The Mamur Zapt and the Girl in Nile. Michael Pearce

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      ‘Were there any tears?’

      ‘Tears? Well, I don’t know. Not so much tears but you know how they get sometimes, you think they’re going to cry and they don’t, they just keep going on and on. A bit like that.’

      ‘With the Prince? When he was trying to persuade her?’

      ‘Yes. And with the girls, too. A bit earlier. Going on and on.’

      ‘Did they get fed up with her?’

      ‘They left her alone after a bit. Then the Prince came up and had a try and he didn’t do any better.’ He broke off. ‘Is this helping?’ he asked.

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘Good. I like to help. Only—all this talking!’ He suddenly pounded on the back of the galley with his fist.

      ‘What’s the matter?’ asked the cook, sticking his head out.

      ‘How about some tea? I’m so dry I can’t speak.’

      ‘It sounded to me as if you were doing all right. I’d have brought you some before only I didn’t want to interrupt you.’

      He placed a little white enamel cup before each of them and filled it with strong black tea.

      ‘No sugar,’ he said. ‘You’d think we’d have sugar on board the Prince’s dahabeeyah but we don’t.’

      ‘It’s that eunuch,’ said the steersman. ‘The stuff never even gets here.’

      ‘It goes somewhere else, does it?’ asked Mahmoud sympathetically.

      ‘Into his pocket!’ said the steersman.

      Mahmoud looked up at the cook.

      ‘You were here that night, weren’t you? The night the girl disappeared?’

      ‘Yes. I was just making supper when that stupid eunuch came along making a great commotion.’

      ‘You left the girl there,’ Mahmoud said to the steersman, ‘and then you came along here. Did you have a cup of tea at that point?’

      ‘Yes,’ said the steersman, ‘I always have one when I finish.’

      ‘Tea first, then supper,’ said the cook.

      ‘And you had a cup with him, perhaps?’

      ‘I did. I always do.’

      ‘Here? Sitting here?’

      ‘Yes. Several of us.’

      ‘And you were still sitting here when the eunuch came?’

      ‘I was,’ said the steersman.

      ‘I had just got up,’ said the cook. ‘To make the supper.’

      ‘So whatever it was that happened,’ said Mahmoud, ‘happened while you were sitting here.’

      ‘I suppose so,’ said the steersman. ‘Well, it must have.’

      ‘Yes, it must have. And you still say you saw nothing? Heard nothing?’

      ‘Here, just a minute—!’

      ‘We weren’t looking!’

      ‘We were talking!’

      ‘You would have seen a person. Or—’

      ‘We didn’t see anything!’

      ‘Two people. On the cabin roof. Together.’

      ‘Here!’ said the steersman, scrambling to his feet. ‘What are you saying?’

      ‘I’m asking,’ said Mahmoud. ‘Did you see two people?’

      ‘No!’

      ‘Up there together. Whoever they were.’

      ‘I didn’t see anything!’

      ‘None of us saw anything!’

      ‘Thirty feet away and you saw nothing?’

      ‘We weren’t looking!’

      ‘You took care not to look.’

      ‘We were talking!’

      ‘And nothing attracted your attention? Someone is attacked—’

      ‘Attacked!’

      ‘Or falls. And you know nothing about it? If she’d jumped into the water she’d have made a splash.’

      ‘A splash? Who hears a splash? There are splashes all the time.’

      ‘One as big as this? You are boatmen. You would have heard.’

      ‘Truly!’ said the steersman. ‘I swear to God—!’

      ‘He hears what you say!’ Mahmoud warned him.

      ‘And sees all that happens. I know. Well, he may have seen what happened to the girl but I didn’t.’

      The steersman showed them off the boat. At the gangway he hesitated and then ran up the bank after them.

      ‘What was it, then? Was she knocked on the head?’

      ‘I don’t know,’ said Mahmoud.

      ‘I thought you’d seen the body?’

      ‘No. It’s not turned up yet.’

      ‘Oh.’ He seemed disappointed. Then he brightened. ‘Tell you what,’ he said, ‘I know where it will fetch up, more than likely.’

      ‘Yes?’

      The steersman pointed downriver to where men were working on a scaffolding which stretched out across the river.

      ‘See that? That’s the new Bulak bridge. That’s where they finish up these days.’

      They were sharing the boat with a kid goat, a pile of onions and the boatman’s wife, who sat, completely muffled in tob and burka, as far away from them as was possible.

      It had been the steersman’s idea. They had been about to set out for the main bridge when he had said:

      ‘Are you going back to Bulak? Why don’t you get Hamid to run you over?’

      He had pointed along the bank to where an elderly Arab was standing in the water bent over the gunwale of a small, crazily-built boat. The sides were not so much planks as squares of wood stuck on apparently at hazard. The sail was a small, tattered square sheet.

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