The Snake Catcher’s Daughter mz-8 Page 15

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I am wondering whether the Philipides business connects up with the McPhee business. Not to mention the side-swipes aimed at me.”

  “But how could-I mean, why should-?”

  “I wonder if there is a plot to get rid of the three of us.”

  “Oh, my dear fellow,” said Mahmoud, putting a hand on Owen’s arm, “how could there be? It is so unlikely!”

  “Any more unlikely,” said Owen, “than that Garvin should have tried to get rid of Mustapha Mir, Philipides and Wain-wright?”

  Georgiades came into the office and perched himself on Nikos’s desk, which he knew Nikos hated. It was not that Nikos had anything personal against Georgiades; it was just that, obsessively tidy-minded, he believed that the top of a desk was for paper not flesh.

  “That orderly of Philipides,” Georgiades said. “Hassan was his name; you were going to go through the lists.”

  “Halfway through,” said Nikos, without raising his head.

  “Don’t bother. He’s not dead.”

  “Right!” said Nikos, without interest.

  “Not dead?” said Owen, overhearing.

  “No. Alive and kicking. And in the Gamaliya somewhere. I’ve found someone who knows him. Would you like to meet him?”

  Chapter 11

  The kahweh was like any other coffee shop which you might find in the poorer, more traditional quarters. Along its front was a raised stone seat, or mastaba, about three feet high and about the same width. Similar benches ran along the walls of the single room inside. They were the only seats. You sat with your back against the wall and, if you smoked, your pipe on the ground beside you.

  In this hot weather most of the customers had brought their water pipes. There was a gourd-shaped bowl on the ground which held the water and the smoke was inhaled through a flexible hose. The whole contraption was quite a thing to carry and if you were sick you employed a servant for that purpose. Most of the men of the kahweh were not rich and carried their own.

  Owen and Georgiades stepped down into the room inside. For a moment they stopped to let their eyes grow accustomed to the dark. The only light came through the open front door. In this country the object was to keep the sun out, not let it in.

  There was hardly anyone inside. Most of the regulars preferred to sit outside on the exterior mastaba, where they could take the air and chat with the people going past. That suited Owen and he made for an empty corner on the other side of the room.

  Cups were brought first, little porcelain ones held inside larger brass ones which were better for holding. The coffee came in a hanging pot, supported from three chains and with charcoal at the bottom. The strong bitter smell filled the room.

  Sayeed Abdullah arrived a few minutes later. He was a small, spare man with the hair at his temples beginning to grey. He walked with a limp.

  He greeted them in a way you seldom saw now, putting his hands to his brow and ducking his head. He seemed nervous of their proffered hands and shook them hesitantly. Then he sat down on the mastaba beside them, tucking one leg up beneath him. The other, the injured one, he let hang.

  He had met Georgiades before and for a while, until the man became used to him, Owen was content to let the two make conversation. Talk was mainly about old times. Sayeed Abdullah had been an orderly at one of the sub-police stations in the Citadel quarter. Georgiades appeared to know it well and they had acquaintances in common, most of whom had now retired. Georgiades asked after them.

  At last he came to the point, the point that Sayeed had been expecting.

  “And Hassan?”

  “He still comes.”

  “You see him?” asked Owen.

  “Every week,” said Sayeed Abdullah. “He comes round to collect.”

  “Collect?” said Owen. “What is it that he is collecting?”

  “The subscription,” said Georgiades.

  “Subscription? What to? A benefit society or something?”

  “You could call it that.”

  “In those days, effendi,” Sayeed Abdullah explained, “if you wanted a job with the police, you would go to someone who could arrange it. You paid them money, of course. Usually you did not have money. So you would agree to pay so much a week after you got the job.”

  “But surely that was years ago? How is it that Hassan is still collecting? You must have paid the debt off years ago.”

  “That is what I said, effendi.”

  “And?”

  Sayeed pointed to his leg.

  “He did that?”

  “They did that. Effendi, I still would not have paid, only afterwards, when I was in hospital, they came and said: First you, then your wife, then your sons. So I paid.”

  “But all this was long ago. You have left the service, Hassan has left-”

  “That is why he collects, effendi. He needs the money, he says.”

  “Even though you no longer have the job?”

  “I have a pension, effendi. It was given me after-after this.” He touched his leg.

  “It must be very small.”

  “After I have paid the subscription,” said Sayeed Abdullah, “there is little left.”

  “Why have you not told someone?”

  Sayeed Abdullah looked at him steadily.

  “Who should I speak to, effendi, seeing for whom Hassan worked?”

  “It is different now.”

  “So they say.”

  “It is different now,” said Georgiades.

  Sayeed Abdullah shrugged.

  “Hassan still comes round,” he said. “And I still have a wife and sons.”

  “Are there others like you?” asked Owen.

  “I do not ask, effendi. But I think so.”

  “And they, too, were treated like this?”

  He pointed to Sayeed’s leg.

  “After they had seen what happened to me,” said Sayeed Abdullah, “that was not necessary.”

  Owen signalled for more coffee. Sayeed Abdullah acknowledged it with the same old-fashioned, traditional bob of the head as before.

  “He had other ways, too,” he said. “There was a new man who came to our station. He was just up from the country and had a new wife who was expecting a child. Hassan had a friend, an evil woman who could cast spells. And he said to this man who had come up from the country, if you do not pay, I know someone who will put the evil eye on your wife.”

  “And did he pay?”

  “No, effendi. He said, what is this nonsense about the evil eye? But the baby died, effendi, and the next time he paid.”

  Owen was silent for a while. Then he said: “It is time this was ended.”

  “That was what your friend said.” Sayeed Abdullah looked at Georgiades. “He said, too, that you were the man who could end it.”

  “I need your help.”

  “You want me to speak,” said Sayeed Abdullah. “Yes, I know.”

  “And will you?”

  “It is easy to ask, effendi. Harder to do, if you have a wife and sons.”

  “I shall put Hassan in a place where he will not be able to harm you. And until then I will give you a guard. In fact, I know just the man. For both you and your family.”

  Sayeed Abdullah hesitated.

  “It is easy for you, effendi. Things happen not to you but to people in the streets.”

  “I intend to see that they don’t happen to people in the streets. But for that I need your help.”

  Sayeed Abdullah sat for a long time looking down on the ground. Then he raised his eyes.

  “I will do it, effendi. Because I know that only in this way can it be ended, effendi, I will do as you ask.”

  Owen sat there with him until Georgiades returned with the guard he had in mind. Selim.

  He noticed the change in atmosphere as soon as he got back to the Bab-el-Khalk. The bearers, who normally greeted him with backchat, averted their eyes. He went into his office and summoned his orderly.

  “What
’s up?”

  Yussuf considered beating about the bush, then took a look at Owen’s face and decided not to.

  “Effendi, you’re in trouble.”

  “Why?”

  “That snake business. Everyone thinks you pulled a fast one. The Rifa’i don’t like it.”

  “What are they complaining about? We tried to use our ordinary snake catcher, didn’t we? And then when we couldn’t find him we tried to use others. We couldn’t find anybody. They want to make it a bit more possible to find their members before they start complaining.”

  “Effendi,” said Yussuf desperately, “that’s not the idea.”

  “What do you mean, it’s not the idea?”

  “It’s the other way round. The Rifa’i want to make it harder to find a snake catcher when you want one. That way they can put their prices up.”

  “And that’s what they were doing?”

  “Yes, effendi,” said Yussuf sadly, “and you spoiled it.”

  “Well, that’s too bad.”

  “Yes, effendi, but now everyone’s afraid the Rifa’i will put the snakes back and…and…”

  “Yes?”

  “Suleiman wants to use the lavatory again.”

  Zeinab had been out having her hair done. She frequented a modish salon in the Ismailiya and used it as an opportunity to catch up with the fashionable gossip of the town. Today she was gleeful.

  “The Whore of Babylon!” she said. “Samira is most envious.”

  “What’s all this?”

  “They’ve been reading Al-Lewa. It is not, it must be confessed, a paper that they usually read but when they heard that I was in it…! ‘What company you keep, Zeinab’, Felicite said; ‘all those policemen! Still, someone must be the criminal, I suppose.’ And do you know what they say? There’s going to be more tomorrow.”

  “Oh, is there?” said Owen. “I’ll soon see about that.”

  “They don’t mind. Demerdash is paying all the fines, you see.”

  “Demerdash?”

  “Unlikely, I know. And I do take it amiss. Gets the paper to write the article and then blames me for appearing in it!”

  “Just a minute. Are you sure?”

  “That’s what Iolanthe says, and she should know since she’s sleeping with Daouad. They can hardly believe their luck, she says, and can only think Demerdash has never read the paper. Well, that’s quite possible, I suppose; he’s been out of the country a long time and I dare say that in Damascus or Constantinople or wherever he’s been he doesn’t get much chance to keep up with things. But I do think it’s nasty of him to get me put in the paper or, at least, not to object, and then to make all that fuss with my father! Still,” said Zeinab, thinking, “I prefer that to the other way round.”

  “What other way round?” said Owen, lost.

  “Denunciation to wooing,” said Zeinab. “At least, in Demerdash’s case.”

  “Got another one?” said the snake catcher, looking around Owen’s garden. “They do come thick and fast. It’s the heat, I expect.”

  “No, it’s not a snake this time,” said Owen. “It’s just that I wanted to ask you something.”

  “Oh!” said the snake catcher, disappointed, letting his bag drop on the ground.

  “Of course, I’ll make it worth your while. I know it’s your time.”

  “Ah, well, that’s different!” said the snake catcher, brightening up.

  The smell was, as Jalila had said, very distinct, the same as on her own arms but stronger, spicier, fresher.

  “I could have done with you the other day,” said Owen. “That business at the Bab-el-Khalk? Well, you’re getting into deep water there, you know.”

  “I would have sent for you, only they said you were visiting your son.”

  The snake catcher looked vague.

  “Yes,” he said. “I think so.”

  “I don’t,” said Owen, smiling. He gave an exaggerated sniff. “Funny smell,” he said.

  The snake catcher looked at him guardedly.

  “It’s once a year you go, isn’t it? There’s the balsam, of course. And then there’s the teryaq. And of course, it has to be done in the right way, in the right frame of mind. That’s why you need a teacher, I expect.”

  “It may be,” said the snake catcher non-committally.

  “Well, I’m not going to ask you about it because I know these things are secret. But I want to know the name of your teacher.”

  “I can’t tell you that!” said the snake catcher, aghast.

  “I think you can. The teacher is not secret. It’s what he teaches that’s secret.”

  It took Owen a long time to persuade him. It took a lot of promises and quite a lot of money. But eventually he got what he wanted.

  Owen found Mahmoud pacing about his office. He turned an angry face towards him.

  “The Khedive’s birthday!” he spat out. “What do I care about the Khedive’s birthday?”

  “What, indeed?” said Owen, taken aback.

  “Look at this!” said Mahmoud, with a fiery gesture towards his desk, piled high with papers. “I’m in court twice this week, three times next. Five cases to be finalized! How do they think I’m going to do it?”

  “Well-”

  “There’s always a lot of preparation at the last moment. Witnesses to be taken through their evidence, clerks to be chivvied-they always leave things till it’s almost too late, damn them. And then something like this happens!”

  “What exactly-?”

  “You haven’t heard? No, and nor has anyone else. And do you know why? Because he only made up his mind to do it this week. This week!”

  “Sorry, his birthday, you said? Surely-?”

  “Public holiday. He’s declared a public holiday for the day after tomorrow.”

  “Oh!”

  “Yes,” said Mahmoud. “Exactly!”

  He plunged into his chair and buried his face in his hands. “Lunacy!” he said. “Sheer lunacy!”

  “It’s not that bad.”

  “It is,” said Mahmoud, refusing to be consoled. “How can you achieve anything when everything is so-so capricious?”

  “Well-”

  “It’s so inefficient!” he burst out in exasperation.

  The best thing, Owen knew from long experience of Mahmoud, was to change the subject.

  “That Philipides business,” he said; “how are you getting on?”

  “That’s an example,” said Mahmoud, declining to be sidetracked. “Not at all. I’ve been going through the records to check which police officers were in post at the time; I wanted to ask them what they knew about it, if they’d been approached in the same way as Bakri.”

  “And had they?”

  “They weren’t saying.”

  “It’s hardly surprising. They might find themselves incriminating their mates. Or even themselves.”

  “Yes.” Mahmoud, calm now, sat back in his chair. “Of course, there’s another explanation possible.”

  “What’s that?”

  “That Bakri was the only instance. And that Garvin made the most of it.”

  “According to Philipides, there were enough other ones to make Wainwright open an investigation.”

  “Not quite. He may have feared there were other ones. The only one he may have actually known about was the Bakri case. That’s why it’s so important to get Wainwright out here. Only then can we know what prompted his action.”

  “Bakri said there were others.”

  “If you’re caught on a thing like this, you usually do.”

  “Are you saying there weren’t any others? That Bakri was the only one and that Garvin-”

  “Made the most of it. For his own ends.”

  “You still think it was a plot to get the Egyptians out and the British in?”

  “I think it may have been much more localized than it was made out to be at the time. And much less significant.”

  “You talked to the police: did you talk to the orderlies?�
��

  “No. Should I?”

  “There’s a man I would like you to meet.”

  “The Khedive’s birthday?” said Garvin in tones of disgust. “Another comic caper we could do without!”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” protested Owen, who had been looking forward to spending a complete day with Zeinab. “He can hardly help having a birthday, can he?”

  “Yes, but this is his second this year already!”

  “Well, it’ll be popular.”

  “Popular?” said Garvin dourly. “I hope so. Because the highlight of it is going to be a big parade in front of the Abdin Palace at which my job will be to see that one of those subjects with whom he’s so popular doesn’t take a pot-shot at him!”

  “Keep them at a distance.”

  “And put plenty of soldiers between them and him, yes, I know. I tell you,” said Garvin bitterly, “the amount of money and time wasted on a thing like this is immense.”

  He sat down heavily in his chair.

  “What was it you were going to ask me?”

  “The Philipides business. His orderly was a man named Hassan.”

  “Oh. I remember him,” said Garvin. “A nasty piece of work. He got out just in time. Otherwise he’d have been in the dock along with the others.”

  “It may only have been deferred. Can you tell me anything about him?”

  “Not much. He was a go-between, the man who put the bite on. There were rumours of violence and coercion. I was sufficiently bothered to put a guard on Bakri.”

  “Very wise. Anything else?”

  “It’s a while ago now,” said Garvin, shaking his head.

  “I’m trying to track him down. You’ve no idea where I might look, have you?”

  “Afraid not.”

  “He’s been seen in the Gamaliya.”

  “He used to know that district, certainly. He was at the sub-station there for several years before he moved to the Citadel. I remember, because I checked to see if there was anyone else like Bakri.”

  “And was there?”

  “If there were,” said Garvin, “they weren’t saying.”

  As Owen walked through the city the following day, there were signs of the coming celebrations. Bunting hung across some of the streets and clusters of brightly-coloured balloons dangled from the overhanging windows. Little boys were decorating their sheep before the open doors of their houses.