The Mingrelian Conspiracy

by Michael Pearce

  ‘No, thanks.’

  ‘You prefer boy? I have brother. Handsome! Not like me, Effendi.’

  ‘No, thanks.’

  ‘No boy?’

  ‘No, nor girl, either.’

  The urchin was temporarily silenced, while he considered the restricted possibilities.

  ‘Effendi,’ he said at last, ‘I know a special house. All sorts. You want something different, can do. Dog, perhaps? Donkey? You want donkey?’

  Owen turned to give the urchin his full attention.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Sidi, Effendi.’

  ‘Sidi, I am surprised at you. Is this the only way you can make money? I would have thought a resourceful boy like you would be growing fat on the pickings from the docks.’

  ‘Effendi,’ said the boy indignantly, ‘I am. I get my share. But it is only a small one. Ibrahim says it will be bigger when I can carry a load myself. The men who carry the loads get first choice of the pickings. It wouldn’t be fair otherwise. But, Effendi,’—(confidingly)—‘I would prefer not to carry the loads. The sacks are heavy and in the sun it is hard work. I would prefer to share in the pickings and not carry the loads.’

  ‘Wouldn’t we all. Tell me about your friend, Ibrahim.’

  ‘He carries the loads, Effendi, two, perhaps three, times a week.’

  ‘I would like to meet him. It could be to his advantage.’

  ‘Effendi, I don’t know—’

  ‘And yours.’

  Owen put his hand in his pocket and jingled some coins.

  ‘Oh, well, Effendi, that’s different!’

  The boy slipped away and returned some ten minutes later with a thin, wiry man in an embroidered skull cap. Sweat was running down his face and he was mopping his neck with a dirty handkerchief.

  ‘Hard work!’ said Owen sympathetically.

  ‘Effendi, I will not deny it.’

  ‘And for not much money.’

  ‘That, too, I will not deny.’

  ‘Even with the pickings.’

  ‘They are few, Effendi. A burst sack, a broken packing case. And then, besides, most of the regular work is with coal and there is not much reward in that.’

  ‘I think I could add to your rewards.’

  ‘What is it you had in mind, Effendi?’

  ‘I need to know if a certain consignment comes in.’

  ‘Will not the office tell you?’

  ‘The consignment I speak of is not likely to be known in the office.’

  ‘It is hidden goods, then?’

  ‘It is likely to have been concealed.’

  ‘That may make it difficult.’

  ‘The reward will be commensurate.’

  ‘I could not do it on my own, Effendi.’

  ‘If the word were spread,’ said Owen, ‘and what I seek, found, you would take your share. For the finder, the reward would be great. So great that he might not even have to carry loads any more.’

  ‘That indeed would be a reward worth earning.’

  Ibrahim stood for some time considering the matter. The sweat was still running down his face. From time to time he dabbed at it with his handkerchief.

  ‘Well, Effendi,’ he said at last, ‘there is nothing to be lost by doing what you ask and there could be much to gain. I will do it. What is it you ask?’

  After he had gone, Owen became aware that the urchin was still standing by him.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ he said, and put his hand in his pocket. Sidi took the coins with surprising inattention.

  ‘Effendi,’ he said, ‘that reward you mentioned: would it apply to me?’

  ‘If you found what I want, yes.’

  ‘I would buy donkeys,’ said Sidi. ‘It would be better if they carried the loads, not me.’

  ‘With such an abundance of management insight, Sidi, you are bound to prosper.’

  ‘I hope so, Effendi. Now, about my sister: are you sure—?’

  ***

  In the Bab-el-Khalk, the headquarters of the Cairo Police, the heat was stupefying. Owen, working at his desk, had wedged a sheet of blotting paper beneath his writing hand to soak up the persistent trickles of sweat that ran down his arm and threatened to turn everything he wrote into an indecipherable damp smudge. The water in the glass beside him was lukewarm again; only a few minutes before, his orderly had come round to fill the glass with ice. Yusef had said the ice was melting even in the ice house. It had been melting, he said, even when the cart arrived and the men had carried the ice loaves, each tenderly wrapped in sacking, down into the cellar.

  The Bab-el-Khalk was as quiet as a morgue. Christ, what would the morgue be doing if the ice was melting! He decided not to think about that. Instead, he changed the image. As quiet as a tomb. Yes, he quite liked that. As quiet as a tomb and as dark as a tomb, with all the shutters closed against the sun, as they had been since early morning.

  But not so quiet! Voices, feet running. Someone running along the corridor. The pad of bare feet, the slap of slippers.

  Yusef burst into the room.

  ‘Effendi! Effendi! A man—’

  A man with his galabeeyah hoisted up round his knees, the better to run, his feet bare, his turban dishevelled, exposing his skull cap, his face running with sweat—’

  ‘Effendi! Mustapha is being attacked again!’

  ‘Mustapha?’

  ‘The café! Oh, Effendi, come quickly! It is terrible!’ Owen jumped to his feet, grabbed his topee—better than a tarboosh if there was a prospect of being hit on the head—and ran out of the room. He found the man running beside him.

  ‘Quick, Effendi! Oh, quick!’

  Well, yes, but how? Arabeah? There was a line of the horse-drawn carriages in front of the Bab-el-Khalk but no one would describe them as speedy. Donkey? There would be donkeys tied up in the courtyard, but somehow—Got it! The Aalim-Zapt’s bicycle! He ran down into the courtyard. There it was, green, gleaming, modern!

  ‘Tell the Aalim-Zapt!’ he shouted, as he sped through the gate.

  He hurtled across the Place Bab-el-Khalk. That was easy. It was when he came to the more crowded streets of the native city that he ran into trouble. A massive stone cart was almost entirely blocking the thoroughfare, useless to shout, a little gap at one side—Christ, another one just behind! Another gap, at the expense of a chicken, Jesus, stalls all over the road, onions, tomatoes a few more onions and tomatoes when he’d finished, and now a bloody Passover sheep! Fat, obtuse and in the way! A flock of turkeys, a man carrying a bed, a line of forage camels, three great loads of berseem flopping up and down on either side—steer clear of them—and now a donkey with a rolled-up carpet stretched across its back, the two ends sticking out right across the street, a man sitting on top—! Or was he on top, still? Owen did not dare to look.

  He became aware of someone running beside him.

  ‘Nearly there, Effendi!’ said the messenger indomitably. One last street, a crowd outside, well, you’d expect that.

  He jumped off the bicycle.

  ‘Out of the way! Out of the way!’ he shouted.

  ‘Make way! Make way for the Mamur Zapt!’ shouted the storyteller.

  He pushed his way through. Hands helped as well as hindered.

  Suddenly he was through, popped out the front, like a cork out of a bottle.

  The café was a scene of destruction. Chairs, tables, hookahs lay all over the floor. In the middle of the room, prone on his face, lay Selim.

  Mustapha’s wife was on her knees beside him. There was blood all over her burka.

  ‘A lion!’ she kept saying tearfully. ‘A lion!’

  Owen bent down. There was a huge gash on the back of Selim’s head. Owen bent closer.

  ‘He breathes,’ he said.

  ‘A lion!’ said the woman,
in tears. ‘A wounded lion!’ The wounded lion groaned.

  ‘Water!’ said the woman. ‘Bring water!’ Mekhmet, terrified, plucked at her sleeve.

  ‘Lady,’ he said. ‘Lady!’

  ‘Fetch water.’

  ‘But, Lady—’

  ‘Go on, you stupid bastard!’ said a voice from across the room. It was the owner of the café, Mustapha, pale and limp, sitting exhaustedly on the bottom of the stairs. ‘Fetch water, can’t you?’

  Mekhmet looked around in despair, saw Owen and clutched his arm.

  ‘Effendi! Oh, Effendi!’

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Owen. ‘It’s over now.’

  ‘But, Effendi—’

  ‘Get some water, can’t you? And after that, some coffee. For me and the Effendi. I bloody need it!’

  ‘Effendi!’ pleaded Mekhmet.

  ‘Move your ass!’

  Mekhmet fled into the kitchen. Mustapha prised himself up and limped across to Owen.

  ‘A fine bloody job he’s done!’ he said bitterly, looking down at Selim. ‘My café’s wrecked! And what did he do about it?’

  ‘He fought like a lion!’ said the woman indignantly.

  ‘Maybe, but he fell down like a sheep when they knocked him on the head.’

  ‘And where were you? Under the bed!’

  ‘I’ve got a broken leg, haven’t I? Isn’t that enough for you? Or do you want me to get a broken skull as well?’

  ‘It is not for you to chide the one who fought!’ said the woman angrily.

  ‘Well, that’s his job, isn’t it? Fighting? I just wish he’d made a better job of it, that’s all.’

  ‘Shame on you!’ said the woman. ‘While he lies there bleeding!’

  ‘Well, it didn’t work, did it? He was supposed to stop this from happening. That was the idea of it, wasn’t it? Well, look around you,’ he said to Owen. ‘A fat lot of use he’s been! Protection? Protection, my ass! The only thing he’s good for is drinking coffee. You know what? She was more use than he was. Threw boiling water over them!’

  ‘God forgive me!’ said the woman.

  ‘God is all-merciful,’ replied Mustapha automatically, and then started. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘I hope He doesn’t carry it to extremes. We don’t want Him forgiving the bastards who wrecked my café!’

  Mekhmet appeared from the kitchen with a bowl of water. He put it down and then plucked Owen by the sleeve.

  ‘Effendi,’ he said anxiously.

  ‘What about that coffee?’ said Mustapha. He picked up a chair and sat down on it heavily. ‘There’s another for you!’ he said to Owen. ‘That Mekhmet! Idle as the other one and even more useless! Go and get some coffee, can’t you?’

  ‘But, Effendi—’ said Mekhmet desperately.

  ‘Coffee!’ said Mustapha peremptorily.

  Mekhmet looked this way and that and then fled to the kitchen.

  Owen turned Selim on to his back. The woman took his head gently on to her knees and began sponging it.

  ‘That’s more like it!’ murmured Selim. Suddenly his eyes opened.

  ‘Those bastards!’ he said, trying to get up. The woman pulled him back.

  ‘Well—’ said Selim, yielding. His eyes opened again.

  ‘At least I got one of them!’ he said. Owen glanced around.

  ‘He’s not here. They must have taken him away,’ he said.

  Mekhmet shot gibbering out of the kitchen.

  ‘Effendi—!’

  ‘I threw him in there,’ said Selim faintly. ‘After I had broken his neck.’

  Owen went across to have a look.

  ‘Effendi, he stirs!’ said Mekhmet.

  ‘What’s that?’ said Selim.

  ‘I tried to tell you, but—’

  A man was lying among the great jars used for storing water. As Owen looked, a foot twitched.

  ‘Effendi, he lives!’

  ‘Does he?’ said Selim, trying to get up. ‘I’ll soon see about that!’

  Chapter Six

  The extreme heat continued. In the Bab-el-Khalk next day nothing moved. The orderlies sat stupefied, in the orderly room when they were on duty, outside in the courtyard when they were off. From time to time, Yusef, Owen’s own orderly, would pad along the corridor with a fresh pitcher of water, oppressed at the capacity of ice to diminish even in the few yards between the orderly room and Owen’s office. Owen, dripping at his desk, was considering whether to change his shirt.

  Selim, bandaged, poked his head round the door.

  ‘They’re coming now, Effendi.’

  Owen could hear the feet at the other end of the corridor, heard, too, a few moments later, Selim’s muttered aside.

  ‘Right, you bastard, now you’re for it!’

  Two slightly apprehensive police constables appeared in the doorway with, between them, rather more apprehensive, the man who had been taken the day before at the café.

  Owen looked him over. Nothing very special, just an ordinary fellah in a blue galabeeyah. But that, actually, was significant. It made it less likely that they were dealing with a political club. The Arabs tended to recruit from students and young effendi, or office workers. This man had never seen the inside of a classroom or an office. His hands were big and awkward. Scarred, too. Owen leaned forward and pushed back the man’s sleeves. The forearms were scarred also, just where you would expect, and the face, yes, not tribal marks, knife wounds. A tough from the back streets. Owen was almost sure already that this was a criminal gang, not a political one.

  The nervousness, too. Members of political clubs might well be nervous when they were brought before the Mamur Zapt but theirs was a different kind of nervousness from that of the ordinary fellah. They were used to the big imposing rooms and the long corridors, which were not so very different from the ones they knew at college or work. If they were nervous it was because of the anticipated consequences, not about the circumstances in which they found themselves.

  For the ordinary street criminal it was exactly the reverse. The consequences when they came would be accepted with the immemorial resigned shrug of the fellahin. It was the shock of an environment completely new to their experience that was so disorienting.

  Even the toughest of street toughs was put out by the Bab-el-Khalk. There was very little space where they came from. Everything was close, local, intimate. Here in the great open spaces of the Bab-el-Khalk they lost their bearings. Everything was alien to them: the men in their uniforms, the formality, the emotional coldness. Probably most alien of all was the white man they had been brought before.

  It was this second kind of nervousness that the man was showing. His eyes flickered compulsively from side to side. It was all new to him. He couldn’t make sense of anything.

  ‘What is your name?’

  The man looked at him as if he had not understood. As, indeed, probably he had not. Owen doubted if he was taking anything in just at the moment.

  Selim leaned over and tapped the man on the shoulder.

  ‘Come on, bright eyes, what’s your name?’

  What exactly Selim was doing there Owen was not sure. He had appeared shakily that morning and taken up a position in the corridor outside Owen’s office, announcing that he wanted to ‘see it through’. What ‘it’ was Owen didn’t know. He had an uneasy feeling that Selim was expecting summary execution.

  The man, however, seemed to find Selim’s intervention reassuring. Perhaps he was used to big constables tapping him on the shoulder.

  ‘Ali,’ he said.

  ‘What’s the rest of it?’

  ‘There isn’t any more.’

  ‘Come on, light of my eyes, don’t you have a family?’ enquired Selim.

  The man seemed bewildered.

  ‘Not as far as I know,’ he said.

  ‘You mu
st have!’ said Selim. ‘You don’t suddenly get dropped in the streets.’

  ‘I did,’ said the man.

  ‘Don’t know your mother?’

  ‘Nor my father, either,’ said the man. Selim turned to Owen.

  ‘Real bastard, isn’t he?’

  ‘Just keep quiet, will you?’ He was beginning to regret Selim’s presence. ‘All right, then, Ali, if you don’t have a name, do you have a place? Where do you live?’

  Again the bewilderment.

  ‘I don’t live anywhere,’ said the man. Then, as Selim stirred, he added hurriedly: ‘I just move around.’

  ‘One woman after another? That it?’ said Selim.

  ‘Yes,’ said the man. ‘That’s about it.’

  ‘It’s all right for some!’ said Selim.

  ‘Shut up! Where did you sleep the night before last?’ asked Owen.

  ‘At Leila’s.’

  ‘And where will I find Leila?’

  ‘Now we’re talking!’ said Selim.

  Owen wondered whether to throw him out. On the other hand, he did seem to get the man talking.

  ‘I don’t know the name of the street,’ Ali said.

  ‘Give me the quarter.’

  ‘The Fustat.’

  ‘The Fustat is a big place,’ observed Owen. The man shrugged.

  ‘If I wanted to find you, Ali, where would I ask for you?’

  ‘At Leila’s,’ said the man promptly, risking a joke and looking to Selim for approval.

  Selim, however, did not approve.

  ‘I’m the one that makes the jokes,’ he said.

  The man tried another shrug, which, however, quickly lost confidence.

  ‘Where would I find you?’ asked Owen.

  ‘Near the ferry,’ said the man reluctantly.

  ‘If I asked for Ali with the scarred face, someone would know?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I expect they’d all know,’ observed Owen. ‘A man like you!’ Ali responded to the invitation, lifting his shoulders proudly.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I’m pretty well known down there.’

  ‘And what about your mates? Are they pretty well known down there, too?’

  The man froze.

  Owen tried a new tack.