A Cold Touch of Ice

by Michael Pearce

  Owen persisted.

  ‘Did someone come here that evening?’

  The Signora gave another dismissive shrug.

  ‘Perhaps it was early. Before the warehouse closed. You said that Abdul sometimes worked late.’

  ‘What if the warehouse was still open? What if someone did come?’

  ‘Then there could have been a conversation. In the warehouse, in the dark. And someone could have heard it.’

  ‘There was nothing to hear.’

  ‘An argument? A quarrel?’

  ‘There was no argument. Or quarrel.’

  ‘I think there might have been. For something left the Signor disturbed. So disturbed that the next day he did something unusual. He came to the porters and asked about the Mamur Zapt’s Box.’

  ‘Why would he do that?’

  ‘I can only think,’ said Owen, ‘that he was considering sending a message to me.’

  After a long while the Signora spoke.

  ‘What were the guns to him?’ she said, as much to herself as to Owen. ‘A load to be carried, that’s all. He would have done it without question if asked. But he wasn’t asked, and so he was angry. But the guns—the guns themselves were nothing to him. He was a busy man and in this country a busy man turns a blind eye to a lot of things. Protection, for instance. What is protection money? It is insurance, that is all. What are guns? A load, that is all. But he wasn’t asked, and so he was angry.

  ‘Angry, but—well, what shall I say?—not too angry. Words, words—that was all it amounted to.

  ‘But the next morning, when he woke up, there were the guns still. So it wasn’t only words. What should he do with them?

  ‘Where did he stand? That was what it came to. Guns are not, after all, just a load, they are things that can be used. And used wrongly. Was that what he wished? He wished that he had told him to take the guns, take them away, forget about it, let everyone forget about it. But they were still there, the next morning.

  ‘They could be used to do wrong. Was that what he wished? They could be used against the government, against the British. But what were the British to him? What was the government, for that matter? He lived his life, let them live theirs. He was of the Nahhasin, that was all he wanted to be. Let the British fight their own wars. What the guns might be used for, what they might do, was nothing to him.

  ‘But there they were. In his warehouse. And the British were people, too, were they not? Even the British. And it might not be the British, it might be Egyptians on the wrong end of them, who knew? They might even be used against the Nahhasin. How could he let that be? He was of the Nahhasin. The British, the government, they were in the end nothing to him. But the Nahhasin was.

  ‘He wished he had asked him what they were to be used for, who against. Perhaps made him promise. But could his promises be trusted? He had deceived once; might he not deceive again?

  ‘And so he thought the best thing to do would be simply to get rid of them. But how? Leave them lying somewhere? But then might they not fall into the hands of others who might do wrong? Take them to the police? But they would ask questions. To the Mamur Zapt? He would ask more.

  ‘And then he remembered the Box. He would tell the Mamur Zapt anonymously and let the Mamur Zapt find the guns and say it was nothing to do with him. Better; he could take the guns from his warehouse and put them somewhere else and tell the Mamur Zapt and who would know who to put questions to? That is what he thought.

  ‘And, who knows, that is what he might have done, had he not—not been killed.’

  She came to an end and folded her arms.

  ‘Signora,’ said Owen gently after a moment. ‘You have told us much, but you have not told me all.’

  ‘All?’

  ‘You have not told me the name of the man he argued with.’

  ‘If Morelli would not have told you who the man was, why should I?’

  ‘Because, Signora, you have a double reason to tell. The guns, perhaps, mean nothing to you. But surely Morelli does.’

  ‘I do not understand.’

  ‘Why shield the man who killed him?’

  She stared at him.

  ‘Killed him?’

  ‘Perhaps in order to make sure that he stayed silent.’

  ‘Oh, no. No.’ She laughed. ‘It was not like that. He would not have killed him. He would never have killed him,’ she said confidently. ‘It was an argument, no more. Words, just words.’

  ‘Signora, please tell me his name.’

  ‘How can I? Am not I of the Nahhasin, too?’

  ***

  Mahmoud listened attentively.

  ‘I do not understand, either,’ he admitted. ‘But it is clear that the Signor knew the man and that he came from the Nahhasin. In which case, I shall find him. Especially if, as you suggest, it all took place earlier in the evening. There will have been people about and someone will have seen him. Leave it to me. But why could she not give his name?’

  ‘I think,’ said Owen, ‘because he was of the Nahhasin and she, too, thought of herself as of the Nahhasin; and that she thought it was a question of guns only, and what are guns to the Nahhasin?’

  ‘Well, yes,’ said Mahmoud, ‘and, clearly, the Signor knew the man well. But why should she shield him? He could not have been family.’

  ‘I think,’ said Owen, ‘that perhaps to the Morellis, the Nahhasin was family.’

  ***

  He had arranged to take Zeinab to the opera that evening. When he called for her, however, he sensed that something was amiss.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he said.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Look, if you’d rather not go—’

  ‘No, no. I would like to.’

  He settled her into the arabeah and climbed in beside her. She turned her face away from him.

  ‘Something is the matter. What is it?’

  Zeinab shrugged.

  ‘The Khedive is going to Constantinople.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘My father has decided to go with him.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘He wants to take me.’

  ‘I see. What do you want?’

  ‘I think I might go.’

  ‘Well, why not?’ he said. ‘You’ve never been there, and it might be interesting.’

  ‘The thing is,’ she said, facing him, ‘I might not come back.’

  He had half guessed it but now that she had said it, he couldn’t quite take it in.

  ‘I see. Why is that?’

  She made a little gesture of helplessness.

  ‘What about us?’ he said.

  ‘It’s no good,’ she said. ‘It’s not going to happen. Things are too difficult.’

  ‘Nonsense!’

  ‘I’m not blaming you,’ she said. ‘It’s me as much as anything. I’m just not seeing it any more. The two of us. It’s too difficult.’

  ‘No, no, no, no. It’s just that it’s a bit difficult at the moment.’

  ‘It’s no good,’ she said.

  ***

  He was sitting in his office the next morning when Nikos stuck his head tentatively in at the door.

  ‘There’s a message from Lord Kitchener.’

  ‘It can wait.’

  Nikos swallowed.

  ‘And one from the Khedive—’

  ‘That can wait, too.’

  ‘Yes. Right.’

  Nikos still hesitated in the doorway.

  ‘Oh, and something’s come in from Georgiades…’

  Chapter Thirteen

  Assuan, over five hundred miles to the south, was like a furnace. When Owen stepped out of the train, he was hit by a blast of hot air. From the engine, he thought. It wasn’t.

  Georgiades, waiting in the shade, detached himself
from the wall and slouched forward.

  ‘Is it always like this?’

  ‘So they say. In summer.’

  Just standing there seemed to drain him.

  ‘OK,’ he said, ‘so what is it?’

  ***

  The Camp of the Bisharin was on the eastern side of the railway station, the desert side. Spread across the sand were dozens of low brown tents. Among the tents, everywhere, were camels: and among the camels were the Bisharin themselves, short, swarthy men with great mops of wiry hair. They crouched together in little groups among the camels, seemingly oblivious of the sun, or swaggered past with the truculent strut of the desert man, their short skirts hitched up to their knees, camel sticks and whips in their hands.

  For they were camel men through and through, the drivers who brought the caravans in from the south, from Sennar and Kassala and Khartoum, and from the east, from the ports on the coast. Sometimes they went on further, to Kharga and the great oases of the west, even to Timbuktu and Tripoli. Mostly, however, the caravans ended at Assuan and the Bisharin would return to their home in the Red Sea Hills.

  Some of them, though, stayed at Assuan and drove for the smaller, more specialized caravans going north; caravans such as that of the Morellis, for whom Mohammed Guri worked as leader.

  ***

  ‘Guns?’ said Mohammed Guri uneasily. ‘I wouldn’t have anything to do with them!’

  Georgiades sighed. He had been through all this with him before.

  ‘Normally,’ he said.

  ‘Normally,’ Mohammed Guri accepted.

  ‘But on this occasion—?’

  ‘Well, I had to, didn’t I? He being my sister-in-law’s cousin’s herdsman’s son.’

  ‘He?’ murmured Owen.

  Mohammed Guri ignored this.

  ‘Besides,’ he said, ‘I owed him a favour. Well, I didn’t exactly owe it myself, but my brother did, and that’s about the same thing, isn’t it?’

  ‘So you had to do it?’ prompted Georgiades patiently.

  ‘Exactly!’ agreed the leader, relieved, and seeming to conclude that the conversation stopped there.

  Georgiades let him have a couple of minutes and then said:

  ‘Of course, you didn’t approach him, he approached you.’

  ‘That’s it! That’s it exactly! I mean, I would never have approached him. Not about guns. I never have anything to do with them. I mean, they take up too much room. You’ve got to think of the load. Camels are all right, they’ll carry a mountain, but guns are really heavy, you know—’

  He stopped, sensing that, once again, he might have said too much.

  ‘Yes, I know,’ said Owen.

  ‘That’s why I never have anything to do with them,’ said the caravan leader unhappily.

  Georgiades let him stew for a moment or two and then said:

  ‘What exactly was it that he asked you to do?’

  ‘Well, nothing. I mean, that was the beauty of it. “All you’ve got to do is what you would ordinarily do,” he said. And for that he was going to pay me extra! Well, I mean…’

  ‘Come on, you must have had to do something!’

  ‘No. Not a thing. Sometimes, you know, when you deliver something for somebody you have to go out of your way. But I didn’t even have to do that. “No, no,” he said, “it just goes to the Morellis’ warehouse as usual.”’

  ‘What about putting the guns in the bales?’

  ‘That would all be seen to, he said. “The less you know about it, the better,” he said. “You just assume they’re there, that’s all.” Well, I didn’t argue, and after that I didn’t ask any questions either, except about the money.’

  ‘I can see, Mohammed,’ said Georgiades, ‘that in all this you were but the unknowing servant of evil men. That will reassure my friend, for he has heard bad words about you. But now he can see that you are a man of good standing; and, to prove it, all you have to do now is tell us the name of the man who approached you.’

  The caravan leader swallowed.

  ‘I’m not sure I know his name,’ he said faintly.

  ‘That is odd,’ said Georgiades, ‘for I have spoken with those who saw you talking to him and they remember it well.’

  ‘Hilmi,’ said the caravan leader.

  ***

  The river bank was lined with feluccas loading and discharging, and on the shore there were huge piles of sugar cane and also, for some odd reason, bright-orange pottery. But where was the great Camp of the Traders of which he had heard so much?

  Georgiades pointed, and there, almost lost among the hills of grain beside the Grain Bazaar, he saw camels coming down to the river to drink, and an area, much smaller than he had imagined, where goods of a rather different kind, skins and carpets and ostrich feathers and spices, were lying scattered around in little heaps, and a caravan was being loaded.

  ‘It’s much smaller than it used to be,’ said Georgiades. ‘The drivers used to stay here but they don’t any more. They don’t like it. They say the town is taking over. They prefer to stay up at the camp at the top, where, they say, they can smell the air. They come down only to load up.’

  So the bales, thought Owen, would have been left standing in the open, possibly for several nights, and it would have been easy to put the guns in.

  ‘There are watchmen, of course,’ said Georgiades. ‘But then, there are ways with watchmen.’

  And a man who knew the ways with watchmen, and, indeed, the ways of the whole dockside, and of the traders and of the traders’ camp, was Hilmi; a man who, it was said around the docks, could arrange anything.

  But where was Hilmi this morning? Sick, said the man in the little coffee house where Georgiades had arranged to meet him. Gone to visit his mother, said someone else. It was his mother that was sick, volunteered a third.

  Georgiades was unperturbed by all this and led Owen along the dock front to a space where they could sit down and study the feluccas as they came into the shore and savour the rich aromas of spices and coffee.

  After they had been sitting there for some time, Owen became aware they had been joined.

  ‘He is in the House of Fatima,’ said the small boy.

  Georgiades nodded.

  ‘Can you take us there?’

  The boy led them away from the front and into the maze of side streets that came down to the river. He stopped at a corner.

  ‘It is the third house,’ he said. ‘I will not come with you, lest he find out and beat me.’

  ‘You have done well,’ said Georgiades, and gave him the money he had promised him for watching.

  Fatima was a lady of astonishing fatness, much blued with henna.

  Georgiades took no notice of her protestations and pushed past her.

  There were only two rooms in the house so it was not difficult to find Hilmi. He was lying naked on a rope bed. The heat in the windowless room, and the smell, was so overpowering that Owen almost retched. He stood prudently at the door until Hilmi was ready to come with them.

  ‘Have you recovered?’ asked Georgiades solicitously.

  ‘Recovered?’ said Fatima suspiciously.

  ‘You are his mother, are you not?’ said Georgiades.

  Fatima turned on Hilmi wrathfully.

  They walked along the river front almost to the Camp of the Traders and sat down among the hills of grain. They did not give much shade but Owen did not mind. Anything was better than the House of Fatima.

  ‘You see, Hilmi,’ said Georgiades, ‘that we had no trouble in finding you. That is the way it is with my friend. He has eyes that see at a distance. They have been watching you even from the Great City. So do not mess us around.’

  Hilmi nodded, much cast down.

  ‘Tell my friend what you told me,’ Georgiades commanded.

  ‘One ca
me to me,’ began Hilmi obediently, speaking in the sing-song manner in which he might have given evidence in court, ‘and said that he wanted guns to go to the Great City. They were to go by such-and-such a caravan, and only that caravan. And I was to arrange it with the leader and also see to it that the guns were put in the bales.’

  ‘Which was done how?’

  ‘It was easy,’ said Hilmi. ‘The guns were lying nearby. They had been brought in that day by separate camel. All I had to do was see that they were put in the bales. And see that the watchmen went for tea.’

  He stopped.

  ‘Well?’ said Georgiades.

  ‘That’s about it,’ said Hilmi.

  ‘Not quite. How did the guns come to be there?’

  ‘I had asked for them,’ said Hilmi reluctantly.

  ‘Who did you ask?’

  ‘There are caravans,’ said Hilmi, ‘which take guns westwards. They do not come into the Camp of the Traders but make a stop out in the desert. They send men in for what they need. While they were in the Camp of the Bisharin I spoke to them. I said I had a friend who would pay them more for their guns than they would get at the end of their journey, and so they agreed to sell some.’

  He stopped.

  ‘That is all.’

  ‘No, it is not all. You did not do this unbidden. Their names, Hilmi; my friend wants their names.’

  ‘I do not know his name—’

  Owen stirred.

  ‘I do not, Effendi. Truly. All I know is that he is a soldier at the barracks.’

  He had shown Georgiades the soldier and in the evening, when the military day was done, they went down to the barracks and met him as he came out of the gates.

  ***

  ‘You see, Rashid,’ said Georgiades, ‘I do as I promised. Remember that, for that is how it will be. Do as I say and you will be rewarded. But if you do not, then things will go hard. And do not seek to flee, for my friend’s breath is hot upon your neck. It burns already. But I can come between you and his wrath, as I have promised to do if you deal with me justly. Tell us now how it comes about that you order guns.’

  ‘Effendi,’ said the soldier, raising his eyes to Owen almost beseechingly, ‘I do not order for myself but for others.’