Michael Pearce - The Fig Tree Murder

‘Ah, Captain Owen!’ said the lawyer, smiling. ‘I think you’re a little out of date, you know. We all go by train now.’

‘Do we?’ said Malik, startled.

‘No,’ said Owen. ‘Not everyone. There’s still a caravan.’

‘For how long? No, Captain Owen-’ the lawyer smiled and shook his head-‘we must look to the future. And Heliopolis is the future.’

‘I think we have to have regard to local religious feeling,’ said Owen.

The other lawyer intervened.

‘With the greatest respect,’ he said, ‘I’m not sure that the Mamur Zapt is the best interpreter of religious feeling.’

‘No?’ said the man from the Ministry of Justice.

‘No. There is, in fact, very considerable local support for the venture. I would go so far as to say that it has captured the imagination of the local populace. As Mr Hosnani, here, is in a position to testify.’

‘You’re damned right,’ said Malik. ‘We’re all in favour. Can’t wait to get started.’

‘With the greatest respect,’ said Owen, ‘I doubt whether Mr Hosnani is in a position to testify; not, at least, as far as the views of the ordinary man are concerned.’

‘I’m a local resident, aren’t I?’ said Malik indignantly.

A few people stood around but, compared with what it would have been in the city, it was nothing. In the city, the crowd would have filled the street. Here, an old man looked up while watering his goats, some women with jugs on their heads paused on their way to the well, men stooping in the fields looked as they straightened their backs for a moment. One or two villagers had come out to see what was going on; and beside the Tree, Daniel, the Copt, stood vigilant, hoping somehow to turn this into a bargain.

The space in front of the Tree was roped off and some men in police tunics and military-style tarbooshes were crouched down examining the ground. Despite the sun, which made the sand so hot that it almost burned the hand, they had bare feet; and although they looked not very different from ordinary city policemen, they were in fact men of the desert. They were the police force’s professional trackers.

Some of their achievements were legendary. On one occasion some goods had been thrown out of a train in the middle of the desert. Accomplices waiting on camels had taken them to Port Said, over a hundred miles away; where the trackers had found them in the market, identifying them by camel track alone.

‘I had thought it might be too late,’ said Mahmoud, ‘and, of course, the ground at the railhead was very disturbed. There had been so many people milling about that first day. But out beyond the disturbed ground they were able to pick up the trail. It was partly the different kinds of sand they found on the body, but then they also found tracks.’

‘And it led back to here?’ said Owen.

‘Yes. This is where he was killed.’

One of the trackers looked up and pointed to a patch of ground.

‘He fell here?’

Owen bent down and looked closely. He didn’t really expect to see anything and he wasn’t disappointed. However, he knew the trackers well enough to believe them. On second thoughts, that might be a slight declivity.

The tracker pointed to one side of it and made smoothing movements with his hand. Yes, you could argue that something had been dragged. He stood up and, beckoning to Owen to follow him, set off across the desert, pointing to the ground.

To him it was as plain as a pikestaff. To Owen it was the next best thing to invisible; only, from time to time, the tracker bent down and showed him marks which he certainly could see. The difficult thing was pulling the marks together to establish the trail as a whole. This was where, presumably, the different types of sand came in. Here again, to Owen the differences were practically indistinguishable. To the trackers they leaped out a mile.

The tracker led him across the desert to the railway, where some of the men he and Mahmoud had talked to the previous day were laying the track. New lengths had been added. The tracker disregarded these and took Owen straight to the place where he had first seen the body.

Owen walked back with him to the Tree.

‘It’s a long way to drag someone.’

The tracker shrugged.

‘Perhaps he didn’t have a donkey,’ he said.

It was a long way. You wouldn’t have done it lightly. It must have been done deliberately, to make, as Mahmoud had suggested, a point.

But then, it was a long way and if it had been done deliberately, premeditated, why had not the attacker thought of the carrying? Here, in the heat, almost every little thing was carried on the back of a donkey. True, the attack had been at night, when it had been cool. All the same, it was a long way.

He said this to Mahmoud.

‘Yes,’ said Mahmoud, ‘I’ve been thinking that too.’

‘Why not a donkey?’

‘Because there are other donkeys about. It might have called out.’

‘We’re some way from the village,’ Owen objected.

‘Yes, but there are donkeys about. There’s one over there, for instance, among those trees by the well.’

Owen nodded, accepting.

‘It had to be a long way,’ said Mahmoud. ‘The railway track was where he wanted the body to be in the end. But Ibrahim wasn’t going to walk there himself. If he was going to be trapped by a meeting, the meeting would have to be close to the village. Close, but not too close. Here, by the Tree,’ said Mahmoud, looking around him, ‘would be just about right.’

The Copt had been watching the goings-on with interest. Owen walked over to him.

‘Are you here all the time, Daniel?’

‘Certainly,’ said the Copt. ‘It’s my property, isn’t it?’

‘Nights, too?’

‘Well, no. I have a wife to keep warm.’

‘And where do you keep her warm, Daniel?’

‘At Tel-el-Hasan.’

‘Ah, Heliopolis? Where they are building?’

‘Where they are building, unfortunately. I offered them my land but the Khedive got there first.’

‘It’s his land, is it?’

‘Most of it is just desert. But he claimed that it belongs to him.’

‘And you go back there every night?’

‘I do.’

‘Do you walk?’

‘Walk?’ said Daniel, astonished. ‘Walking is for fellahin. I have a donkey.’

‘And at what time is it that you set out from here?’

‘When the sun is two fists above the horizon. Leave it any later and it would be dark when I got home. I wouldn’t want that. There are bad men about,’ he said, looking at the spot where the trackers were crouching. ‘Muslims,’ he added.

‘And when do you return?’

‘At sunrise. Leave it any later and who knows how many may have been carving at the Tree.’

‘And on the night the man was killed you saw nothing untoward as you left?’

‘No.’

‘Nor as you came the next morning?’

‘What might I have seen?’

‘I was just wondering.’

‘The other men have already asked me this,’ said Daniel. ‘Both that one’-pointing at Mahmoud-‘and the other one before.’

Owen, following the point, saw again the donkey among the trees.

‘That donkey over there: is it yours?’

‘It is; and the trees should be mine by rights also. For when the Virgin rested beneath the Tree, she went down to the well for water with which to wash the Child’s garments. And when she threw away the water afterwards, trees of holy balsam sprang up. Those trees. Worth a lot of money. And by rights,’ said Daniel bitterly, ‘they should be mine. For they would not have been there had not the Virgin rested under my Tree.’

‘ Who do they belong to?’

‘There are those in the village who say they are wild trees, that they belong to everyone. But the well isn’t wild, is it? Someone put it there. The same with the trees. Someone planted them. And that someone was the Virgin after she had rested under my Tree. They don’t belong to everyone; they belong to me. And that old bastard over there is letting his goats devour my substance!’