Michael Pearce - The Fig Tree Murder

‘No.’

Asif seemed relieved. Conducting his first case was problem enough without the additional difficulty of the Mamur Zapt.

‘I thought that since I was here I would look in. May I join you?’

‘Of course!’

They stepped into the house. It had only two rooms, the rear one, where the wailing was coming from, and the one they were in. It was small and bare. The only furniture was a mattress rolled up and stacked against the wall and some skins, not cushions, on the floor.

Two men came into the room, an old man, probably the father, and one much younger, the brother, or perhaps brother-in-law, of the dead man.

‘I come at a time of trouble,’ said Asif ceremoniously, ‘but not to add to it.’

‘Your grief is my grief,’ said Owen formally.

The men bowed acknowledgement. The older one, with a gesture of his hand, invited them to sit down. They sat on the skins.

A woman brought them water and a small dish of dates.

Asif complimented their host on the water and Owen praised the dates.

‘The water is good,’ admitted the old man.

‘The dates eat well,’ conceded his companion, ‘though not as well as the dates of Marg.’

‘God is bountiful!’ said Asif.

The men agreed.

Owen, used to the slow pace of Eastern investigation, settled back.

‘Although sometimes,’ said Asif, ‘the yoke he asks us to bear is heavy.’

‘True,’ asserted the old man.

‘Does our friend have a family?’

‘A wife,’ said the old man, ‘and two daughters.’

‘No sons?’ Asif shook his head commiseratingly.

‘The girls are still young.’

Which meant that the family would have to support them for some time yet. It would, but every extra mouth was a burden on the family.

They sat for a little while in silence.

‘Are you tax collectors?’ said the old man suddenly.

‘No!’ said Asif, startled.

‘Oh. We thought you might be.’

‘You come from the city,’ explained the younger man.

‘I am from the Parquet.’

The men clearly did not understand.

‘I am a man of law,’ Asif explained.

‘You are a kadi?’

‘Well, no, not exactly,’ said Asif scrupulously. It was not for a fledgling lawyer to claim to be a judge. Besides, the two systems were quite separate. Kadis were concerned with religious law, the Parquet, after the French model, with the secular and more modern criminal law.

‘Who is he?’ asked the older man, pointing at Owen.

‘I am the Mamur Zapt.’

‘Ah, the Mamur Zapt?’

They had obviously heard of him. Or, rather, they had heard of the post. The position of Mamur Zapt, Head of the Khedive’s Secret Police and his right-hand man, went back centuries. Only things were a bit different now. The Mamur Zapt was no longer the right-hand man of the Khedive; he was the right-hand man of the British, the ones who really ruled Egypt.

‘What brings you here?’

‘My friend has some questions to ask,’ said Owen diplomatically.

‘They are not my questions but the law’s questions,’ said Asif. ‘When a man dies in the way that our friend did, they cannot be left unasked.’

‘True,’ said the old man. Ask on.’

‘The first question,’ said Asif, ‘is why, after the evening meal, when all was dark, did he rise from his place and go out into the night?’

‘I do not know.’

‘Was it to meet someone?’

‘I do not know.’

‘Did he not say?’

The two men looked at each other.

‘All he said was that he had to go out.’

‘Did he often do thus in the evening?’

‘Not often.’

‘Were you not surprised?’

‘We thought he was going to sit with Ja’affar.’

‘Did he often sit with Ja’affar?’

The old man hesitated.

‘Sometimes.’

‘But when he did not return, did you not wonder what had befallen him?’

‘Why should we wonder?’

‘What, a man goes out into the night and does not return, and you do not wonder?’

‘What a man does at night is his own business.’

Owen caught Asif’s eye and knew what he was thinking: a woman.

‘And when the morning came and he still had not returned, you still did not wonder?’

‘We thought he had gone straight to work.’

‘After spending the night with Ja’affar?’

‘Yes.’

‘A strange village, this!’ said Asif caustically. ‘Where the men spend the night with the men!’

The younger man flashed up.

‘Why do you ask these questions?’ he said belligerently.

‘Because I want to know why Ibrahim was killed.’

‘That is our business,’ said the brother. ‘Not yours!’

‘It is the law’s business.’

‘Whose law? The city’s?’

‘There is but one law,’ said Asif sternly, ‘for the city and for the village.’

‘It is the city that speaks,’ retorted the villager.

‘These are backward people!’ fumed Asif, much vexed with himself, as they walked away.

‘The ways of the village are not the ways of the town,’ said Owen.

‘I know, I know! I am from Assiut myself. That is not a village, I know, but compared with Cairo-’

‘You did all right,’ said Owen reassuringly.

‘I should have-’

‘Well, Ja’affar, you work late!’ said Asif.

‘I do!’ said Ja’affar, his face still streaked with sweat.

‘It is not every man who works so long in the fields!’

‘Ah, I’ve not been in the fields. I work at the ostrich farm.’

‘Ostrich farm?’ said Owen.

‘Yes, it’s over by the station. You would have seen it if you’d gone out the other side.’

‘And what do you do at the ostrich farm that keeps you so late?’ asked Asif.

‘I feed the birds. You’d think they could feed themselves, wouldn’t you, only if you don’t give them something late in the afternoon they make such a hell of a noise that the Khedive doesn’t like it.’

‘The Khedive can hear them all the way from Kubba?’

‘So he says.’

Ja’affar removed his skull cap and splashed water over his face. A woman came and took the bowl away.

‘So what is it?’ he said. ‘Ibrahim?’

‘That’s right.’

‘He was a mate of mine. We used to work at the farm together.’

‘The ostrich farm?’

‘Yes. Only then the chance of a job on the railway came along and he took one look at the money and said: “That’s for me!” I warned him. I said: “They don’t give you that for nothing, you know. They’ll make you sweat for it.” And, by God, they did. He used to come back home in the afternoon dead beat. Too tired even to lift a finger!’

‘Too tired to go out?’ said Asif. ‘In the evenings?’

Ja’affar was amused.

‘There’s not a lot to go out to in Matariya,’ he said drily.

‘We heard he liked to go out and chat with his friends.’

‘Ah, well-’

‘You, for instance.’

‘He used to occasionally. He’s not done it so much lately. Not since I got married and he-’

He stopped.

‘Found someone more interesting?’

‘Well-’

‘Just tell me her name,’ said Asif.

A man came to the door.

‘Yes, he used to come here,’ he said defiantly. ‘Everyone knows that. And, no, he didn’t come here just to taste the figs from the fig tree. There’s no secret about that, either. What do you expect? A man’s a man, and if his wife-’

‘Did he come here on the night he was killed?’

‘How do I know?’

‘You live here, don’t you?’

‘No, I live on the other side of the mosque.’

He was, it transpired, the woman’s brother, not her husband.

‘She’s lived here alone ever since her husband died.’