Michael Pearce - The Bride Box

They had information to exchange. Owen needed to know about the guns and Mahmoud brought him up to date with the failure to identify any of the Pasha’s men — but also the possible lead with Suleiman. Owen shared with him the conflicting information about the destination of Soraya’s bride box.

In both cases the exchange brought about a switch in thinking. Mahmoud realized that he would have to go back to the Pasha’s estate and the lady’s house; Owen, who had been intending to return to Cairo, thought that in the light of what Mahmoud had told him about the guns — and what he had learned at the temple — he would stay on in Denderah for another couple of days, at least until the caravan had arrived bringing its miscellaneous cargoes.

As they were drinking the tea, Owen heard himself hailed. It was the clerk’s brother, Babikr, and he was moving a slip of paper.

‘For you, Effendi! For you!’

It was a reply to his cable to the Sudan Slavery Bureau. It read:

Abdulla Sardawi known to us. Bugger! Thought he’d retired.

Will keep an eye and nab on return to Suakin.

Macfarlane.

Afterwards, Mahmoud wandered off around the square and Owen went back to the railway station. A train had just come in but it was the passenger train from Luxor, not a goods train and had no effect on the great wall of gum arabic sacks that had sprung up.

Not many people got off the passenger train. This was not yet the tourist season and there were few visitors for Denderah: one or two Levantines in suits, merchants, perhaps, taking advantage of the great cross-over of goods, and a family returning to Denderah to be met by a great gang of relatives. Come for a wedding, perhaps? Or a funeral?

But there was also a tall, thin man in a white suit, a European of sorts. He wore a straw hat, pulled forward over his face against the sun, and dark sunglasses that he kept pulling off to see better. What he seemed to be looking at were the sacks of gum arabic, which he scrutinized very closely.

Some time later Owen had the feeling that he was being watched. This was something about which you developed a sixth sense if you were a Cairo policeman, and Owen, almost as a matter of habit, moved away into the shadows where he was less obvious.

Then he looked around himself. At first he couldn’t spot who had been watching him, but he was sure someone had been. And then he caught sight of him: it was the tall, thin European who had got off the train.

To the best of his knowledge Owen had never seen the man before, so why he should be watching him, he couldn’t think.

The man moved away and Owen almost forgot about him. But not quite.

Sometime later he felt the man’s gaze on him again. He was standing by some camels and he slipped behind him and looked back. It was the man again, the same man. And he was definitely watching Owen. When Owen passed behind the camels the man began to search around for him.

Owen showed himself and walked off. A little later, he looked back — and, yes, there was the man again.

Who was he? What was he doing? And why should he be watching Owen?

He didn’t look, from his clothes, as if he was from Denderah. The train had come from Luxor, but this man looked as if he had come straight from Cairo.

And that put another complexion on it. There were plenty of people in Cairo with something against the Mamur Zapt. But why come down to Denderah to attack him? In Cairo it could be done more easily and less obtrusively. And who was it, anyway? Owen began to run through the list — the rather long list — of those who might have a score to settle.

Owen began to stalk the stalker. It wasn’t easy to do it without being observed. There weren’t that many Europeans in the crowd thronging the square. But one of the few was the man he was trying to keep an eye on, and he stood out as much as Owen himself did.

At first the man seemed nonplussed when he lost sight of Owen, but after hovering about uncertainly for a moment or two he seemed to shrug and move away. Owen followed him as he went through the bales of gum arabic. He seemed to be checking numbers as much as their condition. But then a train of camels moved between them and he lost sight of the man.

It left Owen with a feeling of discomfort and puzzlement. He hadn’t expected this, not out of Cairo.

Owen had called Nikos, the official clerk, and told him to find out what he could about the trader, Clarke, and one day a fat, slovenly dressed Greek came up to the warehouse from which Clarke operated when he was in Cairo.

He wasn’t in Cairo very often, the clerk in the warehouse explained to the Greek when he inquired. In fact, he had just missed him. He travelled a great deal, mostly in Upper Egypt, visiting suppliers of gum arabic and seeing how the trees they harvested were doing that year. He liked to see the stocks before buying them, and then he often accompanied the caravan to Denderah from where they were distributed throughout the Sudan and Egypt and often, these days, abroad. He always took particular care when the gum was going abroad as he wanted to be sure that it was not adulterated on the way. Quality, Clarke had emphasized, was important in foreign markets. And the Sudanis — and indeed anyone who lived in Upper Egypt — were not wholly to be trusted. Clarke Effendi was always having trouble with someone or other. He had often said to Fuad, the clerk in the warehouse, that unless you stood right over them, they were always up to something. So Clarke Effendi was often away standing right over them.

The Greek said that things were not that different in Cairo. The clerk agreed and said that he personally had to keep a sharp eye on the men who worked in the warehouse. Clarke Effendi had enjoined him to keep a particular eye on stock loss through pilfering.

‘Of gum arabic?’ said the Greek, surprised. ‘Wouldn’t that be hard to steal?’

‘No, no, not gum. That is in great slabs and would not be worth the effort. But Clarke Effendi also trades in other things and they are more stealable. Trinkets for the bazaars. Jewellery for the unwary. And, of course, trocchee shells.’

‘Trocchee shells?’

‘Oh, yes.’ It was big business. Shells from Egypt and the Sudan went all over the world. He, the Greek, would be surprised at the places the shells went to: Europe, Italy, especially, America — New York was the place — and even India and China. Clarke Effendi was always saying that he ought to pay a visit to the Far East. A visit, he claimed, would certainly double sales there. But so far he had not gone.

They went round the corner to continue their chat over a cup of coffee. The Greek was good at chatting. His big, brown, sympathetic eyes invited confidences. That was why Owen employed him. Georgiades was his name.

He gave confidences in return. Mostly about his wife, whom he loved dearly but who terrified him. She was a business woman. Well, yes, that was unusual, but she was an unusual woman. A whiz at figures. That sort of thing always made Georgiades himself uneasy. She played the Cairo Bourse, the Egyptian Stock Exchange. When Georgiades had first found out, he had been paralysed with fear and demanded that she stay at home like a decent woman and look after the children.

‘On your money?’ she had said. ‘We couldn’t even afford to buy them shoes!’

This, unfortunately, was true, and he had agreed to let her continue. But only for a short while and with the tiniest of sums. And never, never, never was there to be any risk.

‘Sure, sure, sure!’ said Rosa, but the Greek was not entirely convinced that she followed his instruction. (‘Women are like that,’ said Fuad.)

Anyway, the children always seemed to be well off for shoes, so Georgiades thought it best not to enquire too closely. And then there was the question of the house.