Michael Pearce - A dead man in Tangier

The mosque itself was next to a tannery and its white stucco walls were stained brown with the effluent. But it was entered through a beautiful, old, wooden porch, all latticework and ornamentation. In the cool of its shade several ragged forms were lying. Mustapha stirred one with his foot.

‘Salah?’ he said.

Another form sat up.

‘Who asks?’ it said.

‘Mustapha.’

The form scrutinized him carefully.

‘I know you,’ it said.

‘Everybody knows me,’ said Mustapha impatiently.

‘Why do you want me?’ asked the boy in sudden panic.

‘I want to talk to you.’

‘If it’s about that load of kif, I don’t know anything about it!’

‘It’s not about the kif,’ said Mustapha, slightly uncomfortably. ‘It’s about that dead Frenchman. Look, you’d better come out here.’

There was a sudden chorus of protests from the other forms in the porch.

‘What are you going to do to him?’

‘Leave him alone!’

‘He had nothing to do with it!’

‘Shut up!’ said Mustapha. ‘It’s not about the kif. I just want to ask him some questions, that’s all. About the Frenchman.’

‘I’ve told you everything I know!’

‘All I want you to do is tell it once again. Only this time so that my friend will hear.’

‘Your friend?’

Salah took in for the first time Seymour’s presence.

‘Who’s he?’ he said suspiciously.

‘My friend. Like I said. He’s an Englishman. From the police in London.’

‘The police?’

The porch went still. There was a long silence. Then ‘Mustapha!’ the beggar boy said reproachfully.

‘What is it?’

‘Mustapha, I would never have believed this of you!’

‘What are you on about?’

‘You, whom I have always heard spoken of as a man of honour!’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘The police! Mustapha, I would never have believed this of you!’

‘Have you gone crazy or something!’

‘That you, of all men-’

‘What’s the matter with him?’ said Idris.

‘It must be big. Of course! I’ve got it now,’ said the beggar boy conciliatorily. ‘Really big! Something that will make your fortune. Well, Mustapha, I congratulate you.’

‘Either he’s mad or I’m mad!’ declared Mustapha.

‘It’s just that I’m — well, surprised, that’s all, disappointed. A little.’

‘It’s him!’ said Idris. ‘Definitely. He’s gone mad.’

‘You wouldn’t have cut them in on it if it hadn’t been really big-’

‘What the hell are you talking about?’

‘The kif. You wouldn’t have sold out to the police if-’

‘Shall I just cut his throat?’ asked Idris.

There was another chorus from inside the porch.

‘Leave him alone!’

‘You bastards!’

‘Salah,’ said Mustapha dangerously, ‘I have been very patient with you. But-’

Seymour intervened hastily. He had just about enough Arabic to get it across.

‘It’s nothing to do with the kif,’ he said. ‘Mush kif. And there’s no deal. Mush deal. I’m interested only in the Frenchman. Tell him that, will you?’

‘Mush kif. Mush deal,’ said Mustapha. ‘Got that, you little bastard? My friend has hit the nail right on the head. And now you’re going to tell us, exactly and pretty quickly, just what it was that you saw when that French bastard rode out into the scrub last week.’

‘There were two pigs, see. And they ran off to one side. And the fat Frenchman went after them. Then he settled on one and rode after that. I could see him above the scrub, going up and down because the ground rose and fell at that point. And I thought, You’d better watch it, my fat friend, or else you’ll come off. And then you’ll be in trouble, especially if the pig turns and goes for you. And then I thought, That would be good to see. So I made haste to get there. But, Monsieur, I do not make haste very fast.’

He looked at Seymour apologetically.

‘I have to go like this.’

He showed Seymour how he ran: head down, almost touching the ground, hip up higher than his head. It was just like a hyena, Seymour thought.

‘And when I raised my head, I could not see him. “Lo, it has happened as I foretold,” I said to myself, and redoubled my efforts to get there. I heard the horse in the bushes and ran towards it, but not too fast in case it was the pig and not the horse.

‘And then I saw the lance. It was standing upright, just like this. And I thought, That is strange, but it must have fallen so. But when I went closer I saw that it was stuck through the fat Frenchman, and I thought, How can that be? He cannot have fallen thus. And then it came to me that he could not have done it himself and that someone else had a hand in this! So I sat beneath a bush and waited.

‘And gradually men came. I heard them speak. “What is this?” they said. “He needs help,” someone said. But then someone else said, “Nothing can help him now!” And another said, “Let us not go too close, for the Sheikh will send his men and then it will be better for us if we are not near.”

‘So they sat down and waited. And then the Sheikh’s men came. And they said, “Right, you bastards, who has done this?” And we all said, “Not I!” And they must have believed us, for one stayed and one rode away, and eventually he came back with another Frenchman, the tall captain.

‘That is all, and it was thus, and as I told you the first time.’

‘Not all,’ said Seymour, when Mustapha had finished interpreting.

‘Not all?’

‘Was not there another horse?’

‘Another horse?’

‘Didn’t someone ride in after the Frenchman? Immediately after.’

‘I saw no other horse.’

‘Ask him to think again. Carefully. Is he sure there was no other horse?’

Salah shook his head stubbornly.

‘I saw no other horse.’

‘Think again, Salah, for how else did the lance get there?’

‘That’s a good one,’ said Idris. ‘Someone stuck him, didn’t they? So someone else must have been there.’

‘Ah, but was he on a horse?’ asked Mustapha. ‘Well, was he, you little bastard?’ he said to the beggar boy.

‘I saw no one,’ repeated the beggar boy. ‘And no horse, either.’

‘Salah, I believe you,’ said Seymour. ‘But, then, as my friends say, there is left a riddle. Which, perhaps, you may still help us solve. Go on thinking. Think back to that day. You saw no other horse. Nor person, either. Might that not be because at the time you were running through the scrub with your head down, as you showed me?’

‘Well, it might, but-’

‘Go on thinking. Salah, you saw nothing. But you heard something. You told me. Something in the bushes. A pig, you said, or a horse. Could it not have been a horse?’

‘Well…’

‘You, yourself, were in doubt. Now, Salah, you heard this thing in the bushes, and you were concerned lest it might come upon you. Does that mean it was coming towards you? Or was it going away from you?’

‘Monsieur, I-’

‘Draw it in the sand. With your finger. Here is the spot where the Frenchman fell. And here is the track that he came from, where all the others were. Now, where were you? Draw it.’

Mustapha and Idris bent down to see.

‘So, Salah, you were here. Beside the main track?’

‘Watching the horses go by, yes.’

‘And the Frenchman rode into the scrub here, over to your right hand as you lay?’

‘That is so.’

‘And disappeared here. And you turned and went up to where you had last seen him. And then you heard something in the bushes…?’

‘Here,’ said Salah, pointing with his finger.

‘Near the spot where the fat Frenchman fell, but this side of it. Which means that whoever-it-was was coming away from where he fell?’