Michael Pearce - A dead man in Tangier

‘Look, I know he’s your friend now. He’s a friend of mine, too. But-’

‘Everyone in the bilad knows he’s my friend. Or soon will.’

‘I know, I know. But-’

‘It would look bad,’ said Mustapha, ‘if something happened to him. A friend of mine and I let something bad happen to him! What would people say! I could never show my face again.’

‘Well, I know. I couldn’t, either. A friend of yours is a friend of mine. It would look bad.’

‘I could never hold up my head in public again.’

‘Well, I know. But-’ He turned to Seymour. ‘Look, how long are you likely to be in Tangier for?’

‘I don’t know. Perhaps three weeks. But-’

‘We could look after him,’ said Idris tentatively. ‘For that long. Three weeks is nothing.’

‘Nothing!’ agreed Mustapha, as if a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. ‘Easy!’

‘Look, thank you very much but I don’t really need anyone to look after me-’

The two men caught each other’s eye and nodded.

‘Right, that’s it,’ said Idris. ‘Where are you going today, then?’

‘To the British Consul’s. But-’

‘The British Consul?’ said Mustapha significantly.

‘That’s right. But-’

‘Just a minute,’ said Idris, ‘wasn’t that bloke who got taken out something to do with him? A Frenchman. What was his name?’

‘Bossu!’ said Ali. ‘He used to come to my shop. Here.’

‘Bossu!’ said Idris.

‘That’s right.’

‘Then you certainly do need our protection,’ said Mustapha, turning to Seymour.

When Seymour set out for the British Consulate a little later, his two new friends, despite everything he could do, swaggered along behind him.

‘So you’re Seymour?’ said the Consul unenthusiastically.

‘That’s right.’

‘From Scotland Yard. Well, you’ll find things a bit different here.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Seymour. ‘I worked in the East End.’

‘Where’s that?’

Seymour looked at him to see if he was joking; then decided to make allowance for him being in the Foreign Office.

‘The East End of London. It’s a rough area. There are a lot of immigrants. Italians, Greeks, Jews, Poles — Central Europeans of all kind.’

‘It’s a bit of a mixture here, too. But not immigrants. They belong here. And they all think they own the place.’

‘Who does it belong to?’

‘Aye, that’s the problem. What languages do you speak?’

‘French, German, Italian — most of the European ones. And some Arabic.’

‘Just because they’re Moroccan, that doesn’t mean that they speak Arabic. A lot of them speak Berber. But French will be useful. They’re the ones who currently think they own the place.’

‘Well, don’t they?’

‘They’ve just established a Protectorate here. That doesn’t mean to say that they own the place. As I think they’ll very shortly find. But, yes, they’re the ones we currently have to deal with.’

‘And Monsieur Bossu was the man you had to deal with most?’

‘No. He was there to deal with me.’

He looked out of the window.

‘What are those two hooligans doing there?’

Mustapha and Idris were squatting on the verandah outside.

‘They’re… acquaintances of mine.’

‘They’re drug dealers!’

‘Very probably.’

The Consul looked at him hard.

‘You’re not-?’

‘No.’ He told the Consul how he had come to meet them. ‘What sort of drugs do they deal in?’

‘Kif. It’s like marijuana. Everyone takes kif around here. It’s so normal that nobody thinks about it. But it’s profitable to people to deal in it.’ He looked out of the window again. ‘Although not, I would think, for those two.’

He came back and sat down.

‘Tell me about Bossu,’ said Seymour.

‘He was clerk to a committee I’m Chairman of. The committee was set up following a complex series of international negotiations which led first to France’s declaration of a Protectorate over Morocco — that was in March — and then to an agreement between France and Spain broadly to the effect that Spain would keep out of it in return for a Spanish-owned zone along the coast. The status of Tangier and the land around it, which is of interest to a lot of countries, including ourselves, was left out of it but there was broad agreement that it should be given a special character, roughly, that it should become a free city supervised by a committee which includes representatives of all the Great Powers. The working details were left to this committee: of which I am Chairman.’

‘And Bossu was clerk?’

‘Yes.’

‘Put in by France to see that the committee did not stray too far from France’s interests?’

‘Not quite. Or, rather, not just. There are other interests as well, commercial ones, which are very strong in Tangier. Most are French but not all. Bossu was there to keep them happy as well — their interests may well be different from those of the French Government and through their own contacts they have a strong voice in Paris. Bossu, you could say, was a Tangierian, and that’s not quite the same as a Frenchman, and not at all the same as a Moroccan.’

‘And these conflicting interests may have had something to do with his death?’

‘That is what I want you to find out.’

‘So tell me about the pig-sticking. Which was where, I gather, he met his end.’

‘You know about pig-stickings? They’re a bit like an English hunt. Or so they tell me — I’ve never been to one myself,’ he said, with the disdain of a Scot for his savage English neighbours.

‘They meet on horses…?’

‘Aye. With lances, to stick the pigs.’

‘The pigs…?’

‘Are wild. You find them in the scrub outside Tangier. There’s woodland nearby where they can feed. Well, the huntsmen meet at a special place. A local worthy puts up a tent and they have a splendid feast afterwards, which is half the point of the exercise. Some pigs are rounded up and set loose and then off they go.

‘Well, Bossu was among the huntsmen — it’s a popular sport among the settlers — and was seen chasing after a boar which had darted off at a tangent into the bushes. Bossu had followed him, apparently alone — and it was only some time later that they found him lying face down in the sand with a lance stuck between his shoulders.’

‘And no one saw-?’

‘That’s what they claim.’

‘But surely someone — I mean, there were clearly a lot of people around.’

‘Aye, but the hunt was moving on. Everyone was watching the pigs, and the pigs were running hard, and you didn’t want to lose sight of them-’

‘Weren’t there people behind, on foot?’

‘Oh, aye; half Morocco.’

‘Then-?’

‘They were watching the pigs, too.’

‘But surely someone must have seen something. He was on a horse, wasn’t he? High up. Above the scrub. How high is the scrub there?’

‘Five feet, six feet.’

‘Then -

‘No one saw anything. All two hundred of them rushed past. They say. To be fair, there were probably lots of other exciting things going on.’

‘Okay. So no one saw anything and the hunt moved on?’

‘And eventually came to a stop several miles away. The stickers then made their way slowly back to the Tent and it was only quite some time later that someone noticed that Bossu wasn’t there. And some time after that when someone was sent back to see if he had fallen.’

‘Who was sent back?’

‘The Sheikh sent two of his men.’

‘The Sheikh?’

‘Sheikh Musa. The one who organizes the feast. A fine old boy. Used to be Minister of War. He walked out in disgust when the Sultan signed the treaty establishing the French Protectorate.’