Michael Pearce - A dead man in Tangier

"Pig-sticking. You know.’

" Pig-sticking? Seymour didn’t.

‘As in India,’ said the man from the Foreign Office helpfully.

What was India to do with Monsieur Bossu’s death? Or pigs, for that matter?

‘Really?’ he said cautiously.

‘Yes. Apparently there’s a Tent Club. The only one outside India, they say.’

Still harping on about India. But the Superintendent, across in Whitechapel, had definitely said Africa. And what was all this about tents? If camping was going to be part of the investigation, Seymour was already losing enthusiasm.

‘Is that so?’ he said guardedly.

‘Yes. There’s an old boy who set it up, a local sheikh. Well, not just local. He’s been Minister for War. He sets up the Tent and lays on the hospitality. And then they all come with their horses.’

‘Really?’

‘And spears.’

Spears! Jesus, what was this?

‘And go for the pigs,’ said the man from the Foreign Office happily. ‘Not quite pigs, of course. Not in our sense. Boars, wild boars. And there’s quite a difference, I can tell you! These will turn and come at you. With their tusks. They’ve got long, sharp tusks. And they really know about using them. Rip the horse’s stomach open in a flash!’

‘Rip the-?’

‘And then set about the man.’

‘It sounds-’

‘-great fun,’ said the man from the Foreign Office enthusiastically. ‘Oh, it is! They come at you with such great speed, you see. And they’re so mobile! They can double around like lightning. Much more quickly than a horse can. And then they come at you from a different angle. That’s what gives them the edge.’

‘Yes. Yes, I can see that. It would.’

‘And that’s what makes it such a good sport, of course.’

‘Of course! Yes.’

Seymour hesitated.

‘And that’s what this chap, Bossu, was doing when-?’

‘Yes.’

‘But, look, if he was killed in action, so to speak, I don’t see where I come in. Why send out a policeman? I mean, if a boar got him-’

‘Oh, but it didn’t.’

‘No? Even so, if it was an accident-’

‘Ah, but it wasn’t.’

‘No?’

‘Someone,’ said the man from the Foreign Office grimly, ‘stuck him.’

Not exactly the kind of case that you usually got in the East End. But then, Seymour, these days, did not get the usual cases. With his flair for languages he was increasingly being sent abroad, much to the envy of his colleagues.

‘Tangier,’ said the sergeant dreamily. ‘Isn’t that where the oranges come from?’

‘Palm trees,’ muttered the constable behind the counter, going into a trance. ‘Belly-dancers.’

That bit sounded all right, thought Seymour, tidying up his papers. But what if the bellies were being ripped open by homicidal wild boars?

Less than a week later, however, there he was in a little steamer nudging its way along a brown, barren coast. Occasionally he caught glimpses of white houses huddled below unyielding cliffs. Gradually the cliff became green slopes and the rock retreated inland and became mountains veiled in mist. There was a mist on the sea, too, and for a while he lost sight of the land. Then, suddenly, the mists parted and there, floating uncertainly like a mirage, was a large bay fringed with palm trees, and inland, among the houses, a white-walled building. Its flat roofs rose gradually to culminate in a minaret whose coloured tiles flashed in the evening sun.

‘The Kasbah,’ said a voice beside him.

‘I carry your baggage, sir?’

‘No, I can manage.’

‘I carry your baggage!’ — insistently.

But other voices, also insistent.

‘I carry…’

‘I carry…’

‘You carry,’ said Seymour resignedly, pointing to the first man.

Not so simple.

Another man:

‘Sir, sir, why bother with this man? I have donkey, big donkey, fine donkey-’

‘I carry the donkey as well,’ said the man already with his baggage. ‘Bugger off!’ he said to the donkey man.

An insistent hand (this belonged to a third, or perhaps it was fourth, fifth or sixth party):

‘Why bother walk, sir? When you can ride? In my fine new carriage?’

It wouldn’t have been new in Julius Caesar’s time. Seymour took one look and shook his head.

But the man insisted.

‘No, sir, look! Fine new carriage!’

He opened the cab door and a swarm of flies rose from the tattered upholstery.

‘Thank you, no.’

His already chosen porter, who looked, actually, as if he could carry the cab as well, shouldered the cab man indignantly aside and set out determinedly

‘Just a minute, you don’t know where-’

‘But, yes, sir,’ said the porter in injured tones. ‘You are going to the Hotel Miramar.’

‘Well, yes, I am,’ said Seymour, surprised. ‘But how did you-?’

‘You are official, sir. All officials go to the Hotel Miramar.’

It wasn’t far, which was just as well because Seymour was already bathed in sweat. He preferred it like this, however, as he wanted to give himself time to adjust.

They walked first beside the shore, past palm trees beneath which donkeys, their panniers filled with charcoal, waited patiently for customers while their masters squatted on their heels beside them gossiping with their neighbours, and then they turned up into the narrow, dark lanes of the old city, where he was suddenly hit by all sorts of exotic smells, and where girls with hennaed hands pottered past carrying water melons and small boys, some of them with startling auburn hair (Berber, wondered Seymour?) played in the dust.

They came to a square with a solitary tree, lit by a dim lantern, where merchants squatted beside mounds of brilliantly coloured spices. The air was full of incense and the fumes of frying oil.

There was the sound of a gunshot.

‘It is to signify the end of the day’s fast, sir. This is Ramadan.’

‘It sounded as if it came from the mosque.’

‘It did, sir.’

Around the edges of the square people were preparing food. Bowls of soup were steaming, flat loaves of bread were neatly piled up, and in the pans over charcoal fires the hot food for the main meal was already simmering.

The porter led him off up a side-street between high white walls from the other side of which drifted the heavy perfumes of sweet-scented shrubs. They came to a white building with balconies fenced off by railings of iron fretwork, quite Spanish, Seymour thought: and why not? Spain was only a mile or two away across the straits.

‘The Hotel Miramar, sir.’

He was shown to his room and walked out on to the balcony. Across the tops of the houses he could see the harbour with its thousands of lights and just off to his right he caught a glimpse of the Kasbah. From the European part of the city, further away, he could hear the castanets of the cabarets: Spanish, too.

But here it was quieter. When he listened he could hear the clicking of the crickets in the garden below him. The sounds of the square had disappeared almost entirely; except, occasionally, for the soft quavering of flutes.

He unpacked his things and went downstairs. In the foyer a young woman was sitting behind the desk. Later, he realized that this was unusual. Such jobs in the Arab world were normally filled by men.

She looked up from her writing and smiled.

‘I am afraid we don’t serve evening meals,’ she said. ‘But just around the corner there’s a very good restaurant.’

When he stepped out of the hotel the air struck him as unbelievably warm. He shouldn’t have put on his jacket. He went round the corner as she had suggested and found the restaurant.