Michael Pearce - The Mamur Zapt and the Donkey-Vous

‘What else did Tsakatellis do?’ he asked. ‘Apart from work?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Church?’

‘Ah, well, but—’

‘Did he serve on committees?’

‘No.’

‘Do things for the community?’

‘What community?’

‘Are not the Greeks a community?’

‘We have friends,’ the woman said, ‘but not many. Tsakatellis’s father had been ill for a long time before he died. The business had to be nursed back. Tsakatellis worked long hours. Had done so since he was a boy. He had no time for other things.’

‘I was wondering how they came to hear of him.’

‘I have asked myself that. Why Tsakatellis? Why not Stavros or Petrides?’

‘And what answer did you come to?’

‘I came to no answer. Except this. There is no reason. You lead your life. Then one day God reaches down and plucks you out. And throws you into the fire!’

‘It is not God who does these things. It is man.’

‘That is a comfort. With man there is always the possibility of revenge.’

Nikos was waiting for him when he got back to the office.

‘It’s come,’ he said.

‘What’s come?’

‘The second note.’

‘Telling them the arrangements for paying?’

‘Yes.’

Owen hung up his sun helmet and poured himself a glass of water from the pitcher which stood in the window where the air would cool it.

‘What does it say?’

‘They’re to put the money in a case. Berthelot’s to take it to Anton’s at about midnight and check it in to the cloakroom. He’s then to go on into the salon and stay there for about two hours. While they’re counting, presumably. When he comes out they’ll give him a receipt. On the receipt will be an address. That’s where he’ll find Moulin.’

‘Anton’s. Is he in it?’

‘Probably not. They’re just using his place, but the cloakroom people have got to be in it.’

‘They’ll only be in part of it, though, the money-passing bit. Still, that’s responsible.’

‘Incidentally,’ said Nikos, ‘they don’t tell Berthelot how to get to Anton’s.’

‘They know he already knows?’

Nikos nodded.

‘Interesting. I thought that young man didn’t get around.’

‘He gets around and they know it.’

‘That, too, is interesting.’

‘Yes. They’re unusually well informed.’

‘It doesn’t sound like a student group.’

‘Nor an ordinary Nationalist group either,’ said Nikos. ‘Certainly not a fundamentalist Nationalist group. These people know too much about tourists.’

Owen drank another half glass of water. One glass was really his ration. When it was hot you needed to take in a little liquid often, not a lot at once. He put the glass down and went on through into his own office. Nikos followed him in with an armful of papers.

‘Are you going to leave it alone?’ he asked.

‘Why not? I want the poor bastard free as much as the French do. It’s only money, after all.’

‘Well, yes,’ said Nikos, ‘but …’

‘I know what you’re going to say. Sometimes it’s not just money. It’s just money only if you’re willing to play ball. If you’re not willing it gets nasty. As in the case of the other poor bastard, that Greek shopkeeper, Tsakatellis, whom they killed.’

‘That’s not what I was going to say,’ said Nikos. ‘What I was going to say was that this is the first time they’ve taken a tourist. If you let them get away with it, it might become a habit. And then a lot of people might get interested.’

Nikos always took a detached view of cases which were merely individual. On the other hand, he had a keen eye for political essentials.

Six o’clock that evening found Owen himself on the terrace at Shepheard’s waiting for Lucy Colthorpe Hartley. Quite how he came to be there he was not certain. He had not had time to say no when Lucy had made the appointment; and would he have said no if he had? On the grounds that he was poor and they were tiresome, he made it a general practice to steer clear of the fishing fleet, as the young ladies were called who arrived in scores for the Cairo season in search, it was alleged, of husbands from among the ranks of wealthy young army officers. Besides, he considered himself more or less bound to Zeinab. On the other hand, meeting Lucy Colthorpe Hartley for a drink was hardly work, although he had said that it was when Zeinab had suggested he pick her up at six after her visit to the hairdresser’s. He decided to salve his conscience by asking Lucy some work questions when she arrived.

If she arrived at all. It was already five minutes after six, which by Owen’s standards was being late for an appointment. Perhaps she wouldn’t come, in which case he would feel a complete fool. He hoped no one would see him.

At that moment his friend, the Consul-General’s aide-de-camp, went past with a visiting foreign worthy. He gave Owen a wave behind the worthy’s back. Owen returned the wave half-heartedly.

Garvin went past talking to an Adviser from one of the Ministries. He interrupted his talking to give Owen a smile of recognition. Some hope, thought Owen bitterly, that no one would see him. Out here on the terrace he was as conspicuous as—

Well, as Moulin must have been. And how the hell had he disappeared from the terrace without anyone seeing anything?

Owen looked down the steps. There was the snake-charmer as on the day of Moulin’s kidnapping, squatting so near to the steps as to be virtually sitting on them; there were the donkey-boys playing one of their interminable games within two yards of the foot of the steps. If Moulin had gone down the steps they must have seen him.

And if he hadn’t gone down the steps? The only place he could have gone was back into the hotel. To do so he would have had to pass the Reception clerk and the people on the desk swore that he hadn’t. There were two of them, they were some of the brightest people on the hotel’s staff, the desk was public and busy, they had to be and were alert—hell, one of them was even on Owen’s own payroll!

All the same, they could have missed him. It was a busy area and they might have been busy. Also, they could only see what passed them. Reception was actually inside the hotel, in the foyer, and the people on the desk couldn’t see out on to the terrace itself. Suppose something had happened between the table where Moulin was sitting and the entrance to the hotel: Reception would not have seen it, the snake-charmer couldn’t have seen it, and the donkey-boys, well, they might or might not have seen it.

But, surely, if anything had happened on the terrace someone would have seen it? Someone at a neighbouring table? The tables were, after all, only a few feet apart. If there had been a struggle or anything of that sort—well, there couldn’t have been. The Colthorpe Hartleys, who had been at the very next table, would certainly have seen it.

But suppose the incident, whatever it was, had been smaller in scale, apparently trivial? Suppose it had occurred at a time when their attention had been distracted, perhaps deliberately? That was a possibility. He would have to ask Lucy Colthorpe Hartley if anything like that had occurred.

Owen was sitting at a table a little further into the terrace than either the one Moulin habitually occupied or the one the Colthorpe Hartleys had been sitting at that day. The table was right at the front of the terrace, so close to the railing that the street vendors touched his foot as they poked their wares through the bars. Hippopotamus-hide whips, splendid red tarbooshes, and filmy ladies’ underwear jostled for his attention. A long brown arm with a snake coiled round it was suddenly thrust in his direction; and in an instant a whole pack of postcards of scantily dressed ladies fanned itself open in the air before his astonished eyes.