Michael Pearce - The Mamur Zapt and the Girl in Nile

‘That’s what is was about, you think?’

‘What else could it be? He goes down to his estate and doesn’t stay there a moment, we call in at Luxor and he doesn’t want to go ashore. We go straight down and straight back and the only thing we stop for is to pick up some women at Beni Suef!’

‘Those women,’ said Mahmoud, ‘what were they like?’

‘Classy. But not the sort you’d want to take home with you.’

‘Foreign.’

The steersman hesitated. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I don’t know. Two of them were, certainly. The other—that’s the one who finished up in the river—I’m not sure about.’

‘You’re sure about the others, though?’

‘Oh yes. You could hear them talking. Mind you, she was talking with them. I don’t know, of course, but it just seemed to me … well, and then there were the clothes.’

‘What about the clothes?’

‘Well, they all wore the tob.’ The tob was a loose outer gown. ‘And the burka, of course.’ The burka was a long face veil which reached almost to the ground. ‘But from where I was you could see their legs.’

‘Yes. The Rais told us.’

‘I’ll bet he did! He oughtn’t to have seen that, ought he? I mean, he wouldn’t have noticed if he hadn’t been looking. You’d have thought a man like that, strict, he’s supposed to be—’

‘The women,’ said Mahmoud patiently.

‘Yes, well, the thing was that—I mean, I couldn’t see clearly—but I reckon those two had European clothes on underneath their tobs. You could see their ankles. But the other one, well, I caught a glimpse. She was wearing shintiyan.’

‘Pink ones?’ said Owen.

‘Why, yes,’ said the steersman, surprised. ‘That’s right. How did you know? Oh, I suppose you’ve seen the body.’

‘Never mind that,’ said Mahmoud. ‘Let’s get back to when she was on the top deck. She was up there when you last saw her?’

‘Yes.’

‘Alone?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why didn’t she go down with the others?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Had they been quarrelling?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You heard them talking.’

‘Well, it was not so much quarrelling. I think the Prince was trying to get her to do something. Like, persuade her.’

‘And she didn’t want to?’

‘I couldn’t really tell,’ confessed the steersman. ‘I couldn’t understand the language, see? It was just the impression I got. He wasn’t nasty or anything, not even angry, really. He was just trying—well, to persuade her, like I said.’

‘He didn’t get anywhere, though?’

‘No.’

‘How was she? I mean, was she angry?’

‘I couldn’t really say. You never know what’s going on behind those burkas. You think all’s going well and the next moment—bing! They’ve hit you with something. My wife’s like that.’

‘Were there any tears?’

‘Tears? Well, I don’t know. Not so much tears but you know how they get sometimes, you think they’re going to cry and they don’t, they just keep going on and on. A bit like that.’

‘With the Prince? When he was trying to persuade her?’

‘Yes. And with the girls, too. A bit earlier. Going on and on.’

‘Did they get fed up with her?’

‘They left her alone after a bit. Then the Prince came up and had a try and he didn’t do any better.’ He broke off. ‘Is this helping?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Good. I like to help. Only—all this talking!’ He suddenly pounded on the back of the galley with his fist.

‘What’s the matter?’ asked the cook, sticking his head out.

‘How about some tea? I’m so dry I can’t speak.’

‘It sounded to me as if you were doing all right. I’d have brought you some before only I didn’t want to interrupt you.’

He placed a little white enamel cup before each of them and filled it with strong black tea.

‘No sugar,’ he said. ‘You’d think we’d have sugar on board the Prince’s dahabeeyah but we don’t.’

‘It’s that eunuch,’ said the steersman. ‘The stuff never even gets here.’

‘It goes somewhere else, does it?’ asked Mahmoud sympathetically.

‘Into his pocket!’ said the steersman.

Mahmoud looked up at the cook.

‘You were here that night, weren’t you? The night the girl disappeared?’

‘Yes. I was just making supper when that stupid eunuch came along making a great commotion.’

‘You left the girl there,’ Mahmoud said to the steersman, ‘and then you came along here. Did you have a cup of tea at that point?’

‘Yes,’ said the steersman, ‘I always have one when I finish.’

‘Tea first, then supper,’ said the cook.

‘And you had a cup with him, perhaps?’

‘I did. I always do.’

‘Here? Sitting here?’

‘Yes. Several of us.’

‘And you were still sitting here when the eunuch came?’

‘ I was,’ said the steersman.

‘I had just got up,’ said the cook. ‘To make the supper.’

‘So whatever it was that happened,’ said Mahmoud, ‘happened while you were sitting here.’

‘I suppose so,’ said the steersman. ‘Well, it must have.’

‘Yes, it must have. And you still say you saw nothing? Heard nothing?’

‘Here, just a minute—!’

‘We weren’t looking!’

‘We were talking!’

‘You would have seen a person. Or—’

‘We didn’t see anything!’

‘Two people. On the cabin roof. Together.’

‘Here!’ said the steersman, scrambling to his feet. ‘What are you saying?’

‘I’m asking,’ said Mahmoud. ‘Did you see two people?’

‘No!’

‘Up there together. Whoever they were.’

‘I didn’t see anything!’

‘None of us saw anything!’

‘Thirty feet away and you saw nothing?’

‘We weren’t looking!’

‘You took care not to look.’

‘We were talking!’

‘And nothing attracted your attention? Someone is attacked—’

‘Attacked!’

‘Or falls. And you know nothing about it? If she’d jumped into the water she’d have made a splash.’

‘A splash? Who hears a splash? There are splashes all the time.’

‘One as big as this? You are boatmen. You would have heard.’

‘Truly!’ said the steersman. ‘I swear to God—!’

‘He hears what you say!’ Mahmoud warned him.

‘And sees all that happens. I know. Well, he may have seen what happened to the girl but I didn’t.’

The steersman showed them off the boat. At the gangway he hesitated and then ran up the bank after them.

‘What was it, then? Was she knocked on the head?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Mahmoud.

‘I thought you’d seen the body?’

‘No. It’s not turned up yet.’

‘Oh.’ He seemed disappointed. Then he brightened. ‘Tell you what,’ he said, ‘I know where it will fetch up, more than likely.’

‘Yes?’

The steersman pointed downriver to where men were working on a scaffolding which stretched out across the river.

‘See that? That’s the new Bulak bridge. That’s where they finish up these days.’

They were sharing the boat with a kid goat, a pile of onions and the boatman’s wife, who sat, completely muffled in tob and burka, as far away from them as was possible.

It had been the steersman’s idea. They had been about to set out for the main bridge when he had said:

‘Are you going back to Bulak? Why don’t you get Hamid to run you over?’

He had pointed along the bank to where an elderly Arab was standing in the water bent over the gunwale of a small, crazily-built boat. The sides were not so much planks as squares of wood stuck on apparently at hazard. The sail was a small, tattered square sheet.