The mouth of the crocodi.., p.11
The Mouth of the Crocodile, page 11
‘He was right!’ said the Pasha.
‘But you don’t remember seeing it?’ asked Owen.
‘I don’t remember seeing it,’ said the cook. ‘But I don’t remember not seeing it.’
‘You don’t remember seeing it – or not seeing it – when you cleaned away the breakfast things?’
‘No, Effendi.’
‘You didn’t clear it away with the breakfast things?’
‘I only do the breakfast things,’ said the cook.
‘Does anyone go round afterwards, doing a general tidy up?’
‘Abdul does,’ said the cook. ‘Sometimes.’
‘Abdul!’
The bodyguard emerged from the kitchen. ‘Yes, Effendi?’
‘Did you tidy up in here this morning?’
‘I’m a bodyguard,’ said Abdul, with dignity. ‘Not a general servant.’
‘But you do help sometimes. Did you help this morning?’
‘I may have done,’ said the bodyguard unwillingly.
‘And did you see a briefcase when you were doing so?’
‘As God is my witness—’
‘He is your witness, so speak the truth. Did you see the Pasha’s briefcase in here this morning?’
‘What have briefcases to do with me?’
‘Did you see it?’
‘I may have seen it,’ said Abdul, reluctantly.
‘Ah! So where was it when you saw it?’
‘On the floor,’ said the Pasha. ‘Beside me.’
‘On the floor. Beside the Pasha,’ said Abdul.
‘There you are!’ said the Pasha triumphantly.
‘When was this? When he came into breakfast?’
Abdul looked at the Pasha.
‘Of course it was!’ said the Pasha impatiently.
‘But you weren’t here, then,’ said Owen. ‘You were only here afterwards. When you were tidying up.’
‘Enough of this shilly-shallying!’ said the Pasha. ‘My briefcase was already stolen!’
‘Yes, but when was it stolen?’
‘After breakfast,’ said the Pasha firmly.
‘I thought you kept it with you? Always?’
‘In general, yes,’ said the Pasha.
‘But perhaps not on that occasion? Possibly you left it behind. In the saloon, where you had breakfast?’
‘It is possible, I suppose,’ said the Pasha. ‘But very unlikely.’
‘What did you do after breakfast?’
‘Something, I expect. Nothing much.’
‘You went for a walk,’ said Leila.
‘Did I? Yes, that was it. I went for a walk.’
‘And I went with him,’ said Leila.
‘And I went with them,’ said the bodyguard. ‘That is my job. To go with the Pasha. Everywhere.’
‘So the saloon was empty at that point?’
‘Apart from me,’ said the cook. ‘I was there.’
‘And what were you doing?’
‘Sanding up.’
‘Sanding up?’
‘No water,’ explained Babikr. ‘So I used sand to scour the dishes.’
‘And then?’
‘And then? Well, I sat down and rested, I suppose. And then went outside for a little breath of air. It gets hot in that kitchen. It’s only a small space and—’
‘All right, all right,’ said Owen. ‘You went out. So the Royal Saloon was empty at that point.’
‘Yes. Hey, what are you saying? I didn’t go far. I hardly moved away from the saloon! As God is my witness—’
‘Yes. Yes. You didn’t go far. But that was the point at which someone could have got in …’
‘I was only a few feet away! I would have seen them.’
‘And did you see anyone go in?’
‘No. At least …’
‘Yes?’
‘There was that girl, of course.’
‘But I came out again!’ cried Aisha. ‘And, anyway, I was there with Leila!’
‘Speak respectfully!’ her father ordered. ‘The Pasha’s lady, to you!’
‘She said I could call her Leila! All right, the Pasha’s lady.’
‘But that was earlier,’ said Owen. ‘You came out because you heard the Pasha moving around.’
‘Yes, but then I went back in again. When Leila came back. She and the Pasha came out together and went for a walk. Then Leila – the Pasha’s lady – came back alone and went back in to the saloon. And after a bit I went in. Because she had told me I could and should. She said to come in when the saloon was empty and there was no one around, because then the place was like a morgue!’
‘So you went in a second time?’
‘Yes! But she wasn’t there. I thought she might have gone in to the bedroom but I didn’t want to go in there because I thought she might want to be by herself. She said she sometimes got headaches. Well, I thought she might have one coming on. Already it was pretty hot. And airless. Lots of people were complaining—’
‘So you came out again.’
‘Yes. I didn’t stay long. Once I had seen she wasn’t there …’
‘So the saloon was, to all intents and purposes, left empty again. But someone could have gone in at that point!’
‘That’s right,’ said Aisha. ‘No one was there—’
‘Wasn’t Babikr there? I thought he was there or nearby practically all the time?’
‘I was!’ said Babikr. ‘Only it just happened that at one point I went behind the saloon to have a pee …’
‘I thought that was where he was going,’ said Aisha.
‘So, let me get this clear – you came back out of the saloon, and Babikr had gone round the back to have a pee, and the Pasha’s lady was somewhere inside, and Abdul was with the Pasha … So someone could have got into the saloon unobserved and picked up the briefcase!’
‘What,’ said Mr Nicholson a few moments later, ‘would they have done with it? They wouldn’t have gone walking round with it, because you don’t walk round with a briefcase in the middle of the desert. Unless you’re a Pasha, of course.’
‘But I was the one from whom it was stolen!’ cried the Pasha.
‘Nicholson Effendi’s point remains,’ said Owen. ‘What was done with the briefcase after it was stolen? It can’t have been taken away. So it must still be on the train somewhere. In which case, the train must be searched. I’ll work from this end and, Nicholson, if you wouldn’t mind starting from the other end …’
‘Want some help?’ asked Aisha’s father.
‘No, I don’t think so. Or, rather, yes I do, but a different kind of help. Can you get up on the top of the carriage, from where you’ll be able to see most of the train, and watch that nobody moves the case out while we’re searching?’
‘I can certainly do that. If you will trust me.’
‘Of course I will trust you!’
‘Well, you see, I was just wondering why you didn’t want me to help you with the searching. And, of course, the answer is clear: Aisha.’
‘Daddy!’ cried Aisha.
‘You are under suspicion, my dear. You were in the saloon at or near the time when the briefcase was stolen. And if you are under suspicion then I must be, too.’
‘Daddy! That’s ridiculous!’
‘No, it’s not. Not if you think about it. As, of course, the Mamur Zapt has been doing for some time.’
‘But—’
‘Don’t worry, Aisha,’ said Owen, ‘there are plenty of others under suspicion, too. If you think about it.’
‘The Pasha himself,’ said Yasin.
‘And the Pasha’s lady.’
‘In bed,’ said Leila, still bridling. ‘Along with about everyone else on the train!’
‘The cook,’ said Owen.
‘As God is my witness—’
‘And Abdul,’ said Leila.
‘What’s this?’ said the bodyguard, waking up.
‘Well, it could be.’
‘I swear to God—’
‘There will be others, too,’ said Owen. ‘So don’t worry, Aisha. You’re in company.’
Owen began with the engine.
‘But …’ the driver began to protest.
‘Just the place,’ said Owen. ‘No one would think of it.’
Muttering darkly, the driver went round with Owen, even into the most confined of spaces.
‘You’re a big chap, Owen,’ said Mr Nicholson. ‘Let Jamie do it.’
‘If he can do it,’ said Aisha, ‘then why can’t I?’
‘It’s not a job for a girl,’ said Jamie.
‘Why not?’
Jamie was taken aback. ‘Well, it’s just not,’ he said.
‘I am thinner than you.’
‘Yes, but …’
‘And can wriggle just as well.’
‘You would muck up your dress.’
Aisha gave him a look of withering scorn.
‘I think not, Aisha,’ said her father.
‘Is it because I am under suspicion?’ demanded Aisha.
‘You are not very under suspicion, Aisha,’ said Owen.
‘We are both under suspicion, Aisha. You and I.’
‘I don’t see why you are under suspicion,’ said Aisha, frowning. ‘You’ve not been up in the saloon on your own.’
‘It is because I am an Egyptian,’ said her father bitterly. The fact that he had not been chosen as one of those to search the train rankled.
Owen sighed. ‘Not that, either,’ he said. ‘Now can we go on and search the rest of the train?’
Mr Nicholson went to the rear of the train and began working his way along. Owen did the same from the other direction. Jamie’s father said he was used to searching trains. Anyone who worked on the railway was. There was a lot of petty pilfering and in his early days on the railway he was always being called upon to check carriages and people. Owen, doing his own searching, had an eye on him initially but was soon satisfied that he knew what he was about.
And, of course, that was even truer of Owen himself. Not searching trains specifically, but searching pretty well everything else. Nowadays he had his own people to do the searching. He wished that he had them with him now. Searching was a highly skilled art: with something as big as a briefcase there was no need to search up the rectum, for which small mercy he was grateful.
The thought sent him back to Aisha’s father, who had unwillingly accepted the restricted role assigned him and was up on the roof of a carriage keeping the train under scrutiny. Owen hadn’t liked to make the distinction he had done but he felt it was necessary. It would have been necessary to get rid of the briefcase to dump it somewhere, and that was perhaps a moment when the search could be narrowed. Owen climbed up and stood beside Yasin.
‘I would like, if I might, to make use of Aisha,’ he said. ‘And Jamie.’
‘Despite her being “under suspicion”?’
‘This may reassure her,’ said Owen. ‘It will show her that we think she can be trusted. I would like her and Jamie to walk up and down the train, one on each side, looking to see if the briefcase has been dumped.’
‘I see no objection to that,’ said Aisha’s father.
‘The young have sharp eyes, particularly when their sense of responsibility is engaged.’
‘Jamie less so,’ said Owen, ‘but with the example of Kim before him, he will not let us down.’
‘I haven’t read the book,’ said Yasin. ‘I see I must.’
‘And can you keep an eye on them from up on the roof? I wouldn’t want anything to go amiss with them.’
‘You fear that?’ said Yasin.
‘Not very much, or I wouldn’t let them do it. But I believe in taking care. Perhaps I have an overdeveloped sense of responsibility myself.’
‘I will watch over them,’ promised Yasin.
Jamie agreed at once.
Aisha hesitated. ‘Whose side am I on?’ she said.
‘Whose side are you on?’
‘The British or the Egyptian?’
‘There’s no conflict here. Both. It’s in the interests of both Britain and Egypt that the briefcase is traced.’
Seeing that she was still doubtful, he said: ‘I do work for the Khedive, you know.’
‘And the British.’
‘Certainly. But it was the Khedive who asked me to look after the Pasha. He spoke to me. Directly. And I am not disloyal.’
‘I don’t see how you can be loyal to both sides.’
‘Nor do my Egyptian friends. Nor I myself, sometimes.’
‘On that basis, although I still don’t quite understand it, I will go along the train.’
‘Look under the wheels especially. But allow for someone having covered it with sand.’
Halfway through the search, Owen went up on the roof to have a word with Yasin. It was very, very hot up there and he knew that he would be wilting. He gave him a spell under the carriage, in the shade, and took over his position himself.
Yasin didn’t stay down there for long but soon climbed back up and said he was ready to continue.
‘I had a thought,’ he said. ‘The Hadendoa and his friend. They are no longer here. Could they have gone off with the case?’
‘I have wondered that, too,’ said Owen. ‘And I don’t see how that could have happened. The timing doesn’t work out. But I agree with you. That’s the only time the opportunity could have arisen. I just cannot see the mechanics of it.’
‘And if it was them,’ said Yasin, ‘who were they acting on behalf of? That is what I can’t puzzle out.’
The rescue engine had come up to them by now and its engineers were swarming over the engine. McIlroy, the Chief Engineer, was standing just below them.
‘What’s all this about?’ he asked, as Owen descended from the carriage.
Owen told him.
‘So you think these two, the Hadendoa and his friend, might have stolen the briefcase and ridden off with it?’
‘It’s a possibility.’
‘Where would they have headed for? It’s just desert all round here. It’s desert for miles.’
‘A man like the Hadendoa, on his camel, can cover miles. His home is in the Red Sea Hills and he would have had to cover miles to get here,’ said Mr Nicholson.
‘Why would they have used him?’ said the Chief Engineer. ‘Couldn’t they have found someone nearer?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Owen. ‘And the Hadendoa may have had nothing to do with it. It’s just a possibility. But the thing is, you see, it’s rather odd that he should be here anyway, miles, as you say, from home. And just at this spot.’
‘Where the engine broke down,’ said Mr Nicholson.
‘They wouldn’t have been able to be as precise as that,’ said the Chief Engineer. ‘All that they could have done was ensure that it would break down somewhere.’
‘But somewhere between Atbara and Wadi Halfa,’ said Mr Nicholson, ‘and roughly halfway.’
‘On the railway line,’ said the Chief Engineer. ‘So they would know where to look.’
‘They couldn’t have predicted the haboob,’ said Mr Nicholson, ‘but once they had heard about it, they would know roughly where to look.’
‘Do you have any idea of where they might be making for?’ asked the Chief Engineer. ‘Because if you have, I might be able to help. I’ve got a buggy about to go back to Halfa for spares. If you could tell me who to send it to, I could get a telegraph message sent from Halfa.’
‘Try Crockhart-Mackenzie,’ said Owen. ‘At Atbara.’
Now that the rescue engine had arrived, the mood among the passengers had brightened. The rescue train had brought extra supplies of food and water and almost everyone settled down to a good breakfast. As a precaution, Mr Nicholson had been holding back on the distribution of reserve rations, but now he felt he could reduce them.
Mohammed, the Nicholsons’ cook, allowed two eggs for each person at breakfast. That was normal when they went away in the saloon but since the haboob he had been holding off. Now everything was back to normal and Jamie, who fancied that he had been conscious of a gap in his stomach, was a man again.
The ache in his stomach had, however, been replaced by another anxiety. What would happen when they got to Wadi Halfa? His father had talked about possibly needing to go on to Cairo to talk to the people there about the effects of the haboob. They had haboobs all the time in the Sudan but this had been an unusually severe one. It had, Jamie had overheard the Chief Engineer saying, really tested their defences. Some shortcomings had been found and Jamie’s father had half-suggested that it might be necessary for him to go on to Cairo to talk about them to the people there.
In which case, what would become of him? Would he be sent off by the next train back to Atbara? Or would he be allowed to go on with his father to Cairo? Jamie had been to Cairo once or twice but never for long enough to really get a look at the place. Aisha had told him there were lots of things to see. Besides, of course, there was what Aisha referred to as ‘their project’. Jamie had hoped that she would forget all about that the nearer they got to Cairo. Unfortunately that didn’t seem to be happening. Ever since breakfast she had been sitting on the steps of her own saloon waiting for the Pasha to leave the Royal Saloon so that she could go in. She wanted to have another word with Leila. She thought it outrageous to keep an educated woman so closed in – well, perhaps not very educated, but certainly privileged, and privilege, so her head mistress at school insisted, carried with it responsibilities. One of them was to make the most of your opportunities. That was something her mother and father were always telling her, although in her mother’s case that seemed mainly to consist of lying on the beach at Alexandria or having a cream cake at Groppi’s. Aisha’s own ambitions extended much further.
But what about Leila? She was certainly in a privileged position, and what was she doing with it? Sticking around indoors all day? Either in the saloon, or in the hotel at Khartoum, or back in Cairo, in the Pasha’s house there. All she was doing was exchanging one prison for another. The modern age had not yet reached either her or the Pasha, it seemed. They were still living in the harem age. But that was past, done with. Aisha felt that she owed it to Leila to prise her out of backwardness and into the great modern world of opportunity and activity. Although, now she came to think of it, there wasn’t enough of either for bright sixth-form girls in Egypt just at the moment. However, a start could be made, and start was exactly what Leila was not doing. She needed someone to get behind her and give her a push.
