help we can,’ McPhee told Owen.
‘How far does the help extend?’ asked Owen.
The Prince smiled.
‘Not as far as you are evidently supposing,’ he said. ‘I appreciate that someone has died. The matter must be investigated and will be most ably, I am sure, by Mr el Zaki, here. If a crime has been committed—oh, negligence, say—those responsible must be punished. It’s all straight and aboveboard, Captain Owen, and Mr el Zaki’s involvement should be a guarantee of that.’
‘I have complete confidence in Mr el Zaki.’
‘Quite. But, you see, there is the other dimension too. The political one. The case needs to be handled from that point of view too. It needs to be … managed.’
‘I see. And you would like me to provide that management?’
‘Who better?’
Owen could think of lots of people he would prefer to see handling this particular case. Most people, in fact.
The Prince was watching his face.
‘It’s not as bad as all that,’ he said. ‘We’re not asking you to do anything you shouldn’t. It’s mainly a matter of controlling the Press.’
‘It’s not easy to control the Press on something like this. It’s bound to get out. In a foreign newspaper, perhaps.’
In cosmopolitan Cairo with its three principal working languages and at least a dozen other widely used ones people turned as readily to the overseas press as they did to the native one. More readily, for the former wasn’t censored.
‘That’s why I spoke of … management.’
‘I see.’
‘Good!’ said the Prince briskly. ‘Then that’s all sorted out.’
He looked down at the river bed below him.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘I suppose we ought to go down. You’ll be needing an identification.’
‘There’s just one thing,’ said Owen.
‘Not there?’ said the Prince incredulously.
‘Not there?’ echoed McPhee.
Mahmoud did not say anything but started immediately down the slope.
By the time they got there he was already talking to the watchman.
‘I don’t understand,’ said the Prince. ‘Are you saying that this is all a mistake?’
‘A body was reported,’ said Owen.
‘A false report?’
Owen shrugged.
The watchman fell on his knees.
‘It was true, effendi,’ he protested vehemently. ‘I saw it. I swear it. On my father’s …’
‘I begin to doubt,’ said the Prince coldly, ‘whether you had a father.’
The watchman swallowed.
‘It was there, effendi,’ he said, pointing to the shoal. ‘There! I swear it.’
‘Then where is it?’
The watchman swallowed again.
‘I don’t know, effendi,’ he said weakly. ‘I don’t know.’
‘The river, effendi,’ insinuated the corporal sotto voce. ‘It could be the river.’
Bur the Prince had already turned away.
‘This is awkward,’ he said.
‘It could have been somebody else,’ said Owen. ‘It needn’t have been the girl.’
‘The report was of a woman’s body.’
‘Another woman, perhaps.’
The Prince shrugged.
‘Unlikely, I would have thought. Unless you have women’s bodies floating down this part of the river all the time.’
‘Oh no, effendi,’ said the corporal hastily.
‘Awkward,’ said the Prince again. ‘It would have been much more convenient … Well, it must be somewhere. You’ll have to find it, that’s all.’
‘I’ll get on to it right away,’ promised McPhee. ‘I’ll alert all the police stations—’
‘Quietly,’ said the Prince. ‘If that’s possible with the police.’
‘There’s a bend below the city,’ said Mahmoud. ‘It will probably turn up there.’
‘Have someone looking out for it,’ ordered the Prince. ‘This needs to be handled discreetly.’ He looked at Owen. ‘You’re managing this. Remember?’
Owen and Mahmoud were left on the river bed.
‘Like it?’ said Owen.
‘No,’ said Mahmoud. ‘But then, there’s quite a lot I don’t like.’
He called the watchman over.
‘Come here,’ he said. ‘You saw the body. Describe it.’
‘It was a woman.’
‘Clothed?’
‘Of course!’ said the watchman, shocked.
‘It mightn’t have been. What was she wearing?’
The watchman looked down at his feet, embarrassed.
‘Shintiyan,’ he muttered.
‘Trousers?’ said the corporal, unable to restrain himself. ‘Oh ho, Abu, this is the stuff of dreams!’
‘Colour?’
‘Pink,’ muttered the watchman.
‘She was not a village woman, then?’
‘No, effendi.’ The watchman shook his head definitely.
‘What else was she wearing? A tob?’
The watchman hesitated.
‘I think so, effendi. It was hard to tell.’
The corporal guffawed.
‘He only saw the shintiyan!’
‘She wore something, though, apart from the shintiyan?’
‘Oh, yes, effendi. It was just the way she was lying,’ he said aside to the corporal. ‘That’s how I came to see them.’
The shintiyan were ordinary trousers, not undergarments, and came right down to the ankle.
‘How was she lying?’ asked Mahmoud.
The watchman lay down on the sand and put his arms together over his head. His body formed a kind of crescent.
‘There’s a hump on the shoal,’ he said. ‘She was lying round that.’
‘Show me.’
They splashed out to the shoal. The water was shallow and hardly came up their knees.
The shoal was some twenty feet long, and about four feet wide. At the downstream end it rose into a little hump.
‘She was lying round that,’ said the watchman. ‘Head that side, feet this.’
‘The body probably caught up against it on its way downstream,’ said Owen.
‘Well, yes,’ said Mahmoud. ‘Possibly. But you can see from the mud that normally the upper part of the shoal is above the water.’
‘The wash of a boat? The Prince’s boat?’
‘Possibly.’