– dereliction of duty always excited him. ‘A Mudir should have pride, he should have a sense of his responsibilities, he should—’
Mahmoud stopped and shook his head.
‘I know,’ he said. ‘He is only a Mudir after all. And in the provinces the older relationships still—’
He stopped again.
‘But that is what is wrong! It is what is wrong with the country, too. There is still the old deference to the Khedive, to the Pashas. It gets in the way of doing things properly. And until we start doing things properly, what hope has the country of advancing? All right, he is only a Mudir, but—’
‘Even if he had called the guns in,’ said Owen placidly, ‘all that it probably would have shown us was that it was one of the financiers. And I don’t think they were very anxious to show that.’
‘But that, too, is wrong. You cannot have the law applying to some people and not others. We would have treated him fairly. We understand about accidents. Why cannot they trust us?’ said Mahmoud bitterly.
‘They do trust you,’ said Owen quickly. ‘Of course they trust you!’ It could come out of the blue, this touching of the Egyptian nerve.
‘Even from their point of view it is a mistake. It makes you ask questions. It made me ask questions. When the Mudir couldn’t answer them I went round to the Russian Consulate, because Tvardovsky was, after all, one of their nationals, but they – well, it wasn’t as if they weren’t interested, rather that they suddenly closed down. They wouldn’t tell me anything. And then I went to the Khedive’s office – the Khedive was the host, after all – and got the same response from them. They wouldn’t even give me a list of who was there. And so I thought: why won’t they? Is it that they have something to hide?’
They arrived at the hotel in late mid morning. It was beginning to get very hot and people were already returning from excursions along the bank of the lake. The hotel, which had been emptied of its guests to accommodate the Khedive’s party was full again with its normal clientele: Greek and Levantine businessmen escaping the heat of the city with their families, old hands of the Administration who had done all the sights and were looking for something green, somewhere, perhaps, that would remind them of England, a few foreign tourists complete with Kodaks.
They went at once down to the lake. The foreshore was now lined with boats. Fishermen were shovelling their catch into wickerwork baskets. Every so often one of them would lift a basket on to his shoulder, step over the side of the boat and splash ashore. Gulls would swoop down even as he was carrying and snap at the fish. The baskets were taken to an outbuilding of the hotel, where the fish were emptied out on to the floor. Through the open door Owen could see the grey-and-silvery pile growing and growing.
The heaps of fish inside the boats were diminishing rapidly. From time to time one of the fish would give a squirm and a jump and then fall back again. Some of the fishermen had turned to coiling their ropes and spreading their nets out on the ground to dry.
Mahmoud went across and began to talk to some of them. They pointed along the bank to where the shoot had taken place. The reeds were thick at this point, about six feet high and spreading out in a little headland. The shoot had taken place just off the headland. Around the other side, where ducks crowded in such numbers as to make the water white.
Mahmoud climbed into one of the punt-like boats and two of the boatmen prepared to paddle him over. He asked Owen to go with him.
The men had been on the shoot itself, in the boats where the bulk of the party had been stationed, in the open water beyond the headland, just at the edge of the reeds, where the reeds would conceal them. They were describing to Mahmoud what had happened, putting their arms up to mimic the shooting.
It hardly seemed possible it could be the same place. Then the air had been torn by shooting, there had been a kind of tension. Now everything seemed incredibly peaceful. Ducks were dawdling in and out of the reeds, hardly bothering to register their presence. The sun was warm on the woodwork, the blue lake sparkled in the sun, as still as a mirror. He found it hard to reconcile with his memory.
‘Of course,’ he said to Mahmoud, ‘we weren’t out there. We were in there.’
He pointed vaguely towards the reeds.
‘We?’ said Mahmoud.
‘Tvardovsky and I. In two separate boats.’
‘Just the two of you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why was that?’
‘We had different boats. They could go in among the reeds.’
‘How did you come to have different boats?’
Owen shrugged.
‘Accident. Maybe we arrived later than the others. The other boats were all taken.’
Mahmoud took the boat over to the reeds and peered in. They were impenetrable to a boat like his.
‘How would you see to shoot?’ he asked.
‘You would be shooting upwards. You would see the birds against the sky.’ He tried to remember. ‘You wouldn’t have long. Of course,’ he added, ‘Tvardovsky wasn’t shooting.’
Mahmoud sat there for some time thinking. Then he told the boatmen to take the boat back to the land. There Owen saw him talking to the man who had been Tvardovsky’s boatman.
He came back towards Owen.
‘You were in a separate boat,’ he said. ‘Where is your boatman?’
Owen looked around and couldn’t see him.
Mahmoud spoke to some of the men.
‘He’s gone to visit his mother,’ he said.
The boats had finished emptying their catch now. The nets had been spread out along the bank. There was a stink of fish in the air. Some of the men had gone to sit in the shade of a large boat that had been drawn up out of the water. Mahmoud stayed talking to them for some time.
Owen wandered along the bank. He came to a small bay where flamingoes were paddling on the lake. Beside them was a pair of pelicans. As Owen watched, one of the pelicans stooped down into the water and came up with a fish. Owen saw its tail disappearing into the bird’s beak as it was swallowed. It was a large fish and made a bulge in the pelican’s neck. With horrified fascination Owen watched the bulge wriggling as it went down.
The Mudir was sitting under a palm tree chatting to some waiters. Mahmoud went across to greet him and then brought him back to a table on the terrace, where he summoned coffee. The Mudir sat down uneasily. While a Parquet officer did not count as the great, the Parquet itself was a mysterious object over the horizon from which from time to time incomprehensible reproofs would come like a bolt from the blue.
‘The man was dead,’ he said, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. ‘What need of a postmortem?’
‘To establish the cause of death.’
‘He was shot. There is no puzzle about that.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘And, besides, he was a foreign effendi.’
‘So?’
The Mudir shrugged.
‘You don’t mess about with foreign effendis,’ he said, ‘even when they’re dead.’
‘You have a responsibility,’ said Mahmoud sternly, ‘to establish how he died.’
‘I know how he died! He was shot. There!’ The Mudir clapped his chest dramatically.
‘At what range?’
‘What range?’
‘How far away was the person who fired the shot?’
‘Well, hell,