Donkey-Vous (4 page)

“Monsieur—?”

“Berthelot. The young man who accompanied Monsieur Moulin. His nephew.”

“Oh, I know the one you mean. The one with the bulging eyes. Well, no, I don’t think so, though you often see them together.”

“Does she come out on the terrace too?”

“Only in the evening. I expect,” said Lucy acidly, “that she doesn’t have time. It takes her so long to make up.”

“Then why,” asked Mahmoud, “when you came out on to the terrace yesterday afternoon and saw Monsieur Moulin looking around, did you think he had lost her?”

“My goodness!” said Lucy. “You
are
sharp! He’s caught me out, hasn’t he?” she appealed to Owen.

“He has.”

“I don’t know why I said that. It’s my silly tongue running away with me again. What
did
I mean?” She thought hard.

“Well, it’s true,” she said after a moment, “or it might have been true. She’s always hanging around him. It’s so blatant. I should think he jolly well might have felt lost when she wasn’t there for once.”

“And she wasn’t there?”

“No. And it
is
true that you don’t usually see her on the terrace in the afternoons. Not till later.
I
think,” said Lucy, giggling, “that she finds it hard to get up. Perhaps she’s worn out!”

Lucy shrieked with laughter. Mrs. Colthorpe Hartley, sitting obediently outside the alcove but not abandoning her post, looked at her disapprovingly. The young man beside her stirred unhappily.

“So she definitely wasn’t on the terrace yesterday afternoon but he definitely was?”

“Yes, that’s right. You’ve got it.”

“And you’re sure about that? About him being there, I mean?”

Lucy thought again. “Yes, I’m pretty sure.” She tossed her head. “No, I’m definitely sure.”

“And that would have been about fourish. You’re not able to place the time more precisely?”

“About five to four. We’re always
on
the terrace by four.”

“And then you had tea. Was Monsieur Moulin having tea?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“He was just sitting at the table?”

“Yes.”

“Looking around for someone? As if he was expecting them?”

“Yes. Of course, now I think about it, it might have been her.”

“And then what?”

“Well, then we finished our tea.”

“And did you notice Monsieur Moulin any more? Did you see him leave his table, for instance?”

“No.”

“Go down the steps?”

“He might have been ogling me,” said Lucy with a toss of her curls, “but I wasn’t ogling him.”

“You stayed on the terrace for about how long?”

“About an hour.”

“And when you left, was Monsieur Moulin still at his table?”

“No,” said Lucy.

“That’s definite, is it?”

“Yes, because I can remember seeing the tea things on the table and wondering why the waiters hadn’t cleared them. They’re very good here, you know.”

“One last question, Miss Colthorpe Hartley,” said Mahmoud. “You said your father joined you later?”

“A bit later.”

“Thank you. In fact, thank you very much for being so helpful.”

“I’m glad I’ve been helpful,” said Lucy. “I’m not usually. Daddy says I’m scatterbrained, but I’m not really. I just sometimes
choose
to be scatterbrained.”

She got up to go. Mahmoud rose too.

“You’re very nice, aren’t you?” she said to him. “You’ve got such sweet brown eyes. But such a sad face!”

“I haven’t got a sad face, have I?” asked Mahmoud.

They were having lunch ’round the corner. By the time they had finished with Miss Colthorpe Hartley, it was nearly noon. The heat had driven everyone off the terrace and back into the cool of the hotel, first to lunch and then to the darkness of their bedrooms.

Owen normally worked till one-thirty and then went to lunch at the Sporting Club, but today it was too hot even to do that, so he and Mahmoud found a small Turkish café in one of the side streets near the hotel. Even that was nearly deserted. Although there were one or two tables outside, none of them was taken. The few customers had retreated with the proprietor into the dark depths of the interior where the sun never penetrated. A small boy served them with cups of Turkish coffee and glasses of iced water. They would eat later.

“No, I don’t think so.” Owen considered him. “No, I don’t think so at all.”

Mahmoud if anything looked very bright and alert. Miss Colthorpe Hartley must have been misled by his Arab looks.

“Sometimes I feel depressed,” said Mahmoud. “I felt depressed this morning when I was talking to the old lady and the man.”

“Don’t take any notice of him. He’s just a stupid bastard.”

Mahmoud shrugged. “He’s just Army, that’s all. I’m used to people like him. But the old lady was different. She was very polite but she made me more depressed, if anything. She reminded me of Nuri.”

Nuri Pasha was a common acquaintance and the father of what might have been called, if anyone had dared risk the description since there was nothing petite about Zeinab and she was a forceful person, Owen’s own
petite amie
.

“It’s because they’re the same generation and have similar social backgrounds,” said Owen. “She put my back up too.”

“She’s rich, of course. She must be, to be at the hotel.”

“It’s not just that.”

“It’s the way they look down on you.”

“I wouldn’t let it bother you.”

“It’s easier for you.”

“Not much.”

“Being British, I mean.”

“We escape some things, but don’t escape others.”

“You feel about her the way I feel about Nuri?”

“More or less.”

Mahmoud thought this over. Then he said: “Of course it adds to it when they’re foreign. I sometimes feel quite pleased when something like this happens.”

“A kidnapping?”

“When a Moulin gets kidnapped.”

“You’ve got to take action.”

“Oh, I know that. And I do.” He suddenly cheered up. “Though not in the hottest part of the day. There’s no point in going back now. I’ll go back about four. He’ll be up from his siesta then.”

“He?”

“Mr. Colthorpe Hartley. He came out on the terrace later, remember. He may have seen something.”

“Fellow with long moustaches and sticks?” said Mr. Colthorpe Hartley. “Yes, I saw him. Always sitting there. Same table, same time. Looking as if he’s growing there.”

“You’re sure it was yesterday?”

Mr. Colthorpe Hartley considered a moment.

“Yes. Definitely. Saw him when I came out of the hotel. I was a bit behind the others, you know. Had a longer shower than usual. Bit damned hot just at the moment, isn’t it? You need a shower even when you’ve just been lying down.”

“And you definitely saw him?”

“Oh yes. Exchanged nods. Don’t know the chap, of course, but you sort of know him when you see him every day. We pass the time of day. I say something, he says something back. Nothing much. I don’t think he speaks much English. And I certainly don’t speak French.”

“He didn’t say anything yesterday? I mean, nothing particular.”

“No. Hardly noticed me. Seemed a bit preoccupied. Mind on other things. Didn’t stay there long.”

“Did you see him go?”

“Did I see him go? Let me think. No. I don’t think I saw him go. Saw he’d gone, but that’s not the same thing.”

“Can you pinpoint when that was? About how long after you’d got to the terrace?”

“Well, I must have got to the terrace about four. Saw him then. Nodded to him. Sat down. Had tea. Noticed he was a bit fidgety. Then when I next looked up he had gone. Say about twenty minutes. Between twenty past four and half past four.”

“But you didn’t actually see him go?”

“No.”

“You didn’t see him go down the steps, for instance?”

“No. Don’t think he would have gone down the steps. Not by himself. A bit too shaky on his pins.”

“With someone helping him?”

“Oh, he could have managed it then, all right.”

“But you didn’t see anyone?”

“Helping him? No.”

Mr. Colthorpe Hartley rubbed his chin and stared thoughtfully into space. A suffragi hurried past with a tray of coffee. The aroma came strongly across the room.

“Saw someone else, though,” he said suddenly. “One of those chaps. Or not one of those chaps, one of the others. He was speaking to the Frenchman. Then he went across to the railings. Spoke to someone. As if he was on an errand for the Frenchman. Buying something for him.”

“Did he buy anything?”

“No. Just came straight back.”

“To the Frenchman?”

“Yes.”

“Spoke to him?”

Mr. Colthorpe Hartley hesitated.

“Think so. Stopped looking. Can’t go on watching a chap forever, you know. Bad form.”

“So you looked away.”

“Yes.”

“And when you looked again, the Frenchman had gone?”

“That’s right.”

“Just one thing more, Mr. Colthorpe Hartley,” said Owen. “You spoke of seeing a suffragi. Or one of the others. One of the others?”

“One of the other chaps from the hotel. The ones who go out with parties. Take you to the bazaar.”

“A dragoman?”

“That’s right. A dragoman.”

“Would you be able to identify him if we paraded the hotel dragomans before you?”

“These chaps all look alike to me,” said Mr. Colthorpe Hartley.

Mahmoud established with Reception the name of Monsieur Moulin’s
petite amie
and sent a note up asking if she could see him. Madame Chévènement replied that she was still indisposed but would make an effort to see him on the following morning at eleven o’clock.

Nikos was going through Owen’s engagements for the week. He had not included the Moulin affair. When Owen drew attention to this he shrugged his shoulders and said: “You’re not going to be spending much time on this, surely?”

“Garvin wants me to. He says it’s political.”

“It will all be over by next week. They’ll pay, won’t they?”

“Probably. Though whether we ought to let it go at that’s a different matter.”

“There’s not much else you can do, is there? They won’t want you interfering.”

“Yes, but it’s the principle of the thing. If you let Zawia get away with it once, they’ll try it again. And again. Until they’re caught.”

“In the end they’ll make a mistake and then we’ll catch them. Until then there’s no sense in bothering about them.”

“If we don’t work on the case how will we know about the mistake?”

“Your friend El Zaki is working on the case, isn’t he?” Nikos disapproved of too warm relationships with other departments. “Why don’t you leave it to him?”

“It could blow up in our face. That’s what Garvin’s worried about.”

“The French are quite efficient at this sort of thing.”

“They’re the ones who are on to me.”

“Well, obviously they’re not going to miss a chance to make trouble. Anyway, if they can take it out on you they won’t feel so bad about paying.”

“We don’t know they
will
pay yet.”

“Of course they’ll pay. Incidentally, has the follow-up message got through yet?”

“About paying? No, I don’t think so.”

“It probably has. They’ll keep quiet about it.”

“I think I’d have heard. They’d have warned me off.”

“Perhaps it hasn’t, then.” Nikos considered. “If you’re so worried about it,” he said, “I could ask our man at the hotel to keep an eye open for it.”

“
Have
we got a man at the hotel?”

“We’ve got a man at all the hotels. The main ones. It doesn’t cost much,” he assured Owen, thinking he detected a shade of concern and assuming, naturally, that the concern was financial and not moral.

On becoming Mamur Zapt Owen had inherited a huge information network, which Nikos administered with pride. What was striking about it was not its size, since a highly developed political secret service was normal in the Ottoman Empire and the British had merely taken it over, nor its ability to find informers, since people came cheap in Cairo: rather, it was its efficiency, which was not at all characteristic of the Ottoman Empire. It was, however, characteristic of Nikos, who brought the pure passion of the born bureaucrat to his work.

“Where is he?”

“At Reception.”

“That might be useful.”

“It was where the first message was left.”

Owen thought about it. “If we could get a look at it—”

Nikos nodded. “That’s what I thought. Note the contents and pass it on.”

“It could all go ahead.”

“They would pay.”

“Moulin would be released.”

“And with any luck,” said Nikos, “we would be watching and could follow it up.”

“I’d go along with that,” said Owen, “I’d go along with that.”

Later in the morning, Nikos came into Owen’s room just as he was about to go out to keep his appointment with Mahmoud and Madame Chévènement.

“I’ve been checking through the files to see if I could find anything on Zawia. There’s nothing on any group of that name.”

“It’s a new group,” said Owen.

“Yes. But often new groups are re-forming from members of old groups, so I looked through to see if there were any references to groups with associated names.”

“And did you find any?”

Nikos hesitated.

“Well,” he said, “this kind of stuff is just conjecture. But what about the Wekils?”

“The Wekils?”

“Came on the scene last year. Two known kidnappings. One, a Syrian, notified to us in June. Case went dead, family left the country. My guess is they paid and got out. No point in us going back over that case. But we might look at the other. A Greek shopkeeper, taken about six months ago. Again the case went dead, so they probably paid. But I think the family is still here, so we might be able to find out something.”

“Why is ‘Wekil’ an associated name?”

“It’s a Senussi name. The Wekils are those Brothers who take charge of business matters and so are permitted to have dealings with Christians. As I said, it’s just conjecture.”

Mahmoud was waiting for him at Reception.

“Room 216,” he said.