“They do, sir.”
“You find it embarrassing?”
“Sometimes, sir. But it also gives me a warm feeling here.” The sergeant struck his breast.
“Then the emotion is normal,” said Chafik. His voice had the hollow sound of one who speaks a thought unintentionally; hearing himself, he Hushed, irritated by his incurable habit. “We must find the means of developing the image hidden in our records,” he said hastily. “But enough for the day.”
He was too preoccupied to see the boy who lurked under the arcade, but when he reached his car parked on the city square, he was roused by a light touch. An eager voice began, “Sahib! My father—”
It pulled the trigger of temper and the Inspector shouted, “Out, Pestilence!” and slammed the door of the car.
He drove over the great steel bridge that spanned the river. His home was on the Street of the Scatterer of Blessings, off Mansour Avenue. The yellow brick house, which was small and typically suburban, was cooled by breezes from the Tigris. Chafik latched the street gate, carefully wiped his shoes, and let himself into the softly lighted hall.
His wife, a dark, slim little woman, was there to make him welcome. Her face was freshly powdered and she wore an attractive dress. After fifteen years, Leila knew the wisdom of working at marriage. She was a woman of considerable intelligence and combined a Westernized appearance with a degree of meekness expected of an Eastern wife. She said, anxiously, “You are late, my man.”
“It was a question of a formula for extracting from our records what is surely hidden there. You would not understand.”
“No,” said Leila, “But I understand you are tired.”
She maneuvered him into a chair, removed his shoes, and brought his slippers. He sniffed the appetizing odor of the waiting meal, sighed and said, “Yes, I am tired. Also hungry. One cannot eat records.”
After eating it was possible to relax. The only sound in the house was the ticking of a clock, and he was grateful for the quiet and closed his eyes.
Leila stood at the window, hidden by the curtains, watching the street. She liked to speculate about those who passed; her interest in the foibles of humanity filled gaps in her day, times of idleness inevitable in a childless household.
Suddenly she said, “The house is watched—”
Chafik sat up. “What?”
“There is a boy outside. He has been there for some time.”
Her husband joined her and saw Faisal leaning against the gate. The elfin face was white and pinched in the light of the street lamp. Chafik reacted with confusion. He felt compassion, as for a lost and woebegone puppy, then anger came and he went to the door, but changed his mind and came back. “This foolishness must end,” he said to Leila, and explained what had happened. “He follows me everywhere,” he complained.
“Such a little boy, and he has such charm,” Leila said wistfully.
“A waif. He doubtless has lice.”
“He has a hungry look—”
“I gave him money for food. That was my mistake.”
“Many give him money,” Leila said wisely. “His hunger is not only for food. He walked far to be near you. Oh, pitiful! He makes his bed on our doorstep. Could he not sleep in the shed in the garden?”
Chafik heard the tenderness in his wife’s voice and felt a twinge of an old pain. “I forbid,” he said angrily. “Once you brought a cat into the house and I was inundated with kittens. You are too impulsive.”
“Such a little boy—” said Leila, sighing.
Her husband realized she had not heard a word. Irritably he announced, “I am going to bed,” and left her still at the window.
He slept heavily, but not well. In the morning, when he went out, the familiar small figure was waiting. He noticed crumbs on the mouth that curved to greet him and had a dark thought for his wife as he brushed past the boy.
During the day he caught glimpses of Faisal and continued to ignore him. When he came home in the evening, the boy appeared so quickly outside the house, Chafik guessed he had stolen a ride on the back of a car, perhaps his own. He felt helpless and his wife gave no comfort; she was suddenly withdrawn.
Estrangement was rare between them. He was aware of the reason, and at any other time would have used tenderness to relieve the futile longing that happened sometimes to Leila, like the aching of a tooth which is really sound. But the problem of the drug smuggling was a leech in his mind and he could think of little else as midweek approached and, with it, the dreaded increase in hashish crimes.
He was tormented because he was certain the answer of when and how the drug entered the country was in his records. These records were amazingly detailed, and included files on all regular travelers to and from Baghdad, and on all known criminals in the city. But to attempt to unearth the answer in his crammed filing cabinets without a key would be as difficult as finding the proverbial needle in a haystack.
On Thursday morning, when Chafik found Faisal waiting as usual, he got into his car and recited a few calming verses from the Koran, then reopened the car door. “Come, Pestilence,” the Inspector said. He remembered Leila in the window and was embarrassed by his odd impulse toward the boy.
Faisal began to chatter gaily. The pleasant young voice disturbed thinking, but when the boy said, “Sahib, today I shall make money,” Chafik came out of preoccupation and wondered a little irritably what could be done for the persistent child.
“How will you make money?”
“A train comes. There are things to carry. People tired with travel pay well,” Faisal added wisely.
“So today you will cat. But what of tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow does not matter if I cat well today, sahib.”
“I envy you your philosophy,” Chafik said. “Myself, I would be distressed by such ups and downs. The graph of my life follows an even line; if yours were plotted it would soar to a zenith, then plunge to the nadir. And again to the zenith and so on, indefinitely. Such a graph would be untidy, but the pattern would reveal the fluctuations of your belly, the days when—”
His voice died and he forgot the boy. He was fascinated by his hand which had left the wheel to trace a wavy line in the air. “A graph!” he shouted. “The key — the formula—” The car shot ahead through traffic lights and was parked hastily. For the second time in these few days the sedate little Inspector astonished the guard outside headquarters by running up the stairs.
Sergeant Abdullah was waiting with a pile of reports, but Chafik said, “I have no time for routine. I have found the key.”
“Sir?”
“The hashish matter.” Chafik explained impatiently. “Abdullah, if we could fix the day when the crimes begin to mount, the exact day every week, perhaps the same day, would it not aid our investigation?”
“Indubitably. A fixed day recurring weekly over a period of several months would permit the narrowing down of means of entry. It would be possible to eliminate certain routes of transportation. For example, sir, highways are sometimes closed by sandstorms—”
“Then bring me squared paper.”
“Sir?”
“Paper marked with squares. I am going to make a graph. We will plot all crimes committed by hashish addicts during the past three months. Thus the data from our records will emerge visually.”
When Abdullah brought the paper. Inspector Chafik prepared the frame of the graph and indicated weeks and days of each week along the bottom line. He explained, “I shall count one vertical square for each incident. You will now read me the daily hashish reports from the files.”
The sergeant read in a courtroom voice that reduced crime to its proper level, unglamorous and monstrous. Chafik’s pencil moved up and down marking the level of crime for each day. When he reached the end of the week he linked the daily tallies with a red line.