‘We’ve got something for you,’ he said.
He called down to Macrae, who came up and joined them. They walked down the canal to where what looked like a piece of broken pipe had evidently been heaved up out of the water.
‘What is it?’
‘It’s part of the culvert. From just beside the regulator gates. It was blown out by the explosion and carried here by the water. The thing is, though: see those? They’re burn marks. That means, that’s where the stuff was put. Just shoved up inside, I’d say.’
‘Aye,’ said Ferguson. ‘That would have been enough. It’s the position, you see. It would have cracked the concrete that held the frame just by the hinge. The weight of the water would have done the rest. Whoever did it knew just what they were doing.’
‘And you still say,’ said Owen, ‘that it wasn’t one of your workmen?’
Chapter 3
The gardener came running.
‘Effendi! Oh, Effendi!’
He arrived panting.
‘Oh, Effendi! Another one!’
‘Another what?’
‘A bomb! Oh, Effendi, come quickly!’
‘Another! Jesus! Where?’
The gardener pointed across the Gardens.
‘The Rosetta? Jesus!’
They ran straight across the Gardens, splashing through the water. Birds scattered. Herons rose with a clap of wings like a gunshot. The palm doves rose in a flock. Hoopoes hesitated no longer and made for the trees.
The gardener ran ahead of them, his bare feet kicking up the water. He led them across the lawns and then up on to the crest along which Owen had passed previously. Down into the bamboo clumps of the valley and then left along the stream, almost to the spot where the ghaffir had been taking his repose. There, virtually beneath the baobab trees, the gardener halted.
‘But-?’ began Macrae.
‘There, Effendi, there!’ pointed the gardener with trembling finger.
He was pointing towards a gadwal.
‘Leave this to me!’ said Macrae, shouldering Owen aside.
‘Aye,’ said Ferguson. ‘We know about these things.’
He pushed Owen behind a tree and then went forward to join Macrae.
‘Bloody hell!’ they said in unison.
Owen, who had served with the Army in India before coming to Egypt, and thought he also knew about these things, re-emerged from behind the tree and went cautiously up to them.
They were peering into the gadwal. Lying in the bottom were a pair of detonators.
‘It is easy to see, Abdullah,’ said the ghaffir superciliously, ‘that you are not a man who knows about dynamite!’
‘How was I to know?’ said the gardener defensively. ‘It looked like a bomb to me!’
‘How did you find it?’ asked Owen.
‘I was clearing the gadwal,’ said the gardener. ‘You need to, to make sure that the water can flow along it. You’d be surprised what gets into it. Leaves, sticks, that sort of thing. All these birds! And then the people-they put rubbish in it, though you’d think they knew better. So before I let the water through I go along and see there are no blockages. I mean, you don’t want water coming over the sides until you’re ready, do you? What would be the point of that? You may not think I know about dynamite,’ he said aside to the ghaffir, ‘but I do know about gadwals. Mess up one and you’ve messed up the lot!’
‘Gadwals!’ sniggered the ghaffir. ‘To talk about gadwals when the Effendi have great things on their mind!’
‘Never mind that!’ said Macrae. He looked down into the gadwal. ‘Spares, you reckon?’ he said to Ferguson.
‘Aye,’ said Ferguson. ‘Discarded afterwards.’
Macrae picked them up.
‘And you know where they come from?’ he said.
‘Aye,’ said Ferguson.
The stores were kept in a hut beside one of the regulators. Its door was heavily padlocked.
‘I doubt they went that way,’ said Macrae.
He led them round to the back of the hut. The lower part of the rear wall was masked by a profusion of the mauve, thrift-like flowers that grew everywhere in the Gardens. Macrae pulled them away. At the very bottom of the wall a hole large enough for a man had been neatly cut in the wood.
Ferguson went round to the front again and unlocked the padlock and they went in. The hut was full of equipment neatly arranged on racks. There were spades, picks, drilling bits, coils of wire, nails, screws, packs of various kinds. There was a stack of the wooden trug-like baskets that were still universally used along the banks for carrying earth in. There were piles of the traditional wooden shovels.
Macrae went over to one of the walls and pulled aside some stacks. Behind them was a stout wooden chest with huge iron clasps and a padlock even stronger than the one on the door. Macrae unlocked it and looked in.
Aye,’ he said.
‘Detonators?’ said Owen.
‘Four missing.’
‘That would be right. And dynamite?’
‘At any rate,’ said Macrae sourly, ‘there’s some left.’
‘A padlock’s no good,’ said Ferguson. ‘We’ll have to find somewhere else to keep it.’
‘Have you a storeman?’ asked Owen.
‘He’s all right,’ said Macrae. ‘I’d trust him with my life.’ And then, catching Owen’s sceptical look, he added. Aye, I know what you’re thinking. But he’s all right. I’ve known him for years. He was with me down in Aswan. Got injured in a fall, so I put him in charge of stores. That was six years ago and we’ve never had cause for complaint.’
‘Never!’ said Ferguson.
‘Does he have keys?’
‘No. I open up and lock up each day,’ said Ferguson.
‘And were the only ones with keys to the box. We each keep a set in case there’s a sudden need and one of us can’t be found. But no one else has a key.’
Owen bent and looked at the padlock. It was a fairly standard one. The storeman might be honest but people would be in and out of the hut all day and one of them might well have been able to size the padlock up, even, perhaps, take an impression while the storeman was distracted.
The hole in the wall had been hidden by some sacks.
‘Aye,’ said Macrae, ‘but it can’t have been done long before or we’d have found out.’
‘The same night?’
‘It would take a bit of time to cut,’ said Ferguson. ‘Maybe the night before.’
They went round and looked at the hole again from the other side. Whoever had cut it had dug himself a shallow burrow in the sand for extra concealment while he worked.
‘Yes, but Ibrahim ought to have seen him,’ grumbled Macrae. ‘He’s supposed to look all round.’
He summoned the ghaffir and showed him the burrow. ‘What’s this, then?’
Ibrahim studied it.
‘A lizard, Effendi?’
‘Lizard, bollocks!’ He indicated the hole. ‘This was a man!’
‘Yes, Effendi,’ said the ghaffir unhappily. A lizard man.’
‘I can see, Ibrahim,’ said the gardener maliciously, ‘that you are not a man who knows about thieves breaking in.’
‘I know about thieves breaking in,’ said the ghaffir indignantly. ‘Ordinary thieves, that is. But this was a lizard man. Lizard men are different.’
The phrase unfortunately caught on. Walking past some of Macrae’s workmen later, Owen heard them discussing the latest developments, which, of course, by this time they knew all about.
‘… a lizard man, they say… ’
‘Ah, well, there’s not much you can do about that, then, is there?’
‘I don’t like it. If he’s got it in for us, then there’ll be trouble!’
The newspapers picked it up. Waiting for Mahmoud that evening, sitting at an outside table in the big cafe at the top of the Mouski, Owen heard a new cry from the boys selling newspapers.