Mekhmet looked around in despair, saw Owen and clutched his arm.
‘Effendi! Oh, Effendi!’
‘It’s all right,’ said Owen. ‘It’s over now.’
‘But, Effendi-’
‘Get some water, can’t you? And after that, some coffee. For me and the Effendi. I bloody need it!’
‘Effendi!’ pleaded Mekhmet.
‘Move your ass!’
Mekhmet fled into the kitchen. Mustapha prised himself up and limped across to Owen.
‘A fine bloody job he’s done!’ he said bitterly, looking down at Selim. ‘My cafe’s wrecked! And what did he do about it?’
‘He fought like a lion!’ said the woman indignantly.
‘Maybe, but he fell down like a sheep when they knocked him on the head.’
‘And where were you? Under the bed!’
‘I’ve got a broken leg, haven’t I? Isn’t that enough for you? Or do you want me to get a broken skull as well?’
‘It is not for you to chide the one who fought!’ said the woman angrily.
‘Well, that’s his job, isn’t it? Fighting? I just wish he’d made a better job of it, that’s all.’
‘Shame on you!’ said the woman. ‘While he lies there bleeding!’
‘Well, it didn’t work, did it? He was supposed to stop this from happening. That was the idea of it, wasn’t it? Well, look around you,’ he said to Owen. ‘A fat lot of use he’s been! Protection? Protection, my ass! The only thing he’s good for is drinking coffee. You know what? She was more use than he was. Threw boiling water over them!’
‘God forgive me!’ said the woman.
‘God is all-merciful,’ replied Mustapha automatically, and then started. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘I hope He doesn’t carry it to extremes. We don’t want Him forgiving the bastards who wrecked my cafe!’
Mekhmet appeared from the kitchen with a bowl of water. He put it down and then plucked Owen by the sleeve.
‘Effendi,’ he said anxiously.
‘What about that coffee?’ said Mustapha. He picked up a chair and sat down on it heavily. ‘There’s another for you!’ he said to Owen. ‘That Mekhmet! Idle as the other one and even more useless! Go and get some coffee, can’t you?’
‘But, Effendi-’ said Mekhmet desperately.
‘Coffee!’ said Mustapha peremptorily.
Mekhmet looked this way and that and then fled to the kitchen.
Owen turned Selim on to his back. The woman took his head gently on to her knees and began sponging it.
‘That’s more like it!’ murmured Selim.
Suddenly his eyes opened.
‘Those bastards!’ he said, trying to get up.
The woman pulled him back.
‘Well-’ said Selim, yielding.
His eyes opened again.
‘At least I got one of them!’ he said.
Owen glanced around.
‘He’s not here. They must have taken him away,’ he said.
Mekhmet shot gibbering out of the kitchen.
‘Effendi-!’
‘I threw him in there,’ said Selim faintly. ‘After I had broken his neck.’
Owen went across to have a look.
‘Effendi, he stirs!’ said Mekhmet.
‘What’s that?’ said Selim.
‘I tried to tell you, but-’
A man was lying among the great jars used for storing water. As Owen looked, a foot twitched.
‘Effendi, he lives!’
‘Does he?’ said Selim, trying to get up. ‘I’ll soon see about that!’
Chapter 6
The extreme heat continued. In the Bab-el-Khalk next day nothing moved. The orderlies sat stupefied, in the orderly room when they were on duty, outside in the courtyard when they were off. From time to time, Yusef, Owen’s own orderly, would pad along the corridor with a fresh pitcher of water, oppressed at the capacity of ice to diminish even in the few yards between the orderly room and Owen’s office. Owen, dripping at his desk, was considering whether to change his shirt.
Selim, bandaged, poked his head round the door.
‘They’re coming now, Effendi.’
Owen could hear the feet at the other end of the corridor, heard, too, a few moments later, Selim’s muttered aside.
‘Right, you bastard, now you’re for it!’
Two slightly apprehensive police constables appeared in the doorway with, between them, rather more apprehensive, the man who had been taken the day before at the cafe.
Owen looked him over. Nothing very special, just an ordinary fellah in a blue galabeeyah. But that, actually, was significant. It made it less likely that they were dealing with a political club. The Arabs tended to recruit from students and young effendi, or office workers. This man had never seen the inside of a classroom or an office. His hands were big and awkward. Scarred, too. Owen leaned forward and pushed back the man’s sleeves. The forearms were scarred also, just where you would expect, and the face, yes, not tribal marks, knife wounds. A tough from the back streets. Owen was almost sure already that this was a criminal gang, not a political one.
The nervousness, too. Members of political clubs might well be nervous when they were brought before the Mamur Zapt but theirs was a different kind of nervousness from that of the ordinary fellah. They were used to the big imposing rooms and the long corridors, which were not so very different from the ones they knew at college or work. If they were nervous it was because of the anticipated consequences, not about the circumstances in which they found themselves.
For the ordinary street criminal it was exactly the reverse. The consequences when they came would be accepted with the immemorial resigned shrug of the fellahin. It was the shock of an environment completely new to their experience that was so disorienting.
Even the toughest of street toughs was put out by the Bab-el-Khalk. There was very little space where they came from. Everything was close, local, intimate. Here in the great open spaces of the Bab-el-Khalk they lost their bearings. Everything was alien to them: the men in their uniforms, the formality, the emotional coldness. Probably most alien of all was the white man they had been brought before.
It was this second kind of nervousness that the man was showing. His eyes flickered compulsively from side to side. It was all new to him. He couldn’t make sense of anything.
‘What is your name?’
The man looked at him as if he had not understood. As, indeed, probably he had not. Owen doubted if he was taking anything in just at the moment.
Selim leaned over and tapped the man on the shoulder.
‘Come on, bright eyes, what’s your name?’
What exactly Selim was doing there Owen was not sure. He had appeared shakily that morning and taken up a position in the corridor outside Owen’s office, announcing that he wanted to ‘see it through’. What ‘it’ was Owen didn’t know. He had an uneasy feeling that Selim was expecting summary execution.
The man, however, seemed to find Selim’s intervention reassuring. Perhaps he was used to big constables tapping him on the shoulder.
‘Ali,’ he said.
‘What’s the rest of it?’
‘There isn’t any more.’
‘Come on, light of my eyes, don’t you have a family?’ enquired Selim.
The man seemed bewildered.
‘Not as far as I know,’ he said.
‘You must have!’ said Selim. ‘You don’t suddenly get dropped in the streets.’
‘I did,’ said the man.
‘Don’t know your mother?’
‘Nor my father, either,’ said the man.
Selim turned to Owen.
‘Real bastard, isn’t he?’
‘Just keep quiet, will you?’ He was beginning to regret Selim’s presence. ‘All right, then, Ali, if you don’t have a name, do you have a place? Where do you live?’
Again the bewilderment.
‘I don’t live anywhere,’ said the man. Then, as Selim stirred, he added hurriedly: ‘I just move around.’
‘One woman after another? That it?’ said Selim.
‘Yes,’ said the man. ‘That’s about it.’
‘It’s all right for some!’ said Selim.
‘Shut up! Where did you sleep the night before last?’ asked Owen.