The Snake-Catcher’s Daughter

Owen had not. He could just imagine, though, what the Nationalist press would make of it. The newspapers would be full of it for weeks. He stuck doggedly, however, to his guns. Nikos changed tack.

‘How much are you offering for information?’ he asked practically.

‘It’s McPhee, after all.’

‘Five pounds?’

‘Good God, no!’ said Owen, shocked. ‘We’d have the whole city bringing us donkeys if we offered that. One pound Egyptian.’

‘I thought, as it was an Englishman –’ suggested Nikos.

‘One-fifty.’

‘And in the police –’

‘Two pounds,’ said Owen. ‘We’ll make it two pounds. That is my limit.’

‘It ought to be enough,’ said Nikos, who believed in value for money.

Word went out to the bazaars by methods which only Nikos knew and Owen sat down to await results. They came by nightfall.

‘What the hell is this?’ said Garvin.

Owen explained.

‘It’s like a bloody donkey market,’ said Garvin.

Owen went down into the courtyard to sort things out. Nikos watched with interest. Believing that decisions should be taken where knowledge lay, which certainly wasn’t at the top, Owen enlisted the aid of the orderlies, whom he stationed at the entrance to the courtyard.

‘You know the Bimbashi’s donkey,’ he said. ‘All the others are to be turned away.’

Within an hour the usual torpor of the Bab-el-Khalk was restored.

By now it was dark.

‘You stay here,’ he ordered.

The orderlies, appeased by the prospect of a few extra piastres and full of self-importance at their newly-significant role, were quite content to stay on. Meanwhile, Owen went down to the club for a drink.

‘I gather there’s some problem about McPhee,’ said a man at his elbow.

‘Maybe,’ said Owen, non-committally.

‘Not been knocked on the head, has he? I wouldn’t want that to happen. He’s a funny bloke, not everyone’s cup of tea, but I quite like him.’

‘I dare say he’s all right.’

His neighbour looked at him.

‘Like that, is it?’

Owen gave a neutral smile.

‘You’re not saying? Fair enough. Only I hope he’s all right.’

Owen, who had previously regarded the eccentric McPhee as much with irritation as with affection, was surprised to find that he felt rather the same.

‘What’s happened to the drink this evening?’ he asked. ‘It’s bloody lukewarm.’

‘It’s the heat,’ someone said. ‘Even the ice is melting.’

Owen decided to go back to the Bab-el-Khalk. He put down his glass and headed for the door, spurred on by hearing someone say, ‘Sorry I’m late, old man. Couldn’t get here for the donkeys.’

There were, indeed, a lot of donkeys outside the Bab-el-Khalk. Since they were refused entry into the courtyard, they congregated in the square in front of the building, blocking the road. Garvin was just leaving the building as he arrived.

‘I hope you know what you’re doing,’ he said.

Unaccountably, there were about half a dozen donkeys inside the courtyard.

‘What are they doing here?’

The orderlies looked embarrassed.

‘We thought they might be the Bimbashi’s donkey,’ they said.

‘You know damned well they’re not!’

‘It’s not always possible to tell in the dark,’ muttered someone.

‘We brought them in so that we could see them better.’

Owen knew exactly why they had been brought in. Their enterprising owners, eager for the reward, had slipped the orderlies a few piastres.

‘Get them out of here!’

He heard the arguments beginning as he turned into the building.

Nevertheless, it worked. The following morning it was reported that the Bimbashi’s donkey had been seen grazing unattended on the edge of the Place of Tombs. The informant had not actually brought the donkey – which told in his favour – but was confident that it was the Bimbashi’s donkey. He had seen the Bimbashi on it many times and, yes, indeed – astonishment that anyone could suppose otherwise – he did know one donkey from another. Owen decided to go himself.

‘Why don’t you send Georgiades?’ suggested Nikos, less confident than Owen that this was not a wild goose chase.

‘Because he’s probably still in bed.’

‘He spends too much time in bed if you ask me,’ said Nikos. ‘Especially since he married that Rosa girl,’ he shot after Owen’s departing back.

Owen gave a passing wonder to Nikos’s own sexual habits. He had always assumed that Nikos cohabited with a filing cabinet, but there had seemed some edge to that remark.

He picked up the informant, one Ibrahim, in the Gamaliya and went with him to the place where he had seen the donkey. It was among the mountainous rubbish heaps which divided the Gamaliya district from the tombs of the Khalifs. The tombs were like houses and some of the rubbish came from their collapse. The rest came from houses in the Gamaliya. This part of the Gamaliya was full of decaying old mansions. From time to time, especially when it rained heavily, a mud-brick wall would dissolve and collapse, leaving a heap of rubble. The area was like a gigantic abandoned building site. Coarse grass grew on some of the heaps of rubble and it was here, contentedly cropping, that they found the donkey.