The Snake-Catcher’s Daughter

Even Owen, who was not particularly observant, especially of donkeys, could see at once that it was McPhee’s little white animal. He went up to it and examined it. That was certainly McPhee’s saddle. It was one of those on which – if you had a good sense of balance – you could sit cross-legged. Apart from that he could see nothing special; no bloodstains, for example.

He made a swift cast round and then, finding nothing, sent back to the Bab-el-Khalk for more men. If McPhee were here, he would be lying among or under the rubble and they would have to search the area systematically.

Ibrahim himself knew little. He passed through the area every day on his way to work and the previous morning had noticed the donkey. Although a worker in the city now, he had, like very many others, come originally from the country and distinguished between donkeys as later generations might distinguish between cars. He had seen at once that it was the Bimbashi’s donkey but had not felt it incumbent on him to do anything about it until word had reached him about the reward. He had seen nothing untoward, nothing, indeed, that he could remember about the morning apart from the donkey. He did, however, say that it was not a place where one lingered.

‘Why is that, Ibrahim?’ asked Owen sympathetically. ‘Are there bad men around?’

Ibrahim hesitated.

‘Not bad men, effendi –’

He looked over his shoulder as if he was afraid of being overheard.

‘Yes?’

‘Bad women,’ he muttered, and could not be persuaded to say another word.

The search went on all morning. By noon, heat spirals were dancing on top of the heaps of masonry and individual slabs of stone were too hot to lift. He gave the men a break in the shade. He hadn’t quite abandoned hope of finding McPhee alive, he didn’t let himself think about it too much, but he was growing more and more worried. As usual on such occasions a considerable crowd had gathered and he took the opportunity of the break to go among them making inquiries. He also sent some men around the neighbouring houses. None of it produced anything.

He put the men back to work. By about half past three they had covered an area a quarter of a mile wide on either side of the donkey and found nothing. How much wider was it sensible to go?

He made up his mind. It was a long shot – in fact, bearing in mind McPhee’s prim, if not downright maidenly nature, it was so long it was almost out of sight, but he had to try anything, and Ibrahim had said –

‘Selim!’ he called.

One of the constables came across, glad to escape for a moment from the relentless searching among the rubble.

‘Effendi?’

‘Go into the Gamaliya, not far, around here will do, and ask for the local bad women.’

‘Ask for the local bad women?’ said the constable, stunned.

‘That’s right,’ snapped Owen. ‘And when you have found them, come back and tell me.’

The constable pulled himself together.

‘Right, effendi,’ he said. ‘Certainly, effendi. At once!’

He hurried off.

‘Some men have all the luck,’ said one of the other constables.

‘Get on with it!’ barked Owen crossly.

Selim took a long time, unsurprisingly; so long, in fact, that Owen went to look for him. He met him just as he was emerging from the Gamaliya. He seemed, however, rather disappointed.

‘Effendi,’ he said, ‘this is not much of a place. Why don’t you come with me to the Ezbekiya –’

‘Have you found the place?’

‘Well, yes, but –’

‘OK. Just take me there.’

‘What’s this?’ he heard one constable say to another as they left. ‘A threesome?’

Behind an onion stall, in a small, dark, dirty street, a door opened into a room below ground level. In the darkness Owen could just make out a woman on a bed.

‘Ya Fatima!’ called the constable.

The woman rose from the bed, with difficulty, and waddled across to the door. She was hugely, grotesquely fat and her hands, feet and face were heavily dyed with henna. Her hair was greased with something rancid which he could smell even from outside the door. Eccentric though McPhee was –

‘Would the Effendi like to come in?’

‘This will do.’

‘It would be better if you came in, effendi.’

The constable watched, grinning.

‘This is the police,’ said Owen sternly, eager for once to assert his status.

The woman’s smile vanished.

‘Again?’ she said angrily. ‘They had me over there on Monday!’

‘This is a different matter,’ he said hastily. ‘I want to know the men you were with last night and the night before.’

‘Ali, Abdul, Ahmed –’

The list went on.

‘No Effendis?’

‘No Effendi,’ she said coyly. ‘Not yet.’

All right, it had been a mistake. McPhee probably didn’t know what a brothel was. But what, then, had Ibrahim meant by ‘bad women’? And why was this a place where one didn’t linger? Why had McPhee come here in the first place? And where was the poor devil now?

That question, at least, was soon answered. Urgent shouts came from the Gamaliya and people came running to fetch him. They led him into a little street not far from the bad woman’s and then up a tiny alleyway into what looked like a carpenter’s yard. Planks were propped against the walls and on the ground were some unfinished fretted woodwork screens for the meshrebiya windows characteristic of old Cairo. He was dragged across the yard to what looked like an old-fashioned stone cistern with sides about five feet high. A mass of people were gathered around it, all peering down into its inside. Someone was pulled aside and Owen pushed through. He clung to the edge of the cistern and looked down. McPhee was lying at the bottom. Something else, too. The cistern was full of snakes.

Owen shouted for his constables. They came, big men, forcing their way through the crowd.

‘Get them out of the way!’ said Owen. ‘Clear a space.’

The constables linked arms, bowed down and charged the crowd with their heads. They were used to this kind of situation. The smallest accident draws a crowd in Cairo, all sympathetic, all involved and all in the way.

A couple of constables stayed out of the cordon, drew their truncheons and slapped any encroachment of hand, foot or head.