The Night of the Dog (4 page)

“No.” Owen shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he said.

Mahmoud sighed.

“There was so much happening.” Owen protested. “I’ve told you.”

“Yes, you’ve given me the general picture very well. Let’s try again. When did you first become conscious of the Zikr?”

“When he didn’t get up. After a long time.”

“Where was he? When he was lying down, I mean.”

“About four or five yards in front of me to my left. There, as it were.”

Owen pointed to where a flea-ridden dog was scratching itself in the dust. A dog. He winced.

“Good!” said Mahmoud encouragingly. “About four or five yards to your left.”

“He was lying in a heap.”

“Fine. And if he was lying there he might well have been dancing there. You said they sank down more or less where they were.”

“That’s how it seemed to me. At the time.”

“Try to call up the scene,” said Mahmoud patiently, “with them all dancing. Got it? Right. Well now, look in your mind a little to your left. Four yards, five yards? Six yards?”

“I’m trying. I just don’t see it very clearly. I thought I did.”

“Over to your left. A big dervish with a spear sticking out of his chest.”

After a moment or two Owen said: “I think I’ve got him.”

“What is he doing?”

“Dancing.”

“How is he dancing?”

“Jumping up and down. I think.”

“Is he turning round? Whirling?”

“A bit.”

“Does the spear hit anyone? Get in the way?”

“It’s not really there,” said Owen. “I don’t really see it. I can sort of imagine it when you speak.”

“But you’re not really remembering it?”

“No.”

Mahmoud sighed.

“As a Mamur Zapt you may be all right,” he said. “As a witness you’re useless.”

“I know.”

Owen felt humbled. A murder, possibly, had happened four or five yards away under his very eyes and he couldn’t remember a thing. He hadn’t even noticed it. Perhaps, he told himself determinedly, there had been nothing to notice.

“We don’t know anything happened,” he said to Mahmoud.

“Yes, but we know he was there,” said Mahmoud, “and even that could be in doubt if we went by your evidence.”

“It’s not very good, is it?” said Owen. “A police officer and not remember a thing.”

Mahmoud laughed.

“I don’t know that I’d have done any better. It just goes to show.”

“What are you going to do now?”

“Try the next witness. See if she remembers any better.”

“She?”

“Miss—” Mahmoud stumbled a little. What he was trying to say was Postlethwaite.

“Surely you don’t need to see her?”

“I’m afraid I do.”

“There must be other witnesses.”

“And I shall get to them. But it was fresh to her eyes and she”—said Mahmoud pointedly—“may remember more.”

Owen was silent. He hadn’t realized it would come to this. He considered how Miss Postlethwaite would feel about being involved in a police inquiry. Or, more to the point, how her uncle would feel about it. Or, even more to the point, how the Consul-General would react.

“Are you sure?” he said. “I mean, she’s hardly likely to be able to add anything to what I—”

“You want to bet?” asked Mahmoud.

“Yes,” said Jane Postlethwaite. “I remember the man very well. I’d noticed him earlier because he was so—involved. He put everything into his dancing. He was a big man, rather darker than most of the Zikr—that would be, I expect”—looking at Owen for confirmation—“because he came from the south, although he wasn’t really a Nubian, he wasn’t as dark as that, a mixture, I suppose. Anyway, he threw himself into his dancing rather like a great big child. He seemed a bit like an overgrown boy, he had that sort of childlike face. I’d noticed him because he was bounding away so enthusiastically. And then when he started sticking knives into himself I could hardly believe my eyes. And that spear!”

Jane Postlethwaite shuddered a little at the recollection but it was not so much in sympathetic trepidation as in identification. She saw it all so vividly.

Mahmoud looked at Owen triumphantly.

“Yes, that spear,” he said. “How did he manage with it, Miss Postlethwaite? I would have thought it would have knocked into people as he was dancing.”

“It did once or twice. I thought it would hurt him but it didn’t seem to. And then, you see, it wasn’t sticking out horizontally. He’d thrust it into himself from above. He held it up— I saw him, it was so that everyone could see—up in front of him, like this”—Miss Postlethwaite demonstrated—“and then he pulled it down into his chest. The handle was sticking upwards, if anything. And then he was so big, it was over most people’s heads.”

This time Owen took care not to meet Mahmoud’s eyes. Miss Postlethwaite seemed to recall with amazing facility. She had agreed without hesitation when he had asked her, diffidently, whether she would be willing to make herself available for questioning. “Of course!” she had replied. “It’s my duty.”

“It won’t be me who’s asking the questions,” he had said, “it will be a friend of mine, Mr. el-Zaki, from the Parquet.” He had explained how the legal system differed from that in Britain. “In any case,” Jane Postlethwaite had said, “it wouldn’t have been proper for you to question me, would it? I mean, you were involved yourself. I expect you’re a witness too. Are you, Captain Owen? Oh, perhaps you’d better not tell me anything about it. Otherwise you might influence what I say and that wouldn’t be right, would it?”

To give things as light a touch as possible, Mahmoud had interviewed her in her hotel, and he had asked Owen to be with him. Owen knew very well why he wanted this. It wasn’t that he doubted his own ability or needed reinforcement. Rather, it was a simple precautionary measure, advisable when an Egyptian was questioning one of the British community, especially a visitor of some importance. Owen had agreed, though with a certain apprehension. They would be sure to meet John Postlethwaite, he thought, and the MP would be sure to take up the issue with him. When they arrived at the hotel his worst fears appeared to have been realized, for there, waiting for them in the vestibule, was Postlethwaite himself.

“Young man!” he said formidably, and Owen feared the worst.

“I must apologize, sir,” he said hastily. “It was quite wrong of me to expose Miss Postlethwaite to the possibility of such a distressing incident.”

“Ay,” said the MP, “it was.”

He produced the look which had crushed ministers. Owen recognized it at once and appeared suitably daunted. Unexpectedly, Mr. Postlethwaite seemed mollified.

“Well, you’re not trying to wriggle out of it at any rate,” he said.

“My fault entirely, sir.”

Mr. Postlethwaite sighed.

“Look, lad,” he said, “you’re young and you don’t know any better. But you don’t say things like that. Not if you want to get on in government service. It’s always somebody else’s fault. Got it? I’ll take this up with you some other time. You need a bit of advice.”

He spotted Mahmoud.

“This is Mr. el-Zaki, I take it? How do you do, Mr. el-Zaki.” They shook hands. “I don’t altogether follow this Parquet business, but it sounds a bit like the Scottish system to me.”

“You’re quite right,” said Owen, pleased. “It is.”

“It’s not a bad system,” said Mr. Postlethwaite. “At least you know who’s responsible for what.”

Jane Postlethwaite appeared in the doorway.

“I hope you’ve not been pitching into Captain Owen, Uncle,” she said.

“A bit,” said John Postlethwaite, exaggerating. Owen suspected that he liked to play the role of the hard man with his niece; and that she was not deceived in the least.

“I’ve pitched into the departments,” he said with relish. He winked at Owen. “Now they’ll know what to expect if they try to pull the wool over my eyes.”

“Get them on the run,” advised Jane Postlethwaite. “That’s half the battle.”

Owen was a little surprised at this display of administrative savoir-faire but then realized that she was probably repeating one of her uncle’s maxims. Mr. Postlethwaite endorsed it anyway.

“That’s right,” he said.

His niece laid a hand on his arm.

“Now, Uncle,” she said, “you’d better get back to your memos. Once you’ve got them on the run, keep them on the run.”

“And that’s true too,” said John Postlethwaite, going happily off up the stairs.

Jane Postlethwaite led them into a small room which the hotel manager had made available. The shutters had been closed, which kept the room fairly cool; but the air was lukewarm and inert and the fans useless, so after a while she pushed the shutters right open and they sat by the window.

“It is fortunate for us that you were watching, Miss Postlethwaite,” said Mahmoud, “and that you’re such a good observer.”

“Thank you. I wasn’t really watching him particularly, you know. It was just that I couldn’t help noticing him. He was so striking. So big, and so—rapt.”

“Did you notice him towards the end of the dance? Just before he collapsed?”

“Yes. He was bounding about and I kept thinking: Surely he can’t keep this up, not with all those knives and things sticking in him. But he did. He kept jumping away. Then he seemed to falter. There was a man near him and I thought he had bumped into him, because he, the Zikr, I mean, seemed to stumble. And then all his strength seemed to go out of him and he just slumped down. I think his fatigue had just caught up with him. Other Zikr were collapsing too, at that point.”

“The man who was standing near him, the one he bumped into or might have bumped into, was he another Zikr?”

“Oh no. He was one of—the audience, I suppose I should say, one of the onlookers, anyway. He had sort of strayed into the ring, been drawn in, I suppose, like so many others. There were lots of them, you know, ordinary people. They pressed forward during the dancing and then they began to join in. It was very infectious. I felt quite like joining in myself. Only I thought Captain Owen would not approve of me.”

She gave Owen a look which he considered afterwards he could only describe as arch.

Mahmoud, however, was concentrating.

“This particular onlooker, the one the Zikr nearly bumped into, was he joining in?”

“No. He was just standing there. That is why I noticed him. I thought he was, well, you know, a bit dazed or something, bowled over by it all. I was afraid he would get in the way. And then, when the Zikr stumbled, I thought he had got in the way.”

“Could you describe him for us, Miss Postlethwaite?” Mahmoud asked. “What was he wearing, for instance?”

“Oh, ordinary clothes.”

“Ordinary Western clothes or ordinary Egyptian clothes?”

“How silly I am. Of course. Ordinary Egyptian clothes. A long gown. A—galabeah, is it?”

“You’re picking up our language well, Miss Postlethwaite,” said Mahmoud encouragingly. “Galabeah is quite right. A blue one?”

“No. Darker than that. Grey? Black?”

“Are you sure about that, Miss Postlethwaite?” Owen interposed.

“Well, not absolutely. It was dark by then and hard to see in the light. It was just that in comparison with the others his seemed dark.”

“Did you see what kind of turban he was wearing?”

“I am afraid not. I’m sorry. One turban is much like another to me. Darkish, anyway. Like his gown.”

Owen exchanged surreptitious glances with Mahmoud. It was early yet but he was already beginning to have a sinking feeling.

“Anything else, Miss Postlethwaite?” asked Mahmoud.

“Not really. I saw him only fleetingly.”

“How old was he?”

“Thirty, forty—”

“You saw his face?”

“I must have,” said Jane, concentrating. After a moment or two she shook her head. “I don’t remember it at all clearly, I’m afraid.”

“Hands?”

“Hands?” said Jane, startled.

“Sometimes they are distinctive.”

“Yes,” said Jane, looking at him with interest. “Yes, they are. Well, I did see his hands, but there was nothing distinctive about them. It was just—”

She broke off and thought for a moment. “I don’t remember his hands,” she said at last, “but I do remember hers.”

“Hers?”

“The woman’s.”

“What woman’s?”

“Don’t you know?” said Jane, surprised. “Oh, I see, you’re testing me. The woman he was with.”

Mahmoud recovered first.

“Tell us about this woman, please, Miss Postlethwaite,” he asked.

“Right,” said Jane obediently. “Well, we were in a sort of enclosure, you know, masked off by ropes. During the dancing this woman came right up beside me, outside the enclosure—I was at the very end of the row, next to the rope, there was a carpet hung over it, too, which made it into a sort of wall—and put her hand on the rope just in front of me. That’s why I saw it in the first place. But then, of course, I noticed it. She had such lovely hand-painting. Lots of Egyptian women do, don’t they?”

“Yes,” said Mahmoud, “although it’s going out now, or so my mother says.”

“Does she herself hand-paint?” asked Jane.

“No!” said Mahmoud, immensely amused at the thought of his rather Westernized mother engaging in the traditional Egyptian arts. “It’s not confined to the poorer classes but it’s certainly most common there. You find it generally where the old customs are strongest.”

“Such beautiful patterns!” said Jane enthusiastically.

“In general?” asked Mahmoud. “Or just in the case of the woman you saw beside the enclosure?”

“Both!” said Jane. “But I noticed the woman because I thought her patterns were especially lovely. She didn’t paint the whole palm, you know, not like they usually do, she just sort of sketched it in and then echoed it around the knuckles and nails. But what really caught my eye were her wrists. She had a most intricate pattern around them, all in delicate blue, not the usual blue of the poorer women, and not that rich orangey-red you often see. It ran round her wrist in a series of hooks and crosses all linked together, like a sort of painted bracelet.”

“Crosses?” said Owen. He was quite sure about the sinking feeling now.

“Yes. Small square ones. That’s a traditional pattern too, isn’t it?”