The Snake Catcher's Daughter (2 page)

“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 meshrebi ya 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.

Owen levered himself up on to the edge of the cistern and put his head down into its depths.

“Effendi!” said an anxious voice. It was Selim, who, previously singled out for glory, had suddenly grown in stature and now took upon himself a senior role.

“Get hold of me!”

He felt Selim’s grasp tighten and swung himself lower.

The snakes did not move. One or two were lying on McPhee’s chest, others coiled beneath his armpits. They all seemed asleep at the moment, perhaps they were digesting a meal, but if he tried to move McPhee he was bound to waken them.

“Effendi,” said Selim, “is this not something better left to experts?”

A voice at the back of the crowd shouted: “Abu! Fetch Abu!”

“Pull me up!”

He came back up over the side and lowered his feet to the ground.

“I’ve got to get him out,” he said. “Now listen carefully. Two of you, no three, it will be a heavy weight, catch hold of me. I’m going to reach down and get hold of McPhee. I’ll try and get a good grip—”

“They’ll bite you in the face, effendi!”

Owen swallowed.

“I’m going to do it quickly,” he said. “Very quickly. As soon as I shout, pull me up. I’ll be heavy because I’ll be holding McPhee. But you just bloody pull, as fast as you can. The rest of you can help. And Selim!”

“Yes, effendi?”

“There’ll be snakes on him. Maybe on me, too. Now, what I want you to do is to catch hold of them—”

“Catch hold?” said Selim faintly.

“And throw them back.”

“Look, effendi,” began Selim, less sure now about the glory.

“Do it quickly and you’ll be all right.”

“Effendi—”

“I’m relying on you.”

Selim swallowed.

“Effendi,” he said heroically, “I will do it.”

“Good man. Remember, speed is the thing.”

“Effendi,” said Selim, “you cannot believe how quick I will be.”

“Right.” Owen put his hands on the edge of the cistern and braced himself. “Get hold of me.”

In the background, he heard Selim say to one of the constables:

“Abdul, you stand by me with your truncheon!”

“If I strike, it will make them angry.”

“If you strike, you’ve got to strike them dead!”

“But, Selim,” said the worried voice, “it is not easy to kill a snake. Not in one blow. It would be better if you just caught hold of them and threw them.”

“Thank you very much, Abdul,” said Selim.

“Selim!” said Owen sternly. “Do it the way I told you!” Just then a girl ducked under the legs of the cordon and came up beside Owen.

“What are you doing with our snakes?” she said fiercely.

“I’m trying to get him out
…Your
snakes, did you say? Who the hell are you?”

“I’m Abu’s daughter.”

“He’s the snake catcher,” said someone.

Light dawned.

“They’re your snakes?”

“Yes.” The girl looked down over the edge. “What’s he doing down there?”

“Never mind that. Can you get him out?”

“Of course.”

She swung her leg up on the edge.

“What about the snakes?”

“I’ve milked the cobras.”

“Milked?”

She bent down, seized one of the snakes by the neck and held it up for Owen to see. It opened its jaws.

“See?”

The snake’s mouth looked much like any other snake’s mouth to Owen but he didn’t feel inclined to examine it closely.

“Er…yes,” he said.

The cobra tried to snap at him but the girl was holding it too firmly.

“Selim,” said Abdul’s worried voice, “shall I strike?”

The girl tossed the snake back into the cistern and then dropped down after it. Owen saw her flinging the snakes aside. She put her hands under McPhee’s armpits and lifted his shoulders.

“Can you take him?”

Owen grabbed hold of him. Selim, bold, reached over and caught up McPhee’s legs.

They lifted him down to the ground.

Something moved under his shirt. A snake put its head out. The girl plucked it out and threw it nonchalantly into the cistern.

“It’s the warmth,” she said. “They like to go where it’s warm.”

“Warm?” said Owen, and dropped on his knees.

McPhee was still alive. Alive, but very unconscious. Owen tipped his head back and looked at his eyes.

The girl knelt down beside him.

“He’s overdone it, if you ask me,” she said. “Taken a bit too much this time.”

“Someone else gave it him,” said Owen harshly.

He tore open McPhee’s shirt and put an ear to his chest. A strong, snaky smell, a mixture of snake and palm oil and spices, clung to the shirt. The girl caught it, too, and looked puzzled.

The heartbeat was slow but regular. Owen looked around. The tiny yard was packed to overflowing. He was suddenly conscious of the extreme heat and lack of air.

“We must get the Bimbashi to the hospital,” he said.

There were no arabeahs in that part of the city so the constables improvised a litter out of some of the planks lying against the wall. They had just pushed their way out into the street when the owner came rushing after them.

“Hey!” he said. “What are you doing? You can’t take those!”

“Mean bastard!” said the crowd indignantly.

The owner stepped back and hurriedly changed tack.

“It’s not seemly,” he said. “He’s a Bimbashi, after all!”

This was an argument which weighed with the crowd. And with the constables, who stopped uncertainly and lowered the litter to the ground.

“Come on,” said Owen, “we’ve got to get a move on.”

The crowd, however, now grown to even larger proportions, would not be moved. A lively debate ensued, the outcome of which was that an
angareeb
, the universal bed, was produced and McPhee laid gently upon it. The whole crowd then accompanied them to the hospital, which Owen could have done without.

“But what was he doing there?” asked Garvin.

“I’ll ask him when he wakes up,” said Owen.

McPhee, having awoken, did not respond at once. He seemed to be thinking about it.

“I don’t think I can say, old man,” he said at last, rather stuffily, “I really don’t think I can say.”

Can’t say?” said Garvin in a fury. “Get him here!”

McPhee insisted on standing to attention. This irked Owen because he did not know how to do it properly. He had been, such were the ways of the British Administration, a schoolmaster before being translated into a senior post in the police. Owen had been in the army in India before coming to Egypt and while this was something he now tried to forget, it still irritated him mildly to see what looked like a parody of military drill. McPhee, however, was determined to take his medicine like a man.

“I would prefer, sir, to regard the matter as closed,” he said pompously.

“Closed?” said Garvin, affecting to fall back in his chair with astonishment. “Found drugged up to the eyeballs? Regards the matter as closed?”

“I accept that I am to blame, sir. I take full responsibility.”

“You mean you took the drug knowingly?”

McPhee was a great stickler for the truth.

“I wouldn’t go so far as to say that, sir,” he said uncomfortably.

“Then what do you mean, you take responsibility?”

“I shouldn’t have put myself in the position, sir,” said McPhee, hot and bothered.

“What position?”

“I—I’d rather not say, sir.”

Garvin sighed.

“McPhee,” he said, “you are the Deputy Commandant of Police. You are found in a backyard heavily drugged. Does it not occur to you that some might regard this as anomalous?”

“It was in off-duty hours, sir.”

“You were doing this as a recreation?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Taking the drug?”

“No, no, no, no, sir.”

“Then?”

“I don’t think they meant any harm, sir.”

“Enough to knock you out for thirty-six hours? No harm?”

“I think it was just that they didn’t want me to see anything.”

“McPhee,” said Garvin dangerously, “what was it exactly that you were doing?”

McPhee was silent.

“You can tell us about it, old chap,” said Owen, trying to be helpful. “We understand about such things.”

“What things?” said Garvin.

“Bad women,” prompted Owen gently.

“Bad women?” said Garvin incredulously.

“Bad women?” said McPhee, looking puzzled.

“Sorry!” said Owen. “It was just that I thought—”

“Really, Owen!” said McPhee in tones of disgust.

“You’re obsessed, Owen,” said Garvin. “Keep out of it. McPhee, what were you doing there?”

“I was attending a Zzarr, sir,” said McPhee bravely.

“A Zzarr!”

“In my own time. Off duty.”

“I should bloody hope so,” said Garvin.

“What
is
a Zzarr?” asked Owen.

“A casting out of devils. From a woman.”

“They’re held in secret,” said McPhee. “You don’t come across them very often.”

“Especially if you’re a man,” said Garvin. “Did you say you were
attending
one?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I thought no men were allowed?”

“They’re not, sir. Usually.”

“Then how did you come to be there?”

“I—I invited myself, sir.”

“Using your position as Deputy Commandant?”

“Yes, sir. I’m afraid so, sir.”

“Why?”

“Just interest. Curiosity, sir. You see, sir, they happen so rarely. At least, one comes across them so rarely. Little is known about them. There’s nothing about them in Lane, for instance. So—”

“You thought you would add to the world’s knowledge?”

“Yes, sir. In a way.”

“Deputy Commandant!” said Garvin disgustedly. “Casting out devils!”

“My interest was purely scientific, sir,” said McPhee stiffly.

“Oh yes. I dare say.”

McPhee’s enthusiasm for traditional Egyptian ceremonies and rituals, the deeper mysteries, as he called them, was well known.

“Did it occur to you,” asked Garvin bitterly, “that your presence there might become known? Would, in fact, certainly become known by just about everyone in Cairo? Blazoned abroad in every newspaper?”

“No, sir,” said McPhee, hanging his head.

“Listen,” said Garvin: “how many British officers are there in the police, all told?”

“Two, sir. Not counting Owen.”

“Just you and me. Controlling a city the size of Cairo. How do we do it?”

“Well, sir,” said McPhee, slightly puzzled, “we can call on our men. Good men, sir, fine chaps…the army…”

“Bluff!” said Garvin emphatically. “We run the country by bluff. If somebody called our bluff we wouldn’t last five minutes. We survive,” said Garvin, “only by means of credibility. Credibility! How much bloody credibility do you think we’ll have left when it gets about that we spend our time casting out devils?”

“It was off duty,” said Owen.

“Thank you, Owen. You’re quite right. I have to speak precisely when there are lawyers, of the barrack-room sort, around. That we spend our
spare
time casting out devils.”

“It won’t happen again,” said McPhee.

“I’m not sure I can afford the chance of it happening again.”

“No, sir,” said McPhee. “I understand, sir.”

“I can’t afford my Deputy Commandant behaving like a bloody fool,” said Garvin. “I can’t even afford him
looking
like a bloody fool.”

“No, sir.”

“I don’t think you’re being entirely fair,” protested Owen. “McPhee has been the victim of an assault. It’s hardly his fault.”

“Well, in a way, you know, I’m afraid it
is
,” said McPhee, honest to a fault. “I shouldn’t have been there.”

“How did you come to be drugged?”

“They gave me a drink.”

“And you drank it?”

“I thought it was hospitality,” muttered McPhee.

Garvin groaned.

“The principal reason for sacking you,” he said, “is that you are so damned stupid.”

“I thought it was part of the ceremony,” said McPhee. “Other people were drinking, too,” he said defiantly.

“They put something in when it got to you,” said Garvin dismissively.

“I would vouch for their honesty,” said McPhee.

“That confirms,” said Garvin, “my view of your judgement.”

“McPhee’s only just got out of sickbay,” said Owen.

McPhee was, in fact, looking distinctly wan. Garvin let Owen lead him away. He took him out to the front of the building and found an arabeah, one of the small, horsedrawn carriages that were common in Cairo. He told one of the orderlies to get in with him and see he got safely home to bed.

When he got back to his office, Nikos said: “Garvin wants to see you.”

“He’s just seen me.”

“He wants to see you again.”

“McPhee’s not well,” he said to Garvin.

“It was a big dose,” said Garvin. “It must have been, for him to be out that long.”

“It could have killed him.”

“Yes,” said Garvin, “and that’s another reason not to regard the incident as closed.”

Owen shrugged.

“Is it sensible to carry it any further? Wouldn’t it be better to leave it alone and hope everyone forgets it?”

“McPhee’s been the victim of an assault,” Garvin pointed out. “You said that yourself.”

“Well…all right, then. Perhaps someone ought to look into it.”

“Fine!” said Garvin. “Tell me how you get on.”

“Hey! You’re not asking me to do it, are you?”

“You surely don’t expect McPhee to investigate himself?”

“It’s not political.”

The Mamur Zapt concerned himself only with the political. He was the equivalent of what back in England would be head of the political branch of the CID. He was, however, also much more. The Mamur Zapt had traditionally—for many centuries, indeed—been the ruler’s righthand man, the chief of his secret police, the means by which he maintained himself in power. If he was so lucky. Caliphs came, Khedives went, but the Mamur Zapt went on forever.

Even when the British had come, thirty years before, the Khedive had insisted on retaining the post. Without it, he felt nervous. The British had agreed, insisting only that they nominate the occupant of the post. That, of course, had slightly changed matters. Formally, the Mamur Zapt, with his control of Cairo’s vast network of informers, spies and underground agents, was still responsible to the Khedive. In actual fact, he was responsible to the Head of the British Administration, the British Consul-General.

If, that is, he was responsible to anybody, which Consul-General, Khedive, Khedive’s Ministers, Opposition Members, Nationalists, British Government, Commander-in-Chief (British) of the army (Egyptian) and Garvin sometimes felt inclined to doubt.

All crime other than political was the responsibility not of the police, under the French-style system of law which operated in Egypt, but of the Department of Prosecutions of the Ministry of Justice, the Parquet, as it was known.

“You’re not suggesting the Parquet handle this?” said Garvin, aghast. “Investigating a British officer? A member of the Administration? Oh dear, no!” He shook his head. “I don’t think we could have that. It would set an undesirable precedent. The C-G wouldn’t like it. The people at home wouldn’t like it. Goodness me, no. They wouldn’t like it at all.”

“We are not investigating McPhee, surely!” Owen protested.

“Well, perhaps not directly,” Garvin admitted. “It’s more the circumstances.”

“I don’t call that political.”

Garvin raised his eyebrows.

“Setting up a member of the British Administration? Not political? If that’s not political,” said Garvin, “what is?”

“No, really, Owen, he’s determined to get rid of me!” said McPhee heatedly. “He’s been out to get me ever since they transferred him from Alexandria. I was in charge when he arrived, just temporarily, of course, and he didn’t like the way I was doing things.”

“Well—”

McPhee held up his hand.

“I know what you’re going to say. Perhaps we weren’t the most efficient of outfits. But is that so bad, Owen, is it really so bad? People knew where they were. They knew what to expect. A way that is traditional, Owen, is a way that is invested with a lot of human experience. You discard it at your peril.”

“True. On the other hand—”

“I know what you are going to say. Not all tradition is good. The courbash, for instance.”

“Well, yes.”

The courbash was the traditional Egyptian whip. One of the first acts of the British Administration had been to abolish flogging.

“Well, of course, I’m not against abolishing the use of the courbash. It was a humane measure carried out for humane motives. But not all reform is like that. Sometimes it’s carried out for piffling, mean little reasons. To improve efficiency, for instance. I ask you, where would we be if everything we did was subjected to that criterion?”

Not here, thought Owen. Neither you nor, probably, I. “It’s so mean-spirited. He looks around at the richness of life and then talks about efficiency!”

“He’s got to run a police force, after all.”

“But why doesn’t he run it in a way people want?”

“What do they want?”

“Humanity,” said McPhee, “not efficiency.”

“I dare say. Look, I don’t think he’s particularly out to get you. In fact, it’s the other way round. He thinks somebody is trying to set you up and he wants to stop them.”

“Who on earth would want to set me up? Garvin apart, that is.”

“You’re a senior figure in the police. Lots of people. People you’ve arrested.”

“They don’t blame me. The common criminal is a decent chap.”

Owen sighed.

“In Cairo, at any rate,” said McPhee defensively. “Anyway, he doesn’t blame me, he blames fate.”

“You don’t think he might personalize fate a little?”

“No one’s out to set me up,” said McPhee firmly. “It’s just another of Garvin’s fantasies.”

“Some things do need explaining, though. How you finished up in the snake pit, for instance.”

“I don’t think that was anything to do with the witch,” said McPhee.

“Witch?”

Oh dear, thought Owen.

“Osman told me,” said McPhee.

“That there was going to be a Zzarr?”

“Yes.”

“And he invited you to it?”

“No, no. Quite the reverse. He didn’t want me to come. In fact, he was most unwilling to talk about it.”

“But he did?”

“I prised it out of him. He had come, you see, to ask me for time off. To prepare for a ceremony, he said. Well, naturally, I asked what sort of ceremony. To do with a female cousin, he said. A circumcision, I asked? At first he said yes, but then it transpired the girl was twenty so I knew he couldn’t be telling the truth. In the end I got him to confess. It was a Zzarr. His sister was suffering from a mild case of possession. At least, that’s what they thought. A Zzarr, I said! My goodness me!” He looked at Owen. “They’re immensely rare, you know. I’ve heard of them before and, indeed, once I nearly came upon one. So when I heard about this one I was tremendously excited and demanded that he tell me where it was being held.”

I’ll have a word with Osman, Owen said to himself.

“It was in one of those houses on the edge of the Gamaliya, a big old house with both an outer courtyard and an inner one.”

“Could you show it me?”

“Well, I suppose I could. But I’d rather not. They placed me on my honour, you see—”

“They also drugged you.”

“Well…I’m not sure they did. Someone did, certainly. But not them. I was there on a basis of trust. Which was mutual.”

“You made a bargain with them?”

McPhee hesitated.

“Well, not initially.” He looked uncomfortable. “There was, I’m afraid, an element of deception. On my part. I told them, you see, that it was a police raid. I pretended to have men with me. I demanded to see what was happening. They said it was out of the question. Very well then, I said, I will have to call my men. There was a bit of humming and ha-ing but eventually they said I could take a look through a window. I did and, my goodness me, Owen, it was fascinating! A ring of women, robes, candles, dancing—”

“And then?” Owen prompted.

“Then all the candles went out. There was a great hubbub and lots of people came jostling me and told me I had to leave. And then the priestess came out—”

“Priestess?”

“Aalima. The witch. Well, I call her a priestess because, really, it was all most religious. It does have a religious basis, you know, Owen, there were religious sheikhs there, not in the Zzarr itself, of course, but in the courtyard outside—”