The Mamur Zapt and the Spoils of Egypt. Michael Pearce
he levered himself up on to the roof.
He could see now right across the crowd. There was a little space beside the tram where some arabeah drivers and the conductor of the tram were holding back the crowd. The driver had collapsed against the side and was clasping his head in his hands, his face turned away.
The crowd by the tram suddenly eddied—a horse, it looked like, had objected to being hemmed in—and Owen caught another glimpse of the woman.
Something about her seemed familiar.
And the next moment he had slid to the ground and was fighting his way through the crowd towards her.
‘Make way! Make way!’
Someone looked up at him and took it into their head that he was the doctor.
‘Make way for the hakim!’ he shouted. ‘Make way!’
Others took up the shout.
‘The hakim! Make way!’
The crowd obligingly parted and hands tugged him through. He arrived dishevelled beside the tram and looked down. There, lying so close to the tram that she was almost beneath its running-boards, was Miss Skinner.
‘I did not see her!’ said the driver tearfully. ‘I did not see her!’
Somebody had stuffed a jacket under her head and a water-carrier was tenderly, uselessly, splashing water on her face.
There was no blood.
‘Get an ambulance!’ said Owen.
The cry was taken up and passed through the crowd and at its back someone ran off into the café. But the Ataba was totally jammed and the ambulance, like the fire-engine, would be unable to get through.
And then, over the heads of the crowd, something was being passed, and there, scrambling over people’s heads and shoulders, nimble as a monkey, was the Fire Chief.
A stretcher was passed down and, a moment later, the Chief arrived.
He dropped down on his knees beside Miss Skinner.
‘God be praised!’ he said.
‘Be praised?’ said Owen harshly.
‘She is not dead.’
The Chief seized a water-skin from the carrier and squeezed some of the water out on to Miss Skinner’s face.
Her eyes opened. For a moment they remained unfocused. And then the sharp look returned.
‘What is going on?’ demanded Miss Skinner.
‘An accident,’ said Owen. ‘You’ve had an accident. Just stay there for a moment. You’ll be all right.’
Miss Skinner’s eyes closed again. The Fire Chief dexterously wedged the stretcher under her. Cooperative hands hoisted it into the air. It was raised head high so that it could be passed back over the crowd.
As the stretcher lurched upwards Miss Skinner’s eyes opened again.
‘Accident?’ she said sharply. ‘That was no accident! I was pushed!’
‘Look,’ said Miss Skinner, ‘I know a push when I feel one.’
She was sitting in a chair in the hotel lounge. Owen had suggested she remain in bed but Miss Skinner thought that was no place for a lady to receive a gentleman. She had made an appointment with Owen for six o’clock, taken a slightly extended siesta, and now here she was, not quite recovered—there was a nasty bruise on her face—but inclined in no sense to take this lying down.
‘In the crowd,’ murmured Owen, ‘so easy to mistake—’
Miss Skinner made an impatient gesture.
‘A push is a push,’ she said firmly.
‘So many people,’ said Owen, ‘perhaps carrying things. A porter, maybe. A package sticking out.’
‘A hand,’ said Miss Skinner, ‘gave me a deliberate push.’
Owen was silent. An image of the Ataba came into his mind. So many people milling about, jostling each other in the crowd, hurrying to catch a tram. The easiest thing in the world to bump into someone, collide. But a deliberate push?
‘Let me see, Miss Skinner: you were standing precisely where? Near where I saw you, obviously, but, just before you fell, precisely where?’
‘I had been looking at one of the boards—’
‘Ah, so you had your back towards the traffic, then?’
‘—but it was not the one I wanted and I had just turned away. I was looking for the one to the Zoological Gardens and this one, I remember, was for the Citadel. There! That will help you to place it.’
‘Thank you. That is very precise. You had turned away, then—?’
‘—and was about to move on to the next one when it happened.’
‘That, again, is very precise, Miss Skinner. “About to move on.” You had not, then, moved?’
‘A step, perhaps.’
‘Or two. But still very close to the Citadel board. And in the middle of the street.’
‘Along with everybody else,’ said Miss Skinner defensively.
‘Of course. No criticism implied. But you were in the middle of the street and could very easily have been bumped into.’
‘I think I would have noticed if an arabeah had hit me,’ said Miss Skinner tartly. ‘That is, of course, before I was hit by the tram.’
‘I was thinking of a person, Miss Skinner. Perhaps running for a tram.’
Miss Skinner sighed.
‘A collision is not like a push. This was a push. A definite push.’
‘Perhaps as they collided with you they put out a hand—’
‘No one,’ said Miss Skinner, her voice beginning to rise, ‘collided with me or bumped into me. What happened was that someone put a hand out and gave me a deliberate push just as the tram was approaching.’
‘But, Miss Skinner, why would anyone want to do that?’
‘You tell me. You’re the policeman. If, indeed,’ said Miss Skinner, ‘you are a policeman!’
Owen could not see it. An accidental collision, a stumble, a trip, yes. But not a push. Not a deliberate push.
‘A sheep, perhaps?’ he ventured.
‘A sheep?’ said Miss Skinner incredulously.
‘They nudge you,’ Owen explained.
‘Look, Captain Owen,’ said Miss Skinner in rising fury, ‘this was not a nudge, nor a bump, nor a jostle. This was a push. A hand. In the small of my back. Just when a tram was coming. I have been assaulted—criminally assaulted—and I demand that you take action to find out who my assailant was and to see that he is punished. At once!’
The arabeah-drivers, while waiting for custom, liked to gather round a pavement restaurant near where they parked their cabs; round, because what the restaurants consisted of was a large circular tray with little pegs round the edge on which the customers stuck their bread. In the middle were lots of little blue-and-white china bowls filled with various kinds of sauces and pickles and a few large platters on which lay unpromising pieces of meat.
The customers squatted round in the dust. They did not consist entirely of arabeah-drivers. The restaurant served as a social centre for that part of the Ataba and people dropped in and out all day, drawn by the smell of fried onions and the constant Arab need for sociability.
It