The Fig Tree Murder. Michael Pearce
you still did not wonder?’
‘We thought he had gone straight to work.’
‘After spending the night with Ja’affar?’
‘Yes.’
‘A strange village, this!’ said Asif caustically. ‘Where the men spend the night with the men!’
The younger man flashed up.
‘Why do you ask these questions?’ he said belligerently.
‘Because I want to know why Ibrahim was killed.’
‘That is our business,’ said the brother. ‘Not yours!’
‘It is the law’s business.’
‘Whose law? The city’s?’
‘There is but one law,’ said Asif sternly, ‘for the city and for the village.’
‘It is the city that speaks,’ retorted the villager.
‘These are backward people!’ fumed Asif, much vexed with himself, as they walked away.
‘The ways of the village are not the ways of the town,’ said Owen.
‘I know, I know! I am from Assiut myself. That is not a village, I know, but compared with Cairo—’
‘You did all right,’ said Owen reassuringly.
‘I should have—’
‘Well, Ja’affar, you work late!’ said Asif.
‘I do!’ said Ja’affar, his face still streaked with sweat.
‘It is not every man who works so long in the fields!’
‘Ah, I’ve not been in the fields. I work at the ostrich farm.’
‘Ostrich farm?’ said Owen.
‘Yes, it’s over by the station. You would have seen it if you’d gone out the other side.’
‘And what do you do at the ostrich farm that keeps you so late?’ asked Asif.
‘I feed the birds. You’d think they could feed themselves, wouldn’t you, only if you don’t give them something late in the afternoon they make such a hell of a noise that the Khedive doesn’t like it.’
‘The Khedive can hear them all the way from Kubba?’
‘So he says.’
Ja’affar removed his skull cap and splashed water over his face. A woman came and took the bowl away.
‘So what is it?’ he said. ‘Ibrahim?’
‘That’s right.’
‘He was a mate of mine. We used to work at the farm together.’
‘The ostrich farm?’
‘Yes. Only then the chance of a job on the railway came along and he took one look at the money and said: “That’s for me!” I warned him. I said: “They don’t give you that for nothing, you know. They’ll make you sweat for it.” And, by God, they did. He used to come back home in the afternoon dead beat. Too tired even to lift a fìnger!’
‘Too tired to go out?’ said Asif. ‘In the evenings?’
Ja’affar was amused.
‘There’s not a lot to go out to in Matariya,’ he said drily.
‘We heard he liked to go out and chat with his friends.’
‘Ah, well—’
‘You, for instance.’
‘He used to occasionally. He’s not done it so much lately. Not since I got married and he—’
He stopped.
‘Found someone more interesting?’
‘Well—’
‘Just tell me her name,’ said Asif.
A man came to the door.
‘Yes, he used to come here,’ he said defiantly. ‘Everyone knows that. And, no, he didn’t come here just to taste the figs from the fig tree. There’s no secret about that, either. What do you expect? A man’s a man, and if his wife—’
‘Did he come here on the night he was killed?’
‘How do I know?’
‘You live here, don’t you?’
‘No, I live on the other side of the mosque.’
He was, it transpired, the woman’s brother, not her husband.
‘She’s lived here alone ever since her husband died.’
Asif asked to speak with her in her brother’s presence. This was normal. It was considered improper to speak to a woman alone. Indeed, it was considered to be on the verge of raciness to speak to a woman at all. Questions to women, during a police investigation, for instance, were normally put through her nearest male relative.
The woman appeared, unveiled. This at once threw Asif into a tizzy. He had probably never seen a woman’s face before, not the face of a woman outside his family. This woman had a broad, not unattractive, sunburned face. Things were less strict in the village than they were in the city and when the women were working in the fields they often left their faces unveiled. Even in the village, Owen had noticed, they did not always bother to veil. Sheikh Isa, no doubt, had his views about that.
She was as defiant as her brother.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘he used to come here. Why not? It suited him and it suited me.’
Asif could hardly bring himself to look her in the face. Although she obviously intended to answer his questions herself, he continued to direct them to her brother, as he would have done in the city.
‘Did he come on the night he was killed?’
‘Yes.’
‘And’ – he wavered – ‘stayed the night?’
‘He never stayed long.’ She laughed. ‘Just long enough!’
‘Jalila!’ muttered her brother reprovingly.
Asif was now all over the place.
‘How – how long?’ he managed to stutter.
‘How long do you think?’ she said, looking at him coolly.
Owen decided to lend a hand.
‘The man is dead,’ he said sternly.
The woman seemed to catch herself.
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘He died after leaving you.’
‘Yes,’ she said quietly.
‘He left you early. Did he say where he was going?’
‘He said he was meeting someone.’
‘Ah! Did he say who?’
‘No. And,’ said the woman, bold again, ‘I did not ask. I knew it wasn’t a woman and that was all I needed to know.’
‘How did you know it wasn’t a woman?’
‘Because it wouldn’t have been any good,’ she said defiantly. ‘Not after what he’d done with me. I always took good care to see there wasn’t much left. For Leila.’
‘Leila?’
‘That so-called wife of his.’
‘Why so-called?’
She was silent.
Then she said vehemently: ‘He should have married me. Right at the start. Then all this wouldn’t