The Last Cut. Michael Pearce
it was technical. He had long established that all engineers, in the Levant at any rate, were Scottish. It must be something in the blood, he decided; which perhaps accounted for him himself having no technical competence whatsoever. He understood enough about such things, however, to know when someone was being given the technical run-around. As here, he suspected.
After the Minister had left, shell-shocked, Macrae produced a bottle of whisky and three glasses.
‘Do you like it with water or without?’
Owen hesitated.
‘Aye,’ said Macrae, ‘you’re right. It’s a big question. I take it with just a splash, myself. It releases the aromas.’
‘Aye, but that’s in Scotland,’ said Ferguson. ‘Out here, where it’s warmer, they’re released anyway.’
‘You don’t take it with ice, anyway. That’s the main thing,’ said Macrae, pouring a generous dram.
‘In the Club, perhaps. With soda. And a different whisky.’
‘My view entirely,’ said Macrae. He took a careful sip, nodded approval, and put his glass down.
‘Now,’ he said, ‘you’ll have some questions for us, I fancy.’
‘Basic facts, first,’ said Owen.
‘Aye,’ said Macrae. ‘I like facts.’
‘First: time?’
‘A couple of minutes either side of two o’clock. Ahmed phoned me at five past. I was here by twenty past.’
‘Good.’
‘Next, place. You’ll be wanting to know about that. Well,’– he looked at Ferguson for corroboration –‘I’d say bottom right-hand comer of the gates as you look towards the main barrage. About by the culvert.’
‘Aye,’ said Ferguson. ‘We’ll be able to tell you better later.’
‘What was it done with?’ asked Owen.
‘Dynamite, I fancy,’ said Macrae. ‘Where there’s dams, there’s dynamite. Have you checked the store?’ he asked Ferguson.
‘Not yet,’ said Ferguson. ‘I will.’
‘They’ll have come across the Gardens,’ said Owen. ‘I’ll take a look at those in a moment.’
‘You won’t find anything,’ said Ferguson. ‘They’re a labyrinth.’
‘I’ll look, anyway. Now I want to ask you about workmen.’
‘Workmen?’ said Macrae, surprised. ‘Why?’
‘One of them could have done it.’
Macrae and Ferguson both shook their heads.
‘Not one of ours,’ they said in unison.
‘Why not?’
‘Well –’ Macrae sat back and thought. ‘We’ve known them for years,’ he said finally. ‘Some of them worked with me down at Aswan.’
‘Even the ones who come up for the Inundation,’ said Ferguson. ‘We’ve known them for years. Every year, there they are. Really, there are too many of them. I ought to turn some away. They’re needed elsewhere in the system. But we know them and they know us.’
‘Good men,’ said Macrae.
‘What, all of them?’ said Owen.
‘Look,’ said Macrae. ‘I know what they say about Egyptian workmen. But ours are not like that.’
‘All of them?’ said Owen. ‘I’m looking for one, that’s the point.’
‘We’d have got rid of them if they were.’
‘Well, that, too, could be the point.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘I’m asking, not saying. I’m asking why anyone would want to do a thing like this. And the answer I come up with is: because they’ve got a grudge.’
‘Grudge?’ said Ferguson. ‘Who against?’
‘The Department. You.’
‘Not our workmen,’ said Macrae positively. ‘Why would they have a grudge?’
‘Because they fancied they’d been wronged. Let’s have a try. Any injuries lately?’
‘Nothing serious. It’s not construction work. It’s not like Aswan. And when there are injuries we look after them.’
‘But you do have injuries?’
‘Yes, but –’
‘I’d like the names. Next, dismissals.’
‘We don’t have any.’
‘You said yourself that if people weren’t up to the mark you got rid of them.’
‘Yes. But – Look, all that is in the past. We haven’t needed to get rid of anyone for –’
‘Years,’ filled in Ferguson.
‘What about disciplinary problems? Don’t tell me you haven’t had any of those!’
‘If we have, we’ve known how to handle them.’
‘But that’s the point: how they were handled.’
‘Look –’
‘We’ve had words,’ said Ferguson. ‘I don’t deny that. But nothing serious.’
‘Blows?’
‘I don’t believe in blows,’ said Macrae. ‘If you can’t manage without blows, you can’t manage.’
‘Fine!’ said Owen. ‘But let me have the names, will you?’
‘The Department’s got the records,’ said Ferguson.
‘In any case,’ said Macrae, ‘aren’t you barking up the wrong tree? If they had a grudge against us, wouldn’t they want to take it out on us? Not on a dam they depend on for their livelihood. The only people they’d be hurting there would be themselves!’
Out by the damaged regulator the crowds were thinning now and the carts could turn more easily. They were still coming. The long line still stretched across the gardens. It was testimony to the engineers’ capacity for getting things done that they had been able to organize so many loads in such a short space of time.
The loads, inevitably, were an incongruous mixture. There was masonry, rubble, rocks, wood, mattresses – even old chairs and tables. Not so old, as a matter of fact. Some of them were quite new.
‘Mr Macrae said anything would do,’ explained the hot young man marshalling the carts. His pinkness told that he was fresh from England. ‘He said that I could raid the houses if necessary. A lot of them are just standing empty, you know.’
A cart went by piled high with swathes of fine velvet curtaining. On top teetered a beautiful old escritoire.
‘Just a minute –’ said Owen.
‘Where did you get that?’ asked Ferguson.
‘Oh, a sort of villa over there,’ said the young man, pointing along the river bank.
‘But –’ said Ferguson.
‘Anything wrong?’ inquired the pink youth anxiously.
‘That’s the Khedive’s Summer Chalet,’ said Owen.
‘Murderers!’ muttered the gardener wrathfully, struggling to restore a rose-bed.
‘Take heart, man,’ counselled Owen, standing beside him. The people will go, the gardens remain.’
‘But