The Fig Tree Murder by Michael Pearce Read Free Book Online Page B

vigilant, hoping somehow to turn this into a bargain.
    The space in front of the Tree was roped off and some men in police tunics and military-style tarbooshes were crouched down examining the ground. Despite the sun, which made the sand so hot that it almost burned the hand, they had bare feet; and although they looked not very different from ordinary city policemen, they were in fact men of the desert. They were the police force’s professional trackers.
    Some of their achievements were legendary. On one occasion some goods had been thrown out of a train in the middle of the desert. Accomplices waiting on camels had taken them to Port Said, over a hundred miles away; where the trackers had found them in the market, identifying them by camel track alone.
    ‘I had thought it might be too late,’ said Mahmoud, ‘and, of course, the ground at the railhead was very disturbed. There had been so many people milling about that first day. But out beyond the disturbed ground they were able to pick up the trail. It was partly the different kinds of sand they found on the body, but then they also found tracks.’
    ‘And it led back to here?’ said Owen.
    ‘Yes. This is where he was killed.’
    One of the trackers looked up and pointed to a patch of ground.
    ‘He fell here?’
    Owen bent down and looked closely. He didn’t really expect to see anything and he wasn’t disappointed. However, he knew the trackers well enough to believe them. On second thoughts, that might be a slight declivity.
    The tracker pointed to one side of it and made smoothing movements with his hand. Yes, you could argue that something had been dragged. He stood up and, beckoning to Owen to follow him, set off across the desert, pointing to the ground.
    To him it was as plain as a pikestaff. To Owen it was the next best thing to invisible; only, from time to time, the tracker bent down and showed him marks which he certainly could see. The difficult thing was pulling the marks together to establish the trail as a whole. This was where, presumably, the different types of sand came in. Here again, to Owen the differences were practically indistinguishable. To the trackers they leaped out a mile.
    The tracker led him across the desert to the railway, where some of the men he and Mahmoud had talked to the previous day were laying the track. New lengths had been added. The tracker disregarded these and took Owen straight to the place where he had first seen the body.
    Owen walked back with him to the Tree.
    ‘It’s a long way to drag someone.’
    The tracker shrugged.
    ‘Perhaps he didn’t have a donkey,’ he said.
    It was a long way. You wouldn’t have done it lightly. It must have been done deliberately, to make, as Mahmoud had suggested, a point.
    But then, it
was
a long way and if it had been done deliberately, premeditated, why had not the attacker thought of the carrying? Here, in the heat, almost every little thing was carried on the back of a donkey. True, the attack had been at night, when it had been cool. All the same, it was a long way.
    He said this to Mahmoud.
    ‘Yes,’ said Mahmoud, ‘I’ve been thinking that too.’
    ‘Why not a donkey?’
    ‘Because there are other donkeys about. It might have called out.’
    ‘We’re some way from the village,’ Owen objected.
    ‘Yes, but there are donkeys about. There’s one over there, for instance, among those trees by the well.’
    Owen nodded, accepting.
    ‘It
had
to be a long way,’ said Mahmoud. ‘The railway track was where he wanted the body to be in the end. But Ibrahim wasn’t going to walk there himself. If he was going to be trapped by a meeting, the meeting would have to be close to the village. Close, but not too close. Here, by the Tree,’ said Mahmoud, looking around him, ‘would be just about right.’
     
    The Copt had been watching the goings-on with interest. Owen walked over to him.
    ‘Are you here all the time, Daniel?’
    ‘Certainly,’ said the Copt.