Seven Dials - Anne Perry [96]
Pitt decided to embroider the truth a little. “Of course not,” he agreed. “A British diplomat, ex-soldier, was murdered. He was stationed here for a while, twelve years ago. They think an Egyptian in London killed him. I’m paid to prove she didn’t.”
“Police!” Musa snarled, moving very slightly, as if he would get up.
“They pay police to prove who is guilty, not who isn’t!” Pitt snapped back at him. “At least they do in London. And no, I’m not police. If I were, don’t you think I’d have got out of here by now?”
“You were senseless when they carried you in,” Avram pointed out. “Who were you going to tell?”
“Isn’t there a guard out there?” Pitt inclined his head towards the door.
Avram shrugged. “Probably, although no one imagines we’re going to break out, more’s the pity.”
Pitt squinted up at the window.
Cyril stood up and went over to it, pulling experimentally at the central bar. He turned around and glared at Pitt, a slight sneer on his lip.
“You need brains to get out of here, not force,” Musa said to him. “Or money?” He raised his eyebrows questioningly.
Pitt fished in his shoe. Would it be worth spending what he had, if he still had it, to make allies? They probably knew nothing about Ayesha or Lovat, but they might help him learn—if there was anything worth learning. And he was beginning to doubt that.
Their eyes never moved from him; they barely blinked.
He pulled out about two hundred piasters—enough to pay for his room at the hotel for eight days.
“That’ll do!” Avram said instantly, and before Pitt could even consider a decision, the money was gone and Avram was banging on the door with his fists.
Musa nodded, his shoulders relaxing. “Good,” he said with satisfaction. “Yes—good.”
“That’s two hundred piasters!” The words were out of Pitt’s mouth before he thought. “I want something in return for it!”
Musa lifted his eyebrows. “Oh? And what would you like, then?”
Pitt’s brain raced. “Someone to help me get some real information about Lieutenant Edwin Lovat when he served here with the British army, twelve years ago. I don’t speak Arabic.”
“So you want fifty piasters of my time?” Musa concluded. “Well, you can’t have that if I’m in jail, now, can you?”
“I want a hundred and fifty piasters’ worth of somebody’s time,” Pitt responded. “Or we all stay here.”
Avram looked thoroughly entertained. “Are you making a bargain?” he asked with interest.
“I don’t know,” Pitt responded. “Am I?”
Avram looked at the window, then at the blind door. He raised his eyebrows in question to the others and said something in Arabic. There was a brief conversation. “Yes,” he said finally to Pitt. “Yes, you are.”
Pitt waited.
“I will take you to the village where the British soldiers spent their time off. I’ll speak to the Egyptians for you.” He held out his hand. “Now let’s get out of here, before they come and do something unpleasant.”
PITT HAD VERY LITTLE IDEA of what was said to the guard, but he saw the money change hands, and half an hour later he was walking on Avram’s heels along an alley back on the edge of the city, and heading east again. As always, the flies and mosquitoes were cruel, but it had become habit to swat at them without thinking. His head still ached from the blow in the bazaar.
Delicate, sweet smells mixed with the general ordure as they passed a cook sitting in the dust, leaning with one shoulder against the wall. He wore a shapeless robe of dun-colored linen and canvas shoes without heels. To one side of him was a flat, open-weave basket with dates, onions and what looked like a carrot and a pomegranate. Behind him was a large earthenware jar with a broken lip, and in front of him a brazier piled on bricks, and another earthenware pot on top of it. It was the mixture in that pot which he stirred carefully, and the steam from it which ensnared the passersby. The man’s skin was as black as the dates, his beard trimmed short and his head so closely shaven as to appear bald. There was a mildness and a symmetry to his features which