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First published in 1989 by Collins

Copyright © Michael Pearce 1989

Michael Pearce asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination

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Source ISBN: 9780008259457

Ebook Edition © SEPTEMBER 2017 ISBN: 9780007485024

Version: 2017-09-05

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

Keep Reading

About the Author

Also by Michael Pearce

About the Publisher

Praise

‘Keeps up the high standard set by his first… Elegantly and wittily narrated, with a good plot, colourful characters and an encyclopaedic knowledge of the Egypt of Cromer’s time.’

The Times Literary Supplement

Pearce is a natural novelist, masterly at evoking the jostling crowds, aromas and political religious cross-currents of Cairo under British rule… A vanished world comes alive in Pearce’s deft, humorous, elegant prose.’

Sunday Times

CHAPTER 1

The Mamur Zapt would have treated it all as a joke if Nikos, his Official Clerk, had not been so insistent.

‘Get out there quick,’ he had said.

He had even volunteered to guide Owen to the Coptic Place of the Dead. Since Nikos was normally reluctant to take a single step outside his office, Owen had been impressed. Even so, if Georgiades had been around he might have sent him. Georgiades, however, was out on an errand of his own, or possibly still in bed. In any case, Nikos made it clear that he would not have approved.

‘This is something for the Mamur Zapt,’ he said.

The Mamur Zapt was the Head of Cairo’s Political CID. Responsible in theory directly to Egypt’s ruler, the Khedive, he answered in practice only to the British Consul-General, the man who, since Britain had charge of Egypt’s purse strings, effectively controlled Egypt. The Consul-General, however, had taken pains not to define the Mamur Zapt’s role too closely, observing that the less he knew of the Mamur Zapt’s activities the more effective he was likely to be.

There were certain ground rules, however, and one of them was that the Mamur Zapt did not concern himself with routine police matters. Which he considered this to be.

‘Police?’ said Nikos, as if he could hardly believe his ears. ‘What good would they be?’

Owen had to admit there was something in this. The Cairo police force was recruited from country districts and consisted for the most part therefore of simple fellahin, or peasants, illiterate, underpaid and, when they got to the city, usually quite lost. Their duties tended to be restricted largely to the regulation of traffic, which, since the latter consisted chiefly of donkeys and camels, was in Nikos’s view entirely appropriate. All real criminal investigation was left to the Parquet, the French-style Department of Prosecutions of the Ministry of Justice.

‘The Parquet, then?’ suggested Owen hopefully.

‘The Mamur Zapt,’ said Nikos definitely, and put on his tarboosh and walked out of the door.

Owen put on his tarboosh, too. Although he was still, strictly speaking, an army officer and merely on secondment, he considered himself now to be a civilian and preferred to dress in mufti. A tarboosh, the pot-like hat with a tassel which was the normal headgear of the educated Egyptian, was far less conspicuous than a sun helmet, especially of the heavy military sort. It was also cooler.

Not that that mattered too much this early in the morning. Later, when the sun was high in the sky and the temperature rose into the nineties, every little thing counted. Even the nature of your hat. At the moment, though, with the sun not long up over the horizon, the day was still pleasantly fresh and cool.

Owen borrowed a couple of constables from the orderly room at the front of the building and set out after Nikos.

They went on foot since their way lay through the mediaeval city, where the streets were too narrow and congested for a carriage to pass. This early in the morning the streets were not, in fact, very crowded. Almost the only people they saw were the black-gowned women drawing water for the day from the street pumps, but by the time they reached the Coptic Place of the Dead there were a lot more people around, and when Owen looked behind-him he found that Nikos was not the only guide. From somewhere or other they had acquired a sizeable following of small boys and old men and others who might have been on their way to work if something more interesting had not come along.

Without assistance, although not necessarily on such a scale, Owen would never have found the House of Andrus, for it was set back from the ordinary thoroughfares of the necropolis and masked on all sides but one by huge family tombs. Once it came in sight, however, there was no mistaking it. A large crowd, mostly in the traditional dark gowns and dark turbans of the Copts, had already gathered around its front entrance. As Owen approached, the crowd parted and a man came up to him.

‘This is an outrage!’ the man said.

‘An unfortunate incident, certainly,’ said Owen smoothly. Nikos had been able to brief him on the way.

‘More than that,’ said the Copt, ‘much, much more than that.’

‘Don’t let your distress—’

‘They are trying to provoke us,’ the man cut in.

‘They? Who?’

As soon as he had spoken, he could have cursed himself. For he knew what the answer would be.

‘The Moslems,’ said the man. ‘The Moslems. They are behind this.’

‘Nonsense!’

It was important to stifle such ideas at birth. Cairo was an excitable city.

‘Who else would have done it?’

‘Children. Boys.’

‘Children!’

‘Yes. For a joke.’

‘You call this a joke?’

‘No. I say only that it is the sort of thing children would do as a joke.’

‘We know who did it,’ said someone in the crowd, ‘and it wasn’t children.’

‘Nor was it a joke,’ said the man who had spoken first. ‘It was done to provoke us.’

‘So you say.’

‘So I know,’ the man retorted.

‘How do you know?’

‘This is not a thing in itself. It is part of a pattern.’

‘There have been other things?’

‘Yes.’

‘What things?’

‘Attacks on Copts in the streets. Women jostled on their way to church. Our priests spat on, children stoned.’

‘These are all bad things,’ said Owen, ‘but that is not enough to make a pattern.’

‘What more do you want?’ asked the man. ‘Someone killed?’

‘In a pattern,’ said Owen, ‘there is design.’

‘There is design here. Do you think these things happen by chance?’

‘Women have always been jostled. Boys have always thrown stones.’

‘But not like this,’ said the man. ‘Our women dare not go out. We keep our children at home.’

‘There have been many such incidents?’

‘Every day and increasingly.’

‘In one part of the city or in all?’

‘At the moment,’ said the man, ‘in one part of the city only.’

‘And that is?’

‘We are from the Mar Girgis,’ said the man. The Church of St George, in the old part of the city, Owen thought. He had walked past it on his way to the cemetery.

‘It is around there, is it?’

‘Yes.’

He became aware that the man was watching him closely.

‘If you do not do something about it,’ the man said, ‘we shall.’

The crowd went quiet. Owen suddenly noticed how much it had grown. It must be over two hundred. And with that realization came another. Not all of them were Copts.

‘We have endured too much too long,’ the man said. ‘It is time to make an end of it.’

‘That is not for you,’ said Owen coldly. ‘It is for the Mamur Zapt.’

This was ridiculous. To flare up over a thing as trivial as this! But he knew that was how things did catch fire in Cairo, and also that once started the fires were hard to put out.

‘I will do something about it,’ he said.

‘Do so!’ said the man. ‘And do it quickly. For we will not wait.’

The Mamur Zapt did not reckon to take this kind of talk from anyone, and he looked round for the police. But there were only two of them, huddled uneasily behind him. For the moment he could do nothing.

But he would have to do something. He couldn’t leave the crowd like this. For the moment, the man seemed to have them in hand, but he could as easily incite as restrain. And if he did so, what would become of the Moslems present? There were only a few of them compared to the Copts. And what the hell were they doing here, anyway? You’d think they’d have enough sense to get out, fast.

He knew what they were doing. Watching the drama, like all Cairenes.

The thing to do was get this out of the public forum, get the drama off the streets.

He turned to the man who appeared to be the leader.

‘There is no reason why you should wait,’ he said to him. ‘I am ready to hear what you have to say. Only not here. Can we go into the house?’

‘Of course!’ said the man.

He stepped aside and made a gesture of invitation.

‘It is the house of Andrus,’ said Owen. ‘Where is Andrus?’

‘I am Andrus,’ the man said.

The crowd opened and they walked through.

As he pushed past, someone in the crowd cried out. Owen looked up quickly but it was only an idiot, and he was a Copt, anyway. His head sagged to one side and his lips drooled. He called out again and this time Owen heard what he said.

‘A death for a death!’

Owen turned in a flash, caught hold of him and threw him to one of the constables.

‘Take him away, for Christ’s sake,’ he said.

The constable’s hands closed round the idiot as round a rabbit. As the boy was borne away he cried out once more: ‘A death for a death!’

‘The boy is crazed,’ Owen said to those round about him. ‘To talk of such things when the only death in the affair is that of a dog!’

‘So far,’ said Andrus.

Owen had hoped to disperse the crowd by going inside, but it didn’t work. They followed him into the house. Cairenes had no sense of privacy, and they all wanted to know what was going to happen next. Owen was used to the publicness of Egyptian life and didn’t really mind, especially now that the tension seemed to have eased, though he would have preferred fewer bodies in the room.

The room occupied the whole ground floor of the house. It wasn’t a proper house but one used exclusively for visiting the dead. Coptic religious practice required attendance at the cemetery on specified nights of the year to remember and honour the dead, and many of the wealthier Copts kept ‘houses’ in the cemetery just for that purpose. Like most such houses, this one consisted of two storeys, although the ground-floor room, a large room rather like a council chamber, was carried through in the middle of the house into the floor above. At this point a heavily ornamented balustrade ran round it creating a narrow promenade from which arches gave on to the apartments beyond. The upper floor was reserved for the women. As Owen made his way across the ground-floor room he was conscious of veiled, dark-gowned figures peeping down at him discreetly from behind the arches. The lower room had, as was common in well-to-do Egyptian houses, a sunken floor, at one end of which was a raised dais with leather cushions. This was where Owen was taken.

As he sat down, people pressed round him. A turbanned head craned intimately over his left shoulder, and as he slightly adjusted his position he found himself rubbing bristly cheeks with another head which was inserting itself on his right-hand side. The lower room was now so packed that people had opened the shutters in order to lean through the windows. All were entirely engrossed.

Andrus had sat down on the cushion opposite him. He was a thin, severe man in his late fifties with a gaunt face and prominent eye-sockets. His eyes looked very tired, which was not surprising if, as Owen supposed, he had spent the whole night at his prayers.

‘Well, Andrus,’ he said, ‘let us begin. And let us begin with what happened last night. Speak to me as one who knows nothing.’

‘Very well.’

Andrus paused to glance round the ring of onlookers, as if to make sure they were all attending.

‘We came here to pass the night of the Eed el-Gheetas,’ he said, ‘as we usually do. You are aware of our custom, Captain Owen?’

Owen registered, as he was intended to, the correct use of his name and rank.

‘We come here on feast days and also on some other occasions to honour our dead. I was especially anxious to come on this occasion as it is the anniversary of my father’s death. He died four years ago. We spend the night in the house—’

‘Not in the tomb?’

‘Not in the tomb, no. We go there in the morning. First we have to prepare ourselves. We do that by keeping vigil.’

‘All through the night?’

‘All through the night. We start at dusk.’

‘Did you go straight to the house? When you arrived, I mean? Or did you visit the tomb?’

‘The others went to the house.’ There was a touch of disapproval in the words. ‘I went to the tomb.’

‘And you saw nothing untoward?’

‘Not at the tomb, no.’

‘Or anywhere else?’

‘There are always Moslems about in the necropolis nowadays,’ said Andrus coldly.

‘But they weren’t doing anything untoward?’

‘No,’ said Andrus, with the air of one making a concession.

‘How long did you stay at the tomb?’

‘Not long. I paid my respects and then went on to the house.’

‘Where you stayed all night?’

‘Yes.’

‘And again you saw and heard nothing untoward?’

‘We were praying,’ said Andrus tartly.

‘Of course. But you might have—’

‘We did not.’

Ordinarily, Owen would have probed but there was an impatient finality about the words. He moved Andrus on.

‘Then in the morning—?’

‘We went to the tomb.’

‘Where you found—?’

Andrus made a gesture of disgust as if he could hardly bring himself to speak of it.

‘Where you found—?’ Owen prompted again.

‘A dog!’ Andrus spat out. ‘At the very door of my father’s tomb!’

He glared round dramatically. Totally involved, the crowd gave a sympathetic gasp.

‘I feel for you,’ said Owen tactfully. ‘I feel for you. But …’ He hesitated and chose his words with care. ‘Is there not a possibility—I ask only to make sure—that the dog came there by accident?’

‘Accident?’ said Andrus incredulously.

‘There are lots of dogs in the cemetery,’ said Owen, ‘and some of them are old and sick. Might not one of them, knowing that its time to die had come—’

‘Have dragged itself across the graveyard until by chance it arrived at my father’s tomb?’

‘Yes.’

‘—and then, with its last breath, climbed up a flight of six steep steps and forced open the heavy door that was barred against it? Pah.’

Andrus made a gesture of derision. The crowd laughed scornfully.

‘First, it was a joke. Now it is a fairy tale.’

Owen went patiently on.

‘The door was barred?’

‘Yes.’

‘Not locked?’

‘I unlocked it the night before when I came first to the tomb.’

‘But left it barred? Are you sure?’

‘Surer of that,’ said Andrus, with a sidelong glance at the crowd, ‘than that the dog lifted the bar itself.’

The crowd laughed with him.

‘The point is important,’ Owen insisted. ‘If the door were open, the dog could have come there itself.’

‘It was brought,’ said Andrus, ‘by other dogs. Moslem ones.’

‘Where did you find the dog? Inside the tomb?’

‘In the doorway. Half inside, half out.’

‘And dead?’

‘Quite dead,’ said Andrus.

‘You say it was Moslems.’

‘I know it was Moslems.’

‘Did anyone see them?’

Andrus hesitated. ‘No one has said so.’

‘I will ask. And I will ask more widely. It may be that someone saw them bring the dog into the cemetery.’

‘There are dogs in the cemetery enough.’

Owen shrugged. ‘I will check, anyway. I will also ask those in your house.’

‘I speak for them.’

‘It may be that one of them heard something or saw something that you did not.’

Now it was Andrus who shrugged his shoulders.

‘It may be that no one saw anything or heard anything. They came like thieves in the night.’

‘It is important, however, to check. Then we might establish whether it was indeed Moslems.’

‘Who else could it have been?’

‘Copts. Have you any enemies?’

‘Only Moslems,’ said Andrus.

He seemed stuck on this. Owen could not tell whether it was some personal bitterness or whether it was the general bitterness which he knew Copts felt for Moslems. If it was the latter, he was surprised at its intensity. If that was widely shared, then it was worrying. There was the possibility of a major explosion. And any little spark could set it going.

Even the death of a dog.

He understood now why Nikos had been so insistent that he come.

‘And what the hell were you doing while all this was going on?’ asked Georgiades.

‘I am in the office,’ Nikos said with dignity. ‘I leave the other stuff to you.’

He paused impressively, looked through the sheaf of papers he was holding in his hand, pulled one out and laid it on the desk in front of Owen.

‘All I can find out about Andrus,’ he said.

Owen glanced at it, but then looked back at Nikos.

‘Tell me,’ he said. It would be sensible for Georgiades to hear.

‘A zealot,’ said Nikos.

‘Extremist?’

‘Not in your sense, no,’ said Nikos coldly. He was himself a Copt. ‘Just very religious. You would consider excessively so.’

Nikos liked to get things exactly right.

‘But not politically active?’

‘No known Nationalist connections, if that’s what you’re asking.’

‘I wasn’t. Not specifically. I was wondering if he was active in politics generally?’

‘How can a Copt be active in politics generally?’

The Copts, although the direct descendants of the Egyptians of the pharaohs, were now in a minority in Egypt. They numbered less than a million. There were over eight million Moslems. Since before the days of the Mamelukes Egypt had been a Moslem country. Successive Sultans, and the generals who had governed Egypt for them, had not even thought of sharing their rule with the Copts, nor had more recent Khedives seen any reason to depart from that tradition. Even the new Western-style political parties which were springing up had restricted Coptic participation.

‘You know what I mean,’ said Owen. ‘Behind the scenes.’

But although Copts had been effectively excluded from direct participation in government they participated indirectly in very considerable measure. They were prominent in the civil service. Indeed, you could almost say that the civil service was run by them. Even in what was called in other countries parliamentary politics they were not without influence. They were energetic and skilful lobbyists. One thing they were not, thought Owen, was inactive in politics.

‘I know what you mean.’ Nikos caved in, having made his point. ‘No, he is not. He confines his public activities to church work, of which he does a lot.’

‘The Mar Girgis?’

‘Yes. That’s right.’

‘What sort of church is it?’

‘Fundamentalist. Conservative. Ascetic.’

‘That figures.’

‘Yes,’ said Nikos, ‘he’s like that, too.’

‘Anything else?’

‘A prominent figure in the local Coptic community. Name any committee and he’s on it. Any list of subscriptions and he’s at the top.’

‘Where does he get the money?’

‘He’s a businessman. Soft fruit, raisins, grapes, that sort of thing. He imports them and exports them. His main place of business is really Alexandria, though he prefers to live in Cairo himself, which is where his family have always lived and where his father built up the family business.’

‘His father is dead?’

‘Yes. He’d been in ailing health for some years. He suffered badly in one of the massacres.’

‘Massacres?’

‘Of the Copts. By the Moslems.’

‘I see.’

‘Yes,’ said Nikos, ‘I thought you would.’

*

Among the papers which Nikos had brought in were the Office Accounts. These made gloomy reading. They were still some weeks from the end of the financial year and already Owen was almost spent up. He decided he would have to see Garvin about it. Garvin was the Commandant of the Cairo Police and although not formally Owen’s superior was the man he in practice reported to. Garvin had very good links with the Consul-General.

He was also the person in whose budget, for administrative convenience, Owen’s accounts were included, so any application for an increase would have to be cleared with him.

Owen was not expecting any difficulty. The Mamur Zapt’s budget was relatively small and the work important. Since Cromer’s time, however, the Ministry of Finance had been sticklers for financial probity and formal permission would definitely have to be obtained. The British Consul-General had been brought in specifically to clear up the Egyptian financial mess and by the time he had left, two years ago, the Government’s accounts had been transformed. Some were saying, the new English Liberal MPs among them, that Britain’s work in Egypt was now completed and that there was no excuse for them staying further. It had, after all, been thirty years.

Before going to Garvin, however, Owen was anxious to check the accounts. A previous Mamur Zapt had been dismissed for corruption not so long previously that Owen could afford to ignore criticism. He was deep in calculations when the phone rang.

It was one of the Consul-General’s aides, a personal friend of his.

‘Hello,’ said Paul, ‘I was trying to get you earlier but you were out. I need some help.’

‘Yes?’

‘Visitors. Important ones. Ones who need special handling.’

‘So?’

‘I at once thought of you.’

‘No,’ said Owen. ‘Definitely not. Much too busy. Quite out of the question. No.’

‘It is not I alone who thinks so. The Consul-General thinks so too.’

‘You put the idea in his head.’

‘We reviewed the possibilities together. I may have suggested there was a need for some dexterity. Political dexterity.’

‘You rotten sod.’

‘I have your interests at heart. Also my own. We don’t want this to go wrong.’

‘I’m sorry. I’ve got more important things to do.’

‘You haven’t. This has priority. So says the Consul-General.’

‘Bloody hell! I’ve got a lot on just now.’

‘Then put a lot off.’

‘Who the hell are these visitors?’

‘You only need to bother about one of them. Well, let’s say one and a half. He has a niece with him. He, John Postlethwaite, is one of the new intake of liberal MPs and has chosen to make a speciality of Egypt. This is because none of the other committees would have him. Retrenchment, Reform and Bolton’s backyard is all he really knows about. Oh, and accounts. He took Cromer to task over his and made something of a name for himself. That’s what gave him the idea. Of specializing in Egypt, I mean. He wants to come out and see things at first hand. The accounts, that is.’

‘McPhee sounds just the man for this,’ said Owen, selling the Assistant Commandant down the river without a qualm.

‘McPhee? Not in a million years. This is out of his class. This is a delicate exercise, boyo, and not for the McPhees of this world. Haven’t you been listening? We need someone with some political sense. This is important, I keep telling you. There’s a lot at stake. My job for a start. Yours, too, probably. It’s not trivial stuff like The End of Empire, Egypt’s Manifest Destiny, or England’s Moral Mission to Confuse the World (Christ! Did I say that? I’m going to have to watch my step for the next two months.)’

‘Two months? For Christ’s sake, I can’t spend that amount of time.’

‘You can do other things as well,’ said Paul magnanimously.

‘I’m afraid so,’ said Garvin.

‘But it’s going to take up hours,’ Owen complained. ‘Just when I’m especially busy.’

‘What are you busy on?’

Owen told him about the dog. Garvin, knowledgeable in the ways of Egypt, took it seriously.

‘Christ!’ he said. ‘If you don’t sort that out quickly they’ll be at each other’s throats.’

‘So I can concentrate on that and get someone else to look after Postlethwaite?’

‘You can concentrate on that and still look after Postlethwaite. Don’t spend too much time on him, that’s all.’

As Owen went out, Garvin said: ‘You’d better get it sorted out by the 25th.’

‘Why?’

‘That’s the Coptic Easter Monday. It’s also the day when the Moslems have a Moulid for some local saint or other. I think they do it just to be awkward. The problem is to keep the processions apart, because of course if they run into each other there’s all kinds of trouble, especially if things are a bit tense between them anyway. But that’s not till the 25th. You’ll have it all sorted out by then. I hope.’

CHAPTER 2

In deference to the susceptibilities of Moslem guests, the reception took the form of an English tea. The setting was appropriate. Once guests had been received and presented to the Consul-General’s wife, they passed out on to the beautiful Residency lawns. There, among the herbaceous borders, the great coloured splashes of bignonia, bougainvillaea and clerodendrons, the rose gardens and the citrus grove, they were served with tiny cucumber sandwiches and cups of tea by immaculate white-turbanned waiters. No alcohol was served, and the red-faced, heavy-jowled senior Army officers had to grit their teeth and wait for the hour of their release.

The arrangement suited the Member of Parliament for Warrington since he was a Nonconformist, a teetotaller and a Liberal, all three of which characteristics he assumed, correctly, to be rare in Army officers, especially in Egypt, which he seemed to confuse with the land of Sodom and Gomorrah. He kept a stern eye open for evidence of possible depravity in any young officer who approached his niece and Owen was glad that he had decided to appear at the reception in mufti.

It also helped that Owen was Welsh. Wales was, of course, a stronghold of Liberalism and Nonconformity and, slightly uneasy among all this exoticism, John Postlethwaite fell back on the things he was familiar with, which included, he thought, Owen.

‘I’ll want to see everything, mind,’ he warned Owen. ‘No pulling the wool over my eyes.’

‘I’ll want to see everything, too, Captain Owen,’ his niece said, ‘although, of course, they may not be the same things.’

‘The Accounts,’ said John Postlethwaite.

‘Egypt,’ said his niece.

So far, Owen had not been able to make out Miss Postlethwaite. For one thing, he couldn’t see her, since she had disappeared almost entirely under a huge sunbonnet. She had none of the racy, quasi-emancipated slang of the other girls and he might have taken her altogether for a shrinking Nonconformist violet had he not once caught a very sharp eye appraising him carefully from under the bonnet.

‘We might even be able to make a start on the Accounts now,’ he said, and led them over to an Egyptian he knew slightly who worked in the Ministry of Finance. The Egyptian took in the politics of the situation in a flash and moved smoothly into diplomatic conversation with the MP. Within seconds both were deep in technical matters.

‘That’s the Accounts taken care of,’ said Jane Postlethwaite. ‘What about me?’

‘What would you like to see?’

‘Cairo,’ said Jane. ‘You can start this evening.’

Mr Postlethwaite looked up uneasily.

‘We already have an engagement for this evening, my dear,’ he protested.

‘That is not an engagement,’ said Jane. ‘It is merely something laid on by the hotel.’

‘Nevertheless—’

‘You can go to that, Uncle John. I shall be quite safe with Captain Owen.’

Both uncle and niece were captured shortly afterwards by the Consul-General’s wife and Owen was left alone for a moment with the Egyptian.

‘What are you busy with just now?’ asked Ramses Bey, who knew what Owen’s work was.

‘Copts and Moslems.’

‘As usual,’ said Ramses, who was himself a Copt.

‘Is it as usual?’ asked Owen.

Ramses gave him a sideways glance.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘that’s an interesting question.’

‘I was hoping you were going to tell me if there was anything that might be making it unusual.’

‘I don’t think I shall be telling you anything,’ said Ramses.

He stretched out a hand for a passing cucumber sandwich. The waiter lifted the tray towards him. Between them a sandwich fell to the ground. Before either could move, a dark shape darted between them, scooped up the sandwich and flew off to the far end of the garden where McPhee, the Assistant Commandant, was locked in conversation with a rather intense Egyptian.

‘These damned hawks,’ said Ramses. He caught sight of McPhee.

‘Shall we rescue your colleague?’ he suggested. ‘He looks as if he might need it.’

McPhee glanced up with relief as they approached.

‘Just the man!’ he said to Owen. ‘Sesostris Bey feels that not enough is being done to protect the Coptic community. Have you met? Captain Cadwallader—’

Owen winced. He tried to keep his middle name hidden under a bushel.

‘—Owen,’ McPhee concluded with relish. He had a soft spot for legendary Celtic names, however dubious the descendency. ‘The Mamur Zapt.’

‘The Mamur Zapt?’ Sesostris looked at Owen sharply. ‘Yes, indeed.’

Both Copts were small, spare men and both wore modern European suits; but whereas Ramses dressed with elegance and even a touch of dash, Sesostris wore his with severe Coptic sobriety.

‘Why do you feel that not enough is being done to protect the Coptic community?’ asked Owen.

There was no hesitation about Sesostris. He plunged at once into a catalogue of grievances, wrongs which the Moslems had allegedly committed against the Copts. Most of them were trivial. A shop had been broken into here, stones thrown there. People had been jostled in the market or spat on on their way to church. A few incidents were more serious. Solitary individuals had been set upon by gangs of Moslem youths and beaten up. A prayer meeting had been disrupted. Owen made a mental note to check up on these. The list culminated, as he had half-expected it would, with the business about the dog.

‘Ah! The dog! Yes,’ he murmured. Over Sesostris’s shoulder he saw Ramses cock a quizzical eye.

‘It is no light matter,’ said Sesostris sharply. ‘We will not allow our dead to be insulted.’

‘There may have been no insult,’ said Owen.

‘Ah yes,’ said Sesostris. ‘I have heard of your theory.’

‘I have no theory yet. I am merely checking possibilities.’

‘Do not check too long,’ said Sesostris.

Ramses placed a restraining hand on Sesostris’s sleeve.

‘Surely Captain Owen is right to check,’ he protested. ‘There has been far too much precipitate action between Copt and Moslem.’

‘You would naturally think so.’

‘Why would Ramses Bey naturally think so?’ asked Owen.

‘Because he has taken sides.’

‘I work for the Government, if that’s what you mean.’

‘Copts have always worked for the Government,’ said Owen. ‘With their industry and talent it is a natural thing to do.’

‘Whoever governs Egypt, we do,’ said Ramses.

‘No, you don’t!’ said Sesostris, turning on him. ‘You merely think you do. It is our big mistake. By working with the Government we support it. We should work against it.’

‘Should you?’ asked Owen.

‘Yes,’ said Sesostris fiercely. ‘I know what you think, Captain Owen. You want what the British want. Power, and a quiet life. It is what every conqueror of Egypt has wanted. For two thousand years we Copts have worked with every Government. And for two thousand years every Government has been that of an invader. Perhaps it is time we changed our tactics.’

‘Enjoy what you have,’ said Owen, ‘or you might lose it.’

Sesostris smiled wintrily.

‘Threaten the Moslems, Captain Owen, not me. Or your life may not be quiet.’

He walked off.

McPhee spluttered indignantly.

‘Nasty fellow,’ he said. Then he caught Ramses’s eye, went red in the face and began to apologize profusely.

Ramses laughed and patted McPhee’s arm.

‘Don’t worry,’ he said ‘You’re not the only one who finds him difficult.’

The three of them walked back slowly to the centre of the lawn where the majority of the guests had congregated. A little knot had gathered around the Consul-General. Most of them were ministers. One of them, recently appointed in a reshuffle by the Khedive, and known to Owen, greeted him as he came up. Owen returned the greeting.

‘And how is your son getting on, Nuri Pasha?’ he asked.

The son was in France; for the benefit of his health.

Nuri Pasha raised eyes heavenwards. ‘At least he’s a long way away,’ he said.

‘And how is my daughter, Captain Owen?’ he asked in return.

Jane Postlethwaite, standing nearby, turned her face slightly under her sunbonnet.

‘Quite well, thank you, sir,’ Owen replied. ‘I rather expected she would be here.’

He scanned the crowd but Zeinab was nowhere to be seen.

‘She has a mind of her own,’ said Nuri. ‘Fortunately.’

He was pulled back into the inner circle.

‘He might not be here for long,’ said Ramses. ‘The word is that another reshuffle is on the cards.’

A man detached himself from the circle and made his way familiarly into the Residency.

‘That could be the man to watch,’ said Ramses. ‘He has done very well in our Ministry. The Consul-General likes him.’

‘Who is he?’

‘Patros Bey.’

A Copt.

McPhee had told Owen that there was a gathering of the Zikr that night so he thought he would take Miss Postlethwaite to it to show her some local colour.

‘The Zikr are a sort of sect, Miss Postlethwaite,’ he explained. ‘Moslem, of course. The name refers to their practice of repeating the name of God, Allah, innumerable times.’

‘It sounds very interesting,’ said Miss Postlethwaite doubtfully.

Owen laughed.

‘That’s not all there is to it. They whirl and dance and eat fire and that sort of thing. Sometimes they stick knives in themselves. In fact, they used to carry things to such an extreme that a few years ago the Government was obliged to step in and ban the most excessive practices.’

‘Did they accept the ban?’

‘More or less. You see, it was done with the support of their Grand Mufti—the religious leader so far as ecclesiastical law is concerned—who thought that the whole thing had become too self-indulgent.’

‘Sticking knives in themselves is self-indulgent?’

‘In theological terms, yes, apparently.’

Miss Postlethwaite was silent for some time. Then she asked: ‘Are you a theologian, Captain Owen?’

‘I will introduce you to my colleague, Mr McPhee, the Assistant Commandant of the Cairo Police, who has a great interest in local theology and religious customs. However,’ said Owen, who did not feel that this line was particularly promising, ‘there will also be snake-charmers, acrobats, jugglers, that sort of thing, which I hope you will find equally interesting.’

Well before they reached the place where the Zikr were assembled they heard the sound of drumming and tambourines and as they came into the square they saw that the Zikr had already begun their chanting. There were about thirty of them, sitting cross-legged upon matting in the centre of the square, forming a kind of oblong ring. In the middle of the ring were three very large wax candles, each about four feet high and stuck in a low candlestick. In their light the Zikr could be seen clearly, staring at the flames, swinging their heads and bodies in time to the music, and chanting repeatedly ‘La illah illa Allah—there is no god but God.’

As these were still in the nature of ‘warming up’ exercises, the crowd took no great interest, concentrating instead on the ancillary services inseparable from any public occasion in Cairo. They clustered round the tea stalls, coffee stalls, sherbet stalls and sweetmeat stalls and sampled the chestnuts from the braziers at the foot of the trees. They watched with only an apparent lack of interest the tumblers, jugglers, snake-charmers, baboon-walkers, flute-players and story-tellers competing to entertain them. And they were lured in surprising numbers to the dark edges of the square, where veiled women from the villages read their fortune in the sand.

Owen took to all this like a Cairene; not so much the goods or turns in themselves as the pretext they provided for backchat and bonhomie. He had long ago come to the conclusion that the chief business of the Egyptian was conversation and that Egyptian institutions should be judged by the contribution they made to that. By that criterion the stall-holders, street-vendors and performers rated high. Round every stall was a knot of people all arguing vigorously. Owen would have liked to have joined in and normally would have done so. However, he felt slightly constrained by Miss Postlethwaite’s presence. He wondered, indeed, as he piloted her round the various turns in the open parts of the square, whether she was enjoying herself.

Once, she gave a little jump. This was when a baboon belonging to one of the street-performers put its hand in hers. Owen gave it the necessary milliemes and it released her hand and scuttled back to its owner.

‘Don’t be alarmed, Miss Postlethwaite,’ he said reassuringly. ‘They’re quite harmless. They look rather unpleasant, I know, especially when they’re exploited like this. But they’re the very same creatures as appear in the paintings in the Tombs.’

It sounded horribly like the patter of the dragomans as they showed tourists round the Pyramids.

‘Really?’ said Miss Postlethwaite; slightly distantly.

She revived a little when they left the turns behind them and began to thread their way through the stalls. As always with a Cairo crowd, there was immense ethnic variety, and her interest seemed genuine as Owen pointed out the different types: the Nubians from the south, with their darker skins and scarred cheeks; the Arish from the Eastern Desert, the hawk-faced men with silver-corded headcloths and striped burnooses, their women unveiled but with their feet covered, as opposed to the ordinary Cairo women who exposed their legs but kept their faces concealed. He drew her attention to the dark turbans of the Copts. Was it his imagination or were there rather a lot of them? This was, after all, a Moslem occasion. He was beginning to think he had Copts on the brain when he heard one or two of the sweetmeat-sellers calling out, ‘A grain of salt in the eye of him who does not bless the Prophet,’ the traditional cry for warding off bad luck, and knew he was not mistaken.

He bought Miss Postlethwaite a sherbet at one of the stalls and asked the stall-keeper why there were so many Copts around.

‘Didn’t you know?’ the man said. ‘This is the Moulid of Sheikh Darwish El-‘Ashmawi. All the expenses are paid by a Copt who became a Moslem.’ He grinned. ‘They don’t like to see their money go so they come and eat it up.’

‘To your great benefit, no doubt.’

The man mopped up a spill on the counter.

‘I wish the benefit was greater,’ he said.

‘What is a Moulid?’ Jane Postlethwaite asked.

‘It’s a sort of feast-day for the local saint. In Egypt there are lots and lots of saints. Every village has one. Most have several. There are feast-days all the time. Everyone has a lot of fun.’

‘Saints,’ said Jane Postlethwaite, ‘and baboons!’

A change in the tempo of the drumming drew their attention back to the Zikr.

‘The party’s starting,’ said Owen, standing up. ‘It’s time for us to go.’

To one side of the Zikr was a roped-off enclosure for the elderly and more decorous. In it they were given cushions and coffee and settled back to watch developments. They were not long in coming.

In their absence the chanting had become more complex. Now it was more like an English catch-song or round. One group of Zikr would take up a phrase, embroider it and then give it to the others. In turn they would repeat it, embroider and give it back again. Gradually, the process became faster and faster until there was hardly a gap between the giving of a phrase and receiving it back again and all the Zikr seemed to be shouting all the time. The music rose to a crescendo.

Suddenly, one of the Zikr leaped into the middle of the ring and began to utter loud gasps in time with the words of the others. More and more of the Zikr joined in until they were all on their feet gasping in unison.

The gasping quickened. Someone else sprang into the centre of the ring and began to spin like a top, the skirt of his gown flying out around him like a huge umbrella. Other Zikr started to jump up and down and some of them rushed round the ring contorting their bodies and making little stabbing motions with their hands. All of them were screaming. The music rose to new heights. The uproar was terrific.

The man swirling in the centre stopped and stepped out of the ring. For a moment the music faltered. Then there was a piercing scream and another man sprang into the centre. He was very tall and black, a Nubian of some sort, and at once he began to leap up and down, holding his arms up so that his hands were locked above his head, all the time screaming ‘Allah! Allah! Allah!’ He went on like this for several moments and then collapsed foaming on the ground. Two of the Zikr carried him aside.

The music faltered again and then began to pound even more insistently. Another Zikr sprang forward. This one kept bounding into the air, beating his breast and calling out, until suddenly he rushed to one side, picked up a short Sudanese stabbing spear and plunged it into his body. It seemed to have no effect. He did it again with another spear and then another. In a moment he seemed to be bristling with them.

Another Zikr began calling out for fire. Someone brought him a small copper chafing-dish full of red-hot charcoal. He seized a piece of charcoal and put it in his mouth. He did the same with another and another until his mouth was full, and then he deliberately chewed the live coals, opening his mouth wide every few moments to show its contents. When he inhaled, the coals glowed almost to white heat; and when he exhaled, sparks flew out of his mouth.

Someone brought a thorn bush into the ring and set it alight. One of the Zikr took it and thrust it up inside his robe, all the time continuing with his dancing. As he whirled round, his robe billowed out and the flames blazed up, so that his gown seemed full of fire. There was the great blaze in the darkness and above it the exalted, ecstatic face looking up to heaven.

Everywhere, now, was fire. And everywhere, too, men were rushing around with daggers and spears sticking in their throats, cheeks, mouths, faces, stomachs and chests. They danced and whirled and cried ‘Allah’ continuously. The drums beat on, the flutes shrilled, and the music swirled to new heights of passion. All over the square now people were dancing and jumping.

Beside Owen, an elderly man sprang to his feet, tore off most of his clothes, and leaped into the circle. In a moment he was jumping skyward, his face contorted, his chest heaving with great gasps of ‘Allah’.

The Zikr danced on and on. They did not seem to tire, nor did they seem affected by the stabbing or the fire. After whirling for perhaps five or ten minutes they would stop and step out of the ring for a moment, apparently steady and completely free from giddiness. They would pause only for an instant and then rejoin the ring.

Towards midnight the music slackened. No new coals were brought, and as the flames died out, the Zikr quietened. Their dance became a steady rhythmic leaping. Their voices, hoarse now, could manage only a rapt murmur of ‘Allah’. One by one they fell out of the dance and collapsed to the ground, until there were only two or three whirling in the middle. Eventually, their spinning, too, came to an end.

The music stopped.

A great sigh rose from the onlookers like a collective release. It was as if a spell had been broken. They sat back and as it were rubbed their eyes.

For a moment or two there was silence. And then one or two people began to talk, quietly at first but then more animatedly, and soon normal babble was resumed.

A white-bearded Zikr attendant came round with coffee and then, noting Miss Postlethwaite, returned with almond cakes.

‘We should eat them,’ said Owen, uneasily aware of the hour and thinking about Mr Postlethwaite back in the hotel. ‘It is wrong to refuse hospitality.’

‘I would not dream of doing so,’ said Jane Postlethwaite, and tucked in with relish. ‘It is not, of course, the kind of religious occasion that I am used to but it was most interesting.’

Owen was relieved. It was some time since he had been to a Zikr gathering and he had forgotten what strong meat it was.

A Zikr walked past him. Owen recognized him as the one who had put the blazing thorn bush inside his gown. He was dressed now only in a loin-cloth—the gown had burnt. Owen looked at him closely. There were no traces on his skin either of burns or of thorn scratch marks. He looked over to where some of the other Zikr were standing. These were ones who had stabbed themselves with spears and swords and one or two of them still had knives sticking in them. They looked very, very tired but not hurt. There was a thin trickle of blood coming from some of the wounds. It was nothing like the mutilations, however, which some of the sects practised. These were often combined with self-flagellation and then there was blood everywhere. In the case of the Zikr the intention was not to humiliate but to exalt, to demonstrate the imperviousness of the body when it is caught up in Allah’s holy rapture.

Gradually all the Zikr who had collapsed to the ground rose to their feet. Except one, who as the minutes went by remained still.

CHAPTER 3

Paul was cross.

‘I said show her the sights,’ he complained. ‘I didn’t mean that sort of sight.’

‘How was I to know it would end like that?’

‘Well, Christ, if they’re always sticking knives in themselves, one day it was bound to happen. Anyway, is that the sort of thing you take a girl to? People sticking knives in themselves? Jesus, Gareth, you’ve got funny ideas of entertainment. You were out on that goddamn Frontier a bit too long.’

‘She wanted to go,’ Owen protested.

‘She didn’t know what the hell she wanted. You should have had more sense. Couldn’t you have taken her to a mosque or something? She’s religious, isn’t she?’

‘She wanted to see a bit of Cairo life.’

‘Cairo life, yes, but not Cairo death. Honestly, Gareth, I’m disappointed in you. Where the hell’s your judgement?’

Garvin was even crosser.

‘The Consul-General has been on to me,’ he said, ‘personally. He wants to know, and I want to know too, what the bloody hell you were doing. You’re not some wet-behind-the-ears young subaltern fresh out from England without a bloody idea in his head. You’re the Mamur Zapt and ought to have some bloody political savvy.’

‘She wanted to see Cairo—’

‘Then show her Cairo. Show her the bloody Pyramids or something. Take her down the Musski and let her buy something. Take her to the bazaars. Take her to the Market of the Afternoon. Take her to the bloody Citadel. But don’t bloody take her somewhere where she’s going to see somebody get his throat cut.’

‘He didn’t actually—’

Garvin paused in his tirade. ‘Yes,’ he said, in quite a different voice, ‘that was a bit odd, wasn’t it? They usually know what they’re doing. However—’ his voice resumed its previous note—‘the one thing you’re supposed to be doing is handling this pair with kid gloves. Taking this girl to a Zikr gathering is not that.’

He glared at Owen, defying him to defy him. Owen had enough political sense at least not to do that.

‘And that’s another thing,’ said Garvin. ‘You were supposed to be showing them both around. Both. Not just the girl. This is not a personal Sports Afternoon for you, Owen, it’s bloody work. This man is important. With the new Government in England, these damned MPs are breathing down our necks. They’re on our backs already. This visit was a chance to get them off our backs. The Consul-General wants to build bridges. Any bloody bridge he wanted to build,’ said Garvin pitilessly, ‘is shattered and at the bottom of the ravine right now. Thanks to you. Postlethwaite is going crazy. He’s demanding apologies all round. The Consul-General’s apologized, I’ve apologized—’

‘I certainly apologize,’ said Owen stiffly.

‘You do?’ said Garvin with heavy irony. ‘Oh, good of you. Most kind.’

‘I shall see it doesn’t happen again.’

‘You won’t get the bloody chance,’ said Garvin.

Back at the office there were soon developments. They were not, however, of the sort that Owen had expected.

‘Visitors,’ said Nikos.

Owen rose to greet them. There were three. Two of them were religious sheikhs and the third was an assistant kadi. There was a separate judicial system in Egypt for Mohammedan law presided over by a separate Chief Judge, the Kadi. It was the assistant kadi who spoke first.

‘We have come to lay a complaint,’ he said.

‘A complaint? In what connection?’

‘It concerns a killing. It happened last night. We understand that you were there.’

‘A Zikr? At the gathering? If so, I was there.’

The assistant kadi looked at the two sheikhs. They appeared pleased.

‘He was there, you see,’ one of them said.

‘Then he will know,’ said the other.

‘What should I know, Father?’ asked Owen courteously.

‘How it came about.’

‘I expect you are already working on it,’ said the assistant kadi.

‘On what?’ asked Owen, baffled.

‘On the murder.’

‘Murder? I saw no murder.’

‘But you were there,’ said one of the sheikhs, puzzled.

‘A man died. I saw that.’

‘But it was murder. It must have been. A Zikr would not die as he was reaching towards his God.’

‘Allah takes people at any time,’ said Owen as gently as he could.

The sheikh shook his head.

‘I know what you are thinking,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t like that.’

‘What am I thinking?’ asked Owen.

‘You are thinking he died from his own hand.’

‘Well—’

‘It was not like that. A Zikr knows.’

‘Knows where to put the knife? Yes, but in the—’ Owen hesitated; the word ‘frenzy’ was on the tip of his tongue— ‘moment of exaltation’ he substituted. ‘In the moment of exaltation who knows what may have happened?’

The sheikh shook his head firmly.

‘Allah guides his hand,’ he said with certainty.

‘The Zikr does not make mistakes,’ said the other sheikh, with equal conviction.

They met Owen’s gaze with a simple confidence which Owen felt it would be churlish to challenge.

‘If he did not die by his own hand,’ said Owen slowly, ‘then how did he die?’

‘By the hand of another.’

Owen paused deliberately.

‘Such things should not be said lightly.’

The sheikhs agreed at once.

‘True.’

‘He speaks with justice.’

‘Then how—’ Owen paused—‘can you be sure?’

The sheikhs looked a little bewildered.

‘The Zikr do not make mistakes. Allah guides their hand,’ they explained again, patiently, rather as if they were speaking to a child.

Owen normally had no difficulty in adjusting to the slow tempo and frequent circularity of Arab witnesses but this morning, what with the events of the last two days, he felt his patience under strain.

‘There must be further grounds,’ he said.

The sheikhs looked at each other, plainly puzzled.

‘The Zikr do not—’ one began.

The assistant kadi intervened with practised authority.

‘There was talk of a man.’

‘During the dance?’

‘During the dance.’

‘Just talk?’

‘There are others who claim to have seen.’

‘What sort of man?’

He could have guessed.

‘A Copt,’ the two sheikhs said in unison.

As the three left, Owen detained the assistant kadi for a moment.

‘The Parquet’s been informed, I take it?’

‘Yes. However, as you were there—’

‘Yes, indeed. Thank you.’

‘Besides—’ the assistant kadi glanced at the retreating backs of the sheikhs—‘there could be trouble between the Moslems and the Copts. I shouldn’t be saying it, I suppose, but I thought you ought to be involved.’

‘I’m grateful. It is important to hear of these things early.’

‘You’ll have no trouble with these two,’ the assistant kadi went on confidentially, ‘nor with the people in the Ashmawi mosque. It’s the sheikh in the next district you’ll have to watch out for. He’s jealous of all the money going to the Ashmawi. Besides, he hates the Copts like poison.’

Owen rang up his friend in the Parquet.

‘Hello,’ said Mahmoud.

‘There’s a case just come up. A Zikr killing. A Zikr death, anyway,’ he amended. ‘Do you know who’s on it?’

‘Yes,’ said Mahmoud. ‘Me.’

‘Thank Christ for that,’ said Owen.

‘Have you an interest?’

‘You bet I have. Can we have a talk about it?’

‘About half an hour? The usual place?’

They met on neutral ground, that is to say a cafe equidistant between the Parquet offices and the Bab el Khalkh, where Owen worked. Relations between the Departments were at best lukewarm and there were also practical advantages in confidentiality. Sometimes the right hand got further if it did not know what the left hand was doing. Also, although Owen had known Mahmoud for about a year now and they were good friends, their relationship was—perhaps necessarily—sometimes an uneasy one. Owen was more senior and had an access to power which Mahmoud would never have. Besides which, there were all the usual tensions between Egyptian and Englishmen (or, in Owen’s case, Welshmen), Imperialist and Nationalist, occupier and occupied. At times, too, Owen found Mahmoud’s emotional volatility difficult to handle; and no doubt Mahmoud on his side found British stolidity just as exasperating. There was an element of emotional negotiation in their relationship which was best managed away from their own institutions. If the meeting had been at the Ministry of Justice or at Police Headquarters both would have had to play roles. Sitting outside the cafe in this narrow back street, with only the occasional forage-camel plodding past with its load of berseem, they could talk more freely.

‘I’ve only just received the case. You were there, I gather?’

‘Yes.’

‘With this Miss Postlethwaite.’ Mahmoud stumbled slightly over the word. Although he spoke English well, he spoke French better, and the word came out sounding as it would have done if a Frenchman had pronounced it.

‘Yes. She’s the niece of an MP who’s visiting us. Got to be looked after. You won’t want to see her, will you?’

‘It might be necessary.’

‘I don’t know that she’d be able to add anything to what I might say.’

‘You never know. It’s worth checking. Anyway,’ said Mahmoud, who didn’t like any detail to escape him, ‘the investigation ought to be done properly.’

‘Yes, it ought. Both sides will be watching it.’

‘Both sides?’

‘Copts and Moslems.’

Owen told Mahmoud about the things that had been occupying him recently.

‘The best thing you could do would be to find he died of a heart attack.’

‘There’ll have to be an autopsy. Keep your fingers crossed.’

They watched a camel coming down the street towards them. It was heavily loaded with berseem, green forage for the cab horses in the squares. The load extended so far across the camel that it brushed the walls on both sides of the narrow street. Advancing towards it was a tiny donkey almost buried under a load of firewood. The load was as big as a small haystack. On top of it sat the donkey’s owner, an old Arab dressed in a dirty white galabeah. The two animals met. Neither would, neither could, give way, the camel because it was stuck between the walls, the donkey because it was so crushed under its huge load that it was quite incapable of manoeuvring. Both drivers swore at each other and interested spectators came out of the houses to watch. Eventually the drivers were persuaded to try to edge the animals past each other. In doing so the donkey lost some of its firewood and the camel some of its berseem. The wood fell among the pots of a small shopkeeper who came out of his shop in a fury and belaboured both animals. They stuck. Neither could move forward or backwards despite the best help of observers. The rest of the inhabitants of the street came out to help, including the people smoking water-pipes in the dark inner rooms of the cafe. Mahmoud shifted his chair so that he could see better.

‘This could take a long time,’ he said.

The indignant cries of the drivers rose to the heavens where they mingled with the shouts of the onlookers, who for some reason all felt compelled to offer their advice at the top of their voices. The din was terrific. Owen looked on the scene almost with affection. He loved the daily dramas of the Cairo streets in which high positions were taken as in a Greek tragedy but in which no one was ever really hurt. Would that all Egyptian conflicts were like that, he said to himself. He was thinking of the matter of the dog, but was beginning, now, to have a slightly uneasy feeling about the Zikr.

‘It would be good if both these cases were out of the way before the 25th.’

‘Why?’

‘It’s the Coptic Easter. And the Moulid of the Sheikh el-Herera.’

‘And the Sham el-Nessim,’ said Mahmoud, ‘you’ve forgotten that.’

The spring festival.

‘Christ. Is that on too?’

‘This year, yes.’

‘Bloody hell!’

‘I’ll try and sort it out before then,’ said Mahmoud, still watching the drama. ‘You’ll have sorted out the dog business by then, too.’

‘Yes, but it mightn’t help.’

Along the street one of the onlookers was taking off his trousers. This usually meant business in Egypt. Trousers, especially good ones, were prestigious possessions and no one would want to risk spoiling them by involving them in action. The onlooker, now trouserless, took hold of the donkey firmly by the head, turned it round, despite the protests of its owner, and began to lead it back up the street. It passed the cafe and turned up a side street. The camel resumed its passage, not, however, without incident. As it approached the cafe it suddenly became apparent that its load would sweep all before it. Patrons, including Owen and Mahmoud, hurriedly rushed chairs and tables inside. The camel went past. At the junction with the side street it stopped and the driver looked back. Clearly he was thinking about the spilt berseem. Vigorous cries dissuaded him from going back. After a few moments’ hesitation he shrugged his shoulders and went on. Meanwhile, the donkey was led back up the street and restored to its owner. By the time it reached the scene of the blockage both the spilt berseem and the spilt firewood had gone.

‘Right!’ said Mahmoud. ‘I’ll do my best. I’ll start at once with the principal witness.’

‘Who’s that?’ asked Owen.

‘You,’ said Mahmoud.

‘You don’t remember anything?’

‘More than what I’ve told you? Sorry.’

‘We’ve got the general picture,’ said Mahmoud. ‘It’s the particulars I’m after.’

‘I know,’ said Owen humbly.

‘You saw this Zikr afterwards. The dead one, I mean. So you know what he looked like. Do you remember seeing him before? When he was dancing?’

‘Sort of,’ said Owen vaguely.

‘He had knives and spears sticking out all over him.’

‘Lots of them did!’ protested Owen.

‘This one especially. Look, I’ll help you. He had a spear sticking into his front chest. A three-foot handle. At least three feet. It must have been waggling about.’

‘Can’t remember.’

‘I would have thought it would have got in the way, dancing.’

Owen shut his eyes.

‘I can’t picture it,’ he said.

‘It doesn’t jog your memory?’

‘No.’ Owen shook his head. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

Mahmoud sighed.

‘There was so much happening.’ Owen protested. ‘I’ve told you.’

‘Yes, you’ve given me the general picture very well. Let’s try again. When did you first become conscious of the Zikr?’

‘When he didn’t get up. After a long time.’

‘Where was he? When he was lying down, I mean.’

‘About four or five yards in front of me to my left. There, as it were.’

Owen pointed to where a flea-ridden dog was scratching itself in the dust. A dog. He winced.

‘Good!’ said Mahmoud encouragingly. ‘About four or five yards to your left.’

‘He was lying in a heap.’

‘Fine. And if he was lying there he might well have been dancing there. You said they sank down more or less where they were.’

‘That’s how it seemed to me. At the time.’

‘Try to call up the scene,’ said Mahmoud patiently, ‘with them all dancing. Got it? Right. Well now, look in your mind a little to your left. Four yards, five yards? Six yards?’

‘I’m trying. I just don’t see it very clearly. I thought I did.’

‘Over to your left. A big dervish with a spear sticking out of his chest.’

After a moment or two Owen said: ‘I think I’ve got him.’

‘What is he doing?’

‘Dancing.’

‘How is he dancing?’

‘Jumping up and down. I think.’

‘Is he turning round? Whirling?’

‘A bit.’

‘Does the spear hit anyone? Get in the way?’

‘It’s not really there,’ said Owen. ‘I don’t really see it. I can sort of imagine it when you speak.’

‘But you’re not really remembering it?’

‘No.’

Mahmoud sighed.

‘As a Mamur Zapt you may be all right,’ he said. ‘As a witness you’re useless.’

‘I know.’

Owen felt humbled. A murder, possibly, had happened four or five yards away under his very eyes and he couldn’t remember a thing. He hadn’t even noticed it. Perhaps, he told himself determinedly, there had been nothing to notice.

‘We don’t know anything happened,’ he said to Mahmoud.

‘Yes, but we know he was there,’ said Mahmoud, ‘and even that could be in doubt if we went by your evidence.’

‘It’s not very good, is it?’ said Owen. ‘A police officer and not remember a thing.’

Mahmoud laughed.

‘I don’t know that I’d have done any better. It just goes to show.’

‘What are you going to do now?’

‘Try the next witness. See if she remembers any better.’

‘She?’

‘Miss—’ Mahmoud stumbled a little. What he was trying to say was Postlethwaite.

‘Surely you don’t need to see her?’

‘I’m afraid I do.’

‘There must be other witnesses.’

‘And I shall get to them. But it was fresh to her eyes and she—’ said Mahmoud pointedly—‘may remember more.’

Owen was silent. He hadn’t realized it would come to this. He considered how Miss Postlethwaite would feel about being involved in a police inquiry. Or, more to the point, how her uncle would feel about it? Or, even more to the point, how the Consul-General would react.

‘Are you sure?’ he said. ‘I mean, she’s hardly likely to be able to add anything to what I—’

‘You want to bet?’ asked Mahmoud.

*

‘Yes,’ said Jane Postlethwaite. ‘I remember the man very well. I’d noticed him earlier because he was so—involved. He put everything into his dancing. He was a big man, rather darker than most of the Zikr—that would be, I expect—’ looking at Owen for confirmation— because he came from the south, although he wasn’t really a Nubian, he wasn’t as dark as that, a mixture, I suppose. Anyway, he threw himself into his dancing rather like a great big child. He seemed a bit like an overgrown boy, he had that sort of childlike face. I’d noticed him because he was bounding away so enthusiastically. And then when he started sticking knives into himself I could hardly believe my eyes. And that spear!’

Jane Postlethwaite shuddered a little at the recollection but it was not so much in sympathetic trepidation as in identification. She saw it all so vividly.

Mahmoud looked at Owen triumphantly.

‘Yes, that spear,’ he said. ‘How did he manage with it, Miss Postlethwaite? I would have thought it would have knocked into people as he was dancing.’

‘It did once or twice. I thought it would hurt him but it didn’t seem to. And then, you see, it wasn’t sticking out horizontally. He’d thrust it into himself from above. He held it up—I saw him, it was so that everyone could see—up in front of him, like this—’ Miss Postlethwaite demonstrated— ‘and then he pulled it down into his chest. The handle was sticking upwards, if anything. And then he was so big, it was over most people’s heads.’

This time Owen took care not to meet Mahmoud’s eyes. Miss Postlethwaite seemed to recall with amazing facility. She had agreed without hesitation when he had asked her, diffidently, whether she would be willing to make herself available for questioning. ‘Of course!’ she had replied. ‘It’s my duty.’ ‘It won’t be me who’s asking the questions,’ he had said, ‘it will be a friend of mine, Mr El Zaki, from the Parquet,’ He had explained how the legal system differed from that in Britain. ‘In any case,’ Jane Postlethwaite had said, ‘it wouldn’t have been proper for you to question me, would it? I mean, you were involved yourself. I expect you’re a witness too. Are you, Captain Owen? Oh, perhaps you’d better not tell me anything about it. Otherwise you might influence what I say and that wouldn’t be right, would it?’

To give things as light a touch as possible, Mahmoud had interviewed her in her hotel, and he had asked Owen to be with him. Owen knew very well why he wanted this. It wasn’t that he doubted his own ability or needed reinforcement. Rather, it was a simple precautionary measure, advisable when an Egyptian was questioning one of the British community, especially a visitor of some importance. Owen had agreed, though with a certain apprehension. They would be sure to meet John Postlethwaite, he thought, and the MP would be sure to take up the issue with him. When they arrived at the hotel his worst fears appeared to have been realized, for there, waiting for them in the vestibule, was Postlethwaite himself.

‘Young man!’ he said formidably, and Owen feared the worst.

‘I must apologize, sir,’ he said hastily. ‘It was quite wrong of me to expose Miss Postlethwaite to the possibility of such a distressing incident.’

‘Ay,’ said the MP, ‘it was.’

He produced the look which had crushed Ministers. Owen recognized it at once and appeared suitably daunted. Unexpectedly, Mr Postlethwaite seemed mollified.

‘Well, you’re not trying to wriggle out of it at any rate,’ he said.

‘My fault entirely, sir.’

Mr Postlethwaite sighed.

‘Look, lad,’ he said, ‘you’re young and you don’t know any better. But you don’t say things like that. Not if you want to get on in Government service. It’s always somebody else’s fault. Got it? I’ll take this up with you some other time. You need a bit of advice.’

He spotted Mahmoud.

‘This is Mr El Zaki, I take it? How do you do, Mr El Zaki.’ They shook hands. ‘I don’t altogether follow this Parquet business, but it sounds a bit like the Scottish system to me.’

‘You’re quite right,’ said Owen, pleased. ‘It is.’

‘It’s not a bad system,’ said Mr Postlethwaite. ‘At least you know who’s responsible for what.’

Jane Postlethwaite appeared in the doorway.

‘I hope you’ve not been pitching into Captain Owen, Uncle,’ she said.

‘A bit,’ said John Postlethwaite, exaggerating. Owen suspected that he liked to play the role of the hard man with his niece; and that she was not deceived in the least.

‘I’ve pitched into the Departments,’ he said with relish. He winked at Owen. ‘Now they’ll know what to expect if they try to pull the wool over my eyes.’

‘Get them on the run,’ advised Jane Postlethwaite. ‘That’s half the battle.’

Owen was a little surprised at this display of administrative savoir-faire but then realized that she was probably repeating one of her uncle’s maxims. Mr Postlethwaite endorsed it anyway.

‘That’s right,’ he said.

His niece laid a hand on his arm.

‘Now, Uncle,’ she said, ‘you’d better get back to your memos. Once you’ve got them on the run, keep them on the run.’

‘And that’s true, too,’ said John Postlethwaite, going happily off up the stairs.

Jane Postlethwaite led them into a small room which the hotel manager had made available. The shutters had been closed, which kept the room fairly cool; but the air was lukewarm and inert and the fans useless, so after a while she pushed the shutters right open and they sat by the window.

‘It is fortunate for us that you were watching, Miss Postlethwaite,’ said Mahmoud, ‘and that you’re such a good observer.’

‘Thank you. I wasn’t really watching him particularly, you know. It was just that I couldn’t help noticing him. He was so striking. So big, and so—rapt.’

‘Did you notice him towards the end of the dance? Just before he collapsed?’

‘Yes. He was bounding about and I kept thinking: Surely he can’t keep this up, not with all those knives and things sticking in him. But he did. He kept jumping away. Then he seemed to falter. There was a man near him and I thought he had bumped into him, because he, the Zikr, I mean, seemed to stumble. And then all his strength seemed to go out of him and he just slumped down. I think his fatigue had just caught up with him. Other Zikr were collapsing, too, at that point.’

‘The man who was standing near him, the one he bumped into or might have bumped into, was he another Zikr?’

‘Oh no. He was one of—the audience, I suppose I should say, one of the onlookers, anyway. He had sort of strayed into the ring, been drawn in, I suppose, like so many others. There were lots of them, you know, ordinary people. They pressed forward during the dancing and then they began to join in. It was very infectious. I felt quite like joining in myself. Only I thought Captain Owen would not approve of me.’

She gave Owen a look which he considered afterwards he could only describe as arch.

Mahmoud, however, was concentrating.

‘This particular onlooker, the one the Zikr nearly bumped into, was he joining in?’

‘No. He was just standing there. That is why I noticed him. I thought he was, well, you know, a bit dazed or something, bowled over by it all. I was afraid he would get in the way. And then, when the Zikr stumbled, I thought he had got in the way.’

‘Could you describe him for us, Miss Postlethwaite?’ Mahmoud asked. ‘What was he wearing, for instance?’

‘Oh, ordinary clothes.’

‘Ordinary Western clothes or ordinary Egyptian clothes?’

‘How silly I am. Of course. Ordinary Egyptian clothes. A long gown. A—galabeah, is it?’

‘You’re picking up our language well, Miss Postle-thwaite,’ said Mahmoud encouragingly. ‘Galabeah is quite right. A blue one?’

‘No. Darker than that. Grey? Black?’

‘Are you sure about that, Miss Postlethwaite?’ Owen interposed.

‘Well, not absolutely. It was dark by then and hard to see in the light. It was just that in comparison with the others his seemed dark.’

‘Did you see what kind of turban he was wearing?’

‘I am afraid not. I’m sorry. One turban is much like another to me. Darkish, anyway. Like his gown.’

Owen exchanged surreptitious glances with Mahmoud. It was early yet but he was already beginning to have a sinking feeling.

‘Anything else, Miss Postlethwaite?’ asked Mahmoud.

‘Not really. I saw him only fleetingly.’

‘How old was he?’

‘Thirty, forty—’

‘You saw his face?’

‘I must have,’ said Jane, concentrating. After a moment or two she shook her head. ‘I don’t remember it at all clearly, I’m afraid.’

‘Hands?’

‘Hands?’ said Jane, startled.

‘Sometimes they are distinctive.’

‘Yes,’ said Jane, looking at him with interest. ‘Yes, they are. Well, I did see his hands, but there was nothing distinctive about them. It was just—’

She broke off and thought for a moment. ‘I don’t remember his hands,’ she said at last, ‘but I do remember hers.’

‘Hers?’

‘The woman’s.’

‘What woman’s?’

‘Don’t you know?’ said Jane, surprised. ‘Oh, I see, you’re testing me. The woman he was with.’

Mahmoud recovered first.

‘Tell us about this woman, please, Miss Postlethwaite,’ he asked.

‘Right,’ said Jane obediently. ‘Well, we were in a sort of enclosure, you know, masked off by ropes. During the dancing this woman came right up beside me, outside the enclosure—I was at the very end of the row, next to the rope, there was a carpet hung over it too, which made it into a sort of wall—and put her hand on the rope just in front of me. That’s why I saw it in the first place. But then, of course, I noticed it. She had such lovely hand painting. Lots of Egyptian women do, don’t they?’

‘Yes,’ said Mahmoud, ‘although it’s going out now, or so my mother says.’

‘Does she herself hand-paint?’ asked Jane.

‘No!’ said Mahmoud, immensely amused at the thought of his rather Westernized mother engaging in the traditional Egyptian arts. ‘It’s not confined to the poorer classes but it’s certainly most common there. You find it generally where the old customs are strongest.’

‘Such beautiful patterns!’ said Jane enthusiastically

‘In general?’ asked Mahmoud. ‘Or just in the case of the woman you saw beside the enclosure?’

‘Both!’ said Jane. ‘But I noticed the woman because I thought her patterns were especially lovely. She didn’t paint the whole palm, you know, not like they usually do, she just sort of sketched it in and then echoed it around the knuckles and nails. But what really caught my eye were her wrists. She had a most intricate pattern around them, all in delicate blue, not the usual blue of the poorer women, and not that rich orangey-red you often see. It ran round her wrist in a series of hooks and crosses all linked together, like a sort of painted bracelet.’

‘Crosses?’ said Owen. He was quite sure about the sinking feeling now.

‘Yes. Small square ones. That’s a traditional pattern, too, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ said Owen, ‘especially among some people.’

Mahmoud was pleased.

‘You are a most excellent observer, Miss Postlethwaite,’ he told her warmly.

‘I could hardly help noticing, could I?’ said Jane, half apologetically. ‘It was right before my eyes.’

‘Yes, but not everyone notices what’s right in front of their eyes.’

Owen kept his own eyes looking firmly out of the window.

‘Can you tell us anything else about this woman, Miss Postlethwaite?’ asked Mahmoud.

‘Not really,’ said Jane. ‘She was dressed from head to foot in one of those black gowns. I suppose I wouldn’t even have seen her hand if she had not put it on the rope. The only thing—’ She hesitated.

‘Yes?’ prompted Mahmoud.

‘The only thing I remember,’ she said, ‘was the smell.’

‘What sort of smell?’

‘Scent.’

‘She had a lot of perfume on?’

‘No. Not exactly. Not in that way.’

‘Distinctive? A distinctive perfume? Heavy, perhaps?’

Again Jane shook her head.

‘Not really. I don’t quite know what it was. Perhaps it was where it was that surprised me.’

‘Where it was?’

‘Yes. It wasn’t on her wrist or on her throat, not where you’d usually put it. In fact, it wasn’t on her at all. It was on her sleeve. And—not just on one part. All over her sleeve.’

‘Ah.’

‘That means something to you, does it?’ she said, looking at Mahmoud.

‘It might. Tell me—can you remember—was it one perfume or different ones?’

‘How clever of you. Different ones. She had been trying them on, you think? But on her sleeve?’

‘You’ve been very helpful Miss Postlethwaite,’ said Mahmoud. ‘Truly very helpful.’

‘Is it important?’ asked Jane. ‘I don’t quite see—’

‘It might be,’ said Mahmoud. ‘Now, can we just go back a little. At a certain point you became aware of this lady placing her hand on the rope. When exactly was that?’

‘I can’t say exactly. Towards the end of the dancing? Yes, it must have been towards the end because at the start, you know, the woman were at the back, it was the men who were at the front, and then as the dancing went on everyone became sort of drawn in and some of the women came forward, though of course they didn’t actually join in the dancing or anything like that, except to cry out and encourage the dancers.’

‘And that was when this woman came forward?’

‘Yes.’

‘With the man?’

‘Oh no. He was already there. So far forward that he was almost part of the dance.’

‘When did they meet up, then?’ asked Mahmoud. ‘You spoke of her as being with him.’

‘Afterwards. They left together.’

‘When the Zikr collapsed?’

‘Yes. He stepped back into the crowd. I think he realized that it was partly his fault, that he had bumped into the Zikr. I mean, he shouldn’t really have been there, should he? He was just getting in the way. He stepped back right in front of me, I couldn’t see the dancers for a moment or two, that’s how I remember, but then the crowd let him in and he slipped back along the rope.’

‘Where the woman was waiting?’

‘Yes. It seemed like that, because as soon as he got to her she turned and left with him. I was aware of it because she had been partly blocking my vision and when she left I could see the little boys bringing fire.’

Deep in the recess of the hotel a gong sounded and Miss Postlethwaite stirred slightly. A splendid suffragi in a red sash appeared at the door. Mahmoud rose to his feet and put out his hand.

‘Thank you very much, Miss Postlethwaite,’ he said. ‘You have been an immense help.’

‘I have? Oh, I am so pleased.’

‘You are an excellent observer.’

‘I just notice what I see.’

‘Not everyone does.’

Mahmoud could not forbear a glance in Owen’s direction.

‘Oh, of course,’ said Jane Postlethwaite, catching the glance and misinterpreting it. ‘You will already know all this. Captain Owen will have told you.’

‘Not quite all, Miss Postlethwaite,’ said Mahmoud, ‘not quite all.’

CHAPTER 4

It was safe to assume in Cairo that nothing you did would go unobserved. No matter how private the occasion or how secret the place, someone would be bound to be watching. So it was with the matter of the dog. It was not long before Georgiades, Owen’s agent, had found not one but two witnesses. Not only that; the accounts of the witnesses—and this was definitely unusual in Cairo—roughly corresponded.

The first was an old man, an Arab, who lived in the cemetery. Georgiades showed Owen where he lived. It was in a space between two gravestones beneath the rubble of a collapsed tomb. Peering down between the stones Owen saw a hole about five feet deep and four feet square. It was in there that the old man lived. Apart from a worn rush mat he had no provisions, but the hole at least kept him cool during the hot weather and sheltered him from the wind during the khamsin. He had a short, torn galabeah and thin, birdlike legs. His face was scruffy with grey stubble and his eyes, as they looked up towards the light, were so red with disease that the first question was whether he could have seen what he claimed he had.

During the night, he said, men had come.

Men? Yes, he was adamant. Four of five of them, carrying something. They had stopped some way from the tomb. He could show them. No, he had not gone himself to the place, he had been frightened, thinking that perhaps they were carrying a corpse. The Copts would have been angry with him if they had seen him. They would think he had been observing their secret rites. So he had kept well away from them, hidden among the rubble, but he had definitely seen them, a small group of men in the light of the moon.

Had they gone to the tomb? Did he know which tomb? Yes, he did. It was the Tomb of Andrus. He knew Andrus because the Copt had often chided him when he saw him among the tombs; but he had sometimes given him alms too. He knew the tomb because he had sometimes seen Andrus there, praying. It was a holy place and he, the old man, often liked to sit there, especially when the sun had just moved off the wall, because then he could sit there with his back against the wall and the stone would warm his back. He knew the tomb and he had seen the men going there.

Did they go in? Yes, but not for long. It was a holy place and perhaps they had been frightened. He had heard the door squeak and then they had all come running down the stairs and made off into the rubble.

He had seen the men in the moonlight: what sort of men were they? Bad men. Only bad men would do a thing like that. To come at night to the Place of the Dead! And there to do mischief. Bad men. Bad men.

But what sort of men were they? Were they—and this was the tricky question—were they Copts? Or Moslems? The old man was silent. Owen tried again. How were they dressed? In galabeahs or in trousers? Alas, the old man could not see. He had been far away and it had been dark. Yet he had seen the men in the light of the moon. The old man became confused and fell silent.

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