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First published in Great Britain in 1994

Copyright © Michael Pearce 1994

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. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Source ISBN: 9780008259433

Ebook Edition © JULY 2017 ISBN: 9780007485055

Version: 2017-08-30

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

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

1

One evening when Owen got home he found a girl in his bed.

‘Hello!’ he said. ‘What’s this?’

‘I’m a present,’ she said.

‘Who from?’

‘We can go into details later.’

‘A member of the British Administration is not allowed to accept presents,’ he said, stuffily.

And not altogether honestly. For the Mamur Zapt, Head of Cairo’s Secret Police, was not, strictly speaking, a member of the British Administration but a member of the Egyptian Administration; and whereas the British, under Cromer’s strait-laced regime had not been allowed to accept bribes, the Khedive’s servants had always taken a more relaxed view.

‘All the world knows about your Zeinab,’ said the girl, pouting.

Owen rather hoped that all the world did not know about Zeinab and was more than a little surprised that the girl did.

‘Ah, yes, but she is not a present.’

‘I don’t need to stay a present,’ said the girl.

‘Off you go!’

‘Like this?’ demanded the girl, pulling the sheet back. Underneath she was completely naked.

‘If that’s the way you came.’

The girl, rather sulkily, rose from the bed and picked up a dress that was lying across a chair. A European dress, but was she European? Such questions were on the whole unprofitable in cosmopolitan Cairo. A Levantine, say, and a beautiful one.

Owen began to wonder if perhaps he should make more of an effort to get to the bottom of this attempt to bribe him. Bottom, as a matter of fact, was exactly what he was contemplating just at this moment …

‘Oh yes?’ said Zeinab belligerently when he told her.

‘Oh yes?’ said Garvin, the Commandant of the Cairo Police Force, sceptically.

‘Oh yes?’ said everyone in the bar when he happened to mention it. ‘What happened next?’

‘She put on her veil and left,’ said Owen with a firmness which did not altogether, unfortunately, dampen speculation.

‘Leaving her honour behind her?’ suggested someone.

‘I wouldn’t have thought so.’

Leaving behind her, actually, a small embroidered amulet, the sort of thing you could pick up in one of the bazaars. Inside it was a single quite respectably sized diamond. Perfume stayed on his fingers long after the girl was gone.

‘So that is why you told everybody,’ said his friend, Paul. Paul was ADC to the Consul-General and wise in the ways of the world; wise, at any rate, in the ways of protecting your back.

Owen nodded.

‘People must always be attempting to bribe you,’ observed Paul.

‘Not so much now,’ said Owen. ‘When I first came, certainly.’

He had been in post for nearly three years.

‘And it has taken them all that time to find out?’ said Paul, marvelling.

‘That I couldn’t be bribed?’

‘That you weren’t worth bribing.’

‘Someone,’ Owen pointed out, hurt, ‘has apparently still not found out.’

‘Yes,’ said Paul. ‘Odd, isn’t it?’

The next morning one of the orderlies came in in great agitation.

‘Effendi,’ he said, ‘the Bimbashi’s donkey is not here.’

Owen laid down his pen.

‘Someone’s stolen it?’

‘No, no. It has not been here all morning. The Bimbashi has not come in.’

This was unusual. McPhee, the Deputy Commandant, always came in.

‘A touch of malaria, perhaps,’ said Owen, picking up his pen again. ‘Send someone to find out.’

A buzz of excited chatter outside his door told him when the someone returned.

‘Well?’

‘Effendi,’ said the orderly, with a long face, ‘the Bimbashi’s not there.’

‘He has not been there all night,’ put in another of the orderlies.

‘Hm!’ What members of the Administration did in the night was their business and it was normally wisest not to inquire. McPhee, however, was not like that. He was very puritanical; some would say undeveloped. He was the sort of man who if he had been in England would have joined that strange new organization, the Boy Scouts. After some consideration, Owen went in to see Garvin.

Garvin, also, took it seriously.

‘He’d have let us know if it was work, wouldn’t he?’

‘It can hardly be play,’ said Owen.

‘He won’t be sleeping it off, certainly,’ said Garvin. Owen thought that the remark was possibly directed at him.

‘What I meant was, that he’s not one to let his private life interfere with his work,’ he said, and then realized that sounded unnecessarily priggish. Garvin tended to have that effect on people.

‘What was he doing yesterday?’ asked Garvin. ‘Was it something he was likely to get knocked over the head doing?’

Apparently not. The office had been quiet all day. Indeed, it had been quiet all week. The weather, hot always, of course, had been exceptionally so for the last fortnight, which had brought almost all activity in Cairo, including crime, to a standstill.

‘You’d better get people out looking for him,’ said Garvin.

Owen didn’t like Garvin treating him as just another deputy. The Mamur Zapt reported – in form, of course – to the Khedive and it was only for convenience that Owen was lodged in the police headquarters at Bab-el-Khalk. However, he quite liked McPhee and wasn’t going to quibble.

Garvin, in fact, was genuinely concerned and wasn’t doing this just as an administrative power game.

‘Get them all out,’ he said. ‘They’ve got nothing better to do.’

It was now nearly noon and the sun was at its hottest, and this was therefore not the view of the ordinary policeman. If turned out now they would probably make for the nearest patch of shade.

Besides, what were they to look for? A body? There were thousands of places in Cairo where bodies might be lying and usually it was simplest to allow them to declare their presence later – in the heat it would not be much later – by their smell. There was, however, an easier solution.

‘You all know the Bimbashi’s donkey,’ said Owen. ‘Find it.’

‘Look for a donkey?’ expostulated Nikos, his Official Clerk. ‘You can’t have the whole Police Force out looking for a donkey!’

‘Why not?’

‘It sounds bad. Have you thought how it would look in the pages of Al-Lewa?’

Owen had not. He could just imagine, though, what the Nationalist press would make of it. The newspapers would be full of it for weeks. He stuck doggedly, however, to his guns. Nikos changed tack.

‘How much are you offering for information?’ he asked practically.

‘It’s McPhee, after all.’

‘Five pounds?’

‘Good God, no!’ said Owen, shocked. ‘We’d have the whole city bringing us donkeys if we offered that. One pound Egyptian.’

‘I thought, as it was an Englishman –’ suggested Nikos.

‘One-fifty.’

‘And in the police –’

‘Two pounds,’ said Owen. ‘We’ll make it two pounds. That is my limit.’

‘It ought to be enough,’ said Nikos, who believed in value for money.

Word went out to the bazaars by methods which only Nikos knew and Owen sat down to await results. They came by nightfall.

‘What the hell is this?’ said Garvin.

Owen explained.

‘It’s like a bloody donkey market,’ said Garvin.

Owen went down into the courtyard to sort things out. Nikos watched with interest. Believing that decisions should be taken where knowledge lay, which certainly wasn’t at the top, Owen enlisted the aid of the orderlies, whom he stationed at the entrance to the courtyard.

‘You know the Bimbashi’s donkey,’ he said. ‘All the others are to be turned away.’

Within an hour the usual torpor of the Bab-el-Khalk was restored.

By now it was dark.

‘You stay here,’ he ordered.

The orderlies, appeased by the prospect of a few extra piastres and full of self-importance at their newly-significant role, were quite content to stay on. Meanwhile, Owen went down to the club for a drink.

‘I gather there’s some problem about McPhee,’ said a man at his elbow.

‘Maybe,’ said Owen, non-committally.

‘Not been knocked on the head, has he? I wouldn’t want that to happen. He’s a funny bloke, not everyone’s cup of tea, but I quite like him.’

‘I dare say he’s all right.’

His neighbour looked at him.

‘Like that, is it?’

Owen gave a neutral smile.

‘You’re not saying? Fair enough. Only I hope he’s all right.’

Owen, who had previously regarded the eccentric McPhee as much with irritation as with affection, was surprised to find that he felt rather the same.

‘What’s happened to the drink this evening?’ he asked. ‘It’s bloody lukewarm.’

‘It’s the heat,’ someone said. ‘Even the ice is melting.’

Owen decided to go back to the Bab-el-Khalk. He put down his glass and headed for the door, spurred on by hearing someone say, ‘Sorry I’m late, old man. Couldn’t get here for the donkeys.’

There were, indeed, a lot of donkeys outside the Bab-el-Khalk. Since they were refused entry into the courtyard, they congregated in the square in front of the building, blocking the road. Garvin was just leaving the building as he arrived.

‘I hope you know what you’re doing,’ he said.

Unaccountably, there were about half a dozen donkeys inside the courtyard.

‘What are they doing here?’

The orderlies looked embarrassed.

‘We thought they might be the Bimbashi’s donkey,’ they said.

‘You know damned well they’re not!’

‘It’s not always possible to tell in the dark,’ muttered someone.

‘We brought them in so that we could see them better.’

Owen knew exactly why they had been brought in. Their enterprising owners, eager for the reward, had slipped the orderlies a few piastres.

‘Get them out of here!’

He heard the arguments beginning as he turned into the building.

Nevertheless, it worked. The following morning it was reported that the Bimbashi’s donkey had been seen grazing unattended on the edge of the Place of Tombs. The informant had not actually brought the donkey – which told in his favour – but was confident that it was the Bimbashi’s donkey. He had seen the Bimbashi on it many times and, yes, indeed – astonishment that anyone could suppose otherwise – he did know one donkey from another. Owen decided to go himself.

‘Why don’t you send Georgiades?’ suggested Nikos, less confident than Owen that this was not a wild goose chase.

‘Because he’s probably still in bed.’

‘He spends too much time in bed if you ask me,’ said Nikos. ‘Especially since he married that Rosa girl,’ he shot after Owen’s departing back.

Owen gave a passing wonder to Nikos’s own sexual habits. He had always assumed that Nikos cohabited with a filing cabinet, but there had seemed some edge to that remark.

He picked up the informant, one Ibrahim, in the Gamaliya and went with him to the place where he had seen the donkey. It was among the mountainous rubbish heaps which divided the Gamaliya district from the tombs of the Khalifs. The tombs were like houses and some of the rubbish came from their collapse. The rest came from houses in the Gamaliya. This part of the Gamaliya was full of decaying old mansions. From time to time, especially when it rained heavily, a mud-brick wall would dissolve and collapse, leaving a heap of rubble. The area was like a gigantic abandoned building site. Coarse grass grew on some of the heaps of rubble and it was here, contentedly cropping, that they found the donkey.

Even Owen, who was not particularly observant, especially of donkeys, could see at once that it was McPhee’s little white animal. He went up to it and examined it. That was certainly McPhee’s saddle. It was one of those on which – if you had a good sense of balance – you could sit cross-legged. Apart from that he could see nothing special; no bloodstains, for example.

He made a swift cast round and then, finding nothing, sent back to the Bab-el-Khalk for more men. If McPhee were here, he would be lying among or under the rubble and they would have to search the area systematically.

Ibrahim himself knew little. He passed through the area every day on his way to work and the previous morning had noticed the donkey. Although a worker in the city now, he had, like very many others, come originally from the country and distinguished between donkeys as later generations might distinguish between cars. He had seen at once that it was the Bimbashi’s donkey but had not felt it incumbent on him to do anything about it until word had reached him about the reward. He had seen nothing untoward, nothing, indeed, that he could remember about the morning apart from the donkey. He did, however, say that it was not a place where one lingered.

‘Why is that, Ibrahim?’ asked Owen sympathetically. ‘Are there bad men around?’

Ibrahim hesitated.

‘Not bad men, effendi –’

He looked over his shoulder as if he was afraid of being overheard.

‘Yes?’

‘Bad women,’ he muttered, and could not be persuaded to say another word.

The search went on all morning. By noon, heat spirals were dancing on top of the heaps of masonry and individual slabs of stone were too hot to lift. He gave the men a break in the shade. He hadn’t quite abandoned hope of finding McPhee alive, he didn’t let himself think about it too much, but he was growing more and more worried. As usual on such occasions a considerable crowd had gathered and he took the opportunity of the break to go among them making inquiries. He also sent some men around the neighbouring houses. None of it produced anything.

He put the men back to work. By about half past three they had covered an area a quarter of a mile wide on either side of the donkey and found nothing. How much wider was it sensible to go?

He made up his mind. It was a long shot – in fact, bearing in mind McPhee’s prim, if not downright maidenly nature, it was so long it was almost out of sight, but he had to try anything, and Ibrahim had said –

‘Selim!’ he called.

One of the constables came across, glad to escape for a moment from the relentless searching among the rubble.

‘Effendi?’

‘Go into the Gamaliya, not far, around here will do, and ask for the local bad women.’

‘Ask for the local bad women?’ said the constable, stunned.

‘That’s right,’ snapped Owen. ‘And when you have found them, come back and tell me.’

The constable pulled himself together.

‘Right, effendi,’ he said. ‘Certainly, effendi. At once!’

He hurried off.

‘Some men have all the luck,’ said one of the other constables.

‘Get on with it!’ barked Owen crossly.

Selim took a long time, unsurprisingly; so long, in fact, that Owen went to look for him. He met him just as he was emerging from the Gamaliya. He seemed, however, rather disappointed.

‘Effendi,’ he said, ‘this is not much of a place. Why don’t you come with me to the Ezbekiya –’

‘Have you found the place?’

‘Well, yes, but –’

‘OK. Just take me there.’

‘What’s this?’ he heard one constable say to another as they left. ‘A threesome?’

Behind an onion stall, in a small, dark, dirty street, a door opened into a room below ground level. In the darkness Owen could just make out a woman on a bed.

‘Ya Fatima!’ called the constable.

The woman rose from the bed, with difficulty, and waddled across to the door. She was hugely, grotesquely fat and her hands, feet and face were heavily dyed with henna. Her hair was greased with something rancid which he could smell even from outside the door. Eccentric though McPhee was –

‘Would the Effendi like to come in?’

‘This will do.’

‘It would be better if you came in, effendi.’

The constable watched, grinning.

‘This is the police,’ said Owen sternly, eager for once to assert his status.

The woman’s smile vanished.

‘Again?’ she said angrily. ‘They had me over there on Monday!’

‘This is a different matter,’ he said hastily. ‘I want to know the men you were with last night and the night before.’

‘Ali, Abdul, Ahmed –’

The list went on.

‘No Effendis?’

‘No Effendi,’ she said coyly. ‘Not yet.’

All right, it had been a mistake. McPhee probably didn’t know what a brothel was. But what, then, had Ibrahim meant by ‘bad women’? And why was this a place where one didn’t linger? Why had McPhee come here in the first place? And where was the poor devil now?

That question, at least, was soon answered. Urgent shouts came from the Gamaliya and people came running to fetch him. They led him into a little street not far from the bad woman’s and then up a tiny alleyway into what looked like a carpenter’s yard. Planks were propped against the walls and on the ground were some unfinished fretted woodwork screens for the meshrebiya windows characteristic of old Cairo. He was dragged across the yard to what looked like an old-fashioned stone cistern with sides about five feet high. A mass of people were gathered around it, all peering down into its inside. Someone was pulled aside and Owen pushed through. He clung to the edge of the cistern and looked down. McPhee was lying at the bottom. Something else, too. The cistern was full of snakes.

Owen shouted for his constables. They came, big men, forcing their way through the crowd.

‘Get them out of the way!’ said Owen. ‘Clear a space.’

The constables linked arms, bowed down and charged the crowd with their heads. They were used to this kind of situation. The smallest accident draws a crowd in Cairo, all sympathetic, all involved and all in the way.

A couple of constables stayed out of the cordon, drew their truncheons and slapped any encroachment of hand, foot or head.

Owen levered himself up on to the edge of the cistern and put his head down into its depths.

‘Effendi!’ said an anxious voice. It was Selim, who, previously singled out for glory, had suddenly grown in stature and now took upon himself a senior role.

‘Get hold of me!’

He felt Selim’s grasp tighten and swung himself lower.

The snakes did not move. One or two were lying on McPhee’s chest, others coiled beneath his armpits. They all seemed asleep at the moment, perhaps they were digesting a meal, but if he tried to move McPhee he was bound to waken them.

‘Effendi,’ said Selim, ‘is this not something better left to experts?’

A voice at the back of the crowd shouted: ‘Abu! Fetch Abu!’

‘Pull me up!’

He came back up over the side and lowered his feet to the ground.

‘I’ve got to get him out,’ he said. ‘Now listen carefully. Two of you, no three, it will be a heavy weight, catch hold of me. I’m going to reach down and get hold of McPhee. I’ll try and get a good grip –’

‘They’ll bite you in the face, effendi!’

Owen swallowed.

‘I’m going to do it quickly,’ he said. ‘Very quickly. As soon as I shout, pull me up. I’ll be heavy because I’ll be holding McPhee. But you just bloody pull, as fast as you can. The rest of you can help. And Selim!’

‘Yes, effendi?’

‘There’ll be snakes on him. Maybe on me, too. Now, what I want you to do is to catch hold of them –’

‘Catch hold?’ said Selim faintly.

‘And throw them back.’

‘Look, effendi,’ began Selim, less sure now about the glory.

‘Do it quickly and you’ll be all right.’

‘Effendi –’

‘I’m relying on you.’

Selim swallowed.

‘Effendi,’ he said heroically, ‘I will do it.’

‘Good man. Remember, speed is the thing.’

‘Effendi,’ said Selim, ‘you cannot believe how quick I will be.’

‘Right.’ Owen put his hands on the edge of the cistern and braced himself. ‘Get hold of me.’

In the background, he heard Selim say to one of the constables:

‘Abdul, you stand by me with your truncheon!’

‘If I strike, it will make them angry.’

‘If you strike, you’ve got to strike them dead!’

‘But, Selim,’ said the worried voice, ‘it is not easy to kill a snake. Not in one blow. It would be better if you just caught hold of them and threw them.’

‘Thank you very much, Abdul,’ said Selim.

‘Selim!’ said Owen sternly. ‘Do it the way I told you!’

Just then a girl ducked under the legs of the cordon and came up beside Owen.

‘What are you doing with our snakes?’ she said fiercely.

‘I’m trying to get him out … Your snakes, did you say? Who the hell are you?’

‘I’m Abu’s daughter.’

‘He’s the snake catcher,’ said someone.

Light dawned.

‘They’re your snakes?’

‘Yes.’ The girl looked down over the edge. ‘What’s he doing down there?’

‘Never mind that. Can you get him out?’

‘Of course.’

She swung her leg up on the edge.

‘What about the snakes?’

‘I’ve milked the cobras.’

‘Milked?’

She bent down, seized one of the snakes by the neck and held it up for Owen to see. It opened its jaws.

‘See?’

The snake’s mouth looked much like any other snake’s mouth to Owen but he didn’t feel inclined to examine it closely.

‘Er … yes,’ he said.

The cobra tried to snap at him but the girl was holding it too firmly.

‘Selim,’ said Abdul’s worried voice, ‘shall I strike?’

The girl tossed the snake back into the cistern and then dropped down after it. Owen saw her flinging the snakes aside. She put her hands under McPhee’s armpits and lifted his shoulders.

‘Can you take him?’

Owen grabbed hold of him. Selim, bold, reached over and caught up McPhee’s legs.

They lifted him down to the ground.

Something moved under his shirt. A snake put its head out. The girl plucked it out and threw it nonchalantly into the cistern.

‘It’s the warmth,’ she said. ‘They like to go where it’s warm.’

‘Warm?’ said Owen, and dropped on his knees.

McPhee was still alive. Alive, but very unconscious. Owen tipped his head back and looked at his eyes.

The girl knelt down beside him.

‘He’s overdone it, if you ask me,’ she said. ‘Taken a bit too much this time.’

‘Someone else gave it him,’ said Owen harshly.

He tore open McPhee’s shirt and put an ear to his chest. A strong, snaky smell, a mixture of snake and palm oil and spices, clung to the shirt. The girl caught it, too, and looked puzzled.

The heartbeat was slow but regular. Owen looked around. The tiny yard was packed to overflowing. He was suddenly conscious of the extreme heat and lack of air.

‘We must get the Bimbashi to the hospital,’ he said.

There were no arabeahs in that part of the city so the constables improvised a litter out of some of the planks lying against the wall. They had just pushed their way out into the street when the owner came rushing after them.

‘Hey!’ he said. ‘What are you doing? You can’t take those!’

‘Mean bastard!’ said the crowd indignantly.

The owner stepped back and hurriedly changed tack.

‘It’s not seemly,’ he said. ‘He’s a Bimbashi, after all!’

This was an argument which weighed with the crowd. And with the constables, who stopped uncertainly and lowered the litter to the ground.

‘Come on,’ said Owen, ‘we’ve got to get a move on.’

The crowd, however, now grown to even larger proportions, would not be moved. A lively debate ensued, the outcome of which was that an angareeb, the universal bed, was produced and McPhee laid gently upon it. The whole crowd then accompanied them to the hospital, which Owen could have done without.

‘But what was he doing there?’ asked Garvin.

‘I’ll ask him when he wakes up,’ said Owen.

McPhee, having awoken, did not respond at once. He seemed to be thinking about it.

‘I don’t think I can say, old man,’ he said at last, rather stuffily, ‘I really don’t think I can say.’

2

‘Can’t say?’ said Garvin in a fury. ‘Get him here!’

McPhee insisted on standing to attention. This irked Owen because he did not know how to do it properly. He had been, such were the ways of the British Administration, a schoolmaster before being translated into a senior post in the police. Owen had been in the army in India before coming to Egypt and while this was something he now tried to forget, it still irritated him mildly to see what looked like a parody of military drill. McPhee, however, was determined to take his medicine like a man.

‘I would prefer, sir, to regard the matter as closed,’ he said pompously.

‘Closed?’ said Garvin, affecting to fall back in his chair with astonishment. ‘Found drugged up to the eyeballs? Regards the matter as closed?’

‘I accept that I am to blame, sir. I take full responsibility.’

‘You mean you took the drug knowingly?’

McPhee was a great stickler for the truth.

‘I wouldn’t go so far as to say that, sir,’ he said uncomfortably.

‘Then what do you mean, you take responsibility?’

‘I shouldn’t have put myself in the position, sir,’ said McPhee, hot and bothered.

‘What position?’

‘I – I’d rather not say, sir.’

Garvin sighed.

‘McPhee,’ he said, ‘you are the Deputy Commandant of Police. You are found in a backyard heavily drugged. Does it not occur to you that some might regard this as anomalous?’

‘It was in off-duty hours, sir.’

‘You were doing this as a recreation?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Taking the drug?’

‘No, no, no, no, sir.’

‘Then?’

‘I don’t think they meant any harm, sir.’

‘Enough to knock you out for thirty-six hours? No harm?’

‘I think it was just that they didn’t want me to see anything.’

‘McPhee,’ said Garvin dangerously, ‘what was it exactly that you were doing?’

McPhee was silent.

‘You can tell us about it, old chap,’ said Owen, trying to be helpful. ‘We understand about such things.’

‘What things?’ said Garvin.

‘Bad women,’ prompted Owen gently.

‘Bad women?’ said Garvin incredulously.

‘Bad women?’ said McPhee, looking puzzled.

‘Sorry!’ said Owen. ‘It was just that I thought –’

‘Really, Owen!’ said McPhee in tones of disgust.

‘You’re obsessed, Owen,’ said Garvin. ‘Keep out of it. McPhee, what were you doing there?’

‘I was attending a Zzarr, sir,’ said McPhee bravely.

‘A Zzarr!’

‘In my own time. Off duty.’

‘I should bloody hope so,’ said Garvin.

‘What is a Zzarr?’ asked Owen.

‘A casting out of devils. From a woman.’

‘They’re held in secret,’ said McPhee. ‘You don’t come across them very often.’

‘Especially if you’re a man,’ said Garvin. ‘Did you say you were attending one?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I thought no men were allowed?’

‘They’re not, sir. Usually.’

‘Then how did you come to be there?’

‘I – I invited myself, sir.’

‘Using your position as Deputy Commandant?’

‘Yes, sir. I’m afraid so, sir.’

‘Why?’

‘Just interest. Curiosity, sir. You see, sir, they happen so rarely. At least, one comes across them so rarely. Little is known about them. There’s nothing about them in Lane, for instance. So –’

‘You thought you would add to the world’s knowledge?’

‘Yes, sir. In a way.’

‘Deputy Commandant!’ said Garvin disgustedly. ‘Casting out devils!’

‘My interest was purely scientific, sir,’ said McPhee stiffly.

‘Oh yes. I dare say.’

McPhee’s enthusiasm for traditional Egyptian ceremonies and rituals, the deeper mysteries, as he called them, was well known.

‘Did it occur to you,’ asked Garvin bitterly, ‘that your presence there might become known? Would, in fact, certainly become known by just about everyone in Cairo? Blazoned abroad in every newspaper?’

‘No, sir,’ said McPhee, hanging his head.

‘Listen,’ said Garvin: ‘how many British officers are there in the police, all told?’

‘Two, sir. Not counting Owen.’

‘Just you and me. Controlling a city the size of Cairo. How do we do it?’

‘Well, sir,’ said McPhee, slightly puzzled, ‘we can call on our men. Good men, sir, fine chaps … the army …’

‘Bluff!’ said Garvin emphatically. ‘We run the country by bluff. If somebody called our bluff we wouldn’t last five minutes. We survive,’ said Garvin, ‘only by means of credibility. Credibility! How much bloody credibility do you think we’ll have left when it gets about that we spend our time casting out devils?’

‘It was off duty,’ said Owen.

‘Thank you, Owen. You’re quite right. I have to speak precisely when there are lawyers, of the barrack-room sort, around. That we spend our spare time casting out devils.’

‘It won’t happen again,’ said McPhee.

‘I’m not sure I can afford the chance of it happening again.’

‘No, sir,’ said McPhee. ‘I understand, sir.’

‘I can’t afford my Deputy Commandant behaving like a bloody fool,’ said Garvin. ‘I can’t even afford him looking like a bloody fool.’

‘No, sir.’

‘I don’t think you’re being entirely fair,’ protested Owen. ‘McPhee has been the victim of an assault. It’s hardly his fault.’

‘Well, in a way, you know, I’m afraid it is,’ said McPhee, honest to a fault. ‘I shouldn’t have been there.’

‘How did you come to be drugged?’

‘They gave me a drink.’

‘And you drank it?’

‘I thought it was hospitality,’ muttered McPhee.

Garvin groaned.

‘The principal reason for sacking you,’ he said, ‘is that you are so damned stupid.’

‘I thought it was part of the ceremony,’ said McPhee. ‘Other people were drinking, too,’ he said defiantly.

‘They put something in when it got to you,’ said Garvin dismissively.

‘I would vouch for their honesty,’ said McPhee.

‘That confirms,’ said Garvin, ‘my view of your judgement.’

‘McPhee’s only just got out of sickbay,’ said Owen.

McPhee was, in fact, looking distinctly wan. Garvin let Owen lead him away. He took him out to the front of the building and found an arabeah, one of the small, horse-drawn carriages that were common in Cairo. He told one of the orderlies to get in with him and see he got safely home to bed.

When he got back to his office, Nikos said: ‘Garvin wants to see you.’

‘He’s just seen me.’

‘He wants to see you again.’

‘McPhee’s not well,’ he said to Garvin.

‘It was a big dose,’ said Garvin. ‘It must have been, for him to be out that long.’

‘It could have killed him.’

‘Yes,’ said Garvin, ‘and that’s another reason not to regard the incident as closed.’

Owen shrugged.

‘Is it sensible to carry it any further? Wouldn’t it be better to leave it alone and hope everyone forgets it?’

‘McPhee’s been the victim of an assault,’ Garvin pointed out. ‘You said that yourself.’

‘Well … all right, then. Perhaps someone ought to look into it.’

‘Fine!’ said Garvin. ‘Tell me how you get on.’

‘Hey! You’re not asking me to do it, are you?’

‘You surely don’t expect McPhee to investigate himself?’

‘It’s not political.’

The Mamur Zapt concerned himself only with the political. He was the equivalent of what back in England would be head of the political branch of the CID. He was, however, also much more. The Mamur Zapt had traditionally – for many centuries, indeed – been the ruler’s right-hand man, the chief of his secret police, the means by which he maintained himself in power. If he was so lucky. Caliphs came, Khedives went, but the Mamur Zapt went on forever.

Even when the British had come, thirty years before, the Khedive had insisted on retaining the post. Without it, he felt nervous. The British had agreed, insisting only that they nominate the occupant of the post. That, of course, had slightly changed matters. Formally, the Mamur Zapt, with his control of Cairo’s vast network of informers, spies and underground agents, was still responsible to the Khedive. In actual fact, he was responsible to the Head of the British Administration, the British Consul-General.

If, that is, he was responsible to anybody, which Consul-General, Khedive, Khedive’s Ministers, Opposition Members, Nationalists, British Government, Commander-in-Chief (British) of the army (Egyptian) and Garvin sometimes felt inclined to doubt.

All crime other than political was the responsibility not of the police, under the French-style system of law which operated in Egypt, but of the Department of Prosecutions of the Ministry of Justice, the Parquet, as it was known.

‘You’re not suggesting the Parquet handle this?’ said Garvin, aghast. ‘Investigating a British officer? A member of the Administration? Oh dear, no!’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t think we could have that. It would set an undesirable precedent. The C-G wouldn’t like it. The people at home wouldn’t like it. Goodness me, no. They wouldn’t like it at all.’

‘We are not investigating McPhee, surely!’ Owen protested.

‘Well, perhaps not directly,’ Garvin admitted. ‘It’s more the circumstances.’

‘I don’t call that political.’

Garvin raised his eyebrows.

‘Setting up a member of the British Administration? Not political? If that’s not political,’ said Garvin, ‘what is?’

‘No, really, Owen, he’s determined to get rid of me!’ said McPhee heatedly. ‘He’s been out to get me ever since they transferred him from Alexandria. I was in charge when he arrived, just temporarily, of course, and he didn’t like the way I was doing things.’

‘Well –’

McPhee held up his hand.

‘I know what you’re going to say. Perhaps we weren’t the most efficient of outfits. But is that so bad, Owen, is it really so bad? People knew where they were. They knew what to expect. A way that is traditional, Owen, is a way that is invested with a lot of human experience. You discard it at your peril.’

‘True. On the other hand –’

‘I know what you are going to say. Not all tradition is good. The courbash, for instance.’

‘Well, yes.’

The courbash was the traditional Egyptian whip. One of the first acts of the British Administration had been to abolish flogging.

‘Well, of course, I’m not against abolishing the use of the courbash. It was a humane measure carried out for humane motives. But not all reform is like that. Sometimes it’s carried out for piffling, mean little reasons. To improve efficiency, for instance. I ask you, where would we be if everything we did was subjected to that criterion?’

Not here, thought Owen. Neither you nor, probably, I.

‘It’s so mean-spirited. He looks around at the richness of life and then talks about efficiency!’

‘He’s got to run a police force, after all.’

‘But why doesn’t he run it in a way people want?’

‘What do they want?’

‘Humanity,’ said McPhee, ‘not efficiency.’

‘I dare say. Look, I don’t think he’s particularly out to get you. In fact, it’s the other way round. He thinks somebody is trying to set you up and he wants to stop them.’

‘Who on earth would want to set me up? Garvin apart, that is.’

‘You’re a senior figure in the police. Lots of people. People you’ve arrested.’

‘They don’t blame me. The common criminal is a decent chap.’

Owen sighed.

‘In Cairo, at any rate,’ said McPhee defensively. ‘Anyway, he doesn’t blame me, he blames fate.’

‘You don’t think he might personalize fate a little?’

‘No one’s out to set me up,’ said McPhee firmly. ‘It’s just another of Garvin’s fantasies.’

‘Some things do need explaining, though. How you finished up in the snake pit, for instance.’

‘I don’t think that was anything to do with the witch,’ said McPhee.

‘Witch?’

Oh dear, thought Owen.

‘Osman told me,’ said McPhee.

‘That there was going to be a Zzarr?’

‘Yes.’

‘And he invited you to it?’

‘No, no. Quite the reverse. He didn’t want me to come. In fact, he was most unwilling to talk about it.’

‘But he did?’

‘I prised it out of him. He had come, you see, to ask me for time off. To prepare for a ceremony, he said. Well, naturally, I asked what sort of ceremony. To do with a female cousin, he said. A circumcision, I asked? At first he said yes, but then it transpired the girl was twenty so I knew he couldn’t be telling the truth. In the end I got him to confess. It was a Zzarr. His sister was suffering from a mild case of possession. At least, that’s what they thought. A Zzarr, I said! My goodness me!’ He looked at Owen. ‘They’re immensely rare, you know. I’ve heard of them before and, indeed, once I nearly came upon one. So when I heard about this one I was tremendously excited and demanded that he tell me where it was being held.’

I’ll have a word with Osman, Owen said to himself.

‘It was in one of those houses on the edge of the Gamaliya, a big old house with both an outer courtyard and an inner one.’

‘Could you show it me?’

‘Well, I suppose I could. But I’d rather not. They placed me on my honour, you see –’

‘They also drugged you.’

‘Well … I’m not sure they did. Someone did, certainly. But not them. I was there on a basis of trust. Which was mutual.’

‘You made a bargain with them?’

McPhee hesitated.

‘Well, not initially.’ He looked uncomfortable. ‘There was, I’m afraid, an element of deception. On my part. I told them, you see, that it was a police raid. I pretended to have men with me. I demanded to see what was happening. They said it was out of the question. Very well then, I said, I will have to call my men. There was a bit of humming and ha-ing but eventually they said I could take a look through a window. I did and, my goodness me, Owen, it was fascinating! A ring of women, robes, candles, dancing –’

‘And then?’ Owen prompted.

‘Then all the candles went out. There was a great hubbub and lots of people came jostling me and told me I had to leave. And then the priestess came out –’

‘Priestess?’

‘Aalima. The witch. Well, I call her a priestess because, really, it was all most religious. It does have a religious basis, you know, Owen, there were religious sheikhs there, not in the Zzarr itself, of course, but in the courtyard outside –’

‘The Aalima?’ prompted Owen.

‘A most striking lady, Owen, most striking. Well, at first she absolutely refused. Said it was completely out of the question. And then I said that in that case I would have to arrest them.’

‘On what grounds?’

‘Causing a disturbance. The sheikhs didn’t like that, I can tell you.’

‘The sheikhs? You threatened to arrest the sheikhs?’

Oh Christ, thought Owen.

‘It was a bluff. And then I cunningly said that all I wanted to do was make sure that nothing untoward was happening, so I would be quite satisfied if they just brought me a chair and let me watch for a bit and satisfy myself on that score. In the end they agreed, provided I just listened – the music was marvellous, Owen, cymbals, you know, dubertas, timbrels. I agreed, of course, but then –’

He looked shamefaced.

‘I peeped.’

‘You did?’

‘Yes, I’m afraid I did. And, you know, Owen, it was most interesting, for what I saw –’

‘How did you come to get drugged?’

‘They brought me drink. They brought everyone in the courtyard drink. It was part of it, you see –’

‘Who brought you drink?’

‘A most charming girl. Dressed in white virginal robes –’

‘Yes, yes. Was she part of the, well, witch’s entourage?’

‘Yes. She came out with the bowl and took it round.’

‘She gave everyone a drink?’

‘Yes. Which is why, Owen,’ McPhee said with emphasis, ‘the drug must have been administered on a different occasion.’

‘Such as?’

‘Well, I can’t actually think –’ McPhee admitted.

‘Unless, of course, she put something special in just before she got to you.’

‘Oh, no, Owen. Really! A girl of integrity.’

Owen was beginning to see an argument for Gavin’s position.

‘And then you fell asleep?’ he said.

‘Yes. You know, Owen –’

‘Yes?’

‘I was very tired that night. You don’t think I could have just fallen asleep in the ordinary way and that afterwards someone administered –?’

‘While you were asleep? That strength? No,’ said Owen.

‘You see, I feel sure the lady was genuine.’

‘Well,’ said Owen soothingly, ‘perhaps, in her way, she was.’

McPhee looked pleased.

‘You think so? I must say, I’ve had doubts myself. Could it be a genuine survival, I’ve asked myself? Or –’

‘I shall want to know about the people in the courtyard,’ Owen said.

‘Hangers on,’ McPhee said, ‘excluded from the real mysteries.’

‘All men?’

‘Yes. They’re fascinated, too, of course. Can’t keep away. But frightened! The Aalima is a pretty compelling figure.’

‘Could you identify any of them?’

‘I might be able to recognize them. They’ll be local, of course.’

‘If you could just give me a start …’

McPhee nodded.

‘I’ll do my best. But, Owen,’ he said sternly, ‘there must be no messing about with the ladies. The Zzarr is a remarkable institution. It is, I am sure, pre-Islamic. I wouldn’t be surprised if it owed something to the Greek mysteries. I thought I caught some Greek words. Some Roman influence, too, perhaps. After all –’

‘Yes?’

‘Bacchantium instar mulieres vidimus.’

‘Quite,’ said Owen.

‘I protest,’ said Sheikh Musa.

‘I quite agree,’ said Owen heartily, ‘and I join myself in your protest.’

‘Wait a minute,’ said the Sheikh, ‘you’re the man I’m protesting to.’

‘If the subject of your protest is what I think it is,’ said Owen, ‘the deplorable assault on the Bimbashi a couple of nights ago, then we are on common ground.’

‘It’s not the assault I’m bothered about,’ said the Sheikh. ‘It’s his presence there in the first place.

‘At the Zzarr?’

The Sheikh winced.

‘We don’t like to use that word. The ceremony, you know, is not entirely regular. It’s not something that’s, well, officially recognized. We know it goes on, of course. There are people who, not to put too fine a point on it, are drawn to such things. I dare say you know the kind of people I mean?’

Owen, thinking of McPhee, said he did.

‘I wouldn’t want to encourage them by letting them think they have my approval. So I would prefer, if you don’t mind, not to use the word. To do so would be to admit that I know about such things.’

‘Well, yes, but … then why are you here?’

‘I have come to lodge a formal protest at Bimbashi McPhee’s presence.’

‘At what?’

‘An unspecified event in the Gamaliya district.’

‘You can’t protest at his presence if you’re unable to say what he was present at!’

‘From my point of view,’ said the Sheikh, ‘the protest is the important thing, not the event.’

‘I see.’

‘There’s a lot of feeling in the Gamaliya about the incident.’

‘I see.’

‘Which might boil over.’

‘What do you expect me to do about it?’

The Sheikh looked surprised.

‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘I just wanted to lodge a protest, that was all.’

Owen understood. The Sheikh was anxious to guard his back in terms of relations with his flock.

He thought for a moment.

‘I don’t know that I can accept a formal protest,’ he said. ‘If there wasn’t an event, there can’t have been a presence at it.’

‘Oh!’

‘I don’t think I could offer an apology. Formal, that is. However, I might be willing to issue a general statement deploring recent events – unspecified, of course, – in the Gamaliya. Would that help?’

‘From my point of view, yes.’

‘And from my point of view? Would that be enough to head off trouble?’

‘I doubt it,’ said Sheikh Musa.

Owen felt like kicking McPhee’s backside.

Owen still had hopes it would all quietly fade away. The heat would surely dissuade potential troublemakers from causing a riot and by the time the hot spell was over, with luck they would have forgotten about it. As for Garvin and McPhee, Garvin would soon be departing on leave. He usually liked to return to his old haunts at Alexandria and go duck shooting. With luck, he would return in a less savage frame of mind. Perhaps McPhee, too, could be induced to take a break: go and look at some of the monasteries in Sinai, for example. In heat like this people tended to get things out of perspective.

He had better watch that this didn’t happen in his own case. Perhaps he should take a holiday, too? The trouble was that Zeinab would insist on going to Paris. She regarded everywhere else as boringly provincial. The Government, on the other hand, insisted that its employees take their leave locally. Perhaps, on second thoughts, it might be best not to take a holiday. Besides, if Garvin and McPhee were away, someone had to look after the shop.

However, he must certainly guard against getting things out of perspective. He ought to take it easy for a bit. Working on this theory, he stepped out of the office mid-morning and went to his favourite café, taking the next day’s newspapers or, at least, the Arabic, French and English ones with him. He could always pretend that it was work. One of the Mamur Zapt’s duties was control of the press, a necessary function (in the view of the British) in a city of more than a dozen religions, a score of nationalities, a hundred different ethnic flavours and over a thousand sects, half of which at any given time were at the throats of the other half. To this end, he received advance copies of all publications.

Control, though, was another matter. Debate in the Arab world tended to be conducted at voice top anyway, and in the press the normal temperature was feverish. Cairo had taken to newspapers late but with gusto and there were hundreds of them. Each faction had at least two newspapers (two, because any group in Cairo could be guaranteed to split at least two ways) and they vied with each other in the extremity of their views and the vehemence with which they expressed them. Even the weather reports were fiercely disputed.

How to distinguish the normal incandescent from the potentially explosive? Owen usually did not try. After a year or two’s experience he developed a sixth sense which alerted him to passages likely to bring rival communities to blows. The rest he left well alone, on the assumption that readers were more interested in the violence of rhetoric than in the violence of action: an approach, however, which his superiors did not always understand.

The real value of the newspapers (to Owen) was that beneath the hyperbole it was sometimes possible to detect new concerns and growth of feeling. They were sometimes, despite everything, a useful source of intelligence. Another, of course, was the gossip of Cairo’s café culture. What better, then, than to combine the two? Where better for the Mamur Zapt, the Head of Political Intelligence, to sit than in a well-populated Arab café with all his intelligence material to hand? So, at least, argued Owen; and turned to the sports pages.

He became aware of someone trying covertly to attract his attention. It was a man at an adjoining table. His face seemed familiar, although it took a little while for Owen to place him. Not one of his agents but a man who sometimes gave his agents useful information. A Greek, with the dark suit and pot-like red tarboosh of the Effendi, or office worker.

‘Have you heard about Philipides?’ he said.

‘Philipides?’

‘He’s coming out tomorrow.’ Misunderstanding Owen’s puzzlement, he said: ‘It may not be in the Arab papers. It’s in the Greek ones.’

‘What’s special about Philipides?’ asked Owen.

The man smiled, obviously thinking Owen was playing with him.

‘The Mamur Zapt, of all people, should know that,’ he said.

He put some milliemes out for the waiter.

‘Garvin ought to be interested,’ he said. ‘Or so they say.’

He went off through the tables. Owen sipped his coffee and searched his memory. The name meant nothing to him.

On the other side of the street he saw someone he knew and waved to him. The man waved back and came across. His name was Georgiades. Another Greek, but this time definitely not an Effendi. No tarboosh, an open-necked shirt, casual, crumpled cotton trousers held up by a belt over which his stomach bulged uncomfortably. He pointed proudly to it.

‘See that?’ he said. ‘Another notch! Rosa’s cutting down on the food. It’s been a struggle for her. All Greek women are taught to fatten their husbands up but she’s decided she’s had enough. It’s fattening the goose for killing, she says. She and her grandmother are at loggerheads again over it.’

He sat down at Owen’s table and mopped his brow. There were dark patches of sweat beneath his armpits, on his chest, on his back and even on the thighs of his trousers.

‘Does the name Philipides mean anything to you?’ said Owen.

The Greek thought for a bit, then nodded.

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Owen, ‘but someone’s just told me the Mamur Zapt, above all, ought to know. Above all. That’s why I’m wondering.’

‘Ah, yes,’ said Georgiades, ‘but which Mamur Zapt?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You or your predecessor?’

‘There was a gap,’ said Owen. ‘McPhee stood in.’

‘No,’ said Georgiades. ‘Before.’

‘There was something about corruption, wasn’t there?’

‘There was.’

‘And Philipides was something to do with it?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Can you give me some details?’

Georgiades considered.

‘I think perhaps you ought to ask Garvin,’ he said.

3

‘Philipides?’ said Garvin, musing. ‘So he’s out, is he?’

‘Does it interest you?’

‘Not much. They’ve all got to come out sometime.’

‘My informant thought it should interest you.’

Garvin shrugged.

‘I can’t think why.’

‘Is there a chance he might be looking for revenge?’

‘I put him inside, certainly. But he can hardly complain about that. He was as crooked as they come.’

‘Is there any reason for him to have a particular grudge against you?’

‘Not really. The Parquet handled it all. I was just one of the witnesses. Mind you, I set the traps.’

‘Perhaps that was it.’

‘I wouldn’t have thought so. There was nothing special about it.’

‘It caught him,’ Owen pointed out.

‘I’ve caught lots of people,’ said Garvin. ‘That doesn’t mean to say they all want revenge. No, if there was anyone who wanted to get his own back, it wouldn’t be him.’

‘Who would it be, then?’

‘His boss.’

‘Who was?’

Garvin grinned.

‘Guess,’ he suggested.

‘The Mamur Zapt?’

‘You’ve been talking to someone.’

‘Georgiades. He suggested I talk to you!’

Garvin was amused.

‘Prudent fellow,’ he said.

‘What’s it all about?’

‘It’s straightforward, really. It was not long after I moved here from Alexandria. There was a lot to sort out. My God, you’d never believe how much there was, they were back in the last century –’

‘McPhee here then?’

‘No, that was later. He came because of this. Anyway, one day I got home and found a small parcel on the hall table. I opened it and found a pair of diamond earrings. I was a bit surprised, thought my wife had been buying things; hell, we hadn’t got much money in those days, so I asked her about it when she got back. She didn’t know anything about the parcel. Anyway, I asked around and found that it had been brought by one of Philipides’s orderlies. So the next morning I had Philipides in and asked him about it. He said, big mistake, it was meant for someone else, the orderly had got confused. Anyway, I let him have the earrings back and thought no more about it.’

‘And what was Philipides at this time?’

‘He was a police inspector in the Abdin district and had the name of being the Mamur Zapt’s right-hand man. I didn’t put the two together though till some months later when I heard that one of my own officers had been pawning his wife’s jewellery to raise money to purchase promotion. Well, as you can imagine, I had him in. It took a bit of time but eventually I got from him that Philipides was demanding the money as the price of the Mamur Zapt’s recommendation.’

Garvin looked at Owen.

‘It was significant in those days. The Commandant then was Wainwright and he didn’t have a clue. The Mamur Zapt just twisted him round his finger. What the Mamur Zapt said, went. Well, I was pretty shocked, I can tell you. I hadn’t realized things were as bad as that. I made some discreet inquiries and found that it was quite an accepted practice. But what the hell was I to do?’

‘If the officer had confessed –’

Garvin gestured impatiently.

‘Yes, but, you see, I couldn’t go to Wainwright. I was just a new boy in those days and Deputy Commandant carried no clout. Wainwright took the Mamur Zapt’s word on everything.’

‘Yes, but if you had the evidence –’

‘It wasn’t enough. If it came to it, the Mamur Zapt could disown Philipides. Say it was nothing to do with him. I had to show there was a connection between the two.’

‘So how did you do it?’

‘Set a trap. I told the original officer to let Philipides know that he had confessed to me and then I tapped the telephone lines between Philipides and the Mamur Zapt.’

‘Telephone?’ The telephone system in Cairo was still in its infancy and largely consigned to Government offices; at the time Garvin was referring to, it would have been younger still.

‘Yes,’ Garvin replied, ‘The Mamur Zapt had one of the earliest ones.’

‘Did it work?’

‘Up to a point, yes. Philipides rang him that afternoon and said enough to incriminate the pair of them. I took it all down and showed it to Wainwright the next morning.’

He walked over to the window and poured himself some water from the earthenware pitcher which stood next to the shutters of all Cairo offices where it would cool.

‘Even then it wasn’t simple,’ he said. ‘Wainwright just wouldn’t believe me. I had to go to the Consul-General. Over his head. That made me popular, I can tell you! In the end, I got the C-G to agree but it took three weeks to persuade Wainwright to suspend the two.’

‘By which time –’

‘No, they couldn’t very well destroy the evidence. They tried intimidation first, put a lot of pressure on the officer. I had to give him an armed guard. I was terrified he would give way. They tried it on me, too.’

Owen smiled.

‘Yes, well, that didn’t get them very far,’ said Garvin. ‘But it was pretty unpleasant. I carried a gun with me all the time. Then they tried to discredit me. They dredged up the earrings. Said that I was in the habit of accepting presents and only made a fuss this time because I wanted more. Fortunately, I’d told Judge Willis all about it the day it happened. It just shows you can’t be too careful.’

He pushed the shutters slightly apart to encourage a breeze. Normally they kept the offices dark and cool but the prolonged hot spell had made them like ovens.

‘Next, they said it was political.’

‘Political!’

‘Yes. They said it was all a trick to get Egyptians out and British in. They made great play of that when it came to the trial, and the Parquet was content to let it run because they wanted to make their own political point. They gave me a real grilling. Went on for days. Apart from the officer, and he was my subordinate, I was the chief witness, you see. To the telephone conversation, anyway, and that was crucial, because it was only that, really, that tied the Mamur Zapt in. In the end, though, it suited them to go for a conviction.’

‘Which they got.’

‘Yes. Well, I say “got”. Both were found guilty and sent to jail but the Mamur Zapt was released almost at once on compassionate grounds. He knew too much about all the people involved. The politicians were dead scared that if they didn’t look after him, he would spill all the beans.’

‘Where is he now?’

‘Enjoying a fat pension in Damascus.’

‘It sounds as if he’s got it all worked out,’ said Owen. ‘I’ll bear his example in mind.’

‘There are other examples, too, you might bear in mind,’ said Garvin. ‘Wainwright got the push shortly after. I got promotion.’

‘Thank you. What about McPhee?’

‘That bum!’

‘How does he come into it?’

‘Well, they needed a replacement as Mamur Zapt. The one thing he had to be, in the circumstances, was honest.’

‘Well, he is that,’ said Owen.

‘I managed to get it made temporary. The price was that when they filled the post he got moved sideways to Deputy Commandant. I’m trying to make that,’ said Garvin, ‘temporary, too.’

In this hot weather, Owen liked to sleep outside. He had a small garden, which the house’s previous occupant, a Greek, had developed in the Mediterranean style rather than the English, more for shade than colour. It was thick with shrubs but there was a little open space beneath a large orange tree and it was here that Owen disposed his bed, not too far in under the branches in case creepy-crawlies dropped on him during the night, but not too far out, either, where the moonlight might prevent him from sleeping.

This morning he awoke with the sun, as he always did, and at once reached his hand down for his slippers, tapping them automatically on the ground to dislodge any scorpion that might have crept in. Then he slipped them on and made for the shower. The water came from a tank in the roof and was still warm from the previous day’s sun. He was just reaching out happily for the soap when he heard the slither behind him and froze. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the tail disappearing into the wall.

‘Jesus!’ he said, and dispensed with the shower for that morning.

The snake catcher came that afternoon. He was a gnarled, weather-beaten little man with snake bites all over his hands and carrying a leather bag and a cane.

‘Another one?’ he said. ‘It’s the hot weather that’s bringing them out.’

‘I didn’t see what sort it was,’ said Owen, ‘I just caught a glimpse of the tail.’

He took the snake catcher to the showerhouse and pointed out the hole. The snake catcher sniffed at it and said: ‘Yes, that’s the way he came, but he doesn’t live there.’

He went round to the back of the showerhouse and showed Owen the hole where the snake had got out. A slight, almost imperceptible track led into the undergrowth.

‘Not been doing much gardening, have you?’ said the snake catcher. ‘He’s all right in there.’

He followed the trail in carefully.

‘There he is!’ he said suddenly. ‘See him? Down by that root.’

It would be just the head and eyes that were visible. Owen couldn’t see anything.

The snake catcher stood and thought a bit. He was working out where the tail was.

After a while he put down the leather bag beside Owen and circled round behind the snake. This was the tricky part, he had told Owen on a previous occasion. The next bit was more obviously dramatic but this bit was tricky because the tail would often be coiled around roots or undergrowth and it was not always easy to tear it loose.

Owen liked to watch a craftsman at work. He took up a position where he could see.

The snake catcher began to move cautiously into the undergrowth, peering intently before him. He came to a stop and just stood there for a while, looking.

Suddenly, he pounced. The snake came up with his hand, wriggling and twisting. He threw it out into the open. It tried at once to squirm away but he cut off its escape by beating with his cane. The snake came to ground in the middle of the clearing.

The snake catcher crept forward and then suddenly brought the cane down hard on the snake’s neck, pressing it in to the ground. Then, holding the cane down with his left hand, he reached out with his right hand and seized the snake with thumb and forefinger, forcing the jaws open. He dropped the cane and held out the skirts of his galabeah so that the snake could strike at them. He let it strike several times. Yellow beads of venom appeared on the cloth. When he was satisfied that all the poison had been drawn, he opened his bag and dropped the cobra inside. Snake catchers hardly ever killed their snakes.

‘What will you do with it?’

‘Dispose of it through the trade. Some shops want them. Charmers. Some people buy them for pets.’

‘You’d need to know what you’re doing.’

‘Most people don’t,’ he said. ‘That’s why there’s always a demand for new ones. They die easy.’

‘It’s not the other way round? The owners that die?’

‘We take the fangs out first. That makes them safe. The poison flows along the fang, you see. The trouble is, they use the teeth for killing their food. Once they’re gone, they don’t last very long.’

‘What about milking?’ asked Owen, displaying his newfound knowledge.

‘It’s all right if you know what you’re doing. There is a sac behind the fangs where the poison is. You let it strike – that’s what I was doing – until the sac is drained dry. Then you’re all right for about a fortnight.’

‘If you had a lot of snakes,’ said Owen, thinking about the cistern where they had found McPhee, ‘you’d have to know each one.’

‘Well, you would know each one, wouldn’t you, if it was your job.’

They walked back to the house.

‘Do you know a snake catcher over in Gamaliya?’

‘There are several. Which one?’

‘He’s on the Place of Tombs side.’

‘Abu?’

‘That’s the one. He’s got a daughter.’

The snake catcher smiled.

‘He’s got a right one there!’ he said.

‘She seems to know a lot about it.’

‘Oh, she knows a lot about it, all right. She wants to be one of us. Take on from him after he’s gone, like. But it won’t do. She’s a girl, isn’t she? We’re a special sect, you know. The Rifa’i. You’ve got to be one of us before you’re allowed to do it. It’s very strict. Got to be, hasn’t it? And we don’t have women. It would confuse the snakes. Anyway, it’s not a woman’s job.’

‘How come she knows so much about it?’

‘Watched her dad. He let her see too much, in my opinion. He wanted a boy, you see, and then when one didn’t come he got in the habit of treating her as one.’

‘Well, she seems a lively girl.’

‘Yes, but who’d want a daughter like that? What a business when it came to marrying her off! You might have to pay her husband extra.’

When Owen arrived at her appartement, Zeinab wasn’t there. She arrived half an hour later.

‘Well, what do you expect?’ she said. ‘If you think I’m going to be waiting for you half naked in bed every time you drop in, you’d better think again.’

Zeinab had, unfortunately, not forgotten the business about the girl. It had been a mistake telling her. For some obscure reason she blamed him.

‘And, incidentally, what happened to that diamond?’

Owen fished in his pocket and took it out. Zeinab inspected it critically.

‘Cheap!’ she pronounced. ‘They’ve certainly got you worked out, haven’t they?’

Owen put the stone back in his pocket.

‘Is that a good idea?’ asked Zeinab. ‘Going around with it in your pocket?’

‘It’s all right,’ Owen assured her. ‘It’s safer there than in the Bab-el-Khalk.’

Zeinab began to feel motherly feelings.

‘Yes, I’m sure, darling. But is it a good idea all the same? Oughtn’t you to give it to someone? If you keep it, you see,’ she said, pronouncing the words very slowly, as to an idiot, ‘they may say you’ve deliberately kept it.’

‘I’m keeping it as evidence.’

‘Yes, but –’ said Zeinab, motherliness struggling against exasperation.

‘I’ve booked it in,’ Owen assured her.

‘Did you book the girl in, too, while you were at it?’ asked Zeinab tartly.

Owen overtook McPhee just as he was going up the first steps of the Bab-el-Khalk. He put an arm round him solicitously.

‘How are you feeling, old chap?’

‘Better now, thanks.’

‘You still look a bit groggy.’

‘I’m shaking it off. It was a big dose, I suppose,’ McPhee admitted.

‘Yes … and in this heat … Look, old chap, why don’t you take a few days off? Go and look at some monasteries somewhere … Sinai …’

‘I don’t like –’

‘I can look after it all for a few days. It would do you good. Better to shake it off completely, you know, not go on struggling against it … This heat.’

‘Well thank you, Gareth. I’ll think about it. Yes, I’ll think about it.’

‘It goes on, doesn’t it,’ he said to Garvin as they passed in the corridor, ‘this heat? Could do with a bit of fresh air. Wish I was at the coast …’

‘The coast …’ murmured Garvin reflectively.

Getting rid of those two would get rid of half the difficulty, he told himself. By the time they came back they would have forgotten all about it. He had no intention whatsoever of trying to find out what had happened to McPhee at the Zzarr. As far as he could see, all that had happened was that they’d slipped him something to make sure he didn’t see what he wasn’t supposed to see. It had been a bit nasty putting him in the cistern with all those snakes, though. Still, you could look at it another way, if the girl was going there regularly to milk them, she’d be bound to find him. And then, he’d have woken up anyway once the drug had worn off. Christ, what an awakening! No, the whole thing was best left alone. If, of course, it could be left alone …

The first indication that it couldn’t came not, as he had half-expected, from rumblings in the Gamaliya but from the press. There was a paragraph in one of the fundamentalist weeklies about Christian interference in local religious rites. No details were given but the McPhee incident was obviously being referred to.

Owen was a little surprised. He had expected, following the visit from Sheikh Musa, grumblings at the local level but, given the secrecy of the event and the unwillingness of Sheikh Musa to give it publicity, he had not expected it to reach the press. A couple of days later there was another reference to it, in the Nationalist press this time and with more detail. And then a day or so after, it was picked up yet again, more fiercely, in a sectarian paper which was critical of both the offender – now named unequivocally as an Englishman – and of the local religious authorities.

It was clear that the tip-off had not come from Sheikh Musa. Who had it come from, then? Owen sat back and thought. Was there something after all in Garvin’s supposition that someone was trying to set up McPhee?

This looked very like an orchestrated campaign. He thought about it a little more and then decided to test if it was by inserting a mild spoke in their wheel. He would excise all press reference to the incident for a week or two. It wouldn’t stop publication entirely since there was a large and thriving underground press in Cairo, but it would force someone’s hand if they were trying to mount a campaign. They would have to take the greater risk of illicit publication, and he could have the printers watched in the hope of picking up anyone new who came into the market.

It seemed to work, for after about a week the references in the press died down. He waited for the approaches to the underground printers. Then one morning he came in to the Bab-el-Khalk to find Nikos waiting for him.

‘There’s been an attack on a Coptic shop in the Gamaliya,’ he said.

Owen hardly needed to ask where it was.

‘Near the Place of Tombs? Right, I’ll go there.’

The Copts, the original inhabitants of the city – they had been there long before the Muslims arrived – were Christians, and were usually the first targets of any religious unrest.

He found the shop easily enough. There was a little knot of people standing in front of it. There was no broken glass. Shops in the traditional quarters, like the houses, did not have glass windows. They were open to the street. Instead, though, there were bits of wood lying everywhere. At night, the shopkeepers drew wooden shutters across their shops and these had obviously been broken open.

He couldn’t at first make out what kind of shop it was. All he could see, scattered about on the ground, were little gilt cylinders. Puzzled, he picked one up. It had three thin metal rings attached to it.

‘It’s for women to put on,’ said the shopkeeper. ‘It keeps the veil off the face.’

Seeing that Owen still did not understand – he knew little about technology and even less about female technology – he demonstrated by fitting it on himself. The cylinder went across the nose and the face veil was suspended from it. The rings held the cloth away from the nostrils and the mouth to allow passage of air.

Owen shrugged.

‘At least with this sort of stuff you don’t get much broken,’ he said.

‘It’s not the damage,’ said the shopkeeper. ‘It’s the – I’ll never feel the same again. We’ve lived here for twenty years. We thought we were liked by our neighbours. We thought we liked them. Now something like this happens!’

‘It’s not the neighbours, Guptos,’ said one of the bystanders quietly.

‘It’s someone in the Gamaliya,’ said the Copt bitterly. ‘Don’t tell me they came right across the city just to break up my shop!’

Owen went inside with him. At the back of the shop were some stairs which led to an upper storey. Some children, huddled on the stairs, peeped down at him.

‘It’s the effect on the kids,’ said the shopkeeper. ‘We’ve always let them run around, play with who they like. They’ve got friends … Now my wife is afraid to let them out of her sight.’

He bent down and began to pick up cylinders from the floor.

‘It’s not the shop I mind about,’ he said. ‘We can always start again. It’s the kids, my wife. How can she go to the suk and look them in the face, knowing what they’ve done? What they could do again? We’ll have to move.’

Owen looked around. The fittings of the shop were very simple. The walls were lined with shelves, as in a cupboard, on which the goods were stored. There was a low counter at the front on which, when a potential customer inquired, particular items could be displayed; or on which, typically, the shopkeeper would sit when he was not working. He worked on the ground behind the counter. Owen could see some tools scattered among the debris.

There was not, in fact, a lot of debris. This was not the moment to tell the man he was lucky; but he was. Owen had often seen worse. This did not look like the random, total violence that usually resulted when a mob ran amok. It was something measured, selected, perhaps, to send a message.

‘Why was it you?’ he asked.

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