Michael Pearce - The Snake Catcher’s Daughter

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 cafe 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 cafe 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.

"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?”