Michael Pearce - The Mamur Zapt and the Night of the Dog

“No. Anyway,” said Mahmoud, “I don’t have any Copts in my office. What about you?”

Nikos. Owen pushed the thought immediately aside.

“If I did,” he said, “they are people I can trust.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,” said Owen. “I am quite sure.”

Mahmoud shrugged. The gesture came across offensively. In some way it conveyed utter disbelief.

Owen boiled over.

“Well,” he said, “now that you’ve lost him, you’d better find him.”

The way he put it made it sound like an order. Mahmoud turned on his heel and went off without a further word.

“Well,” said Georgiades, “he could be right, couldn’t he?”

“No,” said Owen, “he couldn’t.”

Georgiades spread his hands. Owen distrusted these Cairene gestures of openness.

“Look at it this way: two loyalties. One to you, one to his people. Both real, both genuine. If he can serve one without hurting the other too much, what the harm?”

“It would hurt me. It would hurt the department.”

“How much?”

“It hits at the work we do.”

“How much? Just this one instance?”

“It’s his people I’m trying to help.”

“And the Moslems.”

“I’m neutral.”

“He’s not.”

“He’s neutral when he works for me.”

“Mostly. Mostly.”

“Are you saying that in this case he’s playing a game of his own?”

“I’m only saying that he might be.”

Owen was silent. Before transferring to the Egyptian service he had been a regular-army officer in India and at times his military background reasserted itself. He liked things, or at least people, or at least those people near him, to be straightforward. He found it hard, almost impossible, to accept any deceit on Nikos’s part. Internally, that was. So far as the rest of the world was concerned he could conceive of almost any deception. But among themselves…

“It’s only a hypothesis,” he said.

“Sure!” Georgiades agreed quickly. “Sure.”

“You don’t know anything that makes it anything more?”

“No, I’m just figuring out all the angles.”

“It could be someone else.”

“It needn’t even be in this office.”

“OK, then.”

“If I were you,” said Georgiades, “I’d forget about it. Only…”

“Only what?”

“Be careful.”

Owen knew what he meant. While they were working on this case there were some things which Nikos had better not know.

“OK.”

Georgiades smiled cheerfully. He had just suggested that his closest colleague might be, in this at least, a traitor. But there was nothing personal in it. Nikos was still his friend. Georgiades still trusted him. As much as he trusted anybody.

Owen was going through the accounts with Nikos trying to find pockets of money which might still be emptied. They came to the end of one set. While Nikos was collecting the papers Owen said casually:

“When they went to find Zoser, he wasn’t at home.”

Nikos understood immediately.

“A tip-off?”

“It looks like it.”

Nikos’s mind began automatically to turn over the possibilities, as it always did.

“That’s funny,” he said.

“Why?”

“Zoser doesn’t strike me as the sort of person who would have contacts.”

“Maybe it was just a sympathizer.”

Nikos nodded.

“Yes. Perhaps you’d better review all Copts working in the office. Including me. Do the same with Mahmoud’s office.”

Owen did not say anything.

Nikos’s thoughts moved on to a different tack.

“He doesn’t have many friends. And they’re all Copts. He must be in one of the Coptic parts of the city.”

“And there are plenty of those.”

“Mahmoud will be checking his friends,” said Nikos. “That’s obvious.”

He frowned for a moment in concentration.

“The centre of Zoser’s life is the church,” he said. “I’ll get you a list of the people who go there regularly.”

“Do you think you’ll be able to?”

Nikos looked at him with scorn, scooped up the remaining papers and went out.

It was the old, normal Nikos. Owen was a hundred per cent sure that he was OK.

Well, ninety-nine per cent.

Owen had other fish to fry and for the next two days he was busy on other things. He kept his men off the case, too. Mahmoud would be going over Zoser’s contacts with a fine-tooth comb and, especially after their last exchange, Owen did not want to queer his pitch.

There were developments, however. He was sitting at his desk on the second morning when Nikos stuck his head through the door.

“Here they are again,” he said.

“They” were the assistant kadi and the two sheikhs who had been before. This time it was the kadi who did most of the talking.

“It’s about that murder,” he said. “My friends are concerned that nothing seems to be happening.”

“Oh, a lot is happening,” Owen assured him. “It’s just that we need to be absolutely sure before proceeding. Especially in a case like this.”

“Not ‘absolutely sure,’ ” said the kadi legalistically. “ ‘Reasonably certain’ will do.”

“Reasonably certain, then,” Owen amended.

“And you are not in that position yet?”

“Pretty nearly, I would say. Of course, the case is in the hands of the Parquet.”

“It is just that my friends are coming under great pressure from their communities over the incident.”

The two sheikhs nodded in unison.

“I am sorry that should be so,” said Owen. “I can assure them that we are making every effort. And, as I said, I think that we shall shortly be in a position to proceed against someone.”

“Rumour has it,” said the kadi, “that the Parquet sought to arrest someone and were unsuccessful.”

“I’m afraid you’ll have to ask the Parquet about that.”

“The trouble is,” said the kadi, “that apparently the man was a Copt. That makes it especially difficult for my friends. You see, there is word in the bazaar that perhaps the man heard beforehand that the Parquet were coming. And the communities are asking whether that was, perhaps, because he was a Copt.”

“On that at least I can set your friends’ minds at rest. Whether the man was Copt or Moslem would make no difference.”

“So there was a man?”

“I was speaking hypothetically. If there was a man, it would make no difference whether he was Copt or Moslem. The Mamur Zapt is even-handed.”

The two sheikhs looked a little perturbed. One of them tried to say something. The kadi affected not to notice and went smoothly on.

“I am sure of that,” he said. “The doubt was rather about the impartiality of the offices. There are a lot of Copts in them.”

“I am sure they are loyal and honest servants of the Khedive.”

“I hope so. But things like this make one doubt, don’t you think?”

Owen judged it best to make no reply. He just smiled winningly.

The sheikh, now, would not be restrained.

“This is a bad man,” he said, “and he must be punished.”

“He will be. Of that I can assure you.”

“My people are angry. They say that the Government is not even-handed.”

“Tell your people that the Government seeks to stamp out wrongdoing wherever it is found.”

“We have told them that,” said the other sheikh unexpectedly, “but they will not listen to us.”

“My friends are coming under great pressure,” said the kadi.

“I appreciate that. And I will do what I can. But one must not hasten justice at the expense of justice.”

“True.” The sheikhs nodded agreement.

“But,” one of them said, “it is important that no one who has done wrong should escape justice.”