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

“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?”