Michael Pearce - The Mamur Zapt and the return of the Carpet

“Make way! Make way!” snapped McPhee, still upset.

The bright white glare of the street was dazzling after the cool darkness of the house and they stopped momentarily to adjust.

Georgiades came running round the corner.

“The roof!” he shouted. “The roof!”

He plunged back into the shop. Two of his men rushed in after him.

Abdul Kassem appeared from a sidestreet.

“There’s a man on the roof!” he said, and doubled back.

Owen ran after him, closely followed by McPhee, closely followed by the entire crowd.

The sidestreet bent round into a wide square from which they could look back at the roofline.

At first they could see nothing.

Abdul Kassem pulled them to one side and pointed.

“There! There!”

Half obscured by the small minaret of a mosque they saw a man on the flat roof of one of the houses. He appeared to be dragging something.

“That’s him!” cried McPhee exultantly. He pulled out his revolver.

“Don’t shoot, for Christ’s sake!” said Owen. "It’s grenades up there!”

Another man suddenly appeared on a roof some way to the right of the first man. It was Georgiades. He began running across the roofs. Two other men emerged and raced after him.

The first man disappeared behind a parapet.

“He could come down anywhere!” said Owen in agony.

He looked around. He still had four men with him.

“You take those two,” he said to McPhee, “and try and get round behind him on that side. I’ll take the others!”

McPhee ran off instantly.

Abdul Kassem did not wait for Owen but set off through the backstreets on the near side.

They soon lost sight of the roofs.

“Christ!” said Owen again. “He could come down anywhere.”

They came out into a long street which ran roughly parallel to the man’s course.

“You stay here,” Owen said to the other constable. “You can see the whole street.”

He himself ran on after Abdul Kassem. The Egyptian was much better than he was at this sort of thing. He knew, or was able to sense, the pattern of the tiny, twisting streets. Owen knew he was holding him back.

“You go on,” he gasped. “Try and get in front of him.”

Abdul Kassem shot off.

Owen came to a corner and stopped. His heart was pounding and his eyes were blinded with sweat. He took out a handkerchief to wipe his face and tried to think. There was no point in just running aimlessly along the street. He needed to know where the man was. He had a vague sense of him being to the right and heading northward, but in this warren of tiny streets forever twisting back on themselves that did not help much.

He walked along until he came to a square and then tried to look up at the roofs, but the square was small and the houses which surrounded it so high that he could see very little. He needed to be up higher.

At the corner of the square was a little mosque with a minaret rising above it. He ran over to it and tried to go in but the door was heavily bolted. Still, the idea was a good one, and as he ran on he kept his eye open for a mosque that was not barred.

The street narrowed still further and then opened out into a kind of piazza which did not seem to have any way out of it. Exactly opposite him was a sebil, a fountain-house, whose steeply curved sides, guarded with grilles of intricate metalwork, rose up high to an arcaded upper storey. It was approached by a sweeping flight of steps with an ornate marble balustrade.

Without stopping to think, Owen ran straight up the steps. At the top, set in among the arcades where it would be cool, was an open recess obviously used as a kuttub, a place where little children received their first lessons in the Koran. The kuttub was empty, but an old man lay sleeping against a pillar.

Besides him another flight of stairs, much narrower, led up to the roof. Owen leaped up them and came out on to the flat top of the arcades.

To one side, behind him, he could see out over modern Cairo as far as the Nile and the brown desert beyond it. To the other was the fantastic skyline of old Cairo, with its minarets and cupolas, the high towers of the mosques, the arcades and domes of the old houses, and in among them the flat spaces where people came up to take the evening air.

Now, with the sun still very hot, the roofs were deserted. There was no movement, anywhere.

He felt a hand plucking at his sleeve. It was the old man. Owen could see now that he was blind. He had found him by hearing alone.

“I will show you the way down, father,” he said.

But the old man could get down without his aid. He kept asking Owen what he wanted. Owen explained lamely that he was looking out over the roofs in search of a thief. The old man shook his head, whether in disbelief or commiseration at the world’s iniquity. He kept touching Owen’s arm. He was obviously puzzled. Something about Owen, the accent, perhaps just the bodily presence, told him that Owen was a foreigner.

Owen apologized again, excused himself, and descended to the ground. Half way down he met a black-veiled woman carrying a bowl for the old man. She shrank back against the wall as Owen passed.

Little streets, so little they were hardly streets, ran off from the piazza on every side. There seemed nothing to tell one from another. It came over Owen how pointless it was trying to intercept a man in this maze.

He made his way back to the Syrian’s shop.

McPhee arrived at almost the same moment.

“Like looking for a needle in a haystack,” he said. “Useless!”

One of the men who had been with Georgiades on the roof came out of the shop carrying a large box.

“Thank Christ for that!” said McPhee. “At least we’ve got something.”

A moment later Georgiades himself appeared. He was mopping his face with a large blue handkerchief.

“The next time we do this,” he said to Owen, “it had better be in the cooler part of the day.”

“You didn’t get him,” said Owen.

Georgiades shook his head regretfully.

“No,” he said. “What a waste! After running over the roofs of half Cairo!”

He looked down at the big box.

“We got this, though,” he said. “When I got close to him he put it down and ran.”

The Syrian came out of the shop with the man from the consulate in attendance.

“ This your property?” asked Owen, indicating the box.

“Yes,” said the man from the consulate.

“I have never seen it on my life before,” declared the Syrian solemnly.

“It’s a box of grenades,” said Owen.

“You heard my client,” said the man from the consulate. “He has never seen this in his life before. You have made a mistake.”

“And so have you,” said McPhee, taking the Syrian by the arm. “What are you doing?” said the man from the consulate, stepping between them.

“Taking him to the police headquarters,” said McPhee.

“You cannot do that,” said the man from the consulate. “He is a Syrian citizen.”

“Caught redhanded,” said McPhee indignantly, “with the arms in his possession.”

“He knows nothing about the arms!” said the man from the consulate. “Someone else had put them there!”

“Oh, yes,” said McPhee sarcastically. “Who?”

“I don’t know,” said the man from the consulate. “It’s not my job to find out. It’s your job.”

"We have found out,” said McPhee.

“I don’t know about that,” said the man. “It would have to be tested in a court.”

“That’s exactly what I’m planning,” said McPhee.

“A Consular Court,” said the man.

“A Consular Court?” said McPhee incredulously. “The man’s been caught with arms in his possession.”

“A Mixed Tribunal, then.”