Michael Pearce - The Face in the Cemetery

‘Laid down by Whitehall,’ murmured Paul. ‘Can’t touch it.’

‘What I want is power of discretion. That wouldn’t solve everything, but it might help.’

‘Discretion is normally understood,’ said Paul. ‘You’ve got to leave some latitude to the man on the spot. However …’

He thought about it.

‘However, I’d be a bit careful about it, if I were you. Have you read the newspapers lately? The English ones? They’re full of spy scares. There’s all sorts of panic at home and some of it is spilling over here.’

‘Yes, but –’

‘And then there’s another thing: they’re making changes. They’re bringing some new people out here. One of them is something to do with security.’

‘That’s my job.’

‘Sure. I expect he’ll be working to you. But, Gareth, he’ll have contacts back at home and he, too –’ he waved his hand again – ‘might be wanting to try other people’s seats. I daresay he’ll be no problem, but you see what I mean when I say that you ought to be a bit careful just at the moment.’

‘Don’t use too much discretion – is that what you’re saying?’

‘That, and also that you ought to get some kind of formal approval, in writing, of your powers.’

‘You can give me that, can’t you?’

‘Yes. But I think it would be better if it came from Cunningham.’

‘OK, I’ll try and have a word with him.’

The bar at the Sporting Club was much less crowded than it usually was at lunch-time. This was because so many people were on holiday. Owen had been hoping to find Cunningham, but he wasn’t there. However, he did find someone he knew from the Ministry of the Interior, a man named McKitterick.

‘Guns?’ McKitterick said, leaning his arm easily on the bar. ‘Well, yes, and not before time. Look what the ghaffirs had to make do with up till now.’

‘Yes, but these are service rifles. You don’t want to put them in the hands of untrained men.’

‘They won’t be untrained. We’ve got a big training programme going.’

‘Yes, I’ve heard about that. But it’s the wrong sort of training. It’s military training.’

‘Isn’t that what they need?’

‘Ghaffirs? Village watchmen? Mostly they shoot crows.’

‘But sometimes they have to shoot brigands, and when they do, they’ve got to have a weapon decent enough to put up a show with.’

‘Very rarely, only in some parts of Egypt, do you have to fight brigands. And when you do, you don’t want ghaffirs doing it. You want police or soldiers. It’s a confusion of functions, from an administrative point of view. A ghaffir’s function is much more limited.’

‘Yes, we know about confusion of functions, thank you,’ said the other man, nettled. ‘And we know about ghaffirs, too. Look, we’ve gone into this very thoroughly, more thoroughly, I suspect, than you have, and the conclusion we’ve come to is that there is a need to do something about the ghaffirs. Both in terms of training and in terms of weaponry. One of our inspectors looked into this in great detail and came up with a really first-class report.’

‘Which suggested turning ghaffirs into a sort of internal army?’

‘If that’s the way you want to put it, yes.’

‘Answerable to whom?’

‘The Ministry, of course.’

‘The ghaffir used to be answerable to his own village.’

‘And still will be. But there’s a need for wider coordination. Look, you’ve just come back from Minya, haven’t you? What chance has a single ghaffir there got against a pack of brigands?’

‘You use the police. Or the Army.’

‘I think, Owen, that the Army’s got other things on its mind just at the moment. And the whole point of this is to take some of the load off the police. I really don’t see what it is that you’ve got against reforming an antiquated, inefficient, and frankly useless service.’

‘It’s just that I don’t like the idea of a well-armed, militarily trained force of fifty thousand men operating independently in the country at a time when it’s at war.’

McKitterick stared at him incredulously.

‘God, Owen, what’s got into you? “Operating independently”? It’s not operating independently, it’s operating under us. Do you think the Ministry’s going to launch some kind of coup? You must be crazy! Aren’t you taking a perfectly sensible reform a little over-seriously? Perhaps you’ve been working too hard. Why don’t you just stay out of the sun for a day or two?’

When he got back to his office he found that Nikos had pushed to one side the lists he had been working on and put in a conspicuously central position on his desk the memorandum from Finance that he had been trying for several weeks to ignore.

We first wrote to you some seven weeks ago requesting an explanation of how your apparent disbursements under Headings J, P, Q and Y of your Departmental Expenditure Statement are to be reconciled with the figures you give in Section 5 (c) ii and 8 (g) iv, not to mention Financial Regulations (see Sections 4 (d) i, 6 (b) v and 7). Despite requested requests …

Didn’t these blokes know there was a war on? Hadn’t they realized that people might have something better to do than answer their potty memoranda? And how could anyone be expected to answer a memorandum that might have been written in Pharaonic hieroglyphics for all the sense he could make of it?

He pushed the memorandum indignantly aside.

‘There’s been a man phoning from the Ministry of Finance,’ said Nikos, watching from the doorway. ‘He says he’ll try again.’

On reflection, Owen thought he wouldn’t speak to Cunningham about discretionary powers. Not just at the moment.

He had recently moved into a new apartment in the Midan Kasr-en-Nil. Zeinab had moved in with him, which was a considerable act for a woman in Egypt at that time. It was a considerable step forward in their relationship, too, and Zeinab had doubts about it. Every time he came home he half expected to find her not there.

She wasn’t there now. However, her things were still scattered about the flat so he decided that it wasn’t permanent. He poured himself a whisky soda, took a shower and then went out on to the balcony, from where he could see right across the Midan to the Nile on the other side. He was watching the amazing sunset when Zeinab arrived.

She took off her veil and kissed him. Then she helped herself to a drink and came out on to the balcony.

‘Something terrible’s happened,’ she said.

‘Oh, yes?’

‘They’ve taken Alphonse.’

‘Alphonse?’ He knew the names of most of Zeinab’s friends but couldn’t remember an Alphonse. He didn’t sound like an Egyptian. Perhaps he was a new artist friend?

‘I’d made my appointment as usual, but when I arrived he wasn’t there. Gerard said they had come and taken him that morning. I blame you.’

‘Me?’ said Owen, astonished.

‘You’re arresting them, aren’t you?’

‘Is he German?’

‘No, he’s a perfectly normal Levantine. However, he became a German because someone was chasing him for a debt. Or was it a woman who wanted to marry him? Breach of promise – yes, I think it was breach of promise. But he’s not really a German at all and I don’t think you should have arrested him.’

‘He’s down on a list, I expect.’

‘Can’t you take him off it?’

‘Well …’

‘Nikos could do it. Nikos is good with lists.’

‘Look, it’s not any old list, it’s a list for a purpose, and its purpose is the identification of German nationals so that they can be interned.’

‘But he’s not a German, as I keep telling you. He just became a German, and he certainly wouldn’t have done that if he’d known you were going to arrest him. I told him at the time that it wasn’t a good idea. He ought to have become a Panamanian or something, and then no one would really know what he was.’