Michael Pearce - A Cold Touch of Ice

Times, too. Owen guessed that they had retraced Sidi Morelli’s movements pretty exactly. Their arrival at the table might had been arranged to coincide with the moment when Sidi Morelli had reached it the previous night. Similarly, their departure might well have coincided with his. He had got up and left the table, shaking hands, as was the Arabic custom, with everyone else in the coffee house and then set off round the corner and along the Nahhasin towards his house.

And exactly here, where a little, dark alleyway ran off between the houses, someone must have been waiting for him. They had probably been standing in the darkness of the alleyway and then, as he had passed, reached out and pulled him into the shadow and strangled him; so quickly and efficiently that he had not had time to utter a cry or make a sound loud enough to catch the attention of those seated in the coffee house not twenty yards away. And then they had fled, almost certainly up the alleyway.

‘Well, yes,’ said Mahmoud. ‘Except that there were some porters further along the alleyway hauling up a bed and they claim that no one passed them.’

He led Owen down the alley. At its far end the blank walls of the big houses of the Nahhasin gave way to tenements. From some of the upper storeys came the weak light of oil lamps. They could see the window through which the bed had been hauled. Its frame was still out and beneath it, on the ground, there were still some bulky objects awaiting their turn to be lifted.

‘There would have been a lamp up there,’ said Mahmoud, ‘and possibly one on the ground, where they were working.’

‘Pretty dark,’ said Owen, looking round, ‘even so.’

‘But narrow,’ said Mahmoud. They are sure they would have seen him. Still, I think it more likely that he escaped along here than that he went down the Nahhasin. I asked the men who found the body and they were positive that they had met no one coming away from where Morelli had been killed. The alleyway seems somehow much more likely.’

They retraced their steps.

‘It all happened in about five minutes,’ said Mahmoud. ‘From the time he left the coffee house to the time they found him.’

‘How was he killed?’

‘Strangled.’

‘Not garotted?’

‘No.’

‘Quick, then.’

‘No money was taken,’ said Mahmoud.

‘No money? But then –?’

‘He was killed for some other reason.’

Owen didn’t like the sound of that. He hoped that Mahmoud would soon find a reason, some private, personal motive, rooted in family, perhaps, or in business. The alternative opened up too many disquieting possibilities. ‘One of us’ Morelli may have been; but had he been ‘one of us’ enough, at a time when war was placing such a new, heavy stress on old identities and relationships?

There was a reception at the Abdin Palace that evening and Owen, as one of the Khedive’s senior servants, was bidden to be there. Although there were plenty of other Englishmen in the Khedive’s service – the whole British Administration, nominally, for a start – he was, in fact, one of very few Englishmen present, an indication of the chill that had come over the relationship between the Khedive and the new British Consul-General. The absence was all the more marked because the reception was for someone who was to all intents and purposes an honorary Englishman.

Slatin Pasha had entered the Khedivial service some thirty years before and had been appointed governor of a province in the Sudan. During the Sudan uprising he had been taken prisoner and had been a slave of the Khalifa for eleven years. His famous escape, made with the help of the British Intelligence, had led to him becoming the darling of the British public. He had paid many visits to Windsor and been showered with honours by the Queen, including a knighthood. He was just the man you would have expected the Consulate to turn out for; and yet no one was there.

Slatin was very keen on honours and the reception was in recognition of him collecting yet another one a short time before, this time from Austria. Slatin was himself an Austrian and had naturally been pleased. All the same, he was not entirely happy about this evening.

‘It won’t do, Owen, it won’t do,’ he said, looking around him. ‘It’s bad if His Lordship wasn’t invited to something like this.’

‘Perhaps he was invited and just didn’t come.’

‘Then that’s bad, too. Countries should come together in Egypt even if they have their differences elsewhere.’

‘Not always easy,’ said Owen.

Slatin looked at him in his sharp, bird-like way.

‘Especially it is not easy for people like you and me,’ he said.

Owen suddenly wondered about Slatin. He was the most Anglophile of Anglophiles; and yet he was also Austrian. If the two sides started pulling apart, how would he react? Which would he choose?

‘Dilemmas, dear boy, dilemmas!’ said Slatin, and scurried away.

And how far would their common service to the Khedive, to Egypt, that most cosmopolitan of countries, containing so many different nationalities, be able to hold the strain?

Across the room he saw Ismet Bey talking to – this was surprising, you hardly ever saw a woman on an occasion like this – a tall, blonde woman, about thirty. No veil, either; she must be foreign.

Later in the evening, one of the German attachés caught him by the arm.

‘Come over, Owen. There’s someone I’d like you to meet’

It was the girl.

‘Fräulein von Ramsberg; the Mamur Zapt.’

‘Ah, the Mamur Zapt!’ said the girl, as if she knew about Mamur Zapts.

‘Fräulein von Ramsberg has just completed a crossing of the Sinai desert. On camel.’

‘Good heavens!’ said Owen.

‘But you yourself, who have lived so long in this part of the world, have no doubt made similar journeys?’ she suggested.

‘I’m afraid not.’

‘No?’

‘I do occasionally go out of Cairo. Reluctantly,’ said Owen.

The girl laughed.

‘You are a city man. Well, there are different sorts of Arabists. I am a desert one.’

‘I do admire people like yourself who make these long, arduous journeys.’

This wasn’t entirely true. In fact, it wasn’t true at all. He thought they were crazy. He had done some camel-riding, which he had found most uncomfortable, and quite a lot of horse-riding, especially in India; but on the whole he preferred sitting in cafés.

‘Fräulein von Ramsberg has a request to make,’ said the attaché.

‘I wish to make a journey, and I wondered if you would give me a firman.’

A firman was a kind of permit.

‘Where are you going?’

‘I want to go west out of Cairo and then drop down to the top of the Old Salt Road.’

‘That’s quite a journey!’

She laughed.

‘That’s the kind of journey that I like.’

Her English was very good.

‘Well, rather you than me.’

‘You wouldn’t like to come with me?’

‘No, thanks!’

‘A pity. Just the firman , then.’

‘Actually, you don’t need a permit to go there.’

‘Nevertheless, a letter of some kind from you would, I am sure, be of great help.’

‘If you wish. But I don’t think it will help much down there.’

‘Does not the word of the Mamur Zapt strike terror into men’s hearts in even the most remote parts of Egypt?’

‘I very much doubt it. When are you setting out?’

‘At the end of the week.’

‘Well, I’ll get it to you before then. And perhaps in return you would like to accompany me on one of my sorts of expedition?’

‘I very much would,’ said Miss von Ramsberg.

‘You great dope!’ said his friend, Paul.