Michael Pearce - The Mamur Zapt and the Donkey-Vous

Mahmoud if anything looked very bright and alert. Miss Colthorpe Hartley must have been misled by his Arab looks.

‘Sometimes I feel depressed,’ said Mahmoud. ‘I felt depressed this morning when I was talking to the old lady and the man.’

‘Don’t take any notice of him. He’s just a stupid bastard.’

Mahmoud shrugged. ‘He’s just Army, that’s all. I’m used to people like him. But the old lady was different. She was very polite but she made me more depressed, if anything. She reminded me of Nuri.’

Nuri Pasha was a common acquaintance and the father of what might have been called, if anyone had dared risk the description since there was nothing petite about Zeinab and she was a forceful person, Owen’s own petite amie .

‘It’s because they’re the same generation and have similar social backgrounds,’ said Owen. ‘She put my back up too.’

‘She’s rich, of course. She must be, to be at the hotel.’

‘It’s not just that.’

‘It’s the way they look down on you.’

‘I wouldn’t let it bother you.’

‘It’s easier for you.’

‘Not much.’

‘Being British, I mean.’

‘We escape some things, but don’t escape others.’

‘You feel about her the way I feel about Nuri?’

‘More or less.’

Mahmoud thought this over. Then he said: ‘Of course it adds to it when they’re foreign. I sometimes feel quite pleased when something like this happens.’

‘A kidnapping?’

‘When a Moulin gets kidnapped.’

‘You’ve got to take action.’

‘Oh, I know that. And I do.’ He suddenly cheered up. ‘Though not in the hottest part of the day. There’s no point in going back now. I’ll go back about four. He’ll be up from his siesta then.’

‘He?’

‘Mr Colthorpe Hartley. He came out on the terrace later, remember. He may have seen something.’

‘Fellow with long moustaches and sticks?’ said Mr Colthorpe Hartley. ‘Yes, I saw him. Always sitting there. Same table, same time. Looking as if he’s growing there.’

‘You’re sure it was yesterday?’

Mr Colthorpe Hartley considered a moment.

‘Yes. Definitely. Saw him when I came out of the hotel. I was a bit behind the others, you know. Had a longer shower than usual. Bit damned hot just at the moment, isn’t it? You need a shower even when you’ve just been lying down.’

‘And you definitely saw him?’

‘Oh yes. Exchanged nods. Don’t know the chap, of course, but you sort of know him when you see him every day. We pass the time of day. I say something, he says something back. Nothing much. I don’t think he speaks much English. And I certainly don’t speak French.’

‘He didn’t say anything yesterday? I mean, nothing particular.’

‘No. Hardly noticed me. Seemed a bit preoccupied. Mind on other things. Didn’t stay there long.’

‘Did you see him go?’

‘Did I see him go? Let me think. No. I don’t think I saw him go. Saw he’d gone, but that’s not the same thing.’

‘Can you pinpoint when that was? About how long after you’d got to the terrace?’

‘Well, I must have got to the terrace about four. Saw him then. Nodded to him. Sat down. Had tea. Noticed he was a bit fidgety. Then when I next looked up he had gone. Say about twenty minutes. Between twenty past four and half past four.’

‘But you didn’t actually see him go?’

‘No.’

‘You didn’t see him go down the steps, for instance?’

‘No. Don’t think he would have gone down the steps. Not by himself. A bit too shaky on his pins.’

‘With someone helping him?’

‘Oh, he could have managed it then, all right.’

‘But you didn’t see anyone?’

‘Helping him? No.’

Mr Colthorpe Hartley rubbed his chin and stared thoughtfully into space. A suffragi hurried past with a tray of coffee. The aroma came strongly across the room.

‘Saw someone else, though,’ he said suddenly. ‘One of those chaps. Or not one of those chaps, one of the others. He was speaking to the Frenchman. Then he went across to the railings. Spoke to someone. As if he was on an errand for the Frenchman. Buying something for him.’

‘ Did he buy anything?’

‘No. Just came straight back.’

‘To the Frenchman?’

‘Yes.’

‘Spoke to him?’

Mr Colthorpe Hartley hesitated.

‘Think so. Stopped looking. Can’t go on watching a chap forever, you know. Bad form.’

‘So you looked away.’

‘Yes.’

‘And when you looked again, the Frenchman had gone?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Just one thing more, Mr Colthorpe Hartley,’ said Owen. ‘You spoke of seeing a suffragi. Or one of the others. One of the others?’

‘One of the other chaps from the hotel. The ones who go out with parties. Take you to the bazaar.’

‘A dragoman?’

‘That’s right. A dragoman.’

‘Would you be able to identify him if we paraded the hotel dragomans before you?’

‘These chaps all look alike to me,’ said Mr Colthorpe Hartley.

Mahmoud established with Reception the name of Monsieur Moulin’s petite amie and sent a note up asking if she could see him. Madame Chévènement replied that she was still indisposed but would make an effort to see him on the following morning at eleven o’clock.

Nikos was going through Owen’s engagements for the week. He had not included the Moulin affair. When Owen drew attention to this he shrugged his shoulders and said: ‘You’re not going to be spending much time on this, surely?’

‘Garvin wants me to. He says it’s political.’

‘It will all be over by next week. They’ll pay, won’t they?’

‘Probably. Though whether we ought to let it go at that’s a different matter.’

‘There’s not much else you can do, is there? They won’t want you interfering.’

‘Yes, but it’s the principle of the thing. If you let Zawia get away with it once, they’ll try it again. And again. Until they’re caught.’

‘In the end they’ll make a mistake and then we’ll catch them. Until then there’s no sense in bothering about them.’

‘If we don’t work on the case how will we know about the mistake?’

‘Your friend El Zaki is working on the case, isn’t he?’ Nikos disapproved of too warm relationships with other departments. ‘Why don’t you leave it to him?’

‘It could blow up in our face. That’s what Garvin’s worried about.’

‘The French are quite efficient at this sort of thing.’

‘They’re the ones who are on to me.’

‘Well, obviously they’re not going to miss a chance to make trouble. Anyway, if they can take it out on you they won’t feel so bad about paying.’

‘We don’t know they will pay yet.’

‘Of course they’ll pay. Incidentally, has the follow-up message got through yet?’

‘About paying? No, I don’t think so.’

‘It probably has. They’ll keep quiet about it.’

‘I think I’d have heard. They’d have warned me off.’

‘Perhaps it hasn’t, then.’ Nikos considered. ‘If you’re so worried about it,’ he said, ‘I could ask our man at the hotel to keep an eye open for it.’

‘ Have we got a man at the hotel?’

‘We’ve got a man at all the hotels. The main ones. It doesn’t cost much,’ he assured Owen, thinking he detected a shade of concern and assuming, naturally, that the concern was financial and not moral.

On becoming Mamur Zapt Owen had inherited a huge information network, which Nikos administered with pride. What was striking about it was not its size, since a highly developed political secret service was normal in the Ottoman Empire and the British had merely taken it over, nor its ability to find informers, since people came cheap in Cairo: rather, it was its efficiency, which was not at all characteristic of the Ottoman Empire. It was, however, characteristic of Nikos, who brought the pure passion of the born bureaucrat to his work.