Michael Pearce - The Mamur Zapt and the Girl in Nile

‘I don’t know anything about it,’ said the corporal hurriedly.

‘One said that you were near, effendi,’ said the watchman forlornly, ‘and the Chief thought—’

Owen knew damned well what the District Chief had thought. He had thought, here was somebody senior he could pass responsibility to without having to do anything about it himself. Right on the spot, too! He wouldn’t even have to stir out of the cool of his office. While he, Owen, was tearing around all over the place like a bloody lunatic!

‘Tell the Chief,’ he said ominously, ‘that I’ll be wanting a word with him.’

This was ridiculous. He couldn’t afford to be spending his time here. He had a dozen men on the other side of town waiting for him. They had been about half way through when the message had come from the District Chief. He had dropped everything and left. And you could bet that the moment he’d left they’d sat down in the shade.

He set off back up the bank.

After a moment’s hesitation the other two ran after him.

‘Effendi! Effendi!’

‘You stay here. Wait for the Parquet. You can tell it all to them.’

He reached the top of the bank, lizards scattering out of the way in front of him. He was just about to plunge back into the streets when he saw someone running towards him. It was one of the men he had left.

‘Effendi!’ he gasped. ‘A message! From the Bimbashi!’

‘Yes?’

‘You are to go to the river.’

Owen looked round. Behind him the river sparkled placidly in the sun. Apart from the corporal and the watchman, there wasn’t a soul in sight. Nothing moved on the bank or out on the water. The mud shoal and its hump dozed tranquilly in the heat.

‘Well,’ said Owen, ‘I’m at the river. But why on earth …?’

The Bimbashi arrived shortly afterwards.

He was in a motor-car. This was impressive since there were relatively few cars in Cairo in 1909 and the police force itself did not boast one. Normally it went about its business either on foot or in an arabeah, the horse-drawn cab distinctive to the city. If it needed a car it borrowed the Army’s one.

But that was battered and sober: this one was new and, well, spectacular.

‘Green,’ said the driver of the car, noting with satisfaction Owen’s interest. ‘There was a bit of a fuss about that. The Mufti complained. But I said: “It’s almost the family colour, isn’t it?”’

The Bimbashi, McPhee, pink and fair and anxious, rushed forward.

‘This is Captain Owen, Prince. Owen, Prince Narouz.’

‘Ah!’ said the Prince. ‘The Mamur Zapt. You got here quickly. Efficient of you. But then—’ he smiled ambiguously—‘we know the Mamur Zapt to be efficient, don’t we?’

He was perhaps in his late, perhaps in his early thirties. All the males of the Khedive’s family tended to thicken out and age suddenly as they approached middle age. Owen knew from the title that this was a member of the Egyptian Royal Family but which of the Khedive’s numerous progeny it was escaped him for the moment.

The third person in the car was another Egyptian, definitely about thirty, slim and dressed, like the Prince, in a smart, European-style suit but with the usual pot-like tarboosh of the Egyptian professional on his head.

Owen knew who this one was. His name was Mahmoud el Zaki and he was one of the Parquet’s rising stars. They embraced warmly in the Arab fashion. They had worked together often and got on well.

The Prince and McPhee had walked on to the top of the bank and were standing looking down at the river.

‘What’s all this about?’ whispered Owen.

‘Don’t know. Someone else was going to do this one and then they suddenly switched me on to it.’

They joined the others.

‘What’s going on?’ Owen asked.

McPhee turned a concerned face towards him.

‘Something absolutely frightful has happened,’ he said. ‘The Prince was on a dahabeeyah last night coming back from Karnak and someone fell overboard.’

‘A woman?’

McPhee nodded.

‘As soon as we got the report we suspected—well, we knew, I suppose. She couldn’t swim.’

‘ You got the report?’

‘The Prince phoned Garvin first thing this morning.’

Garvin was the Commandant of the Cairo Police force. McPhee was his deputy.

‘What about the Parquet?’

‘We got the report in the ordinary way,’ said Mahmoud. ‘At that stage it was just that a body had been found. I imagine,’ he said to the Prince, ‘that you yourself rang up later?’

‘After I had spoken to Garvin.’ The Prince hesitated. ‘You see, I didn’t want this to be … clumsily handled.’

‘Oh, of course not!’ said McPhee sympathetically. ‘The poor girl! And the family, of course!’

‘Yes. And the Khedivial connection.’

‘Of course. Of course.’

‘It could be embarrassing, you see. Politically, I mean.’

‘For you?’ asked Owen.

The Prince looked at him coolly.

‘For the Khedive. There is no particular reason why it should be. There is nothing, shall I say, to be embarrassed about . But you know what the Press is and people are. It could be used. Turned against the Khedive. Used to discredit him. Would the British Government want that, Captain Owen?’

‘Assuredly not. The Khedive is a valued friend and ally.’

Not only that. He was the façade which concealed the realities of British power in Egypt.

For while the Khedive was the apparent ruler of Egypt, the country’s real ruler, in 1909, was the British Consul-General. His rule was indirect and unobtrusive. The Khedive had his Prime Minister, his Ministers and his Ministries. But at the top of each Ministry, alongside each Minister, was a British ‘Adviser’ and all the key public posts were occupied by Englishmen.

Like the Commandant and Deputy Commandant of the Cairo Police.

Like the Mamur Zapt.

‘That’s what the Consul-General thought too,’ said the Prince. ‘I spoke to him this morning.’

‘We are to give whatever help we can,’ McPhee told Owen.

‘How far does the help extend?’ asked Owen.

The Prince smiled.

‘Not as far as you are evidently supposing,’ he said. ‘I appreciate that someone has died. The matter must be investigated and will be most ably, I am sure, by Mr el Zaki, here. If a crime has been committed—oh, negligence, say—those responsible must be punished. It’s all straight and aboveboard, Captain Owen, and Mr el Zaki’s involvement should be a guarantee of that.’

‘I have complete confidence in Mr el Zaki.’

‘Quite. But, you see, there is the other dimension too. The political one. The case needs to be handled from that point of view too. It needs to be … managed.’

‘I see. And you would like me to provide that management?’

‘Who better?’

Owen could think of lots of people he would prefer to see handling this particular case. Most people, in fact.

The Prince was watching his face.

‘It’s not as bad as all that,’ he said. ‘We’re not asking you to do anything you shouldn’t. It’s mainly a matter of controlling the Press.’

‘It’s not easy to control the Press on something like this. It’s bound to get out. In a foreign newspaper, perhaps.’

In cosmopolitan Cairo with its three principal working languages and at least a dozen other widely used ones people turned as readily to the overseas press as they did to the native one. More readily, for the former wasn’t censored.

‘That’s why I spoke of … management.’

‘I see.’

‘Good!’ said the Prince briskly. ‘Then that’s all sorted out.’

He looked down at the river bed below him.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘I suppose we ought to go down. You’ll be needing an identification.’