Michael Pearce - Mamur Zapt and the Return of the Carpet

‘Do you know Fakhri Bey? No?’

They shook hands.

‘Fakhri Bey was passing when it happened.’

‘I was in an arabeah,’ the Egyptian explained. ‘There was nothing I could do. So I told the driver to drive on and came straight here.’

‘I’m very glad you did,’ said McPhee. ‘We’ll get there right away.’

He picked up his sun helmet.

‘In fact, if you’ll excuse us—’

‘Of course. Of course,’ the other protested.

They set off down the corridor.

‘You don’t want me, do you?’ asked Owen.

Normally the Mamur Zapt, as Head of the Political Branch, did not reckon to concern himself with routine killings.

‘Certainly I do,’ said McPhee over his shoulder.

Owen would have preferred to have carried on with the estimates. They were not especially complex but required a certain attention, and he had set aside the morning for that purpose. His predecessor-but-one had been dismissed for corruption and Owen was sensitive on financial matters.

However, he collected his helmet and joined McPhee at the front of the building. The large square of the Bab el Khalk was empty of transport except for one carriage which Fakhri Bey was just getting into.

He stopped as he saw them.

‘You would be very welcome to share my arabeah,’ he said.

‘May we?’ said McPhee. ‘There doesn’t seem to be any other. It would be taking you back—’

‘Not at all,’ said Fakhri. ‘It would be a pleasure.’

The carriage was one of those with two horses and could take three passengers at a pinch. McPhee and Owen wedged themselves in around Fakhri, and the driver, after a great display of urgency, managed to get the horses going at a steady amble along the broad thoroughfare of the Sharia Mohammed Ali.

‘And now,’ said Owen, ‘perhaps you could tell me exactly what happened where.’

‘Nuri Pasha was shot,’ said Fakhri. ‘It was dreadful. I am so sorry. He was a friend of mine, you know,’ he said, glancing sideways at Owen.

‘A good chap,’ said McPhee supportively, but then McPhee considered many people to be good chaps whom Owen knew to be consummate rogues.

‘And where did all this happen?’ he asked.

‘In the Place de l’Opéra,’ said Fakhri, ‘right in front of my eyes. I could not believe it. I could not believe it.’

‘You actually saw the shooting?’ asked Owen, putting a heavy accent, and not too sceptical a one he hoped, on the word ‘saw’.

‘Yes,’ said Fakhri. ‘Yes, I did.’

He hesitated.

‘Or, at least, I thought I did. I was sure I did.’

Again the sidelong glance at Owen.

‘Now I am not so sure,’ he said.

‘Come,’ said McPhee, sympathetic as usual. ‘You certainly did. You told me all about it.’

‘Yes,’ said Fakhri. ‘I know. And I told you what I thought I saw. But when Captain Car—’ Fakhri mumbled a bit—‘Owen asked me in that sharp way of his and I try to recall detail, what seemed clear suddenly becomes misty.’

‘Well,’ said Owen, brightening, ‘that’s a start anyway.’

The usual problem with Egyptian witnesses was not that they could not recall but that they recalled only too well.

‘I expect you’re used to this,’ said Fakhri. ‘The fallibility of witnesses? My legal friends, without exception, assure me that eyewitnesses are not to be trusted.’

‘It’s a funny business,’ said Owen, ‘what you see and what you don’t see.’

‘I thought I saw. Clearly.’

‘Perhaps you did. Start again. Where were you when all this was happening?’

‘In an arabeah.’

‘Which was—precisely—where?’

‘I had come down the Sharia el Maghrabi. I was just crossing the Place de l’Opéra.’

‘Past the statue?’

The statue of Ibrahim Pasha, the famous Egyptian general who had led his army to within a hundred miles of Istanbul, was a well-known Cairo landmark.

‘Right by the statue. I was about to go down the side of the Ezbekiyeh Gardens.’

‘Fine. And you saw?’

‘I saw Nuri Pasha. I think he had just come out of the Hotel Continental. He walked right out into the Place, looking for his arabeah. I think.’

‘About how far from you?’

‘Twenty metres, perhaps.’

‘Anyway, you recognized him?’

‘Oh yes. He is very distinctive. And I know him well. In fact, that was why I was watching him. To exchange greetings. If he saw me.’

‘Did he see you?’

‘No. He was looking about and I thought he might see me.’

‘Go on.’

‘Well, I was watching him, and then suddenly there was a loud bang, and I saw Nuri Pasha stagger and put his arms up and fall, and I thought: That must have been a shot. Nuri Pasha must have been shot.’

‘The shot,’ said Owen, ‘sounded close to you?’

‘Very close. It made the horses jump. The arabeah swerved. That was how I lost sight of the man.’

‘Tell me about the man.’

Fakhri put his hands to his head.

‘I am sorry,’ he said. ‘It is not clear.’

‘To the left or to the right of Nuri Pasha as you were looking at him?’

‘To the right. But I didn’t really see him. It was just that, as Nuri Pasha fell, in the corner of my eye I thought I saw someone move away.’

‘A blue galabeah?’

‘Yes.’

Fakhri grimaced. ‘Like all the other galabeahs,’ he said.

The long blue gown was the standard garment of the Cairo poor.

They exchanged smiles.

After a while, as Fakhri said nothing more, Owen prompted: ‘And then?’

‘That was all,’ said Fakhri. ‘The arabeah swerved and I lost sight of Nuri Pasha. It was—oh, I suppose three or four minutes before I could look again.’

‘And then there was a crowd ten feet deep round Nuri Pasha and you couldn’t see a thing.’

‘Yes,’ said Fakhri, surprised. ‘That’s right. How did you know?’

The crowd was still thick when they reached the Place de l’Opéra, although the incident must have happened at least half an hour before by the time they got there.

McPhee sprang out of the arabeah and shouldered his way into the throng. A constable appeared from nowhere and joined his efforts to the Bimbashi’s, laying about him with his truncheon. Reluctantly the ranks of the crowd parted and brought McPhee to where a man was lying stretched out in the grit and dust of the square.

‘Make space! Make space!’

McPhee thrust the bystanders apart by main force and held them off.

‘Why!’ he said in disappointed tones, ‘this isn’t Nuri Pasha! Who is this?’

‘It is Ibrahim, sir,’ said a voice from the crowd. ‘He was wounded when Nuri Pasha was shot.’

‘And where is Nuri Pasha?’

‘He was taken into the hotel, sir,’ said the constable.

‘What sort of condition was he in?’

Seeing that the constable did not understand, McPhee changed his question.

‘Was he alive or dead?’

Various voices from the crowd assured him that Nuri Pasha was (a) dead, (b) unhurt, (c) suffering from terrible injuries. Leaving McPhee to sort that out, Owen pushed his way back through the crowd.

To one side of the mêlée two constables were casually talking to a slight, spare Egyptian in a very handsome suit. He looked up as Owen approached.

‘The Mamur Zapt? I did not expect to see you here in an affair of this sort. Mahmoud el Zaki. Parquet.’

The Parquet was the Department of Prosecutions of the Ministry of Justice.

They shook hands.

‘You were here very quickly,’ said Owen.

The Egyptian shrugged his shoulders. ‘Nuri Pasha is an important man,’ he said.

‘How is Nuri Pasha?’

‘Shaken.’

‘That all?’

‘The shot did not touch him. It slightly grazed a lemonade-seller.’