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A Cold Touch of Ice
Michael Pearce
In this classic murder mystery from Michael Pearce’s award-winning series, set in the Egypt of the 1900s, the Mamur Zapt investigates the murder of an Italian man in the backstreets of Cairo.Cairo, 1908. When an Italian man is murdered in the city’s back streets, there is concern that this could be some kind of ethnic cleansing. Were the guns in his warehouse anything to do with it? Gareth Owen – the Mamur Zapt – has to find out fast.And then there are other difficult questions. What are Trudi von Ramsberg and Gertrude Bell really doing in Cairo? As the Mamur Zapt is drawn deeper into the investigation, he’s not the only one who has problems over where his allegiance lies…






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First published in Great Britain by
Collins Crime 2000
Copyright © Michael Pearce 2000
Michael Pearce asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780008259471
Ebook Edition © SEPTEMBER 2017 ISBN: 9780007441150
Version: 2017-09-05

Contents
Cover (#u6e451141-3c2c-5dd3-9b75-1b4ad85547d2)
Title Page (#u1fa638b7-ea9d-5496-821d-8a064627676c)
Copyright (#u70a99ba0-36e7-5a49-9c98-a868f4b479a3)
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Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author
Also by Michael Pearce
About the Publisher

1 (#uae0dcaf8-2c16-53c9-a7c1-7b3e90151a82)
A man pushed his way through the crowd and arrived at the bar beside Owen.
‘Wahid whisky-soda!’ he instructed the bartender. ‘No, make that a double. After all,’ he said, turning to the company, ‘it’s not every day that one gets a death threat in the mail.’
‘Yes, it is,’ objected the man on his other side. ‘I get one every morning.’
‘Ah, but that’s just from colleagues or from the Finance Department. Mine,’ said the man, pulling out a piece of paper from his pocket and waving it with a flourish, ‘is the Real Thing.’
‘Can I have a look?’ Owen stretched out his hand. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it’s the same handwriting.’
‘Same as what?’
‘The one I got.’
Someone peered over his shoulder.
‘It’s just an ordinary bazaar letter-writer!’ he said disgustedly. ‘That doesn’t count!’
‘Just because you haven’t got one, Patterson!’
‘How many other people have had one?’ asked Owen.’
Several other people put up their hands.
‘You see!’ said the first man. ‘It’s just people who are important. Sorry about that, Patterson!’
Some had their letters with them.
‘I was going to have mine framed, so that my grandchildren will see that once upon a time I was a man to be taken seriously.’
They passed them to Owen.
‘It’s all the same handwriting,’ said Owen.
‘You mean it’s only one man? Well, that is a relief. I thought it was everybody that wanted to kill us.’
‘It’s just some nut? Well, I do fell let down.’
‘Don’t worry prematurely,’ counselled Owen. ‘Perhaps he means it.’
There was no doubt, thought Owen, as he sat in a meeting later that afternoon, that the British were unpopular in Egypt. The letter-writer was not an isolated case. Since the war had started, there had been a number of such expressions of hostility. Stones had been thrown, British-owned premises vandalized and solitary soldiers attacked on their way back to barracks.
And yet, for once, it was not Britain’s fault. When, a few months before, Italy had invaded Tripolitania, and Turkey, to whom Tripolitania belonged, had retaliated by declaring war, Britain sought to stay neutral. Unfortunately, that was not what most Egyptians wanted. Egypt was still, at least in theory, part of the Ottoman Empire and Egyptian sympathies were heavily with Turkey.
‘Egypt is, after all,’ Ismet Bey, the Turkish representative at the meeting, was saying now, ‘our country.’
Well, yes and no. Yes, it was true, Egypt was still formally part of the Ottoman Empire and the Khedive, Egypt’s ruler, owed allegiance to the Sultan at Istanbul. But in practice the Egyptian Khedives had been virtually independent for the best part of a century now, and for the last thirty years, in any case, the real rulers of Egypt had been the British, who had come in ‘by invitation’ to help the Khedive sort his finances out, come in and then, well, as it happened, stayed.
‘All we are asking,’ said Ismet Bey, ‘is that we should be able to move our troops from one part of His Highness’s domains – Palestine – to another – Tripolitania – through a third: Egypt.’
‘I do see your point,’ conceded Owen’s friend, Paul, who was chairing the meeting.
‘Well, that is something.’
‘However –’
However, thought Owen, there wasn’t a cat’s chance in hell of Britain agreeing to let a Turkish army march through Egypt. Who knows, they might even step aside to assert Ottoman rights in other respects.
‘Shouldn’t Egypt herself have a voice in this?’ asked the Khedive’s representative.
‘Egypt’s is the point of view that I am expressing,’ said Paul.
‘No, it’s not. Yours is the view of the British Administration. We Egyptians strongly condemn Italy’s action as Western aggression and would wish to do everything we could to help Turkey repel its foreign invaders.’
‘Have you thought,’ asked Paul, ‘that if you take too active a part, you could yourselves become the object of aggression?’
‘We would take care of that,’ said Ismet Bey.
The British Commander-in-Chief coughed modestly.
‘I think,’ he said, ‘that the presence of a British army in Egypt is all the guarantee that you need against foreign invasion.’
Ismet Bey sighed. They had been here before in the last few months: many times.
‘At least,’ he said desperately, ‘allow us to move supplies.’
‘Medical supplies, certainly,’ said Paul. ‘As you know, the Consul-General is anxious to provide whatever humanitarian help he can.’
‘Arms?’
‘I’m not sure that counts as humanitarian.’
‘You always used to allow passage.’
‘Limited passage. To allow unrestricted passage would be to prejudice our position of neutrality.’
‘It’s not even limited now,’ protested the Bey. ‘You’ve stopped passage altogether.’
‘That’s because you were sending so much.’
‘But –’
‘If we include what you’ve been smuggling.’
‘Smuggling?’ cried Ismet Bey. ‘How can we be smuggling when it’s our country?’
‘Exactly!’ said the Khedive’s representative. ‘And if it’s not his country, then it’s certainly ours!’
There was a long pause.
‘I’ll tell you what,’ said Paul conciliatorily: ‘there’s clearly a problem here, and it seems to me that it can best be resolved by appointing someone to regulate the arms traffic whom we can all trust.’
‘Well, that sounds very reasonable,’ said the Bey, surprised.
‘The Mamur Zapt.’
‘What?’ said Owen, waking up.
‘Mamur Zapt?’ said the Khedive’s representative.
‘Yes. A faithful servant of the Khedive.’
‘But he’s a faithful servant of the British too!’ cried the Bey.
‘Oh dear, Ismet Bey!’ said Paul, beginning to gather up his papers. ‘What a shocking suggestion!’
There was, alas, some truth in what Ismet Bey had said. One of the first things the British had done when they arrived was to install their own man as Mamur Zapt, Head of the Khedive’s Secret Police, the man ultimately responsible for political security in Cairo. Successive Mamur Zapts had therefore found themselves serving two masters; something which had hitherto not presented much of a problem to Owen, the present incumbent, since he had happily played off one against the other. Lately, however, that had been getting more difficult. Since the new Consul-General had taken over, relations with the Khedive had become strained and the two were often now pulling in different directions.
This evening, though, he was putting such difficulties behind him. An Egyptian colleague had invited him round for coffee. Owen was pleased, because although he had known Mahmoud for nearly four years now, this was the first time he had actually been invited into his house.
The reason for this was partly, he knew, that Mahmoud didn’t really have a home of his own. Although he was now in his thirties, he still lived with his mother. Mahmoud’s father, a lawyer like himself, had died young and Mahmoud had taken over responsibility for the family. Being the man he was, he had probably taken it too seriously, as he tended to do with his work at the Ministry of Justice. Owen doubted if he ever got home much before midnight. He seemed to have very little life apart from his work.
Mahmoud was, in any case, as Owen had learned over the years, an intensely private individual. Owen was certainly his closest, perhaps his only, friend, but in some respects he felt he had never got to know him. He was delighted now that one of Mahmoud’s defensive walls seemed at last to be coming down.
The house was a tall, thin, three-storey building just off the Sharia-el-Nahhasin. Across its roof, surprisingly near, he could see the minarets of the Barquk and, yes, that other one was probably the Qu’alun. The street was towards the edge of the old city, balanced precariously between the new Europeanized quarters to the west and the bazaars to the east.
There was a servant but Mahmoud himself came impatiently to the door and led Owen upstairs to the living room on the first floor. It was a large, sparely furnished room with box windows at both ends, one looking down into an inner courtyard, the other out on to the street. There were fine, rather faded, rugs on the floor and one on the wall, and three low divans, arranged round a brazier, on which a pot of coffee was warming. On the little table next to it were three cups.
‘The third is for my father-in-law,’ said Mahmoud.
‘What?’ said Owen, stunned. This was the first he had ever heard about Mahmoud being married.
‘My father-in-law to be,’ Mahmoud amended.
He seemed a little embarrassed.
‘You are getting married?’
Mahmoud nodded.
Owen had never expected this. He had always taken Mahmoud to be one of nature’s celibates. In all the time Owen had known him, he had never shown the slightest sexual interest in any woman they had met.
Owen pulled himself together.
‘Congratulations! Well, this is a surprise!’
‘It is to me, too,’ Mahmoud admitted. ‘But my mother felt the time had come.’
‘I see. Yes.’ Owen couldn’t think what to say. ‘Have you known each other for long?’ he ventured tentatively.
‘About a week. Of course, our families have known each other for much longer.’
‘I see.’
‘She lives locally so I must have seen her about in the street. But I can’t say I ever noticed her.’
‘Well, you wouldn’t.’
Not in a veil, and covered from head to foot in black.
‘But I must have seen her going to school.’
‘Going to school?’
‘She’s just finished at the Sanieh.’
How old could she be? Fifteen? The Sanieh, though, was something. It was probably the best girls’ school in Cairo.
‘I said she had to be educated.’
‘Quite right. Companionship, and all that.’
‘She seemed very sensible.’
‘Oh, good. You have – you have met her, then?’
‘Oh, yes. Once. After my mother had made the contract. She seems very suitable.’
‘Oh, good.’
‘You’ll like her father. I know him quite well.’
‘Well, that’s important, isn’t it?’
‘Yes. As a matter of fact, that’s partly why I invited you. I wanted him to meet family. I know that, strictly speaking, you’re not family, but … Well, the fact is, we don’t actually have many male relatives …’
‘Glad to do what I can –’
It was no business of his. Mahmoud was old enough to arrange his own life; or, rather, to decide to let others arrange it for him. And if that was the custom of the country –
All the same, he felt bothered. In a way it was his business. Mahmoud was a friend of his and he didn’t want him to get hurt. As a matter of fact, he didn’t want her to get hurt, either, a mere schoolgirl. But what could he do about it? And who was he to interfere, anyway? Jesus, he couldn’t even sort out his own life, the way things were between him and Zeinab –
When the prospective father-in-law arrived, he felt a little better. Ibrahim Buktari was plainly such a nice man. He was short and wiry, with close-cropped grey hair and an open, intelligent face. They embraced warmly in the Arab fashion.
‘You have something in common,’ said Mahmoud, pouring out the coffee.
‘Oh, yes?’
‘You were both soldiers.’
Ibrahim Buktari’s face lit up.
‘You were?’
‘Well,’ said Owen, ‘briefly.’
‘I was with Al-Lurd,’ said Ibrahim, ‘in the Sudan.’
‘With Kitchener?’
‘That was before he was a lord,’ said Mahmoud.
‘And now he returns to Egypt!’ said Ibrahim. He shrugged. ‘Well, at least we have as Consul-General a man who knows something about Egypt.’
‘He knows it only as it was twelve years ago,’ said Mahmoud.
That was something that all the Egyptian newspapers had said when the appointment was announced. Especially the. Nationalist ones. When Kitchener had been here before, Egyptian nationalism had been in its infancy. But a lot of things had changed since then and among them was that there was now a Nationalist movement which touched almost all parts of the population, especially the young professionals. Like Mahmoud.
How would Kitchener handle it? Would he try to work with it, as his predecessor, Gorst, had done? Or would he – and this was what was feared in Egypt, given his recent record against the equally Nationalist Boers in South Africa – try to suppress it? Was that the point of putting a general into what had hitherto been a civilian post? Was that why Kitchener had been made Consul-General?
When Kitchener had been here before, at the time of his conquest of the Sudan, Owen had been just a junior subaltern on his way out to India to take up his first posting.
‘India?’
Ibrahim began to question Owen eagerly about campaigning conditions in the North West Frontier. Seeing them getting along well together, Mahmoud, who had in truth been slightly apprehensive about his prospective father-in-law’s visit, sat back happily and let them talk.
The conversation was still in full flow when the door opened suddenly and an elderly woman came into the room. She was very agitated and wasn’t even wearing a veil.
‘Mahmoud!’ she said. ‘You are needed. Sidi Morelli has collapsed.’
Mahmoud sprang up and hurried out of the door.
‘Sidi Morelli?’ said Ibrahim, standing up too. ‘Perhaps we can help,’ he said to Owen.
‘It was in the coffee house,’ said Mahmoud’s mother, lighting them down the stairs.
Owen had noticed the café as he had turned into Mahmoud’s street. Indeed, he could hardly help noticing it, for its tables and chairs spread out right across the street and into the Nahhasin also. Now there was a large crowd gathered at the corner, their faces all strange in the light from the café’s vapour lamps. He could see Mahmoud bending over a man lying among the tables.
‘Has anyone sent for an ambulance?’ asked Ibrahim Buktari.
‘We have, Ibrahim, we have,’ said someone. ‘But it is taking a long time coming.’
‘All the ambulances are at the front,’ said someone, ‘because of the war.’
‘A hakim, then?’
Mahmoud looked up.
‘There is no need for a hakim,’ he said.
Someone in the crowd gasped.
Mahmoud straightened up.
‘Cover him,’ he said.
Several people at once stripped off their long outer gowns and laid them over the body.
Mahmoud glanced round.
‘It didn’t happen here,’ he said.
‘It happened over there, Mahmoud. Just round the corner!’
Some of the men took him by the arm and led him a little way along the Nahhasin to where an alley snicked off among the houses.
‘It was here, Mahmoud. I found him here,’ said one of the men, distressed. ‘I nearly fell over him. I didn’t see him, it was so dark.’
‘And then I called for help, Mahmoud,’ said another man, ‘and we carried him back to the coffee house.’
‘We laid him down,’ said someone else, ‘and then we saw – saw that it was Sidi Morelli.’
‘Sidi Morelli!’ Some in the crowd had clearly not realized previously who it was.
‘But he had been here!’ said the patron of the café, bewildered, ‘only the moment before!’
He pointed to a table at which three elderly men were sitting, stunned.
From further along the street there came the sound of a bell and then a moment later someone crying: ‘Make way!’ A covered cart, drawn by two mules, was trying to work through the crowd.
‘Make way for the ambulance!’
Somehow it forced its way through the mass of people and drew up alongside the coffee house. A short, thickset, youngish man, Egyptian, but dressed in a suit not a galabeah, began organizing things.
‘It is good that you are here, Kamal,’ Mahmoud said affectionately.
‘I had just got here. I was still shaking hands –’
He seemed, for all his efficiency, bewildered.
The body was lifted, passed over the heads of the crowd and laid in the back of the ambulance.
‘To the death-house,’ instructed Mahmoud. ‘Not to the hospital.’
The crowd watched sombrely. Many of them were weeping. Owen was surprised; not at the crowd, for if there was anything that drew a crowd in Cairo, it was an accident or a fatality, but at the extent, and sincerity, of the feeling.
‘Sidi Morelli, Ibrahim!’ The man beside them shook his head as if in disbelief.
Everyone here, thought Owen, appeared to know everyone else.
Ibrahim Buktari seemed suddenly to have aged.
‘I shall go home, I think. Excuse me!’
He shook hands with Owen.
The efficient young man whom Owen had noticed earlier appeared beside them. He put his arm round Ibrahim Buktari’s shoulders and led him gently away.
Mahmoud touched Owen’s arm.
‘I am sorry,’ he said. ‘We shall have to end our evening early. Another time, perhaps.’
‘Of course!’
The crowd was breaking up.
‘I have work to do,’ said Mahmoud.
‘Work!’
‘He did not collapse. He was strangled.’
In Cairo at that time investigating a crime was not the responsibility of the police. Nor, most definitely – with the exception of political crime – was it the responsibility of the Mamur Zapt. When a crime was suspected, it was reported to the Department of Prosecutions of the Ministry of Justice, the Parquet, as it was known, and the Parquet would appoint one of its lawyers to conduct an investigation. Ordinarily the appointment would come first. Mahmoud being Mahmoud, however, he had seen a responsibility waiting to be taken and had been unable to resist taking it, with the result that by the time – the following afternoon – that he was actually appointed to the case, he had already been pursuing his inquiries for some hours.
A bearer had brought Owen a message from him about midway through the morning asking him to come to the Morelli house. Owen had been a little surprised, for it was not normally the habit of the strongly Nationalist Parquet to involve the Mamur Zapt in its investigations, and this was particularly true of Mahmoud, who, despite their friendship, did not believe that there should be a Secret Police at all, let alone that it be headed by an Englishman. However, Owen knew that he wouldn’t have sent for him unless it was important and, as there was nothing particularly to detain him in his office, set out almost at once.
When he arrived at the house Mahmoud was somewhere else in the building and he was received by the dead man’s widow, Signora Morelli; and this was another surprise, for he had not realized, the evening before, that the dead man was Italian.
‘Italian?’ said Signora Morelli. ‘Of course we’re Italian! And Egyptian, too. We’ve lived in this country for forty years. In Cairo for thirty. In this very house! Everyone knows us here. Our children grew up here. This is the place they look upon as home. We, too. We have made our lives here, we were happy here –
‘And now this! How can it be? How can they do this to us? He was their friend, everybody knew him. Everybody loved him. He used to go there every night, to that café, and play dominoes with Hamdan and Abd al Jawad and Fahmy Salim. Every night! For years and years. They were inseparable. People made a joke of it. They were the four comers of the house, people said. Take one away, and the coffee house would fall down. That’s what they said. And now – now they have taken one away.’
She poured it all out.
‘And it is all because of this stupid war. It must be! There can’t be any other reason. He never did anyone an injury.
‘This stupid war! But it’s not our fault. We were against it from the start, we were appalled, like they were. And they said: “No, no, Sidi,” – that is what they called him, Sidi – “you cannot be blamed. The politicians are mad. They always are. They are mad here, too. No, no, Sidi, you are one of us.”
‘And he thought he was one of them, too; I thought I was. This is our home, this is our country. Why should it turn on us? We have loved it, we have worked for it. We thought we were Egyptian too.
‘And now this. How can it be? How can they turn on him? What harm has he ever done them? What harm has he ever done anybody? Why should they turn on him, their friend, the man who has lived among them for years? How can people be like that?’
Mahmoud had come in and was standing by the door expressionlessly. He caught Owen’s eye and Owen followed him out.
‘I see,’ said Owen. ‘So that’s why you called me.’
‘No,’ said Mahmoud. ‘We don’t know yet that it was a political crime.’
‘Then –?’
He led him off through the house. It was tall and thin, rather like Mahmoud’s own, and, like that one, had an inner courtyard. They went across the courtyard and out through a door on the other side. It led them into a great, cavernous, hall-like building which seemed to serve as a warehouse. It contained a bewildering diversity of goods: divans, tables, rugs, great copper-and-silver trays, a lot of brassware – there was a whole corner of the elegant brass ewers called ibreek which the Arabs use for pouring water over the hands, along with the tisht, the quaint basins and water-strainers that went with them. There were, too, oddly, piles of clothes: finely embroidered shirts which might have belonged to sheiks, lovely old Persian shawls, hand-worked as close as if they were woven, filmy rainbow-coloured veils worn by dancing girls.
Mahmoud led him across to a huge stack of bales of raw cotton. The stuff of one of the bales had been torn, probably in transit, and through the tear there appeared the gleam of something black. Mahmoud pulled more of the cotton aside, put in his hand and tugged. Even before it came out, Owen knew what it was: the barrel of a gun.

2 (#uae0dcaf8-2c16-53c9-a7c1-7b3e90151a82)
Only four of the bales had guns concealed in them. When they had opened them all, they found a total of fifteen rifles and six revolvers; numbers which Owen found puzzling. Gun-running or gun-using? The numbers were too small for the former and large for the latter – there were assassination attempts all the time, but they seldom involved more than two or three people.
And then there was another puzzle: where they had been found. In the house of an Italian. Gun-running in Egypt at the moment was from the Sinai peninsula to Tripolitania, from the Turks to their allies fighting against the Italians. What sort of Italian was it who would be arming enemies against his own kind? He could think of plenty of people who might for one reason or another, for profit or for patriotism, be running guns; but the one national group that wouldn’t be, just at the moment, was the Italians.
But then, neither would they be smuggling guns in order to prepare for some armed raid or assassination attempt. It wasn’t from foreign nationals that such attempts came; it was from nationalistically-minded Egyptians.
One thing, however, was clear.
‘It looks,’ he said to Mahmoud, ‘as if I’ll be joining you in your investigations.’
Sidi Morelli had been an auctioneer. For some reason that Owen could not fathom, many of the auctioneers in Cairo and Alexandria were Italian. The counting at auctions was often done in Italian: uno, due … Strangely, that was not always so at the auctions conducted by Sidi Morelli himself, whose business included both an up-market end, based upon hired premises in the Europeanized Ismailiya Quarter, and a down-market end held in a tented enclosure close to the Market of the Afternoon, where proceedings were conducted totally in Arabic.
When Owen went there the following day he found a few people poking round the various lots stacked at one end of the enclosure while the sundry Levantines who normally assisted Sidi Morelli stood about uncertainly. An auction had been scheduled for that morning but then, since instructions had been lacking, had been abandoned.
‘No, I don’t know when it will be held.’ one of the Levantines was saying to a rather crumpled-looking Greek. ‘Yes, I know you’re looking for cotton, and, yes, we do have some in our warehouse, but the Parquet are crawling all over it and I don’t know when they’ll be finished.’
‘It’s raw cotton, is it?’ said the Greek.
‘Yes.’
‘And slightly damaged? That’s what the man told me last week.’
‘Yes, it’s slightly damaged. That’s why we’ve got it and why it’s not going to the cotton market.’
‘Do you think I could go to your warehouse and take a look at it?’
‘I wouldn’t if I were you. Not just at the moment. As I said, the Parquet are all over the place –’
‘The Parquet? What are they doing there?’
‘I told you. Our boss has just died and –’
‘Do you think there’s any chance of a reduction?’
‘For the cotton? Look –’
‘Yes. You know, to get rid of it. Not have it hanging about on your hands. While they’re working out the estate.’
‘Look, he’s only just died!’
‘Yes, but –’
‘No!’ said the Levantine in a fury. ‘No!’
The Greek moved away.
‘These bloody Greeks!’ the Levantine said to Owen. They’re so bloody sharp, they cut themselves!’
An Arab dressed in a dirty blue galabeah came in under the awning.
‘Louis,’ he said to the Levantine, ‘is there any chance of the angrib?’
He pointed to a rope bed in one of the lots.
‘Sidi said I could have it if you didn’t sell it this time, and I’ve got a customer waiting.’
‘I don’t see why not,’ said the Levantine. ‘If it’s not gone twice there’s no reason to suppose it would go the third time.’
‘Thanks.’
The Arab called a porter, who picked up the bed and walked out with it across his shoulders.
The Arab hesitated.
‘If I sell it, you know –’
‘That’s all right,’ said Louis.
‘I wouldn’t like the Signora –’
‘That’s all right.’
‘We let the stallholders have the stuff we can’t sell,’ the Levantine said to Owen.
The Greek returned.
‘I’m looking for a baby-chair, too.’ he said.
‘Baby-chair!’
‘You know, one of those high chairs that kids can sit in.’
‘We don’t have any baby-chairs.’
‘It’s for when they get big enough to sit up at table.’
‘Yes, I know what a baby-chair is. But we don’t have any. Not here. We wouldn’t have any. People around here sit on the floor. Babies too.’
‘Oh!’
The Greek seemed cast down.
‘Maybe our other place –’ said the Levantine, relenting.
‘Other place?’
‘We’ve got a place up in the Ismailiya. That’s where we put the better-quality stuff. It’s brassware, antiques, mostly, but occasionally we get some European furniture. You could try there.’
‘Thanks,’ said the Greek gratefully. He hesitated. ‘You don’t think they’d have any cotton?’
‘No!’ The Levantine almost shouted. ‘It’s only the better-quality goods. Everything else comes here. Cotton comes here.’
‘Yes, I see. And when –?’
‘Look,’ began the Levantine again, desperately.
Owen went out into the huge square beneath the Citadel in which the Market of the Afternoon was held. All round the edges of the square camels were lying and among the camels were great cakes compounded equally of dates and dirt. The Market itself was up on a raised platform. You climbed the steps and found yourself in a kind of giant village market, where the stalls were often mere pitches, with the owner sitting on the ground and all his goods spread round him in the dust. Potential customers would crouch down and finger the goods; and the dust came in handy for writing out the bills.
The goods in the Market of the Afternoon were different from those in the bazaars. They were for the most part copper or brass and almost entirely second-hand, the copper pots often worn with the use of generations. Everything here was for use, although the use was sometimes a little strange: the manacles for the punishment of harem women, for instance. Yet among the worn and battered goods you could occasionally find things of value, brass bowls inscribed with Persian hunting scenes, finely wrought candlesticks for standing on the ground, intricately chased scriveners’ pots, one of which had been acquired here once by none other than the Mamur Zapt.
In the centre of the Market was a restaurant area, the restaurants consisting often merely of large trays on the ground, with meat and pickles in the middle. Customers sat round on the ground and dipped their hands in.
It was at one of these that Owen found the Arab who had collected the angrib from the auction room.
‘Sold it yet, then?’
The Arab pointed out beyond the stalls to where a man was loading a donkey. The donkey already had panniers hanging down on either side but now the man put the bed across its back; and then he climbed up on top himself.
‘I’ll let the signora have the five per cent,’ the Arab said to Owen.
‘The Signora? You reckon she’ll be taking it on?’ asked the man crouched next to him.
‘Her or someone else.’
‘They won’t be like Sidi Morelli,’ said his neighbour definitely.
‘No. He was one of us.’
It was a phrase that recurred whenever people spoke of Sidi Morelli. Owen heard it again that evening when he returned with Mahmoud to the coffee house at the end of Mahmoud’s street, the one to which Sidi Morelli had been carried when he died, and where he had been in the habit of going every evening, punctually at six, to play dominoes with his friends.
They were sitting there now at their usual table, the table that Owen had seen them at that evening. The dominoes had been spread out on the table but they weren’t really playing.
Mahmoud made straight towards them. They seemed to know him and stood up to shake hands. Mahmoud introduced Owen, first as a friend, and then, scrupulously, feeling that they should know, as the Mamur Zapt. They looked at him curiously but acceptingly. To be someone’s friend was sufficient to invoke the traditional Arab code of hospitality.
Sidi Morelli had been a friend, a long-standing one. The four of them had first started meeting, they explained, ten years before.
‘Hamdan and I were sitting here –’
‘With the dominoes.’
‘– when he came across and asked if he could join us.’
‘The dominoes were all in use, you see.’
‘Well, of course we said yes.’
‘But that was only three. However, just at that moment Fahmy came in –’
‘Whom he seemed to know –’
‘He used to come to me for ice,’ Fahmy explained.
‘And so then there were four of us and there have been four ever since.’
There was a little, awkward silence.
The patron came across, carrying two water-pipes. Behind him his small son struggled with a third. They put the bowls down on the floor beside the three men. The patron looked enquiringly at Mahmoud and Owen. They shook their heads.
‘He never smoked either,’ said Abd al Jawad sombrely.
The patron touched him commiseratingly on the shoulder, then went off for the coffee pot.
‘How can it be?’ said Fahmy suddenly, plainly still distressed. ‘Doesn’t God look down?’
‘He looks down,’ Hamdan chided him, ‘but he does not always interfere.’
‘He sees further than we do,’ said the third man.
Hamdan and Abd al Jawad were, it transpired, shopkeepers. Fahmy kept an ice house just round the comer. They all lived and worked within three hundred yards of the coffee shop.
‘Have you been to the Signora?’ Hamdan asked Abd al Jawad.
‘Yes. I said that we would wish to do what we could. Of course, it will be in the Italian church.’
Fahmy picked up one of the dominoes. He put it down again, however, aimlessly.
‘It’s not the same,’ he said.
‘No.’
‘You know no reason?’ asked Mahmoud.
They shook their heads.
‘He had no enemies,’ said Abd al Jawad.
‘People always say that, but –’
‘He had no enemies,’ Abd al Jawad insisted stubbornly.
Mahmoud let it rest.
‘He was no different that night?’
‘No different.’
Tell me how it was.’
‘Well, he came, and sat down as usual, and we played –’
‘What did you talk of?’
‘Fahmy’s nephew, and would he marry.’
‘It happens, you know, Mahmoud,’ said Abd al Jawad, with an attempt at humour.
‘He has just returned to Cairo,’ Fahmy explained.
‘Where had he been?’
‘In the Sudan. He is a soldier.’
‘Fahmy was worried that he might many someone unsuitable while he was there.’
‘We told him that he was much more likely to marry someone unsuitable back here in Cairo.’
‘And that the only thing to do was to get him properly married beforehand.’
‘Yes,’ said Hamdan. ‘In case he was sent away.’
‘Fahmy’s worried that he might be posted.’
‘Well,’ said Fahmy defensively, ‘it could happen, couldn’t it? Especially these days.’
‘Egypt’s not going to get involved in the war. The British will see to that’
‘I wouldn’t want him to go to the war,’ said Fahmy.
‘Then you can look on the British as a blessing,’ said Hamdan wryly, but with a quick look at Owen.
Owen laughed.
‘That is not how we are usually seen,’ he acknowledged.
The slight note of tension that had crept in seemed to ease.
Mahmoud brought it back again.
‘Sidi Morelli was Italian,’ he observed, as if casually.
‘He was one of us,’ said Abd al Jawad quickly, almost reprovingly.
Afterwards, Mahmoud took him to the spot where Sidi Morelli had been found lying. It was no more than twenty yards from the coffee house, but around the corner and along the Nahhasin. The Nahhasin was quiet at that point and almost deserted. There was a group of shops further along but here there were only houses, and they were the old, traditional ones which presented a blank wall at ground level containing only a door. The windows were higher up, at the level of the first storey, and tonight, at any rate, they were without lights. The street was dark and Owen could quite see how someone might have stumbled over Sidi Morelli.
He suddenly realized that that was the point of them being here. Mahmoud had wanted to see it as it had been the evening before, at the time when Sidi Morelli had been killed. It wasn’t exactly a reconstruction, although Mahmoud, trained, like the Parquet as a whole, in French methods of investigation, favoured reconstructions. It did, though, enable him to see it as it had been, and to check on one or two things: the witness’s story, for example, of how he had come to find the body.
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.
‘Dope? Why?’
‘Agreeing to give her a letter of recommendation.’
‘It’s just a letter!’
‘It will have your name on it, won’t it?’
‘Yes, but it’s not even a firman!’
‘That’s something we ought to think about introducing,’ said Paul. ‘A firman for people like her.’
‘People like her?’
‘What do you think she wants to travel in Egypt for?’
‘She likes travelling. She’s just crossed the Sinai peninsula –’
‘Yes, I know. Another of these great camel-riders. Pain in the ass, all of them. They upset the local tribes, get killed or kidnapped, and then you’ve got to spend a lot of time – and money! – looking for them.’
‘She seems to have managed it all right without any of those things happening.’
‘Oh, sure! Competent, too. Well, if she’s so competent, how come she lost her way?’
‘Lost her way? I didn’t know that.’
‘The Sinai is one of those areas which, being a border region, does require a firman. When she applied for hers she had to specify a route. Which she then did not follow.’
‘Well, hell, all kinds of things –’
‘She didn’t make any attempt to follow it. She didn’t go anywhere near it. Instead she followed the route that Saladin took against the Crusaders.’
‘Yes, but –’
‘Which is likely to be the route if anyone else was invading Egypt.’
‘Invading!’
‘It would take the Turks a matter of days to get to the border.’
‘She’s not a Turk, she’s –’
‘A German. Yes, I know. And the Germans are building the railways which are going to help them get to the border.’
‘Paul, you don’t mean –?’
‘Yes, I do.’
The Mamur Zapt’s remit was confined to Egypt and he did not follow very closely what was happening beyond its borders. He thought, however, that Paul was making too much of this. It was unlike him to be so alarmist; but perhaps now that he was working so closely with Kitchener, as his Oriental Secretary, some of Kitchener’s own alarmism with respect to anything beyond his borders was rubbing off on him.
‘We can’t be sure, of course,’ Paul said now, softening slightly, ‘but just in case she is, we oughtn’t to go out of our way to encourage her!’
‘It’s just a letter!’
‘Can you write it in such a way as to lead to information coming back as to where exactly she is?’
‘I’ll try.’
‘She’s in Cairo for the best part of a week. It would be interesting to know what she’s up to while she’s here.’
‘Well, as a matter of fact –’
He had given her a choice of two places: the Semiramis, which had a dining room with a romantic view over the river, and the Mirabelle, which was a French restaurant in the noisy Arab Mouski. She chose the Semiramis; Owen would have chosen the Mirabelle.
‘But then I am romantic,’ she protested.
‘Is that what brought you out to these parts?’
‘Yes. But not in the way that you think. There are two sides to being a romantic the side that gets you bowled over by the moon on the water, and the rebellious side. It was that other side that led to me coming out here.’
‘Who or what were you rebelling against?’
‘My family. The life they were charting for me – the life of a rich woman in Germany. My family are’ – she grimaced – ‘respectable. We have an estate. The men for generations have been soldiers, the women, soldiers’ wives. Which means you spend your whole life in boring garrison towns. And then you retire to your boring estate. And it is all so predictable.
‘My brothers knew from the start that they would be soldiers. For a long time I thought I would be a soldier, too, and joined them in their horse-riding. But then they went off and it suddenly became apparent that all there was for me was marriage to some absolutely dreadful man.
‘I bought time. I said I wanted to travel. Some relations took me out with them to the Bosphorus. And then I looked around.’
‘And took up camel-riding instead of horse-riding?’
She laughed.
‘It looks like that,’ she admitted. ‘And maybe there’s some truth in it. I sometimes think I took it up only in order to outdo my brothers. They are both great riders, horse-riders. I wanted to be not only a better rider, I wanted to be a different one.’
‘At any rate, to ride to a different tune.’
‘That is so. That is exactly so.’
‘It is hard, though, especially out here,’ he said, thinking of Zeinab, ‘to be a woman and to be independent.’
‘Less hard than you think, if you’re a foreigner. There are no people from home to order me around and the locals don’t know what to make of me.’
‘But on your travels –’
She shrugged.
‘I carry a gun. In fact, though, the Bedu have never bothered me. It’s only in the towns that there has ever been any trouble. And then it’s usually been only from interfering officials. In the desert, at least you can get away from all that. There’s space, there’s freedom. You can choose your own route.’
‘As you evidently did in the Sinai.’
She gave him a sharp look.
‘You do do your homework,’ she said. ‘You have been making inquiries?’
‘No. I just heard.’
‘Well, it is not important. Is it important to you?’
‘Not to me. To the authorities, perhaps.’
‘The authorities!’ she said contemptuously.
They went out on to the verandah and stood looking down at the river. While they had been dining, the moon had risen. The leaves of the palm trees along the bank had turned silver and immediately below them the water was full of silver sparkles, too, where some men had waded out into the river to fill their water-bags. As they watched, the wind stirred the palm leaves and a long silver ripple ran out from the shore right across the river.
‘Let us go for a walk along the bank,’ she said. And, later:
‘It is a pity you are not coming with me,’ she said.

3 (#uae0dcaf8-2c16-53c9-a7c1-7b3e90151a82)
‘Effendi,’ said the warehouse foreman, almost weeping, ‘on my oath, I did not know. Am I a genie, to see what lies hidden inside the bales?’
‘Did not they seem heavy? Heavier than usual?’
‘If they did, Effendi, the camels did not tell me.’
‘The porters, then; did not they remark on it?’
The foreman looked at the warehouse porters, great, bull-necked men, who would think nothing of carrying a piano single-handed.
‘They remark on much, Effendi. Too much. But they did not remark on this.’
Owen thought it likely that they wouldn’t even have noticed.
‘Where did the bales come from?’
‘Sennar, Effendi.’
‘Sennar? That is a long way.’
‘It is. But, Effendi, on their way they pass through Assuan, and there they are sorted into different lots. Most go on to the cotton markets, but some are rejected, and it is those which come to us.’
‘So the guns could have been put in either at Sennar or at Assuan?’
‘They could, Effendi. They would not have been put in during the march, for the camel men would not have it. But –’
‘Yes?’
‘Effendi, why were they put in? And why,’ he said, distressed, ‘were they sent to us?’
‘That is what has to be looked into.’
Owen asked for the names of the firm’s agents at Assuan. The foreman gave them to him.
‘But, Effendi, they may know nothing about it. Do you know the great traders’ market at Assuan? It is by the river. The caravans come in and camp and unload their goods. The bales would have stood as unloaded, waiting for another caravan, one of ours, to pick them up and carry them on. There are many people in the camp, Effendi, hundreds, if not thousands, and they walk around freely. Anyone might have come to the bales in the night.’
Owen nodded.
‘The bales were brought here, then, from Assuan. How long would they have stayed in your warehouse before they were opened?’
‘They would not have been opened. We would have auctioned them as they stood.’
‘But surely buyers wish to examine the goods before bidding?’
‘The goods are taken up to our place near the Market of the Afternoon on the day before the auction. Then anyone can come in and see them.’
‘Would they open the bales?’
‘Not usually. They come and feel the cotton, Effendi, that is all they need.’
‘So that if someone knew that the goods were arriving, they would break in either to your warehouse or to your place near the Market of the Afternoon and take the guns?’
‘They could, Effendi. But our warehouse is safe. We have an interest in making it so. And at our place near the Market of the Afternoon we have a watchman.’
Owen had his own theories about the efficacy of watchmen; especially near the Market of the Afternoon.
‘But, have you thought, Effendi,’ said the foreman, ‘there is no need to break into either; provided you are prepared to pay the highest price at the auction.’

‘I really don’t think –’ began Owen.
‘I think you should,’ said Paul.
‘Appointment of a librarian? Look, I’ve got important things to do –’
‘Not as important as this,’ said Paul.
Paul, now, as Kitchener’s right-hand man, was in a position to insist, so, grumbling, Owen went.
When he entered the room he was staggered by the status of the people present. There was Paul, of course, and his opposite numbers from the principal Consulates. There was the Turkish representative, Ismet Bey. And there was one of the Khedive’s senior cabinet ministers. That was, possibly, explicable since the appointment was to the Khedive’s Library. Even so, they were only appointing a librarian, which was hardly the stuff of international disputes.
Except that it appeared to be.
‘But I am a scholar!’ said the German representative, beaming.
‘A very distinguished one,’ said Ismet Bey.
‘One who, moreover, enjoys the full confidence of the Khedive,’ declared the cabinet minister.
‘No, you’re not; you’re Number Two at the German Consulate,’ said Paul.
‘In Germany, that does not preclude scholarship,’ said the German representative easily.
Stung, Paul retorted:
‘No, but it ought to preclude taking up a sensitive senior post in His Highness’s service!’
‘Sensitive?’ murmured Ismet Bey.
‘Senior?’ said a representative of one of the other Consulates doubtfully.
‘A key post,’ declared Paul, ‘and one that has hitherto been occupied only by distinguished scholars of independent standing.’
‘A tradition I hope to maintain,’ murmured the German representative.
‘But you are not independent. You are –’
‘German?’ suggested Ismet Bey. ‘The post has always been occupied by a German.’
‘On scholarly grounds,’ put in the German representative.
‘There is, of course, an argument for appointing an Egyptian began the cabinet minister.
‘– at some time in the future,’ said Ismet Bey, ‘though at the moment –’
‘On scholarly grounds,’ murmured the German representative.
‘Britain accepts that in the past the post of Khedive’s Librarian has always been reserved to German nationals. However, –’
However, thought Owen, that was all right when the incumbent was someone as unworldly as old Holmweg, the man who had just retired. He was beginning to pick up the hidden agenda now. For some reason Paul, and, presumably, the British government, were set against having someone as politically astute as Paul’s opposite number in the post. But why? It was, after all, only a librarian.
‘– my government could not accept the appointment to the post of someone who would give it a different character.’
He turned to the German representative.
‘Not, of course, that we wish to cast any reflection upon Dr Beckmann. Nor upon his scholarship. It is just that we feel that his qualities, great though they are, are not ones entirely suited to the post, at least for the immediate future. No, gentlemen, I am sorry: I am afraid we will have to cast our net wider.’
He gathered up his papers.
‘Cheeky bastards!’ he fumed, as he and Owen walked away together. ‘Do they think we’re daft, trying something like that on?’
‘But, Paul, does it really matter?’
Paul stared at him.
‘Matter? Of course it matters. It means that he’d be able to carry on even if the Consulate went!’
The whole community turned out to watch the funeral procession. Both sides of the street were lined with people and that was so all the way from the Nahhasin to the Italian church. They bowed their heads and beat upon their chests. Many were openly crying. Used as he was to the extravagance of Arab protestations of grief, Owen could not help being moved. For this was not one of their own that they were mourning but a foreigner.
Since the funeral was that of a foreigner, there was a hearse. With Arab funerals there was no hearse; the body was carried upon a bier. Usually there was a kind of horn at one end, on which the turban was hung. The whole was often covered with a rich cashmere shawl. The bier was borne by the dead man’s friends, often, it seemed to Owen, precariously, for the feeling was intense and grief-stricken mourners would pluck at the bier, threatening to overturn it. Even today at times they pressed in on the hearse, touching the sides as if it was only through touch that they could communicate the strength of their feelings. Communicate or demonstrate? To Westerners there often seemed something histrionic in the affectation of grief. Owen knew, however, that there was nothing false about this. They were mourning someone dear to them.
Sidi Morelli was a Roman Catholic and the funeral service was being held in the Catholic church used by the Italian community. Sidi Morelli’s neighbours, as Muslims, would not go in. This public demonstration of grief and affection was therefore their way of participating. Some were no doubt there merely because they enjoyed a good funeral; but Owen was struck by how many in this most conservative of neighbourhoods were prepared to come out and display their feeling for an infidel.
Beside him, outside the warehouse, while the hearse was waiting, were Sidi Morelli’s three domino-playing friends.
The coffin was brought out of the house and laid in the hearse.
‘We ought to have been carrying that,’ said Fahmy.
‘Let each man die in his own way,’ said Hamdan pacifically.
‘Perhaps it is as well,’ said Abd al Jawad. ‘For it is a long way to the church and he is a heavy man.’
‘There would have been many to assist,’ said Fahmy.
The hearse moved forward a few paces and another carriage drew up outside the house. Signora Morelli and members of her family got in. As she came out of the house she saw the three friends and came across to them and said something. The men were openly moved.
The carriages advanced. The road filled up behind them. Hamdan, Abd al Jawad and Fahmy put themselves formally at the head of the procession.
As the ranks passed in front of him, Owen suddenly saw among them the alert figure of Ibrahim Buktari, Mahmoud’s prospective father-in-law. He was talking animatedly to the efficient young Egyptian whom Owen had noticed at the coffee house. He waved an arm when he saw Owen and Owen fell in beside them.
‘This is Kamal,’ said Ibrahim Buktari; ‘and this,’ he said to the young Egyptian, ‘is a friend of Mahmoud El Zaki’s. A soldier, like yourself.’
‘Soldier?’ said the young Egyptian, surprised. ‘I wouldn’t have thought Mahmoud would have had any friends who were –’
He stopped, embarrassed.
‘Soldiers?’
‘British soldiers.’
‘A hundred years ago,’ said Owen. ‘I’m not a soldier now.’
‘Once a soldier, always a soldier,’ said Ibrahim Buktari.
‘Where are you stationed?’ asked Owen.
‘At the Abdin Barracks, at the moment. I’ve just got back from the Sudan.’
‘Ah,’ said Owen. ‘Have I met your uncle? Wasn’t he one of Sidi Morelli’s domino-playing friends?’
‘That’s him up there,’ said Ibrahim Buktari.
‘Fahmy Salim?’
‘That’s right,’ said the young Egyptian.
‘He was worried about your being sent to the front.’
‘What front?’ said Kamal bitterly. ‘The British are keeping us away from any front.’
Ibrahim Buktari clicked his tongue reprovingly.
‘You’ll get your chance,’ he said.
‘But when? asked the young man. ‘And who against? It’s not the Sudanese that I want to be fighting.’
‘It doesn’t matter who it’s against,’ said Ibrahim Buktari. ‘The important thing, for a young soldier, is to be fighting.’
Kamal laughed and laid his hand on Ibrahim’s arm affectionately.
‘You’re a fine friend for my uncle to have!’ he said. ‘I’ll tell him what you said!’
‘Tell him! And then I’ll tell him that the one thing a young officer wants is war. That’s the way to quick promotion.’
‘Yes, I know. That’s what they all say. But that’s not the only thing, you know. You need to be fighting on the right side.’
‘Nonsense!’ cried Ibrahim Buktari, greatly enjoying himself. ‘There is no such thing as the right side. Not here in Egypt, there isn’t. Sides are all over the place, and the only thing that counts is to be on the winning side!’
‘Shocking!’ cried Kamal. ‘To have respectable elders leading young men astray! What is the country coming to!’
They embraced each other, laughing. This was obviously a continuing pretend argument between them.
Then they sobered up and the young Egyptian excused himself.
‘I must go and walk beside my uncle. It is a long way in the heat and he is much stricken by Sidi Morelli’s death. He may need help before the end. And perhaps,’ he said to Owen, ‘you can talk some sense into this old firebrand. The only people he listens to are the British!’
‘Outrageous!’ shouted Ibrahim Buktari. But the young Egyptian was gone.
‘He’s all right,’ Ibrahim Buktari said to Owen. ‘I’ve known him since he was a boy. Full of wrong ideas, of course. But then, the young always have been.’
That evening Owen went round to see Zeinab. She lived in the fashionable Ismailiya Quarter, and had an appartement of her own. This was unusual for a single Egyptian woman; but then Zeinab was unusual in many respects.
She was the daughter of a Pasha, which explained how she could afford to own an appartement but which did not account for the audacity of maintaining a separate establishment itself. Most Pasha’s daughters were as harem-bound as other Egyptian women and spent their lives at home with their families until they could be suitably married. The circumstances of Zeinab’s birth and upbringing were, however, mildly out of the ordinary, even by Egyptian standards.
Her mother had been one of Cairo’s most famous courtesans and the young Nuri Pasha had been desperately in love with her, to such an extent, indeed, that he had scandalized Cairo society by proposing marriage. To his surprise, and the even greater surprise of society, she had turned him down, preferring to keep her independence. This had endeared her to Nuri – who liked a bit of spirit in his women – even more, and the two had lived happily together until, tragically, Zeinab’s mother had died giving birth to Zeinab.
The shattered Nuri had clutched at the baby as representing all that was left of the great passion of his life, acknowledging Zeinab as his daughter and bringing her up as, in his view, a Pasha’s daughter should be brought up.
This was not quite, however, as other Pashas’ daughters were reared. Like most of the old Egyptian ruling class, Nuri looked to France for his culture, and had brought Zeinab up to share that culture. Being Nuri, however, he had rather overdone it, with the result that Zeinab was as much a Frenchwoman as she was an Egyptian. She spoke French more naturally than she spoke Arabic.
Consistent with this approach, the doting Nuri had throughout her childhood allowed her considerably more licence than her peers enjoyed, rejoicing, indeed, in every expression of independence as reflecting something of the spirit of her mother.
True, still, to his enthusiasm for things French, especially women, he had encouraged her, as she approached womanhood, to assume the ton of the young Parisienne. Basing himself, however, largely on the latest magazines that he had received from Paris, he had tended to confuse the current normal with less widely shared notions of the New Woman, which, admittedly, he interpreted as merely the adding of a piquant new flavour to the more traditional ones of sexual attraction. The upshot of all this was that by the time she was eighteen Zeinab had come to take for granted a degree of freedom unusual among Muslim women; and what Nuri was reluctant to grant, she took.
Zeinab, too, was enthusiastic about French culture, although her interests were more aesthetic. The Cairo art world, where she found most of her friends, was heavily French in tone, and had the additional advantage of taking a more relaxed view of women than the rest of Egyptian society. She was able, therefore, to pursue her interests in painting and music more or less in peace, and sometimes thought that one day she might establish a salon along the lines of that of the great Parisian ladies.
First, however, she would have to get married, and this presented a problem, since the only man she could contemplate was someone who shared her views on personal freedom, and there appeared to be no rich young Egyptian men in that category. That only left Owen; and he, alas, was English.
Meanwhile, she was just coining up to thirty.
‘Mahmoud? Married?’ she said now, raising herself upon her elbows. She seemed disconcerted. ‘I wouldn’t have thought he was the marrying kind.’
‘I think it was a bit of a surprise to him, too.’
He told her about the evening.
‘School?’ said Zeinab. ‘She must be about fourteen.’
‘I think she’s left school now.’
‘Well, that, I suppose, is something.’
‘I met her father. He seems all right.’
‘The trouble is,’ said Zeinab, ‘that Mahmoud is not marrying the father.’
‘I know. It does seem strange. But there you are, Time passes.’
‘Yes,’ said Zeinab.
‘Owen, I’ve had a letter this morning –’
It was McPhee, the Deputy Commandant of the Cairo Police.
‘Everyone’s had them,’ said Owen.
‘Not just me, then.’
McPhee seemed pleased. He turned to go. Then he came back.
‘I’ve had them before,’ he said.
‘The same writing?’
‘It’s a letter-writer’s hand,’ said McPhee, who, despite his eccentricity, knew his Egypt.
‘Got one?’
McPhee laid it before him.
‘It’s the same as mine,’ said Owen. ‘And the same as everyone else’s. Whoever it is always used the same writer.’
‘We could look out for him, I suppose,’ said McPhee. ‘Though there are dozens of letter-writers in the city.’
‘The ones to you, and to the Mamur Zapt,’ said Nikos, the Secrets Clerk, ‘were both posted in the Box.’
Fastened to the wall outside the Governorate was an old wooden box in which from time immemorial it had been the habit of the citizens of Cairo to deposit petitions, complaints about the price of bread, denunciations of their neighbours and accusations against their neighbours’ wives, together with sundry informations which were thought might be of interest to the Mamur Zapt. And some of them were.
McPhee had told him once – McPhee was a fount of such curious knowledge – that it was like the ‘Bocca del Leone’ at Venice, a letterbox decorated with a lion’s head, into which Venetians could drop communications which they wished to bring to the attention of the authorities. In Venice the communications had to be signed. In Cairo the informant could remain anonymous, but Owen, who liked the custom, felt that didn’t matter. In principle it was a way of giving every citizen a chance to communicate with the highest in the land; although these days the Mamur Zapt was not, as he once had been, the right-hand man of the Sultan, the most powerful of all his Viziers.
‘The point is,’ said Nikos, whose duty it was to unlock the Box every morning and bring its contents to Owen, ‘we could have the Box watched.’
Neither Owen nor McPhee liked the idea. To McPhee it was an affront to the spirit of the city. Owen was uncomfortable with the idea too, though he rationalized his discomfort away on the utilitarian grounds that once the anonymity of the Box was breached, its value as a democratic means of communication would be lost.
Nikos, the ever-realistic Copt, shrugged. He wasn’t, after all, the one who had been receiving the death threats.
For some days now the weather in Cairo had been unusually hot. Fans were whirring overhead in all the offices. The green shutters on the windows were kept closed. The windows themselves hung open and a little air, and a thin sunlight, came through the slats. In Owen’s, as in all Cairo offices, a vessel of drinking water stood in the window where the incoming air might cool it. Not today, however; the water was lukewarm. Owen summoned the office orderly and asked for some ice.
The orderly spread his hands.
‘Effendi, there is none in the ice box. There has been a run on it this week. Everyone else has thought the same as you; only they have thought of it first.’
Owen looked at his watch. It was a bit early to go to the Sporting Club.
‘However,’ said the orderly cheerfully, ‘the ice man comes this morning and when he comes I will bring some ice along for you.’
He still hadn’t come by lunchtime, but when Owen went down into the yard he saw the donkey with its great heavy bags on either side coming in at the gate.
‘No, Effendi, I am not late,’ protested the ice man. ‘I am very busy, that’s all. All the offices want ice, but I’ve only got one donkey, haven’t I?’
‘Well, have you?’ said Owen. ‘I would have thought there were other donkeys that might be called on. And other ice men, too, at a time like this when you need help.’
‘Effendi, they are as I am: working themselves to death. In this heat everyone wants ice. The palace wants ice, the hotels want ice, all the barracks want ice. So they cannot help me when I do the government offices. And the government offices want ice most of all. Fortunately I am a man of diligence and resource and so they get ice. Eventually.’
He fished in one of the saddlebags and produced a loadshaped block of ice wrapped in sacking.
‘You want ice, Effendi? You have it. So what are you complaining of?’
Once the funeral was over, the Signora assumed control of the business. The auctions started again.
‘I thought you said there was some cotton?’ said the crumpled Greek.
‘There is,’ said the Levantine wearily, ‘but it’s still in the warehouse. As I told you, the Parquet’s interested in it.’
‘Still?’ said the Greek, aghast.
‘Still.’
‘You don’t know when –?’
The Greek thought for a moment.
‘Presumably you’ve got loads coming into your warehouse all the time?’
‘That’s right.’
‘With cotton?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘Any coming in soon?’
‘There is, I believe,’ said the Levantine coldly, ‘a load coming up from the Delta sometime.’
‘Ah, the Delta?’ The Greek seemed interested; indeed, strangely, cheered.
‘It’ll be coming in next month.’
‘Alexandria,’ said the Greek with satisfaction. ‘I like the sound of that.’
‘What?’ said the Levantine.
‘Alexandria. The Delta. That’s much better than Sennar.’
‘Sennar? What’s that got to do with it?’
‘It’s a hell of a place.’
‘The cotton’s the same’ said the Levantine, puzzled.
‘Ah!’ said the Greek, laying his finger alongside his nose.
‘Perhaps it’s different to people who know,’ said the Levantine, impressed.
‘It’s not the cotton, it’s the place,’ said the Greek.
The Levantine looked puzzled, then shrugged his shoulders and moved away.
The Greek went on poking round the lots that were coming up for auction.
After a while he went up to the Levantine again.
‘Yes?’ said the Levantine reluctantly, over his shoulder.
‘This load that you’ve got in your warehouse at the moment, the bales that the Parquet are so interested in: it will be coming through at some time?’
‘Yes,’ said the Levantine.
The Greek pinched his fingers, as if feeling a crisp note.
‘I wonder – is anyone else interested in it, do you know? Not the Parquet, I mean. Another dealer?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘I mean, you do have cotton from time to time, don’t you? So there will be people who know. Perhaps they’ll have bought from you before.’
‘Well, I don’t know that I’d call them regular customers –’
‘But they know, don’t they? They know about the cotton. I was just wondering if any of them were particularly interested this time?’
‘Not as far as I know.’
The Greek pinched his fingers again and winked.
‘You know,’ he said, ‘it could be of great help to me to know their names.’
He pinched his fingers.
‘Well,’ said the Levantine, weakening. ‘All right.’
‘And anyone else,’ said the Greek, smiling encouragingly, ‘who shows an interest.’
The Greek wandered out of the showroom, sauntered along the edge of the Market of the Afternoon, and then dived into one of the little streets beneath the Citadel. He came to rest in a little, dark, almost subterranean coffee house.
Owen followed him in.
‘You’re going to have to buy that cotton if you’re not careful,’ he said.
The Greek settled himself comfortably on the stone slab and sipped his coffee.
‘At the last moment,’ he said, ‘I shall feel the cotton and look disappointed. Then I shall ask him if he’s got any more coming in.’
‘They get cotton from both the north and south,’ said Owen. ‘The lot with the guns in comes from the south.’
‘I know,’ said the Greek. ‘Sennar. Then Assuan. A pity.’
‘Pity? Why?’
The Greek looked slightly embarrassed. ‘I thought you might want to send me – I was hoping it would be Alexandria.’
‘Alexandria?’
‘I thought I might take Rosa. She’s been looking a bit peaky lately.’ The Greek looked down at his coffee. ‘It’s the baby, you know.’
‘Baby!’
‘Due in the summer. July.’
‘Baby!’
Rosa was about fourteen. At least – Owen began to calculate, time passed more quickly than you thought – maybe she was a bit more than that now. Sixteen? Seventeen?
‘Congratulations! To both of you. Tell Rosa I’m delighted.’
‘Thanks. I will.’
‘July, you say?’
‘Yes.’
‘And she’s looking a bit peaky?’
‘It’s the heat. She gets tired.’
‘So you thought a holiday would do her good?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Seems a good idea to me. Take her with you … But, hey, you’re not going to Alexandria! The guns came up from Assuan!’
‘It just seemed a good idea … Two birds with one stone …’
‘But it’s not two birds with one stone! You’re not going to Alexandria. There’s no reason why you should go to Alexandria! Assuan, the guns came from Assuan!’
‘All right, all right.’
‘You can take a holiday after!’
Baby! The shocks were raining in fast. First Mahmoud getting married, now Rosa having a baby. He would have to tell Zeinab.
On second thoughts, perhaps he wouldn’t tell Zeinab.

4 (#uae0dcaf8-2c16-53c9-a7c1-7b3e90151a82)
The warehouse this morning was buzzing with activity. Strapping, bulging-armed porters were carrying things to and fro, the harassed warehouse foreman ran about chiding everybody, and the Signora herself, black-dressed, arms folded, stood firm at the centre of the maelstrom.
Two carts were being loaded, one bound for the Ismailiya showrooms, the other for the premises near the Market of the Afternoon. Now that the Signora had taken over the management of the business, the auctions were beginning again.
Among the goods being put on the Market of the Afternoon cart were the bales of cotton. Owen had decided that there was no need to hold them longer, now that the arms had been extracted. The arms themselves were piled in a corner, black and leaden, looking oddly at home among the bric-a-brac that surrounded them.
The cart Owen had sent for them was arriving now. The two warehouse carts were occupying all the space in front of the warehouse doors and there was an altercation. The foreman hurried out.
‘Put it there!’ he said, pointing to just the other side of the carts. It would block the street entirely: but then, Cairo traffic was used to that. Not that the camel drivers, donkey men and carts would accept it lightly.
‘Can’t we put it closer?’ pleaded the policemen with the cart.
‘Oh, you poor things!’ said the porters. ‘Why don’t you get your wives to give you a hand? Come to that, why don’t you send them round anyway.’
Affronted, one of the policemen, a giant of a man, jumped off, stalked into the warehouse and picked up a bundle of guns. They were heavier than he had thought and he had to hitch them up with his hip to get them into the cart.
The porters laughed. One of them went across to the guns and picked up two bundles, one under each arm, and then put them up into the cart with ease.
The big policeman went back into the warehouse, half bent to pick up the guns as the porter had done, considered, and then considered again.
‘Come on, you idle sods!’ he bellowed to his colleagues still on the cart. ‘Do I have to do all the work?’
Reluctantly, the policemen fell to. The porters watched them and laughed.
The big policeman walked across to his rival and patted him gently on the head.
‘There are more things to strength, little flower,’ he said, ‘than being able to pick up pianos.’
‘Come on, Selim,’ said Owen hastily. ‘Get on with it!’
It did not, in fact, take the policemen very long, but even so, in the intense heat, by the time they had finished, they were running with sweat and glad to collapse into the shade beside the cart.
By this time, of course, the street was totally jammed in both directions and there were angry shouts. Selim stood for a moment contemplating the furious, gesticulating crowd, then lay down deliberately in a shady part of the street, stretched out and put his arms behind his head.
‘Selim! Selim!’ came an agitated cry.
Selim levered himself up on to one elbow.
‘Why,’ he said, ‘it’s Mustapha, the ice man!’
‘Selim, let me through!’
‘Certainly,’ said Selim. ‘We could do with some ice.’
The ice man and his donkey pushed through the crowd.
‘Selim,’ said the ice man hesitantly, ‘the fact is, I’ve run out of ice. I am just going back to the ice house for some more.’
‘Then you’re no good to us,’ said Selim, lying down again. ‘You’d better stay there.’
‘Selim, the ice house is just round the corner –’
‘You’d never get through.’
‘I could send Amina.’
‘Amina?’ said Selim, levering himself up. ‘Who’s Amina?’
The ice man pushed a small girl forward. She was about twelve or thirteen, dressed in rags and had arms and legs like matchsticks.
‘All right,’ said Selim, ‘she can go and fetch us some ice.’
‘Sod off!’ said the girl.
‘What?’ said Selim, astonished.
‘Sod off!’ said the girl defiantly.
‘You’d better watch out,’ said Selim, ‘or I’ll put you across my knee!’
‘You’d have to catch me first,’ said the girl.
Selim began to stand up.
‘You leave our Amina alone!’ came a warning cry from among the porters.
There were other cries from among the crowd of blocked bystanders. The girl seemed to have a following.
Selim, who although robust in his approach to mankind wasn’t stupid, changed tack.
‘Amina, my darling,’ he said. ‘Light of my eyes. Pearl of the deep seas. Rose of roses. You are like the smell of jasmine, the taste of honey –’
‘Go on,’ said the girl.
‘Your breasts are like the breasts of doves. Or will be,’ said Selim, who on things like this was inclined to be accurate.
‘Go on.’
‘Your smile is like the sunrise breaking across the water, your words like the fall of distant fountains –’
‘All right,’ said the girl, ‘I’ll get some.’
‘I like a girl of spirit,’ said Selim, watching her go.
‘You like any girl,’ said Owen. ‘Now come on, get the street unblocked!’
‘Get back to work!’ cried the Signora.
‘Yes, that’s right,’ said the foreman. ‘Get a move on with these carts. We haven’t got all day.’
Owen had arranged to meet Mahmoud afterwards but when he turned into the street where Mahmoud lived, he stopped, stunned.
The street had been transformed. A great yellow-and-red-striped awning covered the entire street. Palm trees in pots had suddenly sprouted along both sides. At one end men were working on a dais, above which a massive yellow silk canopy curled down; and other men were laying a red-and-blue carpet directly across the street itself.
Further down the street he saw Mahmoud talking to some of the workmen. Mahmoud suddenly noticed him and came hurrying towards him.
‘What’s all this?’
Mahmoud looked embarrassed.
‘It’s the wedding,’ he said.
‘Already? But, surely –’
‘It’s going to be next week,’ said Mahmoud. ‘It has to be,’ he said soberly. ‘Aisha’s mother has cancer. She wants to see her daughter safely married. So everything’s been brought forward. He touched Owen pleadingly on the arm. ‘You will come?’
‘Of course.’
‘There are no male relatives, you see.’
‘Don’t worry. I’ll be there.’
They walked down the street together. At every four paces Mahmoud stopped to shake someone’s hand and exchange embraces. People even came out of their houses. Owen suddenly realized. He was in Mahmoud heartland. Mahmoud was the local boy made good.
A shopkeeper hurried out of his shop and came towards them. Owen recognized him. It was Hamdan, one of Sidi Morelli’s domino-playing friends. He embraced Mahmoud and shook Owen’s hand warmly.
‘What do you think of this?’ he asked, waving at the carpets. Another one was appearing now, behind the dais, hanging down upright from poles across the top of the tent.
Mahmoud flinched.
The shopkeeper laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Don’t worry, Mahmoud,’ he said. ‘It’ll soon be over.’
He insisted that they come into his shop for coffee. It was a grocer’s shop, smelling of spices and raisins and the rich kinds of soaps that Egyptians loved. At the back of the shop was a low counter, on which they all sat. Hamdan clapped his hands and an assistant brought coffee in brass, thimble-like cups.
‘It is good to see you here, Mahmoud. Although I suppose it is not to see the wedding arrangements that you have come.’
‘No,’ said Mahmoud.
The shopkeeper sighed.
‘It is four days now,’ he said, ‘and I still can’t get used to it. We meet every evening as before and set out the dominoes as before: but the gap gets bigger, not smaller.’
Mahmoud laid his hand on his arm. ‘I know, Hamdan,’ he said sympathetically.
‘That someone could do this! For a trifle. A purse, a few coins –’
‘It was not for money, Hamdan,’ said Mahmoud quietly. ‘His money was not taken.’
The shopkeeper stared at him.
‘Then why –?’
‘I do not know, Hamdan. But perhaps you do.’
‘I?’
‘You knew Sidi Morelli. He spoke to you. Often.’
‘Of course. But –’
‘Has he ever spoken to you recently about something that was troubling him?’
‘I do not think so.’
‘You were close. He might have spoken.’
‘But he has not spoken, Mahmoud. I am sure. We would have noticed it.’
‘He had not appeared troubled?’
‘No. The reverse. In fact, we made a joke of it. “There is Fahmy,” we said, “with all his worries about his nephew; and there is Sidi with not a care in the world!”’
‘You see, Hamdan, if it was not money, then it must have been something else. A grudge, perhaps, someone who felt that Sidi had done them a wrong.’
‘But no one could feel like that!’ cried the shopkeeper. ‘Not about Sidi! He was not like that. He was generous, Mahmoud, kind. Mahmoud, you do not know – because he would not speak of it, or let us speak of it – the things he has done for people round here. The Koran entreats us to charity, but – I have said it to the Sheik himself – there are few Muslims who have given as much as he!’
‘But a man with a grudge does not look at the all, he remembers only the one thing.’
‘Mahmoud. I –’ The shopkeeper stopped. ‘Mahmoud, I really cannot believe it!’
‘You look for the reasonable, Hamdan. But the attack on Sidi was not reasonable.’
‘Mahmoud, I am sure this must be some criminal. Perhaps he was surprised and so ran away without taking the money –’
‘He was not surprised. If he had been, someone would have told us. And, besides, Hamdan –’
‘Mahmoud?’
‘I do not think this was a professional criminal.’
‘Why not, Mahmoud?’
Mahmoud hesitated.
‘Hamdan, I do not wish to add to your distress –’
‘Mahmoud, please!’
‘Sidi was strangled.’
‘I do not understand, Mahmoud.’
‘He was strangled, not garotted. I am sorry, Hamdan.’
The shopkeeper held up his hand.
‘Please, Mahmoud. Why does that make a difference?’
‘Usually, when a professional wishes to kill, he garottes. At least, in Cairo. It is quicker. Strangling is slow, and it requires much strength. There is more risk of the victim breaking free. I am sorry to have to tell you these things, but they are things I know from my work. Add that to the fact that no money was taken and you will see why I do not think it was a professional criminal.’
There was a long silence.
‘It must be some madman!’
‘That is possible. Although, again, I do not think so. For madmen do not usually plan, and this was planned. The killer knew, I think, that Sidi would be passing at that time and stationed himself where he could first kill and then escape.’
The shopkeeper was silent again. Then he said:
‘Mahmoud, you say that the killer knew that Sidi would be passing at that time?’
‘That is so.’
‘Then he must have known how Sidi spent his evenings – he must have known about us.’
‘That is so, I’m afraid.’
‘Many people knew about us. But they knew about us only if they lived in this neighbourhood.’
‘That is so.’
The shopkeeper shook his head.
‘I find that hard to believe, Mahmoud. We are not like that.’
Since Sidi Morelli had been an Italian national, the Italian Consulate had asked to be kept informed. Politically wise, Mahmoud took the precaution of asking Owen to go with him to the meeting.
‘So,’ said the consular official eventually, ‘you haven’t got very far.’
‘It takes time,’ said Mahmoud.
‘I appreciate that. However, in the present circumstances, with the war on, I think it would be unfortunate if it took too much time. My country might feel that the investigation was not being taken seriously.’
‘It is being taken seriously,’ said Mahmoud.
‘I am sure. And the presence of the Mamur Zapt is a helpful guarantee of that. In the circumstances. But the Consul would feel more comfortable if he could see some progress.’
‘It is still very early objected –’ Owen.
‘Yes. But, you see, my country feels that if speedy action is not taken, there could be other attacks.’
‘Well, that is always true –’
‘But especially true in this case, don’t you think?’
‘You are afraid that there might be other attacks on Italian nationals?’
‘Yes.’
‘There is no reason as yet to suppose that the attack on Signor Morelli was made because of his nationality,’ said Mahmoud.
‘I am glad to hear it. But then, what was it made for? It appears,’ said the official, glancing down at his notes, ‘that he was not robbed?’
‘No.’
‘Perhaps your inquiries have turned up some other possible motive?’
‘Not so far.’
‘Then how can Mr Zaki be sure that the attack was not because he was an Italian?’
‘Signor Morelli was a very respected figure in the local community,’ said Owen.
‘I am glad to hear it. However, don’t you think that makes it even more likely that he was attacked because of his nationality? He was an Italian whom everyone knew.’
The Consulate was in the Ismailiya so Owen called in afterwards to see Zeinab. A little unexpectedly, for Nuri seldom called on his daughter, her father was there. This didn’t matter, since Nuri regarded himself as largely free from the strict conventions of Egyptian society and didn’t mind Owen seeing his daughter alone. He knew about their relationship and, indeed, regarded it as entirely normal. Ordinarily Owen got along with him very well. This morning, though, he sensed a slight coolness in Nuri’s greeting.
He wondered if he had come at the wrong time, and after a moment or two made to go.
‘No, no,’ protested Nuri. ‘I am just on my way.’
He picked up his tarboosh and made for the door. At the last moment he turned and said to Zeinab: ‘You will think about what I said, my dear, won’t you?’

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