The Face in the Cemetery

by Michael Pearce

  ‘Two hundred, Owen! This is very serious. It’s a big gap in the stock valuation and Whitehall will be jumping down our throats. And it’s not long till the end of the financial year, not in accountancy terms, that is—’

  Relieved, Owen assured him that while it might not be long in accountancy terms, it was quite a while in policing terms and that he had every hope of the arms being recovered during that period. Then he rang off, quickly.

  He went in to see McPhee, to break the news to him.

  ‘But of course, Owen! I’d be very glad to help. I will certainly take over the internment work from you.’

  This was decent of McPhee. Owen knew he hated the work as much as he did.

  ‘However,’ said McPhee, ‘I do feel I ought to warn you: I may not be able to help you for long, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Really?’ said Owen, concerned.

  Now he came to think of it, McPhee had been looking a bit peaky lately.

  ‘The fact is,’ said McPhee shyly, ‘I have volunteered.’

  ‘Volunteered? For the Army?’

  This was ridiculous. McPhee was about a hundred years old. Forty-five at least. They’d never take him.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, um, jolly good! But—but, you know, the Administration might not be willing to release you. You’re needed here.’

  ‘I realize that it would add to your burden. But, you know, I feel that older men ought to go and not—not the younger ones. We’ve had our lives, or at least a chance to play a bit of an innings, and, well, they haven’t.’

  ‘Look, I really—’

  ‘Besides,’ said McPhee confidingly, ‘at least I can shoot. Whereas a lot of the younger chaps, you know, straight out from England, can’t. From what I have seen. Except each other, of course.’

  ***

  It was clear that Owen was going to have to go to Minya. It was also clear that he would have to tell Zeinab, and he approached their apartment that evening with some misgivings. Things, however, had been moving fast with Zeinab. As, admittedly, they usually did.

  She had been to a party that lunch-time to celebrate a sale by one of her artist friends. Sales, sadly, were not so frequent among Zeinab’s artist friends as to promote a life of continuous party-going and there were a lot of people there to share his good fortune.

  ‘Alas,’ said the lucky artist, ‘fortune it is not, and it seemed better to blow it all on one party than to live carefully on it for the next two weeks.’

  There were musical friends as well as painting friends present and Zeinab, remembering her promise, inquired of them if they recalled a Hilde Langer.

  ‘Hilde Langer?’ said Raoul. ‘Yes, I do remember someone of that name. But wasn’t that a long time ago?’

  ‘Hilde Langer?’ said Hussein. ‘That little German girl? Oh, she was no good.’

  ‘Why wasn’t she any good?’ asked someone.

  ‘Because she wasn’t Egyptian?’ suggested someone.

  ‘That, too,’ said Hussein. ‘There are enough foreigners coming in to take Egyptian musicians’ work. But, no, it wasn’t so much that. It was that she never amounted to anything. It was all pretty-pretty stuff. She used to play at salons, that sort of thing.’

  ‘What’s wrong with that?’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t do it.’

  ‘That’s because no one would ask you to, Hussein,’ said someone mischievously.

  ‘I wouldn’t do it even if they did!’ retorted Hussein. ‘Salon music is the music of privilege.’

  ‘Hilde Langer wasn’t privileged,’ said Zeinab.

  Hussein sniffed.

  ‘Silly, sentimental songs!’ he said.

  ‘Schubert? Brahms?’ said the mischievous one.

  ‘Yes! The music of foreign privilege!’

  ‘But sentimental, silly?’

  ‘Women’s stuff!’ said Hussein contemptuously.

  ‘What’s wrong with women’s stuff?’ said Zeinab, taking umbrage.

  ‘It’s the music of feeling, Hussein,’ said someone. ‘That’s why you don’t like it.’

  ‘It’s the music of false feeling!’ cried Hussein, getting excited, as he usually did in arguments. ‘Lonely, yearning, romantic, young girl’s love!’

  ‘Well, she was lonely, and a young girl, and in love!’ shouted Zeinab, who also tended to fire up in argument. ‘What’s false about that?’

  ‘Didn’t she marry an Egyptian?’ asked someone beside her.

  ‘But it’s weak feeling, it’s a woman’s feeling!’ roared Hussein. Usually he drank lemonade but this afternoon, in honour of Fahmi’s sale, they were all drinking Greek wine. ‘It’s not feeling as I feel it here!’ He beat upon his chest dramatically.

  ‘But it’s feeling as I feel it here!’ cried Zeinab, banging her heart too. She was not in fact at all certain about the music. About the feeling, though, she was absolutely sure.

  ‘She did, but it was the end of her as a musician,’ said the person beside her. ‘They wouldn’t have her after that.’

  ‘Quite right!’ shouted Hussein. ‘She was no good!’

  ‘They shut her out,’ cried Zeinab. ‘But did you take her in?’

  ‘Certainly not!’

  ‘A fellow musician!’

  ‘She was no good, I tell you!’

  ‘You shut her out,’ said Zeinab, who was by this time feeling very protective towards Hilde Langer, ‘because she was a woman!’

  ‘And quite rightly, too!’

  Zeinab threw her glass at him.

  Friends grabbed them both.

  ‘Zeinab, Zeinab!’

  ‘Hussein!’

  ‘She was a young girl on her own,’ cried Zeinab, ‘and you shut her out! They shut her out and then you shut her out. You bastards!’

  And walked unsteadily out of the room.

  ***

  She was still spitting fire when Owen came tentatively into the apartment.

  ‘The bastards!’ she said indignantly.

  ‘What is it now?’

  ‘Hussein and the others. They shut her out. Just because she was a woman!’

  Owen took a look at her and then went into the kitchen to fetch her a tumbler of water.

  ‘Who’s this?’

  ‘Hilde Langer. That German woman. They wouldn’t take her in when the Germans threw her out. Because she was a woman.’

  Owen, who knew most of her friends, tried to make peace.

  ‘It may not have been because she was a woman. It could have been for all sorts of reasons. Because she was a foreigner. Or, look, you know what Hussein is. I told you he probably wouldn’t like her kind of music.’

  Zeinab shook her head.

  ‘It was because she was a woman.’

  She finished the water and let her head fall back on the cushion and closed her eyes.

  Then she opened them again and tried to sit up.

  ‘I have feeling!’ she said fiercely.

  ‘You certainly do.’

  He pressed her back against the cushions and put his arm round her.

  ‘They didn’t want her because she was a woman!’ said Zeinab.

  Owen pulled her towards him.

  ‘I want you because you’re a woman,’ he said.

  Zeinab considered this, trying to focus her eyes on a spot on the ceiling. Then she yielded and allowed herself to be pulled.

  Owen thought she might go to sleep, but her eyes remained open. She seemed content to lie against him, however, and he thought this might herald an improvement in relations.

  Zeinab’s eyes focused firmly.

  ‘Of course, you’ll be going to Minya,’ she said.

  ***

  Fricker had been brought up to Cairo the day before and lodged in a cell overnight. Owen wasn’t sure about
this, but then he wasn’t sure about any of the provisions for internees. Fricker was hardly a criminal, so why should he be lodged in a cell? Couldn’t he be given bail or something? But no, the Aalim Zapt, his Legal Adviser, said, he couldn’t be given bail because he wasn’t a criminal. So the cell it was.

  And then where should he be questioned? The interrogation rooms at the Bab-el-Khalk were bare and hardly friendly. Mahmoud, he was sure, would prefer somewhere more relaxed. Fricker to him was a witness, not an enemy. But then, after Mahmoud, Cavendish would interview him, and to Cavendish Fricker was an enemy.

  He considered having him brought to his own room, which would be more congenial. But then Mahmoud refused to recognize the office of Mamur Zapt and would feel his position prejudiced. In the end Owen persuaded McPhee to let him use his office. Mahmoud wouldn’t mind this since he did recognize the post of Deputy Commandant of the Cairo Police and was, indeed, prepared to accept the Bab-el-Khalk—as police station, that was, not as residence for the Mamur Zapt.

  Mahmoud arrived first. They heard Fricker coming along the corridor and then a guard brought him in. They both rose.

  ‘Mr Fricker, Mr el Zaki,’ said Owen. ‘Mr el Zaki is from the Parquet and would like to ask you a few questions.’

  ‘The Parquet?’ said Fricker, surprised. He shook hands.

  ‘Yes. It concerns the case of a Mrs Hanafi,’ said Mahmoud.

  ‘Hanafi? I’m afraid—’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Hilde Langer,’ said Owen.

  ‘Hilde Langer? But—oh, of course! I had forgotten for the moment. I always think of her as Hilde. Yes, I know her.’

  ‘I am the officer investigating the case,’ said Mahmoud. ‘I was hoping you might be able to help me.’

  ‘Well, of course. I would be glad to help. But why—?’

  ‘Hilde Langer is dead,’ said Owen gently.

  Fricker seemed stunned.

  ‘Dead?’

  ‘You did not know?’ asked Mahmoud.

  ‘No. I have been away. I—’

  He looked at Owen.

  ‘It happened just about the time you were taken into internment,’ said Owen.

  ‘Hilde? Dead?’

  ‘I am afraid so, Mr Fricker, I am sorry to press you at a time like this. The news obviously comes as a shock to you.’

  ‘Yes. I saw her—I saw her only a short time ago. She seemed perfectly well. What…? Did you say this was a case? How did she die?’

  ‘We do not know yet.’

  ‘But obviously—?’

  ‘We are concerned about the manner of her death. We think, I am afraid, that she was murdered.’

  The blood drained from Fricker’s face.

  ‘Hilde! Murdered!’

  Owen got up and went out of the room to order coffee. When he came back Fricker had buried his face in his hands.

  ‘There is no justice,’ he whispered. ‘She had had such a hard life.’

  He lifted his head.

  ‘It was not Aziz?’

  ‘Why should it be Aziz?’

  ‘No,’ said Fricker. ‘It wouldn’t be. It couldn’t be!’

  An orderly brought in some coffee.

  Fricker took a sip and nodded his thanks. Then he put the cup down.

  ‘Please!’ he said. ‘If I can help, I would gladly do so.’

  ‘Very well. Let us begin with something you said. That you had seen her a short time ago. When was that?’

  ‘Five, six months ago. I was down in Minya. Looking at the ghaffir system. I am an inspector, you see,’ he explained. ‘I was writing a report. I stayed there for, oh, two, three weeks. I got to know Aziz. I mentioned to him once that I sing. German songs, I said. “Oh,” he said, “then you must meet my wife.” Well, I went, not expecting much. But then I found that it was Hilde!’

  ‘You had met her before?’

  ‘Yes, yes. In Cairo. I used to sing, she used to play.’

  ‘At musical evenings for the German community?’

  ‘Yes. At one time, almost every week.’

  ‘You knew her well, then?’

  ‘Yes, of course! We played together, we practised together—much practice. It is necessary to practise together in order to perform together. There must be no gap.’

  ‘No gap?’

  ‘Between the voice and the piano.’ He looked wryly at Mahmoud. ‘That was all, though. It did not apply to—other things.’

  ‘How long did this go on for?’

  ‘About three months. Then I was posted. I am inspector, you see. Travel much. Travel all the time. When I came back she had gone. “No more Lieder,” I think. Well, of course, that was not true. There were other accompanists. But not like her. She—she was perfect.’

  ‘And you never saw her again until this recent visit to Minya?’

  ‘No. I heard she had married. Married an Egyptian. He was in dams, I think. At that time. So when I met him at the sugar factory I made no connection. It was surprise, great surprise to me.’

  ‘Mr Fricker, you said that when you saw Mrs Hanafi again, she seemed quite well?’

  ‘That is so, yes.’

  ‘And happy?’

  Fricker hesitated.

  ‘It is difficult,’ he said.

  ‘The family?’

  ‘That is so. Very difficult.’

  ‘Aziz?’

  Fricker shook his head.

  ‘Between them, no difficulty.’

  His English, thought Owen, was not so good today.

  ‘But happy?’ Mahmoud pressed him.

  ‘Things were hard for them, very hard.’

  ‘Mr Fricker, when I told you that Mrs Hanafi had been murdered, you said: “It was not Aziz!” As if you thought it could have been Aziz.’

  ‘No! That is not so! That was foolish thought. Foolish thing to say!’

  ‘And yet it was your first thought.’

  ‘That was because there was no one else. No one else that she knew. In that terrible place.’

  Owen had wondered how Cavendish would behave towards Fricker, because for Cavendish Fricker definitely was the enemy. There wasn’t even the restraint that had operated in the case of Owen when he had talked to Fricker before in the camp, namely that he had been conscious that he was addressing a professional colleague. They were both servants of the Khedive; and they had been able to talk as they had, disagreeing with each other but dispassionate about the subject, because it was something that had arisen in the course of their work and where it was the object of both simply to arrive at a working solution.

  In Cavendish’s case there was no such restraint. There was this time no shaking of hands. In fact, it was Fricker who set the note. When Cavendish came in he rose to his feet and bowed politely. Cavendish, caught slightly by surprise, and perhaps also because he was accustomed to the diplomatic forms of the Sublime Porte, bowed back. It set a note of polite formality which Owen decided to preserve.

  ‘Mr Cavendish, Mr Fricker. Mr Cavendish has some questions he would like to put to you, Mr Fricker.’

  ‘Of course.’ He bowed again.

  Cavendish smiled.

  ‘They concern your report, Mr Fricker. Or, rather, the recommendations you made in your report.’

  ‘They were helpful, I hope?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Very helpful.’

  ‘Good,’ said Fricker, pleased.

  ‘Mr Fricker, I wonder if you can tell us something about the process within the Ministry which led to the report? Who initiated it in the first place?’

  ‘Well, I think I initiated it,’ said Fricker. ‘The idea came to me one day when I was down at Beni Sueif. I had been looking at the ghaffirs, and I thought: “This is hopeless! There is no system.” And then I thought, well, what sort of system should there be? And then w
hen I got back I prepared a little paper, and, well, things followed from there.’

  ‘They liked your paper?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘Who, particularly?’

  ‘Well, Mr McKitterick circulated it to all the important people, I think.’

  ‘The Minister?’

  ‘I believe so.’ Fricker smiled, pleased. ‘Yes, I believe so.’

  ‘Any names in particular?’

  ‘I think the report received general support,’ said Fricker seriously.

  ‘Among the senior people?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But especially Mr McKitterick?’

  ‘He has always been most receptive of my ideas.’

  ‘I see. Thank you. The reason I am asking, Mr Fricker, is that I am very impressed. It is not often that one moves so swiftly from idea to implementation.’

  Cavendish was no fool, thought Owen, and he knew more about bureaucracy than Owen had given him credit for. Perhaps that was one of the advantages of working at the Ottoman capital.

  ‘That is so, yes. Very swift. And unusual, too; yes, you are right. The right idea at the right time?’

  ‘I think that may very well be so.’

  ‘I am not always so fortunate with my ideas.’ Fricker sighed. ‘Usually people say, “Thank you very much,” and then nothing is heard of them. The reports of mine that are buried in filing cabinets!’

  ‘Very many, I daresay.’

  ‘And some good ones, I insist.’

  ‘I am sure.’

  ‘There was one especially. When I first started working as inspector. It was on wireless stations.’

  ‘Wireless stations?’

  ‘Yes. A chain of them, all the way down the coast, all the way to East Africa. That is what I suggested. But it never came to anything.’

  ‘An idea before its time, perhaps?’

  ‘Well, yes.’ Fricker was pleased. ‘That is so. But not long before its time. Nowadays…’

  But Cavendish cut him short.

  ‘Returning to your proposals about the ghaffirs, Mr Fricker. The trouble with over-speedy implementation is that sometimes things go wrong.’

  ‘That is so, yes,’ Fricker agreed.

  ‘As in this case.’

  ‘As in this case?’

  ‘There has been an over-issue of firearms.’