“I’ve got an idea,” he said. “Why don’t I have a word with that little sod Ali and see if he can arrange it all? It would need money but it would be worth it. If he’s seen, or they are seen, that’s OK. There’s nothing out of the ordinary. Whereas if we’re seen it’ll start a Holy War.”
“You won’t be able to use his evidence,” said Nikos. “Not in court.”
“We wouldn’t anyway.”
“Why do it, then?”
“It sets his mind at rest,” said Georgiades, looking at Owen.
“It would give a motive,” said Owen, “and once you’ve got that, you’ve got other lines to work on.”
“All right,” said Nikos.
“Can you trust Ali?” asked Owen.
“No,” said Georgiades, “but you can trust money.”
“I mean afterwards. Is he going to talk?”
“I don’t think he’ll talk,” said Georgiades. “His mates may.”
“We wouldn’t want it to get out.”
“I’ll speak to Ali.”
“It’s risky.”
“Got any better suggestions?”
“No,” said Owen regretfully.
“Want me to get on with it, then?”
“Yes.”
As Georgiades went out, Nikos said: “At least it will bring the Copts and the Moslems together.”
“What?”
“When they find out it’s the Greeks that are breaking into their tombs.”
Owen was pursuing Garvin about the Camel Watering Account.
“It’s damned silly,” he said. “We always need money at this time of year. And we always transfer it out of the Camel Watering Account. Why the hell can’t we do it this year?”
“Because they’re looking, that’s why. Usually they don’t bother. They’ve got other things to think about.”
“And this year they haven’t?”
“This year they’ve got Postlethwaite looking over their shoulder so they’re making damned sure they’re being strictly kosher.”
“I don’t mind them playing their little games,” Owen complained. “It’s just that they have real effects. On me. It affects my work.”
“Does it?” said Garvin, not really very interested.
“Yes, it does. I rely on it to supplement the Curbash Compensation Fund.”
“What?”
“Curbash Compensation Fund. It’s what I pay the bribes out of.”
“The curbash was abolished years ago.”
One of Cromer’s first acts had been to abolish the use by government officials of the curbash, the whip, as a means of enforcing obedience.
“I know, but the fund still exists. When the curbash was abolished they set it up to compensate anyone who was whipped after the abolition. You see, they couldn’t rely on the local beys not to forget it had been abolished. So they set up this fund to compensate victims in serious cases of abuse. They didn’t want to make too much fuss about it, otherwise the whole population would come along claiming they’d been whipped. So the fund’s administered by the Mamur Zapt.”
“Have there been any claims?”
“Not recently.”
“And there’s a grant each year?”
“That’s right. That’s what makes it so convenient. The trouble is, we’ve been having to spend more money on bribes lately. It’s never enough. So,” concluded Owen, “I have to transfer money from the Camel Watering Account.”
“Otherwise you’ll have to cut back on bribes?”
“Yes.”
Garvin toyed with the ebony paperweight on his desk.
“Yes,” he said, “I see your point.”
He thought for a moment or two.
“Can’t you use some other account?”
“No. It’s nearly the end of the financial year and most of the money’s been spent. Anyway, why the hell should I? The system’s worked all right up to now. The Consul-General wants the work done, doesn’t he?”
“Yes, but he doesn’t want to know about it. And above all he doesn’t want to see it appearing in the accounts. They are scrutinized, you know, by a parliamentary committee back at home. How do you think it would look if there was a Mamur Zapt Bribes Account? All the little Postlethwaites would go berserk.”
“We don’t have to call it that. ‘Special Purposes’ or something like that.”
“Create something new in finance,” said Garvin, “a new code, a new sub-heading, and that’s always the thing that gets picked out. Stick to what they’re familiar with.”
“OK,” said Owen. “I’ll stick to the Curbash Compensation Fund. But I still want some more money in it.”
“That’s what they all say. Including the Khedive. He wants his allocation upped too.”
“It’s his money, isn’t it?”
“No. It’s ours. He doesn’t have a bean, other than what we lend him. That’s why we’re here.”
Of all the countries in the world, Egypt was perhaps the most thoroughly in debt. Its international indebtedness had reached such alarming proportions under the previous Khedive that its Western creditors had become seriously alarmed. Britain, as the largest of these, had stepped in to sort out the country’s chaotic finances. But that had been thirty years before, and the British were still there. Egypt’s finances, they claimed, were still unsettled.
“Besides,” said Garvin, “all he wants it for is to go to Monte Carlo again. So we’re not keen.”
“But my money-” Owen began.
“Is part of it. He wants a larger allocation in any case. That means more taxes. And here there’s potentially big trouble, because the way he wants to do that is by taxing the Copts more.”
“Just them?”
“Just them.”
“They won’t be pleased.”
“They’re not pleased.”
“I’ve not heard anything about this.”
“You wouldn’t have. It’s still being fought out inside the ministry. Finance are resisting it strongly. No wonder. They’re all Copts.”
“If this gets out-”
“Yes. You’ll be busy, won’t you?”
“I’ll need more money.”
Garvin shook his head.
“No chance. There’s a veto across the board on any increase. Until the main thing gets settled.”
“What do I do, then?”
“You’ll have to use the resources you’ve got,” said Garvin, and smiled ambiguously.
“Well,” said Georgiades, “I’ve found out what you wanted.”
He came into the room and poured himself a glass of water from the earthenware jug which stood, as it did in all the offices of Cairo, in the window so that the air currents could cool it. Although it was very hot, Owen had not put the fan on. It was a huge, three-bladed affair suspended from the roof and when it was at full blast it was hard to keep papers still on his desk. “It was the Zikr?”
“The man who put the dog in Andrus’s tomb and the man who got stabbed are one and the same Zikr.”
“You’re sure?”
“Ali is sure.”
“I’m not going to ask you how he made sure.”
“It cost a lot of money.”
Owen winced.
“He had to do deals. Each of these gangs have got their own territory. Ali’s territory is the Coptic graveyard so he had to make arrangements with the gangs in the Moslem graveyard. It’s a big one and there are three gangs involved.”
“The more people in it, the more it’s likely to get out.”
“If anything get out,” said Georgiades, “it won’t be linked with us.”
“I hope so. I certainly hope so.”
Georgiades put the glass down and mopped his brow. He was a bulky man and had been walking the streets and the sweat was running off him.
“What are you going to do now?”
“It gives us a motive, doesn’t it?”
“Does it?”
“That’s why Zoser killed him.”
> “Why should Zoser care? It’s not his tomb.”
“Zoser doesn’t think like that. For him it’s a religious matter. It was an affront to his God.”
“Which he decided to avenge?”
“Yes.”
“All by himself?”
“Why not?”
“He’s only a little man,” said Georgiades, eyeing the glass again. He made up his mind and poured out some more water.
“Are you saying you think someone put him up to it?” Owen demanded.
“What do you think?”
“I think,” said Owen, “that at least we’ve got bloody Zoser. That’ll satisfy the Moslems. And the Copts are hardly in a position to complain. We could look for the people who put him up to it. In fact, we might well do that. Quietly. No hurry. But we don’t have to.”
“You’d prefer to see it ended?”
“Yes.”
“OK.” Georgiades finished the glass and put it down.
“As long as everybody else sees it the same way,” he said.
“I can’t use this?” said Mahmoud.
“You can use it,” said Owen, “but not in court. My informant is not in a position to testify.”
“A pity. There’s no chance you could persuade him?”
“No chance at all.”
“What about the first identification? The Zikr who planted the dog?”
“That too.”
“Pity. You see, if I had the original identification I could at least match it up against a description.”
“Afraid not.”
“The same informant?”
“The same informant.”
“You’re relying on him a lot.”
“I think he’s pretty reliable.”
“But he won’t talk? In public, I mean?”
“That’s right.”
“Well,” said Mahmoud, “it’s something, at any rate. Now that I know what I’m looking for I’ll see if I can dig it out by other means.”
“Are you going to pull him in?”
“Not till I’ve done some more checking. I’d like to have a bit more before I go for him.”
“Don’t leave it too long. Otherwise he mightn’t be there when you go to pick him up.”
And that was the trouble. For when, two days later, Mahmoud’s men went to call on Zoser, they found that the bird had flown.
CHAPTER 7
Didn’t you ever have a man on him?” said Owen incredulously.
Mahmoud flushed.
“I don’t have as many men as you,” he replied angrily.
“Even so!”
Owen was furious. He had counted on wrapping this up. With Zoser inside, at least he would have headed off trouble from the Moslems. Now he couldn’t count on that. And suppose they found out that a man had slipped through their fingers? It would be even worse. Mahmoud had bungled it. Not to pick Zoser up was fair enough, he had advocated that himself. But not to put a man on him. That was bloody stupid.
In fact, Mahmoud had put a man on Zoser but he preferred not to admit it. The man had gone to sleep, or at least that was what Mahmoud suspected, and that, to Mahmoud, was an even harder thing to admit than that he had not posted a man in the first place. Not being able to post a man was a matter of economics. Having one go to sleep on the job, well, that was just incompetence; and Mahmoud was very sensitive to the charge of Egyptian incompetence. Especially as, privately, he thought the charge was often justified.
It was in a case like this, too, that the weakness of the Egyptian system became apparent. The Parquet, the Department of Prosecution of the Ministry of Justice, which Mahmoud belonged to, and the Police were two entirely different and separate organizations. Mahmoud was responsible for collecting the evidence, deciding whether there was a case, and then carrying through prosecution. In doing so he had to rely on the police for manpower. Working to his instructions, they would collect evidence, do low-level questioning, keep people under surveillance, and if necessary arrest. The trouble was that since they were not directly under his control he was unable to ensure the quality of their work in the way that, for example, Owen could. What made matters worse was that the police were so badly paid that they could be recruited only from poor, country districts and lacked the sophistication, education and even, Mahmoud suspected at times, mother-wit of city people. Owen, because he could pay more, was able to draw his own men almost exclusively from the city. That was another thing that Mahmoud felt was wrong.
Owen’s reaction touched him on a sore spot; and it was made all the sorer by an angry feeling inside him that there had indeed been incompetence, Egyptian incompetence, that he, Mahmoud, was ultimately responsible for it-and that there was absolutely nothing that he could in practice do about it.
“There must have been a leak,” he said sullenly.
Owen was taken aback. This was something that had not occurred to him.
“A tip-off?”
“Yes. How else would he have known?”
“The church? The visit to the Scentmakers’ Bazaar? Your men’s inquiries?”
This upset Mahmoud still further. His men again.
“Their inquiries were general,” he said harshly. “They are always making such inquiries. There was nothing to link them directly to Zoser.”
“Surely they asked questions about Zoser?”
“And others.”
“That might have been enough. Or maybe, seeing us the second time, he might have suspected. Especially if he spotted that it was the third time, for Miss Postlethwaite and me.”
Mahmoud was silent.
“How much notice did you give your men?”
Mahmoud was now in one of those moods in which he found implied criticism hard to take. Owen half-realized this and if he had had any sense would have shut up, but Mahmoud’s moods blew up very suddenly out of an apparently clear sky and once again he was slow in reacting.
“They had no notice.”
Mahmoud did not say that this was because he did not trust them. “I made up my mind, collected them and went straight down.”
“Anyone else in your office know?”
“No. Anyway,” said Mahmoud, “I don’t have any Copts in my office. What about you?”
Nikos. Owen pushed the thought immediately aside.
“If I did,” he said, “they are people I can trust.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes,” said Owen. “I am quite sure.”
Mahmoud shrugged. The gesture came across offensively. In some way it conveyed utter disbelief.
Owen boiled over.
“Well,” he said, “now that you’ve lost him, you’d better find him.”
The way he put it made it sound like an order. Mahmoud turned on his heel and went off without a further word.
“Well,” said Georgiades, “he could be right, couldn’t he?”
“No,” said Owen, “he couldn’t.”
Georgiades spread his hands. Owen distrusted these Cairene gestures of openness.
“Look at it this way: two loyalties. One to you, one to his people. Both real, both genuine. If he can serve one without hurting the other too much, what the harm?”
“It would hurt me. It would hurt the department.”
“How much?”
“It hits at the work we do.”
“How much? Just this one instance?”
“It’s his people I’m trying to help.”
“And the Moslems.”
“I’m neutral.”
“He’s not.”
“He’s neutral when he works for me.”
“Mostly. Mostly.”
“Are you saying that in this case he’s playing a game of his own?”
“I’m only saying that he might be.”
Owen was silent. Before transferring to the Egyptian service he had been a regular-army officer in India and at times his military background reasserted itself. He liked things, or at least people, or at least those people near him, to be
straightforward. He found it hard, almost impossible, to accept any deceit on Nikos’s part. Internally, that was. So far as the rest of the world was concerned he could conceive of almost any deception. But among themselves…
“It’s only a hypothesis,” he said.
“Sure!” Georgiades agreed quickly. “Sure.”
“You don’t know anything that makes it anything more?”
“No, I’m just figuring out all the angles.”
“It could be someone else.”
“It needn’t even be in this office.”
“OK, then.”
“If I were you,” said Georgiades, “I’d forget about it. Only…”
“Only what?”
“Be careful.”
Owen knew what he meant. While they were working on this case there were some things which Nikos had better not know.
“OK.”
Georgiades smiled cheerfully. He had just suggested that his closest colleague might be, in this at least, a traitor. But there was nothing personal in it. Nikos was still his friend. Georgiades still trusted him. As much as he trusted anybody.
Owen was going through the accounts with Nikos trying to find pockets of money which might still be emptied. They came to the end of one set. While Nikos was collecting the papers Owen said casually:
“When they went to find Zoser, he wasn’t at home.”
Nikos understood immediately.
“A tip-off?”
“It looks like it.”
Nikos’s mind began automatically to turn over the possibilities, as it always did.
“That’s funny,” he said.
“Why?”
“Zoser doesn’t strike me as the sort of person who would have contacts.”
“Maybe it was just a sympathizer.”
Nikos nodded.
“Yes. Perhaps you’d better review all Copts working in the office. Including me. Do the same with Mahmoud’s office.”
Owen did not say anything.
Nikos’s thoughts moved on to a different tack.
“He doesn’t have many friends. And they’re all Copts. He must be in one of the Coptic parts of the city.”
“And there are plenty of those.”
“Mahmoud will be checking his friends,” said Nikos. “That’s obvious.”
He frowned for a moment in concentration.
“The centre of Zoser’s life is the church,” he said. “I’ll get you a list of the people who go there regularly.”
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