The Camel of Destruction Read online

  The Camel of Destruction

  A Mamur Zapt Mystery

  Michael Pearce

  Poisoned Pen Press

  Copyright

  Copyright © 1993, 2017 by Michael Pearce

  First E-book Edition 2017

  ISBN: 9781464208805 ebook

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

  The historical characters and events portrayed in this book are inventions of the author or used fictitiously.

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  Contents

  The Camel of Destruction

  Copyright

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  More from this Author

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  Chapter One

  It was, alas, not uncommon for senior members of the Department to nod off in their offices, overcome by their exertions and the heat, so when Abdul Latif stuck his head through the door and observed Osman Fingari he thought nothing of it.

  It was, however, decidedly unusual for them to be at their posts after two o’clock, when the city as a whole closed down for its siesta; so when, going round to make sure the shutters were closed, Abdul Latif found him still there at three, he was taken aback.

  ‘It’s not like him,’ he said in the Orderly Room. ‘He’s usually away by two.’

  ‘He’s usually away by half past eleven,’ said one of the other orderlies.

  Abdul Latif felt called on to defend his master.

  ‘It’s these lunches,’ he said.

  ‘That’s right. Eat too much, drink too much—’

  ‘Drink too much?’ Abdul Latif was shocked. Osman Fingari was, so far as he knew, a strict Moslem.

  ‘He likes his drop.’

  Abdul Latif disapproved of this and felt he should bring the conversation to an end.

  ‘We can’t leave him there,’ he said.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It’s not proper,’ said Abdul Latif firmly. ‘Besides, I want to go to the souk.’

  ‘Then why not go? He can wake himself up, can’t he?’

  Unfortunately, this was one thing that Osman Fingari could not do and so it was that the night porter found him still there when he made his rounds at seven o’clock. A cruder individual than Abdul Latif (night porters were paid less than orderlies), and taken by surprise, he said roughly: ‘Here, come on, you can’t do that!’ and shook Osman Fingari by the shoulder.

  Whereupon Osman Fingari slid slowly out of his chair and fell to the ground.

  ***

  ‘Nasty thing in one of the offices,’ said Farquahar in the bar the following lunch-time. ‘Chap in Agriculture. Found by the night porter.’

  ‘Heart attack?’

  ‘I expect so.’

  In the heat of Cairo such things were not unusual and conversation passed to other topics.

  Owen, sitting at a table nearby, heard the remark but did not think it worth registering. People were dying all the time in Cairo. Not in Government offices, of course, or something would have had to be done about it. He had, in any case, more important things on his mind.

  ‘And then the bank manager said to me—’

  His companion leaned back wearily.

  ‘Gareth,’ he said, ‘do you read the newspapers?’

  ‘Of course I read the papers. Damn it, it’s my job. Part of it,’ he amended.

  One of the incidental duties of the Head of Cairo’s Secret Police, the Mamur Zapt, was to read the day’s press. Actually, he read it twice; before publication, to stop undesirable items from getting in, and after publication, to realize, resignedly, that they had.

  ‘The financial pages?’

  ‘Well, no.’

  They consisted, so far as he could see, entirely of numbers; and on the whole numbers were not considered politically inflammatory.

  ‘You should.’

  ‘Cotton prices, contango, that sort of thing? No, thanks.’

  ‘Take cotton prices, for instance. Nothing interesting about them?’

  ‘Absolutely nothing,’ said Owen firmly.

  ‘You have not noticed that they are only half what they were a year ago?’

  ‘No.’

  Cotton was Agriculture’s concern.

  ‘A half, you say? That’s rather a fall.’

  ‘It is. And since Egypt depends on cotton, it’s reduced the whole national income. By fifteen per cent.’

  ‘Hmm. Well, that does seem a lot. But manageable, manageable.’

  ‘That’s what your bank manager’s doing. Managing it.’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘It affects the government finances too, of course. In a big way.’

  ‘Fifteen per cent?’

  ‘More.’

  ‘Well, that is a bit tough. It explains what they’ve been doing to my budget. I thought they were just being bloody-minded as usual.’

  ‘A thing like this,’ said his companion, who was aide to the Consul-General, ‘gives the bloody-minded their chance. The Old Man’s hospitality allowance has been cut by half. Half! How I’m going to manage that, I don’t know. All these damned visitors! They all expect a free drink, and they measure it in bottles, not glasses.’

  ‘Another one?’

  Owen stood up and picked up Paul’s glass. Paul glanced at his watch.

  ‘A little one, please. I’ve got a meeting at three.’

  Owen stopped, astonished.

  ‘At three?’

  The siesta hour, or two, or three, was normally inviolate.

  ‘Yes. It’s to do, actually, with the financial pages. Perhaps you should come along.’

  ‘No, thanks. No-o, thanks.’

  ***

  On the outside wall of the Governorate was a stout wooden box in which from time immemorial the humble folk of Cairo had deposited petitions, denunciations and information which they wished to bring to the attention of the Mamur Zapt.

  The Mamur Zapt was no longer the powerful right-hand man of the Sultan he had been in the seventeenth century—indeed, there was no longer a Sultan—but lots of people did not know that and still insisted on writing to him.

  They wrote to him about all sorts of things: the price of bread (risen a lot recently); which of the traders was giving short measure (all, but some more than others); the sexual habits of figures prominent in the city (entertaining and quite possibly accurate).

  In among the grimy scraps of paper there were often brief, scribbled messages which were of great use to him in his secret service work.

  These were the items to which he turned first: but the items he turned to second were the petitions, of which there were usually quite a lot. Many ordinary Cairenes, completely flummoxed by the Egyptian bureaucracy, which was of an O
ttoman labyrinthineness, preferred to make use of the more personal mode of address which the Mamur Zapt’s box represented.

  Owen insisted on handling all petitions himself. Often there was little he could do but he always made sure that, so far as they could be, issues raised were followed up. This was very popular with the ordinary folk of Cairo but less so with the bureaucracy, as Nikos, his Official Clerk, pointed out.

  It was one of Nikos’s duties to empty the box every day and lay its contents on Owen’s desk. He did not like doing this as it meant going out of his office. He preferred to keep his distance from the hoi polloi.

  That went for the contents of the box, too, which he was quite happy to leave to Owen to deal with. Occasionally, though, Owen needed his help; as this morning.

  ‘Read this. I can’t make head nor tail of it. If it’s a dowry, I don’t want anything to do with it.’

  ‘It’s not a dowry,’ said Nikos. ‘It’s a waqf.’

  A waqf was, Owen knew, a religious bequest or endowment. And that was nearly all he knew about it, except that the waqf fell under Islamic law (and was therefore nothing to do with him) and was extremely complicated.

  ‘I still don’t want anything to do with it.’

  Waqfs were quite common. They were a traditional legal arrangement for the giving of alms. A waqf was an assignment in perpetuity of the income from a piece of property for charitable purposes, the upkeep of houses for the poor, for example, or the maintenance of mosques or hospitals or schools.

  It could also, however, be used for the benefit of the founder’s family. The founder could provide for a salary to be paid to a member of his family to act as administrator or stipulate that surplus income be given to his descendants as long as they survived.

  Such a system was, of course, open to abuse and over the centuries most possibilities for abuse had been thoroughly explored. From very early days it had been necessary to regulate the system and now, such was the number and scale of waqfs, that task was undertaken by an entire Ministry, the Ministry for Religious Endowments.

  ‘Not for me,’ said Owen firmly.

  ‘I will tell you about it,’ said Nikos, disregarding him.

  ‘It’s from a woman, whose husband benefited for many years from a waqf. He was a schoolteacher and ran a kuttub for small children. It had been in his family for generations. Anyway, he died and she expected the benefit to pass to their son. It didn’t.’

  ‘I thought these things went on forever?’

  ‘So did she. Apparently, though, someone invoked a clause she’d never heard of whereby on the death of her husband the benefit passed to a distant male relative. The relative turned out to be senile and was, she says, tricked into selling the benefit to a rich man who now wants to kick her out.’

  ‘I don’t think I can handle this. I’ll put her on to somebody in the Ministry.’

  ‘She’s already tried them.’

  ‘Well—all right, give me the letter. I’ll think about it.’

  ‘There’s just one other thing. She says several other people in the neighbourhood have recently lost their benefits in a similar way.’

  ‘The same man?’

  ‘She doesn’t say.’ Nikos handed back the letter. ‘It would be easy to find out. A walk round the neighbourhood. But, then, that’s something you like doing, isn’t it?’

  ***

  The phone rang. It was Paul.

  ‘Gareth, the Old Man would like you to take a look at something. ’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘A man died in one of the offices last night.’

  ‘Yes, I think I heard someone say something about it in the bar.’

  ‘Did you, now? It’s certainly got around.’

  ‘What’s special about it?’

  Owen, as Mamur Zapt, or what in England would be known as Head of the Political Branch, did not reckon to concern himself with routine crime, if this was a crime.

  ‘We don’t know there is anything special about it. It’s just that there’s been a reaction to it. A political reaction.’

  ‘Ah! Well, isn’t that something for you to bother yourself about, not me? I mean, if it’s just a heart attack—’

  ‘They’re saying it isn’t.’

  ‘Who are they?’

  ‘Ali Maher, Abdul Filmi, Al-Nukrashi. And others.’

  Owen could understand now. The names were those of prominent politicians. Only one formally belonged to the new Nationalist Party but the others were Nationalist in sympathy and always ready to make the most of any issue which might embarrass the Government.

  ‘But surely the post-mortem—’

  ‘There isn’t going to be one. Unless someone says otherwise. A doctor has signed the certificate in the normal way. Natural causes.’

  ‘Then why—’

  ‘Ali Maher says it’s a fix.’

  ‘What do the family say?’

  ‘They want to get on with it. You’ll have to move fast. The body’s being buried this evening.’

  That was not unusual. Speed was necessary in the heat.

  ‘You want me to order a post-mortem?’

  Paul hesitated.

  ‘I want you to take a look at things. Order one only if you think it’s really necessary. We don’t want this to get bigger than it needs to. That would be playing into Ali Maher’s hands.’

  ***

  Owen, representing the British Administration, went to give his condolences. The family were surprised—they had always known Osman Fingari to be important but hadn’t realized he was that important—but flattered.

  ‘We knew he’d been doing well in the last year, of course.’

  ‘He’s had the house altered a lot.’

  ‘The mandar’ah! New marble entirely.’

  ‘And not the cheapest!’

  ‘Oh, he’s done well, all right. But then, he’s had to work for it.’

  ‘Yes, never home till late at night.’

  ‘Of course, it took its toll.’

  ‘Well, yes, that was it, of course, wasn’t it. In the end he paid the price.’

  ‘You could say he sacrificed himself for his work.’

  ‘Much appreciated,’ said Owen. ‘Much appreciated.’

  They were in the funeral pavilion, which had been erected in the street in front of the house, greatly to the surprise of traffic which had intended to pass by. The tent was crowded, mostly with men in the stiff collar and dark suit and little red pot-like hat, the tarboosh, of the Egyptian civil servant.

  ‘Would it be possible to pay my respects?’ Owen asked one of the relatives.

  ‘Of course!’

  They pushed their way out of the tent. The street was equally crowded. Apart from onlookers, and as the average Cairene was a great believer in onlooking there were plenty of them, those more intimately involved in the funeral procession were beginning to assemble. There were the blind men, the boys, and the Fikis to chant the suras. There were men with banners and men with torches, for this was evidently going to be a funeral in the old style.

  The relative led Owen into the house. From one of the upper floors came the sound of wailing. Owen thought at first that it was the paid mourners but then a door opened and some black-clad women filed down the stairs. The wailing continued up above and he realized that it came from the women of the family.

  He followed the relative up the stairs. Outside a door two Fikis were squatting reciting passages from the Koran. The relative pushed open the door and led Owen in.

  The body lay in a bier with a rich cashmere shawl draped over it.

  Owen advanced and bowed his head. He stood like that for a moment or two and then touched the relative on the arm.

  ‘May I look one last time on the face of someone who was dear to me?’

  ‘Of course!’

/>   But, as he bent over the body, there was really no need to look; the smell by itself was sufficient.

  ***

  ‘It was straightforward,’ said Owen, ‘if you set aside nearly causing a riot, antagonizing the Ulama, provoking the Kadi, irritating the Khedive and raising uproar in the National Assembly. Not to mention upsetting a rather nice old couple still in a state of shock after losing their son.’

  ‘I’m sorry about that,’ said Paul. ‘The others I can live with.’

  ‘And was it worth it, I ask myself? So he did take poison; where does that get us? Does it matter if he took poison? That’s his business, isn’t it?’

  ‘Well, not entirely. Why did he take poison? That’s the question they’re asking.’

  ‘How do I know? Girlfriend, boyfriend, personal problems, fit of depression, overwork—yes, and while we’re on that subject, can I just mention that I was up all last night trying to get the quarter to calm down.’

  ‘You poor chap! And can I just mention that I myself was up half the night trying to sort out something that was much bigger.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘The stupidity of bankers.’

  ‘Heavens, you’ll never be able to do anything about that. My bank manager—never mind my bank manager, what about this chap commiting suicide, what are we going to do about him? And, incidentally—’a ray of hope gleamed—‘why am I doing anything about it at all? It’s nothing to do with me. Suicides, murders—that’s the Parquet’s business, surely?’

  In Egypt responsibility for investigating a suspected crime did not lie with the police but with the Department of Prosecutions of the Ministry of Justice, the Parquet, as it was known.

  ‘The Parquet will have to be involved, certainly. It’s a crime, of sorts, and they’ll have to be notified. They’ll check on the circumstances, etc., etc., and make a fine pig’s ear of it, no doubt, but their part of it really is straightforward. No, no, they can be left to get on with that bit. It’s the other bit—’

  ‘What other bit?’ asked Owen. ‘It sounds as if it’s just a question of managing the Assembly and that’s something you and the Old Man can do, surely? You’re doing it all the time!’

  Paul did not reply at once. Owen hoped he was having second thoughts. He wasn’t.