The Mamur Zapt and the Night of the Dog mz-2 Page 11

  The attacks on the Copts brought, as Owen had expected they would, bitter representations from the Coptic community. Among the leaders who came to complain was Andrus.

  “If you do not take action,” he said, “we shall.”

  “You have said that to me before.”

  “And you took no action.”

  “I took action. But so did you.”

  Andrus looked shaken.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Did you not take action?” Owen pressed him.

  “If we did,” said Andrus, “who can blame us?”

  “I blame you,” said Owen. “Without your action there would not have been blood, Coptic blood, on the streets.”

  “I do not know what is this action you refer to.”

  “Don’t you?” said Owen, looking him straight in the eye.

  “No,” said Andrus, returning the look.

  Owen was not sure. The contradiction was direct and on the whole he believed Andrus to be an honest man. But he sensed an unease beneath the directness. Perhaps although Andrus had not been personally involved, he knew more than he pretended.

  Andrus returned to the burden of his present complaints. They were the same as last time but with, probably, more justification. And whereas previously, under the shock of the immediate offense, he had been fiercely indignant, now there was a savage bitterness which was in a way more alarming.

  He answered Andrus, as he had done the other Copts, with assurances and counsels of patience; and with a touch of iron.

  “Do not be drawn into reprisals,” he said as Andrus left, “or there will be trouble.”

  “Do you think we should just sit back and take it?” asked Andrus.

  “There won’t be any taking it. I’ll see to that.”

  “I hope you will,” said Andrus. “I hope you will.”

  Andrus’s name, of course, appeared on the list that Nikos compiled. Owen was surprised to see how extensive the list was. The church seemed to be a microcosm of Coptic society, with representatives of all social layers. Perhaps because it was conveniently placed on the edge of the Old City closest to the modern, developed parts where the more well-to-do lived, there were surprisingly wealthy people in its congregation. The Zosers rubbed shoulders with men with a hundred times their income. Another way in which the church was comprehensive was in the range of cultural levels among its members. Primitive fundamentalists like Zoser stood alongside sophisticated civil servants like Sesostris and Ramses. Sesostris Owen could understand; he was a fundamentalist too. But Ramses?

  He asked Nikos about it.

  “It’s a very old church,” Nikos said. “Lots of people prefer it.”

  Georgiades had another explanation.

  “They all stick together,” he said.

  Owen could also understand that. A minority which believed itself to be persecuted might well stick together. It would look after its members, even erring ones like Zoser, especially if the grounds for the offence were ostensibly religious ones. Zoser appeared to be a man of few friends. Even so, in the diffuse community which centered on the church there might be those willing to shelter him.

  It was worth checking. But he would have to go through them all one by one. That was a task to stretch even the Mamur Zapt’s resources (especially with the Curbash Compensation Fund so depleted). There were so many of them. Where to start?

  The obvious place to start was with the known agitators and trouble-makers. But when he asked Nikos to check the congregation against his other lists, Nikos said:

  “That’s no good. You won’t find any. They’re all respectable people.”

  “How do you know?” asked Georgiades.

  “They’re all Copts,” said Nikos, but went to look in his files.

  Georgiades sighed.

  “Unfortunately, he’s right,” he said.

  Copts were law-abiding. Their crime rate was far lower than that of any other community. Even with Owen’s political definition, they came out below other national and ethnic groups. On the whole they saw the British as allies from the point of view of protection, as insurance against massacre, and as offering opportunities for advancement. They flocked into government service. Just as Jews, in other countries, were traditionally identified with financial services, so the Copts, in Egypt, were identified with the civil service. Their critics said there was no need for them to break the law; they made it. They were on the inside.

  Like Nikos. A thought struck him. Nikos made the lists. He had drawn up the list of church members and he maintained the other lists too. Any name that was on the list was there because Nikos had put it there. Would it be surprising if some names were not on the lists?

  A feeling of helplessness came over him. All investigations, no matter what the books said, depended on bureaucratic processes. Especially his kind of investigation. It was only partly the men he had out on the streets and in the bazaars, the special agents like Georgiades. All these would be useless without record-keeping and, more than that, record-keeping of the intelligent sort that Nikos provided. If you couldn’t rely on that, how could you even start?

  He came to a decision. He would start with Nikos’s list. Until Nikos was found wanting Owen would continue to trust him.

  But he might ask Georgiades to do a little independent checking.

  Because of the heat all work stopped about lunch-time and the city came to a halt. The streets emptied, the shops shut, the donkey boys retreated into the shade, and government offices closed. Most people took a siesta. A few British officials, however, in whom northern habits died hard, preferred to go to one of the clubs and have a drink and lunch there. Owen was one of these.

  He was unable to sleep during the day, and used the dead time to keep up with the newspapers and journals in the reading-room and to swim in the club pool while it was comparatively empty. Afterwards, about five, when the club started to fill up with people arriving for the daily hockey and cricket matches, played always, by personal decree of the Consul-General, in the cool of the evening, he returned to his office. The buildings were empty except for the occasional orderly and the Assistant Commissioner at the other end of the corridor, and sometimes Nikos working late, and he was able to get a lot of work done.

  His friends, however, were familiar with his habits, so Mahmoud knew where to find him. Mahmoud was another one who didn’t take a siesta and just at the moment, still simmering over the way Zoser had slipped through his fingers, he was driving his men hard. Even Mahmoud, however, could not get them to work in the afternoons and he too, like Owen, normally used the afternoons to catch up on desk work and reading. This afternoon, though, he had been unable to concentrate on the case he was preparing. His thoughts kept drifting back to Zoser. He kept analysing and re-analysing the probabilities. And then he had his idea.

  “It’s logical,” he insisted to Owen when they met. “When he’s not at home and he’s not working, that’s where he is. Why shouldn’t he be there now?”

  They were sitting outside at their usual table. The heat was beginning to go off the streets and the shadows were creeping out from the walls. It was still early, however, and they were the only ones at the tables.

  “There are lots of places he might be,” Owen objected. “He could be anywhere. He might have left the city altogether.”

  “No, he wouldn’t have done that,” said Mahmoud. “He’s never been out of the city in his life. He would be frightened.”

  “OK, but there are lots of places in the city.”

  “He’s a creature of habit,” said Mahmoud, “and very rigid. He has a few basic routines which he sticks to. He keeps to the places he knows, the ones he feels confident in. That’s why he could be there.”

  “Someone would be sure to come across him.”

  “They might not say if they did. Anyway, they might not come across him. It’s always dark, there are lots of little odd corners and he probably knows it well.”

  “It’s a possibil
ity,” Owen conceded.

  “You see,” said Mahmoud, “we’ve been assuming somebody is helping him and we’ve been going round all his contacts. It’s easy because there are very few of them. Well, we’ve drawn a blank. We could have missed it, I know.” Mahmoud thought of the way Zoser had escaped before and wavered slightly. “But I don’t think we have,” he said determinedly. “Not this time. We’ve not found anything because there isn’t anyone else involved.”

  “There must have been someone else involved at some point. Someone put him up to it.”

  “Well, do we know that? Are we sure? Maybe he just heard about the Andrus business and took it into his head to avenge it. All by himself.”

  Mahmoud happily following a logical trail was a different Mahmoud from the one sensitive to charges of Egyptian incompetence. He had forgotten all about his previous difference with Owen and was now totally caught up with his argument.

  “It’s a possibility,” said Owen. “I don’t know I’d go any further.”

  The intuitive, Welsh side of Owen always responded to Mahmoud’s Arab inspirationalism; the pragmatic English side damped it down.

  “But do you think it’s worth trying?”

  “Well-yes.”

  “OK, then,” said Mahmoud. “Will you help me?”

  The Parquet, true to its French origins, was completely secular and made no distinctions among Cairo’s many religions. Mahmoud, however, like most of the Parquet lawyers, was Moslem. Usually this didn’t matter because the Parquet confined itself to criminal offences and there was no religious dimension involved. Occasionally, however, there was and then, Cairo being Cairo, the Parquet trod very carefully. Mahmoud clearly thought this was one of those times.

  “You see,” he said, “it’s the church.”

  How would it look if a Moslem took his men into a Christian church on the pretext, as the Copts would see it, of conducting a search? Wouldn’t it come perilously close to desecration? Almost as close, say, as putting a dog in a tomb?

  But would it look any better if a Christian Mamur Zapt were to do it? In Cairo there was almost as much difference between Christian and Christian as there was between Christian and Moslem. And the Mamur Zapt wasn’t even an Egyptian Christian.

  There was another thing, too. So far he had been able to maintain a claim to even-handedness on the grounds that he treated both sides, Moslems and Copts, with equal severity. Wouldn’t this be seen as tipping the balance?

  Mahmoud was watching him anxiously.

  If Zoser was hiding in the church and they caught him it would be worth it. But suppose he wasn’t? They would have stirred up trouble for nothing. Just at a time when the Copts were especially sensitive.

  Wouldn’t it be better if Mahmoud did it? After all, it was the Parquet’s business. Treat it as he would any ordinary issue and any ordinary criminal. If it had been a brothel or a gaming club Mahmoud wouldn’t have hesitated. He would have sent his men in at once. Why couldn’t he do that now?

  But as soon as he posed the question, Owen knew the answer. Mahmoud was quite right. He couldn’t do it. The Copts would object very strongly if Owen were to invade the church; but if Mahmoud did it they would riot.

  “OK,” he said. “I’ll do it.”

  They moved fast.

  This time they were taking no chances. Owen did not even go back to his office. He got Georgiades to bring his men to the Bab es Zuweyla and only then told Georgiades what he had in mind.

  “OK,” said Georgiades instantly.

  He looked at Mahmoud.

  “How many men have you got?”

  “Ten.”

  “Get some more. Enough to put a ring round the church.”

  “I’ve got enough to watch the roads.”

  “Yes,” said Georgiades, “but he won’t use those.”

  Mahmoud found some more men and Georgiades showed him where to station them. Mahmoud was quite content to follow Georgiades on this. Good investigator though he was, he preferred to leave this side of the business to others. Georgiades would handle it better.

  “If he comes running out,” said Georgiades, “at least they’ll see him now. Though whether they’ll be able to do anything about it if they do see him…”

  Georgiades had no high opinion of the police.

  He gathered his own men into a little bunch and gave them careful instructions. He had used them before and they knew what to do. Intelligence was the thing in a case like this, not brawn. Intelligence-and speed. It would have to be done quickly. The more time they took, the more time there was for a crowd to gather. What Owen wanted was to be in and out fast.

  The men rushed in and fanned out quickly. At least there wasn’t a service going on. A few black-gowned priests looked up startled. For a moment or two they couldn’t understand what was happening. Then one of them rushed off.

  One of Georgiades’s men intercepted him.

  “Where are you going?” he asked.

  “To fetch the Father,” the priest snapped at him.

  “You stay here,” said the man.

  The priests were shepherded into a little knot. They seemed completely bewildered. Bewildered first and then angry. It was not long before they began to complain.

  As the angry voices rose higher and higher other black-gowned figures came in. Among them was an impressively-dressed figure whom Owen recognized to be the Father of the church. He went across to him.

  “I am sorry, Father, that this should be so,” he said. “We will not be long.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “We are looking for an evil man.”

  “Here? In the church?”

  “I am afraid so.”

  “But why here? What reason have you to look here?”

  “One has told us.”

  It was easier to put it that way. To say that they were here only because of a hunch would not do at all.

  “It is an outrage!” the Father said angrily.

  “We will not be long.”

  Owen walked away. The Father joined the other priests. They crowded round him and began to talk excitedly.

  “Have you thought what the Metropolitan will say?” said Georgiades in an aside as he hurried past.

  The Metropolitan was the head of the Coptic Church in Egypt. He would not be pleased.

  “And the Patriarch?” said Georgiades, the next time he went past.

  The Patriarch. Owen had forgotten about him. The Patriarch was head of the whole Coptic Church, including the Abyssinian one, which was Coptic too. Abyssinian. There could be an international complaint. The Patriarch would use the country’s ambassadors. They might go straight to the Foreign Office. The British Government would have to respond. And the British Government, churchgoers like Postlethwaite, would hardly be likely to take kindly to one of its servants invading a church. A Christian church, too.

  Owen cursed himself for having been so foolhardy as to get involved in this affair. Why hadn’t he stayed out of it? Got Mahmoud to go in? Even if Mahmoud had refused, would it have mattered so much? They could always have had the church watched and perhaps picked up Zoser when he came out. If he was there, that was. He might not even be there and the whole thing would have been for nothing and all he would have got out of it would have been kicks. This, he told himself, is a big mistake.

  It began to look increasingly like it. Georgiades had split his force into two. The first group had taken up position in all the key intersections so that they could control anyone who attempted to pass. The second group had moved immediately into the hekals, the Coptic apses, of which there were many, screened off from the rest of the church by fine, heavily-pictured screens. Beyond there was the baptistery and beyond this a whole host of little rooms used by the priests. The men went methodically through these. They knew what to do. They were used to the job. They performed similar raids every week; not on churches, admittedly, but on printers’ premises, warehouses, gambling dens, brothels and private houses. Garvin himse
lf, before he became Commandant, had been responsible for training them. He had needed expert searchers for his battle against the drug traffic. There were none and he had had to train them. Once trained, they could be used for other things too.

  Georgiades went past again. This time he didn’t say anything. His brow was furrowed in concentration. The sweat ran down his face in streams.

  His men were beginning to return from their searches. They came and stood in a little group, disciplined and obedient. Owen didn’t need to ask. They had found nothing.

  Georgiades, vexed, went off on a search of his own. His second-in-command re-divided the men and sent them back for a second search of the places they had searched before. Owen had hoped to avoid this. It all took time.

  He went to the door of the church and looked out. Already a little crowd had gathered. He saw Mahmoud, who caught his eye questioningly. Owen shook his head.

  Back in the church the priests were shouting angrily at the men. The men, who were mostly Sudanis from the south, ignored them but looked uneasy.

  Georgiades came back mopping his face. He stood in the centre of the church beneath the great dome and began to look carefully all round him.

  The men, returned from the second time, stood waiting.

  “Have you done the crypt?”

  Georgiades nodded without speaking. His eyes were now on the roof.

  The Father broke away from the knot of priests, shrugging off the efforts of the men to restrain him, and came across to Owen.