The Last Cut mz-11 Read online

  Macrae went over to one of the walls and pulled aside some stacks. Behind them was a stout wooden chest with huge iron clasps and a padlock even stronger than the one on the door. Macrae unlocked it and looked in.

  Aye,’ he said.

  ‘Detonators?’ said Owen.

  ‘Four missing.’

  ‘That would be right. And dynamite?’

  ‘At any rate,’ said Macrae sourly, ‘there’s some left.’

  ‘A padlock’s no good,’ said Ferguson. ‘We’ll have to find somewhere else to keep it.’

  ‘Have you a storeman?’ asked Owen.

  ‘He’s all right,’ said Macrae. ‘I’d trust him with my life.’ And then, catching Owen’s sceptical look, he added. Aye, I know what you’re thinking. But he’s all right. I’ve known him for years. He was with me down in Aswan. Got injured in a fall, so I put him in charge of stores. That was six years ago and we’ve never had cause for complaint.’

  ‘Never!’ said Ferguson.

  ‘Does he have keys?’

  ‘No. I open up and lock up each day,’ said Ferguson.

  ‘And were the only ones with keys to the box. We each keep a set in case there’s a sudden need and one of us can’t be found. But no one else has a key.’

  Owen bent and looked at the padlock. It was a fairly standard one. The storeman might be honest but people would be in and out of the hut all day and one of them might well have been able to size the padlock up, even, perhaps, take an impression while the storeman was distracted.

  The hole in the wall had been hidden by some sacks.

  ‘Aye,’ said Macrae, ‘but it can’t have been done long before or we’d have found out.’

  ‘The same night?’

  ‘It would take a bit of time to cut,’ said Ferguson. ‘Maybe the night before.’

  They went round and looked at the hole again from the other side. Whoever had cut it had dug himself a shallow burrow in the sand for extra concealment while he worked.

  ‘Yes, but Ibrahim ought to have seen him,’ grumbled Macrae. ‘He’s supposed to look all round.’

  He summoned the ghaffir and showed him the burrow. ‘What’s this, then?’

  Ibrahim studied it.

  ‘A lizard, Effendi?’

  ‘Lizard, bollocks!’ He indicated the hole. ‘This was a man!’

  ‘Yes, Effendi,’ said the ghaffir unhappily. A lizard man.’

  ‘I can see, Ibrahim,’ said the gardener maliciously, ‘that you are not a man who knows about thieves breaking in.’

  ‘I know about thieves breaking in,’ said the ghaffir indignantly. ‘Ordinary thieves, that is. But this was a lizard man. Lizard men are different.’

  The phrase unfortunately caught on. Walking past some of Macrae’s workmen later, Owen heard them discussing the latest developments, which, of course, by this time they knew all about.

  ‘… a lizard man, they say… ’

  ‘Ah, well, there’s not much you can do about that, then, is there?’

  ‘I don’t like it. If he’s got it in for us, then there’ll be trouble!’

  The newspapers picked it up. Waiting for Mahmoud that evening, sitting at an outside table in the big cafe at the top of the Mouski, Owen heard a new cry from the boys selling newspapers.

  ‘Lizard man! Lizard man!’

  He bought a newspaper to find out all about it. It was as he feared. Prominent on the front page was the heading

  LIZARD MAN STRIKES!

  Beneath, was a lurid and totally inaccurate account of the attack on the regulator.

  That kind of detail, however, was of little interest to the newspapers, which, at this corner of the Mouski, were largely Nationalist in tone. They preferred to speculate on the Lizard Man’s identity. Was he, for a start, a Nationalist? A number of the newspapers seemed to think so. They saw the whole thing as an attack on the British.

  LIZARD MAN HERO STRIKES AT BRITISH DAM!

  ran one of the headlines.

  Other newspapers, however, pointed out that the Regulator was not British but Egyptian. Who would be so dastardly as to attack an Egyptian dam? Clearly, the inspiration was Christian. But not necessarily British. The British, for all their faults-and the newspaper listed a half page of them-were not lizard men. They had no need to be, because they controlled the show anyway. No, it was someone more insidious, someone who preferred to lie low and conceal himself in the sand; the Lizard Man was a Copt!

  A Coptic newspaper, not surprisingly, took a different view. The Muslims, relative newcomers in the country (they had arrived a mere twelve hundred years ago), had never really appreciated the great architecture that had preceded them. They had seen it as the work of Satan. Was it surprising, then, that they should strike at one of the great buildings of modern Egypt? The Lizard Man was plainly a Muslim, almost certainly of a fundamentalist persuasion.

  Various other newspapers took various other views. They agreed, however, on certain major points. The Lizard Man had done it, and he was aptly named, for he struck surreptitiously and he did reptile things. Like the snake, he snatched the young from the mother’s nest and the mother’s breast. All women should, therefore, be warned!

  The authorities were, naturally, seriously concerned. The Mamur Zapt himself was on the trail. Unfortunately, if reports were correct, he had allowed himself to be led on a wild lizard chase…

  ‘What’s this I hear about a lizard man?’ asked Mahmoud, dropping into the chair opposite Owen.

  ‘A figure of daft speech,’ said Owen.

  ‘There are plenty of those around. Myths of Maidenhood, for a start.’

  It was, in fact, the Maiden that Mahmoud wanted to talk about, although not in her mythic incarnation. The release of the autopsy’s findings had brought him certain leads and he thought he was now close to establishing the Maiden’s identity. That was not the problem.

  ‘The problem is that Labiba Latifa has got hold of it.’

  ‘Labiba Latifa?’

  ‘You’ve not heard of her?’

  He had, just. Mahmoud filled him in.

  Labiba Latifa was a lady of independent means and independent spirit who in her youth had trained as a nurse-abroad- and on her return occupied herself with a number of good causes, most of them in the field of health. That she had been able to do this so publicly had been in large measure due to the position of her husband, who had been the Dean of Cairo’s Medical School. When he had died, she had proposed to carry on in exactly the same way.

  That, however, was a quite different thing. While widows, especially wealthy ones, were accorded more leeway in Egyptian society than most women, the prominence of her activities and the outspokenness of her views had soon brought her notoriety. Even in reformist circles, opinions of her were mixed, some feeling that progress was more likely to be made in quieter ways. She was altogether a formidable lady; as Mahmoud had found when she had come to see him.

  She said that she had read the findings of the autopsy with interest, and asked him what position he proposed to adopt on the case.

  Mahmoud had replied, with strict correctness, that he proposed to adopt no position on the case. His task was simply to present such evidence as he could to the inquest.

  Labiba had asked him if that would include evidence that she had died of the effects of circumcision. Mahmoud had reminded her that these were only the preliminary findings; but if the final report was to that effect, then he certainly would.

  What verdict did he expect? And what action was likely to follow?

  Mahmoud, honest to a fault, replied that he thought it highly unlikely that any action would follow.

  Was he satisfied with that?

  Mahmoud had replied, truthfully, that he wasn’t.

  So what did he propose to do about it?

  Owen imagined that there must have been quite a silence at this point. Eventually Mahmoud had said that he didn’t know.

  Labiba had nodded her head.

  What did she expect him
to do, Mahmoud had asked?

  Labiba had said that this was a case in the public eye, and that the right thing to do was to make an issue of it.

  Mahmoud had said that this was hardly up to him. His role was to serve the law as it stood. If wider issues were raised by the case, then they would be identified either by the court or by the Parquet.

  Was there nothing that he, as investigating lawyer, could do, Labiba had asked? And waited.

  Mahmoud was much too sharp not to understand how he was being pressurized, and to recognize that his integrity was being skillfully called into play. Labiba had done her homework and knew her man.

  He had replied neutrally that he was still at an early stage of his investigations and if when he had completed them there were issues to be raised he would consider the matter then.

  He had braced himself for further pressurizing. Instead, Labiba had merely nodded her head again, as if accepting what he had said. He had realized afterwards that this was a clever way of binding in his commitment.

  She had then, to his surprise, completely switched tactics. In fact, she had confessed, she was not sure herself how to proceed in the circumstances. Could she discuss them with him?

  Following the publication of the autopsy findings, the case had been brought to her attention by a group of midwives with whom she had dealings on other matters. They had been especially concerned about the age at which the circumcision had taken place.

  ‘Opinions differ, Mr el Zaki, — even amongst midwives-on whether female circumcision is in itself an acceptable practice. I have my own views on the matter and they are clear-cut, but I do have to recognize that they are not universally shared, especially in the poorer, more traditional quarters. The group of ladies in question live out beyond the Khan-el-Kahlil and they usually disagree with me on such issues. We do not, however, disagree on the fact that if it has to be done at all, it is best done at an early age. In this case, as you know, the poor girl was twenty.’

  ‘Why, then, was it done?’ asked Mahmoud.

  ‘She was going to get married. Late, yes, but she was the only woman in the household-her mother died some years ago-and I fancy her father did not want to lose her services about the house. However, the opportunity of a profitable marriage came up and he couldn’t afford to miss it. Now, the bridegroom was very much older than she was and very traditional in his thinking. He would certainly expect her to be circumcised. Indeed, the marriage might well have been off if she wasn’t. So-’

  ‘Why hadn’t she been circumcised before?’

  ‘Her mother had died. These things are usually seen as women’s matters and there was no woman to see they were done.’

  ‘No one else in the family?’

  ‘They had moved from the country. The father is a water-carrier, poor, and’-Labiba sniffed-Very ignorant. Do you know what is the greatest cause of crime in the country, Mr el Zaki? Ignorance. Not even poverty, for we can be poor without being ignorant. Admittedly, the two usually go together.’

  Mahmoud bowed his head gravely. He had expected a lecture at some point.

  ‘So he knew no better. That is why, Mr el Zaki, I am in some difficulty. On the one hand the case is in the public eye, and an issue of principle is involved, an issue which we can make narrow enough-the age, not the fact, of circumcision-to enlist public support. On the other, the person in the dock should be ignorance, not some poor, lowly, uneducated man. Nor the poor, lowly, uneducated woman who performed the circumcision.’

  ‘You know the woman?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘And the girl?’

  ‘I know of her.’

  ‘So,’ said Mahmoud, putting down his coffee and looking at Owen, ‘the issue of principle is very close.’

  Which way Mahmoud would go on the issue when the moment of decision came, Owen did not know. No one could rise as far and as fast in the Parquet as Mahmoud had done without being worldly wise. Yet there was at the same time an odd streak of naivete in Mahmoud which took the form of an obstinacy about principle. He remained, thought Owen, as he walked down to the river the next morning, an idealist at heart.

  He was on his way to see how preparations for the Cut were getting on. As he neared the point where the Khalig Canal came out into the river and where the Cut would be made, there were increasing signs of the coming festivities. Banners had appeared on some of the houses and brightly-coloured strings of bunting hung across the streets.

  He had arranged to meet McPhee and when he turned a corner he saw him ahead of him. Along with a group of small boys and half the neighbourhood he was watching the public crier crying the height of the river.

  ‘Fifteen digits today and still rising!’ the crier intoned sonorously.

  A hand was pushed through the lattice-work of one of the harem windows above and some coins thrown down. The crier scooped them up swiftly before the small boys got to them and bowed to the window.

  ‘Blessed be the mistress of this house!’ he called.

  ‘Digits?’ asked Owen.

  ‘On the Nilometer,’ said McPhee.

  It stood at the end of Roda Island, just opposite them.

  ‘It’s very important, you know,’ said McPhee. ‘In the old days it used to relate to tax. There was a law which said that you couldn’t levy land-tax until the river had reached a height of sixteen cubits. Very sensible, really, because people’s capacity to pay depended on the irrigation of their land. Of course, the Government used to fake it.’

  The dam, a simple earth one, ran across the canal just at the point of its entrance into the river opposite Roda Island. Its top was now only some six feet above the level of the water but its builders had been in this business for a thousand years and knew what they were doing.

  Some way in front of the dam, in the dry bed of the canal, a tall cone of earth had been constructed. Its top had been sown with millet.

  ‘Obvious fertility associations,’ said McPhee.

  When the Cut was made, and the dam breached, the water would pour through and demolish the cone, to the great satisfaction of onlookers. In the past, tradition had it, a young virgin had been sacrificed simultaneously, no doubt to their even greater satisfaction.

  ‘Although there is possibly some confusion here,’ said McPhee. ‘You see, the cone is also called “The Bride”-the Nile, as it were, impregnates it-and popular imagination may have distorted that into a real woman.’

  Popular imagination was still alive and kicking in Cairo and one of the distortions it had threatened was the absorption of Mahmoud’s dead young woman into the traditional story. That had been stopped, fortunately, by the release of the autopsy findings. There was little purchase for the popular imagination in a woman who had died in so apparently ordinary a way.

  McPhee, however, was reluctant to let the connection go. ‘You don’t think,’ he said wistfully, ‘that the woman who was found-’

  ‘No,’ said Owen firmly, ‘I don’t.’

  He made the mistake, however, of telling Zeinab about it when they met for lunch at her father’s house later that morning. It was a mistake firstly because female circumcision was exactly the kind of topic likely to intrigue Nuri Pasha.

  ‘It is a barbaric practice,’ he said, ‘and I am totally opposed to it. They say it improves the woman’s beauty, that unless you do it, the labia minora dangles unbecomingly, but I have never been able to see that myself. I have always felt that the more a woman is developed in that area, the better. And then the cutting pares away the most interesting parts. It diminishes the woman’s capacity for pleasure. I am totally against that,’ said Nuri, shaking his head. ‘It diminishes mine.’

  He looked tenderly at the latest painting he had acquired: a Renoir nude. Nuri was fond of things French; especially women.

  ‘It’s a lower class practice, of course. But, do you know, my dear, I was talking to Shukri Pasha this week-he’s just taken another wife, she’s only fourteen, but a beauty, I gather-and he told me that when Khadi
ya came to him-she is his second wife-or is it his third? — anyway, when she came to him he was astonished to find that she had been circumcised. “My dear Shukri,” I said, “that’s what you get if you marry out of your class.” Anyway-’

  He continued happily for some time.

  ‘Anyway, my dear,’ he said suddenly to Zeinab, ‘that’s why I didn’t have you circumcised.’

  ‘I’m glad you didn’t,’ said Zeinab. ‘I wouldn’t have wanted to miss out on anything.’

  Zeinab was the second reason why it was a mistake to raise the subject. She wasn’t very interested in circumcision but she was interested in Labiba Latifa. Modern in spirit, although not quite in the way that Mahmoud was, Nuri had raised his daughter to be independent. That was a very difficult position for women to be in in Egypt at that time and Zeinab was eager to hear about others in the same position.

  ‘Do you think she would like some help?’ she asked suddenly.

  ‘No,’ said Owen.

  It was Greek day in the Gardens. There was a festival of some sort and they were doing their national dances. The women were in traditional costumes, in which a fine lawn chemisette seemed to play a great part, and danced in a group, with much spirited skipping and rhythmic stamping of feet. The men were dressed more drably, in shiny black clothes and black wideawake hats. They took off their coats and waistcoats to dance, but were less stripped down than the Levantines, some of whom came in singlets, as for the gymnasium. Their women, too, appeared to be feeling the heat, for they had removed their dresses and were sitting in their petticoats, retaining, however, the white wreaths round their heads.

  A pretty young woman danced across to Owen.

  ‘He’s in the shade,’ she said, ‘with the beer.’

  She took Owen in among the bamboos to where a rug had been spread for a picnic. There was a hamper but no beer. Rosa, who knew her husband’s habits, led Owen further into the shade. Georgiades was standing beside a gadwal talking to the gardener. He was embracing an armful of bottles.