The Night of the Dog (6 page)

“What is she doing here?”

“Keeping him company, I suppose. Having a holiday.”

“She’s come here to get a husband. Like all the others.”

“I wouldn’t have thought so. She’s not like them.”

This was a mistake.

“How is she not like them?” Zeinab asked.

Owen floundered.

“Well, she’s quieter. More retiring.”

“She doesn’t seem to have retired so far,” said Zeinab. “What’s she like? Is she beautiful?”

“No. She’s not beautiful. I don’t know what she’s like, really. Mostly she’s been under that hat.”

“Cunning.”

Owen looked at the memo incredulously. It came from Accounts, and it said:

To the Mamur Zapt:

CAMEL WATERING

We notice there have been two recent transfers of sums from the Camel Watering Account to the Curbash Compensation Fund. We assume these transfers to have been made in error. We remind the Mamur Zapt that he has no capacity to vire.

“What the hell does that mean?”

“It means that you can’t switch money from other accounts into the Curbash Compensation Fund,” said Nikos.

“Why not?”

“Because you have no capacity to vire.”

“What the hell’s that?”

“It means to take money which is under one heading and put it under another. It’s an accounting term.”

“I can’t switch money from one account to another because I can’t switch money from one account to another. Is that it?”

“Exactly.”

“But I’ve always done it.”

“And now they’ve found out.”

“But I need to. The accounts are all wrong otherwise.”

“If I were you,” said Nikos, “I wouldn’t tell them that.”

“Who the hell do they think they are? I can vire if I want to.”

“No,” said Nikos, “you can’t. The restriction on viring was one of Cromer’s first measures. It’s a basic accounting principle. Ask Postlethwaite.”

“Well, I don’t know that I’ll take it up with him—”

“If I were you I wouldn’t take it up. It’s one of the things they’re very hot on.”

“Yes, but we need the money.”

“You’d better talk to Garvin. Though I don’t know that that will do much good.”

“About that hedgehog of yours,” said Cairns-Grant, the forensic pathologist.

“What?” said Owen, startled.

Cairns-Grant chuckled, pleased at the success of his little joke.

“That Zikr. The one with all the spikes in him.”

He wiped his mouth with his napkin and signalled to Owen to take the seat opposite him. He was still at the soup stage and was, indeed, having full Sudani, which was the main reason why Owen went to the Sporting Club for lunch.

“You’ve done the autopsy?”

“Yes. Very straightforward.”

There was a touch of regret, even reproach, in Cairns-Grant’s voice.

“Sorry.”

“Never mind,” said Cairns-Grant comfortingly. “You’re doing very well. It’s not every day you get a Zikr with knives all over. It’s out of the common run. I’ve great hopes of you.”

The waiter, who knew Owen’s preferences, brought him the full Sudani.

“What did you find?”

“First, that it wasn’t one of the blades still sticking in him that killed him. None of them went near a vital place. The Zikr may get carried away,” said Cairns-Grant, “but they’re not daft.”

“They know where to put the blade in?”

“Ay.”

“Even so—”

“I know what you’re thinking. Loss of blood. Well, there’s less of that than you might think. I remember when I first came out here being able to check some Zikr over after they had finished their dance. The Government wanted evidence that it was excessive and dangerous. Well, I knew some of the sheikhs so I got them to let me give their men a checkover. There was very little bleeding and when the blades were retracted the wounds healed very quickly. It took a week or two, of course, but even immediately after the dancing most of them were able to walk around quite normally. I dare say you noticed that yourself?”

“Yes,” said Owen, remembering.

“They’re strong,” Cairns-Grant acknowledged, finishing his soup and putting down his spoon. “They’re big strong laddies and very fit. But there must be another factor. And I don’t know what it is.”

He looked thoughtfully into space. The waiters, on whom he had the same effect as he did on Owen, thought the gaze was meant for them and rushed to bring him his chops.

“Ay, well,” he said, recovering and glancing down at his chops, “that’s another story.”

“How was he killed, then?”

“We found another stab wound. It penetrated the heart.”

“Not one of the blades still sticking in?” said Owen.

“No.”

“Fallen out?”

Cairns-Grant shook his head.

“Unlikely. Very deep. Inserted with considerable force. It would have taken force to pull it out.”

“Removed, then?”

“Yes.”

“Someone else, then. Not self-inflicted.”

“No doubt about it,” said Cairns-Grant. “Inserted from behind.”

Owen nodded.

“Okay,” he said. “Thanks.”

“An upward thrust,” said Cairns-Grant, “delivered by somebody small. About five feet six or five feet eight. I’ve tried it out.”

“He would have died at once, presumably?”

“Yes.”

“It must have been someone in the dance, then.”

“Another Zikr?”

“Someone who joined the dance,” said Owen.

“Got someone who fits?”

“Yes.”

“Good,” said Cairns-Grant. “Good.” He examined his chops with a view to dissection. “Well, young man,” he said, reaching out for his knife and fork, “you would seem to have a murder on your hands. Yes, definitely.”

They met at the Bab es Zuweyla, one of the old gates of Cairo, now the centre of the native city. As they approached the gate the street narrowed and became more mediaeval. The houses with their heavy wooden windows leaned over the street until they almost touched in the middle, making it always cool and dark. At ground level the street was lined with traditional little native shops, most of them carpenters, it seemed; and as they came through the Tentmakers’ Bazaar, with its gay awnings and saddle-cloth and leather work, they saw ahead of them in the archway of the gate the gleam of the blue tiles of the tiny dervish mosque.

Most of the bazaars were on the other side of the gate. There were nine main ones: the Silk Bazaar, the Cotton Bazaar, the Tunisian and Algerian Bazaar, the Silversmiths’ and Goldsmiths’ Bazaar, the Sudanese Bazaar, the Brass Bazaar, the Shoemakers’ Bazaar, the Turkish Bazaar, and the Scentmakers’ Bazaar.

The Scentmakers’ Bazaar, which was where Mahmoud was taking them, was one of the oldest and most traditional of the bazaars. The shops were mere cupboards, little dark recesses, six feet high, six deep and four wide, lined with shelves, in front of which was a long, low counter on which the owner sat, like some carved idol in a niche.

Beside him on the counter were large dirty bottles of gilt glass from which he would take out the stoppers and daub them on the sleeves of passers-by. On his other side was an array of cheap, gaudy small bottles for the scent he sold; and on the floor in front of him were ivory balls with cavities for scent.

Behind him, on the shelves of his dark recess, were large brown bottles criss-crossed with gold and rows of foolish otto-of-roses bottles, cut and gilt, but with hardly more inside than a thermometer. Sometimes, too, there was an assistant, a boy for fetching the bottles, a woman for modelling the perfume, but always, in this most traditional of bazaars, totally concealed in shapeless black.

Mahmoud, hesitantly, had asked Owen if Zeinab could possibly come too. Owen had put it to her and, slightly to his surprise, she had agreed. The Scentmakers’ Bazaar was not normally a place she would have allowed herself to have been seen dead in. Like many well-to-do Cairenes, she took her perfumes, with her fashions, direct from Paris. However, on this occasion she was intrigued and agreed readily enough.

As soon as they began to walk along the shops Owen was very glad that she had come. She addressed herself to the task with her usual imperiousness and dragged Owen and Mahmoud along in her wake. She entered into technical discussions with the shopkeepers in a way totally beyond the capacity of Owen and Mahmoud, explaining that while she normally wore only French perfume, she was considering experimenting with a combination of French and Arab scents: “une vraie caireenne, n’est-ce pas?” She treated coldly all attempts to dab the scent on her own sleeve, rejected any suggestion that it could suitably be tried out on Owen and Mahmoud, and insisted that it be tested on a woman, an assistant, perhaps, or, preferably, the shopkeeper’s wife, a suggestion which, with its hint of superiority, would have had shopkeepers in the more Westernized parts of the city grovelling but was treated simply commercially in the bazaar.

There were three Coptic scentmakers in the bazaar. One was an elderly, rather exhausted man who was unable to produce either assistant or wife and had to borrow a lady from his neighbour for the purpose. One was a middle-aged man, rather corpulent, who sent a message into the depths behind his recess which finally produced an abashed female servant; and one was a spare man in young middle age who had his wife helping him in the shop. She was used to helping with such requests and come forward at once when asked.

Zeinab spent a lot of time with this shopkeeper. Several of his perfumes seemed promising and in the end she took away samples in three small bottles and promised that she would return when she had tried them out. She asked the shopkeeper’s name so that she would know to whom to send her servant. It was Zoser.

Zoser served her politely but with an air of detachment, as if his mind was on higher things. There was an ascetic quality about him. He gave the impression that he had come straight from fasting; and there was a mild hint of irritation at his fast being interrupted.

At the last moment Zeinab dithered. She wanted to try just once again a perfume she had already rejected. When Zoser dabbed a little on his wife’s sleeve she took the sleeve and held it up to her nose. The wife obligingly lifted her arm and for the first time there was a flash of something pale, as if to show that there really was flesh and blood beneath the shapeless black garment.

“No,” said Zeinab, “no, I think I was right after all. I’ll just take these.”

They continued on along the line of booths, each with its owner sitting on the counter among his stained, dirty jars like some vast black spider, past the long, carpet-covered benches in front of them with the rows of men drinking coffee and smoking and talking, past the assorted smells of rose and jasmin, amber and banana, past the odd little restaurants with their grand brass jugs of hot water, their servants hurrying with coffee in glasses to some merchant about to strike a deal, past all this and then suddenly through the arch of the Bab es Zuweyla with its two soaring and fantastic minarets and out once more into the Tentmakers’ Bazaar with its donkey-saddles of red brocade and its camel-trappings adorned with cowries and little bits of looking-glass, its gaily-striped awnings and brilliant tent linings.

With its crowds, too. Owen loved the bustle of the bazaars, of the whole native city, in fact; but after you had spent some time in them, especially when it was as hot as this, you felt an overwhelming need for space and air, and after forcing their way through the blocked thoroughfares of the Tentmakers’ Bazaar they were glad to emerge into the more open streets. Mahmoud summoned an arabeah, one of the two-horse kind, and they sank into it gratefully.

Zeinab agreed that she would like a coffee and Mahmoud wanted to talk about what they had seen, so they stopped the arabeah when they reached the Ismailiya Quarter with its more Westernized restaurants into which women could go, and got out. It was late in the afternoon, almost evening by now, and the restaurants were beginning to fill up as people emerged from their siestas and began to promenade the streets. The shops took on a new lease of life, the street-sellers, with their lemonade and nougat, ostrich feathers, mummy-beads and scarabs, carnations and roses, and the street-artists, with their boa-constrictors and baboons, took new heart, and the city in general resumed its normal manic rhythm. They found a restaurant in a side street, where they would be pestered less, and took an outside table.

“Of the three, he’s the most likely,” said Mahmoud.

“Yes, but how certain are you that it’s one of the three? How certain are you in the first place that it’s a scentmaker?”

“Not at all,” Mahmoud confessed.

“I mean, it’s a brilliant deduction,” said Owen, “but it’s just a deduction.”

“Just a deduction?” said Mahmoud, a little sharply.

“There isn’t any real evidence.”

“There is real evidence but not much of it. So you’ve got to use what there is. Hence deduction.”

Owen was silent. He was tempted to ask if Mahmoud had learned that in college. Mahmoud, unlike Owen, had been trained for the job he was doing and sometimes reminded Owen of the fact. Owen did not like being reminded that he was, so far as police work was concerned, an amateur.

“Is there any corroborative evidence?” he asked.

He rather distrusted Gallic logic. Brilliant, yes, but was it sound? The Parquet lawyers, French-trained and French in style, had a name—among the English—for unreliability. Sometimes they homed in on the right conclusion with remarkable speed; sometimes they missed the point altogether.

“A bit,” said Mahmoud. “Three other people noticed the woman. One of them remarked on the scent.”

“Did they see her with the man?”

“Two of them did, including one who noticed the scent.”

“Anyone get a good look at him?”

“No. None of them would be able to identify him. Except as a Copt, that is. They’d all noticed that.”

“They would!”

“Yes. You’d prefer it not to be a Copt, wouldn’t you?”

“Just at the moment I would.”

“It’s rather pointing that way, though.”

“What else have you found out?”

“Nothing to link Zoser directly with the Zikr. One person thinks he saw him there. That was earlier in the evening, though.”

“Have you checked whether he was in his shop?”

“Yes. He wasn’t.”

“Have you asked him why?”

“Haven’t asked him anything yet. I was hoping for a positive identification. I don’t suppose—?”

Owen shook his head.

“No,” he said, “I didn’t see him.”

Mahmoud sighed.

“I was afraid of that,” he said. “That leaves us with Miss Postlethwaite.”

“That girl!” said Zeinab.

“Yes. You see,” said Mahmoud, turning to her, “she was the only one who really saw them.”

“Notices everything, doesn’t she?”

“Yes,” said Mahmoud enthusiastically. “She’s an extraordinarily good observer.”

Something must have told him that he’d not said quite the right thing, for he looked at Zeinab uneasily afterwards. Mahmoud stood a little in awe of Zeinab. It was partly her social position, partly her father, the formidable Nuri Pasha. Mahmoud detested everything that Nuri stood for: the old, near-feudal Egypt, with its hereditary great landlords, of whom Nuri was one; court-based politics, in which Nuri was adept; the power of the old order to block and frustrate all attempts at reform. But although he looked down on Nuri he also looked up at him, and because of that Nuri had a unique ability to touch Mahmoud on the raw. Something of all that had rubbed off on Zeinab, although Zeinab was Nuri’s daughter only by a slave girl, a well-known courtesan, who had had mind enough of her own to refuse to join Nuri’s harem. That was another thing which made Mahmoud uneasy, for modern and emancipated though he was, he could not completely shake off the attitudes and sexual constraints of the old, Islamic society. He even felt slightly awkward sitting out with her in a public place having coffee.

Zeinab added to his unease by opening her handbag, taking out the three small bottles of perfume and dropping them deliberately on the floor. She summoned a waiter to clear them away.

“Presumably you’ve done some background checking?” said Owen.

Mahmoud turned back to him with relief.

“Yes,” he said. “I had my people check out the three scentmakers. One of them, the first one we saw, I think we can rule out straight away. He’s not very strong physically, suffers from some sort of debilitating illness, hardly ever goes out. The fat one doesn’t go out much either but in principle we can’t rule him out. The third one could do it physically and gets out far more. He’s very active in his local church, attends services there at all hours, mortifies himself, fasts, that sort of thing.”

“A zealot?‘’

“Devout.” Like Nikos, Mahmoud did not wish to be pushed into too firm religious characterization.

“Politically active?” Owen pressed.

“Not so far as I am aware.”

“I’m looking for motive.”

“That’s the problem. I can’t find one. That applies to them all. As far as I can tell, they have all three led blameless lives, had no criminal connection, kept themselves to themselves and as separate from Moslems as they could, and had no occasion to even meet a Zikr, let alone enter into a relationship with one which might lead them to want to kill him. They, and Zoser particularly, don’t seem to have had much personal life at all.”

“They sound very dull,” said Zeinab.

“What church does he go to?” asked Owen. “Zoser, I mean. You said he went to a local church.”

“The Mar Girgis—Church of St. George.”

“By the Tunisian Bazaar?”

“Yes. You know it?”

“I know someone who goes to it,” said Owen.

Mahmoud shrugged.

“Nothing special about it. Very Orthodox, a bit fundamentalist. Zoser’s quite well known there. He’s not one of the elders, he’s not rich enough for that, or educated enough. He’s just there at all the services.”

“With his wife?”

“With his wife.” He looked at Owen. “I was wondering—” he said tentatively.

“Yes?” said Owen.

“What were you wondering?” asked Zeinab.

“If you would like to go to church next Sunday,” Mahmoud said, looking at Owen, “with Miss Postlethwaite.”

“Why her?” asked Zeinab.

“She’s the only one who could make a positive identification,” Mahmoud explained. “She’s important.”

“I can see that,” said Zeinab.

“It would be difficult in a church,” said Owen. “The women are kept separate from the men.”

“She could see him, though he wouldn’t be able to see her. That might be an advantage.”

“Why do you have to go?” Zeinab asked Owen.

“She would have to be escorted,” said Mahmoud.

“Couldn’t you do that?”

No, Mahmoud couldn’t. He knew that and so did she. It would have to be a white man, an Englishman preferably. Zeinab knew that perfectly well. She was just trying to be awkward. And she was succeeding as far as Mahmoud was concerned. He flushed and his face went a little stiff.

“I am afraid it would have to be Captain Owen,” he said.

“Very well,” said Owen. “I’ll ask her.”

Zeinab rose from the table in a fury and flounced out.

“What have I done?” asked Mahmoud, bewildered and uncomfortable.

“It’s nothing,” said Owen, wondering whether he should follow her. It looked a bit silly if you followed a woman around like a lap-dog. On the other hand there would be trouble tonight if he didn’t. He decided to strike a balance. He stayed at the table talking with Mahmoud for another moment or two and then went out into the street. Zeinab was nowhere to be seen.

From the far end of the corridor came the sound of angry dispute. After a while Owen could stand it no longer and went along.

“What the hell’s going on?”

Outside the door, where the orderlies sat on the ground in a row, their backs to the wall, a woman was berating the coffee orderly, Yussuf. When she saw Owen she stopped, abashed. Yussuf gave her a great push.