A Cold Touch of Ice

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First published in Great Britain by

Collins Crime 2000

Copyright © Michael Pearce 2000

Michael Pearce asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Source ISBN: 9780008259471

Ebook Edition © SEPTEMBER 2017 ISBN: 9780007441150 Version: 2017-09-05

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A man pushed his way through the crowd and arrived at the bar beside Owen.

‘Wahid whisky-soda!’ he instructed the bartender. ‘No, make that a double. After all,’ he said, turning to the company, ‘it’s not every day that one gets a death threat in the mail.’

‘Yes, it is,’ objected the man on his other side. ‘I get one every morning.’

‘Ah, but that’s just from colleagues or from the Finance Department. Mine,’ said the man, pulling out a piece of paper from his pocket and waving it with a flourish, ‘is the Real Thing.’

‘Can I have a look?’ Owen stretched out his hand. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it’s the same handwriting.’

‘Same as what?’

‘The one I got.’

Someone peered over his shoulder.

‘It’s just an ordinary bazaar letter-writer!’ he said disgustedly. ‘That doesn’t count!’

‘Just because you haven’t got one, Patterson!’

‘How many other people have had one?’ asked Owen.’

Several other people put up their hands.

‘You see!’ said the first man. ‘It’s just people who are important. Sorry about that, Patterson!’

Some had their letters with them.

‘I was going to have mine framed, so that my grandchildren will see that once upon a time I was a man to be taken seriously.’

They passed them to Owen.

‘It’s all the same handwriting,’ said Owen.

‘You mean it’s only one man? Well, that is a relief. I thought it was everybody that wanted to kill us.’

‘It’s just some nut? Well, I do fell let down.’

‘Don’t worry prematurely,’ counselled Owen. ‘Perhaps he means it.’

There was no doubt, thought Owen, as he sat in a meeting later that afternoon, that the British were unpopular in Egypt. The letter-writer was not an isolated case. Since the war had started, there had been a number of such expressions of hostility. Stones had been thrown, British-owned premises vandalized and solitary soldiers attacked on their way back to barracks.

And yet, for once, it was not Britain’s fault. When, a few months before, Italy had invaded Tripolitania, and Turkey, to whom Tripolitania belonged, had retaliated by declaring war, Britain sought to stay neutral. Unfortunately, that was not what most Egyptians wanted. Egypt was still, at least in theory, part of the Ottoman Empire and Egyptian sympathies were heavily with Turkey.

‘Egypt is, after all,’ Ismet Bey, the Turkish representative at the meeting, was saying now, ‘our country.’

Well, yes and no. Yes, it was true, Egypt was still formally part of the Ottoman Empire and the Khedive, Egypt’s ruler, owed allegiance to the Sultan at Istanbul. But in practice the Egyptian Khedives had been virtually independent for the best part of a century now, and for the last thirty years, in any case, the real rulers of Egypt had been the British, who had come in ‘by invitation’ to help the Khedive sort his finances out, come in and then, well, as it happened, stayed.

‘All we are asking,’ said Ismet Bey, ‘is that we should be able to move our troops from one part of His Highness’s domains – Palestine – to another – Tripolitania – through a third: Egypt.’

‘I do see your point,’ conceded Owen’s friend, Paul, who was chairing the meeting.

‘Well, that is something.’

‘However –’

However, thought Owen, there wasn’t a cat’s chance in hell of Britain agreeing to let a Turkish army march through Egypt. Who knows, they might even step aside to assert Ottoman rights in other respects.