The Last Cut

HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 1998

Copyright © Michael Pearce 1998

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

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.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks

HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication

Source ISBN: 9780008259495

Ebook Edition © JULY 2012 ISBN: 9780007400300 Version: 2017-09-05

‘This series continues to be the most delightful in current detective fiction’

Gerald Kaufman, Scotsman

‘Pearce … takes apart ancient history and reassembles it with beguiling wit and colour’

Sunday Times

‘Irresistible fun’

Time Out

‘The Mamur Zapt’s sly, irreverent humour continues to refresh the parts others seldom reach’

Observer

Title Page

Copyright

Praise for Michael Pearce

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

Keep Reading

About the Author

Also by

About the Publisher

‘It will be for the last time,’ said Garvin, the Commandant of Police.

‘It seems a pity,’ said the Kadi’s representative, ‘after a thousand years.’

‘Oh, more than that,’ said McPhee, the Deputy Commandant. ‘The rites almost certainly antedate the Arab invasion. The ancient Egyptians –’

‘Yes, well, thank you,’ said Garvin. ‘That all?’

‘There’s the question of the gravediggers,’ said the young man from the Consulate.

‘Gravediggers?’

‘Yes. The ones who actually make the cut. It’s either the Muslim gravediggers or the Jews. This year it’s the Jews.’

‘Well, then –’

‘Yes, but it falls on their Sabbath this year.’

‘Okay, let the Muslim gravediggers do it, then.’

‘They won’t like that!’

‘The Muslims?’

‘No, the Jews. It’s their turn.’

‘Yes, but they won’t do it on the Sabbath, I thought you said?’

‘Well, they will do it if they’re told to. And if they get paid extra.’

There was a little silence.

‘I suppose I could get the Old Man to talk to the Finance Department.’

‘And I could get the Kadi to talk to the Khedive and get him to tell them.’

‘That all settled, then? Nothing else?’ asked Garvin. ‘Right, Mamur Zapt, the rest is up to you.’

As they got up from the table, McPhee said:

‘They used to sacrifice a maiden, you know.’

‘Nonsense!’ said the Kadi’s representative. ‘That’s just a myth. Anyway, it was the Christians.’

‘That’s a myth, too,’ said the representative of the Copts hastily. ‘You can’t blame it on us. The Canal wasn’t built till the Arabs came.’

‘The rite may be older,’ said McPhee. ‘It almost certainly dates back to the Pharaohs.’

‘Let’s blame them, then,’ said the young man from the Consulate, picking up his papers. ‘At least they can’t answer back.’

‘That’s all in the past, anyway,’ said Garvin. ‘These days we’ve got other things to think about.’

‘What other things?’ asked Owen. It was the first time he’d done this.

‘Oh, the general disorder. People use it as an excuse –’

‘They certainly do,’ said McPhee, cheeks going pink.

‘To do what?’

‘Well …’

‘The women go unveiled, that sort of thing,’ said the Kadi’s representative.

‘Worse than that,’ said McPhee primly.

‘Really?’ said Owen. ‘Exactly what –?’

‘You’ll find out,’ said Garvin. ‘At any rate, it will be for the last time.’

‘Watch out for the Maiden,’ said the young man from the Consulate, as he and Owen left the room together.

They found her, of course, the next day.

The canal bed, awaiting the water, was dry now throughout most of its insalubrious length. It ran through the heart of the city from Old Cairo to the new barracks at Abbasiya and was a handy dumping-place for rubbish of all kinds, from excrement to onion peelings to collapsed angarib rope-beds to dead dogs; and, of course, to dead humans. It had the additional advantage in the last case that towards the time of the Inundation it had become so foul as to deter all but the lowest scavengers from venturing into it. The maiden would have gone undiscovered had it not been for the fact that the ceremonial cutting of the dam involved the construction of a tall cone of earth, and it was while the workmen had been working on this that they had come upon the body.