The Mamur Zapt and the Donkey-Vous

HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 1990

Copyright © Michael Pearce 1990

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: 9780008259389

Ebook Edition © JUNE 2017 ISBN: 9780008257231

Version: 2017-08-30

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Keep Reading

About the Author

Also By

About the Publisher

CHAPTER 1

Owen arrived at the hotel shortly afterwards.

McPhee came down the steps of the terrace to meet him.

‘Thank goodness you’re here!’ he said.

A cobra stretched lazily in the dirt at the foot of the steps stirred slightly. McPhee paused in his descent for a second and in that second its charmer thrust out a bowl at him. McPhee, flustered, dropped in a few milliemes.

‘For heaven’s sake!’ protested Owen. ‘You’ll have them all on to us!’

The crowd surged over them. Hands reached out at McPhee from all sides. Owen found his own hand taken in soft, confiding fingers and looked down to see who his new friend was. It was a large, dog-faced baboon with grey chinchilla-like fur.

‘Imshi! Imshi! Get off!’ shouted McPhee, recovering. One of his constables came down from the terrace and beat back the crowd with his baton. In the yard or two of space so gained a street acrobat in red tights suddenly turned a cartwheel. He cannoned heavily, however, into the snake-charmer and ricocheted off into a row of donkeys tethered to the railings, where he was chased off by indignant donkey-boys. Taking advantage of the confusion, Owen joined McPhee on the steps.

‘What’s it all about?’

‘You got my message?’

‘You’d better tell me.’

McPhee had sent a bearer. The man had run all the way and arrived in such a state of incoherence that all Owen had been able to get out of him was that the Bimbashi was at Shepheard’s and needed Owen urgently.

‘A kidnapping,’ said McPhee.

‘Here?’ Owen was surprised. Kidnapping was not uncommon in Cairo but it did not usually involve foreigners. ‘Someone from the hotel?’

‘A Frenchman.’

‘Are you sure it was a kidnapping?’ said Owen doubtfully. ‘They don’t usually take tourists. Has there been a note?’

‘Not yet,’ McPhee admitted.

‘It could be something else, then.’

‘That’s what I thought,’ said McPhee, ‘at first.’

‘If it’s just that he’s gone missing,’ said Owen, ‘there could be a variety of explanations’.

‘It’s not just that he’s gone missing,’ said McPhee, ‘it’s where he’s gone missing from.’

He took Owen up to the top of the steps and pointed to a table a couple of yards into the terrace. The table was empty apart from a few tea-things. A proud constable guarded it jealously.

‘That’s where he was sitting when he disappeared.’

‘Disappeared?’ said Owen sceptically.

‘Into thin air!’

‘Surely,’ said Owen, trying not to sound too obviously patient, ‘people don’t just disappear.’

‘One moment he was sitting there and the next he wasn’t.’

‘Well,’ said Owen, and felt he really was overdoing the patience, ‘perhaps he just walked down the steps.’

‘He couldn’t do that.’

‘Oh? Why not?’

‘Because he can hardly walk. He is an infirm old man, who gets around only with the aid of sticks. It’s about all he can do to make it on to the terrace.’

‘If he can make it on to the terrace,’ said Owen, ‘he can surely make it on to the steps. Perhaps he just came down the steps and took an arabeah.’

There was a row of the horse-drawn Cairo cabs to the left of the steps.

‘Naturally,’ said McPhee, with a certain edge to his voice, ‘one of the first things I did was to check with the arabeah-drivers.’

‘I see.’

‘I also checked with the donkey-boys.’