The Mamur Zapt and the Night of the Dog

HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

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First published in 1989 by Collins

Copyright © Michael Pearce 1989

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

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Source ISBN: 9780008259457

Ebook Edition © SEPTEMBER 2017 ISBN: 9780007485024 Version: 2017-09-05

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise

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 Michael Pearce

About the Publisher

‘Keeps up the high standard set by his first… Elegantly and wittily narrated, with a good plot, colourful characters and an encyclopaedic knowledge of the Egypt of Cromer’s time.’

The Times Literary Supplement

Pearce is a natural novelist, masterly at evoking the jostling crowds, aromas and political religious cross-currents of Cairo under British rule… A vanished world comes alive in Pearce’s deft, humorous, elegant prose.’

Sunday Times

The Mamur Zapt would have treated it all as a joke if Nikos, his Official Clerk, had not been so insistent.

‘Get out there quick,’ he had said.

He had even volunteered to guide Owen to the Coptic Place of the Dead. Since Nikos was normally reluctant to take a single step outside his office, Owen had been impressed. Even so, if Georgiades had been around he might have sent him. Georgiades, however, was out on an errand of his own, or possibly still in bed. In any case, Nikos made it clear that he would not have approved.

‘This is something for the Mamur Zapt,’ he said.

The Mamur Zapt was the Head of Cairo’s Political CID. Responsible in theory directly to Egypt’s ruler, the Khedive, he answered in practice only to the British Consul-General, the man who, since Britain had charge of Egypt’s purse strings, effectively controlled Egypt. The Consul-General, however, had taken pains not to define the Mamur Zapt’s role too closely, observing that the less he knew of the Mamur Zapt’s activities the more effective he was likely to be.

There were certain ground rules, however, and one of them was that the Mamur Zapt did not concern himself with routine police matters. Which he considered this to be.

‘Police?’ said Nikos, as if he could hardly believe his ears. ‘What good would they be?’

Owen had to admit there was something in this. The Cairo police force was recruited from country districts and consisted for the most part therefore of simple fellahin, or peasants, illiterate, underpaid and, when they got to the city, usually quite lost. Their duties tended to be restricted largely to the regulation of traffic, which, since the latter consisted chiefly of donkeys and camels, was in Nikos’s view entirely appropriate. All real criminal investigation was left to the Parquet, the French-style Department of Prosecutions of the Ministry of Justice.

‘The Parquet, then?’ suggested Owen hopefully.

‘The Mamur Zapt,’ said Nikos definitely, and put on his tarboosh and walked out of the door.

Owen put on his tarboosh, too. Although he was still, strictly speaking, an army officer and merely on secondment, he considered himself now to be a civilian and preferred to dress in mufti. A tarboosh, the pot-like hat with a tassel which was the normal headgear of the educated Egyptian, was far less conspicuous than a sun helmet, especially of the heavy military sort. It was also cooler.

Not that that mattered too much this early in the morning. Later, when the sun was high in the sky and the temperature rose into the nineties, every little thing counted. Even the nature of your hat. At the moment, though, with the sun not long up over the horizon, the day was still pleasantly fresh and cool.

Owen borrowed a couple of constables from the orderly room at the front of the building and set out after Nikos.

They went on foot since their way lay through the mediaeval city, where the streets were too narrow and congested for a carriage to pass. This early in the morning the streets were not, in fact, very crowded. Almost the only people they saw were the black-gowned women drawing water for the day from the street pumps, but by the time they reached the Coptic Place of the Dead there were a lot more people around, and when Owen looked behind-him he found that Nikos was not the only guide. From somewhere or other they had acquired a sizeable following of small boys and old men and others who might have been on their way to work if something more interesting had not come along.