The Mamur Zapt and the Night of the Dog. Michael Pearce

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      ‘Yes,’ said Nikos, ‘I thought you would.’

      *

      Among the papers which Nikos had brought in were the Office Accounts. These made gloomy reading. They were still some weeks from the end of the financial year and already Owen was almost spent up. He decided he would have to see Garvin about it. Garvin was the Commandant of the Cairo Police and although not formally Owen’s superior was the man he in practice reported to. Garvin had very good links with the Consul-General.

      He was also the person in whose budget, for administrative convenience, Owen’s accounts were included, so any application for an increase would have to be cleared with him.

      Owen was not expecting any difficulty. The Mamur Zapt’s budget was relatively small and the work important. Since Cromer’s time, however, the Ministry of Finance had been sticklers for financial probity and formal permission would definitely have to be obtained. The British Consul-General had been brought in specifically to clear up the Egyptian financial mess and by the time he had left, two years ago, the Government’s accounts had been transformed. Some were saying, the new English Liberal MPs among them, that Britain’s work in Egypt was now completed and that there was no excuse for them staying further. It had, after all, been thirty years.

      Before going to Garvin, however, Owen was anxious to check the accounts. A previous Mamur Zapt had been dismissed for corruption not so long previously that Owen could afford to ignore criticism. He was deep in calculations when the phone rang.

      It was one of the Consul-General’s aides, a personal friend of his.

      ‘Hello,’ said Paul, ‘I was trying to get you earlier but you were out. I need some help.’

      ‘Yes?’

      ‘Visitors. Important ones. Ones who need special handling.’

      ‘So?’

      ‘I at once thought of you.’

      ‘No,’ said Owen. ‘Definitely not. Much too busy. Quite out of the question. No.’

      ‘It is not I alone who thinks so. The Consul-General thinks so too.’

      ‘You put the idea in his head.’

      ‘We reviewed the possibilities together. I may have suggested there was a need for some dexterity. Political dexterity.’

      ‘You rotten sod.’

      ‘I have your interests at heart. Also my own. We don’t want this to go wrong.’

      ‘I’m sorry. I’ve got more important things to do.’

      ‘You haven’t. This has priority. So says the Consul-General.’

      ‘Bloody hell! I’ve got a lot on just now.’

      ‘Then put a lot off.’

      ‘Who the hell are these visitors?’

      ‘You only need to bother about one of them. Well, let’s say one and a half. He has a niece with him. He, John Postlethwaite, is one of the new intake of liberal MPs and has chosen to make a speciality of Egypt. This is because none of the other committees would have him. Retrenchment, Reform and Bolton’s backyard is all he really knows about. Oh, and accounts. He took Cromer to task over his and made something of a name for himself. That’s what gave him the idea. Of specializing in Egypt, I mean. He wants to come out and see things at first hand. The accounts, that is.’

      ‘McPhee sounds just the man for this,’ said Owen, selling the Assistant Commandant down the river without a qualm.

      ‘McPhee? Not in a million years. This is out of his class. This is a delicate exercise, boyo, and not for the McPhees of this world. Haven’t you been listening? We need someone with some political sense. This is important, I keep telling you. There’s a lot at stake. My job for a start. Yours, too, probably. It’s not trivial stuff like The End of Empire, Egypt’s Manifest Destiny, or England’s Moral Mission to Confuse the World (Christ! Did I say that? I’m going to have to watch my step for the next two months.)’

      ‘Two months? For Christ’s sake, I can’t spend that amount of time.’

      ‘You can do other things as well,’ said Paul magnanimously.

      ‘I’m afraid so,’ said Garvin.

      ‘But it’s going to take up hours,’ Owen complained. ‘Just when I’m especially busy.’

      ‘What are you busy on?’

      Owen told him about the dog. Garvin, knowledgeable in the ways of Egypt, took it seriously.

      ‘Christ!’ he said. ‘If you don’t sort that out quickly they’ll be at each other’s throats.’

      ‘So I can concentrate on that and get someone else to look after Postlethwaite?’

      ‘You can concentrate on that and still look after Postlethwaite. Don’t spend too much time on him, that’s all.’

      As Owen went out, Garvin said: ‘You’d better get it sorted out by the 25th.’

      ‘Why?’

      ‘That’s the Coptic Easter Monday. It’s also the day when the Moslems have a Moulid for some local saint or other. I think they do it just to be awkward. The problem is to keep the processions apart, because of course if they run into each other there’s all kinds of trouble, especially if things are a bit tense between them anyway. But that’s not till the 25th. You’ll have it all sorted out by then. I hope.’

CHAPTER 2

      In deference to the susceptibilities of Moslem guests, the reception took the form of an English tea. The setting was appropriate. Once guests had been received and presented to the Consul-General’s wife, they passed out on to the beautiful Residency lawns. There, among the herbaceous borders, the great coloured splashes of bignonia, bougainvillaea and clerodendrons, the rose gardens and the citrus grove, they were served with tiny cucumber sandwiches and cups of tea by immaculate white-turbanned waiters. No alcohol was served, and the red-faced, heavy-jowled senior Army officers had to grit their teeth and wait for the hour of their release.

      The arrangement suited the Member of Parliament for Warrington since he was a Nonconformist, a teetotaller and a Liberal, all three of which characteristics he assumed, correctly, to be rare in Army officers, especially in Egypt, which he seemed to confuse with the land of Sodom and Gomorrah. He kept a stern eye open for evidence of possible depravity in any young officer who approached his niece and Owen was glad that he had decided to appear at the reception in mufti.

      It also helped that Owen was Welsh. Wales was, of course, a stronghold of Liberalism and Nonconformity and, slightly uneasy among all this exoticism, John Postlethwaite fell back on the things he was familiar with, which included, he thought, Owen.

      ‘I’ll want to see everything, mind,’ he warned Owen. ‘No pulling the wool over my eyes.’

      ‘I’ll СКАЧАТЬ