In fact, Mahmoud had put a man on Zoser but he preferred not to admit it. The man had gone to sleep, or at least that was what Mahmoud suspected, and that, to Mahmoud, was an even harder thing to admit than that he had not posted a man in the first place. Not being able to post a man was a matter of economics. Having one go to sleep on the job, well, that was just incompetence; and Mahmoud was very sensitive to the charge of Egyptian incompetence. Especially as, privately, he thought the charge was often justified.
It was in a case like this, too, that the weakness of the Egyptian system became apparent. The Parquet, the Department of Prosecution of the Ministry of Justice, which Mahmoud belonged to, and the Police were two entirely different and separate organizations. Mahmoud was responsible for collecting the evidence, deciding whether there was a case, and then carrying through prosecution. In doing so he had to rely on the police for manpower. Working to his instructions, they would collect evidence, do low-level questioning, keep people under surveillance, and if necessary arrest. The trouble was that since they were not directly under his control he was unable to ensure the quality of their work in the way that, for example, Owen could. What made matters worse was that the police were so badly paid that they could be recruited only from poor, country districts and lacked the sophistication, education and even, Mahmoud suspected at times, mother-wit of city people. Owen, because he could pay more, was able to draw his own men almost exclusively from the city. That was another thing that Mahmoud felt was wrong.
Owen’s reaction touched him on a sore spot; and it was made all the sorer by an angry feeling inside him that there had indeed been incompetence, Egyptian incompetence, that he, Mahmoud, was ultimately responsible for it-and that there was absolutely nothing that he could in practice do about it.
“There must have been a leak,” he said sullenly.
Owen was taken aback. This was something that had not occurred to him.
“A tip-off?”
“Yes. How else would he have known?”
“The church? The visit to the Scentmakers’ Bazaar? Your men’s inquiries?”
This upset Mahmoud still further. His men again.
“Their inquiries were general,” he said harshly. “They are always making such inquiries. There was nothing to link them directly to Zoser.”
“Surely they asked questions about Zoser?”
“And others.”
“That might have been enough. Or maybe, seeing us the second time, he might have suspected. Especially if he spotted that it was the third time, for Miss Postlethwaite and me.”
Mahmoud was silent.
“How much notice did you give your men?”
Mahmoud was now in one of those moods in which he found implied criticism hard to take. Owen half-realized this and if he had had any sense would have shut up, but Mahmoud’s moods blew up very suddenly out of an apparently clear sky and once again he was slow in reacting.
“They had no notice.”
Mahmoud did not say that this was because he did not trust them. “I made up my mind, collected them and went straight down.”
“Anyone else in your office know?”
“No. Anyway,” said Mahmoud, “I don’t have any Copts in my office. What about you?”
Nikos. Owen pushed the thought immediately aside.
“If I did,” he said, “they are people I can trust.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes,” said Owen. “I am quite sure.”
Mahmoud shrugged. The gesture came across offensively. In some way it conveyed utter disbelief.
Owen boiled over.
“Well,” he said, “now that you’ve lost him, you’d better find him.”
The way he put it made it sound like an order. Mahmoud turned on his heel and went off without a further word.
“Well,” said Georgiades, “he could be right, couldn’t he?”
“No,” said Owen, “he couldn’t.”
Georgiades spread his hands. Owen distrusted these Cairene gestures of openness.
“Look at it this way: two loyalties. One to you, one to his people. Both real, both genuine. If he can serve one without hurting the other too much, what the harm?”
“It would hurt me. It would hurt the department.”
“How much?”
“It hits at the work we do.”
“How much? Just this one instance?”
“It’s his people I’m trying to help.”
“And the Moslems.”
“I’m neutral.”
“He’s not.”
“He’s neutral when he works for me.”
“Mostly. Mostly.”
“Are you saying that in this case he’s playing a game of his own?”
“I’m only saying that he might be.”
Owen was silent. Before transferring to the Egyptian service he had been a regular-army officer in India and at times his military background reasserted itself. He liked things, or at least people, or at least those people near him, to be straightforward. He found it hard, almost impossible, to accept any deceit on Nikos’s part. Internally, that was. So far as the rest of the world was concerned he could conceive of almost any deception. But among themselves…
“It’s only a hypothesis,” he said.
“Sure!” Georgiades agreed quickly. “Sure.”
“You don’t know anything that makes it anything more?”
“No, I’m just figuring out all the angles.”
“It could be someone else.”
“It needn’t even be in this office.”
“OK, then.”
“If I were you,” said Georgiades, “I’d forget about it. Only…”
“Only what?”
“Be careful.”
Owen knew what he meant. While they were working on this case there were some things which Nikos had better not know.
“OK.”
Georgiades smiled cheerfully. He had just suggested that his closest colleague might be, in this at least, a traitor. But there was nothing personal in it. Nikos was still his friend. Georgiades still trusted him. As much as he trusted anybody.
Owen was going through the accounts with Nikos trying to find pockets of money which might still be emptied. They came to the end of one set. While Nikos was collecting the papers Owen said casually:
“When they went to find Zoser, he wasn’t at home.”
Nikos understood immediately.
“A tip-off?”
“It looks like it.”
Nikos’s mind began automatically to turn over the possibilities, as it always did.
“That’s funny,” he said.
“Why?”
“Zoser doesn’t strike me as the sort of person who would have contacts.”
“Maybe it was just a sympathizer.”
Nikos nodded.
“Yes. Perhaps you’d better review all Copts working in the office. Including me. Do the same with Mahmoud’s office.”
Owen did not say anything.
Nikos’s thoughts moved on to a different tack.
“He doesn’t have many friends. And they’re all Copts. He must be in one of the Coptic parts of the city.”
“And there are plenty of those.”
“Mahmoud will be checking his friends,” said Nikos. “That’s obvious.”
He frowned for a moment in concentration.
“The centre of Zoser’s life is the church,” he said. “I’ll get you a list of the people who go there regularly.”
“Do you think you’ll be able to?”
Nikos looked at him with scorn, scooped up the remaining papers and went out.
It was the old, normal Nikos. Owen was a hundred per cent sure that he was OK.
Well, ninety-nine per cent.
Owen had other fish to fry and for the next two days he was busy on other things. He kept his men off the case, too. Mahmoud would be going over Zoser’s contacts with a fine-tooth comb and, especially after their last exchange, Owen did not want to queer his pitch.
There were developments, however. He was sitting at his desk on the second morning when Nikos stuck his head through the door.
“Here they are again,” he said.
“They” were the assistant kadi and the two sheikhs who had been before. This time it was the kadi who did most of the talking.