“I certainly apologize,” said Owen stiffly.
“You do?” said Garvin with heavy irony. “Oh, good of you. Most kind.”
“I shall see it doesn’t happen again.”
“You won’t get the bloody chance,” said Garvin.
Back at the office there were soon developments. They were not, however, of the sort that Owen had expected.
“Visitors,” said Nikos.
Owen rose to greet them. There were three. Two of them were religious sheikhs and the third was an assistant kadi. There was a separate judicial system in Egypt for Mohammedan law presided over by a separate chief judge, the kadi. It was the assistant kadi who spoke first.
“We have come to lay a complaint,” he said.
“A complaint? In what connection?”
“It concerns a killing. It happened last night. We understand that you were there.”
“A Zikr? At the gathering? If so, I was there.”
The assistant kadi looked at the two sheikhs. They appeared pleased.
“He was there, you see,” one of them said.
“Then he will know,” said the other.
“What should I know, Father?” asked Owen courteously.
“How it came about.”
“I expect you are already working on it,” said the assistant kadi.
“On what?” asked Owen, baffled.
“On the murder.”
“Murder? I saw no murder.”
“But you were there,” said one of the sheikhs, puzzled.
“A man died. I saw that.”
“But it was murder. It must have been. A Zikr would not die as he was reaching towards his God.”
“Allah takes people at any time,” said Owen as gently as he could.
The sheikh shook his head.
“I know what you are thinking,” he said. “It wasn’t like that.”
“What am I thinking?” asked Owen.
“You are thinking he died from his own hand.”
“Well-”
“It was not like that. A Zikr knows.”
“Knows where to put the knife? Yes, but in the-” Owen hesitated; the word “frenzy” was on the tip of his tongue- “moment of exaltation” he substituted. “In the moment of exaltation who knows what may have happened?”
The sheikh shook his head firmly.
“Allah guides his hand,” he said with certainty.
“The Zikr does not make mistakes,” said the other sheikh, with equal conviction.
They met Owen’s gaze with a simple confidence which Owen felt it would be churlish to challenge.
“If he did not die by his own hand,” said Owen slowly, “then how did he die?”
“By the hand of another.”
Owen paused deliberately.
“Such things should not be said lightly.”
The sheikhs agreed at once.
“True.”
“He speaks with justice.”
“Then how”-Owen paused-“can you be sure?”
The sheikhs looked a little bewildered.
“The Zikr do not make mistakes. Allah guides their hand,” they explained again, patiently, rather as if they were speaking to a child.
Owen normally had no difficulty in adjusting to the slow tempo and frequent circularity of Arab witnesses but this morning, what with the events of the last two days, he felt his patience under strain.
“There must be further grounds,” he said.
The sheikhs looked at each other, plainly puzzled.
“The Zikr do not-” one began.
The assistant kadi intervened with practised authority.
“There was talk of a man.”
“During the dance?”
“During the dance.”
“Just talk?”
“There are others who claim to have seen.”
“What sort of man?”
He could have guessed.
“A Copt,” the two sheikhs said in unison.
As the three left, Owen detained the assistant kadi for a moment.
“The Parquet’s been informed, I take it?”
“Yes. However, as you were there-”
“Yes, indeed. Thank you.”
“Besides”-the assistant kadi glanced at the retreating backs of the sheikhs-“there could be trouble between the Moslems and the Copts. I shouldn’t be saying it, I suppose, but I thought you ought to be involved.”
“I’m grateful. It is important to hear of these things early.”
“You’ll have no trouble with these two,” the assistant kadi went on confidentially, “nor with the people in the Ashmawi mosque. It’s the sheikh in the next district you’ll have to watch out for. He’s jealous of all the money going to the Ashmawi. Besides, he hates the Copts like poison.”
Owen rang up his friend in the Parquet.
“Hello,” said Mahmoud.
“There’s a case just come up. A Zikr killing. A Zikr death, anyway,” he amended. “Do you know who’s on it?”
“Yes,” said Mahmoud. “Me.”
“Thank Christ for that,” said Owen.
“Have you an interest?”
“You bet I have. Can we have a talk about it?”
“About half an hour? The usual place?”
They met on neutral ground, that is to say a cafe equidistant between the Parquet offices and the Bab el-Khalkh, where Owen worked. Relations between the departments were at best lukewarm and there were also practical advantages in confidentiality. Sometimes the right hand got further if it did not know what the left hand was doing. Also, although Owen had known Mahmoud for about a year now and they were good friends, their relationship was-perhaps necessarily-sometimes an uneasy one. Owen was more senior and had an access to power which Mahmoud would never have. Besides which, there were all the usual tensions between Egyptian and Englishman (or, in Owen’s case, Welshman), Imperialist and Nationalist, occupier and occupied. At times, too, Owen found Mahmoud’s emotional volatility difficult to handle; and no doubt Mahmoud on his side found British stolidity just as exasperating. There was an element of emotional negotiation in their relationship which was best managed away from their own institutions. If the meeting had been at the Ministry of Justice or at Police Headquarters both would have had to play roles. Sitting outside the cafe in this narrow back street, with only the occasional forage-camel plodding past with its load of berseem, they could talk more freely.
“I’ve only just received the case. You were there, I gather?”
“Yes.”
“With this Miss Postlethwaite.” Mahmoud stumbled slightly over the word. Although he spoke English well, he spoke French better, and the word came out sounding as it would have done if a Frenchman had pronounced it.
“Yes. She’s the niece of an MP who’s visiting us. Got to be looked after. You won’t want to see her, will you?”
“It might be necessary.”
“I don’t know that she’d be able to add anything to what I might say.”
“You never know. It’s worth checking. Anyway,” said Mahmoud, who didn’t like any detail to escape him, “the investigation ought to be done properly.”
“Yes, it ought. Both sides will be watching it.”
“Both sides?”
“Copts and Moslems.”
Owen told Mahmoud about the things that had been occupying him recently.
“The best thing you could do would be to find he died of a heart attack.”
“There’ll have to be an autopsy. Keep your fingers crossed.”
They watched a camel coming down the street towards them. It was heavily loaded with berseem, green forage for the cab horses in the squares. The load extended so far across the camel that it brushed the walls on both sides of the narrow street. Advancing towards it was a tiny donkey almost buried under a load of firewood. The load was as big as a small haystack. On top of it sat the donkey’s owner, an old Arab dressed in a dirty white galabeah. The two animals met. Neither would, neither could, give way, the camel because it was stuck between the walls, the donkey because it was so crushed under its huge load that it was quite incapable of manoeuvring. Both drivers swore at each other and interested spectators came out of the houses to watch. Eventually the drivers were persuaded to try to edge the animals past each other. In doing so the donkey lost some of its firewood and the camel some of its berseem. The wood fell among the pots of a small shopkeeper who came out of his shop in a fury and belaboured both animals. They stuck. Neither could move forwards or backwards despite the best help of observers. The rest of the inhabitants of the street came out to help, including the people smoking water-pipes in the dark inner rooms of the cafe. Mahmoud shifted his chair so that he could see better.