“Who does it belong to?”
“A Mr Abbas, I think. He lives in the Gamaliya somewhere.”
There were still some policemen about. Owen set them to work finding out where Mr Abbas lived-it was simply a question of knocking on people’s doors and asking, someone was bound to know. He himself went to a cafe to wait. The Copt, he sent back to his shop.
Eventually, one of the constables returned. Or rather, two of them returned. One was the man who found out; the other was Selim, who had now, on the strength of past glory, appointed himself Acting Sergeant, still, unfortunately, unpaid.
Mr Abbas owned a large store off one of the suks. He came out to meet Owen and then invited him into his office to take tea. They sat on a low leather divan and the tea was served on an equally low table, about six inches high. Courtesy demanded that it was some time before they got down to business, but eventually they did.
“My house, indeed,” said Mr Abbas blandly, “and sometimes I let it. But a Zzarr! Oh dear, I had no idea.”
“They gave no indication of their purpose?”
“Well, of course, I don’t handle it myself-”
The person who did, an agent who managed several properties, lived on the other side of the Gamaliya. It was another hot day and by the time Owen had reached him, his clothes were wet with perspiration. He was received again with courtesy and tea; and again given the run around.
“Well, of course, I had no idea what they wanted it for. A celebration of some sort, I believe they said. Too large for their own house so they wanted to hire a bigger one.”
“Do you have their names?”
The agent spread his hands regretfully.
“I’m afraid not,” he said.
That was unlikely, Owen remarked.
“They pay the money first,” the man said, smiling. Owen got nowhere. He walked back to Bab-el-Khalk with Selim, dripping.
“The Gamaliya’s a no-good place, effendi,” said Selim, commiserating. “Now, over by the fish market, where I live-” Owen stopped in his tracks.
“Selim,” he said, “are you married?”
“Well, yes, effendi,” said Selim, taken aback. “There’s Leila, and there’s Aisha, and there’s-”
He began, however, to look troubled.
“Effendi,” he said hesitantly, “I don’t think they’d be good enough for you. Not yet. I mean, I’m trading up. In a bit, I’ll divorce Aisha, and then I’ll look out for someone a bit classier. In fact, I know a girl already who would do. She would just suit-
“No, no, no, no!” said Owen hastily. “Not that at all.”
He explained what he wanted.
Selim listened carefully.
“Well,” he said, “Aisha’s the one. She’s a bit of a bitch, that’s why I’m thinking of getting rid of her. Nag, nag, nag all the time, just come back late and you’re in trouble. But she’s got a good head on her. Mind you,” he looked worried, “it could give her ideas, she would start getting above herself-”
“There would be money in it,” said Owen. “For you.”
“Well, in that case-” said Selim, brightening. He thought it over. “Yes,” he said, “Aisha’s definitely the one. She could say she was possessed by an evil spirit, all right. In fact, it wouldn’t be too far from the truth…”
Chapter 5
Garvin asked Owen if he would drop in on him before he went home. It was a request and courteous, so Owen knew that Garvin had found out that the Philipides business was about to be reopened.
He found him not sitting behind his desk, as was usually the case, but standing by the window, looking down through the shutters into the courtyard; as if he had just seen some donkeys there to which he took exception.
He was a big man, well over six feet in height and with huge broad shoulders. Despite twenty years of Egyptian sun, and Egyptian malaria, his face was fair and ruddy as if he had just arrived from English fields. The impression caught a truth about the man. Garvin came from one of the old English country families, no longer property owning but still country living. His father, a youngest son, had been a clergyman, but a clergyman of the ‘squarson’ sort, both squire and parson. Garvin had been brought up in the country and, though a university man (Cambridge), his pursuits were those of the country squire: riding, shooting and fishing. And, of course, hunting.
But there was another side to the man which the bluff exterior concealed. Garvin was no fool. He had spent two decades in the country and knew his job back to front. He knew it at all levels, too. He spoke Arabic like an Egyptian and was as familiar with the patois of the Alexandrian seafront underworld as he was with the slow rhythms of the fellahin in the fields around Cairo. Because of the time he had spent in the provinces before coming to the city, he was intimate with the background of family feuds and alliances which the fellahin carried with them when they migrated to the city. The Cairo poor were still villagers at heart; and Garvin knew them as he knew his own face in the mirror.
Yet he had been to Cambridge, too, and this gave him entry to an inner club from whose members the rulers of Egypt and India and, indeed, England were almost exclusively drawn. Mixing on equal terms with the British elite, inevitably he mixed, too, with the Egyptian elite. He knew the political preoccupations of both.
Garvin was, then, a formidable operator. He knew Egypt from top to bottom; and behind the frank, open face and the honest blue eyes was a political mind of no mean order. He played bridge regularly with the Consul-General and the Financial Secretary. Garvin was a great card player.
If there was a plot against him, the plotters would have their work cut out. The Administration would close ranks around Garvin in a way that Owen knew they would not close around him. He was not a member of the magic circle. He had not been to Cambridge. His father had died young and his family had been too poor to do other than secure him a commission in the army. He was, too, a Welshman; slightly suspect even in the army.
He was the magic circle’s servant, no closer to them, in the end, than he was to the Khedive. But they would expect him to protect Garvin. Certain things did not need to be spoken. He knew what the job was that he was being told to do.
In fact, he did not expect that to put much of a strain on him. Garvin, for all his faults, was honest. This would be a trumped-up charge, if charge it came to. It would be a political manoeuvre. Garvin, in any case, probably was not so much the object as a means: a means of hitting at the British Administration itself.
Owen sighed. He could see himself being forced to take sides. It was a thing he did not like, something he tried to avoid. Usually he got round it by interpreting his loyalty as to Egypt as a whole. There was a sense, a very real sense, as a matter of fact, in which the Khedive and the British Administration together formed the Government of Egypt. His loyalty was to that mystic concept; very mystic, he sometimes felt.
There was, though, a less mystic consideration. In a complex political game the outcome might require sacrifices. He could not see the magic circle going so far as to be ready to sacrifice one of themselves. They would be far more likely to sacrifice someone else; say, him.
Owen thought he had better take up card playing.
Garvin turned to him.
“I gather you know the situation,” he said.
Owen nodded.
“In general terms,” he said.
Garvin came back to his desk.
“Well, you’ll be raking over the details later,” he said. “That’ll be the job of the investigation. The question is, though, what’s the procedure to be?”
“The Parquet will be responsible, presumably.”
The Parquet, or Department of Prosecutions of the Ministry of Justice, was responsible for carrying out all investigations. The police merely reported a crime. A lawyer from the Parquet was then at once assigned to it and he was thenceforth responsible for investigating the circumstances, compiling the evidence, taking a view, and then, if the view was in favour of prosecution, presenting the case, as in the French judicial system, which the Egyptian closely resembled, to the appropriate court.