The Face in the Cemetery

by Michael Pearce

  ‘I suppose there will have to be an investigation?’ said Schneider. ‘Or won’t you bother?’

  ‘There will certainly be an investigation,’ said Owen. ‘But that will be conducted by the mamur. Neither Mr McPhee nor I do that sort of thing.’

  ‘Not down here, at any rate,’ said McPhee.

  Schneider looked at Owen curiously.

  ‘I thought you did do that sort of thing,’ he said.

  ‘Only if there’s a political side to it,’ said Owen.

  The role of Mamur Zapt was roughly equivalent to that of the Head of the Political Branch of the CID. Only in Egypt, of course, there wasn’t a CID. The nearest equivalent to that was the Parquet, the Department of Prosecutions of the Ministry of Justice. The Parquet, though, was Egyptian and the British Administration, which in effect ran Egypt at that time, kept it at arm’s length from anything political.

  ‘You wouldn’t call this political?’ said Schneider.

  ‘Not at the moment, no.’

  ‘I thought that was the reason why you were here…?’

  ‘That’s quite different. The two are completely separate. From the point of view of the law, murder is a civil crime and will be treated as such; that is, investigated by the civil authorities.’

  Mrs Schneider flinched.

  ‘I suppose it must be murder,’ she said. ‘Only, hearing it said like that—’

  ‘Of course it’s murder,’ said her husband impatiently. ‘What else could it be?’

  ‘I just thought that, well, you know, when I first heard about it, and heard that it was poison, well, I thought—’

  ‘What the hell did you think?’ said Schneider.

  ‘That it might be suicide.’

  ‘How could it be suicide? She was bandaged, wasn’t she? And in the pit. Did you think she walked there?’

  ‘Well…’

  ‘Suicide!’

  From somewhere out beyond the immediate houses, in the direction of the house they had just left, came the sound of a mourning ululation starting up.

  Mrs Schneider flinched again.

  ‘It doesn’t seem right,’ she said. ‘Not for her.’

  ‘It’s the family,’ said Schneider. ‘You wouldn’t have thought they’d have cared enough to bother.’

  ***

  Owen knew now what it was that had been nagging at him.

  ‘I heard some shots,’ he said to Schneider, as they were walking back out to the truck.

  ‘Oh, yes?’

  ‘The mamur said it was your ghaffir.’

  ‘Very probably,’ said Schneider.

  ‘What would he be shooting at? The mamur said brigands.’

  ‘We do have them. Not as often as he claims, however. I think sometimes he just blazes off into the cane.’

  ‘That’s a service rifle he’s got.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I was surprised. Ghaffirs don’t usually have that sort of gun.’

  ‘They’ve all been issued with them round here.’

  ‘Not just your ghaffir?’

  ‘No, all of them. We had to get one especially so that our ghaffir wouldn’t feel out of it.’

  ‘Whose bright idea was this?’ demanded Owen.

  ‘The Ministry’s. We had an inspector down a few months ago.’

  ‘Well, I think it’s crazy. Putting guns like this in the hands of untrained people like—’

  ‘Oh, they’re trained, all right. Musketry courses, drill, mock exercises, the lot.’

  ‘Ghaffirs?’ said Owen incredulously.

  It didn’t square at all with the picture he had of the usual Egyptian village watchman, who was normally much more like Shakespeare’s Dogberry.

  ‘Yes. It’s the new policy of the Ministry, apparently.’

  ‘Well, I still think it’s bloody crazy.’

  Schneider shrugged.

  ‘Maybe you’re just out of date,’ he suggested.

  Maybe he was, thought Owen, as he drove back to Minya in one of the company trucks, lent for the occasion.

  But now it nagged at him even more.

  ***

  Trucks were still new in Egypt and it was the first time he had ridden in one. He wasn’t sure that he liked it. The sensation of speed was disturbing and it was very bumpy. Once they had left the cane behind them they were driving across open desert. There was no real road and they were thrown about heavily. He and McPhee both put their sun helmets on to protect their heads when they hit the roof. What with the unfamiliar motion, the constant jolting and the fumes from the engine, he began to feel more than a little queasy. He saw that McPhee’s face was looking increasingly strained, too.

  Still, it certainly got you there quickly. He glanced at his watch. At this rate they would soon get to Minya and with any luck would be able to catch the afternoon boat.

  ‘Have you got them all now?’ asked the mamur.

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Except for her, of course.’

  ‘Ought we to have something in writing?’ asked McPhee.

  ‘To say she’s dead?’

  ‘If we don’t, she’ll stay on a list somewhere and that could cause endless trouble.’

  Owen looked at the mamur.

  ‘Will you be sending in a report?’

  ‘Report?’ said the mamur, as if it was the last thing that would occur to him.

  ‘She’s a foreigner. You have to file a report.’

  The mamur looked very unhappy.

  ‘Certainly, certainly,’ he muttered.

  Owen guessed there was no certainty at all.

  ‘When you do, I’d like to be sent a copy.’

  ‘Of course!’ said the mamur, even more unhappily.

  ***

  The party was already assembled on the landing stage. Some had bags, some had cases. A little group of spectators watched curiously.

  ‘That it?’ asked Owen, as he went down on to the landing stage.

  A police sergeant came forward and saluted smartly.

  ‘That’s it, Effendi,’ he said.

  A woman suddenly broke away from the group, rushed up to Owen and held out her hands.

  ‘Take me!’ she said frantically, waving her hands in front of him. ‘Take me!’

  ‘You’re not German, are you?’

  ‘I’m married to one. That’s him, there. You can’t take him and not take me. He’s my husband!’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Owen. ‘We’re only taking Germans.’

  ‘But I’m married to one! That’s the same, isn’t it? We’ve been married for forty years! You can’t take him and not take me!’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  He hated this. He hated the whole thing. It was not what he had come into policing for. But then, when he had first become Mamur Zapt, Head of the Khedive’s Secret Police, there hadn’t been a war on.

  Chapter Two

  War had come to Egypt like a bolt from the blue. Looking back, Owen could see that there had been plenty of signs that it was coming, but at the time he, like everyone else in Egypt, had not taken them seriously. He had put them down to the infantile war games that the Great Powers were forever engaging in, manoeuvres which were merely ritual. And then, suddenly, barely more than a month ago, the manoeuvres had turned out to be not merely ritual.

  What had made it even more of a surprise was that no one in Egypt had been paying much attention. The declaration had come during the hottest part of the year, when everything in Egypt had closed down. Most members of the Government were on holiday on the Riviera. Those British officials whose turn had come round had left for England. Egyptian officials had headed for the coast. Kitchener himself, the Englishman in whose hands most of the strings of power in Egypt lay, had departed for Europe; for which relief Owen, who ha
d not got on with the Consul-General, had been giving much thanks.

  The great Government offices were largely empty, their occupants having migrated, like the rest of the population of Cairo, to the cafés, where the Mamur Zapt, confident that in the extreme heat even the most desperate of criminals would not be thinking of crime, tended to join them.

  And so when the news hit Egypt it did not at first really register. After the initial shock, Egypt had shrugged its shoulders and got on with doing what it normally did in August. That is, nothing.

  But then the first orders began to arrive from London and among them was the instruction to arrest, detain and place in internment all German nationals and other suspicious foreigners. In the cafés, unkind Egyptians asked if that included Englishmen.

  ***

  Owen had hardly got into his office when he heard the phone ringing; and he had hardly got it into his hand before the person on the other end was speaking, or, rather, bellowing.

  ‘Owen, is that you? Look, this is damned silly! They’ve taken Becker.’

  ‘Becker?’

  ‘Sluices. He’s the one who knows about sluices. Do you know about sluices? No, I’m not surprised. Not many do. They’re tricky things. And once you’ve got someone who knows about them, you don’t muck him about! What is more, you hang on to him. Because if he goes, you won’t find another.

  ‘Now this chap’s really good. He’s been working for us for fifteen years. It’s got so now that I can’t do without him. With him gone, the whole bloody system will close down. Sluices, dams, then the lot.

  ‘How would they like that, then? You tell me. The whole country depends on water, the water depends on the dams, the dams depend on the sluices and the sluices depend on—yes, you’re right: this man Becker!’

  ‘I take it he’s German.’

  ‘Of course he’s German! Or something. What the hell’s that got to do with it? He does his job, like everyone else. Only much better, that’s the point.’

  ‘Yes, I know, but there’s a war on, and there’s this policy of intern—’

  ‘Sod the war! The whole system will collapse, I tell you. Look, Owen, you’ve got to do something, make an exception…

  ‘You can’t? It’s nothing to do with you? Then who the hell is it to do with? Don’t tell me. I know. It’s London, is it? I might have guessed. Well, look, you can bloody tell London—

  ‘Yes, I know, but they’ll listen to you more than they will to me. I’m just a stupid engineer, just someone who makes everything work. You’ve got the gift of the gab, their gab—

  ‘They won’t? All right, talk to someone here, then. How about Kitchener? He’s not entirely without sense, have a go at him—

  ‘He’s not here? He’s in London, too? I might have bloody known it! Look, there must be someone you can talk to about this man of mine—

  ‘All right, all right, I know there’s a policy of internment, and it’s got to be general, I can see that. But surely it can be applied sensibly? Surely people can be reasonable, surely you—

  ‘Why should you be an exception, Owen?!’

  ***

  He decided, nevertheless, that he ought to do something. Calls like this were coming in all the time. He took his helmet and went across to the Consulate to have a word with his friend, Paul. Paul had been one of Kitchener’s ADCs and was now the Oriental Secretary.

  He found him in Kitchener’s office; sitting, indeed, in Kitchener’s chair.

  ‘At last!’ said Paul, with a dramatic sweep of his hand. ‘They held me back, but now I’ve made it!’

  ‘You’re not really in charge?’

  ‘Cunningham is nominally.’ Cunningham was the Financial Adviser. ‘But, as always, the reality of power is different.’

  He wriggled in his seat.

  ‘Just trying it out for size,’ he said. ‘I find it a little small for me.’

  ‘All right, if you’re really in charge, there’s something you can do. It’s this damned internment policy.’

  ‘Laid down by Whitehall,’ murmured Paul. ‘Can’t touch it.’

  ‘What I want is power of discretion. That wouldn’t solve everything, but it might help.’

  ‘Discretion is normally understood,’ said Paul. ‘You’ve got to leave some latitude to the man on the spot. However…’

  He thought about it.

  ‘However, I’d be a bit careful about it, if I were you. Have you read the newspapers lately? The English ones? They’re full of spy scares. There’s all sorts of panic at home and some of it is spilling over here.’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘And then there’s another thing: they’re making changes. They’re bringing some new people out here. One of them is something to do with security.’

  ‘That’s my job.’

  ‘Sure. I expect he’ll be working to you. But, Gareth, he’ll have contacts back at home and he, too—’ he waved his hand again—‘might be wanting to try other people’s seats. I daresay he’ll be no problem, but you see what I mean when I say that you ought to be a bit careful just at the moment.’

  ‘Don’t use too much discretion—is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘That, and also that you ought to get some kind of formal approval, in writing, of your powers.’

  ‘You can give me that, can’t you?’

  ‘Yes. But I think it would be better if it came from Cunningham.’

  ‘OK, I’ll try and have a word with him.’

  ***

  The bar at the Sporting Club was much less crowded than it usually was at lunch-time. This was because so many people were on holiday. Owen had been hoping to find Cunningham, but he wasn’t there. However, he did find someone he knew from the Ministry of the Interior, a man named McKitterick.

  ‘Guns?’ McKitterick said, leaning his arm easily on the bar. ‘Well, yes, and not before time. Look what the ghaffirs had to make do with up till now.’

  ‘Yes, but these are service rifles. You don’t want to put them in the hands of untrained men.’

  ‘They won’t be untrained. We’ve got a big training programme going.’

  ‘Yes, I’ve heard about that. But it’s the wrong sort of training. It’s military training.’

  ‘Isn’t that what they need?’

  ‘Ghaffirs? Village watchmen? Mostly they shoot crows.’

  ‘But sometimes they have to shoot brigands, and when they do, they’ve got to have a weapon decent enough to put up a show with.’

  ‘Very rarely, only in some parts of Egypt, do you have to fight brigands. And when you do, you don’t want ghaffirs doing it. You want police or soldiers. It’s a confusion of functions, from an administrative point of view. A ghaffir’s function is much more limited.’

  ‘Yes, we know about confusion of functions, thank you,’ said the other man, nettled. ‘And we know about ghaffirs, too. Look, we’ve gone into this very thoroughly, more thoroughly, I suspect, than you have, and the conclusion we’ve come to is that there is a need to do something about the ghaffirs. Both in terms of training and in terms of weaponry. One of our inspectors looked into this in great detail and came up with a really first-class report.’

  ‘Which suggested turning ghaffirs into a sort of internal army?’

  ‘If that’s the way you want to put it, yes.’

  ‘Answerable to whom?’

  ‘The Ministry, of course.’

  ‘The ghaffir used to be answerable to his own village.’

  ‘And still will be. But there’s a need for wider coordination. Look, you’ve just come back from Minya, haven’t you? What chance has a single ghaffir there got against a pack of brigands?’

  ‘You use the police. Or the Army.’

  ‘I think, Owen, that the Army’s got other things on its mind just at the moment. And the whole point of this is to
take some of the load off the police. I really don’t see what it is that you’ve got against reforming an antiquated, inefficient, and frankly useless service.’

  ‘It’s just that I don’t like the idea of a well-armed, militarily trained force of fifty thousand men operating independently in the country at a time when it’s at war.’

  McKitterick stared at him incredulously.

  ‘God, Owen, what’s got into you? “Operating independently”? It’s not operating independently, it’s operating under us. Do you think the Ministry’s going to launch some kind of coup? You must be crazy! Aren’t you taking a perfectly sensible reform a little over-seriously? Perhaps you’ve been working too hard. Why don’t you just stay out of the sun for a day or two?’

  ***

  When he got back to his office he found that Nikos had pushed to one side the lists he had been working on and put in a conspicuously central position on his desk the memorandum from Finance that he had been trying for several weeks to ignore.

  We first wrote to you some seven weeks ago requesting an explanation of how your apparent disbursements under Headings J, P, Q and Y of your Departmental Expenditure Statement are to be reconciled with the figures you give in Section 5 (c) ii and 8 (g) iv, not to mention Financial Regulations (see Sections 4 (d) i, 6 (b) v and 7). Despite requested requests…

  Didn’t these blokes know there was a war on? Hadn’t they realized that people might have something better to do than answer their potty memoranda? And how could anyone be expected to answer a memorandum that might have been written in Pharaonic hieroglyphics for all the sense he could make of it?

  He pushed the memorandum indignantly aside.

  ‘There’s been a man phoning from the Ministry of Finance,’ said Nikos, watching from the doorway. ‘He says he’ll try again.’

  On reflection, Owen thought he wouldn’t speak to Cunningham about discretionary powers. Not just at the moment.

  ***

  He had recently moved into a new apartment in the Midan Kasr--en-Nil. Zeinab had moved in with him, which was a considerable act for a woman in Egypt at that time. It was a considerable step forward in their relationship, too, and Zeinab had doubts about it. Every time he came home he half expected to find her not there.