by Len Deighton
Marker added a few extras: ‘There have been demonstrations, ragged and unorganised. The Amr mosque was adorned with anti-British slogans and streamers. A few mobs are still roaming around looking for trouble. All army units are on the alert, and we’ve warned all Europeans to stay off the streets except for essential journeys.’
‘Spaulding phoned and said they’d closed the Royal Automobile Club,’ said Ross. ‘He was going there for lunch, I suppose.’
‘And arrested its president, Prince Omar Faruq. The new government says the club had become a haunt for some dangerous political groups.’
‘Spaulding said the king liked it.’
‘Yes, he’ll be furious that it’s been closed down.’ Marker blew his nose.
‘You’re getting a cold.’
‘It’s the dust.’
‘If most of the noise and excitement in the streets is just support for the king, we can cope with that.’ Jimmy Ross tried to make it sound magisterial.
‘Support for the king is often a crafty way of saying kick out the British,’ said Marker.
‘I suppose it’s better they let off steam where we can see it happening. But can’t we stop the new government arresting these politicians and trade union officials? That sounds as if it could trigger off real trouble,’ said Ross. ‘Who are they giving the jobs to?’
‘Kith and kin. Brothers, sons, close friends and people who will split the take. They want to get their hands on some quick money. The Wafd have got to make up for five lean years in opposition.’
‘Well, that’s all part of the game, I suppose.’
‘These people play rough games,’ said Marker. ‘There have been a lot of fatal accidents already.’
‘What are the embassy people saying this morning?’ asked Ross.
‘The usual tripe: “The Wafd party has been Britain’s most reliable ally since 1936…”’
‘So we let them do what they like?’ said Ross.
‘It’s their country.’
‘Don’t be too blasé about it, Captain Marker. And why the priority alert for this bugger Abdel-Hamid Sherif?’
‘The Wafd are trying to sack the army’s chief of staff. They want to politicise the armed forces. That could become a real thorn in our side. Lampson and the embassy people don’t know how to deal with it.’
‘Umm,’ said Ross, recalling a report he’d just finished reading. ‘And I suppose the Wafd will try to do the same thing with al Azhar appointments. They’ll try to politicise everything in sight, but the students will fight that.’ Marker raised his eyebrows. Ross decided he was doing all right. ‘But you haven’t answered my question. What about this Abdel-Hamid Sherif?’
‘He’s confronting us. He’s putting together a political petition about Fascistic British interference in Egyptian democracy. He’s threatening to send a copy to all the neutral embassies here in Cairo.’
‘It’s a clever move. You’d better find out more. The brigadier is bound to ask me about that one.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘I’m sorry, Lionel, but someone has to do it, and the brigadier is chasing me about this Rommel’s spy business. Add Abdel-Hamid Sherif to your list, and keep me up to date on it. What do you think will happen next?’
Captain Marker sighed. ‘Everything Lampson says he wants to prevent. The Wafd party will lose the support of the effendiyya, the students and the young army officers. The bourgeoisie will become even more anti-Wafdist. Farouk, on the other hand, is beginning to enjoy a popularity he never dreamed of.’
‘Anything else?’
‘I’m afraid you’ve missed Burns’ Night,’ said Marker putting a sheet of paper before him. Seeing the puzzled look, he added, ‘The men of Scottish extraction. You asked for a list of men born north of the border.’
‘Ah, yes,’ said Ross. Fearful of bumping into some old friend or colleague of Albert Cutler, he had asked one of the clerks to compile a list based on their files. So Marker knew about that; it was not easy to keep anything from Marker. He looked down it anxiously. There were only two men from Glasgow, neither had been on the police force. ‘Too bad,’ said Ross, pushing the list aside and feigning disappointment. ‘No matter. We’ll try again when it gets near Saint Andrew’s Day. Well, I won’t keep you, Mr Marker, I know you are keen to start tracking down Abdel-Hamid Sherif.’ Ross gave him a little smile. He liked Marker.
‘Exactly,’ said Marker. The feeling was mutual. Marker had not enjoyed a close relationship with his previous boss. He liked this new fellow and his unorthodox methods. He’d still not got over the surprise he’d had at hearing about Major Cutler’s amazing performance in beating up the Arab in the brothel. It was not what you’d expect from him somehow. Still, Marker’s law practice in England had taught him not to sum people up too quickly. He had a feeling that Major Albert Cutler was a complex personality. Looking at him, Marker could see elements of hesitation … of reticence … almost of apprehension. But what would a tough fellow like that worry about?
Marker picked up his notes. ‘See you later, major. I would go armed for the next few days, by the way.’
Ross smiled at him.
As Marker left, Major Cutler’s sergeant clerk brought in a cup of tea and said, ‘The brigadier will phone you at eleven-thirty, sir.’ Sergeant Ponsonby was over forty: a thin inscrutable Yorkshireman, his short-sleeved shirt revealing tattoos right down to his wrists.
‘How long have you been in Middle East, Sergeant Ponsonby?’
‘Since April fifteenth, 1936, sir.’
‘My God! Never been home?’
‘No, sir. No family, no one to visit.’
‘Which regiment was that?’
‘Ah, the infantry all go home eventually. I came out with the Engineers. Sappers don’t get sent back to Blighty like the battalions do.’
‘Do you know what the brigadier wants of me, sergeant?’
‘No, sir. Urgent and important. That’s all his office said. The brigadier will be off for two or three days after that.’
Two or three days usually meant the brigadier was departing on a duck shoot. The embassy and GHQ staged duck shoots every week. Once someone from the field security office at the docks had poked his nose into the diplomatic consignment from London and discovered ten thousand cartridges.
‘It’s a damned strange war, sergeant.’
Sergeant Ponsonby looked at him and nodded. Ponsonby had seen his fair share of fighting. He’d earned his third stripe clearing minefields under fire. He’d fought the Italians in Ethiopia and then the Germans in Greece. But the SIB had claimed him because Ponsonby had learned a reasonable amount of Arabic, together with Hindi and some other Indian languages. ‘You take the rough with the smooth, sir,’ said the sergeant. ‘Cairo has always been a cushy number.’
‘Yes. Thank you, sergeant. Did you read this one?’ Ross tapped his fingers on a report about the death of the thirty-three-year-old Ordnance Corps sergeant major.
‘I did, sir.’
Ross was cautious in his dealings with the sergeant in a way he was not cautious with the others. Ponsonby had all the cunning and instinct of the old soldier. If Ross set a foot wrong, Ponsonby would spot it before any of the others. ‘Wonderful isn’t it? The most squalid brothel in El Berkeh, and it’s only a few steps from Shepheard’s Hotel.’
The sergeant looked at him. Everyone in the building had by now heard of their major’s remarkable tough-guy act, interrogating the manager of the brothel. ‘Death was caused by knife wounds,’ said Ponsonby, who was keen to get the file closed and put away. ‘Poor sod.’
‘You and I, sergeant, have had to make do with only one paybook apiece. This sergeant major had two of them. And a whole lot of other critically important army paperwork.’ He opened the file to refresh his memory. This sergeant major had been a chief clerk, issuing what the army quaintly called ‘warlike stores’ in the Command Ordnance Depot and Workshops at Abbasiya. Lately the depot had been losing too much to thefts. Not j
ust boots and tyres but guns, signalling equipment and explosives, the sort of thing the dead man had been handling. Ross looked at Sergeant Ponsonby. ‘What happened to the paybooks I left in the drawer, sergeant?’
‘Gone, sir.’
‘I know that. I can see that. Gone where?’ Ross had planned to keep the blank paybooks for himself. They’d be useful when he changed identity. He remembered an E. Phillips Oppenheim story in which the spy had changed his identity three times in close succession. His pursuers had detected the first two changes but he’d got away under the third identity. It sounded like a good method.
‘Evidence for the inquiry, sir. I knew you’d want it all sent on to them.’
‘I see.’ The genuine blank army paybooks were probably worth a fortune on the black market. He suspected Ponsonby of taking them for himself, but it would be dangerous to challenge him. It was particularly disconcerting that the paybooks had been in a folder under a wad of other papers in his desk drawer. It indicated that Ponsonby sifted through everything on a regular basis and was not afraid of letting him know it. Suddenly Jimmy Ross started to worry about the army servants – and the Arab cleaners – who went into his rooms at the Citadel. Had they gone through his kit? What did they know about him?
He looked at the sergeant. So Ponsonby took the rough with the smooth? Many of the old-timers were like Ponsonby. They took life as it came, not resenting the luxuries that were enjoyed by the rear echelons while the men at the front risked their lives in constant discomfort. Perhaps that was the way to deal with all the problems of life: to take every day as it came. He looked at the clock on the wall. So the brigadier would call at eleven-thirty. All the brass did it like that: they made appointments so that there was no chance of your being elsewhere. Ross hated such commands, he hated being at someone’s beck and call.
‘You saw the answers to your supplementary questions, sir? And my report?’ Ponsonby asked. He leaned over and touched the typewritten sheets that had come from the army pathologist who did the post-mortem.
‘Yes, I saw it,’ said Ross. ‘Traces of mutton fat in his mouth but none in his stomach. More to the point: no traces of semen anywhere on the body, and none on the under-clothing or outer-clothing. So why was he visiting a brothel?’
‘You can’t ever be sure why any man visits a whorehouse,’ said Ponsonby. Ross glanced at him. So Ponsonby was being philosophical today.
‘Wouldn’t a brothel make a convenient place for a secret meeting?’ suggested Ross, as a teacher might elicit a reply from a small child. ‘Not much chance of being spotted.’
Ponsonby had already admitted that Ross was right about this, but if his boss wanted reassurance, so be it. ‘And our MPs, being mostly lance-corporals, are not so keen to challenge a sergeant major who knows his way around,’ said Ponsonby reflectively. Then, as if suddenly deciding to reveal a secret, Ponsonby said, ‘I am somewhat familiar with the location in which the body was found.’
Ross looked up. ‘Go on,’ he said.
Ponsonby’s words had been chosen to indicate to his master that he’d been to El Berkeh only in the course of duty, but now he reverted to his normal syntax again. ‘It’s a filthy Arab hovel. Not many soldiers would go into a lice-infested rathole like that, let alone’ – he hesitated – ‘have a meeting there.’
‘Look, sergeant. I know all about where the body was found. I examined the body before we moved it: where do you think I got the paybooks? And we already have an eyewitness to these two men being regular visitors to Lady Fitz. So let’s stop all this nonsense, shall we?’ It seemed as if the whole damned army had a soft spot for Lady Fitz. She’d become a sort of legend among the fighting men, like Lili Marlene and Rommel. Even men who would never think of visiting a brothel would speak in her support.
‘But we don’t have an eyewitness who saw them on what we think was the night of the killing.’
‘Of course you’re right, sergeant.’ He didn’t have to be reminded of that fact. ‘Yesterday I went to visit Lady Fitz, as she’s actually calling herself nowadays. She didn’t try too hard to persuade me it wasn’t done there. She sat there with a gin and tonic in her hand, looked me right in the eye, and told me she doesn’t know what her clients do upstairs. There have been murders in some of the most exclusive hotels in London and Paris, she said.’ Ross fumed at the memory of her haughty manner.
‘And is that true?’ said Ponsonby.
‘Of course it’s true. The old cow! I’d like to throw her into the native cells for a week, and close that whorehouse so it stays closed, but Mr Marker says she has too many friends in high places.’
‘Yes, sir, she certainly does,’ said Ponsonby, with emphasis calculated to deter his master from any such rash course of action.
‘But did you get anything more out of number twenty-three?’ He turned over page after page of Ponsonby’s horrendously inexpert typewriting. The Cairo informants were all known by numbers. It had started as a way for the British to cope with Arab names, but as the city became more dangerous it also afforded protection to the informants. Number twenty-three reported regularly. Because she was a prostitute they didn’t have to set up clandestine meetings. She came to the police barracks just as all the girls did at some time or another. She was a Turkish girl who could successfully pass herself off as French, except to French clients.
Ponsonby nodded. ‘Number twenty-three said that Lady Fitz suddenly decided to have just that one room redecorated. It didn’t need redecorating. It probably was marked with blood, just as you guessed. Number twenty-three affirmed that the sergeant major was always there with another soldier. It’s all typed there,’ said Ponsonby proudly pointing to the laboriously typed report of the interview.
‘I know. I read it. She said he was there with a German.’ He paused. ‘You say with a South African. Did you pursue that with her?’
‘South African badges. She described his uniform.’
‘I’m not talking about bloody badges,’ said Ross, boiling over. ‘Why did number twenty-three say the man was a German?’
Ponsonby was unmoved by his master’s sudden burst of temper. ‘Because he sometimes spoke German with Lady Fitz.’
‘That bloody woman!’
‘Does it matter if he spoke German? Or where he did the killing? He’s not likely to go back there again after that stunt, is he?’
Ross closed the folder. ‘I want someone to give me the exact dimensions of that dagger wound and see if someone can discover what the murder weapon might have been. It’s not the right shape and size to have been a bayonet, or an army issue folding knife.’ He handed the folder to Ponsonby for filing. ‘I’d like to know if it’s the sort of blade an Arab peasant might carry. I have a feeling that there is something big behind this one, Ponsonby. We have a killer who speaks fluent German. And if you look at our file on number twenty-three, you’ll see her second husband was a German. She knows a German when she sees one. And this fellow, whoever he is, has enough influence to have Mahmoud the banker send his men to move the body. It’s an all-star cast.’
‘I’ll get someone onto that, sir,’ said Ponsonby. He’d taken the file but he held it in front of him. ‘But meanwhile workshops are waiting for us to reply.’
‘What’s the hurry?’ said Ross.
‘They’ll want to know what the incident report will say. I can phone them if you like. His unit will want to do the paperwork: next of kin and so on.’
‘What’s stopping them?’
‘They’ll want to know what we are going to say.’
‘Am I being particularly dense this morning, sergeant?’
‘His unit will want to say he died on active service. They’ll want to tell his next of kin that he was a brave man who gave his life for his country, was loved by everyone … you know how they write them, sir.’
So Ponsonby was a dedicated cynic. ‘Well?’
‘If they do all that, and then some time later we let on that he was stabbed in a whorehouse…’<
br />
‘Oh, I see.’ Ross sighed. He’d never get used to the army’s way of doing things. It was as well that he had Ponsonby to guide him along the not very straight but exceedingly narrow path of army procedures. ‘I’ll think about it.’
‘Today, sir?’
‘Maybe. Why?’
‘He’s downstairs in our mortuary, sir, and the refrigeration has been giving a lot of trouble. They are trying to mend it again now, but the system is very old. He’s getting very pongy.’
‘Oh, my God! Release the body and get him buried. They can say he died in action as far as I’m concerned.’
‘Very good, sir. Died in action. I’ll tell them to say that.’
‘And take that smirk off your face, Ponsonby.’
‘Yes, sir. Shall I release the prisoner too?’
‘The brothel keeper? Yes, I suppose so. Has the poor sod been in solitary all this time?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Kick his arse and send him home. Oh, and Ponsonby: what’s the latest on that poor fellow who died on the train?’
‘Didn’t you see that, sir? I left it on your desk.’
‘See what?’ Ross felt anxiety well up in him so that he felt physically ill.
‘Tell a lie, I gave it to Mr Marker. I’m really sorry, sir. They said I should tell you straightaway. It’s my fault.’
‘Ponsonby! What are you talking about?’
Ponsonby mistook his anxiety for anger. ‘Well, I can remember it well enough: natural causes. The prisoner died of natural causes, so there will be no further inquiry. I don’t know what I did with the papers, but I’ll find them.’ He went out muttering lamentations.
No sooner had Ponsonby departed to his outer office than he reappeared.
‘A call on the outside line, sir,’ he said, his head round the corner of the doorway.
‘Who?’
‘It’s Miss Stanhope, sir.’
‘Hello,’ said Ross picking up the phone. His heart was beating frantically and he tried to sound calm.
