The Night of the Dog

by Michael Pearce

  ‘It would be interesting to see the account.’

  ‘That wouldn’t tell you much. It will either show he’s overdrawn or that money has been credited. If it’s been credited, then the only person who will be able to tell you where it comes from is Sesostris.’

  ‘Is he involved, do you think? Personally, I mean?’

  ‘They’re all involved. You see, the way the Copts work is that if they decide on something, like a campaign of trouble-making and agitation, the first thing they do is set up an organization. Then they set up resourcing arrangements, just as they would do for any other business operation they undertook. They would arrange drawing facilities, appoint a local agent, etc. Sesostris may be just another mechanism, like Mordecai.’

  ‘Like Andrus?’

  ‘Could be. The local agent. On the other hand, if you were Andrus and for some reason you decided to start a campaign of your own, and you were, like him, a Copt, the first thing you would do would be to go to a bank and make proper financial arrangements. And when I say proper, I mean proper. You wouldn’t go to anyone else, because banks are where you go for finance, and you wouldn’t go to a shady one, because that’s not sound business practice.’

  ‘You think he might be doing it on his own?’

  Georgiades hesitated.

  ‘Well, it could be. He’s strong enough, he’s got a grudge, he’s doing something about it. He’s the one who’s actually masterminding the campaign.’

  ‘I agree with all that,’ said Owen. ‘But.’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘Remember what Nikos said: apply the analysis not to the Moslems but to the Copts. Not Osman, but Osman plus money. Not Andrus, but Andrus plus money. Where does it come from?’

  ‘Sympathizers. There are a lot of Copts who agree with him. They’re subscribing.’

  ‘Using the bank as a collecting point? Well, you might be right. But I’m sticking with the analysis.’

  ‘Test it out,’ Georgiades invited. ‘Talk to him.’

  ‘Andrus? I might just do that.’

  ‘After all,’ said Georgiades, ‘you’ve got an excuse.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Zoser. He talked to Zoser the night before the killing. Remember?’

  Mahmoud leaned forward in his chair. Since it was ostensibly in connection with the Zoser case, it was his business, and they met in his office.

  ‘So on that night,’ he said, ‘the night before the Zikr was killed, you talked only about the money she was to give out?’

  ‘Why do you ask me these questions?’ asked Andrus. ‘What have I to do with the Zikr?’

  ‘You talked only about the money she was to give out?’

  ‘Yes. As I said.’

  ‘Did you have any money with you?’

  ‘No. It is best not to carry money in Cairo at night. She was to collect it from the church house in the morning.’

  ‘Where you would give it her?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you give it her?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Personally?’

  ‘Yes. I was there when she came.’

  ‘You are there a lot,’ said Owen, ‘these days.’

  It was the first time he had spoken. Andrus gave him a hostile look.

  ‘Yes. I am. The church has a considerable charity programme which I administer. There is nothing wrong with that, surely?’

  ‘Not with that, no.’

  ‘You talked that night about the people she was to give the money to,’ said Mahmoud. ‘Their names?’

  ‘Their names?’

  ‘Yes. Could you tell me the names, please.’

  ‘Why should I tell you their names? What business is it of yours?’

  ‘I need to know them.’

  ‘I forget them.’

  Mahmoud sighed and made a note with his pencil. He would check the names with the woman. If there were any names.

  ‘You talked with the woman,’ he said. ‘Did you also talk with her husband?’

  ‘With Zoser?’

  ‘Yes, Zoser.’

  ‘Whom you killed,’ said Andrus, looking at Owen.

  ‘He killed himself. And someone else.’

  Andrus looked as if he was going to say something, then changed his mind.

  ‘Answer my question!’ said Mahmoud.

  Andrus looked at him with undisguised fury. Owen suddenly remembered that Mahmoud was a Moslem.

  ‘Of course I talked to him,’ said Andrus.

  ‘What about?’

  ‘How can I remember?’

  ‘Did you talk to him about what happened at your father’s tomb?’

  ‘I may have done. I do not know.’

  ‘And what was his response?’

  Andrus did not reply. He seemed to be looking into space. Perhaps it was the reference to his father’s tomb. Owen suddenly felt unexpectedly sorry for him. It came home to him for the first time that what had seemed to him a trivial event, a stupid joke, was something genuinely much bigger to Andrus. It had touched him on a raw spot. That harsh, unaccommodating man had clearly loved his father, perhaps had loved him alone. Owen felt a twinge of pity.

  ‘And what was his response?’ Mahmoud prompted softly.

  Andrus came back from space and looked at him bitterly.

  ‘I do not know why I should tell you,’ he said. ‘However, I will tell you. He was shocked and horrified. He felt for me as would anyone of a right mind. And then he was angry. That this should happen to one he knew and an elder of the church. At first he could not comprehend it. But then he realized. This blow was not aimed at me but at the Church. It was struck not at the weak man who suffered it but at the strong God who was the man’s master. And he said to himself: That man is weak indeed who lets his master suffer such an insult. We looked for redress from the Mamur Zapt and received none. But that was right. We were wrong to look for redress from others when we should be taking the wrong done to our master upon ourselves. That was Zoser’s response.’

  ‘That was what you told him,’ said Owen.

  ‘That was what he said,’ said Andrus.

  And almost certainly believed it. When he had finished he sat glaring at them in defiance and pride. Owen could believe that he had poured out all the wound and hurt that was in his heart when he spoke to Zoser. And he could believe that although Zoser might not have said these things he had actually felt them. And if he had felt them, might have done something about them.

  Had Andrus intended that Zoser should do something about them?

  ‘You told him these things,’ said Owen, ‘in order to inflame him.’

  ‘I did not.’

  ‘You killed Zoser,’ said Owen. ‘Not I.’

  For the barest second Andrus seemed to flinch. Then the moment passed and the certainty returned.

  ‘God is great,’ said Andrus, ‘and will not desert his servant.’

  ‘There is a law of man, too,’ said Mahmoud, ‘and that, too, must be obeyed.’

  He probed on, and Owen was glad, for it gave him time to think. He needed to think, because although he was sure that Andrus had been speaking the truth, and that he had not deliberately incited Zoser to kill, he still felt puzzled. If everything he had projected on to Zoser was true, or a true picture of his own feelings, why had he not taken the action upon himself?

  As Mahmoud continued with his patient questions, and Andrus continued with his impatient replies, an answer began to come to him. Andrus, for all his faults, was, politics aside (and no Egyptian would accept that politics had anything to do with morality), a moral man. He would not kill. On the other hand, his wound went so deep and he was such a vengeful man that he had wanted his wounder dead. When he had spoken to Zoser something of this had come across, perhaps not consciously but perhaps not completely unconsciously either. He had said it speaking what he believed to be truth and justice, said it and left it. If Zoser picked it up, then that was God’s will. If Zoser did not pick it up, then that was God
’s will. There had been an act but he, Andrus, had not acted. He had done nothing inconsistent with his morality.

  Listening to Andrus now, Owen felt again his immense moral rigidity. He had to have absolute certainty. There was no room for doubt, least of all self-doubt. Mahmoud’s barbs, and there were plenty of them now, for Mahmoud was getting irritated, bounced off his massive self-assurance like wooden arrows off a rock of granite.

  If they were going to get anywhere with Andrus, not on the Zoser business, Owen was satisfied about that, but on the other, then that granite surface must be undermined. Somehow or other they had to get beneath the certainty and feed the seeds of doubt.

  ‘Tell me, Andrus,’ said Owen, ‘why do you spend all day and every day at the church house?’

  ‘I am doing God’s work,’ said Andrus, caught rather off guard.

  ‘Are you sure that God would own it?’

  There was a little silence.

  ‘Why should he not own it?’

  Owen did not reply, merely waited.

  ‘God loves charity,’ said Andrus, with slightly less than his usual self-assurance.

  ‘No doubt; but what is that to do with what you are doing?’

  ‘What are you accusing me of? Why don’t you speak out?’

  Andrus began to grow angry. ‘Do you think I am frightened of you?’

  Owen took no notice.

  ‘You are spending a lot of time there,’ he said almost conversationally. ‘Have you given up your business?’

  ‘My business is no concern of yours.’

  ‘I thought you might have given it up. You spend so much time at the church house.’

  ‘Have you been spying on me?’

  ‘I would have thought you needed the money.’

  ‘My business is doing well,’ said Andrus, ‘and I have no need of money.’

  ‘For what you are doing at the church house, I mean,’ Owen explained.

  ‘I give to charity what I can afford.’

  ‘Yes, but the other things.’

  ‘What other things?’

  ‘The other things you do at the church house.’

  ‘I do not know what you mean,’ said Andrus. ‘I do God’s work.’

  ‘Oh no. God is a god of peace.’

  Andrus was brought up short. After a moment he said to Owen:

  ‘You are mistaken. He is a god of war. Ask him.’ He pointed to Mahmoud. ‘He is a Moslem and will tell you.’

  Mahmoud looked uncomfortable.

  ‘God is a god of neither peace nor war,’ he said. ‘It is man who makes war and man who makes peace.’

  Andrus stood up.

  ‘Are you going to take me?’ he said to Owen.

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘I am not frightened of you.’

  ‘Why should you be,’ asked Owen, ‘when all you will get is justice?’

  ‘Your justice.’

  ‘Egyptian justice.’

  ‘Does a Copt ever get justice,’ asked Andrus, ‘in Egypt?’

  He turned impatiently towards the door. ‘Come! Take me!’

  ‘Sit down!’

  If he took Andrus now it would be no good. The Copts would merely regroup without him. And Andrus would be untouched, impregnable behind his rigid simplicities. His world was still certain.

  ‘Why do the British hate the Copts?’ asked Andrus.

  ‘We do not hate the Copts. We are neutral between Copts and Moslems.’

  ‘How can a Christian be a Christian and be neutral?’

  ‘We are all servants of the Khedive,’ said Owen, correct in form if not in substance, ‘British as well as Copt, Copt as well as Moslem.’

  ‘I do not understand,’ said Andrus, ‘how a Christian can voluntarily choose to serve a Moslem.’

  ‘Many do,’ Owen pointed out, ‘including many Copts.’

  For some reason this seemed to irritate Andrus particularly.

  ‘They are traitors!’ he said passionately. ‘They are traitors to the Coptic cause.’

  ‘To try to provide good government to the people of Egypt is hardly to be a traitor.’

  ‘The people of Egypt! Who are the people of Egypt? We are. The Copts. And for two thousand years we have had a government not our own. And why is that? Because we Copts have let others govern us. We have even helped them to govern. We have worked with the Government when we should have been working against it. For two thousand years we have done that. And for two thousand years every Government has been that of an invader.’

  Where had he heard that before?

  ‘You are a Moslem,’ Andrus said to Mahmoud, ‘and you are an invader. You are invaders too,’ he said to Owen, ‘but you are Christian. When the British came we thought that they would lift the Moslem yoke from off our backs. But Christian turned against Christian. They supported the Moslems instead of sweeping them away.’

  The moment of doubt, if there had been one, had gone. Andrus was back in his old self-confident stride. He would go to prison, if he had to go to prison, convinced of his rightness, proud of his martyrdom.

  It was time to move in.

  ‘Andrus,’ said Owen, ‘you surprise me. You hate the Moslems. Why then do you support them?’

  Andrus stopped.

  ‘Support them?’

  ‘Yes. Against your own people too.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ Andrus declared flatly.

  ‘Sheikh Osman. You give him money.’

  ‘Nonsense!’

  ‘All the money that Sheikh Osman has used in the past few weeks in his war against the Copts is money that you have given him.’

  ‘Nonsense!’ said Andrus. ‘I have given him no money. How would I give him money? You invent these things to trick me.’

  ‘Every week,’ said Owen, ‘every Friday, you take money to Mordecai.’

  ‘Well,’ said Andrus, ‘what of it?’

  ‘Which he gives to Osman.’

  ‘That is just a lie,’ said Andrus. ‘Why do you bother with such tricks?’

  ‘I will bring Mordecai to you if you wish, and he will confirm what I say.’

  ‘You have told him what to say.’

  ‘I will show you the evidence that Osman goes to him every Friday and comes away with the money you have given him.’

  ‘But—but this cannot be.’

  ‘All the money that has been used against the Copts has been supplied by you. And you talk of traitors!’

  ‘Mordecai is the traitor. How dare he do this thing?’

  ‘He does only what he has been told.’

  ‘The money was brought for another purpose.’

  ‘What purpose, Andrus?’

  Andrus was silent.

  ‘You brought the money, Andrus, and gave it to Mordecai to be used against the Copts. Against your own people. Why did you do that, Andrus?’

  ‘I did not bring it for that purpose,’ said Andrus hoarsely. ‘Mordecai has tricked me.’

  ‘Not Mordecai. It is not Mordecai who has tricked you. Mordecai has only carried out instructions. Whose instructions were they, Andrus? If they were not yours, whose were they?’

  Andrus would not reply.

  CHAPTER 12

  The Mamur Zapt sat in his office, thinking. Nikos started to come into the room, stopped and withdrew unobserved. No one after that was allowed past the office. The bearers sensed the situation and stayed quietly in their office at the other end of the corridor. They were in any case somewhat subdued by Yussuf’s misfortunes. A sympathetic peace descended on the corridor.

  In fact, Owen was thinking mostly about Zeinab. Since their visit to the opera relations between them had been distinctly cool; and Owen was feeling the effects of being deprived. He had decided that it was time to think things through and settle them once and for all, but whenever he started thinking about Zeinab thoughts became memories of touch and smell and look and emotion and he became most unsettled. He had to admit, too, that a certain drama had gone out of his life. He co
nsidered himself on the whole a pretty steady person, but the trouble with steadiness was that it could very easily become the humdrum. Zeinab, whatever else she might be, was definitely not humdrum. She had all an Arab’s volatility, added to which was an emphatic unpredictability which was all her own. Too strong-willed and forceful to remain easily in any slot into which a male-oriented Moslem society might force her, regarding marriage, certainly to a Moslem, as the ultimate form of prison, conducting life as a ceaseless battle for Home Rule and Independence, she sometimes found things too much for her and plunged into pits of despair, from which she would spring out again almost immediately with a soar and a vehemence which left Owen dazzled. He loved her both when she was cast down and when she was leaping up, and also in between when she was normal, although as far as Zeinab was concerned normality was a flexible concept. However, ‘love’ was, for Owen, a strong word and one which needed thinking about. Particularly in view of Paul’s remarks and what he had said about Jane Postlethwaite.

  Paul’s remarks first. There was no need for him to get married yet. Paul’s views notwithstanding, he was not old. On the other hand, Owen was uncomfortably aware, a lot of men were married. Especially senior men. You could safely disregard Paul’s opinion that marriage was a prerequisite of life at the top, because Owen could think of notable exceptions, Kitchener included. Yet there was no doubt that it helped. You fitted more snugly into society, especially, the tight little society around the Consul-General, if you were married and could take your wife along to dinner-parties with you, instead of forever having to be fixed up with a stray aunt or somebody. Owen did not think of himself as ambitious. He had left India for Egypt because he wanted to get out, not up. He loved his work as Mamur Zapt. It was still new to him and he wanted to go on doing it. But there might come a time, there was no denying it, when he might have had enough, and then if he wanted to move it would have to be up. But what to? That opened up whole chains of other thoughts which he put resolutely away. He had enough to think about as it was.