A Cold Touch of Ice

A Cold Touch of Ice
Michael Pearce

In this classic murder mystery from Michael Pearce’s award-winning series, set in the Egypt of the 1900s, the Mamur Zapt investigates the murder of an Italian man in the backstreets of Cairo.Cairo, 1908. When an Italian man is murdered in the city’s back streets, there is concern that this could be some kind of ethnic cleansing. Were the guns in his warehouse anything to do with it? Gareth Owen – the Mamur Zapt – has to find out fast.And then there are other difficult questions. What are Trudi von Ramsberg and Gertrude Bell really doing in Cairo? As the Mamur Zapt is drawn deeper into the investigation, he’s not the only one who has problems over where his allegiance lies…

HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk/)

First published in Great Britain by

Collins Crime 2000

Copyright © Michael Pearce 2000

Michael Pearce asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks

HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication

Source ISBN: 9780008259471

Ebook Edition © SEPTEMBER 2017 ISBN: 9780007441150

Version: 2017-09-05

Contents

Cover (#u6e451141-3c2c-5dd3-9b75-1b4ad85547d2)

Title Page (#u1fa638b7-ea9d-5496-821d-8a064627676c)

Copyright (#u70a99ba0-36e7-5a49-9c98-a868f4b479a3)

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author

Also by Michael Pearce

About the Publisher

1 (#uae0dcaf8-2c16-53c9-a7c1-7b3e90151a82)

A man pushed his way through the crowd and arrived at the bar beside Owen.

‘Wahid whisky-soda!’ he instructed the bartender. ‘No, make that a double. After all,’ he said, turning to the company, ‘it’s not every day that one gets a death threat in the mail.’

‘Yes, it is,’ objected the man on his other side. ‘I get one every morning.’

‘Ah, but that’s just from colleagues or from the Finance Department. Mine,’ said the man, pulling out a piece of paper from his pocket and waving it with a flourish, ‘is the Real Thing.’

‘Can I have a look?’ Owen stretched out his hand. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it’s the same handwriting.’

‘Same as what?’

‘The one I got.’

Someone peered over his shoulder.

‘It’s just an ordinary bazaar letter-writer!’ he said disgustedly. ‘That doesn’t count!’