The Mamur Zapt and the Night of the Dog

The Mamur Zapt and the Night of the Dog
Michael Pearce

A classic murder mystery from the award-winning Michael Pearce, in which The Mamur Zapt races to prevent an explosion of religious violence in the Cairo of the 1900s.Cairo in the 1900s. When the body of a dog is discovered in a Coptic tomb – a Muslim insult that could spark an explosion among the Christian community – the Mamur Zapt, British head of Cairo’s secret police, is called in to investigate.Equally volatile is a command from an English Member of Parliament that the Mamur Zapt, Gareth Owen, show the MP’s niece the sights of the city. When a dancing dervish is stabbed before the lady’s very eyes, Owen begins to uncover a plot to set Cairo’s ethnic communities at each other’s throats…

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First published in 1989 by Collins

Copyright © Michael Pearce 1989

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

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Source ISBN: 9780008259457

Ebook Edition © SEPTEMBER 2017 ISBN: 9780007485024

Version: 2017-09-05

Contents

Cover (#ued1b8c67-8a39-588a-9968-400589d8e82e)

Title Page (#u264a7929-9765-5088-b4e5-8ae9a82d27e5)

Copyright (#u0d5cb056-f049-5015-bcdd-09c6ff9529bd)

Praise (#ulink_f1112a95-2894-571d-91b2-ec603c5713dc)

CHAPTER 1 (#ulink_9418bfd1-601a-535c-aee4-df20c6821e9a)

CHAPTER 2 (#ulink_4fcfe72a-6a7c-5859-a287-dccf9f796092)

CHAPTER 3 (#ulink_bda4a9d6-6b83-5ee3-ba01-f230e97a85a3)

CHAPTER 4 (#ulink_ce035ec5-2f24-549b-9eaf-c8556d5eb9ea)

CHAPTER 5 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 6 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 7 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 8 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 9 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 10 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 11 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 12 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 13 (#litres_trial_promo)

Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

Also by Michael Pearce (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

Praise (#ulink_d72934e6-98a2-5db9-9ae8-3e87562f1d7b)

‘Keeps up the high standard set by his first… Elegantly and wittily narrated, with a good plot, colourful characters and an encyclopaedic knowledge of the Egypt of Cromer’s time.’

The Times Literary Supplement

Pearce is a natural novelist, masterly at evoking the jostling crowds, aromas and political religious cross-currents of Cairo under British rule… A vanished world comes alive in Pearce’s deft, humorous, elegant prose.’

Sunday Times

CHAPTER 1 (#ulink_6759d54c-d105-5515-8d93-940cc37af42b)

The Mamur Zapt would have treated it all as a joke if Nikos, his Official Clerk, had not been so insistent.

‘Get out there quick,’ he had said.

He had even volunteered to guide Owen to the Coptic Place of the Dead. Since Nikos was normally reluctant to take a single step outside his office, Owen had been impressed. Even so, if Georgiades had been around he might have sent him. Georgiades, however, was out on an errand of his own, or possibly still in bed. In any case, Nikos made it clear that he would not have approved.

‘This is something for the Mamur Zapt,’ he said.

The Mamur Zapt was the Head of Cairo’s Political CID. Responsible in theory directly to Egypt’s ruler, the Khedive, he answered in practice only to the British Consul-General, the man who, since Britain had charge of Egypt’s purse strings, effectively controlled Egypt. The Consul-General, however, had taken pains not to define the Mamur Zapt’s role too closely, observing that the less he knew of the Mamur Zapt’s activities the more effective he was likely to be.

There were certain ground rules, however, and one of them was that the Mamur Zapt did not concern himself with routine police matters. Which he considered this to be.

‘Police?’ said Nikos, as if he could hardly believe his ears. ‘What good would they be?’

Owen had to admit there was something in this. The Cairo police force was recruited from country districts and consisted for the most part therefore of simple fellahin, or peasants, illiterate, underpaid and, when they got to the city, usually quite lost. Their duties tended to be restricted largely to the regulation of traffic, which, since the latter consisted chiefly of donkeys and camels, was in Nikos’s view entirely appropriate. All real criminal investigation was left to the Parquet, the French-style Department of Prosecutions of the Ministry of Justice.