The Mamur Zapt and the Girl in Nile

‘Or thought you did.’

‘Foolish man!’ said the corporal, swiftly switching sides. ‘It was all a dream.’

He gave the watchman a push. The watchman pushed him back.

‘It was no dream!’ he insisted. ‘I saw it with my own two eyes. A woman, on the sandbank.’

‘A woman!’ said the corporal. ‘There, what did I tell you! It is time you got another wife, Abu. Then you would stop having these foolish dreams.’

‘I saw it plainly. On the sandbank.’

‘You saw something plainly,’ said Owen.

‘It was a woman,’ insisted the watchman doggedly.

‘A heap of camel dung!’ scoffed the corporal.

‘In the middle of the river?’ said the watchman angrily.

‘Anyway,’ said Owen, ‘it’s not there now.’

‘It was there.’

‘Then what has happened to it?’

‘Perhaps,’ suggested the corporal, ‘the river has washed it away?’

Owen looked up and down the river. It stretched, broad and placid, to the horizon on both sides. Further on down, near to the city, a single felucca was gliding gracefully in towards the bank. It came to rest and then there was nothing else moving in the intense heat of the late morning Egyptian sun.

He scanned the water’s edge carefully. At this time of year, with the flood still some weeks off, the Nile had shrunk back into its bed, uncovering a wide strip of mud, now baked hard and dry and cracked like crazy paving. Far away he thought he could see some goats grazing. But there was no suspicious heap lying grounded in the shallows, no flotsam or jetsam at all. Anything that came ashore would be snatched up at once by thrifty beachcombers.

Under his feet a little floating clump of Um Suf, Mother of Wool, papyrus reed, torn loose from its moorings hundreds of miles to the south, nestled along the bank and came to rest against the shoal. Nestled and stuck. The current was not even sufficient to tug it loose again.

‘It can’t have!’ said the watchman angrily. ‘It was lying right up on the shoal.’

‘How did it get there, then?’ asked the corporal. ‘Did it jump up there like a fish?’

This was exactly the kind of non-issue that Owen didn’t want to get involved in. In fact, he didn’t want to get involved in any of this at all.

‘This isn’t anything to do with me,’ he said. ‘This is not for the Mamur Zapt.’

‘Quite right, effendi!’ said the corporal smartly. ‘Only a woman.’

That was not what he had meant.

‘This is a matter for the Parquet,’ he said.

This was an ordinary crime if ever he’d seen one. And ordinary crimes were handled by the Parquet, the Department of Prosecutions of the Ministry of Justice. The Egyptian legal system was like the French. Conduct of a criminal investigation was the responsibility of a prosecuting lawyer, not of the police. The police worked under his direction. And, of course, when a crime was reported they were the ones who had to notify the Parquet in the first place.

‘Has the Parquet been notified?’ he said sternly.

The corporal scratched his head.

‘I expect so,’ he said.

‘Expect so?’ Owen boiled over with fury. ‘I should bloody well expect so, too. And I’d expect them to be here. I’d expect them to be wasting their time on this foolish nonsense and not me. Whose idea was it to send for the Mamur Zapt anyway?’

‘I don’t know anything about it,’ said the corporal hurriedly.

‘One said that you were near, effendi,’ said the watchman forlornly, ‘and the Chief thought—’

Owen knew damned well what the District Chief had thought. He had thought, here was somebody senior he could pass responsibility to without having to do anything about it himself. Right on the spot, too! He wouldn’t even have to stir out of the cool of his office. While he, Owen, was tearing around all over the place like a bloody lunatic!

‘Tell the Chief,’ he said ominously, ‘that I’ll be wanting a word with him.’

This was ridiculous. He couldn’t afford to be spending his time here. He had a dozen men on the other side of town waiting for him. They had been about half way through when the message had come from the District Chief. He had dropped everything and left. And you could bet that the moment he’d left they’d sat down in the shade.

He set off back up the bank.

After a moment’s hesitation the other two ran after him.

‘Effendi! Effendi!’

‘You stay here. Wait for the Parquet. You can tell it all to them.’

He reached the top of the bank, lizards scattering out of the way in front of him. He was just about to plunge back into the streets when he saw someone running towards him. It was one of the men he had left.

‘Effendi!’ he gasped. ‘A message! From the Bimbashi!’

‘Yes?’

‘You are to go to the river.’

Owen looked round. Behind him the river sparkled placidly in the sun. Apart from the corporal and the watchman, there wasn’t a soul in sight. Nothing moved on the bank or out on the water. The mud shoal and its hump dozed tranquilly in the heat.

‘Well,’ said Owen, ‘I’m at the river. But why on earth …?’

The Bimbashi arrived shortly afterwards.

He was in a motor-car. This was impressive since there were relatively few cars in Cairo in 1909 and the police force itself did not boast one. Normally it went about its business either on foot or in an arabeah, the horse-drawn cab distinctive to the city. If it needed a car it borrowed the Army’s one.

But that was battered and sober: this one was new and, well, spectacular.

‘Green,’ said the driver of the car, noting with satisfaction Owen’s interest. ‘There was a bit of a fuss about that. The Mufti complained. But I said: “It’s almost the family colour, isn’t it?”’

The Bimbashi, McPhee, pink and fair and anxious, rushed forward.

‘This is Captain Owen, Prince. Owen, Prince Narouz.’