Mamur Zapt and the Return of the Carpet

‘I am dying,’ said the man.

There seemed no evidence of any wound.

‘Where is your hurt?’

The man groaned but said nothing.

‘In the bum, effendi,’ a woman said eagerly. ‘Look!’

She lifted the man’s galabeah. The bullet had glanced along the buttock, leaving a livid furrow.

‘He will survive,’ said Owen.

The man was unconvinced.

‘I am dying.’

‘This is not a houris you see,’ said the woman. ‘It is your wife.’

The man groaned again, louder. The crowd guffawed.

‘Take heart, man,’ said Owen. ‘You might have been hit in the front.’

The woman looked up at him mock-demurely. She was a villager and did not wear a veil.

‘What difference would that have made, effendi?’

‘None at all in his case,’ said a voice from the crowd. ‘He has not been with his woman for weeks.’

The wounded man sat up indignantly.

Owen moved away. There seemed very few casualties from the shooting. Whoever it was had thoroughly bungled his job.

McPhee was talking to the man from the Parquet. He signalled to Owen to come over.

‘They think they’ve got the man,’ he said. ‘He was seized as he tried to run away.’

‘Who by?’ said Owen, surprised.

It was very rare for the ordinary populace to intervene in an assault, which, as opposed to an injury or accident, they tended to regard as a private matter.

‘It’s not so surprising,’ said the man from the Parquet. ‘Come and look.’

He led them across the Place and into the Hotel Continental.

In a small storeroom at the back, guarded by a large, though apprehensive, constable, an Arab lay prone on the floor.

He was completely unconscious. Mahmoud turned the head with his foot so that they could see the face. The eyelids rolled back to reveal white, drugged eyes.

McPhee dropped on one knee beside the man, bent over him and sniffed.

‘Don’t really need to,’ he said. ‘Smell it a mile away. Hashish.’

He began searching the man methodically.

‘I expect you’ve already done this,’ he said apologetically.

‘Police job,’ said Mahmoud.

‘And I don’t expect they’ve done it,’ said McPhee.

Most of the ordinary constables were volunteers on a five-year contract and were recruited from those who had finished their conscript service, again five years, with the Egyptian army. They tended to come from the poorer villages and were nearly all illiterate. They were paid three pounds a month.

‘He wasn’t like this when he was caught, surely?’ said Owen, puzzled.

‘Pretty well,’ said Mahmoud. ‘That’s why they caught him. He more or less fell over.’

‘Then how—?’

‘How did he fire the shot?’ Mahmoud shrugged. ‘My guess is he took the hashish to stiffen himself up. He just about managed to fire the shot, and then it caught up with him. That’s why he shot so poorly.’

‘Maybe,’ said Owen.

The other smiled.

‘The other explanation is, of course, that he was drugged up to the hilt, someone else fired the shot—equally poorly—and then put the gun in his hand.’

McPhee looked up. ‘The gun was definitely in his hand at some point.’

He took up the Arab’s limp hand, smelled it, and then offered it to the other two.

‘No, thanks,’ said Owen.

‘Distinct smell of powder.’

‘I’m surprised you can pick it out among the other things.’

McPhee let the hand drop and rose to his feet.

‘Nothing else,’ he said.

‘Did you find the gun?’ Owen asked Mahmoud.

Mahmoud nodded. ‘On the ground,’ he said.

He signed to the constable, who went away and returned a moment later gingerly carrying a large revolver in a fold of dirty white cloth.

‘Standard Service issue, I think,’ said McPhee, ‘but you’ll know better than I.’