The Mamur Zapt and the Night of the Dog

‘We were praying,’ said Andrus tartly.

‘Of course. But you might have—’

‘We did not.’

Ordinarily, Owen would have probed but there was an impatient finality about the words. He moved Andrus on.

‘Then in the morning—?’

‘We went to the tomb.’

‘Where you found—?’

Andrus made a gesture of disgust as if he could hardly bring himself to speak of it.

‘Where you found—?’ Owen prompted again.

‘A dog!’ Andrus spat out. ‘At the very door of my father’s tomb!’

He glared round dramatically. Totally involved, the crowd gave a sympathetic gasp.

‘I feel for you,’ said Owen tactfully. ‘I feel for you. But …’ He hesitated and chose his words with care. ‘Is there not a possibility—I ask only to make sure—that the dog came there by accident?’

‘Accident?’ said Andrus incredulously.

‘There are lots of dogs in the cemetery,’ said Owen, ‘and some of them are old and sick. Might not one of them, knowing that its time to die had come—’

‘Have dragged itself across the graveyard until by chance it arrived at my father’s tomb?’

‘Yes.’

‘—and then, with its last breath, climbed up a flight of six steep steps and forced open the heavy door that was barred against it? Pah.’

Andrus made a gesture of derision. The crowd laughed scornfully.

‘First, it was a joke. Now it is a fairy tale.’

Owen went patiently on.

‘The door was barred?’

‘Yes.’

‘Not locked?’

‘I unlocked it the night before when I came first to the tomb.’

‘But left it barred? Are you sure?’

‘Surer of that,’ said Andrus, with a sidelong glance at the crowd, ‘than that the dog lifted the bar itself.’

The crowd laughed with him.

‘The point is important,’ Owen insisted. ‘If the door were open, the dog could have come there itself.’

‘It was brought,’ said Andrus, ‘by other dogs. Moslem ones.’

‘Where did you find the dog? Inside the tomb?’

‘In the doorway. Half inside, half out.’

‘And dead?’

‘Quite dead,’ said Andrus.

‘You say it was Moslems.’

‘I know it was Moslems.’

‘Did anyone see them?’

Andrus hesitated. ‘No one has said so.’

‘I will ask. And I will ask more widely. It may be that someone saw them bring the dog into the cemetery.’

‘There are dogs in the cemetery enough.’

Owen shrugged. ‘I will check, anyway. I will also ask those in your house.’

‘I speak for them.’

‘It may be that one of them heard something or saw something that you did not.’

Now it was Andrus who shrugged his shoulders.

‘It may be that no one saw anything or heard anything. They came like thieves in the night.’

‘It is important, however, to check. Then we might establish whether it was indeed Moslems.’

‘Who else could it have been?’

‘Copts. Have you any enemies?’

‘Only Moslems,’ said Andrus.

He seemed stuck on this. Owen could not tell whether it was some personal bitterness or whether it was the general bitterness which he knew Copts felt for Moslems. If it was the latter, he was surprised at its intensity. If that was widely shared, then it was worrying. There was the possibility of a major explosion. And any little spark could set it going.

Even the death of a dog.