The Mamur Zapt and the Camel of Destruction

‘I would always welcome a colleague–’

‘Oh no. Quite unnecessary, I assure you. Every confidence–’

Mohammed Fehmi looked slightly puzzled.

‘Then, why, may I ask–?’

‘Am I involving myself at all?’ Owen saw no reason why he should not speak the truth. ‘It’s not so much the case itself – that I leave entirely to you – as the possible reaction to it. Politically, I mean.’

‘A fonctionnaire? Civil servant?’

Mohammed Fehmi was still puzzled. However, he shrugged his shoulders. This was evidently political in some strange way and politics was not for him. He was not one of the Parquet’s high fliers.

He had picked up, however, that Owen was leaving the conduct of the investigation to him, and visibly relaxed.

‘After all,’ he said, ‘a simple suicide!’

‘Exactly.’

‘The post-mortem – quite definite.’

‘Oh yes.’

‘I’ll just have to find out where he got it from. And why he took it, of course.’

‘Up to a point.’

‘Oh yes,’ Mohammed Fehmi assured him swiftly. ‘Only up to a point. Otherwise you find yourself into personal matters, family matters, even social matters, that are best left alone.’

‘Quite so.’

‘No,’ said Mohammed Fehmi, finishing his cup and sucking up the last mixture of coffee grounds and sugar, the sweet and the bitter, the taste of Egypt, ‘no, the only puzzling thing about it is why the doctor signed the certificate in the first place.’

Owen called the doctor in. He was a small, shabby man with worried eyes and a lined, anxious face.

‘How did you come to miss it?’

‘I didn’t miss it.’

‘You wrote the certificate knowingly?’

The doctor shrugged.

‘You know, of course, what this means?’

The doctor shrugged again. ‘You do it all the time,’ he said quietly.

‘Sign certificates you know to be false?’

‘It spares the family.’

‘You know why we have the system of certification?’

‘Of course. To prevent abuses.’

Egypt was a country of many abuses.

‘And you still thought you would sign the certificate?’

‘The parents are old. He was their only son. The shock of that was enough without the other.’

‘The other?’

‘Suicide.’

‘Are you sure it was suicide?’

‘What else could it be?’

‘The Under-Secretary,’ said Nikos. ‘The Ministry of Agriculture.’

Owen picked up the phone.

‘Captain Owen? I understand you’re handling the Fingari case?’

‘Well, of course, the Parquet–’

‘Quite so, quite so. But – I understand you’re taking an interest?’

‘Ye-es, in a general way.’

‘Quite so. I was wondering – the circumstances – a bit unfortunate, you know.’

‘Yes?’

‘The Office. The Ministry.’

‘I don’t quite–’

‘Bad for the Department. A bit of a reflection, you know.’

‘Well, yes, but–’

‘I was wondering – just wondering – if it could be moved. Out of the office, I mean.’

‘Surely it has been moved?’ said Owen, startled. ‘It was taken for post-mortem. And before that, the funeral. I saw it myself–’

‘No, no. I don’t mean that. Not the body. The – the incident, rather.’