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A Cold Touch of Ice
Michael Pearce
In this classic murder mystery from Michael Pearce’s award-winning series, set in the Egypt of the 1900s, the Mamur Zapt investigates the murder of an Italian man in the backstreets of Cairo.Cairo, 1908. When an Italian man is murdered in the city’s back streets, there is concern that this could be some kind of ethnic cleansing. Were the guns in his warehouse anything to do with it? Gareth Owen – the Mamur Zapt – has to find out fast.And then there are other difficult questions. What are Trudi von Ramsberg and Gertrude Bell really doing in Cairo? As the Mamur Zapt is drawn deeper into the investigation, he’s not the only one who has problems over where his allegiance lies…
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First published in Great Britain by
Collins Crime 2000
Copyright © Michael Pearce 2000
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. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780008259471
Ebook Edition © SEPTEMBER 2017 ISBN: 9780007441150
Version: 2017-09-05
Contents
Cover (#u6e451141-3c2c-5dd3-9b75-1b4ad85547d2)
Title Page (#u1fa638b7-ea9d-5496-821d-8a064627676c)
Copyright (#u70a99ba0-36e7-5a49-9c98-a868f4b479a3)
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About the Author
Also by Michael Pearce
About the Publisher
1 (#uae0dcaf8-2c16-53c9-a7c1-7b3e90151a82)
A man pushed his way through the crowd and arrived at the bar beside Owen.
‘Wahid whisky-soda!’ he instructed the bartender. ‘No, make that a double. After all,’ he said, turning to the company, ‘it’s not every day that one gets a death threat in the mail.’
‘Yes, it is,’ objected the man on his other side. ‘I get one every morning.’
‘Ah, but that’s just from colleagues or from the Finance Department. Mine,’ said the man, pulling out a piece of paper from his pocket and waving it with a flourish, ‘is the Real Thing.’
‘Can I have a look?’ Owen stretched out his hand. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it’s the same handwriting.’
‘Same as what?’
‘The one I got.’
Someone peered over his shoulder.
‘It’s just an ordinary bazaar letter-writer!’ he said disgustedly. ‘That doesn’t count!’
‘Just because you haven’t got one, Patterson!’
‘How many other people have had one?’ asked Owen.’
Several other people put up their hands.
‘You see!’ said the first man. ‘It’s just people who are important. Sorry about that, Patterson!’
Some had their letters with them.
‘I was going to have mine framed, so that my grandchildren will see that once upon a time I was a man to be taken seriously.’
They passed them to Owen.
‘It’s all the same handwriting,’ said Owen.
‘You mean it’s only one man? Well, that is a relief. I thought it was everybody that wanted to kill us.’
‘It’s just some nut? Well, I do fell let down.’
‘Don’t worry prematurely,’ counselled Owen. ‘Perhaps he means it.’
There was no doubt, thought Owen, as he sat in a meeting later that afternoon, that the British were unpopular in Egypt. The letter-writer was not an isolated case. Since the war had started, there had been a number of such expressions of hostility. Stones had been thrown, British-owned premises vandalized and solitary soldiers attacked on their way back to barracks.
And yet, for once, it was not Britain’s fault. When, a few months before, Italy had invaded Tripolitania, and Turkey, to whom Tripolitania belonged, had retaliated by declaring war, Britain sought to stay neutral. Unfortunately, that was not what most Egyptians wanted. Egypt was still, at least in theory, part of the Ottoman Empire and Egyptian sympathies were heavily with Turkey.
‘Egypt is, after all,’ Ismet Bey, the Turkish representative at the meeting, was saying now, ‘our country.’
Well, yes and no. Yes, it was true, Egypt was still formally part of the Ottoman Empire and the Khedive, Egypt’s ruler, owed allegiance to the Sultan at Istanbul. But in practice the Egyptian Khedives had been virtually independent for the best part of a century now, and for the last thirty years, in any case, the real rulers of Egypt had been the British, who had come in ‘by invitation’ to help the Khedive sort his finances out, come in and then, well, as it happened, stayed.
‘All we are asking,’ said Ismet Bey, ‘is that we should be able to move our troops from one part of His Highness’s domains – Palestine – to another – Tripolitania – through a third: Egypt.’
‘I do see your point,’ conceded Owen’s friend, Paul, who was chairing the meeting.
‘Well, that is something.’
‘However –’
However, thought Owen, there wasn’t a cat’s chance in hell of Britain agreeing to let a Turkish army march through Egypt. Who knows, they might even step aside to assert Ottoman rights in other respects.
‘Shouldn’t Egypt herself have a voice in this?’ asked the Khedive’s representative.
‘Egypt’s is the point of view that I am expressing,’ said Paul.
‘No, it’s not. Yours is the view of the British Administration. We Egyptians strongly condemn Italy’s action as Western aggression and would wish to do everything we could to help Turkey repel its foreign invaders.’
‘Have you thought,’ asked Paul, ‘that if you take too active a part, you could yourselves become the object of aggression?’
‘We would take care of that,’ said Ismet Bey.
The British Commander-in-Chief coughed modestly.
‘I think,’ he said, ‘that the presence of a British army in Egypt is all the guarantee that you need against foreign invasion.’
Ismet Bey sighed. They had been here before in the last few months: many times.
‘At least,’ he said desperately, ‘allow us to move supplies.’
‘Medical supplies, certainly,’ said Paul. ‘As you know, the Consul-General is anxious to provide whatever humanitarian help he can.’
‘Arms?’
‘I’m not sure that counts as humanitarian.’
‘You always used to allow passage.’
‘Limited passage. To allow unrestricted passage would be to prejudice our position of neutrality.’
‘It’s not even limited now,’ protested the Bey. ‘You’ve stopped passage altogether.’
‘That’s because you were sending so much.’
‘But –’
‘If we include what you’ve been smuggling.’
‘Smuggling?’ cried Ismet Bey. ‘How can we be smuggling when it’s our country?’
‘Exactly!’ said the Khedive’s representative. ‘And if it’s not his country, then it’s certainly ours!’
There was a long pause.
‘I’ll tell you what,’ said Paul conciliatorily: ‘there’s clearly a problem here, and it seems to me that it can best be resolved by appointing someone to regulate the arms traffic whom we can all trust.’
‘Well, that sounds very reasonable,’ said the Bey, surprised.
‘The Mamur Zapt.’
‘What?’ said Owen, waking up.
‘Mamur Zapt?’ said the Khedive’s representative.
‘Yes. A faithful servant of the Khedive.’
‘But he’s a faithful servant of the British too!’ cried the Bey.
‘Oh dear, Ismet Bey!’ said Paul, beginning to gather up his papers. ‘What a shocking suggestion!’
There was, alas, some truth in what Ismet Bey had said. One of the first things the British had done when they arrived was to install their own man as Mamur Zapt, Head of the Khedive’s Secret Police, the man ultimately responsible for political security in Cairo. Successive Mamur Zapts had therefore found themselves serving two masters; something which had hitherto not presented much of a problem to Owen, the present incumbent, since he had happily played off one against the other. Lately, however, that had been getting more difficult. Since the new Consul-General had taken over, relations with the Khedive had become strained and the two were often now pulling in different directions.
