Mamur Zapt 02 The Mamur Zapt and the Night of the Dog by Michael Pearce

Author:Michael Pearce [Pearce, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: det_history
Published: 2014-07-15T13:15:12.173905+00:00

Because of the heat all work stopped about lunch-time and the city came to a halt. The streets emptied, the shops shut, the donkey boys retreated into the shade, and government offices closed. Most people took a siesta. A few British officials, however, in whom northern habits died hard, preferred to go to one of the clubs and have a drink and lunch there. Owen was one of these.

He was unable to sleep during the day, and used the dead time to keep up with the newspapers and journals in the reading-room and to swim in the club pool while it was comparatively empty. Afterwards, about five, when the club started to fill up with people arriving for the daily hockey and cricket matches, played always, by personal decree of the Consul-General, in the cool of the evening, he returned to his office. The buildings were empty except for the occasional orderly and the Assistant Commissioner at the other end of the corridor, and sometimes Nikos working late, and he was able to get a lot of work done.

His friends, however, were familiar with his habits, so Mahmoud knew where to find him. Mahmoud was another one who didn’t take a siesta and just at the moment, still simmering over the way Zoser had slipped through his fingers, he was driving his men hard. Even Mahmoud, however, could not get them to work in the afternoons and he too, like Owen, normally used the afternoons to catch up on desk work and reading. This afternoon, though, he had been unable to concentrate on the case he was preparing. His thoughts kept drifting back to Zoser. He kept analysing and re-analysing the probabilities. And then he had his idea.

“It’s logical,” he insisted to Owen when they met. “When he’s not at home and he’s not working, that’s where he is. Why shouldn’t he be there now?”

They were sitting outside at their usual table. The heat was beginning to go off the streets and the shadows were creeping out from the walls. It was still early, however, and they were the only ones at the tables.

“There are lots of places he might be,” Owen objected. “He could be anywhere. He might have left the city altogether.”

“No, he wouldn’t have done that,” said Mahmoud. “He’s never been out of the city in his life. He would be frightened.”

“OK, but there are lots of places in the city.”

“He’s a creature of habit,” said Mahmoud, “and very rigid. He has a few basic routines which he sticks to. He keeps to the places he knows, the ones he feels confident in. That’s why he could be there.”

“Someone would be sure to come across him.”

“They might not say if they did. Anyway, they might not come across him. It’s always dark, there are lots of little odd corners and he probably knows it well.”

“It’s a possibility,” Owen conceded.

“You see,” said Mahmoud, “we’ve been assuming somebody is helping him and we’ve been going round all his contacts. It’s easy because there are very few of them.

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