Mamur Zapt 14 The Face in the Cemetery by Michael Pearce

Author:Michael Pearce [Pearce, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780007401338
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2017-04-20T21:00:00+00:00

10

There were no hotels in Minya and Owen was staying at the Government rest house. It was where officials usually stayed in their tours of the province and he saw Fricker’s name higher up the page when he signed the Visitors Book.

The rest house was small – there were only half a dozen bedrooms – but the food was good and it was possible to have guests for meals. Fricker had signed in several. Among them, on no fewer than four separate occasions, was the name Hanafi.

Well, perhaps that was not surprising. He knew that they had met and they had obviously struck up an acquaintance good enough for Hanafi to have invited Fricker to meet his wife. All the same, Owen was a little surprised. Four separate occasions? Over a period of – he looked – less than three weeks. It didn’t square with the picture he had had in his mind of the Hanafis living an isolated, closed-in life in that awful house among the sugar cane. Perhaps it was just the wife who had led the isolated life!

Hanafi had, though, taken Fricker over to see her. They had sung together. Just once, or several times? He had the impression that it was more than once.

How had they managed that? The sugar factory was quite some distance from Minya, two hours at least if you went by boat, which would be the normal way. Hanafi would, of course, probably have access to the factory’s trucks. Even so, that was a lot of to-ing and fro-ing. These were working trucks.

He looked again at the signings-in. They were all for lunch. That would certainly have helped. There might be a truck coming in regularly to the town, that truck, perhaps, that he had seen down on the waterfront. Hanafi could have come in by that; and then, probably, in the evenings the trucks would not be being used. Fricker would have been fetched and returned.

But then there was another problem. Journeys and lunch would take up the best part of a working day. Four full days in just over two weeks? When Hanafi was a working manager? How had he managed that? Owen hadn’t the impression that his boss, Schneider, would look very kindly on that sort of thing!

Unless, of course, Hanafi was coming to Minya on business. But what business was it that would bring him to Minya four times in such a short period?

And had it anything to do with Fricker?

The three Egyptians were also staying in the rest house. They came in when he was halfway through his meal and joined him later on the verandah for coffee. He asked them about their day.

‘Fruitless!’ said Kattim, mopping his neck with a silk handkerchief. He seemed to be troubled by the heat. ‘Entirely fruitless!’

‘At least you got a feel for the books,’ said Hoseini soothingly.

‘These provincial bookkeepers!’ said Latif, shaking his head with a smile.

‘The books are all right,’ said Kattim. ‘They are consistent with the other documentation.’

‘But can that documentation be trusted?’ said Latif.

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