The Last Cut. Michael Pearce
workmen started to go back. Macrae was already there. He saw Owen and waved an arm in greeting. Owen suddenly realized that the man had been there since two o’clock the previous night. He wondered if the workmen had, too. They were going back to work, however, willingly enough.
Ferguson squinted at the sun.
‘I’d better be rigging up some lights,’ he said.
The sun was already beginning its downward plunge. The Egyptian twilight was short. Already there was a reddish tinge to the water.
The gardens were emptying rapidly.
‘You’d best be getting back,’ said Ferguson.
Owen joined the crowd streaming back down to the river on the other side of the main barrage. Down at the water’s edge the boats were filling up fast. The big gyassa had already left. There was no sign of the launch. He found a felucca which was not too crowded and stepped in.
By the time the felucca nosed into the bank at Bulaq, the sun had already set and the lights were coming on in the streets. He took an arabeah back to the Bab-el-Khalk, the Police Headquarters, where he had his office. There were no lights in that. Like all Government buildings it closed for the day at two. Admittedly it opened at seven.
He found a porter, however, who produced a lamp and showed him to his office. He wasn’t going to stay, he merely wanted to check for messages. There was one from Mahmoud suggesting a meeting. The first findings of the autopsy had come through.
Owen knew Mahmoud’s habits. Indeed, they were his own and those of most Cairenes. After the inertia of the afternoon the city came alive in the evening and made for the cafés. Owen tried one or two of Mahmoud’s favourites and found him at a third. He was sitting outside at a table, sipping coffee and preparing for an appearance in court tomorrow.
‘I tried to get you earlier,’ he said.
‘I was up at the barrage.’
‘The regulator?’
‘Yes.’ Then, knowing that Mahmoud would be wondering, he said: ‘It looks like sabotage.’
‘Sabotage?’ said Mahmoud, surprised. ‘But who on earth would –?’
‘Exactly,’ said Owen. He asked about the autopsy.
They’re only preliminary findings,’ said Mahmoud, ‘but I thought you’d be interested.’
The Maiden, it appeared, had not been murdered at all, ritually or otherwise, but had died of natural causes.
‘If you can call it that,’ said Mahmoud.
‘Why shouldn’t you call it that?’
‘She probably died as a result of circumcision.’
‘It went wrong?’
‘That, or infection.’
As was commonly the case. The practice was widespread, especially in the older, poorer and more traditional quarters of the city. It was defended on the grounds of hygiene but the operation itself often took place in circumstances that were the reverse of hygienic, performed by an old woman in a filthy room, with consequences that were too frequently the same as those in the case of the Maiden.
Owen was silent for a moment, then shrugged.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘in a way that’s quite helpful for me at any rate. Any chance that we could publish the findings?’
‘Why not?’ said Mahmoud.
‘It would help me if we could. It would knock all the daft “Myth of the Maiden” nonsense on the head. And with the Cut coming up so soon –’
‘I don’t see why not,’ said Mahmoud. ‘I’d have to make it clear that they were preliminary findings, of course.’
‘They’re not likely to be altered, though, are they?’
‘I wouldn’t have thought so. Only if something new comes up. Or if they find anything unusual. Actually,’ said Mahmoud, ‘there is something unusual. Mildly so. Her age. Circumcision usually takes place at thirteen, or even younger. This girl was about twenty.’
‘That’s not going to affect anything, though, is it?’
‘No. I just find it puzzling, that’s all.’
‘A late marriage, perhaps?’
‘Perhaps. At any rate it should help us to make an identification.’
‘Are you going to do anything about it?’ asked Owen. ‘When you’ve found out who it was?’
‘Probably not. It’s not illegal.’
‘I know, but –’
‘Yes. I know.’
It was an issue that the Parquet generally fought shy of. Charges of some sort could certainly have been brought but the case would probably have gone to the Native Courts, where it might well have been thrown out. The Native Courts were the most traditional of the courts and unlikely to have any doubts about the practice itself. As for the consequences, while they were undesirable and unfortunate, they were also, one might say, in the natural way of things. The practice was so deeply embedded in social custom that it was, besides, something of a political hot potato. Even the Nationalists steered clear of it.
‘It’s not illegal,’ Mahmoud repeated.
That for him was usually decisive. He had been trained in the French School of Law and had a thoroughly French frame of mind. A thing was either legal or it was not. If it was legal, then it was no concern of lawyers. If it was illegal, then that had to be spelled out.
All the same, Owen could see that he was not happy.
The release of the findings had the desired effect. Public interest in the Maiden disappeared entirely. No one, after all, cared much about a woman dying. Certainly, of natural causes.
The next morning Owen presented himself at the Department of Irrigation. When he learned what Owen wanted, the clerk threw up his hands.
‘Effendi,’ he said tragically, ‘there is only I.’
Owen looked round the office.
‘There is not,’ he said. ‘There are Yussef and Ali and Selim and Abdul. Not to mention the man who has gone out to make the tea.’
‘But, Effendi –’
‘As well as the people in the next office. And the one after that. And what about –?’
‘Effendi, we are as grains of gold in a desert of sand!’
‘I’m sure you are. But how about getting on with –’
‘Does the Effendi want all the names?’ asked the clerk despondently.
‘Certainly.’
‘But surely only of those fine men who are on the permanent strength?’
‘I want the names of all those who are working on the barrage at the moment.’
‘But, Effendi, they are legion!’
‘How legion are they?’
The clerk consulted his ledger.
‘At this time of year, Effendi,’ he said impressively, ‘sixteen thousand.’
‘Not working on the barrage at the moment, there aren’t. About two hundred, I’d say.’
‘But, Effendi, they are for the most part worthless fellows, mere villagers, who come up here for the Inundation, work for a few weeks and then return to the dreadful place from where they came!’
‘They are the ones I am particularly interested in. First, I’d like disciplinary cases –’
‘But, Effendi,