The Mamur Zapt and the Return of the Carpet Read Online Free

after the shot was
seized and brought to the ground, or tripped, or just fell over, about here. Definite, because he stayed there, unconscious, till the police
came and one constable, brighter than most, marked the spot.”
    “That’s
where he was taken,” said Owen. “Where was he when he fired the shot?”
    “Or when the shot was fired. Don’t know. Fakhri
Bey said he moved to the right, so if we move to the left—” He counted out four
paces. “He might have been standing here.”
    “About twelve feet from Nuri.”
    “In
which case,” said Mahmoud, “why didn’t he hit him?”
    “It’s
more difficult than you might think,” said Owen, “even at twelve feet. Especially if you’ve never fired a revolver before.” “Which might well have been the case,” said Mahmoud. “Why is it so
difficult?”
    “It
kicks back in your hand when you fire,” said Owen. “If you’re not holding it
properly the barrel jerks upward.”
    “If
the shot went upward,” said Mahmoud, “how did it hit the lemonade-seller?”
    “Could have ricocheted.”
    “Off what?”
    Mahmoud
moved back to where Nuri Pasha had been standing. Owen took up the position
they had guessed at for the assailant. “Off the statue,” said Owen. “Maybe.”
    They
went over to the statue of Ibrahim Pasha and examined it. Mahmoud put his
finger on a mark.
    “Yes?”
he said.
    “Yes.”
    They
became aware that a small crowd was watching them with interest.
    “I
think your half million is beginning to arrive,” said Owen.
    “It’s
unreal to reconstruct without a crowd,” said Mahmoud. “It’s impossible with
one.”
    He
walked across the Place to where Fakhri might have observed the scene from his
arabeah. For a moment he stood there looking. Then he walked slowly back to
Owen.
    “Just fixing it in my mind,” he said,
“before I talk to them.”
    Two heavily laden brick carts emerged at the
same time from adjoining streets and then continued across the Place abreast of
each other. A car coming out of the Sharia el Teatro was obliged to brake
suddenly and skidded across in front of two arabeahs which had just pulled out
of the pavement. All three drivers jumped down from their vehicles and began to
abuse the drivers of the brick carts, who themselves felt obliged to descend to
the ground, the better to put their own point of view. Other vehicles came to a
halt and other drivers joined in. Some Passover sheep, painted in stripes and
with silver necklaces around their necks, which had been trotting peacefully
along beside the Ezbekiyeh Gardens, abandoned the small boy who was herding
them and wandered out into the middle of the traffic. In a moment all was
confusion and uproar. The Place, that is, had returned to normal.
    “That,” said Mahmoud resignedly, “is
that.”
    The
two had taken a liking to each other and Mahmoud, unusually for the Parquet,
invited Owen to be present at his interrogation. It took place in the Police
Headquarters at the Bab el Khalk. They were shown into a bare, green-painted
room on the ground floor which looked out on to an enclosed square across which
the prisoner was brought from his cell.
    He looked dishevelled and his eyes were
bloodshot but otherwise he seemed to have completely recovered from his heavy
drugging. He looked at them aggressively as the police led him in. In Owen’s
experience a fellah, or peasant, caught for the first time in the toils of the
alien law tended to respond either with truculent aggression or with helpless
bewilderment. This one was truculent.
    After the preliminaries Mahmoud got down to
business.
    “Your name?”
    “Mustafa,” the man growled.
    “Where are you from?”
    “El Deyna is my village,” he said
reluctantly.
    El Deyna was a small village on the
outskirts of old Cairo just beyond the Citadel.
    “You have work in the fields,” said Mahmoud.
“What brought you to the city yesterday?”
    “I came to kill Nuri Pasha,” said the