The Mamur Zapt and the Spoils of Egypt by Michael Pearce

gesture with his hand and spat into the sand. ‘Accident!’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you this: there isn’t any such thing as an accident. There’s always a reason.’
    ‘And what do you think the reason was here?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ the man growled. ‘That’s what I’m trying to find out. But I’ll tell you this: I reckon he was on to something.’
    ‘On to something?’
    ‘Yes. Found out something he ought not to have found out. And so they killed him.’
    ‘Killed!’
    ‘That’s right.’
    ‘I thought you said it was an accident?’
    ‘That’s what
they
said. Accident!’ He spat again.
    ‘Which one was this?’ Owen asked Mahmoud.
    ‘The second one. He was found in a trench one morning with half a ton of earth on top of him.’
    ‘They said he’d been wandering about at night. Fallen in. Brought the walls down on top of him. His fault, they said. Didn’t look where he was going, and shouldn’t have been there anyway. Drunk, more likely than not. Drunk!’ said the man bitterly. ‘Abu! A decent, God-fearing Moslem. Never touched a drop. Well, not often. Not here, anyway. Where would he have got it from? Hadn’t been paid, had he? Nobody gets paid until the stuff is up at Heraq.’
    ‘Drunk! said Mahmoud, commiserating. ’What a thing to say!’
    ‘And the man so new in his grave, the angels have not even had time to examine him!’
    ‘Outrageous!’ said Mahmoud.
    ‘A pack of lies, all of it!’
    ‘Mind you,’ said Mahmoud, ‘you’ve got to ask what he was doing there at that time of night.’
    ‘That’s it! It’s not as if there was a woman about.’
    ‘You’re sure there wasn’t a woman about?’
    ‘Over here? In the village, perhaps, not over here.’
    ‘I wondered if one had come over.’
    ‘Too far. In any case, those village women keep to themselves.’
    ‘You see, that would explain it. Some husband, perhaps—’
    ‘He’d have stuck a knife in him. Anyway, Abu wasn’t that sort. Well, not often. And he’d hardly been here long enough.’
    ‘True. That’s true. And anyway he fell into a trench.’
    ‘So they say.’
    ‘You don’t think so?’
    ‘What I ask,’ said the workman, ‘is what he was wandering about for?’
    ‘And what’s your answer?’
    ‘He was on to something. There was something going on and he wanted to find out what it was.’
    ‘So he went out to look?’
    ‘And found it. And they found him. And then—Bash!— that was it!’
    ‘Terrible!’ said Mahmoud, shaking his head commiseratingly.
    ‘What do you think he found?’ asked Owen.
    The man looked over his shoulder and lowered his voice.
    ‘Treasure,’ he breathed. ‘These Der el Bahari people know where it is, see? They’ve been robbing these tombs for centuries. They’ve got it all hidden away, somewhere. Let it out a bit at a time. Don’t spoil the market, see? Oh, they’re clever ones, everyone knows that. Well, it’s my belief that Abu got on to it somehow. Had an idea where they kept it. Went to have a look and they caught him. Well, that was it, wasn’t it? They had to finish him off. No choice, really. Didn’t want him telling anyone else. A quick tap and there you are.’
    ‘What about the trench?’
    ‘Stuffed him in it and knocked the walls down. Made it look like an accident.’
    There was a general shaking of head over man’s criminality and ingenuity and then a little silence.
    ‘And there it would have rested,’ said Owen, as if philosophizing, ‘if it hadn’t been for the other man. One accident, well, things like that happen, don’t they? But two! It makes you wonder.’
    ‘You don’t wonder very much,’ the man said bitterly, ‘if it’s a peasant that’s dead.’
    ‘It makes me wonder,’ said Mahmoud quietly.
    ‘Well, perhaps you’re different. Only it always seems to us that the city is a long way away and so is the Khedive, and no one cares very much about what happens up here and the Pasha’s whip is still