Free The Night of the Dog by Michael Pearce Page A

and out once more into the Tentmakers’ Bazaar with its donkey-saddles of red brocade and its camel-trappings adorned with cowries and little bits of looking-glass, its gaily-striped awnings and brilliant tent linings.
    With its crowds, too. Owen loved the bustle of the bazaars, of the whole native city, in fact; but after you had spent some time in them, especially when it was as hot as this, you felt an overwhelming need for space and air, and after forcing their way through the blocked thoroughfares of the Tentmakers’ Bazaar they were glad to emerge into the more open streets. Mahmoud summoned an arabeah, one of the two-horse kind, and they sank into it gratefully.
    Zeinab agreed that she would like a coffee and Mahmoud wanted to talk about what they had seen, so they stopped the arabeah when they reached the Ismailiya Quarter with its more Westernized restaurants into which women could go, and got out. It was late in the afternoon, almost evening by now, and the restaurants were beginning to fill up as people emerged from their siestas and began to promenade the streets. The shops took on a new lease of life, the street-sellers, with their lemonade and nougat, ostrich feathers, mummy-beads and scarabs, carnations and roses, and the street-artists, with their boa-constrictors and baboons, took new heart, and the city in general resumed its normal manic rhythm. They found a restaurant in a side street, where they would be pestered less, and took an outside table.
    “Of the three, he’s the most likely,” said Mahmoud.
    “Yes, but how certain are you that it’s one of the three? How certain are you in the first place that it’s a scentmaker?”
    “Not at all,” Mahmoud confessed.
    “I mean, it’s a brilliant deduction,” said Owen, “but it’s just a deduction.”
    “Just a deduction?” said Mahmoud, a little sharply.
    “There isn’t any real evidence.”
    “There is real evidence but not much of it. So you’ve got to use what there is. Hence deduction.”
    Owen was silent. He was tempted to ask if Mahmoud had learned that in college. Mahmoud, unlike Owen, had been trained for the job he was doing and sometimes reminded Owen of the fact. Owen did not like being reminded that he was, so far as police work was concerned, an amateur.
    “Is there any corroborative evidence?” he asked.
    He rather distrusted Gallic logic. Brilliant, yes, but was it sound? The Parquet lawyers, French-trained and French in style, had a name—among the English—for unreliability. Sometimes they homed in on the right conclusion with remarkable speed; sometimes they missed the point altogether.
    “A bit,” said Mahmoud. “Three other people noticed the woman. One of them remarked on the scent.”
    “Did they see her with the man?”
    “Two of them did, including one who noticed the scent.”
    “Anyone get a good look at him?”
    “No. None of them would be able to identify him. Except as a Copt, that is. They’d all noticed that.”
    “They would!”
    “Yes. You’d prefer it not to be a Copt, wouldn’t you?”
    “Just at the moment I would.”
    “It’s rather pointing that way, though.”
    “What else have you found out?”
    “Nothing to link Zoser directly with the Zikr. One person thinks he saw him there. That was earlier in the evening, though.”
    “Have you checked whether he was in his shop?”
    “Yes. He wasn’t.”
    “Have you asked him why?”
    “Haven’t asked him anything yet. I was hoping for a positive identification. I don’t suppose—?”
    Owen shook his head.
    “No,” he said, “I didn’t see him.”
    Mahmoud sighed.
    “I was afraid of that,” he said. “That leaves us with Miss Postlethwaite.”
    “That girl!” said Zeinab.
    “Yes. You see,” said Mahmoud, turning to her, “she was the only one who really saw them.”
    “Notices everything, doesn’t she?”
    “Yes,” said Mahmoud enthusiastically. “She’s an extraordinarily good observer.”
    Something must have told