Murder in Jerusalem (46 page)

“From six-thirty until eight,” Lillian said. “From the time the crew departed from Umm-Thuba, when you told them you would follow them later. And that's exactly what you did. You returned an hour and a half later.”

“I just told you,” Rubin said, exploding, “that I stayed to talk to the mother. And the boy's sister, too, you can—”

“—ask them?” she said, smiling sweetly. “They're already here, under interrogation. Don't concern yourself about it. But we want to ask
you,
not them.”

Rubin stood up and pushed his chair back. At the same moment, the door flew open, and Tzilla was standing there, pale-faced. She signaled to Lillian to join her in the corridor. Lillian stepped outside, leaving Rubin alone. The video later showed that he did not move from his place, did not even try to look at the papers on the desk; it seemed as though he felt he was being watched, and he sat down and covered his face with his hands. After that he stood up again and paced the room as though taking exercise.

“There's something going on,” Tzilla told Lillian. “They phoned from the scene of the murder, in the middle of interrogating Benny Meyuhas. They're on their way here right now, and they're asking for you to get him to talk about the business with Sroul by the time they arrive.”

Lillian returned to the office, closed the door very quietly, and took her seat, expecting Rubin to do the same. But Rubin was not eager to sit down. “I asked to see Benny,” he said, his voice threatening. “I don't understand—is he being detained without rights? What is this here, how can you forbid me from—”

“Not now,” Lillian said. “First we'll finish what we started: this hour and a half, of which you sat with the mother of the Palestinian boy from Umm-Thuba for about ten minutes and then disappeared. Doesn't anybody, like, know where you were?”

“Like? Like? Or really?” Rubin asked, mocking her openly. He sat down and said, “I'm really interested in knowing what you're thinking.”

When Lillian spoke next, her expression had totally changed; the false sweetness and artificial affability made way for a no-nonsense austerity she had developed over years of working with drug dealers. “Tell me,” she hurled at him, bringing their banter to an end, “how is it that you never mentioned the ultra-Orthodox guy with the burns, the one who visited Zadik? How is it that you never told us he was your friend Sroul?”

Rubin looked at her without blinking. “I did not know that that was Sroul. As far as I know, he's in America. I for one have not seen him here in Israel.”

“What about the police composite we've been passing around?” Lillian persisted. “You could certainly have known from that. Even just a word, you could have said something. Anything. I mean, if a composite like that is so very similar to someone's childhood friend, a person so dear to him that he keeps a picture of that person in his office, the person Tirzah went to visit before—”

“Who says?” Rubin interjected. “Who says she went to visit him? She went to the U.S. on business. Maybe she saw him there as well, and I've already told you people, I told Ohayon earlier—don't you people cross-check your information? Don't you update each other?—I told him that she wanted to raise more money for producing
Iddo and Eynam
. But that's none of your concern.”

“Everything,” Lillian said, “but every little thing, as you have already been told, is now our concern. What I am asking you is, how is it that you did not tell us that the person in the composite was your own friend Sroul?”

“Believe me,” Rubin entreated her, “it never entered my mind. It's that simple…. You know how it is when you just don't think about something? It simply wasn't in my head. I've been so confused lately, and worried about Benny. And don't forget, my wife's body was—”

“Your
ex
-wife's body,” Lillian corrected him. “And as far as work is concerned, you seem really quite clear-headed to me.”

“Work is something else entirely,” Rubin said, leaning forward. He looked intently into her eyes. “Believe me,” he said, “I had no idea he was in Israel. Even now I'm not entirely certain it's Sroul. Just let me speak with Benny, and perhaps—”

“So where
were
you during that hour and a half? On your way back to the television station from Umm-Thuba?” Lillian asked. She maintained an impenetrable expression, careful not to give herself away.

“I've already told you,” Rubin said in exasperation, “I was in the village with the mother of that boy. Do you have any idea what they did to him?” he asked with dramatic restraint. “Maybe if I tell you a little bit, you'll understand why I had to sit with the family in private. What would you say if I told you they stuck a pole in his rectum? Do you think the family would be willing to discuss that sort of thing in front of a television camera?”

“So what you're telling me is that for the entire hour and a half that you were missing, you were in the village?” Lillian asked. She riffled through the papers in front of her as though she did not know what her next question would be.

“Yes, that's what I'm telling you,” Rubin said, calmer now. He leaned back in his chair like a person who has done his job.

“If that's the case,” Lillian said, “how do explain that you were seen at the Oranim gas station?”

“Ahhhh,” Rubin said with a smile, “now you expect me to report every time I fill my tank with gas? The tank was low, and I—”

“No, no, no,” Lillian said, cutting him off, “I'm not just talking about the gas. First of all, since when does it take an hour and a half to fill your tank? And second, we know for a fact that you didn't fill your tank up. Don't forget, your face is known all over the country. People recognize you. According to our information, you were seen in the vicinity of the Oranim gas station, and you stopped at an auto supply shop to pick up a flashlight. It was already dark by then, and rainy, no? Do you remember now? It wasn't all that long ago,” she said, glancing at her watch, “just seven hours ago. I'm sure you remember stopping there to buy a big flashlight. Where is it now?”

“Yes, that's right, I'd forgotten,” Rubin muttered. “I bought a flashlight, I needed to check the…” He fell silent.

“How long did it take?” she asked, staring intently at him. “How long did it take you to buy that flashlight?”

Rubin shrugged. “I have no idea,” he said. Then after a long pause, he added, “It took as long as it took.”

“And after that did you come straight back to the television station?”

“Absolutely, yes,” Rubin said, blinking several times. “If you'd like to know what I needed a flashlight for, well, I should tell you I've needed one for weeks now, and suddenly I found myself passing by—”

“Suddenly passing by?” Lillian exclaimed. “On the day that Zadik was murdered? And Benny Meyuhas was arrested? And Sroul's picture was plastered everywhere? Just then you needed to buy a flashlight? Please forgive me if I'm just the slightest bit skeptical about all this.”

Rubin studied her closely and frowned. A moment later he said, “What does it matter now what I say and what you find skeptical? Believe me, it doesn't interest me in the least. That's how it was, pure and simple. What are you trying to do here, frame me?”

“No,” Lillian said sedately. “I am not trying to frame you, please believe me. I simply wish you would tell me what you were doing in the Mekor Haim area of Jerusalem in an apartment that belongs to Sroul's sister. Here's what I would like to happen: you'll tell me all on your own, without me having to milk you for every bit of information. So perhaps now, after all this is finally becoming clear, you're prepared to explain what you were doing there?”

Rubin folded his arms over his chest and ran his tongue over his chapped lips. For a long moment he sat looking at her and finally said, “Don't forget that in my line of work I often find myself in situations such as these, on the other side of the table—where you're sitting—and I know all the tricks of the trade. What I'm saying, my dear,” he said, unfolding his arms and placing his hands on the desk, then leaning toward her, “is that I know this gimmick you're using, so I can tell you with absolute certainty that nobody saw me in Mekor Haim in an apartment owned by Sroul's sister. You know why nobody saw me there? I'll tell you,” he said, speaking slowly and emphasizing every word. “For the simple reason that I was not there. Do you understand? It's quite simple: I was not there. Not today. Not yesterday. Not the day before that. In fact, it seems to me that I've only ever been there once before, about ten years ago perhaps. So no one could have said a word to the contrary to you. That's all I wanted to explain to you. And now I have no intention of speaking with you any longer until I am taken to see Benny Meyuhas. I want to talk to him. I have the feeling that without me around, they'll harass him until he says something…never mind, I demand to see him right now, and I will accept no excuses. Either that, or you'll be hearing from me in the future. I'm sorry I have to resort to such threats, but there is a limit to the foolishness I am willing to endure. At the end of the day, we live in a democracy, not under Saddam Hussein!”

The two sat for a long moment without speaking. Finally Rubin said, “We're wasting time here, your time. I refuse to continue our conversation until you've kept your promise and let me speak with Benny Meyuhas.”

“Wait,” Lillian said, and she left the room.

Tzilla was already waiting outside the room, and she pulled Lillian quickly to the far end of the corridor to fill her in on the latest developments in the apartment in Mekor Haim. She suggested having Rubin wait in the hall and recited—with the help of the note she had jotted down—the question Michael had asked her over the phone.

“What? What was that?” Lillian asked. “What are we talking about? What doctor? The one from his interrogation?”

“Believe me, I don't have a clue what he's talking about. He didn't even ask you to wait for an answer,” Tzilla said. “He only requested that you ask the question, right before you send him out of the office. We need it on video, that's what Michael said.”

“Okay,” Lillian said uneasily. “I just don't like asking what I don't understand myself.”

“Who does?” Tzilla countered. “But after this we'll be waiting for you with coffee and sandwiches in the little office.” Lillian was about to return to Balilty's office when Tzilla called after her. “Wait a second, wait until I'm behind the wall.” Lillian watched as she hurried down the hall, her long silver earrings—which had become her trademark over the years—swaying from side to side.

“Okay,” Lillian said to Rubin when she returned to the office. He looked at her with anticipation. “He's still in conference”—Rubin guffawed at her use of the word
conference,
though she ignored him—“but it'll be over soon, and you can…in the meantime you'll have to wait outside the office until Chief Inspector Ohayon is available.”

“I insist on speaking with him,” Rubin proclaimed. “I have all sorts of…I request…no, I'm not requesting, I am insisting on speaking with Ohayon as well. Would you let him know?”

“I already have,” Lillian said in a strained voice. “He knows.”

“And?” Rubin asked. “What did he say?”

Lillian sucked air into her lungs and filled her cheeks, then exhaled noisily. “He asked me to ask you,” she said, standing next to the door, her hand on the doorknob, “if you know who shot the doctor in the back.”

Afterward, when they watched the video, the members of the Special Investigations Team argued among themselves about the meaning of the expression on Rubin's face when he heard the question. “The fear of God nabbed him,” Balilty claimed, while Eli Bachar opined that Rubin's face was apathetic and that his expression gave nothing away. As for Lillian, she thought fear and apathy produced similar reactions, especially where facial expressions are concerned. She felt that Rubin was stunned and had not actually comprehended what she was asking, at least for the first minute.

J
ust before dawn, Michael brought Benny Meyuhas back to his office at police headquarters in the Russian Compound and told him to wait there with Sergeant Yigael, who had suddenly turned up. (Ever since finding the bloodstained T-shirt in the foreign correspondents' room at Israel Television, he had attached himself to the Special Investigations team like a small boy trailing after a gang of boys older than himself, ready and willing to be of service at any time.) After providing them with coffee and hot pita bread, Michael joined the rest of the team for an emergency meeting in Balilty's office.

At two in the morning Michael had stopped his interrogation of Benny Meyuhas and had holed himself up with Shorer in the kitchen for more than an hour. When they emerged, the district commander instructed Balilty, Sergeant Ronen, and Nina to return to headquarters with him. Balilty, who was eager to hang around until the interrogation was completed but was compelled—by the unmistakably decisive look in Michael's eyes—to obey orders and return to the Russian Compound to take part in interrogating Hefetz, was now opening the meeting with a report to all the assembled, including Tzilla (and her lists) and Eli Bachar, whose green eyes were ringed in red from fatigue, and Lillian, who seemed wide awake and was standing behind Sergeant Ronen's chair, expertly massaging his neck and shoulders; she desisted only when Balilty began recounting how Hefetz had secretly slipped out of the building.

“He left after it was already dark, after six o'clock; that's always a kind of dead time over there before the shit hits the fan,” Balilty said. “I found out about it completely by chance,” he muttered, though no one in the room fell for this offhand remark that concealed a declaration of his own special talents; by his own testimony, he could “squeeze juice out of rocks.” “You see, I was talking with Ezekiel the auto mechanic, the guy who takes care of Ruta's car”—the tribulations of Ruta, Balilty's wife, and the old Fiat she refused to part with, were known to all—“because I stopped by to settle an account with him. He'd stayed late at the garage, he was sitting with his bookkeeper in the back, must have been about seven o'clock. Or seven-thirty, I can check. Anyway, Ezekiel tells me that a little while earlier, an hour or two, he saw Hefetz ducking into the Iraqi hummus place. You know which one I mean,” he said, turning to Michael. “We used to go there, over on Jeremiah Street, behind the junk-yard. Little place, they cook the hummus on an old paraffin stove, like in the Old City. Do you remember what I'm talking about?” Michael swiveled his head, though it was not clear whether in confirmation or merely to encourage Balilty to get on with it. “In any case,” Balilty continued, “Ezekiel the mechanic sees Hefetz stealing into the Iraqi place ‘like a thief,' that's what he said about Hefetz: ‘He looked to the right and looked to the left and dashed in like the place just swallowed him up.' That's how he described it. But it gave me the tiniest lead, something I could hint at with Hefetz to let him know I was aware he'd left the building. And that's not all: I told him that this was exactly the same time another murder had been committed and that he, Hefetz, could be considered a suspect. That's when everything turned smooth as butter with him. Could I have another cup of coffee?”

“But he closes up at three-thirty, four o'clock, the Iraqi,” Eli Bachar remarked as someone passed Balilty a half-full cup of Turkish coffee.

“Most of the time that's true,” Balilty said, “but if you're an important guy,” he said with a sigh, “or if you're coming to meet the director general of the Israel Broadcasting Authority on the sly, then the restaurateur himself—if you consider the Iraqi hummus place a restaurant—opens up for you, actually waits there for you till you show up.”

“Hang on, I don't get it,” Sergeant Ronen said. “Who does the Iraqi guy know? Which one was he waiting for?”

“Both of them,” Balilty answered impatiently. “Hefetz and Ben-Asher. He's known them both since they were kids. They were in school together in Baghdad, then they were neighbors in Israel, in the camps for new immigrants. All three of them, or maybe just two of them, I'm not clear on that. Anyway, what's important here is that they're some kind of gang, the three of them, since way back,” he said, holding his hand just above the floor to indicate how small they were back then, “and together they hated the whole world: the camps and the European Jews and the teachers and the Jewish Agency. Everybody! So the Iraqi opens up his place specially for them. He has this room in the back where he lives. Did you people know that?” Everyone waited with anticipation, hoping he would reach his point soon, but Balilty would not be rushed. “With me, if I go there after, say, three o'clock, I don't have a prayer in hell of even getting a crumb of pita bread. ‘Kitchen's closed,' they tell me. But Mr. Hefetz and Mr. Ben-Asher? Whatever they want. That's the way it is, not that I care, I mean we're just talking about a lousy hummus joint, but—”

“Tell me, Balilty,” Eli Bachar said, “why can't you just get to the point? Just for once!” Michael flashed him a look—fatigued but austere—and Eli Bachar shut his mouth, pulled his cooling mug of coffee toward himself, and stared at the window facing him, outside of which the sky was still dark.

“I already told you the point here: he left the building. It's recorded in the security officer's ledger, he was out for an hour and a half,” Balilty said. “And he was sitting with the director general. They're making plans: cutbacks, savings, stuff like that. If you ask me, it's an ass-licking, ball-busting plan. Seems like Zadik's death saves the director general a lot of trouble.”

“So what do you make of all this?” Shorer asked him.

“It's all pretty clear,” Balilty said as he looked with disgust into his Styrofoam cup before slurping down the rest of the coffee. “This Ben-Asher, I don't need to tell you his whole life story, you can read about it in the papers. But what's important to keep in mind about him is how much he wants to screw the European Jewish establishment, the people he thinks screwed him. Nobody knows exactly how he worked his way into the system; he started off at Israel Radio in the Arabic Department and moved over to television, first on the station that broadcasts from the Knesset—the one nobody ever watches—and then later he was in charge of bringing Egyptian films for screening on Friday afternoons. Sometimes I used to watch them myself because of Hanna, my sister-in-law, my little brother's wife. And then suddenly, I don't know how—what do I mean, ‘I don't know how,' that's the way everything works around here—suddenly the guy's director general of the Israel Broadcasting Authority. Ever since then, the gig's up, nothing's going to remain the same, you'll see. A real upstart, that Ben-Asher. Between him and Hefetz there's going to be a lot of score-settling to come. They've already informed Rubin that he's been relieved of his duties.”

“All right,” Shorer said, “but you're not implying that Hefetz is in some way involved in Zadik's death, are you?”

“No, I'm not implying any such thing,” Balilty said with a smile. “It doesn't seem that way. He would have been named director of Israel Television at some stage anyway; believe me, that was part of the plan. No way that Hefetz could have done it: he was in the newsroom when Tirzah Rubin was murdered, there were witnesses, except for a couple of minutes when he was with Natasha. But even then what's-her-name—Niva—saw them.”

“So what are we wasting our time on this for?” Eli Bachar asked, enraged. “Don't we have enough work to do as it is?”

“First of all,” Balilty said, “I'd like to point out that if Hefetz could leave the building so easily without anyone noticing, then other people could too. Not just today—I mean yesterday—which was a particularly tough day, but on other days, too. And anyway, it's just a side story, you know, so we won't get bored. We all already know the story of Zadik's death, right?”

“Right,” Michael said, “but we don't have enough—for the time being, we don't have enough of a case. Maybe when forensics gets the DNA results—”

“But it's clear we're talking about Zadik's blood on that T-shirt,” Lillian reminded them. “It says so in the preliminary report.”

“The blood is one thing,” Balilty was quick to point out, “but we still don't know who the T-shirt belongs to. And there's that gray hair that could be—”

Michael's beeper sounded. He looked at the display screen and said to Tzilla, “It's from the forensics lab at Abu Kabir. Give them a call, would you, and see what they have to say.”

“Already?” Eli Bachar asked, incredulous. “What could they possibly find that quickly? It's only been three hours since—”

“First of all,” Balilty said, “three hours is a pretty long time, and second of all, maybe they found something really important.”

Tzilla dialed the phone, and when she was put through to the pathologist, she handed the receiver over to Michael. He listened for a long moment, then said, “Hang on a minute, I'm going to put you on the loudspeaker, we're holding a short team meeting right now.” Everyone in the room could hear the distraught voice of the pathologist: “Final stages, spreading, terminal,” he was saying.

“What?” asked Lillian, alert and tense. “What was that?”

“Cancer, that's what. Our Sroul had cancer,” Balilty announced. Into the loudspeaker he said, “Dr. Siton, can you tell us where? Which kind?”

“Lung cancer.” The pathologist's hoarse voice crackled through the speaker. “It seems he only had a few weeks left to live. When a person's living, you don't make such predictions, because you can never really know, but since this man is no longer with us, I can tell you—off the record, it won't appear in my autopsy report—that it was only a matter of weeks. Incidentally, in America they tell the patient the truth to his face because they're afraid of being sued for malpractice.”

Shorer stood and approached the loudspeaker. After informing the pathologist who he was, he asked, “What does this mean physiologically? How would it have affected him? I mean, is it right to assume that strangling him would have been quite simple, since the illness itself involves difficulty in pulling air into the lungs?”

“Yes,” the pathologist answered, a note of sarcasm in his voice. “It's easier to strangle someone who is about to stop breathing anyway.”

“Excuse me for a moment, Dr. Siton, this is Michael Ohayon again. I have a question: in the state he was in, wouldn't he have required assistance of some kind—an oxygen tank or something?

“Naturally,” the pathologist said through the speaker. Michael gave Nina an inquisitive look; she shrugged as a way of saying she knew nothing about it. “There must be some sort of oxygen tank in the vicinity, no doubt about it.”

“There was nothing of the sort there,” Nina said, a look of panic spreading across her face. “We took apart the entire apartment, there was nothing—the only place we didn't touch was under the sink, it appeared nobody had touched anything there for ages.”

“Impossible. There must be something,” the pathologist declared. “He could not have managed without oxygen—take a better look around. It won't necessarily look like an oxygen tank, there are small models—something called a cannula, looks like a pair of eyeglasses. It's two holes in a tube that you wear on your nose like a small mask, with a pipe running from it to the patient's back, where a little tank—which looks like a thermos—sits in a backpack. There must be one somewhere in that apartment, and a tank, too, even a small one. Didn't you find anything that even—”

“Yes!” Nina cried suddenly. “There was a thermos! Silver, I didn't understand…it was in the kitchen, I thought…we checked for fingerprints, but we only found the dead man's. Nothing else. The thermos was in a kitchen cupboard, looks like some futuristic soda-making machine. Is that right?”

“Send somebody to bring it in,” Michael told Tzilla. “Right away.” Turning to Nina, he said, “What about those glasses? Wasn't there a pipe attached to a mask that looked like a pair of glasses?”

“No,” Nina said. “But we weren't able to check the surroundings because it was dark. Maybe it's outside. We'll be able to search as soon as it's light outside and the rain has let up.”

“How could a man in his condition,” Shorer asked the pathologist, “manage such a long flight?”

“I'm sure he was given steroids. We haven't checked his blood yet, but I'm certain we'll find steroids. Lots of them, and strong ones,” the pathologist said. “There are anabolic steroids that can keep you on a constant high for days. They give you the false impression that you have strength. Afterward you crash, if the steroids don't finish you off first.”

“Excuse me,” Sergeant Ronen asked when the doctor had finished speaking, “but why are we so concerned with lung cancer and oxygen masks? The guy was strangled to death, there's proof of it. So why is it important—I mean, isn't it more important for us to finally hear what Benny Meyuhas had to say?”

“We'll get to that,” Michael assured him, “in just another minute. But first of all this is of the utmost importance, since we did not understand until now what it was that prompted Sroul to come forward
now
and tell Tirzah Rubin a few weeks ago something that had been bothering him for more than twenty years.”

“What, you mean like because he was going to croak?” Eli Bachar asked. “Like he wanted to confess before he died?”

“But he was religious,” Lillian said. “Don't you people know that religious Jews don't do confession before they die? I mean, what are we talking about here, gentiles?”

“Every person confesses in one way or another before dying,” Shorer said. “Especially if something is weighing heavily on his conscience.”