The Labyrinth of Osiris (7 page)

‘You want something to eat?’ asked George.

Ben-Roi had only managed a snatched breakfast and his stomach was rumbling. The sausages would take at least fifteen minutes to prepare, however, and he didn’t have time.

‘Coffee’s fine,’ he said. ‘You heard what happened? In the cathedral?’

‘Every Armenian in Jerusalem’s heard about it,’ said George, pulling on his cigarette. ‘We heard about it before the police did. We’re a close community.’

‘Any thoughts?’ asked Ben-Roi.

‘What, like: do I know who did it?’

‘That would be helpful.’

George blew a smoke ring. ‘If I knew anything I’d tell you, Arieh. There’s not an Armenian in Jerusalem who wouldn’t tell you if they knew something. In the whole of Israel. To desecrate our cathedral like that.’ He sighed and shook his head. ‘We’re in shock. All of us.’

There was a clatter on the stairs and a burly man descended, carrying a cardboard box full of what looked like bundles of spinach. George spoke to him in Armenian; the man deposited the box just inside the kitchen swing-doors and left.

‘In shock,’ repeated George once he was gone. ‘In ’67, during the fighting, there were people killed when a shell fell on the compound, but this . . . For everyone in our community, the cathedral is sacred. The centre of our world. It’s –’ he laid a hand over his heart – ‘it’s like it happened in our own home. Worse. Terrible.’

Despite his stern, slightly lugubrious features, George was, in general, a happy-go-lucky sort of guy. Ben-Roi had never seen him like this.

‘I’m out of my depth here, George,’ he said. ‘
Haredim
, Arabs – these I’ve got experience of. But the Armenian community – I’ve never really had any dealings with them. Apart from that thing a couple of years back.’

The tavern-owner looked puzzled.

‘The seminary students,’ prompted Ben-Roi.

‘Ah yes.’ George took another drag on his cigarette. ‘Not the Israel Police’s finest hour.’

It was the exact same phrase Archbishop Petrossian had employed. It had probably become standard usage, Ben-Roi thought, tagged on every time anyone in the Armenian community discussed that particular case. Not entirely without justification, although to be fair the blame lay more with the politicians than the police. As it always did. Get the politicians out of the way and everything would probably work a lot better.

What had happened was that a couple of seminary students over from Armenia had got into a fight with a group of
Haredi
teenagers from the Jewish Quarter. For months
Haredi
kids had been spitting at Armenian priests and students, and in this instance the students had retaliated. In a sensible world those involved would have got a stern talking to, a kick up the arse and that would have been the end of it. But the Old City wasn’t a sensible world. One of the
Haredi
kids had got his nose broken. The
frummers
, as was their wont, had demanded blood, and the Interior Ministry, as was
its
wont, had caved in. Result: the seminary students had been arrested, held and then deported. A ludicrous over-reaction, and one that had, not surprisingly, generated a lot of bad feeling among the students’ fellow Armenians, not least because the
Haredi
kids had got off scot-free.

Baum had been the officer in charge of the whole thing, which had guaranteed a cock-up from the start. Ben-Roi had only played a minor role, conducting a couple of the early interviews, but he still felt tainted by association. Like the Wall, like the settlements, like so many things in this country, agendas set in offices and synagogues – and mosques and churches, for that matter – made the job of being a policeman extremely fucking difficult at times. Most of the time.

‘Coffee.’

In front of him, the old woman had appeared in the serving hatch, a cup and saucer in each hand. George took them, laid them on the table and emptied a sachet of sugar into his. Ben-Roi emptied two.

‘Like I say, I’ve not had many dealings with your community,’ he resumed, sipping. ‘As I’m sure you’ve heard, she was –’ he made a garrotting motion around his neck. ‘Probably some lone nutter, but we need to look at all the options.’

George didn’t say anything, just stirred his coffee and puffed on his cigarette.

‘Have you heard of any . . . I don’t know . . . feuds within the community? Turf wars?’

No response.

‘Vendettas?’ pushed Ben-Roi. ‘Any problems among the priests, the people who use the cathedral regularly? Grudges, grievances? Anything . . . out of the ordinary?’ He was scraping around, fumbling for leads. ‘Anything, basically, that might give us some sort of steer on this?’

George lifted his coffee cup, slurped, and tamped his cigarette out in the dribble of dark liquid pooled at the bottom of his saucer.

‘Listen, Arieh,’ he said. ‘We have our squabbles, like every community. Our bad apples, our troublemakers. Our priests get in fights with Greek Orthodox priests, this person dislikes that person, someone swindled someone else – these things happen, we’re human. But let me tell you, unequivocally –’ he looked up at Ben-Roi – ‘no Armenian would do something like this to another Armenian. And certainly not within our own cathedral. We’re a family. We look out for each other, we protect each other. It just wouldn’t happen. Whoever committed this crime, Arieh, I can guarantee you they’re not Armenian. Guarantee it.’

He turned and spoke to his mother, who jabbered back at him before putting her face through the serving hatch.

‘No Armenian,’ she said. ‘No Armenian do this.’

She scowled at Ben-Roi to make sure he’d got the point, then returned to her cooking. Ben-Roi finished his coffee.

‘Well, at least that narrows the field,’ he said.

There was a hubbub of voices and half a dozen people clumped down the stairs from the street above: tourists, elderly, American or English judging by their guidebooks. George went over to seat them and hand out menus. Soft music started playing through the restaurant’s speaker system, although who had turned it on Ben-Roi couldn’t see.

‘You haven’t heard anything about who the victim is?’ he asked when George returned. ‘Rumours on the grapevine?’

George shook his head. ‘Not an Armenian, that’s for sure. Or at least, not one from Jerusalem. Everyone here knows everyone else.’

‘From outside Jerusalem?’

George shrugged. ‘Possible.’ He tapped out another cigarette and put it in his mouth, then thought better of it and laid it on the table.

‘The person you should speak to is Archbishop Petrossian. He knows everyone and everything in our community. Not just Jerusalem, the whole of Israel.’

‘Already saw him,’ said Ben-Roi. ‘Back in the cathedral. He said he didn’t know anything.’

‘Well, there’s your answer. Petrossian knows more than the Patriarch and the other archbishops put together. More than the whole community put together. Nothing happens in our world that he doesn’t know about.’

He looked round as if to make sure no one was listening, then leant forward. ‘We call him the octopus. He’s got tentacles everywhere. If he can’t help you . . .’ He threw up his hands, the gesture substituting for the words ‘nobody can’. On the other side of the restaurant one of the tourists called ‘Hello’ and waved a menu, indicating they were ready to order.

‘Sorry, Arieh, I’ve got to deal with this.’

‘No problem. I should be getting back to the station.’

Ben-Roi stood and pulled out his wallet, but George motioned him to put it away.

‘On the house.’

‘You’ll let me know if you hear anything?’

‘Sure. And say hi to Sarah. Tell her we hope everything’s OK with the—’ he patted his stomach, and moved away to take the order. Ben-Roi started back up the stairs to the street, juggling a vague feeling of disappointment that he hadn’t managed to land more information with a rather more distinct feeling of guilt that Sarah and the baby seemed to be more in other people’s thoughts than his own. His child hadn’t even been born yet and already he felt like the crappest father in the world.

About halfway down its length, just before it passes the entrance to the compound of St James, Armenian Orthodox Patriarchate Road runs through a tunnel. In the wall above that tunnel there is an arched window, its panes barred and grimy and criss-crossed with filigrees of withered creeper. It was from this vantage point that His Eminence Archbishop Armen Petrossian watched as Ben-Roi entered the Armenian Tavern. He was still watching twenty minutes later when the detective emerged and set off down the street towards the David Police Station.

Stroking his beard, the archbishop kept the tall, bear-like figure in his sight, tracking him as he strode down the street and rounded a bend into the top end of Omar Ibn al-Khattab Square. Only when he was completely lost to view did the archbishop turn from the window and make his way down to the compound’s main gate. He nodded to the men in flat-caps sitting inside the concierge’s office, and motioned one of them to join him. They moved a few metres along the vaulted passage leading into the compound, stopping beside a green baize notice board, out of earshot of both the office and the five Israeli policemen standing guard outside the gate. The archbishop looked around, then, leaning forward, whispered in the man’s ear. The man nodded, patted his leather jacket and strode through the gateway out on to the street.

‘God protect us,’ murmured the archbishop, raising his hand and kissing the amethyst ring on his finger. ‘And God forgive me.’

T
HE
E
ASTERN
D
ESERT
, E
GYPT

The village of Bir Hashfa was seven kilometres west of the farm, back towards the Nile Valley, clustered around the intersection of two dirt tracks: one running east–west from the mountains to the river, the other, broader, north–south, parallel to the Nile, linking Highways 29 and 212. As they approached, Khalifa checked his mobile and asked Sariya to pull over.

‘I’ve got a signal,’ he said. ‘I need to give Zenab a call. Won’t be a moment.’

He climbed out and crunched across the gravel, stopping ten metres away beside a rusted oil drum. He dialled, then, as he waited for his wife to answer, bent down, picked up a couple of Coke cans that were lying on the ground and placed them on top of the drum. Inside the car, Sariya smiled. The action typified his boss. He was a man who liked to bring order to things, keep them tidy, even in the middle of a desert. That’s why he was such a good detective. The best. Still the best, even after everything that had happened.

Reaching for the pack of mints sitting on the dashboard, Sariya popped one in his mouth and sat back, watching Khalifa talk. He’d lost weight these last months. Khalifa, not Sariya, who’d actually put on a few kilos since his mother-in-law had come to live with them and taken over the cooking duties. Slim at the best of times, Khalifa now looked positively gaunt, his cheekbones even more prominent than they used to be, the cheeks themselves deeply sunken. His eyes, it struck Sariya, had also lost some of their old brightness; the bags beneath them had become heavier and darker. Although he would never have said as much, he worried about him. He thought the world of his boss.

In front of him Khalifa was pacing to and fro, patting the air with his hand as if to say: ‘Calm down, it’s OK.’ Sariya crunched the mint and popped another one in his mouth, and then another. He was on to his fourth when Khalifa finally finished the call and came back to the car.

‘Everything OK?’ he asked.

Khalifa didn’t answer, just climbed in and lit a cigarette from the pack he’d found on the drive down from the farm. Sariya knew better than to push the matter – if his boss wanted to talk, he’d talk; if he didn’t, he wouldn’t. Instead he started the engine and continued on to the village, which was five hundred metres away, beyond a scatter of olive groves and maize fields.

There were only about forty houses, most of them plastered mud-brick, although there were a couple of larger red-brick and concrete buildings as well – symbols of wealth and status, whatever that meant out here.

Sariya took them into the middle of the settlement and pulled up beside a whitewashed mosque. Friday prayers had just finished and men were emerging from the entrance, slipping on their shoes, squinting in the glare of the sun. Khalifa called a
sabah el-khir
and asked where they might find the village headman. There was mumbling and not a few unfriendly looks – in these out-of-the-way places strangers were always treated with a degree of suspicion, if not outright hostility – before they were directed, grudgingly, to one of the larger buildings at the far end of the hamlet.

‘Cheery lot,’ said Sariya as they moved off. ‘Maybe I should send the mother-in-law here. They can all be miserable together.’

‘Never disrespect your elders, Mohammed.’

‘Even the fat bossy ones?’

‘Especially the fat bossy ones.’

Khalifa looked across at him, a hint of the old sparkle in his eyes, then forward again.

‘Watch the goose,’ he said.

Sariya swerved around the bird, which had taken up position in the middle of the track and showed no sign of moving, and idled along to the end of the village, where he pulled up in front of the house. It was a two-storey affair, its brickwork uneven and shoddily pointed, iron rods sprouting from the corners of its flat roof in preparation for a further level that chances are would never be built. The wall around the front door had been rendered and painted with a colourful if clumsy mural – a car, a plane, a camel, the black cube of the Qa’ba in Mecca – indicating that the building’s occupants had been on Hajj. Another symbol of wealth and social standing.

News must have travelled fast because a wizened old man in a white
djellaba
and
imma
was waiting for them in front of the door, a
shuma
clutched in his hand. With his stubble-covered cheeks, small eyes and pointed nose he looked distinctly like a rat.

‘We don’t get many police out here,’ he said as Khalifa and Sariya got out of the car, his stare hard, bordering on hostile, his Saidee accent so thick it was barely understandable. ‘We don’t get
any
police out here.’