Judas Country

'There must have been plenty of hire cars on the way.'

She looked at me with cool blue eyes but a twitch at the sides of her mouth. Suddenly she grinned outright. 'I guess so – but sometimes you wonder about a ride that lasts a bit longer."

Sometimes you do. How manycafé tables had I sat at, listening for the moment when I knew this conversation would last the night? But tomorrow – tomorrow there'd be a cargo for Amman or Ankara or Lagos.

How manycafé tables had she been at, waiting for a spark, the moment of decision? We shared something already.

I reached and held her hand on the table. She gripped mine.

I said: That's what happens when you put the job first, maybe.'

'Maybe. But you don't get to work at the Met because there's no job at Macy's glove counter.'

I waved for the bill. 'D'you want to stroll a bit – first?'

She smiled gently. 'Sure.'

We walked hand in hand up the wide – well, fairly – road lined with trees and brightcafés. But slower than the rest of the crowd. The young Israelis strolled with a sense of purpose, a hungry edge to their gaiety.

Eleanor shivered and clutched my hand tighter. 'They're… growing up too fast.'

"That's Ufe as lived on the edge of war. These kids have never known anything else.'

'What can itdo to them?'

I shrugged. 'Too much teenage rumpus – for a Jewish society – use of arms in crime… the way they drive, even. The price of liberty is eternal vigilance. Now we're learning the price of eternal vigilance.'

Though some people must have known before. Myself a bit.

Just enough to know when I'm being followed – not tailed expertly, mind, but followed.

We stopped at a lighted bookshop. A tubby gent twenty yards back put on his brakes, too.

The window showed a book with an old sword on the cover. Eleanor said thoughtfully: 'Did Mitri ever say just what she plans for the sword – when and if?'

'One-track mind. Let's cross the road. There's a dark alley I want to show you.'

'This is so sudden, sir.' But she gripped my hand and we got through a squadron of hell-diving taxis and private jeeps intact.

So, a moment later, did my tubby non-acquaintance.

I said: 'She's going to sell it, she said. And if the Met can raise the money, you're home and dry.'

'It can find the money. Where's this dark alley?'

'Men were deceivers ever. I just wanted to prove we're being followed.'

'Oh shit.' She looked back. 'You know, that's the bit I'm worried about: getting the Met mixed up in an undercover deal.'

'Don't I remember something about the way they got hold of a vase from Italy a couple of years back?'

'Yes. They remember it, too. They don't want those sort of newspaper stories twice. Who's following?'

'No idea. Let's have a beer and find out.'

We sat down at the nextcafé; an open-fronted Parisian place. Before we'd ordered, a face peek-a-booed in from the street. I beckoned it across. It grinned and came.

He was dressed in an inconspicuous – for Dizengoff – shambolic way, with an open-necked shirt, a smudged lightweight jacket weighed down by too much in the pockets, thick grey trousers. It was only his chubbiness that made him noticeable; Israel isn't a fat country.

'Then you must be Captain Case. Thank you.' He sat down. 'I was waiting to see if you noticed me – I'm not very good at following – and I thought, if he notices, he must be him. Most people don't notice even me.'

I said: 'Miss Eleanor Travis. She'stouring. And you are…?'

'Yes, of course. Inspector Tamir. Attached to the Department of Antiquities at the Ministry of Education and Culture.' He tried to shake hands with us both and show a tattered warrant card at the same time. 'I tried at the airport, then the Avia, then I learned you'd taken a taxi to Dizengoff, so…"

'What are you drinking?'

He and I chose beer, Eleanor coffee. She asked: 'What do you inspect, Inspector?'

'Normally, normal police things. Now I'm bothered about…* he searched his pockets and found a piece of paper; '… Captain Cavitt. And something about Professor Spohr. I know he's dead. And Cavitt is in Israel.'

'I don't know where,' I said.

'Oh, we know: at Akka,'

'Acre?' What in hell was Ken doing there, nearly a hundred miles from Jerusalem?

'Yes. And that was where Professor Spohr was digging.' He routed his pockets again and stuck a wide-bowled briar pipe in his mouth. 'You see… the Professor had, there was a story in Beit Oren prison he had, he found something. Valuable. Not reported. Ah-' The waiter put down our drinks.

I carefully didn't look at Eleanor, just sipped my beer. 'And so?'

'Then we heard he was dead. The Professor, I mean. Shot'

'Suicide.'

'But can you be quite sure?'

'Ask the Nicosia police. They proved he had terminal cancer.'

He frowned and scratched his scalp, just a sun-blotched dome with a poor crop of long grey strands. And dandruff; a few flakes drifted down into his beer.

'But cancer victims don't…' He stopped and sighed. 'In Beit Oren we get people who could make the chicken seem to walk into the soup.'

'I believe that. But-' I took out my own pipe '-butsomebody fired a gun in that hotel at around ninein the evening. It was an empty wing, so nobody was too likely to hear, but… And if it wasn't the Prof, somebody got in and out without being noticed. Those two things needed luck; a man who could fake a suicide that well wouldn't rely on luck to get away with it.'

He nodded violently and scattered more dandruff. 'Ah. Yes. Youare the Captain Case I wanted. Try some of this.' He pushed over a rubber tobacco pouch. 'I mix it myself.'

He mixed it coarse and dark and smelling like old armpits. 'Thanks, but I don't think my flying licence covers that stuff.'

He grinned, not apologetically. Had it been a test? To see if. I felt a need to flatter him? Why am I so suspicious of policemen? Why do policemen come and talk to me and never say exactly why?

He lit his pipe, but burning that stuff didn't improve it. 'So perhaps, as it always is on television, it was an inside job? By your colleague Cavitt, maybe?'

'Ken and I have alibis. We were out with a couple of… you might say… bar girls.'

'Wereyou?' Eleanor's voice said from somewhere around the last ice age but three.

Tamir smiled sadly. 'Prostitutes make good witnesses. They have little shame and they dare not annoy the police too much. Loassort, it was just an idea; to kill other people is normal -killing yourself, who can understand it?' He gulped the last of his beer. 'Why did the doctors tell him he had cancer? – they do not, usually.'

'Probably because he had.'

'You may be right.' He stood up. 'Are you staying in Israel long?'

'No, but it depends on my company. Castle.'

'Ah yes. Thank you. ' He shook hands again. 'I hope you enjoy Israel Miss… er, yes.'

He shambled off.

'A weird one,' Eleanor commented.

I just grunted; I had an idea that inside that fat man there was a very sharp one quite able to get out. 'What the hell's Ken doing in Acre?'

'Probably digging for bar girls.'

'Look, that night, he'd just come out of jail and anyway, in the confusion I never…' I wasn't improving things; the evening was dead on its feet. 'Ready to go?'

We had to walk back to Dizengoff Circle to find a taxi, and she kept her hands to herself. The crowd had thinned as people settled incafés or headed home for an early Monday. A few soldiers, some with weapons and all with bundles of food from mother, were beginning to hitch rides back to camp.