"If you have any evidence—"
"Pfff. Evidence. Of course I haven't got any evidence. I've got nothing, and I'm not about to get anything, either. The case is not going anywhere. There is no investigation."
I looked at him. "What do you mean?"
"I mean," he said, tugging his beard with quick, hard pulls, "that I have done nothing to solve this murder. Well, that's not entirely true. I did work on it for the first two days after she was found and identified. There was an autopsy, not that one was needed to determine cause of death, and I did some background work on her, but that's it." He leaned forward and lowered his voice. "I was ordered to lay off it. No more work was to be done on this case."
"Who ordered you?"
"The word came down from upstairs. I got it from my inspector. And he probably got it from the chief inspector, and so on up the chain of command. I don't know how high it went. I asked, but Rosen—that's the name of my inspector, Avi Rosen—told me it was none of my business, but that it came from way up high, so I better make no trouble. Play along is what he told me. Don't make waves. Just forget about it and move on to another case. Easy for him to say, he didn't see her body. He didn't even read the report, I bet."
Talmon's voice had taken on a rough edge. Like a guard dog whose leash was too short to engage a robber, he was prevented from doing his job, and he couldn't even bark his lungs out in frustration. Now I knew why he'd gotten so upset when Reuben asked him about this case.
"Did Rosen give you a reason for the order?"
Talmon's upper lip curled, pulling his mustache down with it. "He said one thing to the medical examiner and the responding officers at the scene and another thing to me. Them, he told to be quiet so as not to cause a panic while the investigation was in progress. And I think that's what he told the woman who discovered the body. He couldn't feed me this lie. He had to tell me the truth."
He paused and took a big swallow of beer before saying, "It's the father again, Rashid Jamalka. Or rather his position. And his actions during the war. You see, when the war between us and the Arabs started in 1947, before the British left, the Jamalka clan took part in attacks on Jewish towns and vehicles. This continued well into 1948, when Syria, Egypt, Transjordan, and the rest of the Arab armies joined the war. But when it became apparent that things were not turning out as well as the Arabs had planned, that the foreign Arab armies were not about to wipe us out, he switched sides. He became an ally." Talmon made quotation marks in the air, to signify what he thought of this "ally."
He took a long gulp from the beer and wiped his beard.
"So now I'm told that I should let this investigation die a slow death of neglect, because someone higher up doesn't want to ruffle Rashid Jamalka's feathers. Because the war may be over, but who knows if it won't start up again. We want to come to some accommodation with the local Arabs, and we need clan leaders like Rashid Jamalka on our side. So what if two of his sons are common criminals? As long as they keep it relatively small, we can take it. So what if they murdered their sister? It's a family matter. It's their culture. For the sake of peace and coexistence, I should let this go."
He drained the rest of the beer, setting the glass down so hard I thought it might shatter in his hand. His face was twisted into a mask of disgust. When he spoke, it was like he was spitting the words out.
"Coexistence. With murderers? What for? Let the Arab murderers coexist in prison with the Jewish murderers where they belong. Maybe then the rest of us will find it easier to get along."
I let him get it all out. He was red across the cheeks. Suddenly he looked tired again, his pent-up energy having been discharged like the air out of a torn balloon.
"So you see," he said, in a soft, defeated voice, "this is why the investigation is dead."
I said nothing, just looked at him. He gave me a half smile that was as devoid of humor as the desert is of fish.
"I see it there, the contempt in your eyes. Don't think I don't feel a bit of it myself. You think I should have carried on, ignored the orders I'd been given. Don't think I didn't want to do just that. But Rosen's keeping an eye on me. He knows I'm not happy with the way things are. And he's a mean son of a bitch. Wouldn't hesitate to bump me off the case if he caught wind of me investigating further. He might do worse. I might end up directing traffic on Allenby Street before I got anything tangible. Or maybe I'd get kicked off the force entirely. And I have a family to feed." He let out a heavy sigh. "No, I can't do anything." He paused, looking at me. "But maybe you can."
9
Now I understood why Talmon had me come to Holon to meet him at this dismal café. He didn't want to be seen with me. He wanted no one to know he was talking to anyone about the case, least of all a detective who had been hired to investigate it.
Talmon said, "Reuben told me you weren't just a policeman in Hungary, but also a detective."
"That's right," I said. I had been the first and only Jewish police detective in Hungary. Not that it helped me any. First I was kicked off the force when anti-Jewish laws came into effect in the late 1930s, then I was conscripted to a hard-labor regiment and sent to dig ditches and pave roads, and finally, in 1944, I was pushed into a crowded train car, along with my family, and transported to Auschwitz. I was the only member of my family to survive the camp. I didn't tell Talmon all this. It was irrelevant, and he wouldn't have understood any of it, anyway.
"Well, this case deserves a detective," he said. "One not hampered by the chain of command and the realities of local politics. I can't do it, no matter how much I want to. But you don't have anyone above you who can order you to back off. In fact, no one even knows you've been hired to investigate this case, and no one, apart from Reuben Tzanani, knows that you and I are meeting. We should keep it that way. Agreed?"
I said that it was.
He reached down and brought up a small jute bag that had been leaning against the leg of the table. He slid it toward me. Inside was something rectangular, an inch or so thick.
"Here is the complete report on the murder of Maryam Jamalka. It's not a whole lot, but it's a starting point, and who knows where you can go with it. If I were you, I would start with her record."
"She had a record?" I asked.
"Yes. That's how we identified the body. By her fingerprints."
"What was the charge?"
He averted his eyes. "It's all in the report. I can't add anything to it, since I'd done absolutely no work in that direction before Rosen told me to back off. Besides, it's getting late and we need to get out of here before they throw us out. But when you read the record, you'll see why I am dead certain those two brothers, Jalal and Kadir, are the ones who killed her."
He paused, drawing in a breath.
"One more thing. It's about the pictures in the report. They're not easy to see. They did a number on her, the savages. Consider yourself lucky that you didn't have to examine her body. The pictures capture most of it, but not everything, especially not the smell."
I didn't tell him that the sight of death did not bother me. I had seen dead bodies by the thousands. I had seen men whose bodies had been starved to a mere skeleton. I had seen men ravaged by typhoid and other diseases. I had seen men fall prey to terminal exhaustion and despair. I had seen men hanged or shot or beaten to death. I had seen men who seemed healthy enough drop dead in mid-step. I had smelled the stench of burning flesh that blew across the camp from the crematoriums. And at the end of the war, when wide-eyed American boys rescued us and served us food, I had seen men eat themselves to death, their deprived stomachs unable to handle the sudden influx of food.