A picture of a dead girl would not disturb me. But the fact of her death did.
Talmon said, "Don't open it now. Take it home with you. Read it through tonight. I want it back by tomorrow." He gave me his address and told me to stick the entire thing in his mailbox. "Tell no one you have it or that you read it."
I laid my hand on the bag. "If, after reading this, I have any questions…"
"Then you'll have to answer them yourself," he said flatly. "Don't come to me. The moment our meeting is concluded, I am out of this."
"And if I find proof as to who did it? What do you want me to do?"
Talmon smiled bitterly. "I want you to blow this whole thing wide open. Find proof, give it to a reporter, make it public. Don't give it to anyone from the department. They'll sweep it under some bureaucratic carpet. But if conclusive evidence is presented to the public, if it's out there where everyone can see it, they won't be able to keep this quiet. We will have to do our job and arrest them." He looked at me, and there was pleading in his eyes. "And I hope to God you succeed, because this girl deserves better."
I looked at him and nodded my commitment.
Outside, he led me to a white Fiat parked at the curb. "I'm sorry, but I can only take you as far as Jaffa."
"That's all right," I said, and it was. Walking was no hardship. Not on a mild night like this, without a trace of rain or sleet or snow, not with good shoes and a stomach that had seen proper food that day.
We rode in nervous silence. We hardly knew each other and we were engaged in a conspiracy of sorts. Maybe Talmon was wondering whether he had done the right thing in giving me the report. Maybe it was on the tip of his tongue to ask for it back and tell me to forget all about it. If it was, the words never came out. Which was good, because I didn't think I would have given it back.
After ten minutes or so he dropped me off on Yerushalayim Boulevard close to the Basa soccer stadium. He apologized again for not taking me further north, and I told him not to worry about it.
"Good luck," he said, and looked relieved, as if he had passed on a heavy load to me. I nodded and he drove off. I tucked the bag with the report under my arm and started walking north.
Yerushalayim Boulevard was a main thoroughfare that cut through Jaffa from north to south. Sandwiched between the south and northbound traffic lanes was a walkway lined with ficus trees. I trekked up the walkway, treading buckling paving stones, dislodged from their mooring by fist-wide roots. I continued north on the seaside road, past the forlorn turret of the Hassan Bek Mosque, all the way to Opera Square, where I took a right to Allenby. I followed it as it curled southeast and cut my way through a number of side streets till I got to Hamaccabi Street and my apartment.
I drank two glasses of water, took a long shower, and got into some clean clothes. With a hot cup of tea to keep me company, I sat at my dining table, took out the folder Yossi Talmon had given me, and weighed it in my hands. I burst out laughing. The previous day I had asked myself why I should stick my neck out for Ahmed Jamalka, and here I was, doing just that. I was pursuing a case the police higher-ups wanted dead and buried and forgotten, and I was in possession of a police report I had no business reading. I was probably breaking some laws, and I knew the police could come down hard on me. So why was I doing it? Why get involved? Why take the risk?
I wasn't doing it for Ahmed Jamalka, I realized. I was doing it for his sister. Because she was dead. Because she deserved better. Because someone had to do it. And because no one else would.
I flipped open the folder and began reading the murder report of the almost-forsaken Maryam Jamalka.
10
Maryam Jamalka's body was discovered by a Mrs. Olga Gal, a sixty-six-year-old resident of Tel Aviv, who was taking her regular early morning walk along the southern bank of the Yarkon River. She began her trek at the corner of Ibn Gabirol and Ussishkin Streets and walked west toward the sea. She would usually walk all the way to the mouth of the river, spend a few minutes admiring the tower of the Reading Power Station, which stood on the opposite bank, then retrace her steps before going to eat breakfast in her apartment on Alexander Yannai Street.
It was a comforting and healthy routine, one which Mrs. Gal had adhered to for a good many years. Rain or shine, she told the officer, she always took her walk. But on the nineteenth of September, 1949, she cut her trek short when, where an outcropping of earth hid part of the Yarkon's bank from view, she came upon the naked body of a young black-haired woman.
The body was lying with its lower half submerged in the brackish water of the river and its face sunk into the soft, wet earth of the bank. Here Mrs. Gal—whose body had been made strong by her early years as a farm girl and her later years as the mother of four strapping boys—did something that Sergeant Talmon ardently wished that she hadn't: She grabbed Maryam Jamalka's body by the armpits and dragged it out of the water and up the slope of the bank.
Mrs. Gal could see that the young woman was dead. The gash across her neck was sufficiently wide to be visible even in a prone position. So Mrs. Gal did not try to revive her nor did she turn her over. She did, however, perform one additional act of charity—she removed her shirt and used it to cover the corpse's exposed buttocks, tucking the sleeves under the thighs to make sure the shirt wouldn't be carried off by a stray breeze. Unfortunately, that left Mrs. Gal in nothing but her skirt and girdle and shoes, and she was not the sort to walk around immodestly dressed. Nevertheless, she did not rush straight home for another shirt. Instead, she hurried back to Ibn Gabirol Street, ignoring the stares of the few people on the street at that early hour, located a telephone, and called the police. Only then did she go home, put on a shirt and grab a small star-embroidered blanket her grandchildren used when they came over to visit. She went back to where she'd found the dead woman and covered her naked back with the blanket. Then she stood watch over the body, ready to fight off any voyeur who might have passed by. In the end, no such person came. Some minutes later, two policemen found a clench-fisted Mrs. Gal shaking with fury that such an indignity might befall a woman in her beloved Tel Aviv.
Mrs. Gal's humanity went against investigative protocol, which called for the preservation of a crime scene until it had been scoured for evidence. Upon arriving at the scene, Talmon conducted an extensive interview with Mrs. Gal, lobbing question after question at her, all for the purpose of determining whether she had inadvertently erased any evidence the killer might have left behind—footprints, cigarette butts, a wrapper of food, a torn button. Judging by her answers, Mrs. Gal quickly wearied of this line of questioning and made it clear to Sergeant Talmon that, regardless of what he thought of her, she was not a careless fool and would not have disturbed any evidence. As for his insinuation that she had disrupted the crime scene by pulling the body from the water, she was not only unapologetic, but also proud of her actions. It was the right thing to do. The girl was dead and what she had seen of her body left no doubt that she had been violently murdered. Leaving her in the water for the fish or river rats to feast on was out of the question, evidence be damned. I smiled when I pictured the sad-eyed Talmon on the receiving end of the righteous fury of Mrs. Gal. And despite the dry and factual tone of his report, I was certain that Talmon did not resent her reproach.
Mrs. Gal was questioned as to the position of the body when she had found it, and a sketch was made and included in the report. I studied it but could see little to be gleaned from it.