Seiden paused for a moment. “Then he took the body of the woman — wrapped in that carpet over there — and tossed her from the balcony onto the car below.” He looked over at Rubenstein. He smiled a flat thin smile. “Well,” he added, “am I right?”
Rubenstein nodded. He closed the side of the video camera, removed it from its tripod, and dropped it into a large clear plastic bag. “I’m sure you know what this means,” he said.
Seiden walked over to the man lashed to the chair by the sliding door. Sheer white cotton curtains wafted around his body like the wings of an angel, a shroud newly thrown. They shivered on the breeze. The dead man’s face looked tattooed, a mask of petrified terror. His brown eyes bulged as if the magnesium ribbon — which had been wrapped, again and again, around his neck — had constricted slowly as it burned, strangling him with fire. He had bitten his tongue off at the tip. It hung like some organic growth from his lower lip. His entire body was covered with burns, bright black, like the carapace of some gigantic beetle.
“Call in the forensics team,” said Seiden. “And have the IDF take the suspect to police headquarters. I’ll have a car pick him up from there.”
“It’s him, isn’t it?” Rubenstein continued. “Isn’t it, sir?” His voice was filled with awe. “Who else would… ” He could not finish. He pointed at the boys. “This is his trademark, isn’t it? This kind of writing with fire. I thought he was dead. That’s what I heard. Killed by a rocket strike in Lebanon three years ago.”
“Call your men please, Captain.”
Rubenstein stepped forward and yanked the Arab to his feet. He was still praying. He was still mumbling underneath his breath as the soldiers returned and ushered him away.
Seiden pulled off his latex gloves, wiped his hands across his trouser legs, and glanced down at his watch. His daughters were probably on their way to school by now. Dara would be driving them, along the open and defenseless roadways of the city. And, at home, the blankets and sheets would still be warm from their small bodies, would still retain the memory of dreams.
Seiden looked over at Captain Rubenstein who hovered expectantly by the hallway. Seiden knew only too well what this trademark torture meant. The thin, rather nondescript Arab in custody was the infamous El Aqrab, one of Israel’s most wanted terrorists, responsible for dozens of bombings, thousands of innocent deaths, affiliated with both Hamas and Hezbollah, leader of the Brotherhood of the Crimson Scimitar, with shadowy ties all across the Middle East and Europe, and beyond.
“He didn’t even try to run,” said Captain Rubenstein. “He was waiting when my men arrived, in the center of the room, just waiting like that, on his knees. It doesn’t make sense, sir. Why throw her body from the balcony, alert the world? It’s like he wanted to be caught. As if he’s given up.”
Seiden glanced once more at the two boys in the chairs, their anguished immolated faces, the script tattooed across their flesh. “No, Captain. I’m afraid he’s only just begun.”
Chapter 3
Giles Pickings pulled at the cord above him and turned on the naked light bulb overhead. Then, with a sigh, he shuffled down the narrow wooden staircase and began to rummage around in his storm cellar. After a few minutes, he found the box that he was looking for. He opened it and there it was. He pulled out the wine-colored blanket, draped it across one arm, and patted it lovingly. It had belonged to his wife, Layla. The blanket had covered up a thousand memories along the years, and they all came spilling out now as he pushed the material to his face. He could still smell her. Pickings spun about and rushed back up the stairs.
The cellar door opened up onto the side of the house overlooking the Atlantic. It was a cool and windy night on the island of La Palma. The stars glared down through inky clouds, behind the sloping shoulders of the Cumbre Vieja ridge just to the south, illuminated by a crescent moon. No wonder astronomers from all over the globe had set up domed observatories on the top of the Caldera de Taburiente National Parque, 2,400 meters above sea level. Pickings staggered around the house, buffeted by the wind that swept across the Canary Islands chain, and made his way inside.
At the center of the living room stood a Sound Leisure Beatles jukebox, half buried in a crate. Pickings draped the blanket over the veneered marine ply cabinet, the polycarbonate tube pillers, the plastic periscopes, the cartoon figurines — John, Paul, and George, and Ringo, inside their Yellow Submarine. He had purchased the jukebox in Leeds, back in the ‘70s. Surely, I have time for just one more, he thought. He plugged it in, turned on the jukebox, and made a selection. Help began to play. Listening to the music for the last time, Pickings was sad to see it go. But hard times had driven him to sell off most of his belongings. He hadn’t had a choice. The Sound Leisure had fetched almost five thousand pounds. Besides, he was better off without it. The jukebox was a memory machine.
Pickings was a retired Housemaster from Wyckham College, an English boarding school in Winchester, Hampshire, England. He was fifty-six years old, with a heart-shaped face, thin gray hair and gold wire-rimmed glasses that constantly descended down his pudgy nose. An expert in Papal history, he’d been married to Layla Pickings for almost thirty years, before she had disappeared one day, never to return. Layla was Lebanese; they’d met years before in Beirut, while he was doing research on a book about the Crusades. He used to travel quite a lot in those days, going from school to school across Europe to teach, like some ancient troubadour. But now all that was finished. Pickings stumbled about the house, listening to the music. The house had once belonged to his great aunt, Jane Chilvers, who had recently passed away and left him this property between the towns of Buena Alta and Tigalate, plus a modest inheritance.
Layla had vanished before, of course. In fact, it had been a regular feature of their marriage. Every four months or so, she would simply disappear for a few days. At first Pickings had thought she’d taken a lover, but when he confronted her, she denied it. “Sometimes,” she said, “I just need to be alone. It isn’t about you. But with the children and your work, sometimes I need some time for me, just for myself. To be alone. To just be me.” And, for some strange reason, he had believed her. He had wanted to believe her. And she’d always returned, revitalized, almost rejuvenated.
One time, at the beginning of their marriage, he had tried to follow her, but she’d spotted him with ease and they’d had a terrible row. “You have to trust me,” she had said. “If you love me, just let me be.” So he had given up his sleuthing. It was only for a few days anyway, at most a week, and, after a while, he found himself enjoying her departures. It gave him time to be alone as well, to work, to bond with their two children. And she always came back. Until the last time, anyway.
After a fortnight of worrying, he finally called the police. They made a half-baked effort to locate her, to no avail. Pickings ran advertisements in the local papers and in the London Times. He even issued a reward. But the months rolled by without a word. Layla had simply vanished. Then, a new nightmare began. The police, frustrated by the disappearance, began to ask him questions that could only be interpreted one way: They thought he was responsible, that he had murdered his own wife, and then buried her somewhere. For weeks, they kept him under surveillance. He would leave the College House and see them parked across the street. He would see them after class, or in town when he went shopping. They kept bringing him down for questioning. They grilled him for hours and hours, to no avail. He was innocent, after all, and — in the end — they’d been forced to let him go. His alibis were immaculate. He had never run afoul of the law, never been violent, never argued with Layla in public. And they could see he was an exemplary father.