“I hope so, sir,” Khaled muttered, avoiding Hanash’s gaze. He looked much more uncomfortable than the interview warranted, Hanash thought. Keeping his voice calm and reassuring, he asked, “Do you have any other enemies apart from Farida?”
Khaled shook his head, staring down at his lap. Hanash began to think it almost pointless to ask the questions he had in mind about the port to a person who seemed elsewhere and barely able to express himself. Nevertheless, he persisted: “Do you suspect anyone who might be capable of such an act? Is there anyone apart from Farida who might want to take revenge against you or your wife?”
“No, sir. I don’t have any enemies.”
Hanash decided to try another tack. “At the port . . . What’s your job there, exactly?”
“I work a container crane.”
Hanash was looking for some information about any possible illegal migration activities at the port that the police might not know about or that might even involve some police on the take. In particular, he wanted to learn if there were any way Kahila could have infiltrated the security barriers or been smuggled into the port and onto a ship as part of some human trafficking scheme. There was no other avenue of escape from the city without him having to surface and risk being recognized. Hanash continued to contemplate Khaled in silence. He sensed that Khaled wanted the interview to end, as though he were no longer desperate to learn who killed his son or as though he were afraid that if he talked too much he’d let something slip. Yes, thought Hanash, he’s hiding something.
This time, to Hanash’s surprise, the medical examiner called him before he called her.
“Who would do this to an innocent child? This makes me regret ever choosing forensics as a career. This is . . . this is heinous.”
“Sometimes I regret choosing this profession, too,” Hanash replied. “If I could start all over again, I’d become a college professor who gets a three-month holiday so I could spend my time in the pursuit of knowledge.”
After a brief silence, Dr. Amrani sighed and said, “It’s the parents’ fault. How could they be so negligent? How could they leave their children outside, totally unsupervised, until something like this happens? Have you formed an idea about the perpetrator?”
“We’ve formed an idea about a perpetratress,” he replied sarcastically. He was beginning to enjoy this conversation.
“A woman?”
“What was the approximate time of death?”
“Between midnight and three a.m. at the outside. I’ve only just begun the autopsy, but the cause of death is definitely asphyxiation.”
“No sexual abuse?”
“The body is completely unscathed. You’ll find all the details in my report.”
He could hear another mournful sigh before she hung up. She was strongly affected by this case. It betrayed a certain weakness, despite her outward appearance of strength. It’s maternal instinct, thought Hanash as he settled back in his plush leather chair and stretched until his
joints cracked.
There came a knock on the door. It opened and in heaved the corpulent Officer Baba, face flushed.
“Welcome back,” sneered Hanash.
“I’m sorry, sir. I was wrong. I shouldn’t have left without official leave. But it was an emergency. . . . It had to do with my brother-in-law passing away.”
“This makes the third time you’ve killed your brother-in-law.”
Baba stuttered. A deep scarlet infused his dark complexion. Hanash felt a surge of pity for the obese officer whose eyes were hidden behind glasses with lenses as thick as the bottom of a beer bottle. He was diligent and thoroughly dedicated, yet he hadn’t received a promotion for twenty years.
“As long as you did it, you should have called me up before you returned and told me that you were in El Jadida. Then I would have looked the other way.”
Baba bowed his head, and his shoulders slumped.
“You may leave.”
13
Hanash instructed Hamid to drive him to the home of the parents of the murdered child. Hamid felt stung. He’d had the impression that he was handling the case.
“Have I done something wrong, sir?”
“Not at all,” Hanash answered. “It’s just that I’ve got a hunch about Khaled. He’s hiding something. I’m not sure what it is but I want to get to the bottom of it.”
While the detective had apparently eliminated Farida as a suspect, Hamid was determined to defend his point of view. “True, Farida has a good alibi. But there still remains the possibility that she hired a contract killer.”
Hanash, focused on his cell phone screen, responded, “It’s a remote possibility at best. Even if the idea occurred to her, where would she get the money to pay for one? Plus, I’m not convinced she’s the sort of person who would do that.”
After a brief silence, he scoffed, “The media is deaf and dumb on this murder. At most, poor Saad gets a line or two along with a picture of a kid from some foreign
film.”
“It must be from the shock that the homicide didn’t have Kahila’s MO written on it.”
“Copy that,” said Hanash as they pulled up in front of Khaled’s and Sumaya’s house.
Sumaya opened the door after the first knock and looked at the men with hollow, dark-rimmed eyes. “Have you found the person who killed my child?”
Hanash adopted a comforting tone: “Rest assured, we’ll have him in custody soon. Is your husband in?”
She paused, then mumbled something unintelligible. Noticing how his question had flustered her, the detective asked her to raise her voice. “Please speak up, ma’am, so I can hear you. Is your husband in?”
Her eyes widened in alarm at the tone of Hanash’s voice. “He went to the port,” she said reluctantly, after which she bowed her head and fell silent.
She’s hiding something, too, thought Hanash.
Sumaya mumbled an excuse and turned to go inside as though the interview had ended. Hanash stepped in after her with a determination that took Hamid by surprise. She turned around, contemplated them silently, and heaved a sigh as she battled conflicting thoughts. She took a step back, casting about for something to lean on.
As though to help her out of her predicament, Hanash said, “Your neighbor, Farida, had nothing to do with what happened to your child, did she?”
He noticed the muscles in her jaw work as she tried to formulate her response. Before she could change her mind and the opportunity slipped out of reach, he asked, “Do you suspect someone else? If you have anything to say, don’t hold back. We’re speaking about your son. I can’t imagine you’d hold his life so cheaply as to allow the killer to go free.”
Something seemed to click in the woman’s mind. With an almost imperceptible nod, she looked directly into Hanash’s eyes and said, “My son’s blood is dearer to me than anything else in this world. . . . My husband suspects the migrants.”
To help the woman over the last hurdle, Hanash said, “Your husband was helping migrants sneak into the port, wasn’t he? Why would he suspect them of killing your son?”
“A smuggling operation fell through. They wanted their money back and they were threatening him.”
“When did your husband leave for the port?”
“About a quarter of an hour ago.”
Hanash wondered what might have made Khaled head off to the port if it wasn’t urgent. He told Hamid to step on it and power up the siren to max. They reached the port in twenty minutes. The guard at the gate saluted as their car drew up and screeched to halt.
“Where’s Khaled Wazzani?” Hanash called out urgently.
The guard glanced down at his logbook and said, “Usually he works with the ships that dock at Pier Four.”
“How did he get here?”
“In his private vehicle, sir.”
“Vehicle model and color?”
“A white Fiat Palio.”
The port was like another city. It had wide streets, circular intersectio
ns, and street signs pointing to the huge warehouses, cold-storage facilities, and the many piers that jutted like teeth into the dark waters of the Atlantic. Hamid was forced to turn back and retrace his route several times before eventually finding Pier Four, which turned out to be empty—not a single ship was docked there. They returned to the closest traffic circle and asked a port employee if he’d seen a white Fiat Palio. “Yes, it headed that way,” the man said, pointing toward a mountain range of unused shipping containers at the far end of the port.
It was another world. Discarded shipping containers stacked on top of each other formed long lanes and filthy alleyways. Some containers appeared to have been tossed here and there haphazardly, their doors torn off and rusting. The lanes between the containers were at most two meters wide, barely enough for their car to pass. After several turns in which they failed to locate Khaled’s car, they were forced to get out of their vehicle and complete the search on foot, their hands covering their noses to filter out the penetrating stench. Some containers had been put to use as animal cages. Others seemed to serve as caches for wires and copper parts that had probably been stolen from machines. At one corner, they saw an alleyway that had been given a makeshift canopy of corrugated iron. The Fiat Palio was parked to one side. They approached silently, and then spotted Khaled. Hanash reached for his gun.
Khaled caught sight of them and froze. Then, as though unfazed by their presence, he disappeared into a container. They hurried after him and jerked to a stop at the sight of the migrant slumped against the container wall, his hands bound and his head hanging down on his chest. He
was dead.
Officer Hamid snatched the flashlight from Khaled’s hand. He bent down, lifted the migrant’s head, shone the flashlight on the face, and turned to the detective with a stunned expression.
In a strange, hollow-sounding voice, Hanash said, “Open those doors all the way and get some light in here.”
Hanash shone the flashlight in his face again and removed all doubt. It was Abdel-Salam Kahila.
“You didn’t recognize him?” Hamid asked Khaled in disbelief.
Khaled, in a stunned daze, shrugged and said, “He was just another migrant. The others left. He got to like this place.”
“You’ve never seen his picture before?”
“No. Why? Is he some sort of celebrity?” His tone was caustic. He’d lost hope in everything.
The officer pulled out his phone, called headquarters, and issued the necessary instructions. Eyeing Khaled suspiciously, Hanash shot out, “Did he admit to killing your son?”
Khaled stood motionless. Hanash shook his head. He tried in vain to keep the pity out of his voice. “You killed him without obtaining a confession. Not only did you kill our ability to learn the facts about many murder cases, you also hampered our task of finding whoever murdered your son.”
“I didn’t mean to kill him, sir,” Khaled blurted out, as though finally aware of his horrible deed.
Hanash pointed to the gash on Kahila’s head and the dried blood on his clothes.
“You didn’t do that?”
“I didn’t mean to kill him.”
“This person,” said Hamid, “was the object of a nationwide manhunt. If you had identified him and reported him to the police, you would have been a national hero instead of ending up a killer yourself.”
Back at the station, Khaled spilled his confession. He used to conceal one or two migrants under the seat of his van when one of the guards who was in on the game was on duty. Then he’d assemble them all into one of those large freight containers that are stacked on an unused wharf designated for disposables. The migrants had to stay hidden there for anywhere from a few days to several weeks until the arrangements to smuggle them aboard a boat were ready.
Khaled, in his statement, acknowledged that others gained from the operation. From the money he took, he had to pay off the guards, the crew members, and others in the ring. He also had to pay for the food and drink to keep the migrants alive until they left.
The last operation would have gone as smoothly as the previous ones had it not been for an unexpected malfunction in the ship that had been arranged for them. Although the migrants had been notified of the delay, they were so eager to leave that they left the container before the new departure time, almost blowing the lid off the operation and imperiling the ship workers. So the ringleaders called off the deal. Not only was Khaled to unable to recoup the money he’d spent; as the intermediary he became the victim of an amount of malice he could never have imagined. He tried his best to reason and bargain with them, but to no avail. They threatened to take revenge if he didn’t return their money or make new arrangements for them. Eventually they left the port—apart from Kahila, who seemed to have taken a liking to the place but, as he now knew, was actually using it to hide from the police.
There was no evidence that Kahila was implicated in the Saad file, which remained open. The fate of Khaled, now in custody, was tragic. If Kahila had murdered his son, at least Khaled would not have committed murder for nothing.
The morning after they discovered Kahila, Hanash received a curious phone call from the chief medical examiner, who told him that the murdered child was a “zouhari.”
“Are you telling me that Saad might have been murdered by treasure hunters?” Hanash asked.
“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” she said.
Like everyone else in headquarters, Hanash knew that Officer Baba was a zouhari, and had heard the story about how Baba, as a child, had been abducted by treasure-hunting ‘wise men,’ known as fiqis.“Well, then,” said the astonished Hanash to Hamid after ending the call with Dr. Amrani, “Let’s see what Baba has to say about this.”
He issued the order to have Baba report to his office pronto, and before long the officer appeared at the door, panting, and snapped to an exaggerated salute.
“At ease,” Hanash said with a smile. “You’re not in trouble. Take a seat.”
Hamid offered the chubby inspector an encouraging smile. Baba, still trying to catch his breath, plunked himself down on a chair. He sat rigidly and wordless, waiting for Hanash to address him.
“You’re a zouhari, right?”
Baba perked up. He raised his hand, fingers up, palm forward, and extended it toward the detective. “As you can see, this line goes straight across the whole palm. It’s the path to treasure. It’s why I was abducted when I was five years old. By a stroke of luck, my uncle caught sight of me with my kidnapper at the bus station. When he called out my name, the kidnapper tried to escape. But my uncle managed to catch up to him and hold him until the police came. The abductor confessed that he’d been watching me for days. When he ascertained I was a zouhari, he took advantage of a time when no one was looking to kidnap me.”
“Tell me exactly what or who is a zouhari,” Hanash said as he settled back into his plush seat.
Baba launched into an explanation with enthusiasm. “A zouhari could be someone who has a line going straight across their palm, like I have. Or they might have one eye looking in a different direction from the other. Or they might have a straight line going the length of their tongue. Treasure hunters believe that zouharis are the offspring of jinn and that the jinn snatch human babies from their parents the moment they’re born and replace them with zouharis. The human parents believe that they’re raising their own child, whereas in fact they’re raising jinn children. This is why wise men believe zouharis are endowed with the gift to see things human beings don’t.”
Hamid burst out laughing. Hanash contemplated Baba. “So, you’re a jinn, Baba,” he said.
Baba blushed and said, “I don’t believe such superstitions.”
“Kidnappings of zouhari children are very common, especially in lower-class quarters. The medical examiner has learned that Saad, the murdered child, was a zouhari. Maybe that’s why he was abducted and killed.”
“It’s impossible that the parents hadn’t realized he was a zouh
ari. You’d think they’d have taken the necessary precautions to protect him from treasure hunters.”
“That we can easily find out,” said Hanash, thoroughly intrigued. “The question is why the kidnappers would return him dead, leaving his body in a dumpster in the middle of the square.”
“They believe that they are supposed to kill the zouhari after finishing with him, regardless of whether or not his supposed gifts led them to their dreamed-of treasure. The child would not be returned to his parents alive.”
Hanash leaned forward and spoke in a grave tone. “Very well then, Baba. As long as you’re a jinn, I’m going to assign you the task of following the zouhari thread of this investigation. The other thread is the search for the two migrants who’d been in the shipping container with Kahila—the ones Saad’s parents think are responsible. I think we’ll proceed in these two directions in tandem unless evidence emerges to point us elsewhere.”
Hanash put Hamid in charge of the search for the other two migrants. Baba started to stand up to leave, but Hanash motioned him to remain seated. Smiling, Hanash said, “Now you’re my CO in this zouhari trail.”
“Even in jest, I couldn’t pretend to be your superior officer, sir.”
“So long as we’re pursuing this zouhari path, I am at your command.”
“In that case, sir, let’s go.”
Baba didn’t utter a word during the whole trip to the Fallah neighborhood. He was at the wheel, but he was not a skillful driver. He’d take shortcuts that turned out to be “longcuts” because the streets were too narrow to allow them to pass the cars in front of them. To break the tedium, Hanash asked, “Have you ever been part of an investigation of this sort?”
Baba shook his head without turning to look at Hanash. At last they pulled up in front of Khaled’s and Sumaya’s house and knocked on the door.
“Don’t let my being under your command embarrass you,” Hanash said, his voice calm and friendly. “You’re the jinn here. No matter how high my rank is in the force, I’ll never reach your level in the jinn world.”
The Butcher of Casablanca Page 17