by Batya Gur
He felt hot in his faded jeans, the last of the clean ones in his closet. Listening to the rapid, clattering footsteps of the procession at the end of which he walked, he looked alternately at his shoes and the back of the Jerusalem police spokesman, Gilly, who preceded him, squeezed into his khaki uniform, the chief inspector insignia gleaming on his shoulders. The university security officer strode among the policemen, like someone who had finally found his true vocation. Before going into the superintendent’s office, in the blue wing, the C.O. gripped Michael’s arm. The thick hand on his flesh was oppressive, but the commander’s words were even more so. “Ohayon,” said Ariyeh Levy without removing his hand, “this isn’t an ordinary case. I want a special SIT,” and Michael, combating the weariness that was already spreading through him, refrained from remarking that a special investigation team was special by definition.
The weariness was familiar, the immediate response to the sense of being at a loss, of not knowing where to begin. It would come after the second wave: the dread that assailed him with every new case, the feeling that all his previous achievements had been wiped out, vanished into thin air. The first wave was always a reaction to the ugliness, the atrociousness of the death itself. At the beginning of every case he would be filled with the terrible certainty that this time there would be no solution. And then came this weariness, accompanied by voices that reminded him of the futility of life, the futility of death, the fact that in the end someone would be punished and that this would solve nothing. But he covered all this up with the question he addressed to his commander: “Sir?”
Major General Ariyeh Levy, commander of the Jerusalem Subdistrict, replied: “I think you should head it; I’d like you and Bahar to make up the team. We’ll have the university president breathing down our necks, and the press and the whole bloody world. I need it wrapped up quickly.”
Superintendent Ohayon nodded automatically. The text was so familiar. It was always a special case, it always had to be wrapped up quickly, although the head of the Investigations Division was not always asked to head the special task force in person. Someone knocked on the door, and the police spokesman, whose task would be more delicate than usual this time, as the commander had warned him, opened it. The president of the university stepped inside.
Ariyeh Levy treated him as if he were still the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, and Michael looked at the dark-blue tie lying against the blinding white shirt and wondered how the man managed to look so cool and flawless on such a scorching day, while he himself felt sticky in his jeans and his open-necked light-blue shirt, which he had ironed only that morning and which already felt as if it had been dragged out of the laundry hamper. The room filled with the smell of expensive shaving lotion, and Michael breathed it into his nostrils, in the hope of effacing that other smell, which still pervaded everything. President Marom’s face was pale, and there was a look of panic in his light eyes. Michael asked himself how Marom would have reacted to the sight of the corpse, and he squirmed with embarrassment at the pompous manner of the C.O., who introduced himself by name and rank, looking at once self-important and obsequious. Ariyeh Levy’s attitude toward institutions of higher learning was one of the main reasons for his habitual outbursts against Michael. Eli Bahar enjoyed quoting the sentence, “This isn’t a university, you know!”—the invariable conclusion to Levy’s fulminations against his subordinate, ever since his early days as an inspector on the force.
But this was a university—the university—and with increasing embarrassment, Michael listened to Levy’s words: “Our investigating team will be headed by Superintendent Michael Ohayon, who was once a big star over here—history, wasn’t it, Ohayon?” And the university president looked at him with an expression in which politeness vied with anxiety, and straightened the tip of his tie as he nodded at Levy, who couldn’t seem to stop talking.
Avidan, the departmental investigations officer, introduced himself to the president and then began to consider various possibilities. A security-related crime was the first on the list. They began to discuss the security arrangements on the campus. They spoke of the hours when the gates were locked, the fact that a person could stay in his office for the entire weekend without anyone noticing. Finally the spokesman commented that they could make no real progress until the hour of death was determined. Then, said the departmental investigations officer, they would be able to speak to the security officers who had been on duty during the relevant shift. The president stared at them, and then he asked quietly what the other possibilities were.
“Well,” said Levy grandiosely, “there are other possibilities, of course, such as nationalistic motives or, of course, personal, sexual ones.”
The university president looked at the people surrounding him, with an expression of anxiety, and Michael clearly read the disbelief on his face. Only then did the other incident surface in his mind, and he spoke for the first time in a quiet voice, listening to the silence that descended as he began talking. “Last night,” said Michael Ohayon, “I drove back from Eilat. I had been a witness to a diving accident there.”
They all stared at him. Ariyeh Levy was about to protest, but before he had a chance to do so, Michael addressed himself directly to Marom: “A young man by the name of Iddo Dudai—does the name mean anything to you?” The president shook his head, and Ariyeh Levy opened his mouth again.
The spokesman, the departmental investigations officer, and Eli Bahar waited for Michael to continue.
“I understood that he, too, was a lecturer in the Hebrew Literature Department here. And I can’t help but ask myself if the two things aren’t connected. Two people from the same department, on the same weekend.”
“It hasn’t been brought to my attention yet,” said the president, with diplomatic discretion. “But I can make inquiries, of course.” He looked hesitantly at Ariyeh Levy, and after Levy nodded, he picked up the telephone and spoke to his secretary. She confirmed the fact that Iddo Dudai, a lecturer in the Hebrew Literature Department, had died in a diving accident. “She said that the autopsy is yet to be performed—the funeral will not be held until tomorrow. I knew nothing about it, of course,” he said, glancing apologetically at Michael. “But surely that’s something entirely different? A diving accident in Eilat and a violent death here.”
Ariyeh Levy looked at Michael with interest. Then he said decisively: “Yes, we’ll have to go into the question of a possible connection between the two events. How many people are there in the Literature Department?” he asked Marom, who replied apologetically that he didn’t know exactly but that the administration office would of course provide all the information they needed. He estimated that there were twenty, “including teaching assistants,” and then he looked at Michael with a worried expression and said hesitantly: “Although it’s very tragic, of course, terrible, I can’t see why there should be a connection between the two incidents, especially since one of them took place here, inside the university, and the other in Eilat.”
And suddenly the policemen constituted a united front. No one answered the lean man fingering his tie, the only necktie in the room. Traces of perspiration became visible on the white shirt. Ariyeh Levy passed his hand over his short, frizzy hair, wiped his forehead, and said in a soothing tone: “Maybe there’s no connection, but it has to be checked. Two incidents in the same weekend. From the same department. We can’t ignore it.”
Pnina from Forensics peeped into the room. Her bouncy joie-de-vivre had disappeared, and her usually rosy cheeks were pale. “We’re finished,” she said, looking at Ariyeh Levy, who nodded. Even she can’t take it; I’m not the only one without defenses. Not much consolation, thought Michael as the door closed behind her and Marom set about making the contacts that would “help you in your work,” as he put it. He phoned his secretary again, at her home, he explained, as if hoping to win their appreciation for his efforts. They would receive every possible assistance, he promised. By then they could hear t
he commotion outside, and they exchanged looks of despairing resignation. Finally Levy nodded at Gilly, the Jerusalem police spokesman, and said: “Okay, you’d better go out and say something. Tell them we’re investigating the security angle, but keep it cool; we don’t want a panic. Make it clear from the beginning that’s only one possibility, before the politicians begin to scream. They’ll have something to say in any case. The ones on the right will say that Mount Scopus has to be made safe, that the Arab students should be expelled, and the ones on the left’ll say that the campus should never have been moved here after the Six Day War. There’ll be an uproar, for sure.”
“How did the reporters get here so quickly?” asked Marom in surprise.
“I don’t call that quick,” said Ariyeh Levy, glancing at his watch. “It’s already five o’clock. They usually arrive as soon as we do, but we only began radioing for our intelligence officer half an hour ago, and if they’ve come he’ll be here soon enough. They tune into our frequency, you know, and anyway, there’s no way we can hide the facts.”
Marom looked doubtfully at Gilly. His youthful face, his wide blond mustache, his smiling eyes, apparently failed to inspire confidence in the veteran diplomat.
Gilly noticed, and the hint of a sly smile appeared on his face as he looked the university president up and down, from his gleaming black shoes to his cold blue eyes, and then asked if he should talk to them immediately. “Yes. Talk to them and get rid of them. Tomorrow—tell them we’ll have more information tomorrow,” said Ariyeh Levy impatiently, and then the door opened and in burst Danny Balilty—his paunch was growing more evident every day, thought Michael—tossing juicy profanities at the group clustering around the door. “And this,” explained Ariyeh Levy to Marom, who straightened his tie again, “is our intelligence officer, Inspector Balilty,” and he scowled at Danny, who tucked his T-shirt, drooping over his paunch, into his trousers, wiped his red face, and apologized for his late arrival, offering some vague explanation about having just come back from a professional meeting. He looked around him, and gradually his face relaxed. He hasn’t seen the body, thought Michael.
“So what’s going on?” inquired Balilty, breathing almost evenly. “What happened here?” Levy briefly reported the facts.
“Tirosh . . . isn’t he some sort of poet?” Balilty asked, and he looked at Michael, who had seated himself behind his C.O. and was holding an unlit cigarette.
The president now directed the same expression at the intelligence officer he had used on Gilly when he went out to speak to the press. Michael asked himself how much confidence someone who looked like Balilty—with his bald head, his red face, the belly bursting from his grubby trousers—could arouse in someone who looked like Marom.
Balilty spoke. “But during the weekend, all the buildings on campus are locked from Friday afternoon to Sunday morning, and to get in you have to contact the security officer and ask him to open up for you, and then call him to open up again so you can get out.” He looked at the university security officer. Michael Ohayon, whose voice rang hollowly in his own ears, said quietly that this was indeed the case, unless the murder had taken place on Friday morning, “or somebody remained here in the building until Sunday morning, when the gates are opened and anyone can come and go as he pleases.”
Danny Balilty scratched his scalp and said: “Okay, there’s no point in talking until we know the time of death. And I suppose we have to discount the security aspect first? Does anyone know anything about Tirosh’s politics?”
Michael had read the poems published in the literary supplements of the Friday papers. He had not been impressed by their power, and so he said: “On the surface, I’d say a parlor pink.”
“He was from the university, wasn’t he?” said Balilty brutally. “Couldn’t avoid being a bit of a pinko, could he?” He looked at Marom. Except for Michael Ohayon, who suppressed a smile because he knew that Balilty meant every word he said, everyone there thought that he was being ironic.
Dryly, the president replied that all shades of political opinion were represented at the university.
“In the Hebrew Literature Department? A poet? In nineteen-eighty-five and not on the left? Give me break!” Balilty tilted his sweating head and threw the president of the university a mocking glance.
Michael saw the president, tie and all, feel the ground slipping beneath his feet. There were beads of sweat on his forehead when he asked if his presence was still required. “Whom should I keep in touch with?” he then asked, and Ariyeh Levy, with the expression of a man too busy to be bothered, replied: “We’ll contact you the minute we know anything new. If you want anything, or come into possession of any information that might be helpful, you can contact Superintendent Ohayon, who’ll be in charge of the investigation from now on. You can always locate him through our control center. But you’ll have to be patient,” he warned in a didactic tone, and Michael knew just how superior Levy was now feeling.
For a moment Michael vacillated between his enjoyment at the embarrassment of the president, who aroused what he called “my Foreign Office antibodies”—by which he meant the resistance aroused in him by the suave smoothness, the tie, the ability not to perspire in stressful situations, the noncommittal remarks, the well-camouflaged but explicit message: “I know how to tell the genuine article from the imitations, I know what wine to drink with every dish”—and his own embarrassment at being associated with the self-important C.O. He decided in favor of enjoyment.
Even though he had sworn to Maya that ever since he had met her, at the home of the ex-cultural attaché to Chicago (who at the time was home between postings, on his way to Australia), nothing about the Foreign Office could surprise him, he could not help feeling the old rage, and also—he had to admit—the envy, that these people had been born with a silver spoon in their mouths, which later, as he explained in all seriousness to Maya, turned into a silver tiepin.
On the other hand, he said to himself—as Ariyeh Levy escorted the university president out of the room and silenced, with a loud, authoritative voice, the gentlemen of the press who were still besieging the place, and who now turned from the spokesman to the two figures emerging from the door—on the other hand, how was it possible not to respond with polite chilliness and almost undisguised contempt to the obsequious affectation of his commanding officer?
But then they began discussing whom to co-opt onto the SIT, besides Ohayon himself and Eli Bahar, and Avidan asked whether Tzilla was still in bed—she was pregnant and experiencing complications—and was told by Eli Bahar that she wasn’t: “She got up two weeks ago, but I wouldn’t like her to start running around at night and so on, even though as a team coordinator she’s the greatest, of course. I really don’t know what to tell you,” and he looked inquiringly at Michael. “If Tzilla agrees, she could be coordinator,” said Michael, “but she’ll have to have help,” and then Levy came back into the room and shut the door behind him. His face had resumed its usual sour expression, and his little eyes, which always reminded Michael of two beads, dulled as he said: “Okay, you’ve seen for yourselves the kind of person we’ll have to deal with, and that’s even before the commissioner’s stuck his oar in, never mind the district commander and everybody else in the world. Balilty! You three are joining the SIT, and I think I’d better add two more men to the three of you if we want a quick solution.”
Michael looked at the marks his teeth had made on the filter of the unlit cigarette he had been holding and now lit. “Tzilla could be useful,” he remarked. “She knows some of the people here. She spent two years as a student at the university before she joined the force.” Levy squinted in his direction and asked: “And who else?”
“I don’t know at the moment, unless we decide to take Raffi off that Jaffa Gate case.”
Ariyeh Levy nodded and suddenly smiled as he said: “You’re a conservative, Ohayon. You like working with the same people all the time, eh?” Michael did not reply, but thought of Emanuel
Shorer, who had headed the Investigations Division before him, the man who had “groomed” him and taught him all he knew, and he wished with all his heart that Shorer would come back and be over him, that he himself wouldn’t have to take the responsibility for solving a case that didn’t seem to offer a single clue.
The team had been decided on before anyone had spoken to Tzilla, and Eli Bahar’s face was clouded. Bahar’s wife had almost lost a baby, Michael remembered, but he hardened his heart, thinking that he didn’t have the strength to teach a new person the subtleties only Tzilla knew. He would insist, he decided. There was no reason why a woman in the third month of pregnancy, who had now been allowed to get out of bed by her doctors, shouldn’t be able to sit in an office and coordinate activities from there.
There was no escape; in spite of the relentless khamsin, in spite of the hour, he had to return to the little room where the Literature Department faculty were still sitting. Despite their protests, reported by the sergeant who had been posted outside the door, they had not yet been allowed to leave the building. The same sergeant had also kept out the reporters, four in number, who were waiting there and who pounced on the two men about to go inside. Michael knew three of them. The fourth was an attractive young woman, the television police reporter, who gazed at him seductively as she waved to the cameraman standing behind her to aim his camera at him, causing Michael to protest.
He ordered the reporters to make themselves scarce. They retreated down the corridor, issuing their usual protests about the right of the public to know, and Michael called after them: “The public will have to wait until there’s something for it to know.”