The Final Bet

by Abdelilah Hamdouchi

“Where were they going?” asked Boukrisha, his eyes darting back and forth.

  “I don’t know. Madame told me to go away.”

  “Was she mad at him?”

  “Maybe. She didn’t call him chéri like she usually does.”

  “Did she tell you to leave earlier than usual?”

  “No. It was around noon.”

  Boukrisha stood there and stared at Rahma until she lowered her eyes. Scowling, he left her and began pacing around the rest of the employees, holding his hands behind his back. He stopped in front of Abdelkader.

  “What do you do here?”

  “I’m head of the kitchen, sir.”

  “You got anything to say? Any trivial detail might be useful for us.”

  “What’s going to happen to us now that Madame’s gone?” asked Suleiman in a grieving voice, not giving Abdelkader the chance to reply.

  “That’s your problem,” said one of the inspectors.

  Boukrisha’s cell phone rang in his pocket. He got the order to come back to the station immediately.

  Boukrisha found Othman sitting in the office in front of Alwaar. He was hunched over in the chair as if he was trying to warm himself up. His legs began shaking nervously and his face was pale and sickly. His chapped lips quivered and a look of fear appeared in his eyes as Boukrisha started talking.

  “The best thing you ever did was turn yourself in,” he said.

  “I wasn’t on the run,” said Othman disdainfully.

  Boukrisha grabbed him by the collar and shook him violently.

  “Don’t you raise your voice at me, understand?” he screamed in Othman’s face.

  “Leave him alone,” said Alwaar with a hint of mockery. “He has a law degree from the French track.”

  This information lit Boukrisha up, who didn’t even have a college degree. His voice became sharper, as if he was feeling a bit of envy.

  “Even a PhD in criminal justice won’t help him with us,” he said bitterly.

  Alwaar winked at Boukrisha, indicating to him to calm down.

  “So, let’s start from the beginning,” said Alwaar, flipping through his papers and addressing Othman with a deadly heaviness. “You said you left to take the dog out for a walk around eleven at night, as usual. When you got back, you found your wife murdered, right?”

  Othman nodded.

  “How’d you know she was dead?”

  Othman’s words got stuck in his throat. He felt like the noose was tightening around his neck. He remembered his fingerprints might be on the knife handle. He closed his eyes as if he was about to pass out. The detective and inspector exchanged glances, watching him closely.

  And what if his prints aren’t on the knife? He can’t remember if he wiped them off or not. What he remembered clearly was washing off the blood that was stuck to his hands after calling the ambulance and the police. He decided not to risk telling the details of what happened until he knows if his prints are on the handle. There’s no way they could’ve received the lab report yet, Othman thought to himself. He let out a sigh and shook his head trying to drum up some courage from inside.

  “She was still and wasn’t breathing,” he said, his eyes not focusing on anything. “I thought she was dead.”

  Alwaar seemed like he wasn’t listening to Othman. He flipped through his notebook and lingered for a while on a page.

  “Did you meet anyone while you were out with the dog?” he asked without looking up.

  This question led Othman to deduce the kind of investigation the detective was following. Othman loved police novels and had some solid knowledge about criminal investigations he picked up from law school. He knew the detective would get past the little details first and then go straight to what would let him get at evidence that’ll prove the charge.

  Othman thought about all the possible ways he could answer the question. He then decided to risk giving them Naeema’s name, hoping to send the investigation in a different direction, which might eventually prove to be even more difficult for him. But, if nothing else, this would stop them from talking about the crime, at least for the time being.

  “I’ve got an alibi for when I was out with the dog,” he said, taking a deep breath as if getting rid of a heavy burden. “I wasn’t alone. My girlfriend was with me.”

  Neither cop interrupted him. It was as though what he’d said wasn’t anything new. Alwaar lit a cigarette, even though he didn’t smoke during interrogations. He knew this information was worth the exception.

  “Why didn’t you say that yesterday?” asked Boukrisha, butting in.

  “I didn’t think things would go in this direction,” said Othman in a naive voice.

  He then asked if he could have a cigarette and Alwaar nodded. A cloud of smoke soon filled the office.

  “What’s the name of this girl?” asked Alwaar calmly.

  “Naeema Lamalih.”

  Alwaar took the name down on a blank page in his notebook.

  “Where does she live?”

  “Al-Jabal al-Dhahabi Street, number five, Maarif.”

  Alwaar paused a moment at the number five. He realized it was the number of a jockey who loses the race all the time.

  “Where and when’d you meet her?”

  “Two years ago. She’s a sports trainer at Yasmina Club. Actually, she was Sofia’s trainer.”

  Boukrisha bit down on his lips. Parts of the puzzle were starting to fall into place.

  “Your wife,” Alwaar said without looking up from his notebook, “she worked out at Yasmina Club. Naeema, her trainer, she’s your girlfriend, right?”

  Othman nodded.

  “How’d you two first meet?”

  “By chance. I was waiting for Sofia outside the club. She came out with Naeema and Sofia introduced us.”

  Alwaar moved his head as if the rest of the story was obvious.

  “How’d it happen you were with your girlfriend near the villa past eleven at night?”

  Othman took a number of drags on his cigarette, one after the other, and then put it out in the ashtray in front of him on the desk.

  “Actually, we meet near a square not far from the villa where the dog would play,” he replied without the least hesitation. “We meet there almost every night. Naeema drives over and waits for me there. We chat in the car for fifteen minutes and then she leaves.”

  “Don’t you meet at other times?”

  “Almost never. Sofia’s very jealous. She’d watch my every move. She rarely left me alone.”

  The detective smiled and put out his cigarette.

  “How’d you pull off these nightly meetings with Naeema, so close to the villa?” Boukrisha asked, quickly lighting up a cigarette of his own.

  “My pretext was taking the dog out for a walk. After a while, it seemed normal to her and she didn’t ask any questions. She never thought I was meeting someone while out with the dog.”

  Alwaar kept quiet for a while, turning over a number of ideas in his mind. He leaned his head back and closed his notebook with a bewildered look in his eyes. It seemed like he was about to make a decisive call. Othman and Boukrisha locked eyes waiting for Alwaar to start talking.

  “Don’t leave the city,” he said to Othman bluntly. “Wait for us to contact you.”

  Othman jumped up as if he’d just had an electric shock.

  “That means . . . .”

  “Goodbye.”

  A look of brash happiness appeared on Othman’s face. He shook Alwaar’s hand warmly but when he turned to Boukrisha, the inspector looked away. As Othman left the office, Boukrisha slammed the door behind him.

  “You let him go just like that?” he asked, unable to hide the anger in his voice.

  Alwaar got up, putting his hand on his lower back in fatigue.

  “And what do you want me to do in this age of democracy and human rights?” he said derisively. “There’s no more falaqa, no more shock treatment, no more beatings or torture. If I kept him here, we’d have to take him to the
DA after forty-eight or seventy-two hours at the most. And what would I tell him? We don’t have any proof against this guy. All we can do is keep him under surveillance twenty-four hours a day. And you’re the one who’s going to arrange it. I want a detailed report on his movements at the top of every hour. And I don’t want to hear again he slipped away. Understood?”

  7

  Detective Alwaar reached the door of the building where Yasmina Club was located. He waited a few minutes until he heard the sound of people coming down the stairs. He then saw a group of women wearing jackets on top of their workout clothes. They had just taken a shower.

  He looked at his watch and saw it was seven in the evening. He began pacing in front of the building door with his hands in his pockets. He didn’t have any idea what time Naeema got off work. When he saw some other women go in the building with sports bags, he was sure another aerobics class was about to start. He decided to take advantage of the break between workouts and headed in.

  The bright neon lights scattered through the club glittered along the wall mirrors. He heard some women’s voices laughing gracefully. The scents of perfume mixed with sweat clung to his nostrils. The ground was covered with yellow leather exercise pads. There was a door leading to the locker room, where the voices were coming from.

  As for the workout area, it was empty except for two young women lying on their backs. Alwaar felt embarrassed by their tight spandex clothes that revealed the curves of their bodies. He turned around quietly and went back out to the street.

  The first woman was Naeema and the second, shorter one was Selwa. No older than twenty-four, Selwa was extremely attractive, with short hair dyed light blonde.

  The two were lying down, relaxing and talking in what seemed like a whisper.

  “The old lady’s dead,” said Naeema, looking up at the ceiling.

  Selwa sat straight up and looked over at her friend.

  “Dead? That’s impossible. She was doing aerobics here yesterday with the best of ’em.”

  “She didn’t die a natural death,” said Naeema without moving. “She was murdered.”

  “Who killed her?” Selwa asked in a tone full of fear as she put her hand on her chest, staring at Naeema.

  “God knows. Yesterday, I was with Othman at our usual place. When he went back to the villa, he found her murdered, with a knife stuck in her stomach.”

  Naeema noticed her friend’s hands were shaking, and sat up.

  “What are you thinking about?” Naeema asked, perplexed.

  “If that’s what really happened, God will keep you safe,” said Selwa, smiling strangely.

  A woman came into the workout area from the locker room. Naeema looked at her watch.

  “Othman will have a lot of problems with the police before they find the killer,” she said, getting up.

  “Do they suspect him?” Selwa asked with a hint of fear in her voice, putting her hand over her heart.

  “He went to the police station this morning and hasn’t called me yet.”

  A group of women, most of them overweight mothers, came out of the locker room. They were wearing tight sports clothes that accentuated their stomachs, breasts, and backsides, which had grown flabby from sitting in front of their computer screens for too long. Most of them were bank and company employees. Apart from them, there was a group of single and recently married women who were still fit. These were the ones Sofia would insist on working out with.

  Naeema yelled out for them to follow along with her. She looked for Selwa and saw she had disappeared.

  Outside on the street, Alwaar finished his second cigarette and decided to storm that place of perfume and sweat. He scaled the stairs for the second time, panting. He walked to the door at the end of the hallway and without hesitation went in the club.

  “What do you want?” yelled Naeema at him immediately. “Women only!”

  The detective nodded, but that didn’t stop him from looking closely at the face of this beautiful woman and at her perfectly round breasts.

  “Are you Naeema?” he asked, struggling not to steal a glance at the others.

  When she heard him utter her name, she knew immediately who he was. Her face went pale.

  “Yes, I’m her.”

  “Criminal police. Can we talk a bit?”

  She didn’t want anyone to pay much attention to this visit. She turned around quickly and Alwaar took advantage of the opportunity to let his eyes wander over the women. It seemed he was enjoying the view so much that he didn’t hear Naeema ask him to follow her.

  “Please go ahead,” she repeated in an embarrassed voice.

  She led him to the next hallway, opened an office door, and asked him to go in. She left him alone for a minute and in no time, she came back wearing a light jacket over her sports clothes. She closed the door and stood opposite him. Alwaar noticed that her face was pale. He could almost hear the beating of her heart. He was waiting for her to say something, but she didn’t break the silence.

  “No doubt you know why I’m here,” he said in a monotone. “You were expecting me.”

  She shook her head to throw her hair back from her face.

  “No, I wasn’t,” she said, looking away from him. “But I know why you’re here. Othman came over this morning and told me what happened. He then went to see you at the police station.”

  Alwaar nodded, pleased with what she said.

  “What’d he tell you exactly?”

  “He said he found his wife murdered.”

  “Didn’t he tell you where he was when she was killed?”

  She hesitated for a moment, remembering that Othman told her to tell the truth. Her face betrayed how nervous she was.

  “He was with me. We’ve had a relationship for two years. We don’t have a chance to meet, except late at night. We talk for about fifteen minutes in my car and then I leave.”

  Alwaar looked at her with a knowing smile on his lips. The door opened suddenly and a brown-skinned woman wearing cleaning clothes and holding a broom stepped in the room. She was shocked to see a man in the office.

  “Naeema, they’re asking for you outside,” she let out in a rough voice.

  Alwaar took out his business card and handed it to her.

  “Tomorrow at ten o’clock. I’ll be waiting for you at the station.”

  Naeema finished work at nine in the evening. She took a shower, got dressed, and wrapped her hair in a wool cap without much care. She went down the building stairs and walked quickly toward the gas station where she’d left her car. She was agitated and wanted to get back to her apartment as quickly as possible.

  The street was empty except for some taxis speeding by. The trip back to her house seemed to take forever. Alone in her car, she felt overcome by fear. She kept checking her rear-view mirror and drove in the far right lane, trying to avoid the attention of busybody drivers. She was relieved when she got to the door of her building. As she was parking between two cars, the night guard came out like a ghost. He was about fifty years old. He wore a suit like a military uniform and had a thick stick in his hand. He greeted her with his head lowered and began waving enthusiastically for her to back up. The guard’s presence made her feel safe. She opened her purse, took out ten dirhams, and gave the coins to him as a tip on top of the monthly sum she paid him.

  After getting out of the car, she opened the door of the building with her key and went up the stairs two at a time with her athletic agility.

  Once she was gone, the night guard walked down the street, looking furtively around him until he stopped at a car parked in the distance in a dark space.

  “That’s Naeema, his girlfriend,” he told the driver quickly and then walked off.

  There were two inspectors inside the car, one of them holding the police radio. He called the station to pass on the information since the inspectors didn’t need anything else. They already got from the guard everything they wanted and more.

  As she climbed the final flight
of stairs to her door, Naeema suddenly put her hand on her chest, about to scream out in fear. She didn’t expect to find Othman sitting outside her apartment waiting for her. She wasn’t happy to see him submissively crouched on the ground with his head buried between his knees.

  “Did any of the neighbors see you like this?” she grumbled, hurrying to open the door and get him inside.

  She turned on the lights and shut the door, staring at him. He seemed like a stranger to her with his unshaven face, withered eyes, and distressed look. She dropped her purse on the couch and went straight into the kitchen. The small apartment had two rooms, an entranceway, kitchen, and bathroom. The furniture was neatly arranged and the place gave off an air of relaxation, proving its owner was a good decorator.

  Before she met Othman, she shared the apartment with another woman who worked in one of the big companies in Casablanca. She made it hard for Naeema to meet Othman, so he suggested to her to ask the roommate to move out, offering to pay the whole rent, which was about Naeema’s entire salary.

  “Why didn’t you call?” she asked, taking a bottle of water out of the refrigerator.

  “I tried several times,” he said in an angry tone, throwing himself down on a small chair. “Your phone wasn’t on. Why didn’t you call me?”

  She held the bottle of water up and drank until it was empty.

  “That’s not important. What’d the police do with you?”

  Othman felt she was overwhelmed by anxiety. She left him for a moment and came back after taking off her coat and cap. She shook her hair a number of times, spreading it out like silk, and then collected it in a ponytail. Othman swallowed with difficulty.

  “They asked me about this and that and I kept telling them the story of what happened. I had to confess to them I was with you when I took the dog out for a walk.”

  She threw herself down on the chair opposite him.

  “A detective came to see me at work. He asked me to go to the police station tomorrow.”

  She gave him the business card and Othman looked to make sure it was Alwaar’s.

  “What’d he ask you?”

  “He wanted to double-check I was with you.”