by Batya Gur
“With what?” demanded Michael.
“A thin wire. Or maybe a plastic cord. Fishing tackle, let’s say. If it’s really thin it can cut the head right off, slicing between two vertebrae.”
“A wire?”
“If it’s sharp enough. If enough force is exerted. If it’s tightened from behind, let’s say, wrapped around the killer’s hands, or something. If there’s a counterforce from behind, then it can pass precisely between two vertebrae and cut through the neck just like this. Theoretically, death here might have been the result of anoxia, a lack of oxygen to the brain. If a sudden strong pressure is exerted on the neck the whole thing doesn’t take more than a minute. Because of their small diameter, arteries close off before the larger, less compressible trachea. Something thicker, like a cable, could cause either strangulation or stoppage of the blood to the brain. But I’m not sure that in this instance there was enough time for that. The neck is a sensitive area,” he explained, putting the flashlight down next to the corpse. “I’m sure that there Wasn’t time for him to be strangled, but we’ll have a look anyway.”
The flashlight shone directly onto the gaping neck. Michael averted his eyes.
“If he’d been strangled we would have seen bulging eyes, burst blood vessels in the eyes, edema, blueness in the face, a swollen tongue, and so on,” Solomon argued with an invisible opponent. “But this deep cut in the neck proves that there was no pressure at all. In strangulation the cause of death is the closing off of the large blood vessels leading to the brain, which is not what we have here,” he added in an argumentative tone, as if someone had demanded proof. “Here we have a circumferential cut. Someone cut through the front part of the neck and penetrated deeply through the cartilage. The resistances, that is, the front of the neck and the back of the head pressing against the pillar, made for the speed and depth of that cut.”
“Maybe the plaster on his shirt has nothing to do with his death. Maybe it got there earlier. In the morning, let’s say,” said Michael. He heard his voice tremble. Every second he stood here might be the moment Nita woke up. How could he have left her alone? She’s with Theo, he tried to reassure himself. She’s not alone. She won’t wake up so soon, he thought. His legs felt heavy. But he had to listen to everything the pathologist had to say.
“Maybe,” said Solomon doubtfully. “They’ll find out more at Forensics. But it isn’t so important. It’s clear that he was standing, because of the drops of blood I showed you before.”
“I remember,” said Michael, his voice still trembling uncontrollably, “someone once telling me about death by vagal reflex, where pressure on the neck leads to a sudden drop in blood pressure and instant death, even before the loss of blood.”
Dr. Solomon let out a whinny of laughter. “All these speculations are really superfluous,” he said condescendingly. “If you sever someone’s arteries and trachea he’s dead—with or without a plunge in his blood pressure.”
“So, what are you saying? He was leaning against the pillar, and someone from behind with a thin wire . . .”
“Or a plastic cord, if it was very thin and strong,” Solomon interjected.
“Slipped the cord around his neck from behind, and pulled? Like this?” Michael stood behind the pillar, put his arms around it, and pulled the two ends of an imaginary cord.
“Yes, more or less,” agreed Solomon. “Remember that I haven’t examined everything yet and that this isn’t a lab. But that’s how I see it. The victim was standing, leaning against the pillar, his throat was exposed, and after . . . Just a minute!” he cried with sudden animation, looking intently at the palm of Gabriel’s right hand. “Look at this!” he cried triumphantly, and he hurried to look through the magnifying glass: “Look, do you see this cut?” Michael kneeled down next to the body. He looked through the magnifying glass at the cuts on the inside of the dead man’s right thumb and index finger joints. The thought pierced Michael that only a short time ago this hand had been holding a violin bow. Then the pathologist examined the left hand. “Here it’s fainter,” he murmured.
“Did he resist?” asked Tzilla.
“He didn’t have much of a chance to. But you see how thin the cord was. He grabbed it with both hands, instinctively, to free himself, but of course to no avail. It’s important for us because it confirms our theory of the method.”
“A wire? A nylon cord?” Michael speculated, thrusting aside the mental picture of the distorted face, the struggling hands. “I suppose it didn’t leave any traces on the neck?”
“How could it?” said the forensics investigator dismissively from behind him. “A uniform cut, a smooth cord,” he said. “But if we find the cord it’ll show traces of the neck. Only we haven’t found it yet.” And he looked at Yaffa, who was moving from tile to tile on her knees.
“We need more people!” instructed Michael. “At least two more.” Yaffa looked at the investigator, who nodded his head and left in the direction of the stage.
“Even if we find it,” remarked Tzilla, “it’ll be clean, no? Whoever murdered him will have cleaned it.”
“They can clean it all day!” said the investigator. “There are things you can’t wipe off. And maybe we’ll get lucky and find the gloves somewhere, because he had to have worn gloves, otherwise he would have cut himself. You’d better check for cuts on people’s hands. Where could he have hidden the gloves if he’s still here?”
The investigator wasn’t much older than Yuval, Michael reflected as he repeated the words, “if he’s still here.” But he already has a degree in chemistry and solid achievements in his field.
“You know our pathologist Kestenbaum, don’t you?” intervened Solomon. Michael smiled and nodded his head. “You know what he likes to say? ‘Every contact leaves a trace.’ He always says it in English,” said Solomon, snickering. “Hungarian English. So we’ll keep samples of skin from the neck and examine the weapon under a microscope later for a match. If you find it for me, I’ll find something on it. Or they will,” he said and looked toward the forensic investigator. He picked up the thermometer again and added glumly: “I don’t think we’ll find particles of metal on the neck. It seems to have been a very smooth wire.”
Michael left the pathologist and the forensic investigators at the scene, crossed the stage, and walked through the hall toward the big wooden doors leading into the lobby. He pushed the heavy doors open and saw a large group of people waiting for him in the distance. Tzilla followed him, beckoning to the concertmaster, who trailed slowly behind them. Only when Michael was already outside the hall, as he was letting go of the wooden doors closing slowly behind him, and staring at the people waiting for him, did the significance of what he had seen hit him. In a flash, he thought of Nita bending over her open cello case, kneeling down and removing from a narrow compartment a thin, semitransparent envelope, like the one he had seen earlier in the open violin case.
He pulled the wooden doors open and ran back into the hall, stopping next to the open violin case on the seat in the front row. Tzilla stood holding the door as if she were unsure which side of it she should be on. Avigdor, the concertmaster, was still standing in the hall, at the end of the first row of seats, as if crossing the distance to the doors was too much for him. At the sight of Michael running back down the aisle and stopping at the violin case, he recoiled in alarm, and then he hesitantly approached the seat in the middle of the row. “That’s my violin,” he said with obvious apprehension. “I shouldn’t have left it here like that. It’s a very valuable instrument, but in the . . .” His voice died away, but his hand gesturing toward the back of the stage completed the sentence.
Michael sat down on the seat next to the violin case, picked it up, and laid it on his knees. First he looked at the photographs of the young couple and baby attached to the red felt lining inside the lid. Then he carefully passed his finger delicately over each string of the violin, touched the cloth folded under the gleaming reddish instrument, and fingered the blo
ck of wrapped rosin in the little compartment. Only then did he extract the thin, semitransparent envelope and carefully remove the strings rolled up inside it. “Four,” he murmured as he felt each of them with his fingertips. Avigdor stood over him wringing his hands. “I always have four,” he said tremulously, “because they snap. You can never know . . . I’m always prepared. . . .”
“And this is the thinnest,” said Michael, holding one of the four between his fingers and stretching it out to its full length.
“That’s the E string,” said Avigdor, as if apologizing in the name of all the strings. “It’s the highest, that’s why it’s the thinnest.”
“Dr. Solomon!” Michael shouted at the top of his voice, and Solomon quickly emerged from backstage and hurried to the edge of the stage, where he remained standing under the weak light. “Could it . . . ?” asked Michael loudly and suddenly stopped. He looked at Avigdor, looked at the string, and then mounted the stage. “Could it have been a violin string?” he asked in a whisper as he stood very close to Solomon and stretched the E string between his hands.
Solomon felt the string with his gloved fingers, then peeled off the right-hand glove, threw it aside, and felt again. He nodded and hummed. “It could, why not?” And after a pause he added: “If it’s long enough. We’ll have to check the length—you’d need seventy, eighty centimeters at least to wrap around the hands,” he added loudly.
“Shhh, keep your voice down,” warned Michael.
Solomon looked at him uncomprehendingly.
“I want it to remain under wraps. Like that time with the bra strap. Do you remember? When we didn’t reveal what the woman had been strangled with?”
Solomon nodded. “You said it was effective during the lie-detector test,” he recalled.
“The less they know, the more we’ll know,” pronounced Michael, adding less authoritatively: “Maybe.” He peered into the half-lit hall, where Avigdor had dropped limply into the seat next to the violin case. Tzilla was still standing at the end of the row.
“Shimshon!” Michael called out. “Come here quickly!” The young forensics investigator bounded over the stage as if he’d been waiting for the call.
“It could be,” singsonged Dr. Solomon as he fingered the string. “It definitely could, but maybe it’s a little on the short side.”
“Does it have to be from a violin?” asked Michael.
Dr. Solomon frowned judiciously. “No, I’ll have to look at viola strings, too,” he said without humming at all. “They used to make strings out of catgut,” he said with a chuckle. “Is there a viola here? We also need a cello, and maybe a double bass. We have to check the length and thickness of the strings.”
“The musicians are sitting outside with their instruments,” Shimshon reminded him.
“I’ll go and get someone with a viola,” volunteered Tzilla, who had also mounted the stage in the meantime.
“I don’t want them to know what we’re looking for,” said Michael. “From now on keep it to yourselves.”
“So how will we check?” asked Shimshon. “How’ll we find out?”
“We’ll have to invent something. Slip it into other questions. And we have to check their hands.”
“There’s no reason why we shouldn’t start with the violists,” said Tzilla. “Most of the string players are still here. Some of them were going to work with him.” She turned her head toward backstage and shuddered. “I’ll go get one of them, and you think about how we can put it to them.”
“Bring a cellist, too,” Dr. Solomon called after her as she pushed the heavy wooden doors.
“I’m going to faint,” Avigdor said weakly from the dimly lit hall. “I feel sick.”
“We’ll get you some water in a minute,” promised Michael, and climbed down from the stage. “Sit still and breathe deeply,” he said as he sat down next to him. “Stretch your legs out in front of you and take a deep breath.” Then he casually asked: “Where were you while Gabriel van Gelden was backstage?” Avigdor choked and coughed at length before managing to say: “I . . . I . . .” Michael waited. “After the rehearsal, when he left the stage, I thought that we were taking a break. At least until he would come back to talk to us. So I went outside, into the fresh air. I had something to eat. There’s a kiosk that sells sandwiches. I didn’t have time to eat in the morning.”
Michael fingered the violin case. “Are all your strings in here?” he asked.
Avigdor nodded. His breathing was shallow and rapid, and his hand trembled. “I always have four spares,” he said. “To be on the safe side.”
Dr. Solomon came down from the stage. “Allow me,” he said, and, taking the four spare strings, he ran his fingers carefully over them, one by one. After a moment he nodded at Michael and walked over to the stairs at the side of the hall. “It would be possible,” he said to Michael when the latter approached him, “with these thicker violin strings, too.” He glanced at Avigdor, who raised his eyes, his head trembling on his neck. “I have to ask him a couple of questions,” he said, excusing himself, and he went over to him. Michael didn’t hear the questions, but he heard Avigdor’s answer: “This is the A string and this is the D,” he muttered. “And this?” asked Dr. Solomon, holding the thickest of the strings. “That’s the G,” said Avigdor weakly, as if reluctantly. “The viola is tuned a fifth lower,” he added, his voice trembling. “Why . . . why, do you think . . . ?” he asked anxiously. “But that’s impossible!” he cried out, and Michael saw in his frantically blinking eyes the image of Gabriel van Gelden’s severed neck.
“Don’t say anything to anyone for the time being, please,” he warned. Avigdor choked, swallowed, shook his head, and clasped his hands together.
“Are there four strings on the viola, too?” asked Solomon.
Avigdor nodded and said: “Yes, but they’re a fifth—five notes—lower.”
“So they’re thicker than the violin strings,” Solomon clarified.
Once more the wooden doors opened slowly and Tzilla came into the hall. Behind her was Yaffa from Forensics and two other women. The thin one with the cropped hair was holding a viola case, and the younger one—still almost a girl, with a long braid hanging down the side of her neck and dangling over her chest—was holding a cello.
Tzilla took Michael by the arm and drew him aside: “These two didn’t leave the building either during the break or after the rehearsal,” she said. “The one with the short hair says that she waited with the cellist in order to persuade Gabriel van Gelden at least to take her on as an extra player. She’s a pupil of her mother’s or something like that. Anyway, I don’t think there’s any connection . . . I told them we were conducting a search. Neither of them saw the body, not really. They think we’re looking for a knife.”
At his request the violist opened her case and took out her instrument. Michael put it next to Avigdor’s violin, and in comparison to the gleaming red-brown of the violin, the viola paled to a faded yellow-brown. Pretending to be looking for something, he took the cloth out of the case and spread it out, unwrapped the rosin, and fingered a semitransparent envelope. “What’s this?” he asked.
“Spare strings,” replied the violist, and she watched his hands opening the envelope.
“There’s only one here,” he said.
The violist took out the coiled string and peered into the envelope as if to make sure there wasn’t another one inside. “Only one,” she said apologetically. “Only the G.”
“Is this the thickest?” asked Solomon, feeling the spare string with his fingers.
“No, this is the G,” she said, surprised at the question. “The thickest is the C.”
“And how many did you have this morning?” inquired Michael.
“One,” she admitted guiltily. “I intended . . . but I forgot . . . I have some at home,” she promised.
“Did you have the C or the G in your case this morning?” asked Michael.
“It’s the G,” she replied uncomprehendin
gly. “Actually, I should have had an A, because it was my A string that snapped at the last rehearsal, but . . .”
Michael touched the spare G string, and then he turned to the instrument and felt the A tautly strung on it. He handed the viola to Solomon, who examined it and whispered: “Of course, without a doubt.” As Solomon unrolled the spare G string to its full length, he pursed his lips doubtfully and added: “But the length . . . I don’t know, you’d need almost a meter to go around the pillar and hold it tightly at both ends.” Then they spoke to the cellist, who opened her cello case and, kneeling beside it, took out the instrument and put it down carefully. She removed the cloth and music from the case, and took the spare strings from their envelope without any questions. Michael kneeled next to her. Solomon sat on the seat near them and rubbed his knees.
The cellist had three spare strings. She chewed the tip of her braid as she nodded to confirm that there had been three strings there all along.
They asked the two women to wait outside. “You can leave your instruments here. We’ll call you in a minute,” said Tzilla, and shepherded Avigdor away toward the big wooden doors. “You wait here, too. Here, sit down in this armchair,” they heard her say gently to him.
“It’s less than half a millimeter thick,” said Shimshon, holding the spare cello D string.
“Quite definitely less than half,” said Solomon. “It’s really thin—there wouldn’t be any problem with this one, it’s also . . . Just a minute, let me measure it.” He took a tape measure out of his pocket, laid the string out at his feet, pulled out the tape, and announced: “Exactly one meter long.”
“In other words,” reflected Michael aloud, “the cut could have been made with a string from any of these instruments?”
“With any of the thin strings, definitely,” said Solomon, and he hummed. “That includes the A strings of the violins, violas, and cellos. But I’m not sure that the length of the violin strings is right. You never know when things you once learned might come in handy. All of a sudden those violin lessons that made my life hell when I was a boy are paying off.”