Three

by D. A. Mishani

  Eran still didn’t look at her when he said, “Ordinary.”

  “She was alone when you talked to her, right? You didn’t see anyone else in her room?”

  He hadn’t.

  “But did she mention that someone was with her? Or that she’d met someone there?”

  He didn’t know.

  “Do you remember if, in the days before Mum’s trip, she told you anything about her mood or about what she was going through? Did you maybe feel like she wasn’t in a great mood?”

  That was the only question she regretted. Eran had been nine at the time, and his father had come to visit after being absent for months, so what could he have sensed? She decided to change course: “I want to ask you some different questions, some of which might sound silly or illogical, but that’s how it goes sometimes in our work.”

  The therapist smiled at both of them and said, “Ours, too, right?”

  “Do you remember if Mum ever talked about a woman called Emilia?”

  No.

  “Not an Israeli woman. Someone from overseas. Emilia Nodyeves?”

  Eran shook his head.

  “Or a man called Tadeusz?”

  Eran still looked back and forth between the therapist and the rug. But when she asked, “Do the names Gil or Nachum mean anything to you?” he looked up at her with his lovely eyes and nodded.

  “Which one?”

  Gil.

  He said that was Mum’s friend. She used to go to movies with him, and once they went to Jerusalem together. The therapist confirmed that Orna had mentioned a friend but he couldn’t remember his name.

  She still didn’t know that this was the moment that would change her view of the investigation, not even when she asked Eran, “Do you happen to remember Gil’s last name?” He didn’t. She wanted to hide the direction the investigation was going in from them, and the possible connection to Emilia’s suicide, so she added, “Because I’d be happy to talk to him and for him to tell me about Mum. Do you happen to remember anything she told you about him? Maybe where he worked?”

  Eran didn’t know. But when Orna asked, “Do you remember if you ever saw him?” Eran immediately said that he’d seen him three times.

  “Do you remember where? Or when?”

  He remembered everything. He remembered meeting Gil by the box office at the cinema in Dizengoff Centre when they went to see How to Train Your Dragon. Gil was with another woman and two older girls, and Orna had introduced him to Eran. Another time he’d seen him from a distance, perhaps even before the time at the movies: Gil was in his car, he’d come to pick Mum up for the trip to Jerusalem, and Eran had watched from the window as she got into the car and waved goodbye.

  The third time was hard for Eran to talk about, and the therapist tried to help him. He asked Eran if he was allowed to tell the policewoman, and when Eran nodded, the therapist said Eran had seen them at home. Orna hadn’t told him that Gil was coming to visit, and she didn’t know that Eran had woken up in the middle of the night and seen them asleep. Orna hadn’t told him about it the next day either, and in fact they’d never discussed it. Eran told the therapist about it a few weeks after what happened to Orna in Romania, as an example of how Mum had kept secrets from him. The therapist had tried to convince him that maybe Orna wasn’t hiding things but just hadn’t had time to tell him, because it had happened a few days before she’d left.

  Orna tensed up and asked if they knew exactly when this was, because she remembered from testimonies of relatives and friends that Orna was not in a relationship in the weeks before her trip to Romania.

  “I might have it written down somewhere in my old notes,” the therapist said, but Eran had already leaned over to a blue backpack on the floor by the armchair and taken out the brown notebook that Orna had bought him for his birthday.

  The date when Eran had seen Orna and Gil was written in the notebook. He told her the date, then leafed back and added, “I also know what car he has, if that helps you find him and talk to him. He has a red Kia Sportage. I saw it when he came to take Mum to Jerusalem.”

  Orna called Commander Ilana Liss that night, after she got the second answer from the registration bureau.

  The first one had been a disappointment. Attorney Gil Hamtzani, who had employed Emilia Nodyeves to clean his flat, owned two vehicles: a metallic-grey Toyota C-HR and a Volkswagen Polo. Orna doodled the same blue square over and over again on her page of questions, then asked the clerk: “The C-HR is a new model Toyota, isn’t it? That’s not what I need. Can you tell me which cars he owned before those ones?”

  When she called Ilana Liss she already knew with almost complete certainty that she wasn’t wrong and that there was a connection between the deaths of Emilia and Orna.

  “So what are you saying?” Ilana said. “I don’t get it. That he was responsible for both of their deaths?”

  “I don’t know yet. I do know that he apparently knew both of them, that he had a romantic relationship with Orna while he was married, and possibly with Emilia too. Or maybe with Emilia it was different and she somehow found out that he was connected to the first death, I don’t know yet. Maybe that explains the things she wrote in her notebook. What’s certain is that they both allegedly committed suicide under peculiar circumstances, without any of the people close to them understanding why, and that they both knew him.”

  “So explain to me the ‘allegedly.’”

  “Emilia definitely worked for Attorney Gil Hamtzani. That we know. And Orna was in a romantic relationship, right before her trip, with a man named Gil, who drove the exact same car Gil Hamtzani owned at the time. So I’m assuming it’s the same man, Ilana, but I have no definitive confirmation, and of course I’m still checking.”

  Ilana Liss went into her study and lit a cigarette by the open window so that her husband and her kids wouldn’t smell the smoke. She wasn’t in uniform. She wore a thick, green cardigan over a black shirt and black sweatpants, and she watched the smoke she exhaled scatter into the night as she talked. “Checking what, exactly?” she asked.

  Orna said she wanted to find out where Gil Hamtzani was on the day Orna allegedly committed suicide—whether he was in Bucharest or in Israel—and where he was on the day Emilia’s body was found. She wanted to know more details about him, about his history, his relationships with women, but without questioning his family or immediate surroundings, so as not to arouse suspicion. In fact, she was still far from being convinced it was the same Gil, but she’d decided to move forward on that presumption, and when she was later asked why she’d acted that way, she could not explain it. She wanted to get records of Gil’s phone calls and precise dates of when he’d left and entered Israel, and to file a request to listen in on his phone, at home and at work, even though it was still premature.

  Only after Ilana Liss authorized her to start the procedure for opening a covert investigation did Orna tell her husband, Avner, about the case. He tried to listen attentively, even though he was tired, because he could see how upset she was. He turned the girls’ reading lamp off and tucked them in and made two cups of coffee for him and Orna so that he could keep his eyes open. They sat in the kitchen while she told him about her breakthrough with Eran and the sense of urgency she’d felt since reading about Orna Azran in Emilia Nodyeves’s notebook and had considered for the first time that the two cases were connected.

  “If that turns out to be true, then it’s really unbelievable that you figured it out,” said Avner, clearly impressed.

  “I’m almost positive. And it’s all thanks to her son, do you see? I wouldn’t have been able to verify the connection without him.” She told him that since Hava Yashar had put Emilia’s cardboard box in front of her that day, she’d felt something propelling her towards this case and it wouldn’t let go. She’d never felt this way before, not even when she’d been involved in big cases.

&n
bsp; “It’s because of the maternity leave, isn’t it?” Avner suggested. “After four months at home you need this kind of action.”

  “I don’t think so. I feel that I was supposed to meet that boy, do you understand?”

  But he didn’t. And he managed to irritate her by saying that she’d always been that way, extremely driven to prove herself and get to the top, and that this case, if it turned out to be what she thought it was, was a chance for her to show everyone what she could do.

  She stayed up long after he fell asleep. At 3 A.M. she woke up to feed Danielle and soothe Roni, who had woken up crying because she thought there was someone in the house. Even so, she got up before Avner did, when it was still dark outside. She made herself some sweet tea with lemon and drank it in the dining area by the closed window, which the rain was beating down on, before she made the girls breakfast and packed their lunches.

  The next breakthrough came five days later, when she decided to show Gil’s neighbours the pictures of Orna and Emilia, without saying anything about their connection with him. She arrived shortly after ten o’clock, after making sure Gil and his wife had left for work. She went from door to door in their building, showing the pictures and asking if anyone had ever seen these women. Only when she got to the second floor did she realize she was in the wrong building: this was not where he took Orna, nor was it the flat Emilia had cleaned, based on the address she’d written in her notebook and the testimony Gil himself had given Inspector A. when he was first questioned.

  The plain-clothes detective who accompanied her went up ahead into the correct building, in Givatayim, and knocked on Gil Hamtzani’s door. No one answered, so she went from door to door, showing the pictures.

  The neighbour across the hall didn’t recognize Orna’s photo, but when she saw Emilia’s picture she said, “Her I know. Definitely. She used to clean the flat across the way.”

  Orna already knew that, but she did not know the things the neighbour told her next.

  She asked the neighbour if she’d ever talked to Emilia, and she replied, “Actually, yes. By chance. I knocked on the door while she was there and asked if she wanted to work for us, because the guy who cleaned our place was deported. She didn’t want to.”

  “Do you remember when the last time you saw her was?” Orna asked.

  “The last time? No, I don’t think so. A long time ago. Actually, I do remember seeing her come over in the evening once. And on a strange day—I think it was a Friday or Saturday, because I wondered what she was doing there, whether she’d come to clean on the weekend or if she was going in without him knowing, because he always left her the key in the fuse-box cupboard. I even thought of calling to ask Gil if she was supposed to be there, but I don’t have his number, and also I didn’t want to get her into trouble. Did something happen to her?”

  The neighbour couldn’t say which Friday or Saturday she’d seen Emilia at Gil’s in the evening, but Orna had no doubt that it was the day before her body was found on Ha’Galil Street. It suddenly occurred to her that there might have been, or still be, other women. “Have you seen another woman come here since then?”

  The neighbour looked at her as if she couldn’t understand the question. “You mean a woman who comes to clean?”

  “To clean, or maybe someone else who comes here a lot.”

  “They refurbished the apartment a few months ago, and I don’t think anyone lives there regularly. I think they rent it out short-term to tourists, and it’s empty a lot of the time. But I don’t understand who you’re looking for. Is it this woman? I think I even remember her name: Emilia, isn’t it?”

  “Never mind, I’ll ask them.” She thanked the neighbour and turned around to knock on Gil’s door, even though she knew he wasn’t there. She waited until the neighbour went back inside. Despite the refurbishment, the door was the same old brown wooden door that still had no name on it, just the same slightly rusted copper number: 3.

  11

  He will open the door with a grave expression, looking pale and tense, as if he hasn’t slept for days. He will not say a word when he sees her, and she will stand there, awkward and jumpy, in the doorway to the almost-bare flat, without knowing where she is supposed to go and where he wants them to talk.

  On the kitchen table, which will be the same table, there will be the embroidered tablecloth that Emilia bought, and the wicker basket, with no fruit. A glass mug of steaming water will be on the table, and Gil will point to it and ask what she wants to drink. When she says she doesn’t want anything, he will say, “I’ve made some for myself and I’ll make you some too. Regular tea with lemon and sugar, is that okay?”

  She will still be able to get up and run, but she will remain seated. When he puts the tea on the table and sits down next to her she will say pointedly, “Can you explain why you threatened me?”

  Gil will look almost surprised. “When did I threaten you?”

  She will answer, “What do you mean? Didn’t you threaten to show my husband our emails and tell him about the trip?”

  “You know I wouldn’t do that,” he will say. “It was the only way to get you to meet me.”

  All the rooms will have a faint smell of paint, glue and dampness, which will have replaced the odour of cigarette smoke from the Chinese labourers that permeated it during the refurbishment. The kitchen, bathroom and toilet will be new, and the other rooms will have parquet flooring. The little bedrooms that Emilia cleaned thoroughly, as though they were going to be hers, will be furnished with things he bought alone at Ikea. The wooden wardrobe in the big bedroom will have been replaced by a new one, with sliding glass doors. In the window, with a view of the garden where Emilia used to see Nachum, and where Orna loved to look at the tall trees swaying against the house, an electric blind will have replaced the old one, and the copper bell that hung from the frame will be gone. There will be a suitcase containing clothes, toiletries, ten thousand shekels in cash and an ultra-Orthodox Jew’s outfit: black coat, black felt hat, wig purchased that week in Bnei Brak. In one of the drawers he will have two passports with his picture but different names, and two plane tickets to different destinations that he does not yet know if he will use.

  She will not drink the tea Gil made her but will wrap her hand around the mug, and when he tries to touch her she will pull back and not let him. He will say, “I’m sorry I cancelled the trip, but I really had no choice. Won’t you forgive me? Everything was going so well for us.” She will say, “Gil, you have to understand—I don’t believe you any more. Not a single word. Not just because of the trip but because of the threats. I came here to ask you for something, and then I’m leaving. I want you to listen to me for a second and be rational, so that we can end this respectably, okay?” And he will say, “Of course. Whatever you want.”

  It will still not be too late for her to get out. It will be early evening, only just getting dark. Outside it will be unusually quiet for a Saturday night, with no cars passing by.

  “I don’t believe you any more. It’s that simple, and we have nothing more to talk about. I don’t want to know why you came on to me and why you wanted me to go away with you and why you cancelled at the last minute and what you actually wanted from me. I don’t want to know who you are or what you want. Whether you’re a lawyer or not, whether you’re married or not. I’m just scared of you now and of what you could do to my life. Are you listening to me? So I’m asking you to delete my phone number and the text messages and emails I sent you, and for us to cut off this relationship. I promise to delete your messages and not make contact with you again. Do you agree?”

  He will look at her for a moment and seem to be deliberating, but he will say, “Yes, I agree. Even though it doesn’t make me happy. I had no intention of hurting you.”

  “So you’re deleting everything? Not tomorrow but now? While I’m here, and you’ll show me?”

  “If that
’s what you want, then yes. I don’t have my work computer here, but I have the phone.” He will take a phone she does not recognize out of his pocket and then put it back and take out the phone she remembers. He will put it on the table. “But I want to know: did you really think I was the man from the newspaper picture? Did you think I did something to that woman? And that I was planning to hurt you too?”

  She will say, “I don’t know. I didn’t know what to think. It was a coincidence, that picture, but then you suddenly cancelled without any explanation. The whole thing stressed me out. It could be that I was just really panicked by the idea of the trip, and the way you behaved didn’t exactly help.”

  “Did you tell anyone about it?”

  “About what?”

  “About the picture. The newspaper.”

  “Who would I tell? Who could I tell? No one knows about me and you. And I would like it to stay that way.”

  “Me too.”

  But instead of dropping the subject, she will go on: “Why were you so hurt, can you explain that? If you have nothing to do with that story, why were you so spooked by what I wrote? That’s what I still can’t understand. Are you sure you didn’t cancel the trip because I hurt your feelings?”

  The blinds in the living room will be slightly open, but the thick glass panes will be shut and that is why the flat will be so silent. Everything will be closed up in the bedroom, too, and it will be completely dark. Gil will lock the front door from inside when she goes to the toilet, and for the rest of their conversation the key will be in his pocket. Before she arrives, he will have covered the bed with an old grey sheet he doesn’t need.

  He will get up from the kitchen table and come back with a glass of water and a little plastic bag that he will put down by the table leg. Only when he asks, “And if I do have something to do with the woman in Romania, then . . . ?” will it be clear that he has made up his mind what to do.