Bethlehem Road Murder

by Batya Gur

  “What? What’s that? What did they say?” asked Esther Hayoun in a trembling voice. “Have they found her? Show me what’s written there,” she said, and grabbed the beeper out of his hand. “Who is Tzilla?” she demanded, and the hand holding the beeper waggled at him in a threatening gesture. “What does this mean?”

  “Mrs. Hayoun,” Michael said soothingly and held out his hand to retrieve the beeper delicately. “If you’ll take me to the telephone—you do have a telephone here, don’t you?” he said calmly and soothingly, as if talking to a frightened child. “If you’ll let me phone Tzilla—she’s the policewoman who’s coordinating all the information about the search—we’ll be the wiser.”

  Silently she laid the beeper in his palm and tilted her head in the direction of the bookcase at the far end of the room. A pale blue telephone stood there on a white lace doily next to an old black-and-white picture of a bride and a groom. Even in the bridal gown and despite the glamorous aura with which the photograph tried to endow her, she still looked—Michael continued to dial Tzilla—like a woman who had a hard life. It looked as though the smile had been forced on her by the photographer, and was directed at him, rather than at the skinny, delicate-featured man who stood beside her.

  Chapter 12

  They got there before the ambulance. Michael supported Esther Hayoun to the opening of the abandoned kiosk. From the moment they left the apartment until they reached his car, and again on Yehuda Street, when he stopped in front of the kiosk and they both got out of the car, she leaned on his arm with all her weight and her rapid, heavy breathing was interrupted by voiceless sighs and mutters of “God help us, God help us.” Around the small stone structure there was already a crowd of dozens of people. A police car was parked on the narrow sidewalk and next to it the Criminal Identification lab vehicle, and up the street was another police vehicle and the dog handlers, heading for Hebron Road. For a moment, Esther Hayoun stood fixed to the spot, leaning on his arm and looking around her at the people who made way for them, until her gaze fell on Balilty and her mutterings and sighs increased at the sound of his orders to clear the area. He was standing on the sidewalk in front of the kiosk, waving his hands in all directions and with his body reserving the parking spot for the ambulance that was on its way there.

  Only right in front of the green iron door did Esther Hayoun drop Michael’s arm and suddenly stand up straight. With long, rapid steps she walked right into the dimly lit structure, snapping on her way a large branch that hung down from the old rosebush. A lovely shower of petals fell on the threshold before Michael followed her into the moldy rectangular space, where there were smells of vomit and mildew and urine.

  The flashlight he had borrowed from the Criminal Identification man faintly illuminated the room, into which the rays of autumn light could not penetrate, even after they had broken the locks on the rusty green iron shutters. In its wavering beam he picked out knots of cobwebs, patches of mold, peeling whitewash, shreds of yellowed newspapers, rags, a large rusty tin can and the desiccated cadaver of a cat. Esther Hayoun shoved Sergeant Yair aside and bent over the body sprawled there on its back, ignoring her son, who stood close to her and said: “She’s just fainted, mother, but she’s alive. She’ll be all right.” Michael watched her as she laid her head on the chest of the girl, who was lying there with her legs spread and her arms close to her body, her head to one side and her eyes shut. With surprising gentleness the mother ran her rough-skinned fingers over her daughter’s cheek, as if to redraw the map of freckles on the grayish skin. Lines of filth ran from Nessia’s closed eyes down to her mouth, the tracks of tears that indicated something of what she had endured. With wavelike, gentle movements Esther Hayoun palpated her daughter’s arms and legs and caressed them. And Michael was astonished at the sight of this delicacy, the existence of which he had not imagined.

  Behind him, Sergeant Yair drew Yigal Hayoun back and said sternly to Peter, who stood to his left: “You too. Don’t touch. Leave this to the Criminal Identification Unit. They haven’t finished checking here yet, and anyway, you mustn’t touch anything.” When Michael turned around he saw Peter pulling his hand back from the tangle of rope that had been thrown into a corner of the room among the spiderwebs and dried excrement.

  Slowly Esther Hayoun felt the girl’s swollen elbows and then leaned over and put her lips to the red cracks that had been cut there by the ropes. Kneeling, she examined the signs of the knots on her ankles, feeling the scratches and carefully touching the deep cut on the top side of the right foot, from which descended a thin thread of dried blood. And quietly, as if afraid to wake her up, she said: “Nessia, honey, Nessia, sweetie, it’s Mommy, Mommy’s talking to you.”

  Nessia did not respond, and from the entrance Yigal Hayoun called, “She can’t hear you, Mother. She’s unconscious,” and he hastened over and knelt beside her, but her whispers had already turned to shouts.

  “Nessia, Nessia,” and Esther Hayoun did not stop until her eyes took in the large, damp patch on the front of the blue sweatpants. She pulled them down with a swift movement and leaned her head over and felt the crotch she had exposed. Michael heard her sigh as she looked at the palm of her hand and said, as if to herself, “There’s no blood,” and as if they weren’t there she pulled down the underpants and spread the girl’s legs and looked carefully between the thighs. After a long moment, she rose from her knees with an effort, supported by her son, stood on her feet, wobbled a moment until she steadied and with an amazement in which there was something of a relief she said: “He didn’t do it to her, like he did to Zahara.”

  As if apologetically, the Criminal Identification man approached the girl and looked warily at Esther Hayoun, who stepped back a bit. He knelt down, carefully felt the girl’s skull and lingered a bit on a big bump on her forehead, examined her swollen neck and looked at the signs that had been etched there, drew her swollen, pudgy hand toward him and with a sharp instrument scraped under the bitten nails. Then, from the leather case he had brought with him, he took out a rectangular glass slide and carefully smeared it with the tip of the instrument.

  “Is the doctor on the way?” whispered the Criminal Identification man. “I need him to take some tissue for me here,” he explained to Sergeant Yair, indicating the cut in her neck. He beckoned to the second Criminal Identification man, and when he approached and started taking pictures with his camera, Michael shaded his eyes, and beneath his hand he saw Esther Hayoun squeezing her eyes shut every time the flash went off.

  “He’s already arrived, the doctor,” said Sergeant Yair. “They’re parking the ambulance now,” and he pushed the door wide open with his foot, preparing the way for the doctor and the laden stretcher they would be taking out of here.

  “We better wait outside,” said Michael to Yigal Hayoun, whose mother had frozen to the spot next to her daughter. “The doctor will examine her first here, before they take her to the ambulance,” he added. And as if to confirm what he said, at that moment the doctor entered, a plump, dwarfish man who was short of breath. He patted the fair hair that was carefully brushed like a little cap covering his round skull and, still panting, he blurted: “Please leave the room.”

  Esther Hayoun looked at him and didn’t move even when he looked directly at her. “I’m the mother,” she challenged him, but he had already knelt down next to Nessia, bringing his stethoscope to her chest.

  “Go outside, lady. You’ll have to wait outside a minute,” he ordered her impatiently, and she, as if considering whether to leave, was pulled out after her son, who tugged at her arm and supported her as they left.

  Michael followed them out and stood next to Sergeant Yair and Sergeant Einat, who was rolling a rose petal between her fingers. “How he crushed the dog,” she said, looking at the black plastic bag the Criminal Identification people had set down next to the fence.

  “Do you want a pathological examination or should we take it straight to the lab?” one of them asked Michael from t
here, and he shrugged and looked questioningly at Sergeant Yair.

  Yair hung his head as if scrutinizing his feet, and after a moment he looked up and said, “I think . . . ,” but did not complete the sentence.

  Out of nowhere, Balilty appeared as if waiting for him to hesitate, and interjected: “It’s a waste of time. It’s pretty clear how this dog died. He didn’t poison it,” said the intelligence officer. “He smashed its head in, slashed it and—”

  “So straight to the lab?” asked the Criminal Identification officer impatiently, and Sergeant Yair nodded.

  “Good for you, boy,” said Balilty without looking at Yair, rubbing his hands together. “I didn’t believe we would find her alive, and so fast, today! Had we found her in another day or two . . . Really, good for you. Did you tell him?” he asked Michael. “Did you praise him?” And without waiting for an answer he continued: “If he didn’t tell you, then I’m telling you: Good for you, really. If we hadn’t found her today, she wouldn’t have been alive. It’s certain that there’s hemorrhaging inside the skull. He banged her head on the floor, the maniac. For sure there’s a crack in the skull, and that’s the big danger,” he explained with satisfaction. “How did you get here?” he asked with a cunning but seemingly innocent look: “Probably the dog . . . because of the girl’s dog, no? The dog didn’t leave the place, because of that—”

  “The dog barked a lot of times before then,” Einat hastened to say. “It was Yair’s idea. He—”

  “It’s because of the rose,” Yair apologized, and turned to look at the door and the bush that was creeping along it. “No, not what you’re thinking. I just saw that there was a broken branch here, as if someone had . . . It’s all rusted, it’s been shut for years, and suddenly you see a branch and you can tell someone broke it not long ago. It hasn’t even dried out.”

  Balilty sighed and rolled his eyes. “So in the end farming does us some good, eh, Ohayon? They who sow in sorrow—,” and because Michael clenched his jaw and remained silent, the intelligence officer looked at the young sergeant again and said: “There’s one thing I don’t understand. What were you doing looking at this bush at all? Pink like an old woman’s underpants.”

  “Not so,” said Yair assertively. “You won’t find this color anywhere. It’s impossible to imitate it.”

  “Balls,” dismissed Balilty gleefully. “Believe me, this is panty pink.”

  Michael shaded the cigarette lighter, and for a moment, in the light of the flame that flickered on his hand, he saw the curve of Ada’s thighs and the smoothness of her shoulders and her neck and her eyes. A shudder ran down his spine.

  From the entrance to the kiosk emerged the two medics, bearing the stretcher to which the girl was strapped, and the door slammed behind them.

  “You get into the ambulance and go with them,” Michael ordered Einat, “and stay in the picture the whole time. The moment there’s a medical opinion you let me know, and also the moment she wakes up you inform me.”

  “Don’t you want me to go with her?” asked Yair.

  “You stay here now,” said Michael. “Until she wakes up, we still have work to do.”

  “If she does,” said Balilty skeptically. “It’s not at all certain that she’s going to wake up so fast. And even if she does regain consciousness, do you think she’s going to talk? How often have I seen that they don’t remember a thing, from the shock? You can’t count on it.”

  “I want a full medical report,” said Michael to Einat. “After they bring her in, you get a copy of the intake form from them and you tell them to fax it to us, and you don’t leave her alone for a minute. You’re at her bedside the whole time, so that the moment she wakes up—”

  He was interrupted by the doctor, who paused next to him and watched the two medics as they cleared a way for themselves through the people who had crowded around and put the stretcher into the ambulance. “Well,” said the doctor, “there are both fractures in the skull and internal hemorrhaging. We still don’t know how many internal injuries there are. And she’s also dehydrated. I gave her an infusion of fluids.”

  “So she’s still unconscious?” confirmed Michael.

  “She won’t be conscious for a while yet,” said the doctor. “She won’t come to so quickly. It could take days. And I don’t know about her spine. We had to tie her to the stretcher, with a board underneath. It was quite a business to move her.”

  Yigal Hayoun supported his mother, who climbed heavily into the ambulance behind the stretcher. “I’ll come with the car in a little while. I’ll go get it,” he called after her, and Michael saw Peter go up to him hesitantly. His long shadow looked sad and desperate.

  Balilty also followed them with his eyes, but Michael was grateful that he didn’t say anything and only waggled his head at them. He leaned his back against the utility pole, crossed his arms and gave a big yawn. “I’m wiped out,” Balilty informed everyone around. “If I don’t snooze for an hour or two, you’ll also need a stretcher for me. I’m going home. Nothing’s going to run away. There isn’t anything big now, is there?”

  “Yes, you go rest,” said Michael, “and we’ll get something to eat.”

  “Where are you going to eat?” said Balilty, suddenly waking up. “You aren’t going to the Old City now, with all the mess, are you? Don’t even go to Abu Ghosh now. Where are you going to eat? Have you got anything at home?”

  “Give me your phone a minute,” requested Michael, and Balilty handed him the mobile telephone with a challenging look.

  “How do you do this?” asked Michael, looking at the phone.

  “Tell me the number and I’ll dial,” said Balilty, with a sly gleam in his eye.

  “Don’t bother,” insisted Michael in embarrassment he couldn’t conceal. “Just tell me if I need to dial 02 first.”

  “If it’s in Jerusalem,” said Balilty nastily. “Is it in Jerusalem? Because if it’s to a mobile phone, then you need the phone company’s code and not an area code . . . Who ever heard of a head of an investigations division who doesn’t have a mobile phone? It’s against the law, and if it’s not against the law, then there ought to be a law about it. A person in the twenty-first century who hasn’t learned to use a mobile phone! And he even thinks this is admirable. That’s what kills me,” he grumbled as Michael dialed. “Hit SEND,” said Balilty. “SEND, SEND, push the green.” And Michael, who moved aside and turned away from them, whispered into the small phone and on his back felt Balilty’s curiosity burning as he strained to catch every word.

  In a whisper and briefly, he told Ada how they had found the girl alive: how they had thought of the mikveh on Shimshon Street and the underground cistern, how they had searched the crumbling Labor Party house, how they had gone down into all the shelters in the housing projects and how in the end they had found her in the abandoned kiosk on the corner of Mordechai Hayehudi and Yehuda.

  “Kiosk?” she wondered. “Where is there a kiosk there?” and after he explained to her exactly she said only: “Never mind. The main thing is that she’s okay and the main thing is that they aren’t in the attic again. There’s a limit to how rational a person can . . . Can you hear me?”

  “I’m not alone,” warned Michael. “I . . . There are people here.”

  “So this evening? Will you come this evening?”

  “But maybe late,” he said to her.

  They took Balilty back to his car, which was parked on the narrow sidewalk on Yiftah Street. In front of the entrance to the apartment block Eli Bachar was waiting for them. “Good for you,” he said as he slipped into the car after Balilty got out.

  “It was just by chance,” apologized Yair, and Balilty regarded them for another moment with a considering look, like a child whose mother’s call to come home had interrupted his game.

  “That’s the way it is in our line of work anyway,” said Eli Bachar without any bitterness.

  “Listen a minute,” said Yair. “There’s something else . . . Before we .
. . I’m also dying of hunger, but maybe before we go back, would you mind if for just a minute . . . It’s just that, before, I heard the woman upstairs saying that the girl went into the shelter a lot, so maybe we ought to . . . And there’s also another thing, but maybe it’s nothing.”

  Michael took his hand off the steering wheel, pulled the hand brake and turned around to look at Yair’s face.

  “When I found her, when we first went in? There was a smell there . . . In addition to everything else, in addition to the stink, there was kind of a faint smell coming from her, but I can’t really . . . It was something I’d already smelled, but can’t remember, like a perfume or aftershave.”

  “Like what? Paco Rabanne, or Hugo Boss? A woman’s perfume or a man’s?” asked Eli Bachar.

  “How should I know? No, not a woman’s perfume, something kind of bitter, sharp, with a hint of lemon, something that not too long ago . . . But I can’t remember. Maybe a deodorant or . . . Is there perfume for hair?”

  “After she was lying there for twelve hours?” said Eli Bachar doubtfully. “Maybe it was something from the Criminal Identification people, or the people who—”

  “No,” insisted Yair. “It was from her skin, from her face. I bent down to see if she was breathing and I smelled it. But I don’t know what it is.”

  “Take your time. It’s one of those things you remember suddenly, even in the middle of the night,” Michael reassured him. “Do you want to go into the shelter now or not?”

  “We were already there, at the beginning of the search,” Yair said, and looked out the window, and a moment later he opened the car door and stood next to it, looking at the other side of the street. Michael followed Yair’s gaze to the carport, at the edge of which Yoram Beinisch was standing in shorts and a white T-shirt and stylish sunglasses and spraying water from a rubber hose onto the roof of the red Toyota. A large puddle spread around his bare feet and a muffled bass rhythm came from the open radio in the car.