by Batya Gur
Murder in Jerusalem
The crowning achievement to a magnificent career, Murder in Jerusalem is the final installment in the beloved Michael Ohayon mystery series.
Acclaimed Israeli director Benny Meyuhas’s film production of the heartbreaking work “Iddo and Eynam” promises to be a landmark of Israeli film—until his wife and the films’ set designer Tirzah Rubin are crushed under a set piece, stalling the production indefinitely. Shimshon Zadik, the head of Israel Television, is among the first at the scene, and the death of this talented and mysterious woman, a colleague of his for many years, sends shockwaves through the film and television community. But more shocking is what comes to light in the investigation—that Tirzah’s storybook life wasn’t at all what it seemed, and that her death may have been part of a larger network of social and political unrest. The brooding chief superintendent Michael Ohayon has spent his career surrounded by horrific crimes, but nothing has ever disturbed him more than what Tirzah’s murder reveals: that the very ideals upon which he was raised, upon which the nation was raised, may have led to unspeakable crimes.
THE KEROSENE HEATER WAS OF NO USE; the room was terribly cold. It was a Jerusalem cold—dense, powerful—of old stone rooms. Schreiber stood rubbing his hands over the soot-covered grid of the heater. “She didn’t want to call you people,” he said casting a look of reproach at Natasha. “It took me a while to convince her, but in the end I told her she could do whatever she wanted, but there was no way I was getting mixed up with them.”
“Who’s ‘them?’” Michael asked.
“These religious fanatics,” Schreiber said. He moved to the half-open door and lit a cigarette there. “It’s pretty clear they did this, don’t you think? Believe me, I know those people.”
The room was very small, most of the space taken up by a single bed in disarray. A few sweaters lay in a pile upon it and at the other side of the room, in a niche in the thick wall, was a clothes hook with several shirts and one skirt hanging from it. There was a pile of books on the floor next to the bed, and perched on a woven-straw stool stood a book in Russian, open-face down. A makeshift kitchen stood facing the doorway; there were water spots and mold on the wall near the electric burner, a single pot and pan hanging there, and a dish rack with three plates, two mugs, a few spoons, two forks, and a knife. Behind a half-open door there was a bathroom: a toilet, a sink, and a faucet with a shower hose.
Michael looked around the room; everything was utilitarian and meager except for a blue vase with a clutch of wilting wild daffodils that stood on the only table in the room, and a long, narrow print in a thin wooden frame hanging over the bed. The print showed a solitary and peculiar tower standing erect in an empty brown field; one side of the tower was brightly lit and the other shaded, the shadow extending from two people, small and displaced, posed in the middle of the foreground. He wondered how it was that in spite of the bright white light on the illuminated side of the tower, the picture exuded the feeling that the light did not have the power to illuminate this world, as though the shadows had overwhelmed it and the blackness in the background was about to flood the entire picture. Four flags blew loftily in the wind from the top of the tower, but even these brought no happiness. The mood of the entire picture was one of regret, of interminable loneliness. Who had painted this picture, he wondered, and why did it disturb him so? Underneath it, in a corner of the bed, folded in between the wall and the simple wooden table on which stood the vase of daffodils and a few plates with the remains of dried-up hummus and pita bread, was Natasha, huddled under a gray army blanket and shaking nonetheless. Michael looked into her clear blue eyes and saw no fear there.
“It’s like she doesn’t care,” Schreiber said, “but at first, from the shock of it, she screamed. After that, nothing. She wanted to clean it up. It took me a long time to convince her to call the police. I didn’t let her touch all the blood and filth, I wanted you to see it as it was . . . Anyway, I took pictures of it all,” he said, adding in a faint voice. “It was her idea.”
“What was Natasha’s idea?” Michael asked. From outside the apartment they could hear the forensics people arriving, and Balilty’s voice a moment later. “Taking pictures?”
“No, taking pictures was my idea,” Schreiber said. “Calling you was her idea,” he explained, lowering his eyes. “She said that you . . .”
“Schreiber, shut up already,” Natasha said. Her voice burst forth from between her narrow hands, which were wrapped around her small face.
“What? What did I say wrong? Didn’t you tell me to call him? You said he was the only one worth his salt.”
“There’s no reason to hurt people’s feelings,” Natasha mumbled, looking out the half-open door. “There are other people here. Everybody needs a good word.”
About the Author
BATYA GUR lived in Jerusalem, where she was a literary critic for Ha’Aretz, Israel’s most prestigious newspaper. She earned her master’s in Hebrew literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and she also taught literature for nearly twenty years. Her five other Michael Ohayon mysteries include Murder Duet, The Saturday Morning Murder, Literary Murder, Murder on a Kibbutz, and Murder in Jerusalem. She passed away in the spring of 2005.
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International Praise for Bethlehem Road Murder
“Marked by keen psychological insights and well-developed characters, Gur’s latest also offers a valuable portrait of a divided, contemporary Jerusalem.”
—Library Journal
“Through the investigative techniques of her fictional detective Michael Ohayon, Batya Gur finely lays bare the contradictions that tear modern-day Israel apart. She tells us about racism, fear, hatred, the conflicts between European and Oriental Jews, and the violence linked to the second intifada. But also—and better than newspaper reports convey—she reveals the incredible love of life in this little country that dances on a volcano.”
—Elle magazine (French edition)
“There is a substantial measure of courage and talent here, hidden under the pretext of an amiable detective novel.”
—Le Monde
“Batya Gur is a skillful observer of various milieus and the sensibilities within Israeli society. . . . It takes an uncompromising analyst like Gur to make an outsider understand the complicated nuances of a seemingly homogeneous society.”
—The Standard
Praise for Batya Gur’s Mysteries
“Murder Duet is not only a superb murder mystery but also a subtle study of the relationships between creativity, ambition, love, and possessiveness. A warm book, full of skillful modulations.”
—Amos Oz
“The Saturday Morning Murder is a splendid mystery. . . . Intriguing. . . . A therapeutic whodunit.”
—Time
“Both Jerusalem scenery and the psychological scenery of The Saturday Morning Murder are wonderfully presented. Like all good mystery novels, this fascinating, pleasurable book is difficult to put down: curiosity propels you from page to page until what seemed unlikely ends in being inevitable.”
—Shimon Peres
“Murder on a Kibbutz is an enormously satisfying read, suspenseful and layered with colored details about everyday life in Israel.”
—Cleveland Jewish News
Also by Batya Gur
Murder in Jerusalem
Murder Duet
Murder on a Kibbutz
Literary Murder
The Saturday Morning Murder
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
A hardcover edition of this book was published in 2004 by HarperCollins Publishers.
BETHLEHEM ROAD MURDER. Copyright © 2004 by Batya Gur. All rights reserved under International an
d Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST DARK ALLEY EDITION PUBLISHED 2005.
FIRST HARPER PAPERBACK EDITION PUBLISHED 2006. REISSUED 2020.
Cover design by Andrea Guinn
Cover illustration by Christopher Zacharow
* * *
The Library of Congress has catalogued the hardcover edition as follows:
Gur, Batya.
[Retsah be-Derekh Bet Lehem. English]
Bethlehem Road murder : a Michael Ohayon mystery / Batya Gur ; translated by Vivian Eden.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-06-019573-8
1. Ohayon, Michael (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Police—Israel—Fiction. 3. Jerusalem—Fiction. I. Eden, Vivian. II. Title.
PJ5054.G637R3913 2004
892.4’36—dc22
2004042444
* * *
Digital Edition DECEMBER 2020 ISBN: 978-0-06-297051-0
Version 10242020
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-095492-5 (pbk.)
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