The Samaritan's secret oy-3

by Matt Beynon Rees

  “I’ve lived in a world of men,” Khamis Zeydan said. “We didn’t have our children with us when we were on operations in Europe or during the war in Lebanon. I never learned the first thing about kids. Maybe that’s why mine hate me.”

  “Wasn’t it a world of women, too? Liana was there, after all.”

  “No, I never understood women. Least of all Liana.”

  The boy loped out of the house onto the pavement, head down. He bounced his ball and grabbed for it, then he ran between Omar Yussef and Khamis Zeydan and disappeared into the trees beyond the park. Omar Yussef looked up at Roween’s house. A curtain on the second floor fluttered, as though it had just been dropped by someone watching from the window. He kept his eye on it, until the curtain was still.

  A sturdy woman in a long red embroidered gown appeared at the door of the priest’s house. The skin of her fat, wrinkled face was the color of wet sand. She lifted her arm for them to enter.

  The sun filtered through lightweight pink curtains in the reception room. Along the wall, black-and-white photographs of white-bearded men wearing the tarboosh of the priesthood stared down. The earliest portraits were distinguished by the priests’ lack of spectacles, but all the men looked otherwise alike-high foreheads, long noses, innocent eyes.

  Omar Yussef heard Jibril approach, his legs swinging against the loose skirts of his robe.

  The priest took Omar Yussef’s hand in both of his own. “Greetings, pasha.”

  “Double greetings.”

  “You are with your family and as if in your own home,” Jibril said. The top of the light cotton robe he wore next to his skin was ripped from the neck to the breastbone-a sign of mourning for his son. He smiled restrainedly and extended the same greeting to Khamis Zeydan.

  “Are you also a policeman?” he asked.

  Khamis Zeydan’s eyes swung toward Omar Yussef, who cleared his throat, uneasily. “I’m the police chief in Bethlehem,” Khamis Zeydan said.

  “Welcome.” The priest swept his hand above the couch, as though spreading a silk upon it. He sat in an armchair that commanded the room. “Welcome to our village.”

  “I’m sorry for the loss of your son,” Khamis Zeydan said. “May Allah be merciful upon him. If that’s what you say in condolence. You Samaritans, I mean. Pardon me.”

  “It’s an acceptable wish. May you be granted a long life.” The priest fingered his robe. “It has been an exhausting week. We must mourn my son Ishaq for seven days, as is our tradition. But we also had to celebrate our Passover festival.”

  “We saw the rites,” Omar Yussef said. “It was very interesting.”

  The priest pulled his beard. “I admit, this was a difficult festival for our people, because of the murder,” he said, softly. “But I’m pleased you found it of interest.”

  The thickset woman entered with two tiny coffee cups, breathing loudly through her wide nostrils like a heavy sleeper. Omar Yussef and Khamis Zeydan each drank a bitter slug. The woman looked at the priest, who closed his eyes briefly and shook his head. She shut the door behind her.

  “Do you have developments to tell me about?” Jibril asked.

  Omar Yussef frowned.

  “About the investigation into the death of Ishaq?” the priest went on. “Did you not come here to tell me you have found the killer?”

  “I’m sorry to say that we’re far from that stage, Your Honor,” Omar Yussef said. “We have some further questions which we believe are important to the progress of the investigation.”

  Jibril nodded slowly.

  Omar Yussef sat forward. “The scroll that was returned on the same night as Ishaq’s death-”

  “The Abisha Scroll.”

  “Yes. Tell me exactly how it was returned to you?”

  “I found it on the steps of the synagogue.”

  “Was there any message attached?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Isn’t it odd that such a valuable object should be placed there, where anyone could have picked it up?”

  “But no one else could have found it. You’ve seen that the doors are set back some distance from the street. No one goes up the steps, unless it’s one of us on our way to the synagogue, and they’d almost always be accompanied by me, because I’m the only one with a key.”

  “Even so, it seems a strange way to return the scroll.”

  The priest poked his tongue into his cheek and rolled it around.

  “Was there any damage to the Abisha?” Omar Yussef asked.

  “Thanks to Allah, no. I examined it thoroughly.”

  “Where is the scroll now?”

  “After the Passover celebration here on Jerizim, I returned it to the safe in our synagogue.”

  “When we were together in the synagogue, I believe you told me that most of your people’s important historical documents are kept here in your house.”

  “One of the leading priests traditionally safeguards these documents in his home.”

  “May we see them?”

  The priest gripped the side of his armchair, pushing himself to his feet. Omar Yussef and Khamis Zeydan followed him into a spartan study, darkened by rolling blinds lowered halfway to block the bright morning sun. Against the nearest wall was a desk, its surface covered in brown leather nicked with light scratches. Across the room, a tall wooden cabinet displayed a series of tubular casings behind glass doors.

  Omar Yussef put his face close to the glass. His breath misted it. “These are amazing,” he said.

  “We keep twenty-six copies of the Books of Moses here,” Jibril said. “This one is the oldest, from the fifteenth century.”

  Omar Yussef followed the priest’s gesture. The Torah was encased in a tube of goatskin about eighteen inches in length. The handles at the top were of tarnished silver and the front of the case was decorated with a silver panel molded to its curve. Omar Yussef looked more closely and tapped the glass. “This silver is embossed with the same image of the ancient temple as the Abisha Scroll,” he said.

  “The scrolls themselves are from different historical periods, but it’s possible that the cases were made and decorated around the same time,” the priest said.

  “Has there ever been an attempt to steal these scrolls?”

  Jibril shook his head. “The Abisha is much more valuable. That’s why we keep it in the safe at the synagogue, rather than here in my home.”

  Omar Yussef tapped his finger against the glass once more. “Before he died, Ishaq said something to his wife that I think might be important.”

  The priest regarded Omar Yussef expectantly.

  “He told her he was involved in something very dangerous. So dangerous that he wanted to bury it behind the temple and forget about it.” Omar Yussef looked at the monumental towers of the temple on the weathered panel encasing the scroll. “Those were his precise words, according to his wife.”

  Jibril puffed out his cheeks. “What does that mean?” he said, slowly.

  “I hoped you might have an idea.” Omar Yussef watched the priest run a hand through his short beard and shake his head. “Roween said you argued with Ishaq over something immediately before his death. What was the argument about?”

  “It’s not appropriate for me to say bad things about my son after his death.”

  “Why does the argument reflect badly on Ishaq?”

  “To curse his father is a shameful thing.”

  “He cursed you? Why?”

  The priest moved toward the window. He yanked on the chord, pulling the blind open. Omar Yussef blinked in the strong light.

  “I told him to divorce Roween,” Jibril said.

  “Were they unhappy?”

  “I wanted a grandson.”

  “Ishaq was your only son. But you told me you have two daughters. Are they childless?”

  The priest shook his head. “You Arabs have a saying: ‘The son of a son is dear. The son of a daughter is a stranger.’ The male line is most important. You understand that.”


  “I understand that this is what convention dictates, Your Honor, but I can’t agree with you,” he said.

  “Easy for you to say,” Khamis Zeydan said. “You only have sons.”

  Omar Yussef looked with irritation at his friend. He turned back to the priest. “You argued with Ishaq. Did he refuse to end his marriage?”

  “He refused.” Jibril leaned his face on the windowpane, squinting into the sunlight.

  “Because he loved Roween?” Omar Yussef stepped toward Jibril in the corner. “Or because he knew a change of wife wouldn’t make him any more likely to father a child?”

  The priest straightened quickly to his full six feet and raised his chin. He glared at Omar Yussef.

  “You know what I mean, don’t you?” Omar Yussef said.

  Jibril slackened his fingers and let the blind rattle down. In the sudden darkness, the priest’s voice was raw and dry. “Roween is a very plain girl. If Ishaq had a more beautiful wife, he might not have become a Louti, a sodomite,” he said.

  “How harshly did you criticize him?” Omar Yussef moved close to the priest. He smelled raw onion on the man’s breath. “Did you tell him you hated what he was? Did he blame you for his unhappiness? For making him live on this lonely hilltop with a wife to whom he could never be a real husband?”

  “I’m a priest of our people.” Jibril’s voice was quiet. “I’m a symbol. My family must be above reproach.”

  “So you made him return from Paris. Don’t you think he might have been happy there? In the liberal West, he might have found love.”

  “What kind of love? A filthy, sinful love.”

  “You made him pay a fine to rejoin the community. You made him come back to this remote, conservative place, where he would be isolated. Where he would fall under the spell of the only other cosmopolitan character around.”

  “What’re you talking about? Whom?”

  “Amin Kanaan.”

  “What does this have to do with Kanaan? Ishaq did some work for him, that’s all.”

  Khamis Zeydan snorted. “Hard work for you or I, maybe. But quite to Ishaq’s taste, it seems.”

  The priest shook his head, his misty eyes rolling.

  “If it were Roween’s fault that they had no children, everyone would expect Ishaq to divorce her. But he refused to end the marriage. No divorce and no kids: people in the village would have realized Roween wasn’t the cause of the childlessness.” Omar Yussef raised his voice. “Did Ishaq tell you about his secret life? Did you kill him because of that? Because of the scandal there would be if people found out that the priest’s son was gay, that he was having an affair with a powerful businessman?”

  Jibril’s slender shoulders shook. “It wasn’t that way,” he said. “I loved him.” His words became a moan and his legs gave way. He slipped down the wall onto his haunches and crouched with his hand on his forehead. His other hand gathered the skirts of his robe and twisted them.

  Chapter 27

  The lonely teenager bounced his basketball somewhere behind Roween’s house. Omar Yussef leaned on the police jeep. Khamis Zeydan limped to his side. “You seem to be leaving some tearful scenes behind you today.”

  “These have been painful conversations,” Omar Yussef said. “My head’s killing me.” He stretched across the front of the jeep and dropped his forehead to the hood. The metal was hot in the early afternoon sunshine. By the time the sun rises this high tomorrow, I must have my hands on those account details, or I won’t be the only Palestinian with a headache, he thought.

  He looked up at the sun. “Even people driven to suicidal despair are clearminded enough to climb to the fourth story before they end it all,” he said. “I feel like I’m throwing myself again and again from a ground-floor window. I get hurt, but I can’t make it count.”

  “I’ve always warned you that a detective needs to be hard,” Khamis Zeydan said. “You have to be able to manipulate people, to make them like you, hate you, fear you. But you should be dispassionate. Don’t feel what they feel.”

  “How can I fail to feel the anguish of Liana and this priest?” Omar Yussef inclined his head toward the house with the pink window frames. “That’d be inhuman.”

  “Murder is inhuman.” The police chief picked a strand of tobacco off his lip. “You need to feel the inhumanity, so that you can walk beside the murderer and read his mind.”

  Omar Yussef shook his head. “You’re forgetting that passion and love might figure in it. I prefer to enter the head of the killer by feeling those emotions, rather than hate and violence.”

  The boy with the basketball loped around a corner. When he saw Omar Yussef, he halted with the ball at his ear and his feet wide apart in the middle of the road.

  Omar Yussef approached him and beckoned. The boy didn’t move. Omar Yussef sweated as he shuffled along the empty street. From the corner of his eye, he caught another movement in the curtain behind Roween’s window.

  “Clever boy,” he said, “where is the house of the man who looks after the visitor center on top of the mountain?”

  The boy stared and rolled his eyes.

  “A fat man.” Omar Yussef held his hands far in front of his belly, puffed out his cheeks and waddled from side to side. The boy sucked in his chin and wagged his head. He’s laughing, Omar Yussef thought. “A fat man who wears a cap with the name of his cigarettes on it.”

  The boy moved along the street, the ball tucked beneath his arm. Khamis Zeydan limped up beside Omar Yussef. “If you’re intending to shoot some baskets with this kid, I warn you my leg’s in no state for me to jump,” he said.

  “I imagine you’d offset your handicap by playing dirty,” Omar Yussef said.

  The boy came to an alley between two squat apartment blocks and pointed into the darkness.

  “Thank you, clever boy,” Omar Yussef said.

  The boy headed toward the park, tossing the ball awkwardly in the air and jerking forward at the waist to catch it, his arms sagging each time as though it were a tremendous weight.

  Omar Yussef moved into the dark alley. The breeze cooled him now that he was out of the sun. Behind one of the apartment blocks, a lurid green awning flapped lightly over a yard filled with junk. Against the bare cinderblock wall of a shed, the frame of an old Japanese motorbike leaned, stripped of its parts like desert carrion, the springs cutting through its dusty seat. A blackened oil drum, punctured to ventilate a fire during colder months, stood beside an upended ceramic sink and a mattress rotten with mold. In a worn leather armchair, the caretaker who had found Ishaq’s body snoozed with his cap over his eyes. His dirty white undershirt had slipped up over his belly and the sweat shone on his hairy stomach.

  Khamis Zeydan flicked his cigarette. The butt landed on the undershirt and smoldered. The caretaker came upright with a gasp, swatting the cigarette away. When he saw the policeman’s uniform, he gripped the arms of his chair and dropped his jaw.

  “Evening of joy,” Omar Yussef said.

  “Evening of light, ustaz,” the man mumbled.

  “I brought a senior colleague with me.” He gestured to Khamis Zeydan. “He’s a brigadier.”

  The caretaker swallowed hard and bowed to the policeman. “Welcome, pasha,” he said. Khamis Zeydan stared at him without expression.

  Omar Yussef stepped forward quickly and looked down at the caretaker. The man’s eyes opened wide with surprise. “You lock that place every night?” He lifted a finger toward the summit of Mount Jerizim, visible over the tin roof of the shed.

  “That’s right,” the caretaker said.

  “You lock the gate by the parking lot?”

  “That’s the only entrance, ustaz.”

  “Who has the key?”

  “Only me.”

  “Ishaq’s body wasn’t there when you locked up in the evening, but you found it in the morning.”

  The caretaker nodded dumbly. Khamis Zeydan took a small step toward him and the fat man pressed himself deep into the cracked leather of
his armchair.

  “So how did the body get there?”

  “I don’t know, ustaz.”

  “Whoever took the body to the mountain must have had the key.”

  “No, that’s not possible.”

  “Unless they had your help.”

  The caretaker removed his baseball cap and wiped his bald head with his forearm. He looked at the front of the cap. Sweat soaked the band. He ran a hairy finger across the logo of the cheap Israeli cigarettes. “There’s a path in the pines beyond the village. It goes through a hole in the fence behind the fortress.”

  “What’s the point of locking the gates, if there’s a hole in the fence?”

  “No one knows about the hole in the fence, except us. Anyway there’s nothing up there to steal.”

  “Who’s us?”

  The caretaker bit his bottom lip. “The people from the village.”

  “The Samaritans?”

  The caretaker kept his eyes on Khamis Zeydan. The police chief shuffled closer and stroked the leather glove on his prosthetic hand.

  Omar Yussef moved closer, too. “Ishaq was taken up to the peak of the mountain after he died, or he was killed there. But he certainly didn’t go through the gate, because it was locked. He must have entered through the hole in the fence-a hole known only to the Samaritans.”

  “So the body must have been taken there by a Samaritan.” Khamis Zeydan smiled. “That narrows things down.”

  “A Samaritan would never defile our holy place that way.”

  Omar Yussef thought for a moment. “Unless he was doing it for the good of the Samaritan people,” he said.

  “How could a murder be good for us?” The caretaker raised his arms. The dark hair in the pits glistened with sweat.

  Omar Yussef watched the man closely. “Who’s up there now?”

  “No one.” The caretaker opened his palms. “I have to take a break sometime, don’t I?”

  “We may be back to talk to you again.”

  The fat man bobbed his head. “Welcome, ustaz. Welcome, pasha.” They left him examining the cigarette burn on his undershirt.