Bled Dry

by Abdelilah Hamdouchi

  The officer moved toward the group, unfazed by the official presence, and delivered a half salute since the room was so packed.

  “Sir, the apartment is empty,” he said. “The residents moved out last month.”

  Detective Hanash nodded knowingly, even though he hadn’t expected this response. He started scanning the room as if he were looking for something specific.

  “Wherever alcohol and debauchery mingle, crime is just around the corner,” he said, taking on the air of a philosopher.

  He looked around and noticed Hamid feigning admiration, as if this were the first time he’d heard him say this.

  “Who notified us about this crime?” Detective Hanash asked Hamid in a businesslike tone, signaling that the philosophizing was over.

  “One of the building’s residents who we have in custody, sir,” Hamid said, standing straight as an arrow, his hands at his sides. “I did the initial interrogation, sir, and he said he lives on the top floor and discovered the crime scene when he was heading to work this morning. On his way down the stairs, he noticed that the victim’s door was open, so he called out several times. When he got no response, he went inside and discovered the scene.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “Bu’u is with him in his apartment upstairs.”

  There was considerable commotion when the head medical examiner exited the bedroom carrying his tattered leather bag. He was a short, stout man and was wearing a medical apron splattered with blood, like a butcher. He looked exhausted, and was clearly perturbed to find such a huge gathering outside the crime scene. He didn’t know whom to address. He gestured toward Detective Hanash, indicating that he’d like to speak with him.

  “What do you think, doctor?” Hanash asked, following him toward the door.

  “A gruesome crime, no doubt about it,” the medical examiner said, glancing back at the group. “You’ll find all the details in my report.”

  “Could you at least tell me about the murder weapon and when it happened?”

  “The crime was committed with a sharp object—a large knife, or maybe even a sword. The time of the murders was between midnight and three in the morning. The autopsy will verify everything with far greater precision.”

  The doctor didn’t wait for further questions. He made his way down the staircase without even removing his bloodstained medical apron. After he departed, a group from the coroner’s office entered the bedroom to place the corpses on gurneys and transport them to the morgue. It was a chaotic scene, and the arrival of the coroner and his aides added a few more bodies to the already packed apartment.

  Detective Hanash felt a combination of exhaustion and bewilderment. He remembered that he had to call his wife. Work had frequently caused him to miss important family events. He’d known he wouldn’t be present for the birth of his granddaughter, and now he probably wouldn’t be able to attend the celebration they would organize in Marrakesh either.

  He snapped out of his daze when the attorney general approached him, motioning that he wanted to speak to him alone.

  “What are your thoughts on this bloodbath?” the attorney general asked.

  The detective tried to clear his head and refocus on the crime at hand, which was still a mystery. His thoughts were scattered. It wasn’t an option—as it had been with other crimes—to offer a confident hunch, because he feared subsequent developments would prove him wrong. There was also the fact that he knew the female victim. Keeping this fact concealed only intensified his caution.

  “I think we have a crime of unprecedented brutality on our hands, the likes of which we haven’t seen since the time of the Zweita serial murders, when the victims were horribly mutilated. The difference is that this is a double murder and the grisly way it was carried out might lead you to assume it was revenge. The evidence in front of us seems to indicate this, assuming that the perpetrators didn’t cover their tracks and shift things around. If we just take into consideration the facts on the ground so far, it looks like a crime of passion whose motivation was jealousy or infidelity. This is my feeling, but we’ll have to wait and see where the investigation leads us.”

  This was the answer the attorney general was hoping for, since Hanash was suggesting that it was an isolated incident. What everyone feared was that the crime might be tied to some larger criminal conspiracy. The attorney general relaxed and put his hands in his pockets, smiling at the detective.

  “You are well aware of the smear campaign the media is waging against us these days. They’re obsessed with how crime is out of control in Casablanca, and accuse the police of being negligent. But we both know it’s just the opposite. Given this reality, I hope, detective, that you will redouble your efforts to solve this crime as soon as possible. We need an arrest to satisfy public opinion.”

  Hanash thought this was all a little premature. He and his men hadn’t even concluded the initial neighborhood sweep, and the preliminary data hadn’t yet been gathered.

  “Each crime has its own particularities,” Hanash said, avoiding going any further. “I’m going to give this case my full attention.”

  A satisfied look spread over the attorney general’s face. He extended his hand and shook Detective Hanash’s hand vigorously.

  “May God help you. Let’s be in touch about this case. As soon as you find out anything new, call me.”

  “Of course, sir.”

  The attorney general left with his entire entourage in tow. Hanash knew that most of those leaving could care less about this double murder. Even after the two corpses were extracted, the chaos in the apartment continued. The detective now resumed his role as the most senior official in the apartment, and felt a need to reassess the many threads of this case.

  Hamid appeared in front of him, awaiting orders. “Should I close the window, sir?” he asked.

  This was exactly what was bothering the detective—this light flow of air between the room’s window and the open door. The detective sneezed and nodded. He took another lap around the apartment.

  “Doesn’t this building have a guard?” he asked.

  “They don’t have a full-time guard. There was a woman who came once a week to clean the stairwell, but she stopped coming a few months ago because the residents couldn’t pay her.”

  “How many units are in this building?”

  “Ten apartments, sir. According to one of the neighbors this building wasn’t originally an apartment building, but a headquarters of some foreign company in the nineteenth century. It’s more than a hundred years old.”

  This old building was pressed between two modern buildings on a dark and depressing alley. Its paint job was equally miserable. The apartments were small and dark, giving the impression of a haunted cellar. Hanash started up the stairwell with his right-hand man, Hamid. He couldn’t believe how filthy the walls and floor were. There was a uniformed officer standing on the narrow landing of the top floor. When he saw Hanash he gave a firm salute that seemed to shake the building. The thud of his boots hitting the floor sounded like a gas tank exploding. For the first time ever, the officers saw a hint of fear in Hanash’s eyes.

  “What are you doing up here?” the detective reprimanded him. “Go downstairs and stand guard.”

  The apartment’s door was open and its walls were a moldy green from the humidity. It was a single room partitioned into a living space and a bedroom by a cloth hanging from the ceiling.

  The man who lived there was wearing a faded suit. His face was as white as a sheet and an unlit cigarette was twitching in his trembling fingers. Officer Bu’u was sitting in front of him. Bu’u had gotten this nickname, which meant the boogeyman, because of his terrifying face and his equally terrifying interrogation techniques, which made even the most hardened criminals confess. He had already thoroughly interrogated this man. As Hanash entered, Bu’u had his hand raised as though he were about to whack the guy.

  Before Bu’u could salute, Hanash stopped him, ordering him to stay still, lest
the whole building collapse.

  Hanash refused to stay in the apartment for more than a minute due to the horrible stench of cat shit, which was intensified by the humidity.

  “Take him to the precinct,” he muttered to Bu’u, after taking a look at the fear-stricken man.

  Detective Hanash headed toward the door and descended the stairs very carefully. He returned once again to the crime scene, where he spent another five minutes by himself inspecting every detail, looking for anything that had been missed. His mind drifted to a previous crime scene that had ended up being the first in a serial murder case. The murderer had wound up killing three people in an attempt to hide the initial murder. It wasn’t unheard of for a suspect to commit a second or third murder to try to cover their tracks, especially if they feared being tortured by the likes of Officer Bu’u and others on the force. In the old days, most murders were the result of simple arguments or confrontations that got out of hand. It seemed that a major societal shift had occurred of late, perhaps a result of the Internet and the globalization of crime.

  Detective Hanash lost his train of thought when his phone rang. He looked at the number and saw that it was home calling.

  “Yes, hello?” he answered in a professional and resolute tone, indicating that he didn’t have time to chat.

  “Dad, you’re now a grandfather! Atiqa gave birth to a baby girl!” his daughter Manar responded cheerfully.

  “What!” he exclaimed, forgetting he was standing in the middle of a crime scene. “How is she? Did everything go well? And didn’t they say she was having a boy?”

  “Yeah, that’s what her doctor said based on the ultrasound, but she had a girl. Everything went well, thank God. You can give her a call if you want. We all congratulated her and apologized for not being there, as the baby came early. We promised to visit soon.”

  “Your mother, is she feeling all right?”

  “She’s upset because she really wanted to be with her for the birth. Are you still in Fez?”

  “I returned this morning, but had to go straight to work . . . one of the most horrific murders I’ve ever seen, and I’m up to my ears in it. Is your mother next to you?”

  “No, she’s crying in the bathroom. She feels really guilty about not being with Atiqa, even though there was nothing we could do.”

  “Stay with her. I’ll call her later.”

  Hanash sighed as he hung up. How quickly and unapologetically time passes, he thought. It seemed like just yesterday his firstborn, Atiqa, had been a child herself, clinging to him, her eyes welling up when he tried to leave for work. Now she was a mother in her own right.

  He looked over at Hamid, who had overheard the detective’s call from home. He knew Hamid wouldn’t say anything until he delivered the news himself.

  “My daughter had a baby girl.”

  “Congratulations, sir!” Hamid hugged him, trying to give the impression that he was deeply moved by the news. Hamid then stepped back and saluted him so enthusiastically that he lost his balance. Hanash smiled reluctantly.

  “She had a girl even though we were told it would be a boy,” he said, still a bit stunned.

  “God knows best, sir,” Hamid replied.

  “All right,” said Hanash, shifting back to the crime scene. “Has anything gone missing here? Any chance the crime was motivated by theft?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Hamid. “The doors had no visible signs of a break-in, and there is no indication that someone was rummaging around. The male victim who lived here, as you can see, didn’t have much worth stealing.”

  There wasn’t much left at the scene for Hanash to ponder. The real work was about to commence at the police station. He was confident his men were working feverishly in hopes of being the first to uncover a clue that could start unraveling this puzzle.

  8

  It wasn’t easy for Detective Hanash to navigate his way through the crowd back to car. He glanced at his watch and saw that it was noon. He was thinking about his daughter in Marrakesh in an effort to focus on the bright side of his new reality. He was elated that she was now a mother. Thinking about Atiqa made him think about his other daughter, Manar. When would she get married and have children? He had been giving a lot of thought to her situation in the past few months. And her situation was complicated by an ill-fated relationship with an irresponsible young man that had resulted in a broken engagement. This had not only tarnished her reputation; since then, she’d had no more marriage proposals.

  Hanash sped out into the middle of the street, driving recklessly through the traffic. He tried to collect his thoughts and focus on the task at hand. After all, he was lead on this double murder. His competence and reputation as the head detective of Casablanca’s criminal investigations unit were unquestioned, and he had a good success rate in solving cases. He knew that his excellent results were directly related to the years he had spent waging war against—and with—the drug lords in Tangier. He had climbed the ladder, occupying every rank in the force, until he took the lead on the Grand Campaign. This invaluable experience had taught him that all successful police work depended on three basic factors: a loyal second in command; a well-coordinated team; and an informant on the team whose job it was to report on what was going on behind the scenes with the investigative team.

  He parked his car in his reserved spot at the central precinct. Even before he reached the main entrance, officers were preparing to salute, but he didn’t look their way. He was thinking about Qazdabo, the missing piece to his template for a successful investigation. Qazdabo had always been the informant who eavesdropped on the other members of the team and reported back. He was the only one Hanash trusted to report on prospective leads or other secrets among them, because he was uniquely capable of casually extracting this information before it went public. His presence was even more crucial in this investigation, as Hanash needed to know about any chatter that might implicate him and his previous interaction with one of the victims. Qazdabo was the only one who could insulate him from a potential catastrophe.

  Detective Hanash’s spacious carpeted office was furnished with luxurious leather sofas and the walls were encased in wooden paneling. There was a massive bookcase stretching the length of one wall, holding a collection of beautiful books that gave the impression of being in a lawyer’s office. Hanash had utilized his wide web of connections to furnish his office. It stood out in comparison to the others, which were unkempt and shoddily furnished. The other offices’ walls were plastered with mug shots and other photos of dangerous criminals. They usually didn’t even have a spare chair for a visitor to sit on.

  Before sitting on his leather swivel chair, the detective carefully hung his jacket on the coat hanger and loosened his necktie a bit. He then leaned as far back as possible in the chair. He picked up the telephone and dialed his wife. She told him all the details of Atiqa’s delivery, as relayed to her by their daughter. He then filled her in on his purported trip to Fez. He told her about receiving a call from the head of security himself, and how he had been totally absorbed in this horrible double murder since then. As had become customary in these situations, he then asked Naeema to guess what he bought her in Fez. But this time was different; she didn’t entertain him and play her role in this worn-out game. Instead, she told him to save the gift for their daughter, and insisted that he call Atiqa to congratulate her immediately. She also prohibited him from expressing an opinion on the baby’s sex, or asking about who had misread the ultrasound.

  After he hung up, Hanash took a deep breath and removed from his desk a case file that was nearly finished. He yawned and stretched his limbs, readying himself to dive into the paperwork that had already come in about this case. Despite the gruesome nature of these murders, his preliminary observations didn’t seem to reveal anything outside the usual circumstances in a murder case like this: there was alcohol, there was sex, and then there was murder. What was unique for him, as the image of the victims kept flashing through
his mind, was the fact that he had met the female victim.

  A sudden knock at the door interrupted his train of thought. He opened the door to find Hamid, carrying a bunch of files. Hanash asked him to sit down, and Hamid began detailing what they had discovered.

  “The girl is Nezha al-Gharbi, a lady of the night, a prostitute. She has a few prior arrests.”

  “Has she ever been imprisoned?” asked Detective Hanash.

  “No. The morality police arrested her once, but the prosecutor had the charges dropped.”

  “You have her address, right?”

  “Area thirty-three, in Saada, the neighborhood known as Kandahar.”

  “Go there yourself,” said Hanash. “Try to get a sense of the area and then bring in her mother, father, or any family members. And the other victim?”

  “His full name is Said bin Ali. He was unmarried and worked at a factory that manufactures electrical cables in Ain Seba.”

  “There’s only one factory for electrical cables and it’s owned by a German company called C.E.B. What about his family?”

  “We don’t know anything yet about them except that they live in Madinat al-Qala. We’re working with the police there, and they will inform the family. The male victim has no priors, and all of his neighbors report that he had an excellent reputation and seemed completely harmless. His landlord said that no one had ever complained about him.”

  “The girl who was murdered,” Detective Hanash interrupted. “Was she his girlfriend? Had anyone in the neighborhood ever met her?”

  “We described her to everyone we questioned but no one knew her.”

  “Why didn’t you show them her picture from the digital camera?” Hanash interjected. “Her face was untouched. What’s the point of this equipment if we aren’t going to use it to speed things up?”

  Hamid nodded and remained silent.

  “Where is this neighbor who found the crime scene?” Hanash went on.

  “He’s still with Bu’u, who is taking a statement from him in an interrogation room.”