Murder in Jerusalem (16 page)

“Did she generally tell you where she was going?” Michael said, feeling his way.

“Sometimes, not always. It depended,” Benny answered reluctantly.

“On what? On where she was going? On the time of day? What?”

Benny Meyuhas did not look at him. He was staring at his fingers, which were pleating the edges of a page of the
Haaretz
newspaper lying on the bed next to him. Between the small advertisement at the corner of the page in which LIAR was printed in bold black letters, just as it had been every day for the past two months, and an item about the Jerusalem hairstylist and his girlfriend the model who had been found shot to death, there was a small notice about the head of the Scenery Department at Israel Television, who had been killed in an accident.

Benny Meyuhas remained silent.

“How is it that she didn't say anything to you? You were both in the same place, you worked together. You yourself were there, up on the roof.”

Benny Meyuhas frowned. “Yes, I was.”

“From what time? Approximately.”

“A little after six, after it got dark. We were waiting for the moon; we were hoping it would poke through the clouds.”

“Who knew that you were up there?” Michael asked.

Benny Meyuhas shrugged. “I don't know, I don't have a clue,” he said without looking up. “Whoever needed to know.”

“Were you aware that Matty Cohen was on his way?” Michael asked, aware that Rubin was tensing up.

“The tea will be here in a minute,” Rubin said to Benny Meyuhas. “It's hard for you to speak because your mouth is so dry.” Rubin cast a glance at Michael that contained a measure of warning, but Michael ignored it.

“Matty Cohen was on his way to the roof,” Michael said to Benny Meyuhas, “to put a stop to your production. Did you know that?”

Benny looked up from his fingers. “No,” he said in his parched voice, “no, I didn't. There were rumors…. I had heard they weren't going to let me complete the missing bits, Zadik had already hinted…but I didn't know that he was—” A note of astonishment had crept into his voice. “But he didn't come, I didn't see him.”

“He was on his way, and he saw Tirzah at around midnight, before—” Michael waved his hand instead of completing his thought. “She was still alive at the time.”

Benny Meyuhas regarded him; unlike his voice and the rest of his body, his round blue eyes were now filled with expression, his pain alive and writhing. They were bloodshot, the eyes of a man haunted.

“She was not standing there alone; she was with someone else,” Michael said carefully. “Someone was arguing with her.”

Benny Meyuhas did not speak.

“We thought that perhaps you might have some idea who she could have been speaking with in the middle of the night,” Michael said.

“I don't,” Benny Meyuhas said. “I didn't even know she was there. If I had known, I would have—” He fell silent and covered his face with his hands.

“What would you have done?” Michael hastened to ask. “What?”

“I would have spoken to her, I would have told her—never mind.”

“Are you certain she did not tell you she would be at work?” Michael persisted.

Benny Meyuhas shook his head. “I did not know.”

“I understand that there was some…disagreement…crisis…rift between you two?” Michael said, venturing a guess.

Benny Meyuhas's amazement was visible. “We—how did you know that?” A note of suspicion entered his voice. “Nobody knew,” he said, wiping his face with his hands. In the ensuing silence, the only sound was his heavy breathing. Arye Rubin laid a hand on his shoulder.

“Generally speaking, did you two get along well?” Michael asked, studying Benny Meyuhas's face and ignoring Arye Rubin's look of reproach.

“We got along beautifully, beautifully,” Benny Meyuhas said. “God…how…” and he pressed his hands to his face.

“You yourself were there,” Michael said to Arye Rubin.

“When?” Rubin asked, surprised.

“Last night, when Tirzah…you were at the television station, weren't you?”

“Yes, I was, but in the editing rooms. They're in the main building, nowhere near…. I had no idea, I didn't see Tirzah, I was busy working,” Rubin said.

“There's no connection between the two buildings, no passageway?” Michael asked.

“None,” Rubin said emphatically. “There's practically no connection between floors of the same building. Anyway, there are always people around. Apart from the security guards, there are rooms manned twenty-four hours a day. The broadcast monitoring room, for example: you can check who was on duty monitoring local and foreign transmissions, the place is never unmanned.”

Michael asked suddenly, “What was the disagreement about? Did something specific happen?”

Benny Meyuhas glanced at him, dismayed. “It's something personal, it's not relevant—something personal.”

Michael looked at the newspaper. A headline at the side of the page caught his eye, the story of an explosive device planted at the door of a West Jerusalem apartment occupied by three female Arab university students. Apparently the bomb had been placed by some ultra-Orthodox fanatics, and the police sapper sent to defuse it had been slightly injured when he touched the bag. “You can never know,” Michael said after a few long moments of silence, “if it's relevant or not. Sometimes something that seems relevant—”

“I don't want to talk about it,” Benny Meyuhas sputtered.

“Was it a serious argument?” Michael said, groping. “Was it something important, something that might affect the future of your relationship? Was there some talk of a separation?”

Benny Meyuhas slumped until he was lying on top of the bed, pulled his knees to his chest, and burst into tears. Arye Rubin's face wore a look of astonishment; after a moment he leaned over and touched Benny's shoulder.

“Did you know about all this?” Michael asked Rubin, as though Benny Meyuhas were not in the room.

Rubin shook his head. “I had no idea.”

Hagar pushed the door open with her shoulder, carrying a cup of tea on a saucer with a teaspoon clinking inside. Michael hastened to make way for her to pass and went to stand by the window, where he could observe her placing the cup and saucer on the nightstand next to the bed, and where he could watch her as she threw an inquisitive and accusatory look at Rubin. Rubin shrugged his shoulders as if to say, “I don't know.” When she touched Benny Meyuhas's arm, he removed his hands from his face and glanced at her as though he were seeing her for the first time in his life.

Michael stood watching the window and the side of the bed near it and noticed a pair of black velvet embroidered boots shoved underneath, partially hidden by the bed. He wondered if they belonged to Tirzah, but there was something coquettish and juvenile about them which did not quite jibe with the impression he was forming of her.

Michael was still pondering this when he heard Rubin say, “Drink up, Benny, otherwise we'll have to put you on an IV; you're dehydrating. You don't have to eat, but you've got to drink.”

The sound of Benny's head butting the wall behind him sickened Michael. “She's left us, Arye,” he wailed. “She didn't want to be with me anymore.”

The door opened again. Eli Bachar stood for a moment watching the two men on the bed, then said to Michael, “They say that Arye Rubin has to sign. If he agrees.”

Rubin regarded him, stunned, then nodded his consent. To Benny he said, “I'm going to give my consent to an autopsy, if that's okay with you. Do you agree?”

“I've got to get going,” Eli Bachar said impatiently. “Someone will call you and bring the forms around, okay?” Without waiting for an answer he left the room.

“Benny,” Rubin said hesitantly, “do you consent? Is it all right with you?”

“She's left us, Arye, she didn't want to live with me anymore. I don't have…I didn't have any reason to go on…”

“That's the way he's been the whole time,” Hagar said from the corner of the room, her brows knitting to the point where the crease between them deepened even further. “That's the way he's been talking the whole time,” she said, and left the room.

Michael followed her. She was standing in the foyer, next to the kitchen door, her arm on the door frame and her head resting on her arm.

“It's my impression that you're the person closest to him,” he said, looking at her unabashedly. “Do you think you might know what was going on with them?”

She lifted her head and stepped away from the doorway. “With who?” she asked suspiciously.

“Benny and Tirzah.”

“Going on? Who says anything was going on? When?”

“Rubin told me you'd know the details,” Michael said, “about the rift between them lately. He said you would know, that you'd certainly felt it, even if Benny had never mentioned anything about it to you. He says you're the only person who always knows what's happening with Benny.”

Her face softened. “Believe me, I have no idea. I was very close, I mean, pretty close, but…he never talked to me about Tirzah.” She scratched at an invisible spot on the door frame with the tip of her fingernail. “I was close to him in matters of”—she gestured toward the maquette—“anything related to work. In those matters I'm an expert. But where his private life is concerned I'm not, not where his life with Tirzah was concerned.”

“But you certainly must have felt something, perceived something. Sensitive people can recognize things in people they're close to even without talking about it explicitly, don't you think?”

She looked down the hallway as if to verify that no one was listening. “Where's Sarah?” she wondered aloud. “Her coat is here, so she hasn't left yet. Maybe she's in the other room watching television,” she said, indicating the living room. “There was tension between them lately, something was weighing heavily on Benny, that much was clear to me. I know him like the palm of my hand; there's no question that something was going on. I didn't ask him because I didn't dare to, but it was clear to me also from the way Tirzah was behaving, even from the way she talked to me lately. But I don't have a clue what—” She glanced at her watch, startled. “Are you planning to be here for a while?” she asked quickly, and without waiting for an answer added, “because if you are, I'd like—look, I've got to get back to the station to talk to Zadik about continuing filming. We can't stop now, there's only a little more to wrap up, we've got to—I'm going to Zadik with Rubin…. Sarah,” she said, turning to the young woman who had suddenly appeared from the next room. “Can you stay here a little longer? I don't want to leave Benny alone.”

“No problem,” Sarah said, rubbing her feet one against the other.

“Where are your shoes?” Hagar asked, surprised, and the young woman blanched.

“Over there,” she said, pointing to the living room. “I took them off in there. I'm going to—it's cold in here, but there was mud on them…” She fell silent. But Hagar was already putting on her coat and made no response.

“Arye,” she called toward the bedroom. “Arye, let's get moving.” As she spoke, she moved toward the room.

“Where
are
your shoes?” Michael asked in a whisper, and Sarah blushed, indicating with her head the room she had just emerged from.

“Black boots? Embroidered?”

She cast him a suspicious look and nodded.

“Know where they are?”

She shrugged, her answer unclear.

“I actually know where they are,” Michael said. “Shall I tell you?”

“That's not necessary,” she whispered, her frightened eyes on the bedroom door. “I just don't want Hagar to know. If she did, she'd—” Sarah did not complete her thought.

“Yes, what would happen if she found out?”

“She would think that we…that I…” She spread her arms wide.

“That what? That you what?”

“That I, you know, like, like that I was with him,” she said, averting her glance.

“And the truth is that—”

“Nothing. I mean, yes, I…he…he was crying so hard and asked me to…and Hagar wasn't here…so I, not that I, I just lay down next to him. He put his arms around me and cried and talked and I…what could I do? I let him talk.”

“And what did he tell you?”

“Truth is, I didn't understand most of it,” she admitted. “He said she didn't want him anymore, that she—Tirzah—had already gone away before this happened, that she'd left him. I don't understand why, but he said, ‘She couldn't forgive me.' I don't know what it was she couldn't forgive him.”

Rubin and Hagar emerged from the bedroom. “We're on our way to Zadik,” Hagar said. “Are you going to be around here much longer?” she asked Michael.

“No, not much longer,” Michael assured her. In fact, he had no idea how much longer he would stay.

“But you're staying,” Hagar commanded Sarah.

“Sure,” she responded, nodding vehemently. “For as long as necessary.”

When the door had shut, Sarah regarded Michael with suspicion. “You won't say anything to her, will you?” she asked.

“Why are you afraid of her?” Michael asked. “Do you think she's jealous? That she'll be angry with you?”

“Of course!” she said with a look that made it clear she thought he was thickheaded. “Everyone knows. She…he…always, right from the beginning people told me.”

“And Tirzah?”

“What about her? There was nothing going on between Benny and Hagar, they were just…they didn't sleep together, people just said she always wanted to. Tirzah didn't…well, I don't know.”

“What's it like working with him?” Michael asked.

Her face lit up. “He's amazing, the best, everyone says so. He's a wonderful director, teaches you everything. But he demands a lot, all the time.”