She smiled at that, although there was a sourness to the expression.
‘OK, I’ll allow it.’ She scribbled Zisky’s details on her pad. ‘I’ll be recording the conversation –’ she produced a Dictaphone and laid it on the table – ‘which will constitute a legally admissible record should you decide to go off remit. I’ll also be keeping a close eye on the time. I believe we agreed on sixty minutes.’
‘You believe right.’
‘Let’s keep it to that.’
Preliminaries over, she sat back and folded her arms. From somewhere outside the room came the distant echo of music. Ben-Roi resisted the temptation to ask if she wanted to dance.
A couple of minutes went by, then there was a slap of footsteps in the corridor and the click of key in lock. The door swung open again and the subject of the interview entered the room. The solicitor stood; the two detectives remained seated.
Pimps and traffickers come in many different shapes and sizes, and from many different demographics, but if ever there was a stereotype, Genady Kremenko was it. A bulky, overweight man with a balding head, jowly face and pink, fleshy eyes, he combined cheery avuncularity with an undercurrent of brooding menace. He sported an array of heavy gold jewellery – neck-chain, bracelet, signet rings – and, rather to Ben-Roi’s annoyance, since they were
his
team, a green and white Maccabi Haifa shirt. Prominently displayed on his forearm was a tattoo of a girl with her legs spread, the limbs, torso and head done in green ink, the vulva graphically highlighted in pink.
‘Well, this is cosy, isn’t it,’ he chuckled, his Hebrew leavened with a thick Eastern European accent. ‘Always a pleasure to welcome our brave boys in blue. Particularly such pretty ones.’
He grinned at Zisky, who to his credit didn’t react.
‘I’d give you both a hug, but unfortunately . . .’ He held up his hands, which were cuffed.
‘I don’t think those will be necessary in here,’ said his solicitor.
The guard looked at Ben-Roi, who nodded. The cuffs were undone.
‘Can’t blame them,’ laughed Kremenko, rubbing his wrists and rolling his hands. ‘You only have to look at me to see I’m a trained killer. A couple of years back I took out a whole tank regiment with a single fart.’ He blew a raspberry and guffawed.
‘I think we’d better get started,’ said the solicitor primly.
The guard indicated a button on the wall which they could press if they needed anything, then left them to it, locking the door behind him. Kremenko sauntered round the table and took the seat beside his lawyer.
‘Shall I buzz for champagne?’ he asked, nodding at the wall button and letting out another guffaw.
Ignoring the comment, the solicitor checked her watch, then leant forward, turned on the Dictaphone and slid it across the table so it was positioned midway between Kremenko and Ben-Roi. She gave the location, date, time and names of those present in the room, then sat back and indicated that the interview could start.
‘Just for the record I’d like to say the younger of the two detectives has really beautiful skin,’ sniggered Kremenko.
Zisky smiled and crossed his legs, unperturbed. Ben-Roi laid the folder he’d brought with him on the table and got to work.
‘Mr Kremenko, you recently—’
‘Genady, please. We’re all friends here.’
‘You recently received a visit from a journalist named Rivka Kleinberg.’
‘Did I?’
‘Yes, you did.’
‘If you say so. I seem to have become awfully forgetful these days. Something about the air in this place. Dulls the brain.’
Ben-Roi’s jaw tightened. This was going to be hard work.
‘Let me try and jog your memory,
Genady
. On May thirtieth, Mrs Kleinberg contacted
Shabas
with a request to visit you. That request was put to you, you agreed.’
‘Without my knowledge,’ cut in the solicitor.
‘The reason for the visit was stated as “personal”. Mrs Kleinberg attended the jail on the afternoon of June sixth when, between the hours of 13.30 and 14.05, you were alone with her in this room.’
‘Not shagging, I can assure you of that,’ grunted Kremenko.
‘You remember now?’
‘Suddenly I do. Big fat pushy bitch with massive –’ he cupped his hands in front of his chest. ‘Not a pleasant sight. I must have blocked it out.’
Beside him his solicitor sat poker-faced.
‘Well, now that you’ve unblocked it,’ said Ben-Roi, ‘do you want to tell me what Mrs Kleinberg was doing here?’
Kremenko shrugged. ‘Impression I got was that she was lonely. You know how it is: fat, unfuckable, getting on in life. I think she wanted some company. Saw my face in the paper, thought I looked a friendly sort of guy, decided maybe I was someone she could have a chat with.’
Ben-Roi played along, let him have his little joke.
‘And what exactly was it you chatted about?’
Kremenko folded his arms and sat back, gazing thoughtfully at the ceiling.
‘Now let me think. The weather certainly came up – it’s been unseasonably hot, don’t you think – and I seem to remember there was some political discussion: municipal elections,
ha-matzav
, whether Tzipi Livni takes it up the arse . . .’
Beside him his solicitor stiffened and blushed. Kremenko noted her embarrassment and grinned.
‘Only kidding. We didn’t really talk about that.’
‘You don’t say,’ muttered Ben-Roi.
Slipping a hand underneath the shoulder of his football shirt, Kremenko pulled out a pack of Marlboro. He removed one with his teeth, took a lighter from the pack and, leaning his elbows on the table, lit the cigarette.
‘OK, enough pissing around, let’s get down to it,’ he said, exhaling a dense billow of smoke towards Zisky, who wafted it away with a flick of the hand. ‘This woman says she wants to come in and talk to me. I don’t know her from Adam, but think why the hell not. You get bored in here, welcome any sort of distraction. Who knows, she might have been a looker, worth a wank. Which of course she wasn’t. Built like a fucking Space Hopper. Very disappointing.’
He exhaled another waft of smoke, forcing Zisky to move his chair back a few inches.
‘Sorry, darling.’
‘And what did Mrs Kleinberg want to talk to you about?’ asked Ben-Roi, putting his earlier question again.
‘This and that.’
‘This and that being . . .?’
‘My business, the girls—’
The solicitor dived in. ‘I think in the current circumstances we ought to steer clear . . .’
Kremenko extended a finger, quietening her. A small gesture, barely noticeable, but one that spoke volumes to Ben-Roi. This was a man who was used to being obeyed, especially by women.
‘Relax,’ he said. ‘I’m here to help these gentlemen. I’ve nothing to hide, nothing to be ashamed of.’
He sat back and took another long suck on his Marlboro, holding it right at the bottom of the filter in the way that all lags seem to do. Beside him the woman folded her hands and stared across the table, tight-lipped.
‘They’ve got it all wrong, you see,’ said Kremenko. ‘The police, the papers. They say I’m a pimp, a trafficker, but I don’t even know what those words mean. I’m a businessman, plain and simple. A landlord. The only crime I’ve committed, and this I do hold my hands up to –’ he raised his hands theatrically – ‘is the sin of being too kind. These young girls, they come to Israel, they don’t know anyone, don’t speak the language. I help them out – fix cheap accommodation, lend them a bit of cash when they’re short, get them back on their feet.’
‘From what I’ve heard, it’s more a case of getting them
off
their feet and
on to
their backs,’ shot Ben-Roi.
Again, the solicitor was straight in. ‘Any more cheap gags like that and this conversation—’
‘Easy, tiger!’ laughed Kremenko, waving her quiet. ‘He was only joshing. Can’t take offence every time someone makes a little joke. Can we, eh, Bambi?’
This last line to Zisky, who yet again let it roll over him. Credit to the kid for keeping his cool. If it had been Ben-Roi on the receiving end he’d have decked Kremenko by now.
‘And this is what you told Mrs Kleinberg?’ he asked.
‘Exactly. I said to her, these girls, I’m like a father to them. How was I to know they were up to all sorts of naughtiness behind my back? Take it from me, I’m the victim here. Victim of my own trusting nature.’
He shook his head, all mock outrage. Ben-Roi flicked a glance at Zisky, then at the solicitor, whose expression remained resolutely neutral, even though it was obvious her client was talking horseshit. He wondered if it troubled her, defending a turd like Kremenko. Probably not. The law is impartial, she would argue, everyone is entitled to a fair defence. She might not have liked the man, but to her way of thinking, she was serving a higher cause. To Ben-Roi’s way of thinking, she was as much of a whore as the girls Kremenko had been pimping. More of one – at least she had a choice in the matter.
‘Tell me about the Egypt route,’ he said.
‘What’s that, then?’ Feigned outrage gave way to feigned bewilderment.
‘The route the girls are trafficked into Israel – across the Sinai, up into the Negev.’
‘I wouldn’t know anything about it.’
‘They say you run it.’
Kremenko shrugged. ‘People say all sorts of things. They say you lot are a bunch of cunts but that doesn’t mean you’ve got a clit on your head and piss blood every month.’
The solicitor winced. If Ben-Roi had been less frustrated by Kremenko’s stonewalling he’d have found her discomfort amusing.
‘Did Mrs Kleinberg talk about Egypt?’
‘Might have. If she did, I’d have told her the same as I’ve just told you.’
‘Which is?’
‘That I don’t fucking know anything!’
The pimp gave an impatient flick of the wrist, bling rattling. Ben-Roi rewound.
‘Let’s go back to the girls,’ he said. ‘Did Mrs Kleinberg ask about any of them in particular. Mention any names?’
‘Not that I recall.’
‘Maria? Did that name come up?’
Kremenko scrunched his eyes as if pondering, then shook his head.
‘Vosgi?’
Another shake. ‘Like I said to the fat woman, I’ve got a lot of tenants, I don’t remember what all of them are called.’
‘Maybe you’d remember a face.’ Ben-Roi opened the folder, slid out the photo of Vosgi and laid it on the table in front of Kremenko. ‘Was this one of your
tenants
?’
The solicitor caught the sarcasm and shot Ben-Roi a warning look. Kremenko either didn’t notice, or chose not to rise to it. He picked up the photo, made a show of staring at it.
‘Never seen her before,’ he replied after an extravagant pause, handing the photo back.
‘Sure.’
‘Sure as I’ve got a hole in my arse.’
‘She’s Armenian. Went missing from a shelter a few weeks ago.’
Ben-Roi threw it out to see if he got a reaction. He didn’t. Kremenko just stared at him, his eyes puffed and pink and vaguely amused. He tried to read what was going on behind the eyes, to push inside, but the shutters were firmly down and he got nothing, not even a glimpse. Kremenko began to chuckle.
‘You’re fishing, Detective. Fishing with a broken rod in an empty pond and wondering why the fuck you’re not getting any bites.’
Clunky metaphor, not that far off the truth. The pimp sucked away the last of his cigarette and, leaning forward, ground the butt out in the ashtray.
‘I’ll tell you what, I’m going to help you,’ he said. ‘You seem like a nice couple –’ another wink at Zisky – ‘and I’m an amenable chap, always anxious to please. So here’s the score.’
He sat back again and folded his arms, man-boobs squeezing out beneath his elbows, the tattooed vulva on his forearm seeming to gape at Ben-Roi like an inflamed eye.
‘Hand on heart, I didn’t like the Kleinberg woman. I agreed to meet her, gave her the time of day, and by way of thanks she was a rude, pushy, mannerless bitch. Asked all sorts of out-of-order questions, made all manner of unpleasant insinuations about my personal and professional life. In the end I’m afraid I lost patience and told her to go fuck herself, which was frankly more than anyone else was ever going to do. In short, and I make no bones about this, we didn’t hit it off. But if you’re asking me – and I suspect this is what you
are
asking me in your own roundabout way – whether I had anything to do with the woman’s murder . . .’
His solicitor started to protest, saying this wasn’t germane to the interview, but again Kremenko waved her quiet.
‘
If
that’s what you’re asking me, then I can tell you, again hand on heart, Jew-boy’s honour, that no, I didn’t. And if you’re going to suggest otherwise, you’d better have some seriously fucking good evidence to back it up, or this charming lady beside me is going to come down on you like a hundred tons of the thickest shit that ever dropped out of a human butthole.’
He eyeballed the two detectives, fists clenched, the jokey charade parting like a curtain to reveal the true nature of the man behind: hard, brutal, thuggish. And then, as suddenly as the storm had blown up, it dissipated and Kremenko was all smiles again.
‘Right, now we’ve sorted that out, let’s get back to business.’ He beamed and reached for the water jug. ‘Refreshments, anyone?’
The interview continued for another forty minutes, but Ben-Roi was only going through the motions. He didn’t expect Kremenko to tell him anything, and the man lived up to expectations. He was closed up as tight as a clam, batting away the detective’s questions with the glib insouciance of someone who has spent his entire life playing cat and mouse with the law and was more than confident of his abilities to give his pursuer the run-around. He was obviously lying about his pimping and trafficking activities, and he had equally obviously lied about them to Rivka Kleinberg. The issue was less
what
she’d got out of him as what she’d
hoped
to get out of him. And again and again Ben-Roi came back to the same point – the girl was the key to it all. Kleinberg had applied to visit Kremenko the day after she’d heard of Vosgi’s disappearance, and whatever information she’d been trying to prise from him, Ben-Roi was certain it was tied up with the missing Armenian. Had Vosgi been one of Kremenko’s girls? Had Kremenko’s people snatched her, maybe to stop her testifying against his operation? Had Kleinberg got too close to the truth and been bumped off as well? It was a feasible scenario – the most feasible scenario he’d yet come up with – albeit one that left a bundle of loose ends and unanswered questions. Over and over he steered the interview back in that direction, pressing Kremenko, showing him the girl’s photo, trying to open up a chink in his armour. To no avail. Maybe at a later date he’d go in harder, get Kremenko up to Kishle, really turn the screws, but even then he doubted it would have any effect. Like the man said, he was fishing – plenty of supposition, fuck-all hard evidence. And Kremenko knew it. As the interview drew towards its conclusion he bore the look of a man who’d had a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon.