‘Taking a morning off in the middle of an investigation. There’s something going on.’ Her tone was more teasing than confrontational. ‘Come on, ’fess up. You’ve done something. Or you want something.’
‘I just want to spend some time with you and Bubu. I’ve missed you both.’
Which was the truth. Something about this case – the whole sex-trafficking thing, Khalifa losing his son like that – seemed to be striking an unusually deep chord with him. Last night, when he’d got back from Tel-Aviv, he’d just lain in bed thinking about Sarah and the baby, wishing they were there beside him, chiding himself for the fact they weren’t. Normally the way it went, particularly with an investigation as intense as this, the case dragged you away from the people you loved most. This one seemed to be pushing him back towards them. More and more he was thinking that they really ought to give it another go.
He
ought to give it another go. It was him who’d screwed the whole thing up, after all.
‘Are you going to take these?’
‘Of course. Thank you. They’re beautiful.’
She accepted the flowers.
‘I’ve got something else,’ he said. ‘Watch this.’
Pulling out his mobile phone, he wafted it in front of her, like a magician setting up a trick. With a flourish, he arced a finger through the air and pushed the off button, soundtracking the gesture with a loud ‘Ta-Na!’ She burst out laughing and wrapped her arms around him, the baby-bump pushing against his stomach, which felt fantastic.
‘I thought the chief rabbi would be eating prawn cocktail before I ever saw you do that,’ she joked.
‘Well, there you go. Miracles do happen. Can I make you breakfast?’
‘Yes please.’
Which is what he did, his Spanish omelettes mutating into scrambled eggs, his toast setting off the kitchen smoke alarm. She joshed him about his culinary ineptitude, drawing some sharp retaliatory comments about biting the hand that feeds you – fun banter, light-hearted. The sort of banter they had used to engage in all the time and that had been markedly absent this last year. God, she looked good.
Once they’d eaten – out on the balcony, the atmosphere curiously charged, like they were on a first date or something – he performed his second miracle of the morning by doing the washing up.
‘Who on earth is this domestic god?’ she asked in mock amazement.
‘Nothing to do with me. You must have an intruder in the house. Better call 100.’
More laughter. The best sound in the world.
Afterwards she lay on the sofa so he could press a hand on her belly and feel his child going through what felt like a particularly vigorous Pilates routine. Then, at her suggestion, they took themselves down to Mamilla Mall to shop for baby clothes. Ben-Roi loathed shopping, rated it somewhere alongside doing his tax return. He put a brave face on it, glad just to be spending time with her, even if spending time did mean kicking his heels for two hours while she worked her way through an endless succession of babygros and miniature Crocs.
‘Sure you’re not bored?’ she kept asking.
‘Not at all,’ he kept lying.
And then, suddenly, it was midday and he was driving her round the Old City walls and down to the play scheme she ran in Silwan – an Arab neighbourhood crowded on to the hillside to the south of the Old City. The scheme was experimental, tried to integrate Israeli and Palestinian kids by encouraging them to have fun together. Four years ago it had catered to upwards of thirty children. Now the number had dropped to less than a dozen, which said just about everything that needed to be said about the peace process.
‘What’s going on with the settlers?’ he asked as they turned off Ma’ale Ha-Shalom on to the steep slope of Wadi Hilwah.
‘What do you think’s going on? Same shit as usual.’
A group of settlers – ultra-Orthodox, American-funded, as most of them were – had bought up the house next door to the school, and had been causing trouble from the off.
‘The other day one of them lobbed a bag of piss into the playground,’ she said. ‘Damn near hit one of the kids. A
Jewish
kid!’ She shook her head in disgust. ‘Although credit where credit’s due. Last week a group of
shebab
firebombed our minibus.’
This was all news to Ben-Roi. He’d been so wrapped up in his own work he hadn’t even asked about hers.
‘At least you’ve given the nut-jobs something to agree on,’ he joked, a weak line that didn’t even raise a smile.
‘To be honest, I don’t think we’re going to be able to carry on much longer,’ she said. ‘There was a time when it looked like it was going to work, but the way things are going these days . . .’
She rubbed her temples.
‘I tell you, Arieh, the lunatics are taking over the asylum. Have already taken it over. On both sides of the line. I sometimes wonder if this is a country I want my kid to grow up in.’
Ben-Roi slowed the car and took her hand.
‘Our kid’s going to have the best home in the world, Sarah. The happiest home, and the safest. I promise you that. With all my heart.’
She squeezed his hand, leant over and kissed his cheek.
‘I love you, Arieh. You drive me nuts, but I love you. Now come on, I’m going to be late.’
He ruffled her hair and they continued down the hill to the school – a drab concrete compound with grilled windows and a graffiti-covered steel gate. He helped her out of the car and they crossed to the entrance, ignoring the neighbouring building with the giant white-and-blue Israel flag fluttering from its roof. Sarah pressed the school entrance buzzer.
‘Thanks for a great morning.’
‘Thank
you
.’
‘We should do it again.’
‘We certainly should.’
‘The toast was delicious.’
‘Screw you.’
They laughed and clasped hands. He wanted to say more, go deeper; tell her how special she was, how much she meant to him, how more than anything in the world he wanted their future to be a shared one. Before he could speak the gate swung open. Sarah rolled her eyes – maybe she’d been thinking the same things.
‘Call me,’ she said.
‘Of course.’
She kissed him on the nose, touched her belly gently against his and, with a whispered ‘Bye, Dad’, stepped into the compound. A quick wave and the gate clanged shut. Ben-Roi stared at it, thinking how much easier life would be if he just had a normal job, something that wasn’t forever clogging up his system with death and violence and misery. Then, with a shake of the head, he pulled out his mobile, switched it on and trudged back to the car. As he came up to it, a series of bleeps alerted him to missed calls and messages. A lot of missed calls and messages. Way more than normal. Frowning, he accessed his voicemail and leaned on the car roof, listening.
Inside the compound Sarah was walking across the play area with her colleague Rivka, telling her what a fun morning she’d had, how maybe, just maybe, she and Ben-Roi might try and make another go of it. Suddenly a familiar voice roared out on the far side of the compound wall.
‘Oh no, no, no, you ignorant fuck! What are you doing?’
Her smile faded.
‘Good while it lasted,’ she sighed.
Ben-Roi drove like a madman, foot to the floor, siren blaring, police light strobing frantically on the Toyota’s roof. He made it back to Kishle in five minutes. Omar Ibn al-Khattab was jammed – several hundred Armenians chanting, shouting, hurling insults at the line of uniforms who’d been deployed to keep them back from the front of the station. All of it watched over by a crush of journalists, photographers and TV news crews. Pretty much what he’d been expecting, given that Archbishop Armen Petrossian had just been arrested on suspicion of murdering Rivka Kleinberg.
He nudged the Toyota up to the station’s security gate, flashed his badge, barrelled through into the car park at the rear of the building. He’d called ahead and Zisky was waiting for him.
‘This is Baum’s doing, isn’t it!’ he yelled, scrambling out of the car. ‘It’s Baum who’s behind this!’
‘He pulled rank on Sergeant Shalev,’ confirmed Zisky. ‘Says he’s got enough evidence to charge.’
‘What evidence, for God’s sake?’
Zisky didn’t know details, just that the chief superintendent was claiming to have a watertight case.
‘About as watertight as the bloody Titanic, knowing Baum’s track record! Where’s Leah?’
Apparently she’d been sent home to cool down. Had flipped out when she’d heard what was going on. Ben-Roi slammed a fist on to the Toyota’s roof, then started across the compound, Zisky trailing in his wake.
‘Chief Gal?’
‘Across town briefing the ministry.’
‘What a God-all-mighty bloody cock-up! The one community that actually behaves itself and he’s got them out there rioting. In full view of the press! Imbecile!’
Ben-Roi reached the entrance to the detectives’ suite, stormed inside. Uri Pincas, Amos Namir and Sergeant Moshe Peres were all sitting around with their feet up on the desks. They seemed to think it was a done deal.
‘Nice of you to—’
‘Where’s Baum?’ snapped Ben-Roi, cutting Pincas off mid-flow.
‘—join us,’ continued Pincas, finishing the sentence. ‘Upstairs. Fielding calls from the press.’
‘I’ll bet he bloody is,’ growled Ben-Roi, turning on his heel, hurrying back out into the car park and round into the station entrance tunnel. At its far end the crowd was pushing right up against the security gates, their cries filling the air, the line of uniforms struggling to keep them back. Ben-Roi swung right into a low doorway and started up a set of stairs.
‘You want me to come with?’ asked Zisky, still tagging along behind.
Ben-Roi wheeled. ‘What I want you to do is to get out there and find a guy called George Aslanian. Owns the Armenian Tavern, everyone knows him. Tell him I’m on the case and see if he can do something to calm this lot down. OK?’
‘OK.’
‘And take a couple of plods with you. I wouldn’t want anything happening to that peachy little face of yours.’
He gave the kid a pat on the cheek, wheeled again and clattered on up to the top of the stairs, taking them two at a time.
Chief Superintendent Yitzhak Baum was in his office, sitting behind his desk talking on the phone. A short, pudgy man in a neatly pressed uniform, the leaf and star insignia of a
sgan nitzav
gleaming on his shoulders, Baum had always exuded an air of prim self-satisfaction, and that was amplified this morning as he held forth on how he really couldn’t give any comment beyond the fact that at this stage they weren’t looking for anyone else in connection with Rivka Kleinberg’s murder. Ben-Roi stomped across the room and jabbed a thumb-tip on the phone’s on–off toggle, cutting the line.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ Baum’s voice was an outraged squeal. ‘That was the
Jerusalem Post
I was talking to.’
‘Fuck the
Jerusalem Post
,’ snapped Ben-Roi, leaning across the desk right into his superior’s face. ‘What’s going on?’
It took Baum a moment to get his voice, his fleshy mouth twisting and contorting as he fought to bring his anger under control.
‘What’s going on,
Detective
Ben-Roi, is that I’m solving a murder.
Which is a shit sight more than you’ve been doing for the last ten days.’
‘Petrossian!’ Ben-Roi’s tone was incredulous. ‘A seventy-year-old priest! How do you figure that one out?’
‘How I figure it is by a time-honoured process of gathering evidence and following where it leads!’
‘Oh spare me the clever stuff, Baum!’
‘And you show me a bit of respect, Ben-Roi!’
‘Fuck you!’
‘Fuck
you
!’
Baum was on his feet now, the two men eyeballing each other. A young police constable stuck her head into the room, asked what all the noise was about.
‘Piss off!’ bellowed Baum.
He charged across the office, slammed the door, returned to his desk.
‘You want to watch yourself, Ben-Roi,’ he snarled. ‘Speaking to me like that! You seriously want to watch yourself or I’ll have you on a charge.’
‘I’m trembling!’
‘So you should be! You’re a disgrace. You and that jumped-up tart of an investigator—’
‘Don’t you dare—!’
‘Don’t
you
dare!’
‘
Maniak!
’
‘Watch your language!’
‘
Maniak!
’
It rumbled on for a while longer, back and forth, shouts and insults, until eventually they’d blown themselves out and fell silent, both of them panting heavily, the yells of the Armenian protesters barging in from outside. Ten seconds passed, then Baum sat back down. Ben-Roi lifted his hands and took a step away from the desk.
‘Does Chief Gal know about this?’
‘Of course he knows about it. You think I’d act behind his back? I showed him the evidence, he cleared it, signed off on the warrant.’
Ben-Roi shook his head. Chief Gal was no fool – if he’d authorized the arrest it was almost certainly because Baum had made the case sound stronger than it actually was.
‘So what is this evidence? This
watertight
evidence.’
Baum settled back in his chair, chest puffing out. ‘He’s got form.’
‘Petrossian?’
‘Attacked a Greek Orthodox priest in the Holy Sepulchre. Damn nearly strangled him. Totally lost the plot.’
‘This was . . . ?’
‘2004.’
Ben-Roi let out a dismissive bark of laughter. ‘Serial offender then.’
Baum bristled, but didn’t rise to the sarcasm.
‘There’s more.’
‘Do tell.’
‘Back in the seventies he got caught cooking the cathedral books. He was in charge of the finances, was siphoning money off the accounts and reinvesting in dodgy bonds. The bonds went bad, damned nearly bankrupted the Church.
Ha’aretz
did a big exposé.’
Ben-Roi could barely believe what he was hearing. ‘This is somehow relevant?’
‘It certainly is.’
Baum’s chest puffed out further.
‘The journalist who did the exposé was a young trainee on her first major story. Name of . . .’
‘Rivka Kleinberg.’