39
Friday was the beginning of the end of the summer. The wind had gained a little strength, and clouds were cooling some odd corners of the sky. The first days of the end of the summer are the best days of the year. They’re the farthest point in time from the next summer.
Bar bought a large bouquet in the lobby of Ichilov and described nuclear medicine to me on our way to the department. ‘It’s basically mapping of the body. Huge cameras that photograph the inside of the body.’
‘X-rays,’ I said.
‘Not X-rays. It’s similar but a lot more top-end. In X-rays you can only see the bones, but nuclear mapping lets you see everything.’
‘What’s nuclear about it?’ I was picturing the blood flowing, white blood cells, muscles being stretched and relaxed, fat, microbes, lungs dirty from nicotine.
‘The nuclear cameras can decipher radiation emitted by the body,’ continued Bar. We’d arrived at a quieter part of the hospital. ‘They inject this radioactive fluid, a really low isotope, whatever, into the blood and the…’
‘Can I help you?’ asked a brown-haired nurse.
‘Ah, yes, we’re looking for Professor Binyamin-Moshe Warshawski.’
‘Can I ask what it concerns?’
‘Yes. He recently treated our mother, so we just wanted to give him these flowers and ask him a couple of brief questions about the diagnosis.’ I don’t know how Bar comes up with this stuff sometimes.
‘And your mother’s name?’
‘Enoch,’ Bar said. I kept my head down in a women’s magazine, whose cover promised me twenty-five tips for a perfect sex life in Chapter 5. I flicked through to Chapter 5.
‘Sorry, sir. There doesn’t appear to be any Enoch in the system.’
‘Look, is he here? We just need to ask him one small thing.’
‘I’m afraid that’s impossible. The professor’s extremely busy this morning.’
‘Tell him it’s related to Giora Guetta,’ Bar said, deciding to deploy the one weapon we had in our armoury.
He came out immediately. He looked old. Later, we would learn that he was only sixty-one, but our first impression of him was of a man in his mid-seventies. White hair, white beard, a high-blood-pressure colour to him, a wide mouth and large tombstone-like teeth. His eyes were clear and intelligent, but there had been fear in his first glance towards us. It was the fear which had made him seem old. Weak handshake. He took us to the cafeteria and ordered coffee for us and tea for himself.
‘Who are you?’ he said. Professors of nuclear medicine tend not to watch Noah’s Ark.
‘We’re investigating the death of Giora Guetta,’ said Bar.
‘Guetta…he was killed in a terrorist attack, wasn’t he?’
Warshawski’s hands were both palm down on the table, like he was braced against a shock. His voice was weak and defeated-sounding.
‘Yes he was. But a short time before the bombing he met a Professor Binyamin-Moshe Warshawski in a café in Yehuda Maccabi Street.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘Let’s just say that we know,’ said Bar. ‘And we know that money was involved.’
Warshawski raised his eyes and looked at us in turn.
‘Who are you?’ he said. ‘What do you want?’
‘Why did you meet Guetta?’ asked Bar, with a persistence that reminded me of Duchi.
Warshawski didn’t answer for a while.
‘Who are you, and what do you want?’ he repeated. And we could have told him the truth: that we were trying to find out about Guetta as a gesture to his girlfriend, who had since died. He looked like a basically decent man to me. I thought he’d give us the answer and we could put the whole story behind us. But Bar suddenly stood up, scribbling his phone number on a piece of paper:
‘We’ll be back, Professor,’ he said. ‘If you remember why you met Guetta on the morning of his death, give us a call.’
‘What was all that about?’ I asked Bar, trying to catch him up. ‘What are we hiding?’
‘We’ve got plenty of time,’ he replied. ‘And other leads to check. We don’t have to reveal everything, do we?’ Bar stopped next to a bin and threw the bouquet into it. ‘Listen, Croc, if he realises that he’s dealing with a couple of nerds playing at being detectives because they’re bored, he won’t tell us anything.’
‘I’m not playing at detectives because I’m bored,’ I said, but Bar was already striding ahead of me into the Sarsur grocery.
We asked Amin whether he knew Warshawski, and he did: he and his wife Dvora were regular customers. They lived near the store, in King David Street. But when we asked him whether his brother had any dealings with the professor, Amin clammed up. It was Friday and there were a million customers to deal with, and he was suddenly too busy to talk.
‘Interesting,’ said Bar, and we went back to the hospital to look for Tamer. But he wasn’t at work, and his next shift wasn’t before the middle of next week. Another dead end, in my opinion. It infuriated Bar whenever I said that–and I said it pretty often.
‘No, man–we’re almost there. Stick with it. All we’ve got to do is connect Warshawski and Tamer, and then we’ll get the link to Guetta.’
‘Yeah, but how are we going to do that?’
‘We’re a couple of bored nerds playing at detectives. We’ll find a way.’
On Sunday morning I recorded the Arab guy who had replaced this rather cute cleaner we had at Time’s Arrow, a kid with a wispy moustache and a startled look. I wouldn’t have given him a second thought except he’d fixed my PalmPilot. After lying dead on my desk for almost a year, my Palm was reborn after a couple of hours in the hands of Fahmi the Cleaner from Kafr Qasim–who’d have thought? I can’t even remember how it came about. Once upon a time, he told me, he’d been an electrician. Then he asked whether I was the Croc from Noah’s Ark. Weird to think of Arabs watching it. Anyway, the Belgians had asked for a North African Arab and I suppose if I’d searched hard enough I could probably have found a Moroccan or a Tunisian, but what the hell, I thought, let’s see what our software can do with a Palestinian accent.
He was a little nervous when he showed up on Sunday, so I told him not to worry–no one was going to bite him. He told me he wasn’t worried, just a little sick in the stomach. I wanted to say something like ‘Too much hummus, eh?’ but I managed to stop myself. There’s a limit.
I think I used the hummus joke later that day, because it turned out that Fahmi was an all-right kid. He did Palestinian, Egyptian, Jordanian and Lebanese accents, which he’d picked up off the TV. He didn’t know a North African accent, but the system got along fine with him. He had a funny ‘Hello’, which he kind of mooed while lowering his head: ‘Hellooooo.’ I started to imitate him and he laughed and said that at least he didn’t keep a broken PalmPilot on his desk for a whole year. At lunch I asked him whether he wanted to let me buy him a falafel and a Coke. The falafel was OK, he said, but not as good as in his village.
‘You ever tried the falafel in Tel Aviv?’
‘I’ve never been to Tel Aviv…’ he said, and we were interrupted by Bar’s arrival. I introduced him to Fahmi and he inexplicably shot me a look as if he wanted to kill me. Maybe he was angry because I was lunching with an Arab. Or just annoyed that I’d forgotten him: it used to drive Talia Tenne nuts when people ordered food without telling her. But he took me aside and told me I was an idiot.
‘Don’t you get it? He’s from Kafr Qasim!’
‘Yes, so?’
‘The Sarsurs are from Kafr Qasim.’
‘So?’
Bar shook his head at me and then his anger dissolved into laughter. ‘Oh, man. You’re the true heir to Poirot, aren’t you? F*cking…Hushash the f*cking Detective is nothing next to the CrocDetective. It never crossed your mind to ask him about the Sarsur brothers?’
‘Well, what could he find out?’
‘I don’t know, Hushash, but we need to try. Don’t you think?’
Fahmi and I continued working through the afternoon. Once I’d filled out the test forms, we drank coffee and chatted for an hour in the dining area. His Hebrew wasn’t bad and improved as he loosened up: I liked him. He told me about his grandfather, and how he used to ride a white horse through the hills of Samaria. So I told him about Duchi’s grandfather, who was in the patrol that bumped into Izz ad-Din al-Qassam himself in 1935.
‘You know who Izz ad-Din al-Qassam was, right?’ I asked.
‘Oh, yes.’
‘God,’ I said, ‘it used to be like cowboys and Indians around here,’ which made him laugh.
It was Sunday evening in a deserted Bar BaraBush: Fahmi, Bar and me at the bar. Fahmi was running his finger down an almost empty pint glass of beer and telling us more about his grandfather, also named Fahmi.
‘You know where Beit Machsir is?’ Neither of us did. ‘These days the Jews call it Beit-Meir. Above Bab al-Wad,’ he said.
‘Yeah. We know all about Bab al-Wad,’ I said.
‘He was a teacher who got involved with operations against the British during the thirties. With the Jews he was actually OK, but he hated the British. Because the whole thing was their fault. He killed three British soldiers. But they caught him and put him in the prison in Acre.’
A couple of girls came in who were so good looking they stopped the conversation. One of them approached Noam behind the bar and asked for a couple of Orgasms. Three heads turned towards her: she was already waiting for us with a smile. Short brown bob, apple cheeks, sweet little pout, a total babe. Torture. She flicked her attention back to Noam, already busily fulfilling her needs, and Fahmi sighed and continued. ‘They sentenced him to be hanged. He sat in the prison in Acre and waited for the end. He had to wear these red overalls you wore if you were to be hanged. One day they told him his last day had come. They led him from his cell to the gallows and asked him if he had a last wish. What do you think he asked for?’
‘What was it?’
Fahmi pointed to his nearly empty glass.
‘His last wish was a beer. The first time in his life. We Muslims aren’t allowed alcohol, you know? So he says: one time, I will try it. They bring him a glass of beer, just like this, and he starts drinking.’ Fahmi broke off and concentrated on his own beer. He seemed to be following a train of thought somewhere else. Bar and I drank quietly.
‘Well?’ said Noam, from behind the bar. ‘What happened after the beer? Did they hang him?’
‘No, they didn’t,’ Fahmi said, coming back to us. ‘In the middle of his beer, a miracle happened. An Englishman rode up on a horse and told him he was free to go. They let him finish the beer, made him take off his red overalls and set him free.’
‘You serious?’ asked Bar.
‘Totally serious.’
‘Why?’ I asked.
‘He never knew till the day he died. No one explained, not then, not ever. He thought it was probably a mistake. They’d mixed him up with someone else. But he never knew who or why.’
Bar and I chuckled, and Noam too, his pointed sideburns seeming to smile more widely as he laughed.
‘Maybe it was the beer,’ I said.
‘That’s what he always said. So after that he drank beer all the time. Everyone in our family does. And he also stopped hating the British. He never got into any trouble again for the rest of his life.’
‘Thanks to the beer, huh?’
‘Thanks to the beer. If someone is angry, he needs beer. That way there are no problems. I’m going to take a piss.’
‘Complete and total horseshit,’ Bar said when he was gone.
‘Well, maybe…he sounded kind of honest to me.’
‘Yeah, well. I just hope he’s not going to bullshit us about Tamer Sarsur.’
Tamer Sarsur. I’d almost forgotten why Fahmi was sitting with us in Bar BaraBush. It had been Bar’s idea to invite him to Tel Aviv. Fahmi had been nervous initially, worrying about the Jews’ attitude. I told him that he’d be with us, and that I’d take him back to Kafr Qasim afterwards, which seemed to do the trick. And after his first ever beer in Tel Aviv he relaxed and started telling his grandfather stories.
When Fahmi came back from the Gents, Bar started in on Sarsur. Did he know a Tamer Sarsur in his village?
‘Sarsur? There are many Sarsurs in Kafr Qasim. It’s a big family there. But I don’t know a Tamer.’
‘Or Amin?’
He frowned and thought. ‘No, sorry. Why?’
‘Tamer and Amin are brothers. They live in Tel Aviv, in Weizmann Street. Amin runs a fruit-and-veg place. Tamer’s a nurse in Ichilov. The hospital. We need to find out about him.’
‘Well, what do you want to know?’
There was a silence. Bar looked at me. I said, ‘Come on, tell him. What harm can it do?’ So he briefly detailed the story of Guetta and the attack, Shuli and the Palm (Bar asked Fahmi whether he knew what a PalmPilot was, which made us laugh) and Warshawski and Tamer and Amin.
‘We’re trying to understand the connection between Tamer, Warshawski and Guetta. You could ask around in Kafr Qasim. Ask about Tamer. Maybe you’ll find something, maybe you won’t. That’s all. I’m not saying you will. I’m just saying it’s worth trying. You don’t have to. Maybe the two of us could come over and sniff around one day.’
‘Are you crazy?’ That was me.
‘But why are you doing this?’ Fahmi asked bewilderedly.
‘I promised Shuli I’d find out what Guetta was doing in Tel Aviv that day.’
Fahmi stared at me. ‘But this Shuli is dead.’
‘It happened after we got going. Her death wasn’t in the plan. But we started this thing and we want to finish it.’
He drained the dregs of his beer. ‘Don’t go to Kafr Qasim. You won’t get anything. You know Arabic?’ We shook our heads. ‘So what are you going to do, walk into the mosque and ask about Tamer Sarsur in Hebrew?’
There was nothing to say to that.
‘OK. I will ask. I’ll try. Yalla,’ he said, getting up and pulling out the notes he’d earned that day in Time’s Arrow, ‘are you taking me home?’
‘Put them away, I’m paying,’ I said, and pulled out my wallet.