'I can't see any reason I should help.'
'Why not?'
'You think it's all a joke, don't you? 'My signature'-you think that's cute. But, see, to me it isn't cute. I invented it, just like I chose the guns we carried and the boots we wore and everything else. I decided everything. I handpicked every man. I was feared from Beirut to Damascus. I loved that work, loved the sport of it. That unit was my life.'
'Look, Peretz, I never said-'
'Let me finish, Bar-Lev. The way I look at it, the person who killed those people tried to set me up. He carved my name onto them to try and pin his crimes on me. So now I'm going after him. If he was one of my old boys, I'm going to find him, too. When I do, I'm going to punish him. And when I'm done doing that, I'm going to break his head.'
HIDDEN SYMMETRY
Five victims in four and a half weeks, then, suddenly, the killings stopped.
Rafi was right: the serial case, so incomprehensible to the Israeli mind, had been replaced in the public imagination by the double murders of Aaron Horev and Ruth Isaacson.
For David, Horev-Isaacson came as a welcome relief; the enormous pressure that had been on Pattern Crimes was now transferred to the Jerusalem homicide squad. While the Israeli press and public feasted on the extramarital scandal, the PC Unit went quietly about its business, assembling lists of violent men who'd been in military prisons.
He called in Shoshana. As always, she appeared in his doorway in an instant.
'What's new on Gutman?'
'Refuses to say a word. He's got himself a first-class lawyer, Abramsohn. They're going to make a motion for bail.'
'He's still in the lock-up then?'
'Prosecutor told the judge he's got lots of money and there's reason to believe he might try and flee.'
'Plus, I suppose, the 'heinous nature of the crime.' '
Shoshana nodded. 'They put him in a cell by himself. Worried he might get hurt. Meantime, most of the scrolls have been identified. I've been talking with Netzer, who's going to try the case. As the arresting officer I'll have to testify. He says even with Abramsohn, Gutman doesn't have a prayer. The evidence is strong, he won't get any sympathy, and about the only things he's got going are that he's old and doesn't have a record.'
David phoned his father. 'What does it mean: 'A man who has been wronged'?'
'You arrested him.'
'Did I wrong him?' Silence. 'He calls us Nazis.'
'Well?'
'You think that's what we are?'
'Let me ask you something, David: Do you think Gutman's nothing but a shrewd old crook?'
'Tell me about him.'
'Talk to him.'
'He won't talk.'
'No, of course not. Stupid of me. Of course he won't.' A pause and then a change of tone, as if Avraham wanted genuinely to help. 'Think of it this way: there's a colored translucent screen between you and Gutman. Don't mistake the colored light that passes through for the hard white light that burns behind.'
Anna called from Strasbourg. The recital series was going well. So far the reviews were good, and now there was a chance the tour would be extended to Amsterdam.
'I'm always thinking of you, David. I love you very much.'
'I love you too.'
'How is Jerusalem?'
'Beautiful. There're flowers everywhere.'
'Your father?'
'We're getting on better now.' He paused. 'I miss you, Anna. Coffee together in the morning, you in your white robe, the light streaming in. And at night when I come home. And watching you practice. And in bed, holding you, kissing you, tasting you, whispering. Listening to you breathing in the night…'
'I've been thinking about Micha's theory.'
'It's nonsense.'
'Yeah. But there's a germ of something, especially when I put it together with something my father said to me the other night.'
He had taken Dov to lunch at the Mei Naftoah, an arcaded Iraqi-Jewish restaurant on the edge of Jerusalem. Below the sunlight glittered upon the ruined roofs of an abandoned Arab village. Beyond the gully lay the stony Judean hills.
'Forget a conspiracy between two killers, but keep the notion of two classes of victims, 'easy' and 'hard.' Easy victims are whores and hustlers and soldier-girls hitching rides. Easy to pick up. Young and sexual. You stop, exchange a couple words with them, they get into your car, and you've got them. Right?'
Dov nodded.
'Okay, up till now we've been thinking of this as a serial murder case. That's what it looks like. That's the pattern. And it fits with the easy victims-no problem there. But it doesn't fit with Schneiderman and Mills. They're hard. They're not the kind you can get into your car. They're not sexual either. It's as if… there are two different things going on at once.'
'The marks are always the same, David. The blankets, the method. Everything.'
'Forget all that. I'm talking victims. Ever hear the expression 'hidden symmetry'?'
Dov shook his head.
'Particle physicists use it, biologists too, to describe a situation where two totally different results derive from one unseeable source. For example, the crab that has two claws, one big one small. That kind of crab looks unbalanced, but there's symmetry-it's just not visible. Both claws derive from a single gene. You have to understand genes and the purposes behind them before you can recognize the symmetry in what at first you think is just a weird lopsided crab. So, okay, we have two classes of victims. The symmetry's concealed because we don't know the killer's purpose. So suppose we forget serial murders. Let's ask ourselves what other purpose he might have had. Start by throwing the easy victims out. Then what have we got? Schneiderman and Mills. So why were the others killed exactly the same way? Maybe to make it look more complicated than it is, give it a shape, a pattern that disguises what was really going on.'
'Three innocent people killed just to throw us off?'
'It's a possibility. All I know is that when I throw out 'serial killer' I get a whole new angle on the thing. Look, suppose we've got a pattern that conceals another pattern? Suppose we've been so blinded by what we've been shown that we haven't looked at what we've really got?'
'What do you want to do?'
'First, keep searching for Peretz's men, because, whatever his motive, the killer used their unit signature. But I want you to split off and concentrate on Schneiderman and Mills. Track back and get as much detail as you can. Don't worry too much about looking for connections. Just bring in the data. Then together we'll see if we can't find something that links them up.'
Micha was frustrated. The lists of imprisoned men were long. Peretz's unit had no name or designation. The task was to find men who'd been suddenly and unexpectedly released.
'Since Peretz is out looking for his forger, wouldn't it save a lot of time if we just let him do the work?'
'You mean follow him?' David laughed. 'I don't know, Micha. Seems to me we tried that once before.'
Stephanie Porter: After she waved to him that night at Fink's, he had a feeling she would get in touch. The night she did he was sitting home, lights off, staring out at the city, feeling lonely and powerless and somewhat scornful about himself.
