'Rafi says wait for you.' Liederman's voice was hoarse, his fingers stained from smoking. He wore a beaten- up leather commando jacket. 'Says I should tell you everything.'
'So go ahead. Tell me.'
Liederman shrugged as he danced from foot to foot to fight off the morning chill. 'She's young, maybe eighteen, twenty. Throat cut. Beaten and mutilated. Found naked under that old army blanket there. No ID. No idea who she is.'
An empty tourist bus rounded the corner, stopped, and blocked the road. The driver peered at them and then at the body.
'Hey! Get him out of here,' Liederman yelled at one of his men. 'Keep traffic moving. I told you that.'
'Jewish?' David asked.
'How the hell should I know?'
Use your instinct.'
'I don't have any instinct. I'm just an old cop. This year, thank God, I retire.'
'Ask him.' David gestured at the Arab boy who was sitting on the ground; his horse was grazing the sparse plants that grew along the base of the wall. Liederman grinned and fumbled with his Polaroid. David walked closer to the body, shivered, and stared down.
The girl's face was puffed. Her skin was already turning blue. Her cheeks were marked, two shallow vertical slashes across each, cut quickly, David thought, like a pair of bars drawn across a check.
There were similar pairs of marks, harsh, ugly, brutal, cut into her lips and breasts and a neat slit across her throat. Very little blood. No expression on her face, no frozen look of agony or fear. She was very young. Her eyes were closed and there was a residue of kohl around them. Attractive, perhaps even pretty. He could hardly bear to look at her. He turned away.
Liederman called to him. He was standing with the Arab boy. 'He thinks she's Jewish,' he said.
David walked over. 'You've seen her?' he asked the boy in Arabic.
The boy nodded. 'She stands by the Damascus Gate.'
'A prostitute?'
The boy nodded again. He was wearing two brown sweaters, the outer one old and torn.
'A Jewish prostitute?'
'I think so.'
'Did you ever go with her?'
The boy shook his head.
'You ride down here every morning?'
He explained that he exercised the horse, which belonged to his uncle who lived beyond Ramat Rahel on the road to Bethlehem.
'So why ride this way?'
'I ride her to Shiloah. Besides I find it beautiful.'
David looked around. 'Yes, you're right. It is beautiful here. Especially just at dawn.'
The boy stared deeply at David, then patted the neck of his horse. He had the very gentle sort of Arab- Christian face that always filled David with guilt. No angry PLO kid from Hebron University but a sweet thin Jerusalem boy with large sad injured eyes.
There were more cars now. Cops were blowing their whistles trying to keep the traffic moving up the hill. People gazed out of car windows, their faces curious and disturbed. An ambulance arrived. Several pedestrians stopped by the side of the road to watch. David looked over at Abu Tor, found his building, wondered if Anna was standing before the large window rubbing her hands together, or sitting on her stool in the middle of the room already at work practicing her scales.
Liederman followed David to his car. 'How did you know he'd know if she was Jewish?'
'I'm a detective.'
'Yeah, I see that. But how did you know?'
'Just a guess.'
'A good one. I've heard about you. I've heard you're very good.' Liederman threw down his cigarette, then leaned in through the window so he could speak in confidence. 'Rafi wouldn't have called you here if he wasn't going to give this to your section. If it turns out she was definitely Jewish, this could turn out to be a pretty interesting case.'
David waited. The sun was up, already caressing the walls. In a few minutes it would strike full force and set Jerusalem aflame.
'…I never worked a good case, never worked anything that wasn't shit. I can't wait to retire. I've got other things to do. I have an archive. Books, old newspapers, documents. It's stashed in a room in the German Colony. An old lady's house. I do odd jobs for her, stay there when she's gone and keep an eye on everything. And for that she lets me have the room.'
'What sort of archive?'
'Early 1940s. Poland. My father's collection. And I've added to it on my own. Thing is, I wonder if you'd come out one day and look it over. You've a good eye. You see things. I've heard that and now I know it's true.'
'What could I see in all your papers?'
'Well, you might see something if you looked.' Liederman stopped. 'You don't like that kind of study, do you-examining the past?' He backed away. 'I'm sorry. You're young. You were born here. People born here don't like that kind of thing. I understand.'
'I'm thirty-six years old,' David said. 'Examining the past is my passion. If you think I can help, then of course I'll look at your stuff. Sarah in Rafi's office has my schedule. Pick a day when both of us are free.'
At ten that morning he was sitting in the office of Rafi Shahar, Chief of Criminal Investigation, staring at stripes on the terra cotta floor projected by the sun through Rafi's blinds. Through the open window he could hear the buses grinding their way up Jaffa Road, and in the courtyard patrol cars revving up. He could also hear phones ringing unanswered in other offices, and echoes from the hall beyond the door, people striding, talking, cursing the coffee machine, and the quick high-heeled steps of the Moroccan girl who worked in Superintendent Latsky's office, who wore tight sweaters and used henna on her hair and fought with her fingernails and for this had been dubbed 'The Claw.'
Rafi sat back, his eyes watery and sad. The sun made a halo around his balding head. He held the headset of his phone between his cheek and shoulder and drummed his fingers on his desk. Every so often he nodded at Sarah Dorfman, who sat at her little table across the room listening on the extension and taking notes.
Finally, when Rafi put down the phone, the stripes on the floor compressed. David looked up; the back of Rafi's chair was crushing the blinds against the sill.
'So?'
'Nasty marks. Unusual.'
'That's all you have to say?'
'Well -'
'What?'
David glanced back at Sarah Dorfman, then down at the floor. 'Maybe whoever killed her marked her to say 'She's mine, belongs to me.' '
He looked up at Rafi, saw his eyes enlarge behind his glasses. Since the day David had met him, he'd been aware of the sadness in his eyes. Rafi was only five years older, but his remaining hair was graying above his ears and he had developed the pale complexion and growing paunch of a ranking officer who now, to his great regret, was forced to work behind a desk.
'Marks of ownership. Interesting, David. You've always had an interesting kind of mind.'
Rafi stared at him a moment, then leaned forward. From the clutter on his desk he picked out a pipe. Pipes and orchids: Rafi liked Turkish tobacco and bred air orchids in his greenhouse after work. Though David considered him a friend, he was aware of the methods by which Rafi distanced himself: hiding at work behind clouds of aromatic smoke, performing his solitary hobby behind a wall of glass.
Rafi lit his pipe, then selected a file folder. He pushed it across the desk. There were photographs inside. As David examined them, he felt his stomach tighten. When Rafi spoke again, it was in a hoarse whisper that filled the little room.
