'She was murdered, sir. Violently.'
A long, maddening silence, every creak and exhalation, thunderous. Then:
'I have three daughters. Sahar, Hadiya, and Salway. None are idle. Three sons as well. Many grandchildren.'
The Chinaman swore softly and cleared his throat. 'It was a very brutal murder. Multiple stab wounds.'
'We want to find the person who did it,' said Daniel.
'To avenge her,' added the Chinaman.
The wrong thing to say, thought Daniel. Revenge was the prerogative of the family. To suggest that an outsider could accomplish it was at best ignorant, at worst an insult. He looked at the Chinaman and gave his head a barely perceptible shake.
The big man shrugged and started gazing around the room, restless and eager for action.
Rashmawi was smiling strangely. He'd placed His hands on his knees and had started to sway, as if in a trance.
'Any information you can provide is essential, sir,' said Daniel. 'About anyone who could have done this to Fatma. Why anyone would have wanted to hurt her.'
Anyone other than you or your sons
'A bad influence, perhaps,' said Daoud. 'Someone who tried to corrupt her.'
That, too, seemed the wrong thing to say, for the old man's face compressed with anger and his hands began to shake. He pushed down harder on his knees to avoid the appearance of feebleness. Clamped his eyes shut and continued swaying, further out of reach than ever.
'Mr. Rashmawi,' said Daniel, more forcefully. 'No young girl should have to come to such an end.'
Rashmawi opened his eyes and Daniel examined them closely. Irises the color of the coffee in his demitasse, the whites soiled an unhealthy shade of gray. If eyes were the mirror of the soul, these mirrors reflected a weary soul beset by illness, fatigue, the pain of remembrance. Or was it guilt he was seeing, Daniel wondered-segregated from the heart by a fortress of silence?
Eloquent eyes. But you couldn't work a case based on unspoken eloquence.
'Tell us what you know, sir,' said Daniel, fighting back impatience. 'What she was wearing when she left, her jewelry.'
Rashmawi's shoulders rounded and his head drooped, as if suddenly too heavy for his neck to support. He covered his face with his hands, swayed some more, then raised himself up, fueled by defiance.
'I have three daughters,' he said. 'Three.'
'Hard-assed old bastard,' said the Chinaman. 'Didn't so much as look at the picture. Our best bet is to talk to the women.'
They stood by the side of the dirt pathway, several yards from the house. The wailing had resumed and was audible at that distance.
'We could try,' said Daniel, 'but it would be a violation of their family structure.'
'To hell with family structure. One of them may have sliced her, Dani.'
'The point is, Yossi, that the family structure makes it impossible for us to get information. Without the father's permission, none of them is going to talk to us.'
The big man spat in the dirt, pounded his fist into his hand.
'Then haul them in! A few hours in a cell and we'll see about their goddamned family structure.'
'That's your plan, is it? Arrest the bereaved.'
The Chinaman started to say something, then sighed and smiled sheepishly.
'Okay, okay, I'm talking shit. It's just that it's weird. The guy's daughter is butchered and he's as cold as ice, making like she never existed.' He turned to Daoud: 'That culturally normal?'
Daoud hesitated.
'Is it?' pressed the Chinaman.
'To some extent.'
'Meaning?'
'To the Muslims, virginity is everything,' said Daoud. 'If the father thought Fatma lost hers-even if he just suspected it-he might very well expel her from the family. Excommunicate her. It would be as if she didn't exist.'
'Killing her would accomplish the same thing,' said the Chinaman.
'I don't see this as a family affair,' said Daniel. 'That old man was in pain. And after seeing the way they live, the factors I mentioned yesterday seem stronger-the Rashmawis are old-school, by the book. Had they chosen to execute a daughter, it would have taken place in the village-a swift killing by one of the brothers, semi-publicly in order to show that the family honor had been restored. Removing the body and dumping it for outsiders to find would be unthinkable. So would mutilating her.'
'You're assuming,' said the Chinaman, 'that culture overrides craziness. If that was the case, they would have replaced us long ago with anthropologists.'
The door to the Rashmawi house opened and Anwar came out, wiping his glasses. He put them back on, saw them, and went hastily inside.
