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.In fact I’d say he looked serene.He was all dressed up in a suit and tie with a pink and white flower in his jacket lapel as if laid out for viewing in a mortuary by his family and closest friends.He had his arms folded and crossed on his chest like in some photos that I’ve seen of dead saints.Do you mind my asking, by the way, what killed him?ZUI: We haven’t quite nailed it, Sergeant.There’s a second autopsy underway.The first one found a terminal cancer.The incurable one.Pancreatic.MERAL: That’s what killed him?ZUI: We’re looking at something else.MERAL: Then he was murdered?ZUI: Suicide or murder, it could go either way.Let’s go on now, Sergeant.Let’s pick up.You found something on the body that led you to a furnished apartment that Temescu had rented in Jerusalem Hills for some—what?—some three weeks or so?MERAL: Thereabouts.SANDALLS: You went in there alone, Sergeant?MERAL: No.I had Corporal Zananiri with me.SANDALLS: So there’s a witness.MERAL: A witness? A witness to what?ZUI: To the fact that you found what you say you found there.Sandalls thinks we sit around here all day munching matzohs and dreaming up schemes to salt evidence just to make him and Bell even crazier than they already are.SANDALLS: Moshe, I wouldn’t put it past you.ZUI: Sergeant Meral? You’ll continue with your witnessed story?MERAL: The concierge let us into the apartment.It was small: two rooms, a kitchenette, and a bathroom.Very dreary.It had some old rental furniture in it.Anyway, we made a thorough search.There was hardly any clothing, just a jacket, a shirt, and a pair of trousers hanging in a closet.No labels.They’d all been cut.Things were covered with dust.But as you know we did find a few items of interest.The passports and the I.D.card, mainly.ZUI: And the juggling balls and circus clown items.MERAL: They’re of interest?BELL: [To Sandalls] That’s our boy, alright!MERAL: I feel that I’m missing something.ZUI: No.Let’s move on.MERAL: Yes, of course.So we went about knocking on doors and asking questions about him.About Temescu.There were just a few apartments.It’s a four-story building Some of the occupants weren’t at home and those who were could tell me little, almost nothing in fact.They all said that except for one time when he first moved in they never saw him; never heard him, in fact: No sound of water running ever.No radio.No footsteps.Nothing.But then a woman on the second floor in the apartment across the hall from Temescu’s, a pretty young house wife, she came home as we were just about to leave and she told us that she’d heard someone going into Temescu’s apartment on the morning of the day Temescu’s body was found in the church.He stayed only a few minutes, she said, during which she thought she heard a closet door being opened and then afterward a drawer sliding open.And then a few seconds later she heard it being pushed shut.Then she heard him leaving.SANDALLS: She never saw him though?MERAL: No.No, she didn’t.But the odd thing.ZUI: Yes?MERAL: Well, it seems there was a repetition very late that night: someone entering the apartment for a very brief time and the sound of drawer sliding open and shut and then the footsteps of the person leaving.ZUI: One drawer only?MERAL: Just one.But Temescu was dead by that time.So who was it?SANDALLS: So once again she doesn’t see the person? Right?MERAL: She’s in bed.And she also couldn’t swear it was a man.ZUI: Is her bedroom so situated she could really tell for sure that the sounds were from Temescu’s apartment?MERAL: No, her bedroom was a bit down the hall from there.She herself wasn’t positive, she said.ZUI: Let’s go on.Now you made a passing reference [consults notes] to a woman, to a nurse who also lives in the neighborhood.A nurse named Samia.MERAL: Yes, Samia Maroon.We’re acquainted: friends of a friend sort of thing.She was walking up the street when she saw us going into the building, and when we came down from the apartment she was standing beside the patrol car.She gave us a “Hello,” and then asked what was going on.She’s a naturally inquisitive sort of person.BELL: You mean a busybody, Sergeant?MERAL: Oh, no! Not at all! She’s quite nice, in fact.I showed her the driver’s license with the photo of Temescu on it and I asked if she had seen him around.Well, she squinted at first, as if she couldn’t make it out.It’s in very soft focus and blurred.She kept staring and staring and she began to look troubled.She looked up at me, then, and had opened her mouth to give an answer, but she never got it out.She just stopped and very quickly closed her mouth.There was that worried look still on her face and her eyes seemed to study me, flicking back and forth and scanning mine.And then she asked me a question.She—SANDALLS: Hold it, please.Sorry.This is one of the things that we want to be absolutely sure of.Okay? Please repeat word for word what she said, would you Sergeant? At least as you now recall it.MERAL: What she said was, “Does this have anything to do with a murder or something? Some really really serious crime?”ZUI: And that’s precisely what’s in your report.Please go on.MERAL: I told her yes, and that a serious crime was a possibility, and then right away she gave me an answer.No, she told me, she’d never seen him.And then something about wanting to meet for a drink or a coffee that night.That’s not in my report.ZUI: No it isn’t.Do you socialize with her?MERAL: No.I never have.Though she sometimes asks me to meet in that way on some pretext or other.ZUI: Did you do so that night?MERAL: No, I didn’t.I gave her request no significance.ZUI: And so what do you think was going on with her, Sergeant?MERAL: I’m not sure.But I suspect that she actually had seen Temescu.ZUI: Any reason she would lie about that?MERAL: Oh, well, she could be one of those people who just doesn’t ever want to be involved.ZUI: You think that’s it, then?MERAL: Actually, I don’t.Assessing her manner, her behavior—as I said, I do know her a little—my instinct says she might be protecting someone.ZUI: Right.Now it’s been mentioned to us that there’s a bit of a lapse in your written report.MERAL: Is that so?SANDALLS: Wouldn’t someone at the church remember seeing the dead man going into the Tomb? I mean, although it’s not entirely out of the question, it seems whacko to imagine someone carried in a corpse.There must be someone from the church who’s always posted by the entrance to the Tomb [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]