“Your most recent client was the Manar building. In Lafayette?”
Hamid jumped in excitedly. “I know that building! It’s a tall and luxurious-looking office block. I don’t think it’s completely finished yet.”
The company employee, relieved that he was no longer under pressure, stepped in to correct him. “It is finished. Otherwise they wouldn’t have ordered the mailboxes.”
Hanash eyed the man closely. The short and thickset Mr. Habbab was now calm and unflustered. An unfurrowed brow and candid eyes told Hanash that the man had nothing to do with this case and did not have the constitution of a murderer. With a quick nod, he signaled Hamid that it was time to go. They quickly headed out of the building and to their car.
As the car sped out of the industrial zone, Hanash said, “I think we got something solid this time. At least we finally have a causal connection between a point ‘a’ and a point ‘b.’”
“I suspect that that personnel manager was hiding something from us,” Hamid said.
“In any case, we’ll have to go back to that company if we don’t get anywhere,” Hanash muttered as he became absorbed in thoughts.
Hamid too fell silent. It was pointless to discuss this further before they had more information to go on.
They pulled up in front of the Manar building, which was located on one of Casablanca’s main boulevards. Hanash was struck by the coincidence that the building bore the same name as his daughter.
It was an impressive building: nine stories tall, with a façade of dark smoked-glass panels set in a grid of shiny metal beams. A small, well-tended garden with flowerbeds separated the building from the street. It was clear that the major construction had been completed, but it was still unoccupied and the office spaces had not yet been put up for sale.
Officer Hamid pressed the doorbell next to the glass front door. He pressed again and listened, but no sound came from within. He gave the door a few tugs and shoves, but nothing gave.
Hanash, squinting up at the rows of closed windows, said, “There’s nobody here.”
They turned to head back to the car. Just then, the front door of the building opened and a young man appeared wearing a blue private security guard’s uniform. He hesitated for a moment and then called out, “Were you the guys who rang the doorbell?”
They turned in surprise. Hanash gave him a quick once-over: early twenties, small, narrow eyes, beardless, a wide flat nose, frizzy hair. He looked like he had just woken up.
“Who are you?” Officer Hamid asked curtly.
“The building guard.” The young man still sounded half asleep.
“What’s your name?”
“Abdel-Salam Kahila.”
“Where’s the owner of this building?”
“He’s not here.”
Hanash pushed past the young man and entered the foyer. He climbed several stairs and saw a series of mailboxes exactly like those they had just seen in the company. Hanash opened some of them.
“None of them are locked. The office spaces are still unoccupied,” the guard explained.
“When’s the building owner going to get here?” Hamid asked as he inspected the young man more closely.
“Maybe this evening,” he answered indifferently, as he passed his hand through his hair.
“Where are the cartons that these mailboxes came in?” Hanash asked, eying the guard closely.
“The carpenter who works here took them,” the young man answered without hesitation.
“Where can we find this carpenter?”
“I don’t know. But he’ll be here tomorrow.”
Kahila shrugged and sighed as though fed up, and added dismissively, “If you want to rent an office space, come back tomorrow when the holiday’s over.”
He left them standing in the foyer and disappeared down a corridor.
After leaving the building, Hanash and Hamid jerked to a stop simultaneously and exchanged perplexed smiles. After months of not being able to take a step forward due to the lack of information, now that they had seized the beginning of a solid thread, they seemed struck by a kind of paralysis.
It seemed farfetched to think that this empty building could be directly connected with the murderer. Solving the case couldn’t be that simple after all those weeks of getting nowhere. They had to find that carpenter who, according to the guard, had taken the empty cartons. They felt it better not to press the young man further on that matter, or to reveal that they were police. There was always the possibility that he’d inform the carpenter, giving him the opportunity to flee or destroy any incriminating evidence. And, of course, they had no concrete proof that the cartons in question came from this particular building. There were other buildings on the company’s list that might have purchased mailboxes around the same time. They needed to make inquiries at those buildings as well.
*
Back at the station, Hanash called a meeting in his office. After reading his team in on the latest developments, he instructed them to check out all the buildings that had recently bought the Spanish-made mailbox units, and report back to him with the information they collected—every detail, he stressed, no matter how seemingly trivial. They were not to let on that they were police, he added, and then assigned one officer the task of conducting a background check on the personnel manager at the al-Saada company.
After the men left, he sat back in his swivel chair and closed his eyes. Something was nagging at him. He wasn’t comfortable with the way he’d handled that guard at the Manar building. Perhaps he and Hamid had been too cautious, which kept them from asking more questions that might have reaped more details. They should have asked him when he last saw the carpenter take one of those cartons. Why did he take them? How many cartons were there and did he take them all? They should have asked him how well he knew the carpenter, and they could have pressed him for the carpenter’s address. Come to think of it, what was to say that the guard wasn’t lying when he said the carpenter took the cartons?
He shot out of his chair and strode out of his office, slamming the door behind him. He decided not to let anyone know where he was going. He strode through the corridors without responding to greetings and without peeking into offices, as he usually did, in order to check up on subordinates.
He pulled up in front of the Manar building, got out of his car, and walked through the small garden to the front door. It was locked. He shook the handle, knocked on the glass pane, and rang the bell. He rapped on the glass repeatedly. Taking a couple of steps back, he peered up at the glass façade and shouted, “Is anyone here?”
He went back to the door, bent down, and peeked through the keyhole. No trace of the guard. “What are you looking for?” an angry voice asked, and Hanash spun around.“Where’s the building guard?” Hanash asked the man who stood there.
“I haven’t seen him today. Maybe he’s still asleep.”
“I just spoke with him a little while ago. Where’d he get off to?”
“Hell if I know,” the man responded curtly.
“Who are you?” Hanash demanded, as he flashed his official ID.
The man shot a hand to his forehead in a military-like salute and assumed a more polite and respectful tone. “I’m the doorman at that building across the street.” He pointed to a timeworn apartment building dating from the colonial era.
“Do you know any of the people who’ve been working at this site?”
“A few of them.”
“Do you know the carpenter?”
The man raised his eyebrows and smiled. He was about fifty, in a threadbare uniform. He had a cigarette tucked behind his ear and twiddled another between his fingers.
“There isn’t just one carpenter. There’s a whole team of carpenters.”
“How well do you know the building guard here?”
“Abdel-Salam Kahila . . . I can’t say I know him well.”
“Does he live here, in the building?”
“Yes. He’s got a room.”
>
The middle-aged man put the cigarette between his lips and lit it. He moved passed the detective, rapped on the door, and shouted for Kahila. Still no sound came from within.
“Can you open it?” Hanash asked in a friendly manner.
“I can try.”
The doorman seemed glad to be able to perform a service for the police. He extracted a large bundle of keys from his pocket and began to insert them into the keyhole, moving from one key to the next with machine-like rhythm, as though to demonstrate his skill. After several attempts, the door opened. He entered, inviting the detective to follow. He flicked on the lights and shouted, “Abdel-Salam!”
He turned to Hanash and said apologetically, “It looks like he’s gone.”
Hanash entered a corridor that led to a door at the other end.
“Is this where he lives?” he asked the doorman.
“Yes.”
The detective turned the knob. The door opened easily and a foul odor assaulted their noses. The older man flicked on the lights.
“It stinks in here,” he grumbled. “This guy’s an enemy of hygiene.”
Hanash remained silent, frowning as he took in the sparse contents of the small room. There was a narrow mattress, some rumpled sheets, and a filthy quilt. The few clothes were in disarray in a tiny closet with no doors. There was a small dirty table with nothing on it. Everything was visible, hardly requiring an extensive search.
Hanash swiveled in place, allowing his eyes to pan the room, pausing on spots here and there as though in accordance with a preset route. There was something disingenuous about the anarchy in this room, as though it had been searched. Or perhaps the owner had been in a frenzy to find something he’d misplaced—or needed to hide. Hanash’s eyes came to a rest on one of the walls. The color looked patchy and uneven, as though it had been hastily repainted. He took his car key and scratched at the paint, which chipped off, exposing dark stains. He touched them with his fingertips, brought his fingers up to his nostrils, and sniffed. Just the thought that these might be spots of dried blood made his skin crawl. He turned toward the doorman, who stood staring, mouth agape. Hanash could see the fear mixed with the astonishment. He clearly sensed the gravity of this situation. Hanash approached the closet and cast a cursory glance at its meager contents, without touching anything. There were only a threadbare shirt, a pair of underwear, a pair of socks, and a black jacket. These are the clothes he left behind, Hanash thought.
He stooped to peer beneath the closet and, right at the back, he found a pair of rubber gloves with what looked like traces of dried blood on them. He exchanged glances with the doorman and said sternly, “Don’t touch anything.”
The doorman gave a jerky nod. He was unable to utter a word. Hanash lifted a corner of the mattress. There was a school notebook with some pages ripped out. A shiver coursed through his body as he thought of the letter the killer had left between the thighs of his last victim. It was written on the same type of paper as the pages in this notebook. He grabbed his cell phone and barked instructions to have all the members of his team report to the building immediately and to notify forensics to do the same.
As he conducted the guard out of the building, he asked him whether he had Abdel-Salam’s phone number. The doorman extracted his cell phone and said proudly, “Here it is, sir.”
The detective punched the numbers in on his own phone, only to hear “The number that you are calling is currently not available . . .” He asked the guard whether he had the number of the owner of the building. He did, and gave it to the detective.
Hanash dialed and received an answer this time. He introduced himself formally, asked the proprietor of the Manar building to come to his property immediately, and hung up, cutting off the landlord’s inquiries.
He turned back to the doorman and pelted him with questions about Abdel-Salam Kahila. What kind of person was he? Anything unusual about his behavior? What kind of friends did he have? Girlfriends? The man grew wary and protested that he knew nothing. But he summoned the courage to ask the detective the reason for the search. Hanash ignored the question.
9
No one apart from Hanash and the guys from forensics were allowed in the room. Hanash stood guard at the door while the forensics team dusted for prints, examined the paint and stains on the walls, and combed the room for other evidence. The forensic graphologist trained his flashlight on a page in the notebook that Hanash had found beneath the mattress. It contained minuscule impressions of words that matched those in the letter addressed to the police.
“We have some hard evidence here!” Hanash exclaimed triumphantly. “This is the notebook the killer’s letter was written in! You can see the letters embossed on one of the pages. You can even make out some of the words. He had pressed too hard with the pen, as you said.” He paused suddenly and then murmured, “That means he wrote the letter before tearing the leaf out of the notebook.”
He suddenly blanched and felt his stomach knot. The security guard of this building must be the killer. He had just stood face to face with him a couple of hours ago. Images of that young man’s face, his pat response about the carpenter taking the cartons, and the abrupt way he disappeared down the corridor flashed though his mind. No, thought Hanash as he wrestled with his self-recriminations, that guy is not deranged or demented. He’s an extremely intelligent young man. He would have certainly seen Hanash on TV and recognized him, and he had the presence of mind to remain calm and play the naive and humble building guard. He’d had the ability to make their conversation seem of no concern to him, and hadn’t betrayed the slightest degree of discomfort or confusion.
Hanash could have kicked himself. He and Hamid were the butt of that charade. Hanash could still picture the man’s face, inches away from his own. The guy had no resemblance to the type of maniac who could have committed all those horrible murders. He seemed like an ordinary kid, no different from other young men his age. Nothing whatsoever in his appearance aroused fear or suspicion.
A crowd of gawkers had begun to collect in front of the building. The police ringed the building in order to keep pedestrians away. A short, obese man in a djellaba pushed his way through the crowd. The skewed Andalusian tarboosh on his head and his quivering jowls added to his clownish appearance. When the police prevented him from passing through the cordon, he thumped himself on his chest and protested loudly, “I own this building. Let me through.”
Just then the chief of police’s car drew up. The guards rushed forward to clear a passage for him, shoving the landlord aside in the process. They snapped to attention and raised their hands to their foreheads in a military salute.
The landlord shouted, “What’s happening in my building? Would somebody please tell me what’s going on!”
Hanash greeted Commander Mohammed Alami at the main door of the building. In a voice strained from fatigue he said, “The guy who worked as a security guard at this building . . . he’s our man.”
“Where is he?” the chief asked, peering around anxiously.
Hanash sighed. “He’s cleared out. There’s no sign of him here. I’ve put out an APB.”
“You mean he’s the one responsible for all those unsolved murders?”
“If not all of them, at least the last one. We have some hard evidence.”
A smile appeared on the chief’s face. “What led you to him?”
He would have liked to say that he had spent all night at the computer until he cracked the code that put them onto this building. However, sensing that this was not the time to boast, he merely said, “The cartons in which he had packed the remains of the victim.”
Once the police chief left, Hanash was unable to think calmly or keep his mind on the work of the forensics teams. He still couldn’t believe that he let the killer give him the slip. He’d been hoodwinked, goddamn it! He’d let a doltish-looking doorman with a guileless smile pull a fast one on him. He prayed the news wouldn’t get out. The ridicule he’d have to bear!
>
He stole away from the forensic crews. Grabbing Hamid by his jacket sleeve on the way, he led him out of earshot of the others.
“The perp’s the building guard we met earlier,” he whispered. He tried to steady himself, then spat out, “We had him in our hands and we let him get away!”
Hamid’s eyes widened. He’d been with the teams assigned to check out the other buildings on the al-Saada company’s clients list. He stepped back in disbelief. Then he howled with laughter. No one else on the force could laugh so openly in front of their commanding officer. Though in this case it was clear that Hamid’s laughter was synonymous with a wail.
“This will stay between the two of us,” Hanash said firmly.
Hamid nodded. Mostly to comfort his CO, he said, “Even if we let him get away, we made him do it so quickly that he left us evidence.”
At last the landlord was allowed through to speak with Hanash. News that this building was associated with the serial murders and that the doorman was implicated had spread through the crowd of onlookers. That explained the pallor and dazed expression of the landlord, who began to speak before Hanash even had a chance to pose a question.
“Abdel-Salam, my building guard and doorman. . . . Yes, the polite, bashful young man who was always ready to lend a helping hand. . . . He has never shown a bad side or a tendency toward violence. Everyone around here liked him.”
The detective greeted this with a smirk. “So, where’s he now? Do you know?”
“He must be on some errand. He’ll be back soon.”
The landlord extracted his phone, dialed his doorman’s number, and received the automated out-of-service message. He looked at Hanash with a bewildered expression.
The detective brought his face close to the landlord’s and snapped, “Does he have family here in Casablanca?”
The landlord jerked his head back, his eyes widening. He had wanted to stick to the defense of his doorman and clear his building of all suspicion. This affair could ruin sales of office space. But the detective’s authoritative tone threw him off balance and made him feel that the glare of suspicion had fallen on him, too. In a trembling voice, he said, “He’s got a sister here in Casablanca. She works as a maid in the Oasis quarter.”
The Butcher of Casablanca Page 10
