The Butcher of Casablanca

by Abdelilah Hamdouchi

  They all turned out to be false leads until Hanash’s office received a call from Sidi Taibi, a coastal village located about 140 kilometers north of Casablanca. The caller claimed to be the brother of the victim. The precision of the information he provided led Hanash to dispatch Hamid to the village to question the man and verify his information.

  “Take Bu’u with you,” Hanash said. “I want a full report. Don’t leave out a thing. You’d better shine if you want to marry my daughter.”

  Hamid’s eyes lit up with joy at his boss’s faith in him: sending him on such an important task solo. He felt a wave of relief, as though Hanash had just given him the green light to date his daughter. He hadn’t gone out with her, been invited to their home, or seen her at all since Eid al-Adha. There’d only been a few hasty phone calls with no time for words of affection or intimacy.

  Hamid returned with some good news from Sidi Taibi, which is situated in what was once a fertile agricultural area but that had succumbed to a drought that turned its fields into dusty and arid wastelands. “There’s a strong resemblance between the man claiming to be the brother and the reconstructed face of the victim,” Hamid told his boss.

  Once the DNA tests were conducted, there was no longer a shadow of a doubt. The police had now confirmed the identity of the first and fourth victims: Nezha Nour and Abdel-Qader, the brother of a villager in Sidi Taibi. The prime suspect, in these two cases at least, was Abdel-Salam Kahila.

  No sooner was he notified of these results than the chief of police invited Hanash and senior officers in CID to a meeting in his office. Hanash, who had brought with him a thick dossier on the homicides linked to the prime suspect, had intended to open the meeting with a strong introduction that he’d round off with congratulations all around. However, just as he was about to speak, he wavered. Despite all the hard work and the good results so far, he shouldn’t take too much credit, not when the perpetrator was still at large and could strike again at any moment, and two of the victims remained unidentified.

  “In light of the results of the DNA analyses, combined with other information acquired in our investigation, we can presume that the first victim, Nezha Nour, was probably in an illicit relationship with the fourth, Abdel-Qader. As for the second and third victims—one female, the other male—their identities remain unknown. No missing-persons reports have been filed for persons of their age and complexion who disappeared around that time. Nevertheless, we now know that Kahila rented out some rooms in the Manar building for illicit purposes and that at least two of his victims were among his customers.

  Commander Alami shot forward in his seat and thrust his index finger into the air: “Remember, this criminal is out there wandering our streets among us. He may come from some rural backwater, but he’s an intelligent, educated man and every murder he committed was performed in a manner meant to defy us and prove that he can outwit us.”

  Bringing the meeting to a close, the chief urged the officers to dedicate their fullest energies to the case. “The whole of Morocco, not just Casablanca, is clamoring for Kahila’s capture before he can kill again.”

  Before Hanash reached his office, his cell phone rang. The caller was the landlord of the Manar building with some garbled story about the contractor, a guy called Mohamed Ali, going missing along with a sizable sum of money that the landlord had given to him to purchase materials. Hanash asked for the contractor’s full name, address, and phone number and said he would see what he could do.

  Hanash ended the conversation abruptly. He felt a tingle of excitement and didn’t want his voice to betray him. That story of the vanishing contractor was significant. First the building’s security guard is revealed to be the killer, and now the contractor disappears with a sizable sum. Where could he have gone? And what could this mean?

  The initial inquiries produced nothing. The contractor’s phone was out of service. He was unmarried, and a search of his apartment yielded no evidence of plans to abscond or even to travel. According to the neighbors, he was an upstanding, kind, and mild-mannered man who had no enemies that they knew of. He had no relatives in Casablanca, they said. He came from Salé, where he had a brother who was married with a family. He was supposed to have spent the feast with his brother’s family, but after contacting the brother, Hanash’s team discovered he had not shown up in Salé.

  He had no record of theft and there was no evidence of personal motives for turning to theft. He wasn’t a womanizer. He wasn’t an alcoholic or drug addict. There was nothing to suggest he was a victim of blackmail. Moreover, an inquiry at his bank revealed he had considerable savings in his account, which he hadn’t touched in over a year.

  Hanash began to weary of the questions racing through his mind. He wanted to find a solid thread linking the contractor’s disappearance and the murderer. What if this was Kahila’s next victim?

  Then he had a flash of inspiration. Up to now, he’d thought of the room of the absconded guard as the crime scene. Yet, given that the guard was the only inhabitant of the building, the entire nine-story office block should be considered the crime scene. He snatched up his phone and asked Hamid to report to his office.

  “Do you mean we’re going to have to search the building again?” Hamid asked after Hanash explained his brainstorm.

  Hanash smiled apologetically and said, “Unfortunately, the elevator still doesn’t work. But there’s no getting around it. The building has to be searched again, top to bottom this time. We’ll put all available men on it.”

  Four vehicles set off for the Manar building. The detective had issued a call for volunteers from members of the force on leave. The landlord was waiting for them in front of the building. He seemed on the verge of tears as he opened the door.

  “Why did the press have to mention my building by name? I’ll never be able to lease office space here. I’ll go bankrupt!” he cried.

  “Then change the name,” Hanash said.

  “There are photos of it all over the internet!”

  Hanash looked up at the splendid façade. Now, where could Kahila be hiding? he thought. He didn’t go back to his village. He doesn’t know anyone here in Casablanca. His sister was probably the last person to see him. The detective refrained from adding that, actually, he may have been the last to see him.

  The police began the combing operation, working up from the ground floor. On each landing there were four doors opening onto palatial offices: large reception areas, spacious rooms overlooking the boulevard, elegant conference rooms. The offices weren’t furnished yet, but their clean, modern lines were impressive. The men split up into two teams and proceeded rapidly from office to office and floor to floor. The smokers and overweight officers were the first to curse the lack of an elevator as they wheezed and sweated their way upward. They had to finish before sunset because the upper floors of the building weren’t completely wired yet.

  By the time the teams reached the ninth floor, out of breath and dripping with sweat, they still hadn’t found anything. Hamid opened the window in one of the offices and peered out. He took his phone out and rang Hanash, who had returned to the station.

  “We’re on the ninth floor. The view’s fantastic from up here!”

  “You haven’t found anything?”

  “Some cigarette butts here and there. They probably belong to the workers.”

  “Is that all?”

  Before Hamid could answer he heard one of the officers shouting for him. From that horror-filled voice Hamid knew they had discovered something important. Keeping his phone on so that Hanash could listen in, he followed the detective to the top of staircase, where he had discovered a way up to the roof. A foul stench began to assault his nostrils. Then he reeled in horror at the sight before him: shreds of human flesh, parts of a human face, torn and tattered women’s clothing, a meat cleaver, a huge glistening knife, a few razor blades, and walls splattered with dried blood. In another room, they found several bottles of a powerful caustic acid and par
ts of another body, which had not been completely corroded.

  DNA tests established that the partially decomposed body parts were those of Mohamed Ali. The assumption was that Kahila had killed him, too, but hadn’t dismembered the body and gotten rid of it like the others.

  Kahila’s MO had become clearer: He killed his victims in his room, decapitated and dismembered them, and took most of the pieces to the top floor, where he dissolved them in acid. After destroying any identifying features, he disposed of the remaining body parts in garbage dumpsters.

  Only the contractor’s body had been spared the full treatment. This murder was different. It had been hurried and possibly unplanned. Perhaps the contractor had discovered what Kahila was up to on the roof. Or, maybe, now that he was on the run and needed money, Kahila may have robbed the contractor and then killed him.

  And where was Abdel-Salam Kahila?

  10

  Hanash and all the members of his team were fired up with an unwavering zeal and energy, now that it looked like the arrest of Abdel-Salam Kahila was only a matter of time. Also, it would be very difficult for him to strike again. His face was everywhere. In fact, some news and media outlets were raking in fortunes through the sheer inventiveness with which they wove stories, embellished descriptions, and smeared and slandered. Some hidden hands had even plastered pictures of him on dumpsters and garbage bins. Naturally, there was the concern that he might disguise himself: dye his hair or roam around in broad daylight dressed as a woman in a niqab. But, as the days passed, not a trace of a clue or a whisper of a rumor surfaced as to where he might be hiding. There weren’t even sightings of possible look-alikes.

  Another reason why Hanash felt confident that Kahila wouldn’t strike again was that he had no place to indulge in his passion for mutilating his victims. With his face all over the place, he would never risk renting a flat or even a room in a hotel.

  Meanwhile, the general state of alert and mobilization helped solve other cases that had gone cold so long ago they’d almost been forgotten. An example was the famous “Sleepers beneath the soil” file, which dated back to before Hanash had been transferred from Tangiers to Casablanca. It was a member of Hanash’s army of informants, recruited from the larger armies of street bums, beggars, and itinerant peddlers, who provided the crucial bit of intelligence that cracked the case. He shared a flat with another vagrant who eked out a living by working the coffeehouses and bars, playing the oud. The problem was that he only played one song, a heartrending one by Mohamed Abdel-Wahab that went, “O ye sleepers beneath the soil, I have come to weep.” Every night, after completing his circuit, he would head to a desolate place next to the railway line and sing the song one last time beneath a tree. Once in a while, his roommate would accompany him. They’d sit on the ground beneath the tree and crack open a bottle of booze. One night the street bum noticed that his friend strummed his oud and sang with greater passion than usual, eyes welling with tears as they stared at a particular patch of ground. When he finished the song, he went over to that patch and knelt down and kissed it, and then lay on top of it as though making love to it. The bum related the incident to a police officer who was performing one of his routine rounds of Hanash’s CIs. It was merely something to report to keep the officer happy; he didn’t see anything suspicious in the oud player’s behavior. The officer, in turn, relayed the anecdote to Hanash, thinking his CO would appreciate a good laugh. Instead, the story tickled Hanash’s sixth sense. He ordered some of his men to go out to that place near the railroad tracks and dig. Much to their surprise, they unearthed the remains of a body. A woman. As would become clear during the subsequent investigations, the itinerant oud player had had a violent falling out with his lover many years before. He’d killed her and buried her on that spot.

  Officer Hamid had phoned Manar to give her the exciting news that the case that had been preoccupying the police 24-7 was nearing an end. He invited her out to dinner and offered to drop by her beauty parlor to pick her up after work. She agreed without a second’s hesitation.

  Hamid paced up and down the sidewalk waiting for Manar to come out and meet him. He saw her assistants leave the beauty parlor one by one. Then, to his surprise, she appeared at the door and signaled for him to come inside. Hamid looked to either side as though unsure she was beckoning to him. He turned back to face her, eyes widened in alarm. What if Hanash dropped by all of a sudden and caught him alone with his daughter? They weren’t even engaged yet. Reading his thoughts, Manar reached out and grabbed him by the hand, pulled him inside, and shut the glass door. She asked him to have a seat until she finished getting ready.

  Hamid sat perched on the edge of the chair. He felt that there was something odd about her behavior. Suddenly a delicious thrill coursed through him, making him put his police instincts on hold. He peered around the salon, taking in its large mirrors, plush chairs, and stylish decor, and his heart filled with joy. All this belonged to his future wife . . . if his luck held. When Manar emerged from the bathroom, he could not conceal his admiration. She’d changed out of her white smock and was now in an elegant emerald-green dress topped by a jacket tailored perfectly to her petite shoulders. She wore matching shoes with heels high enough to make her at least as tall as he. “Um . . . perhaps we should be going now?” he asked awkwardly. Instead of the answer he’d expected to hear, she looked at him with a twinkle in her eyes and a mysterious smile playing on her lips and asked, after a pause, “So, how do you like my beauty parlor?”

  “It’s great! May God bless you with success.”

  She remained standing next to the customers’ couch. She was in no rush to leave and seemed to be thinking of a way to prolong the conversation. He was not the type to play naive. He moved toward her, staring deep into her eyes, searching for the answer to a riddle.

  “I need to know what you really think. Do you really want to marry a policeman?”

  Peering directly into his eyes, she asked, “Do you love me?”

  His eyes filled with a profound tenderness. He stepped forward, took hold of her hand, and kissed it deeply. In a voice trembling with emotion, he said, “Love is what makes me want to marry you.”

  She murmured something indistinct as she felt her head spin and her body go slack. Hamid, holding her by the shoulders, pulled her to him and planted his first real kiss on her lips.

  11

  Contrary to expectations, Casablanca was once again shaken by another murder bearing Kahila’s signature.

  As he drove up, Hanash saw the herd of gawkers held back by the yellow crime-scene tape. They were pushing, shoving, and shouting as rowdily as a horde of football fans. The latest victim had been discovered in one of Casablanca’s overpopulated lower-class quarters. Hanash paused before pulling the door handle. He barely had the energy to get out of the car. It was almost nine a.m. The reason the body was discovered so late in the day was that this part of town was not on the rounds of the waste pickers because the pickings in the dumpsters were so poor.

  It looked like the same MO again. The body was dismembered and the parts were stuffed into three heavy-duty garbage bags. The bags themselves had no identifying marks. The difference, this time, was in the signs that the perp had been in a rush. Apart from a gash to the forehead, the victim’s face wasn’t damaged and the bags had not been distributed into different garbage receptacles. Hanash left the moment he learned that forensics would probably be able to identify the victim.

  By the time Hanash reached his office the web was ablaze with the latest murder and Kahila’s mug stared out of the breaking news bulletins. Hanash rapidly skimmed through the reports on online news sites and flicked through social-networking sites.

  Fake news interwove with strange rumors of similar murders in other neighborhoods and alleged sightings of the killer here or there. Hanash felt his stomach growl as he scrolled through headlines like “Kahila Defies the Police!” “Women Still Not Safe!” “He’s Threatened to Kill More!” One site posted a ma
p with the GPS coordinates of where the Butcher of Casablanca might strike next.

  Work at the station proceeded rapidly. The central fingerprint unit identified the victim in record time. The murderer hadn’t taken the time to amputate the fingers. When Hanash brought her up on his computer screen, he saw a beautiful, full-figured woman in her late thirties called Fanida al-Ghali. Married. No children. Unemployed. No criminal record. Despite the different MO, Hanash conceded that it could still be Kahila. If so, he no longer bothered to make his victims unrecognizable. Police had already identified him and his mugshots were everywhere, so they no longer needed to know the identity of his victims in order to identify him.

  *

  It was around noon when Hanash and Hamid pulled up in front of the victim’s home. It was a two-story building located on a side street well away from the main street. Through the iron gate, they could see a small courtyard with well-pruned trees and carefully tended plants. The owners must have annexed the space to the house informally, taking advantage of a bend in the road that concealed the property from the eyes of building inspectors. Hamid ascertained the building number. No sooner did he press the doorbell than a small, wiry old man appeared. He was about seventy, with a pallid complexion, and wore a heavy overcoat over his pajamas in spite of the pleasant weather. Still, he seemed sturdy enough for his age, his posture erect and his eyes sharp. The detective sensed the man was anxious and that he had been expecting a visitor, probably for some time.

  His questioning eyes darted back and forth between Hamid and Hanash. Hanash remained silent, fixing his eyes intently on the man while his officer did the formalities. The detective picked up on a tremor in the man’s hands, which, combined with the pallor, made him wonder whether he was ill.

  Hamid spoke softly so as not to alarm the old man. After introducing the detective and himself, he asked, “May we speak with you inside, please?”