by Batya Gur
He agreed to Michael’s request to show him the apartment. In Gabi’s study there were piles of music, a violin lying on the piano, a big desk, red and pink geraniums on the windowsill, and a huge lithograph in black, brown, and red of three women in seventeenth-century dress. One of them, sitting in the picture’s foreground, playing a flute, another, standing behind her, plucking a lute, and the third singing from a leather-bound book of music in her hands. On a narrow bed, covered in black fabric, lay musical scores. Some of them were open, showing written annotations. Michael picked up one with a yellow cover that said Vivaldi.
“Did Gabi like Vivaldi?” he asked. Izzy, sitting on the piano bench, nodded. “Vivaldi, Corelli, Baroque music in general. Bach, of course. If he’d had the choice he would have preferred to live at the end of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth. I said to him sometimes that for him music ended before the Classical period began. Or maybe he was ready to include the High Classical period, above all Haydn and Mozart. It was a joke between us that Beethoven and Brahms were too modern for him. But that’s nonsense, of course. He could listen to Brahms when it was well played, and to Verdi and even Mahler.”
The two men from Forensics stood in the living room and looked around.
“There isn’t much here,” said the one with the pitted face and the angry scowl. “We’d better begin over there,” said the fat one with the flushed face, and they made their way to the study, one of whose walls held a bookcase crammed with music and books.
“Everything in this room is his,” confirmed Izzy. “It was his study. My work space was in the living room.” The scowler collected the books and music and emptied the desk drawers into brown cardboard boxes. The fat sweating one dusted for prints and without much ado took Izzy’s fingerprints, after briefly explaining to him that it was necessary in order to distinguish him from others, as someone with legitimate access to the apartment. To Michael’s question about spare strings, Izzy responded by taking a rectangular box out of one of the drawers and holding it out.
“It’s a completely new box,” he explained to Michael, who was struggling to undo the box’s tape. “There should be four strings in every one of the little envelopes inside.”
Michael stood in the doorway to the bedroom and looked at the bed, feeling slightly embarrassed. It looked like any other couple’s bedroom. Two night tables on either side of the bed; on the one closest to the window, at the far end of the room, were a few books next to a reading lamp, among them a thick Mozart biography in English. Next to it, open and facedown, a thick book with a black binding. Michael picked it up. It was a history, with photographs, of musical instrument making.
“Was this his side of the bed?” he asked Izzy as he leafed through the book.
“No,” replied Izzy. Then he pointed to the other side of the bed. “That was his side,” he said in a choked voice.
On Gabriel van Gelden’s night table was a pile of thrillers, all in English, among them a hardcover copy of Anthony Price’s A New Kind of War. On the floor was a paperback. Izzy approached the bed and picked up the book. “This is what he was reading last night,” he said, stroking the cover. “He loved detective novels. Especially those by this Dutch writer, Robert Hans van Gulik, whose books are set in sixth-century China.”
Michael refrained from preventing Izzy from touching the book and the surface of the night table, from which he now removed a half-full glass of water. Izzy’s fingerprints would be all over the room anyway. The forensic men were already standing in the bedroom doorway, and Izzy pointed out Gabriel’s night table, whose drawers they now emptied into black plastic bags that they carefully placed in a cardboard box.
Michael followed Izzy into the living room. Izzy switched off the computer and sat down at his desk, leaning his elbows on the narrow space in front of the screen and burying his face in his hands. Michael cleared his throat and said: “You’ll have to come with me now to the Russian Compound to give evidence.”
“Give evidence about what? What do I have to give evidence about?”
“That’s what it’s called,” explained Michael. “It’s the usual procedure. There are all kinds of things we have to ask you.”
Izzy shrugged his shoulders. “Everything seems completely fantastic,” he said, “and nothing matters now anyway. I’ll do whatever you say. Evidence, polygraph, whatever you like.”
They had to wait for the forensics people to remove the cardboard boxes from the apartment, and only when the scowler nodded his head did Michael signal Izzy. Izzy locked the door and went downstairs with a heavy tread to Michael’s car. They drove in silence. Izzy stared straight ahead with a blank expression. From time to time he shook his head and groaned, sighed, took a deep breath. When Michael parked the car at the gate to the Russian Compound, Izzy said: “I want to see him.”
“Who?” asked Michael, trying to buy time.
“Gabi. I want to see him.”
“That’s impossible at present,” said Michael. “He . . . his body is at the Forensic Medicine Institute. They’re doing an autopsy.” A shiver went down his spine at the thought of Izzy, with his trembling, childlike chin, standing over that gaping throat and nearly decapitated head. In order to distract him he quickly added: “Are you sure you’re ready to take a polygraph test? If you’re not really willing, the test is worthless.”
“What difference does it make to me?” mumbled Izzy. “Do you need active willingness, or is it enough just to agree?”
“It’s enough if you agree, if you really do.”
Izzy spread out his hands and let his head fall back. “What difference does it make now,” he said dully. “It’s all the same to me.”
“Anyway, it’s not admissible in court,” said Michael. “If you’re thinking about consulting a lawyer and so on.”
“So why do you do it at all?” asked Izzy as they walked to Michael’s office.
“I’m asking you to take the test in order to establish your credibility,” Michael admitted frankly. “Your willingness to take the test is in itself a basis for credibility, because you probably know that even though the test is inadmissible, it’s very difficult to deceive the machine.”
“Really? What’s so difficult about it?”
“There are all kinds of indicators. I’ll explain when we get to it.”
“What I want, the only thing I really want, is to see him one more time,” said Izzy in a broken voice, and he was about to plead for it again but fell silent at the sound of the voices coming from Michael’s office.
“We used to call her Four-in-One!” Zippo’s voice was rising loudly behind the closed door. “You wouldn’t remember that religious madwoman, you’re too young, but the woman in this case reminds me of her. Even though she was as skinny as a string bean and this one’s not as thin, and Four-in-One looked like a bag lady and this one wears pants . . .” Michael opened the door and Zippo’s voice died away. Eli Bahar was sitting behind the desk in Michael’s chair, sorting through a pile of papers.
“There’s a ton of stuff here from the orchestra already . . .” he said, “and the gloves . . .” He fell silent when he saw Izzy standing behind Michael. On the way here, Michael had already wondered how to introduce Izzy, and now he said: “Izzy Mashiah, Gabriel van Gelden’s companion.” Zippo dropped his jaw, quickly shut it again, and tugged at his military mustache.
“Start taking his statement,” Michael ordered Zippo. And, turning to Eli: “Come outside with me for a minute.”
“Do you have the forms?” he asked Zippo as he stood in the doorway waiting for Eli to squeeze his body through the narrow space between the desk and the two chairs, on one of which Izzy was already sitting, his face yellowish. Zippo nodded.
“Is he gay?” asked Eli coldly as they stood outside the office.
“Yes, but not the kind . . . They’ve been together five years, the last two years living like a married couple. You have to treat him like a spouse.”
; “Yes, but wife or husband? I’ve never understood how they themselves see that. By the way, I hear you’ve given Balilty . . . that he’s heading the team or something like that.”
“Because of the robbery case.”
“They’ve brought the Felix van Gelden file. You asked for it, remember?” said Eli Bahar.
“Where’s Tzilla?”
“Still at the scene, with Raffy and Avram. We don’t have a lot of time to waste, and I’ve been sitting here pushing papers. I’ve become the team coordinator,” he said disconsolately. “I’m the secretary. And that Dalit’s with Balilty. But you know that, you said they had to have a woman there. You should see her work. Does she work! On the business of the gloves. I’m telling you, her ambition is something else! She’s already phoned here three times. I haven’t told you yet that those gloves belong to the woman double bass player.”
“What do you mean? They’re a woman’s gloves?”
“A woman with big hands. Tzilla phoned to tell me. The musicians brought it up. The bass player wears gloves because she has low blood pressure and has a problem with cold hands. Anyway, she has a pair like that.”
“It’s September!”
“Apparently she has several such pairs. She kept this pair at the concert hall. She wears them there because of the air conditioning. Anyway, the drummer and an oboe player identified them, and others recognized them, too, because of the color—Tzilla calls it mustard—and because she always wears them. They all joke about them. Everybody knows about them.”
“And where’s the bass player herself? Why isn’t she here?”
“That’s a problem. We can’t find her. She went to the airport right after the rehearsal, to pick up someone or something—it’s not clear. She lives with her mother, who’s so old and out of it that there’s no way of knowing anything definite. Avram’s responsible for picking her up. He’ll bring her in when he finds her.”
“And where did she keep the gloves?”
“They’ve got lockers there, but she apparently kept them somewhere else. We won’t know until we talk to her. The gloves have only been partly examined. They haven’t been taken to the lab yet.”
“Let’s have a look at the file,” said Michael.
“You’re not giving up the case, are you?”
“Which case?”
“The Gabriel van Gelden case. Haven’t you thought about what I told you? You’re not giving it up?”
“For the time being, no.”
“For the time being,” repeated Eli grumpily. “And what about Balilty?” he added sullenly.
“You’ll manage,” said Michael trying to calm him.
“Of course we’ll manage,” said Eli Bahar, “but I wonder if you’ll manage.”
“Let it go for now,” said Michael with growing irritation. “I don’t want to worry about it now. While Zippo is filling out the forms with Mashiah, I want to go through the Felix van Gelden file.”
“It’s in Balilty’s office.”
“Here it is,” said Eli, pointing to a large envelope. They had seated themselves on either side of the desk in Balilty’s office. “Everything’s in there, all the findings in the case.”
“Is there any progress with the string?”
“No,” said Eli. “I got in touch with an expert, who told me that there are a number of outfits that make them. It’s impossible to tell what particular instrument a string came from. None of the musicians reports a missing string. Nita van Gelden’s the only one we haven’t talked to yet. But Balilty will check it out.”
“They haven’t questioned her about her strings yet?” asked Michael, astonished. “Her of all people?”
“Maybe they have,” said Eli, and he averted his face in embarrassment. “I imagine they have. But Balilty doesn’t tell me everything. Do you want me to find out?”
“Not at the moment,” muttered Michael, and he emptied the envelope out onto the desk. He should really leave the matter of Nita’s strings to Balilty and keep his nose out of it, he thought as he went slowly through the contents of the envelope. He peeped into the plastic bags, read the reports, fingered the rope old van Gelden was tied up with. “What’s this?” he asked, holding a transparent little plastic bag up to the light.
“It looks like . . .” Eli Bahar picked up the piece of paper that had been attached to the plastic bag. “It’s the surgical tape they used to gag him. That’s what it says here.”
“What else does it say?”
“Nothing.”
“What do you mean, nothing? Aren’t there any laboratory findings?”
Eli rummaged through the papers and said: “No.”
“They didn’t examine it at Forensics?”
“What do you want from me? Ask Balilty,” said Eli resentfully.
“That’s exactly what I intend to do,” said Michael. He tapped his ballpoint pen on the desk impatiently until Theo answered the telephone. He asked for Balilty immediately, without inquiring about Nita or the babies. In the background he could hear voices and noises, and a few seconds passed before Danny Balilty said: “Sir!”
“The tape they gagged Felix van Gelden with—”
“What about it?” Balilty’s short, rapid breathing was noisy, as if he were holding the receiver right next to his mouth.
“Didn’t you send it to Forensics?”
“What for? There was no need to.”
“So you didn’t send it.”
“No, I didn’t,” said Balilty defiantly. “Why do you think I should have? Is there something unclear there?”
“Until we check it out, we won’t know.”
“So send it.”
“That’s exactly what I’m about to do. Is there anything new there?”
“Nothing special,” said Balilty gloomily. “I’m recording everything. Can it wait for the team meeting tomorrow? Or do you want to hear it before then?”
“When I finish here, we’ll see.”
“Do you intend to wait there all night for the reply from the lab? About that surgical tape?”
“In any event, I’ve got Izzy Mashiah here,” said Michael.
“Who’s Izzy Mashiah? Oh yes, the boyfriend. . . . Do you want us to bring in the other two this evening as well? For questioning? Do you want us to interrogate them at the station tonight?” asked Balilty.
“You decide,” said Michael. And he added nervously: “Did you check Nita’s strings?”
“I actually did,” said Balilty in a careful, neutral tone. “You could say there’s a possibility that the object came from her.”
“What does that mean?” asked Michael, and he wiped away the dampness that suddenly filmed his brow. “Is it her string?”
“It might be,” mumbled Balilty, “but it’s not definite. We’re still looking. There’s a question of memory.”
“She doesn’t remember how many strings she had?” demanded Michael.
“More or less,” said Balilty with hostility. “Could we talk about it somewhere else? I’m not finished here yet.”
“Have you been in touch with your sister?” asked Eli after Michael had finished talking to the duty officer at the forensics laboratory.
“Not yet, it’s late and—”
“What do you mean, late? It’s only ten o’clock! Does Yvette go to sleep with the chickens?”
Michael looked at him with astonishment. In all their years of working together, Eli had never spoken to him so rudely and aggressively.
“I’m sorry,” said Eli, “but this whole business is getting on my nerves. Who’s interrogating Nita? You haven’t said a word about her. Is Balilty interrogating her? This business is driving me crazy.”
“Do you mean the business of the baby?”
“The whole thing. The baby, your girlfriend, the . . . the whole mix-up. I don’t know if you . . . if I . . . if it’s possible . . . and Shorer, really!” He blinked. Long, dark eyelashes covered the green glint in his eyes. Among the stubble on his head there were p
atches of silver.
Michael said nothing. When he looked inside himself, at what he really thought and felt, his heart sank. He was afraid of losing the baby. Maybe he would never again experience the delight of seeing the tiny mouth waiting expectantly for a bottle, of its sudden smiles, of the baby’s sweet odor. At lunchtime today, when he had brought her home from the concert hall, she had fallen asleep while sucking rhythmically from the bottle. He had sat for a long time watching her sleep. He looked at the thick down of her hair, which had grown a little darker in the past few days, and his finger had brushed the flushed cheek. Before leaving the house on his way to work, when the babysitter rang the bell, she woke up. She lay on her stomach, raised her head, and looked around without focus, until her eyes encountered his face, and the light blue latched onto him. When he had put her in the carrier and hung up the little rabbit to which he thought she was attached, her head turned sideways and she smiled with what seemed to him obvious pride, to the admiring exclamations of the babysitter.
Now he looked at Eli Bahar imploringly. “Stand by me on this. Give me a little. . . . Please?”
Eli Bahar lowered his gaze with embarrassment, pursed his lips, and said nothing.
“It’s difficult. Complicated. I’m not saying it isn’t.” Michael heard his voice echoing. There was a faint note of falsity in what he heard, but he himself didn’t know what caused the sense of falseness and what it really was, even though he was prepared to share it with Eli Bahar. Only he himself couldn’t define it right now. There were so many contradictory feelings tumbling inside him. “It’s like a washing machine,” he finally said.
“What’s like a washing machine?” asked Eli, alarmed. “What washing machine?”
“My head, my thoughts, they’re churning as if they were in a washing machine, without stopping. . . . Everything’s in a jumble and I don’t know—”
“Okay, let it rest for the time being,” acquiesced Eli Bahar. “But you’ll talk to Shorer soon?”
Michael nodded.
