Selected Detective
THE JERUSALEM POLICE STATION

Returning to his Office, Ben-Roi gulps Brandi from his waist bottle and sees a three-quarters page report on the computer screen that is in front of him. He has been, he is grounded, doing whatever might be expected of him. He had interviewed Old Woman at Ohr Ha-Chaim; called Kfar Shaul to ask more about Schlegel's twin brother (deally still alive, even in “Very disturbed”); he even contacted Yad Vashem to confirm that Schlegel had actually been a worker there (and indeed yes, part-time, in the archive department).

Well, there are some paths he should have taken: He has not yet fully directed himself to the core of the matter. But why should he, indeed? “Slight information about background,” that's what Khediva asked for. And that's what he gave her. He would type in a few extra lines, make it more than a page and finish there. Send it by email and wash your hands of all this shit.

Except. except the fire of that house. He could not get that out of his mind. The last thing Weinberg's woman said to her was all Hannah Schlegel's property that was damaged in that crazy attack. He could not get it out of his mind why, why, he kept thinking to himself in spite of all his best efforts not to think to himself a group of Arab children took the risk of entering into the Jewish Territory and climbing a water pipe for the sole purpose of flushing Flat the old woman with oil and burn her? It really doesn't make any sense. He had dealt with Arab thieves before, as well as Arab Vandals, but these did not fall into any category.

Pain in his stomach. That's what his mentor, Commander Levi used to say. “The pain in the stomach, Arieh, is what makes the difference between a good Detective and a great Detective. A good detective will look at the evidence and use logic in an attempt to find that something is wrong. But a great Detective will feel that something is wrong before he even sees the evidence. It's a mere instinct. Pain in the stomach.”

He used to feel the pain all the time, the pain in his stomach was an uncertain upheaval in his stomach, a sixth sense that felt that something was not what it seemed. He felt that way when dealing with Rehevot's fraud case, when everyone tells him that he is shooting shadows alone until the Computer expert recovers the files that have been dumped in the garbage box and proves his suspicions right after. And he felt that also in the case of the Saphiro Settlement Murder, when all the evidence pointed to an Arab child, every little thing of him, but he remained convinced that the child was innocent, he said, that there's still another angle. He had received many strokes of the case, but he kept digging, and of course they found a large knife in the warehouse of a Rabby and the truth was revealed. “I'm proud of you, Arieh,” Commander Levi once said that to him when he awarded him an award for his satisfactory work. “You're a great Detective. And you're gonna get even bigger, as long as you keep hearing that pain.”

He stopped listening to it last year.

Even stop having that pain, other than all the things about Al-Mulatham. He followed the movement, did what he had to do, but the old spirit, the desire to get to the bottom of the matter, the will to be like Al Pacino in the film had faded and vanished.

He doesn't care anymore. Right, wrong, truth, lies, justice, injustice is nothing more.

He really doesn't care, until now. Because now he had the strongest pain he had ever experienced and was unwilling to leave.

He did not want to have it, he was angry because he had it, but the feeling remained there, twitching around the inside of his body. Children, burning houses intentionally, murdered women, Jewish Territory. It'swrong. Completely wrong.

“Damn you Khediva,” he murmured. “You shit, Kparat!”

He paused a few minutes longer, recklessly washing his hands of all these affairs, not interested any further. Then, unable to stop himself, he picked up the phone and dialed a number.

“Feldman?” he said when there was an answer. “I have to get an archive about the house burning case since fifteen years ago.... None of your business. Just tell me where to look.”

It took nearly two hours to browse the archives, which for unexplained reasons were stored in the Archives in Moriah, one of the other Regional Police Offices. He received the file sent by bicycle, and now he sits with his feet pressed against the edge of the table, reads the entire file, and once sips a drink from the bottle.

Something that immediately jumped in front of him, and only deepened his misgivings, was the date and hour of the fire. Mrs Weinberg told her that the incident took place a day or two after Hannah Schlegel's death; according to records, it actually happened on the same day as the day of her murder, just a few hours later, a remarkable coincidence and one thing that even the most ignorant investigators would be compelled to find no suspicion.

Unfortunately, and frustratingly, there is nothing left in the rest of the file that explains this problematic synchronicity.

There were indeed statements from Schlegel's neighbors, including Mrs Weinberg; photos of the destroyed flat; and arrest forms for three Arab children who were considered criminals, two of them are said to be guilty and each is subject to eighteen months of detention for juveniles, while the third, the youngest, is identified in his arrest sheet only as “Ani”, he said, released without bail in consideration of his age when it was seven years and lack of evidence that existed on him.why they choose the flat to be burned on a certain day and a certain hour anyway, and what, and what, if anything, the link to the Hannah Schlegel murder is a question that remains unanswered. “We did that for courage,” that's all the kids said, and the police interrogators were content to get their guilty plea cunningly, seemingly not trying to investigate any deeper.

Ben-Roi reads the note twice, then rests his head back and drinks the remaining vodka from the bottle. All wrong. Absolutely wrong. The question is what can he do about it? The fire happened a decade and a half ago, all clues are dead, the culprit may have moved or changed names, or both. He can spend months trying to get to the bottom of all this. And for what?

Some sort of ambitious Jewish hater.

“Zoobi!” muttered. “Sialang. What's important? Pain in the stomach or not.” He closed the file, threw it on the table, and picked up the phone, dialed the Moriah Archival Office number, intending to tell them he was done with it. As he did so, something caught his eye, a line of writing behind the archives, in a faded pencil. He hadn't noticed that before. He grabbed it, pulled the file towards him.

The writing was almost illegible, and he had to flicker reading it: “Ani-Hani Al-Hajjar Hani-Jamal. Born 11/2/83. Camp Al-Amari.”

Name: Hani Al-Hajjar Hani-Jamal

Age: 22 Years

Date of Birth: 11 February 1983

Address: 14, Ginna Lane, Camp Al-Amari, Ramallah

“Shalom, Archival Office.” The receiver's phone handle echoed in his ear. His eyes went from note to arrest sheet and back to note again.

“Archival Office,” reset that sound.

“Ya,” said. “It's Ben-Roi. By David.”

“Hai. Already done with that file?”

Ben-Roi bit his lip, wounded.

“Not yet,” said after a momentary pause. “I think I still need it for a while longer.”

*****_____*****

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