Scorpion's Advance (14 page)

The second one hit Anderson on the head almost before he had had time to realize what was happening. It caught him on the exact spot of his head wound and reopened it. He saw the ground swim far below him; consciousness was slipping away. He knew instinctively that he could not go forward across the gap; he would have to try and get back from the railings. He tilted dangerously far forward as he tried to alter his position and again saw the ground below. There was a moment when he almost accepted that falling was now inevitable and relaxed his grip ever so slightly. At that moment another rock from below hit him in the chest and made him recoil automatically. It was enough to send him tumbling backwards off the railings and back on to the ramparts. He pulled himself up on to the wall but felt consciousness slip away fast. He had a sensation of grit in his mouth before he slid down the wall at approximately the same rate as the blood that had splashed on to it from his head wound. His last thought before passing out was of how red the dust looked in the sunset over Jerusalem.

Anderson awoke in jail. He groaned, alerting the guard, and put his hand to his head to find it bandaged. The guard looked in at him, grunted and left the room without saying anything. He returned a few minutes later with two other men.

'Why am I being held here?' asked Anderson.

The taller of the two men said. 'You are ... Nile Anderrsson?' He made it sound foreign as he read from Anderson's passport.

'Yes,' agreed Anderson and repeated his question.

'You are being held in connection with the murder of Shula Ron.'

Anderson reacted with all the exasperation of the innocent. He repeated over and over again that he was not the girl's killer but that he had witnessed the murder and had given chase. He was met with blank stares and endless questions.

'Why were you in Jerusalem?'

'I had a lunch appointment.'

'Who with?'

'Captain Mirit Zimmerman of the Israeli army,' replied Anderson, hoping to impress. The expressions did not change but one man left the room briefly.

'After lunch, the Captain left you in the Old City?'

'No, she drove me downtown.'

'But you came back to the Old City?'

'Obviously.'

'Why?'

'To . . . find Shula Ron.'

'You knew the dead girl?'

'No,' said Anderson, walking deeper into the mire.

The policemen exchanged dull glances. 'Why would you look for someone you didn't know?'

Anderson took a deep breath. His head was hurting and his patience all but exhausted. 'Look, it's quite simple. I wanted to ask her some questions about her boyfriend. He was a medical student in England.'

'What did you want to know?'

Anderson let his head slump forward on to his chest. 'It's a long story and it wouldn't help your investigation.' 'We have all the time in the world,' said the policeman, lighting a cigarette.

'I want to call the British Embassy.'

'All in good time.'

'Now!' Anderson wished that he had not raised his voice; his headache had doubled in intensity.

One of the policemen got up and came towards him. He stuck his face in front of Anderson's and said quietly, 'We will decide when.' Anderson did not argue further.

'Get up!'

Anderson was held by both men and guided along a long corridor that led from the cells to a series of small rooms bearing Hebrew inscriptions. He was pushed into one of them.

'Stand there!'

Anderson stood in front of a white wall as directed. A woman was shown into the room; she wore metal-framed glasses. It was the woman he had taken to be Shula Ron's mother when he had met her at the apartment. The tears and the handkerchief said that he had probably been right.

'Is this the man?'

The woman looked at Anderson and nodded. She broke into fresh tears and was led out. Next came the young guide he had spoken to outside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

‘Is this the man?'

'Yes, that's him,' said the girl with a look that said she would like to kill him.

Four other people were brought into the room in succession. They were from the tour party that
Shula Ron had been leading. None of them recognized Anderson. The parade seemed to be over. One of the policemen closed the door and sat down beside the other, flicking some imaginary substance from the knees of his trousers before saying to Anderson, 'Two of these people recognized you.'

'Of course they did. I recognized them.'

'How did you recognize them?'

'Damn it! You must know that!'

Tell us.'

Anderson told
them.

The policemen spoke briefly in Hebrew. One left the room and returned with a small boy dressed in ragged clothes. He looked at A
nderson and burst into a monologue punctuated with frequent pieces of mimed action. Anderson could not decide whether the boy was speaking Hebrew or Arabic but concluded that, in his present position, there weren't many things in the world that mattered less. The boy was taken out and the policeman returned.

'You are fortunate,
Doctor. That boy saw two men up on the wall. One was chasing the other. The boy says that the foreigner was doing the chasing.'

A
nderson sighed in relief. Then I can go?"

'Tell us about this other man.'

'For Chri . . . Anderson bit his tongue and started again, keeping his temper in check. 'Look, I must have told you at least a dozen times. My head hurts and ..."

‘
Tell us again,' said the calm voice, 'you might remember something else."

Anderson gave the description that he had given before. Tall, over six feet, sallow skin, Mediterranean features, well built, black moustache.

'You can go now,' said one of the policemen without bothering to look up.

'I can go?' repeated Anderson softly.

'Yes,' said the man, finally looking up. 'Go see Israel.' He returned to his writing.

'At this moment,' said Anderson, getting to his feet a bit shakily, 'seeing the back of it would be very nice.' He walked out, leaving both policemen looking puzzled.

'Not one of your better days, Neil,' said Mirit’s voice. Anderson spun round at a rate his head did not appreciate to find the white Fiat parked by the kerb outside the police barracks. Mirit was sitting in it, one hand on the wheel, her elbow resting on the open window.

'How on earth?' said Anderson.

‘The police contacted me about our lunch date.'

'And?'

'I told them what I could, which wasn't much. I had to say that I had no idea why you had returned to the Old City.'

‘
Thanks,' said Anderson, without smiling.

'After all,
you didn't tell me anything about Shula Ron.'

'No, I didn't,' agreed Anderson wearily, putting his hand to his head again.

'You look like you're . . . all in?' said Mirit, questioning the idiom.

'End of my rope,' agreed Anderson unhelpfully.

'Get in," said Mirit.

Anderson got into the car and sat down with a long sigh. He was tired and thirsty and hungry and his head hurt a lot. He leaned his head against the window as
Mirit pulled out into the traffic, and looked at the lights moving towards them in the rapidly falling dusk. Aware that they had just passed the bus station, Anderson pointed it out.

'We're not going to the bus station,' she said. Anderson put his head back on the window without further comment. OK, so they weren't going to the bus station.

The car eventually came to a halt in the pleasant leafy suburb of Beit Hakerem where Anderson experienced a sensation that he'd almost forgotten. As he got out of the car he felt cold. He rubbed his bare arms as he followed Mirit up a tree-lined path.

'It's because we're high up in the mountains," said
Mirit.

'Is this your house?" asked Anderson as once more he found himself having his head wound dressed.

'
It’s my parents' house; they’re in Europe.' She stepped back to assess her work. ‘There, that should do. But you must be hungry. A lot has happened since lunchtime.'

Mirit
left the room and Anderson got up and went over to the French windows. They led to a first-floor balcony overlooking a walled garden that seemed so beautiful in the twilight that Anderson just had to explore further. He went out on to the balcony and found the cool night air heavy with the scent of orange blossom. A spiral wrought-iron staircase led down from the balcony to the garden. Anderson descended and revelled in the silence while overhead the stars were becoming brighter.

‘There you are,
' said Mirit softly from the balcony. She came down and joined him.

'It's so peaceful,' said Anderson.

'Whenever I have a problem I come here. I have done since I was a little girl.'

'I had a hill,' said Anderson.

When they had finished eating, Mirit poured coffee and said, ‘Tell me about Shula Ron.'

‘I
never even met her,' said Anderson, smiling at the bitter irony. 'I wanted her to tell me what her late boyfriend was doing for ten days last January.'

'Late boyfriend?'

'Martin Klein, the student I told you about at lunch.'

Mirit
refilled the cups twice more while Anderson told her everything about the Klein affair, except how potent the toxin really was.

'So that's what you were doing in Caesarea,' she said, when he told her of his visit to Klein's parents.

'Another of my not so good days!'

'You've had a bad time in Israel.'

Anderson didn't deny it. 'If the Colomycin tests check out my job will be over. I can go home.'

Mirit
looked at the clock. 'It's too late to return to Tel Aviv. You can stay here tonight. I'll make up a room.'

Anderson lay awake for a long time.
Shula Ron's death had raised a question which he had been avoiding all evening, but now, as he lay in the silver moonlight that filled the room, he met it head on. Was there a connection between the Klein gene and the young girl's death? There seemed to be a dearth of alternative reasons for her murder, but if there was a connection didn't that mean that Cohen and Klein were not the only ones to be implicated in the affair? Just who else had an interest in the Klein gene?

The answer wasn't written on the moonlit ceiling, neither was it on the walls which now held Anderson's attention as the trees outside began to move in a gentle breeze, making the shadow of their leaves a dark, tumbling waterfall.

Anderson awoke to sunshine, orange juice and Mirit's smile. 'Feel better?' she asked.

'Much,' he replied, deciding not to tell her of the thoughts which had plagued his mind in the night. Besides, the sight of her full hips in tight jeans and the rounded firmness of her breasts inside a dazzling white blouse did make him feel a whole lot better.

'Must you go back this morning?' she asked.

'No,' said Anderson, looking at the profile of her face as she looked out the window.

'When do you have to be back?'

'Never.'

'Neil. Be serious.'

‘
Tonight.'

'Good. Then I’ll show you
Jerusalem.'

For Anderson it was
to be a day to remember, an enchanted day.

'Where are we going?' he asked as they started off in the car.

'A special place,' said Mirit, without offering further explanation. Anderson did not press her. He was content to take in the sights and sounds of the Jerusalem morning until they reached a car-park at the foot of an avenue of trees and stopped.

The 'special place' turned out to be
Yad Va'shem, the museum of the Holocaust. Anderson's stomach reacted when he read the plaque outside the entrance. He looked at Mirit questioningly.

'I want you to see it,' she said softly, 'I want you to understand about Israel.'

Anderson followed her into the building, steeling himself for what was to come.

It was as awful as he
had imagined, but it was not so much the films and photographs of the death camps, with their cold captions, that shocked him as the little things that screamed their own story. Shoes that had been worn by a child, a cloth doll, limp and ownerless, a suit of striped Auschwitz pyjamas, their absent owner more present than the threadbare material.

Mirit
said nothing throughout and Anderson was grateful, for anything that he could have said in reply would have been inadequate. He tried to analyse his feelings. Revulsion? Horror? Certainly, but there was more to it than the obvious reactions. Embarrassment? Guilt? Detachment? Yes, detachment was there, a conscious feeling of not being Jewish, of failing to understand fully what a Jew must feel about Yad Va'shem.

Anderson felt the burning heat of the pavement through the soles of his shoes as they left the museum.

'Don't dwell on it, Neil,' said Mirit softly. 'Just remember.'

Anderson didn't reply. He just concentrated on walking away from the place.

'Well, what now?' said Mirit as they returned to the car.

'I'm in your hands,' smiled Anderson. 'Show me Jerusalem . . . your Jerusalem.'

Mirit took Anderson through the haunts of her childhood, an odyssey through winding streets and alleyways seldom if ever seen by the tourist. At his encouragement she reminisced freely, her recollections often accompanied by gales of infectious laughter as Anderson recalled some parallel experience. They had a long lunch in a small, intimate restaurant where Anderson agreed to sample anything Mirit suggested he should experience. More laughter accompanied the occasional strange looks on his face. They stayed in the garden of the restaurant, resting in the shade till the sun was well past its zenith, and then continued.

Anderson found himself taking every opportunity to look at
Mirit's face as she pointed out things of interest to him or explained the historical significance of what they were looking at. He only had eyes for her, the way she flicked her hair back, the curl of her lip when she smiled, the feeling he got when he made contact with her deep, dark eyes.

'And now the finest sight of all,' said
Mirit as the sun went down. 'One you will never forget.'

Mirit
drove the car up the winding road on Mount Scopus and brought it to a halt at a point high up on the hillside. She got out. 'Come with me,' she said. Anderson obeyed, moving round to join her. She led him by the hand through a small gap and said simply, 'Look.'