Gavin Lyall - Judas Country

'It can find the money. Where's this dark alley?'

'Men were deceivers ever. I just wanted to prove we're being followed.'

'Oh shit.' She looked back. 'You know, that's the bit I'm worried about: getting the Met mixed up in an undercover deal.'

'Don't I remember something about the way they got hold of a vase from Italy a couple of years back?'

'Yes. They remember it, too. They don't want those sort of newspaper stories twice. Who's following?'

'No idea. Let's have a beer and find out.'

We sat down at the nextcafé; an open-fronted Parisian place. Before we'd ordered, a face peek-a-booed in from the street. I beckoned it across. It grinned and came.

He was dressed in an inconspicuous – for Dizengoff – shambolic way, with an open-necked shirt, a smudged lightweight jacket weighed down by too much in the pockets, thick grey trousers. It was only his chubbiness that made him noticeable; Israel isn't a fat country.

'Then you must be Captain Case. Thank you.' He sat down. 'I was waiting to see if you noticed me – I'm not very good at following – and I thought, if he notices, he must be him. Most people don't notice even me.'

I said: 'Miss Eleanor Travis. She'stouring. And you are…?'

'Yes, of course. Inspector Tamir. Attached to the Department of Antiquities at the Ministry of Education and Culture.' He tried to shake hands with us both and show a tattered warrant card at the same time. 'I tried at the airport, then the Avia, then I learned you'd taken a taxi to Dizengoff, so…"

'What are you drinking?'

He and I chose beer, Eleanor coffee. She asked: 'What do you inspect, Inspector?'

'Normally, normal police things. Now I'm bothered about…* he searched his pockets and found a piece of paper; '… Captain Cavitt. And something about Professor Spohr. I know he's dead. And Cavitt is in Israel.'

'I don't know where,' I said.

'Oh, we know: at Akka,'

'Acre?' What in hell was Ken doing there, nearly a hundred miles from Jerusalem?

'Yes. And that was where Professor Spohr was digging.' He routed his pockets again and stuck a wide-bowled briar pipe in his mouth. 'You see… the Professor had, there was a story in Beit Oren prison he had, he found something. Valuable. Not reported. Ah-' The waiter put down our drinks.

I carefully didn't look at Eleanor, just sipped my beer. 'And so?'

'Then we heard he was dead. The Professor, I mean. Shot'

'Suicide.'

'But can you be quite sure?'

'Ask the Nicosia police. They proved he had terminal cancer.'

He frowned and scratched his scalp, just a sun-blotched dome with a poor crop of long grey strands. And dandruff; a few flakes drifted down into his beer.

'But cancer victims don't…' He stopped and sighed. 'In Beit Oren we get people who could make the chicken seem to walk into the soup.'

'I believe that. But-' I took out my own pipe '-butsomebody fired a gun in that hotel at around ninein the evening. It was an empty wing, so nobody was too likely to hear, but… And if it wasn't the Prof, somebody got in and out without being noticed. Those two things needed luck; a man who could fake a suicide that well wouldn't rely on luck to get away with it.'

He nodded violently and scattered more dandruff. 'Ah. Yes. Youare the Captain Case I wanted. Try some of this.' He pushed over a rubber tobacco pouch. 'I mix it myself.'

He mixed it coarse and dark and smelling like old armpits. 'Thanks, but I don't think my flying licence covers that stuff.'

He grinned, not apologetically. Had it been a test? To see if. I felt a need to flatter him? Why am I so suspicious of policemen? Why do policemen come and talk to me and never say exactly why?

He lit his pipe, but burning that stuff didn't improve it. 'So perhaps, as it always is on television, it was an inside job? By your colleague Cavitt, maybe?'

'Ken and I have alibis. We were out with a couple of… you might say… bar girls.'

'Wereyou?' Eleanor's voice said from somewhere around the last ice age but three.

Tamir smiled sadly. 'Prostitutes make good witnesses. They have little shame and they dare not annoy the police too much. Loassort, it was just an idea; to kill other people is normal -killing yourself, who can understand it?' He gulped the last of his beer. 'Why did the doctors tell him he had cancer? – they do not, usually.'

'Probably because he had.'

'You may be right.' He stood up. 'Are you staying in Israel long?'

'No, but it depends on my company. Castle.'

'Ah yes. Thank you. ' He shook hands again. 'I hope you enjoy Israel Miss… er, yes.'

He shambled off.

'A weird one,' Eleanor commented.

I just grunted; I had an idea that inside that fat man there was a very sharp one quite able to get out. 'What the hell's Ken doing in Acre?'

'Probably digging for bar girls.'

'Look, that night, he'd just come out of jail and anyway, in the confusion I never…' I wasn't improving things; the evening was dead on its feet. 'Ready to go?'

We had to walk back to Dizengoff Circle to find a taxi, and she kept her hands to herself. The crowd had thinned as people settled incafés or headed home for an early Monday. A few soldiers, some with weapons and all with bundles of food from mother, were beginning to hitch rides back to camp.

After a while, she said: 'Did that Inspector think some other crooks from jail are in on this?'

"There's one Israeli racketeer involved. I think he was trying to locate the Prof with phony letters,' I admitted. 'He wasn't in jail at the right time, but he'd have friends who were.'

'My God. What am I getting the Met into?' After a little longer: 'Could he have killed Spohr?'

'Same objection: he was an outsider.'

'Then somebody else on the inside?'

'Sergeant Papa? Or the cooks or the barman or chambermaid? Kapotas? Where's the motive – who gained anything by his death?'

'The Sergeant got those letters.'

'If he'd wanted them he could have taken them anyway and sworn he'd posted them. He was a carrion bird, not a hunter.'

'He's still the best suspect,' she persisted.

'Wanna bet? The police would take Mitzi any day.'

'Oh no. Her own father? But what'sher motive.'

'She was related to him. That's motive enough for most murders.'

'That's just cynicism.'

'No, it's statistics.'

'Well… do you think shedid?'

'I'm one of the downtrodden minority who believes he actually committed suicide.'

She just shook her head, dissatisfied.

I tried to get cosy on the back seat of the taxi, but might just as well have tried it on a Centurion tank. Some woman can get a bit uptight about where you put it last. Or maybe, as a medievalist, she just preferred older men.

It rained in the night – the warm front coming through – but had just about stopped by the time I got up. We'd be due the cold front some time today.

Eleanor wasn't around the dining-room so I read the Jerusalem Post and stretched breakfast into coffee and watched the aircrews migrating in and out. Ken rang at about a quarter to eleven.

'How are you doing, favourite nephew?'

'Surviving. What's your news?'

'Victor Foxtrot and established on the glidepath.' I decoded Visual Flight to mean he'd met Gadulla and things were going well; close to an end, maybe. Anyway, he couldn't still be in Acre.

'Fine. So?'

'Listen: I think the Queen should go to the throne of Kings.'

"The – huh?' Then I got it: he wanted me to fly the Queen Air to Jerusalem Airport. Just a single-runway affair they'd taken over from Jordan in 1967, used mostly for tourist sightseeing jaunts.Masada and Eilat and all. But the real point was it was only thirty miles away, and you don't use an aircraft to go thirty miles. Not in Israel.