The Saturday Morning Murder by Batya Gur

Author:Batya Gur
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2020-06-02T00:00:00+00:00

Michael did not make it by eight, and Yuval greeted him by pointing at his watch and saying: “We can forget about the movies.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll make it,” said Michael, and rushed him to the car. Although he stopped to buy a huge sack of popcorn on the way, they arrived just in time for the science fiction film, Alien Passenger; that Yual had been dying to see.

Once Yuval had settled down to watch, Michael was free to relax and think about his tired mind and aching body. There was no hope of sleeping, the visit to the hospital had left him tense. Baum had consented to let him meet Tubol, but as the doctor had predicted, they had not succeeded in getting a single word out of him. Michael had never seen the inside of a mental hospital before, but he maintained his usual deadpan expression and perfect composure, even when he was sitting by the bed of a mute, curled-up psychotic. Haunted by images from the hospital, he missed the first fifteen minutes of the movie.

At first the nurse, Dvora, insisted that she had no idea where Tubol could have got hold of the pistol. But after repeated requests that she try to imagine where he might have gone, Baum, who was sitting and tugging at his mustache, hit on the idea that Tubol must have met the gardener.

Michael pricked up his ears and asked about the gardener’s relations with the patients, and Baum sang Ali’s praises at length. When asked where Ali could be found, he said he couldn’t say; he only knew that Ali lived in Dehaisha. Ohayon shivered when he thought of the wretched conditions of the refugee camp, only a half hour away from Jerusalem. The maintenance supervisor, they said, would know how to find Ali. But the supervisor finished work at three. Yes, they could call him at home. They called, and Michael spoke to him, and the man said that he couldn’t remember any details offhand. “Not even his surname?” Michael asked impatiently. No. It was all in the files, but he couldn’t come and look now; he was home alone with the baby. No, there was nobody else who could look up the information at this time of day. No, he couldn’t take the baby out of the house and come there now, not in this weather. Yes, Ali worked on Saturday, and here the maintenance supervisor became aggressive: it was an internal matter and nobody’s bloody business. Ali didn’t work on Sunday, but he would be at work the next day. “Can’t it wait?”

Michael controlled his frustration and maintained a polite tone and a patient expression for the benefit of Dr. Baum and the nurse. Yes, said the supervisor, he supposed he could come later on, when his wife got home, in about two hours.

Michael returned to the subject of Dr. Neidorf. No, neither Dr. Baum nor Nurse Dvora had any contact with the Institute. Dr. Neidorf had been a

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