Hulumi went into the court building, presented himself to the public prosecutor’s office as Othman’s lawyer, took the police report to the photocopier, and then sat down in a corner to read it. He only lifted his eyes off the report twice. The first time was when he saw the statements of the cook Abdelkader, who accused Othman of sneaking into the kitchen and taking the knife the victim was killed with. The second time, he looked up as all the muscles of his face twitched. The police report stated the fingerprints of the accused were the same as those found on the murder weapon. The lawyer thought this case was the most difficult he’d faced in his career and he began to feel it was hopeless. It didn’t help that he was only permitted to read the report just moments prior to defending Othman before the investigative judge. The only thing that encouraged him to continue was the fact that Othman hadn’t confessed to the crime.
A half hour later, the lawyer met Othman in the hallway leading to the office of the investigative judge. He was handcuffed and a uniformed policeman held him by the arm. The lawyer smiled at him gently and noticed he was suffering from exhaustion and sleep deprivation. Othman lowered his head, clearly humiliated.
Despite the simplicity of the office, it gave the impression of gravity. The judge was a short man, about fifty-five years old. He had a face with severe features and dark sunken eyes. He was entirely bald and his lips were tight, making him constantly flash his teeth. He was famous among lawyers for his severity. Some of them thought he was a stubborn opponent but no one would deny his boldness in taking initiatives that flew in the face of formalities for the sake of speeding up the settling of justice and getting to the heart of a case.
As for the judge’s secretary, she was a heavy-set woman about the same age wearing an elegant jalbab that matched the scarves covering half her head. She was a master of her work and knew what she had to write down and what she could leave out to the point that the judge never gave her any directions. Sometimes he’d forget she was even there.
The judge ordered the police to uncuff Othman and then pointed at a seat and told him to sit down. He waited until the policeman closed the door and then took out his reading glasses, which looked like those financial accountants wear. He put them on the bridge of his nose and flipped through the police report.
“Why have you not confessed your crime to the judicial police?” he said to Othman in a commanding tone.
Othman cast a glance at the lawyer appealing for help. Hulumi was sitting in front of him watching and waiting.
“I’m innocent, your honor,” Othman stammered.
“All the evidence’s against you,” said the judge, turning the pages of the police report.
He turned away from Othman and looked at the lawyer, prompting him to speak.
“So, Ustaz, what do you have to say?”
Hulumi smiled and leaned forward so the judge could hear him.
“Yes, your honor,” he said, “the evidence is indeed against my client but he hasn’t confessed to this crime. If you please, my client has a degree in the law and was a colleague of mine at law school. Before going to the police, he visited my office and told me the details of what happened. I convinced him to face the counsel of the court. I then undertook some investigations and, if you please, I request that you summon the following people.”
The lawyer opened his briefcase and took out a sheet of paper, which he presented to the judge. He read the contents of the paper in a loud voice.
“Jacques Beaumarché, the Shore Hotel, Ain Diab.”
The judge turned his lips slowly without raising his head from the sheet.
“Who’s this Jacques Beaumarché?”
“The victim’s son.”
The judge rested his chin on the palm of his hand and leaned forward.
“This request of yours will produce something new for the case?”
“Yes, your honor.”
The judge turned his lips another time and continued reading.
“Selwa Laghyathi, 16 Abd al-Mumin Boulevard, Maarif.”
“Who’s this Selwa?” asked the judge, blinking his eyes.
“The secretary of the accountant with whom the victim deposited her will.”
The judge suddenly seemed interested. Without raising his head, he read the final name.
“Jilali Bouchra, the Shore Hotel, Ain Diab.”
“Who’s this person?”
“An employee at the hotel who’s in charge of the reception.”
Othman bit his lips and looked at the lawyer and the judge. He felt himself forgotten in the session, despite the fact that he was the most important person in it. The judge took his time reading the sheet.
“I don’t want to subject these people to useless trouble,” he said without looking up from the paper. “Are you sure their presence could change something in the course of the case?”
“Yes, your honor,” said the lawyer, sure of himself. “If you please, I ask your honor to summon them as soon as possible.”
“Tomorrow at two o’clock,” said the judge in a severe voice as he pressed his foot on the bell under the desk, suddenly ending the session.
The next day, after a delay of half an hour, the lawyer sat down in front of the judge. The latter was busy looking for something in his drawers and after five minutes of searching, he gave up. The lawyer was afraid this frustration might influence the judge’s mood.
“Maybe what you’re looking for is hiding because I’m here,” he said, trying to lighten things up.
The judge cracked a smile, but his frown did not entirely disappear.
“Working in government offices grates on my nerves,” he said, sitting upright in his chair. “Never mind. All the people I summoned are waiting. Should I call them in together or one at a time?”
“If you please, your honor, I ask you to call Jacques Beaumarché.”
The judge pressed on the bell with his foot. There were knocks on the door and then the doorman appeared.
“Jacques Beaumarché,” the secretary instructed him.
A minute later, a voice came from behind the door and the knob turned. Jacques came in. He stared at the lawyer, unable to hide his surprise. The judge shuffled forward on his seat and shook Jacques’s hand.
“This is Ahmed Hulumi, the lawyer of the accused,” he said, pointing over at him. “Please, sit down.”
“We’ve already met,” mumbled the lawyer.
Jacques sat down. He was elegantly dressed, as usual, but traces of insomnia were clear in his bloodshot eyes. The lawyer thought it was obvious that being summoned to the court scared him.
“Go ahead,” said the judge, pointing at the lawyer.
“As you know, Monsieur Beaumarché,” said the lawyer, addressing Jacques, “Othman, the husband of your mother— and we are very sorry for what happened to her—is the primary defendant in her murder. The presumed motive for committing the crime is the will your mother wrote that excludes you from the inheritance, while Othman, according to the will, is the sole beneficiary of her entire estate.”
Jacques face became tight.
“Monsieur Beaumarché, did you have knowledge of this will before your mother’s death?” asked the lawyer.
A stunned look appeared in Jacques’s eyes.
“No, I didn’t,” said Jacques, hesitating. “But it doesn’t bother me that my mother left everything to her husband. She was very kind to me and after she got Papa’s life insurance years ago, even though she was the sole beneficiary, she gave me half the payout. My mother wasn’t being unfair to me in any way when she willed her estate to her husband.”
“Fine,” said Hulumi. “Then you didn’t know about the will?”
“I told you, no,” replied Jacques, clearly annoyed.
The lawyer turned toward the judge.
“I have another opinion. You knew about the will your mother set with the accountant Shafiq Sahili. His secretary, Selwa Laghyathi, leaked its contents to you,” he said, pointing at Jacques.
Jacques’s face went pale. He seemed to be in a state of shock. The lawyer exchanged a glance with the judge.
“Monsieur Beaumarché,” said the judge, trying to hurry a reply.
“I don’t know what this man’s getting at,” said Jacques, addressing the judge bluntly.
“Do you know this secretary?” the judge asked Jacques in a commanding voice, looking over at the lawyer. “Answer yes or no.”
“No,” said Jacques in a decisive voice.
“Please, your honor, I’d like to call Selwa Laghyathi,” said the lawyer, addressing the judge.
A minute later, the doorman brought her in and closed the door. Selwa was wearing a jalbab and had a scarf on her head. Her clothes made her seem older than she was and hid her usual attractiveness. She stood frozen in her place, looking at the men in surprise. The judge asked her to sit down.
“You’re Selwa Laghyathi, the secretary of the accountant, Shafiq Sahili?” asked the lawyer as she threw herself down on the chair nervously.
She nodded, rubbing her fingers together.
“Do you know this man?” the lawyer added, pointing at Jacques.
She barely gave him a sideways glance and then shook her head.
“Look closely at him,” said the lawyer insistently.
“I looked at him and I don’t know him,” uttered Selwa, the words leaving her throat with an uneven hoarseness.
“Fine,” said the lawyer, folding his hands. “Two days ago, you left the accountant’s office at four o’clock in the afternoon anxious and hurried. You took a taxi with license plate number 2230 and went to Ain Diab—to the Shore Hotel, to be exact. You asked the permission of the man at the reception desk and then went up to room number ninety-six to see this man,” he said, pointing at Jacques.
Selwa’s face immediately turned the same pale yellow of her dyed hair. The investigative judge noticed that Jacques gave her quick affectionate looks. The judge told the lawyer to move on and ask for the third person.
The young man who was in charge of the reception at the Shore Hotel came in and stood confused in the middle of the office, looking around at those who were there. He was wearing his work clothes, which looked like the suits worn by admirals. He was clearly nervous. All he wanted, when he was asked to talk, was to say he was innocent of anything that might be tied to him.
The judge told him to sit down on a chair in the far corner of the office.
“We won’t take more than five minutes of your time,” said the lawyer, smiling to lighten the deskman’s nervousness as he sat down. “When I visited you at the hotel, what did I ask you?”
The chair shook under the weight of the young man. Immediately, the lawyer knew he was afraid the hundred dirhams he gave him would come out. The lawyer signaled furtively for him to hurry up and answer.
“You asked me about this girl,” he stammered, pointing at Selwa. “She got to the hotel just before you. This man here,” he said, pointing at Jacques, “told me if someone named Selwa asks for him, I should tell her to go up to his room.”
“Do you still deny, monsieur,” said the lawyer, addressing Jacques, “that you don’t know this girl?”
Agitation got the better of Jacques.
“Great,” he said angrily. “If I knew I was going to be interrogated like this, I would’ve also brought a lawyer with me.”
“You have the right to hire a lawyer to defend yourself,” said the judge with a firm tone.
“Is there a charge against me?” yelled Jacques in the judge’s face, suddenly becoming excited.
“Why did you deny knowing this girl?” asked the judge sharply, angered by Jacques’s rudeness. “And why did she go up to your hotel room?”
“This is a personal matter. I don’t have to respond to that.”
“This isn’t a personal matter,” said the lawyer. “It’s connected to the will since this girl is the secretary of your mother’s accountant.”
“I object to all these questions!” yelled Jacques, stamping his foot on the ground. “I refuse to be interrogated until I have my lawyer.”
“Don’t talk unless I tell you to,” said the judge with a calmness that increased with Jacques’s anger.
“Do you still need this person?” he asked the lawyer, looking over at the deskman.
The lawyer signaled to the young man and smiled at him graciously.
“I’m finished with him, your honor,” he said.
“Wait outside until I call you,” said the judge.
The young man hurried out of the room and the doorman closed the door behind him.
“When did you join Yasmina Club?” Hulumi asked Selwa, catching her off guard.
She kept rubbing her fingers together and gave Jacques a quick look.
“I don’t remember. Maybe a year ago or more.”
The lawyer took his notebook out of his pocket and flipped through it quickly.
“It was six months ago,” he said. “The club’s records prove this. And you quickly became friends with Naeema. You knew about her relationship with Othman and you knew Othman was the husband of Sofia, who also worked out at the same club. You told Naeema you were Shafiq Sahili’s secretary and revealed to her the contents of the will, isn’t that right?”
Selwa lowered her head, thinking Naeema had confessed to the police that she was the one who leaked the contents of the will. She looked up and then stared off into the empty space of the room.
“I admit I did the wrong thing,” she said in a low voice. “But it was Naeema who kept insisting when she found out I was the secretary of Sofia’s accountant.”
“Who told her that?”
“I don’t know,” said Selwa, staring out at nothing.
“Did you tell her the contents of the will?” asked the judge sharply.
She nodded. The judge was surprised, since this information wasn’t in the police report.
“Does your employer let you look over all the confidential documents in his office?” asked the judge severely.
“I’ve never done anything like that before,” she said in a bewildered voice. “But Naeema seduced me. She showered me with gifts and kept pestering me until I finally gave in. I had no idea doing that would make Othman kill his wife. . . .”
“Who told you Othman killed his wife?” interrupted the lawyer sharply.
Her face went pale and she swallowed with difficulty. She gave Jacques a pleading look and saw he was even paler than her. Her head shook forcefully and signs of indignation and hesitation appeared on her face. The judge saw how much she was suffering and gave her a piercing look.
“If you don’t want to ensnare yourself even deeper, you have to be frank and recount the events exactly as they happened,” he said. “Don’t forget we’re dealing with the crime of murder, which the law punishes with either life in prison or death.”
Her teeth chattered as she remembered all the executions she’d seen in the movies. All of a sudden, she burst out crying.
“I don’t have anything to do with Sofia’s murder!” she yelled out in a choked voice.
“Who told you Othman killed her?” asked the lawyer.
“Him,” she said suddenly in a clear voice, pointing right at Jacques.
“Did you visit him at the hotel?”
“Yes.”
“Liar!” yelled out Jacques, hitting his knee.
The judge told him to keep calm.
“Is he the one who told you to leak the contents of the will to Naeema?” continued the lawyer.
Without hesitation, she nodded.
The judge sat back in his chair staring at Jacques.
“When did you tell Monsieur Beaumarché the contents of the will?” asked the lawyer quickly, trying to take advantage of her breakdown.
She continued crying. She didn’t have any tissues with her so she wiped her tears on the sleeve of her jalbab.
“How did you meet this man?” asked the judge, taking the reins and pointing at Jacques.
“On the street, randomly,” she replied, as if she wanted to end this ordeal as quickly as possible. “He told me I was beautiful and that it was love at first sight. I soon fell head over heels for him. After a couple of days, our relationship took off and he promised he’d marry me, saying he’d take me to France with him and give me a job in his company. He soon started to ask about my work and about the kind of clients the office works with. He then asked me who our foreign clients were and I mentioned Sofia to him.”
“Didn’t you know she was his mother?” asked the judge.
“No, your honor. He was surprised. He told me Sofia was his mother and then told me about her personality and about her marriage to a man more than forty years younger than her. He said this man is Othman and that he has a lover whose name is Naeema.”
“When did he ask you to look at the will?” asked the judge.
“A few weeks after we started dating. He was stunned when he found out his mother left everything to her husband. He cried between my arms and said what hurt him wasn’t being excluded from the inheritance but that a cheating husband would enjoy his mother’s fortune. I told him to tell his mother about her husband’s infidelity but he refused.”
“Why?” asked the lawyer.
“He said he didn’t want to cause her pain, especially since she’d just found out she had breast cancer.”
Both the lawyer and the judge looked over at Jacques, who bowed his head in grief. Selwa continued rubbing her fingers. The judge told her to continue.
“He told me his mother, after her last visit to France, had a complete medical examination. The doctors discovered the beginning stages of breast cancer but she hid the news from everyone. He found out about it by chance when he saw her medical file sitting out and flipped through it.”
“That’s why he hurried up and carried out his plan,” said the lawyer enthusiastically.
The judge gave him a cold look and then asked Selwa to go on.
“He told me to sign up at Yasmina Club,” she said, rubbing her fingers again. “And to get close to Naeema and become friends with her.”
“Is he the one who told you to reveal the contents of the will to her?”
She nodded.
“Did he say why?”
“I didn’t ask. I was blindly in love with him and did what he told me to without asking questions.”
She broke out crying.
“It’s clear now, your honor,” said the lawyer, taking advantage of the opportunity, “that the victim found out she had cancer during her last visit to France and immediately after her return, she set her will. It’s also clear that her son was spying on her and what we heard now from this woman shows what Monsieur Beaumarché had in mind to make sure Othman didn’t inherit his mother’s estate.”
“I excuse myself from any comment on these absurdities,” said Jacques as calmly as he could with a bitter smile. “Yes, it’s true I had a relationship with this girl and it’s true I loved her and was intending to marry her. I pushed her to look over my mother’s will since I was greatly pained by Othman’s infidelity. I found out about his cheating by accident and it caused me great pain that my mother would leave her fortune to a man stabbing her in the back. As Selwa said, I didn’t want to tell my mother about her husband’s betrayal because I didn’t want to see her miserable and alone. I also didn’t want to be the cause of that pain. I never told Selwa to tell Naeema about the will. I know now there’s a conspiracy against me.”
Fatigue appeared in the judge’s eyes. He took down some notes in the register in front of him.
“Your honor,” said the lawyer, “I have proof this man wasn’t in Paris at the time of the murder, as he claims. He was here in Casablanca.”
Jacques shuddered in his chair and his face turned pale. His fingers trembled and he quickly hid his hands in his pockets. A smile of victory appeared on the lawyer’s lips. As for Selwa, she still seemed confused.
“I visited Monsieur Michel Bernard,” added the lawyer confidently, “the advisor at French Cultural Center who was a dear friend of the victim and also of Monsieur Beaumarché. As you know, your honor, the police report does not indicate in any way who told Jacques about his mother’s murder and the reason is clear. The judicial police believed my client was the killer. When Othman visited me before turning himself in, I asked about this point and he told me Bernard was the one who informed Jacques in Paris. This morning, I visited Monsieur Bernard and he told me he tried to contact Jacques immediately after he heard the horrible news but no one responded to his call. As Bernard said, it was very late. He therefore sent an email to Jacques and the next morning, Jacques called and said he’ll take the next flight to Morocco. And here you see, your honor, Monsieur Beaumarché only responded after he got the email, not before. When Bernard told me he met Jacques at the airport immediately after his arrival from Paris, I almost gave up on this theory. But I asked Bernard if he actually saw Jacques walk through customs. And here I was surprised by what he said. Jacques didn’t tell Bernard when he was leaving Paris. Instead, he called him after he arrived at Mohammed V Airport, and Bernard found him outside, in front of the main entrance. Since this point was so important to my case, I went to the airport just to make sure. I talked with the chief of security and gave him Monsieur Beaumarché’s name and passport number, which I took from the deskman at the hotel. I asked the chief of security for the list of travelers coming from Europe on the day Jacques claims he arrived in Morocco.”
Hulumi took a folded up sheet of paper out of his pocket and handed it to the judge.
“Here’s the list. You can see for yourself Monsieur Beaumarché’s name isn’t there. The reason is that he wasn’t in Paris at the time of the crime. He was here in Casablanca.”
Jacques got up as if he was about to flee. In no time, though, he collapsed back into the chair and buried his face between his hands.
Selwa fidgeted in her chair as she stared at Hulumi in surprise. A thick silence hung over the room. Jacques finally lifted his head and stared at the lawyer with a strange look of surprise mixed with hatred. His jaw jutted forward and a look of defeat and resignation appeared in his eyes. His frazzled appearance clashed with the natural politeness that was obvious from how he spoke.
“Othman’s innocent,” he said clearly without the least hesitation. “And this girl wasn’t involved,” he said, pointing at Selwa. “She didn’t know anything about it. No, I didn’t go back to France when I visited my mother the last time. I acted like I went through customs at the airport but I gave my spot to a pregnant woman and snuck out. My mother, Othman, and Michel thought they saw me off and that I took my plane. I knew for a long time about Othman’s relationship with Naeema. I won’t hide from you how much it pained me and how much it made me hate my mother’s behavior even more. It was humiliating that she acted like a child and married two men much younger than her. But the will was the breaking point. It’s unjust that my mother cuts me out and leaves her entire estate to a man stabbing her in the back. That fortune is mine. It has to be mine. It’s my right.”
He swallowed with difficulty.
“That night,” he went on, “I snuck into the restaurant’s kitchen after everyone left since I had a copy of the keys, but I was surprised when Othman came back. If he’d come into the kitchen, he’d have found me hiding there behind the door with the knife in my hand. I imitated a cat’s meow and all of a sudden he turned around and walked out. Of course, I knew he met his girlfriend every night when he took the dog out for a walk. I waited until he went to see her and opened the door of the villa with my key. . . .”
He wasn’t able to continue.
“You stabbed your mother with the knife you took from the restaurant’s kitchen,” said the judge.
He bent his head.
“It was bad luck for my client that he pulled the knife out of the victim’s stomach,” added the lawyer. “He left his fingerprints on it. How naive!”
“I’m the one who’s naive,” said Jacques with a faded smile. “I carried out what he’d dreamed of and gave him a life of security with his girlfriend.”