7

AT TEN O’CLOCK THE NEXT morning, the cop at the reception desk led a young man to Laafrit’s office. The detective immediately knew it was the brother of victim number three.

Laafrit greeted him warmly and asked him to sit down. After a few pleasantries, the detective asked him for his ID and then put a photo of drowning victim number three in front of him. Laafrit watched the kid’s expression closely as he stared at the picture in disbelief. The kid began scrutinizing the picture, holding it with his thumb. His feelings were a mixture of confusion and grief.

“Tell me, Abdel-Jalil, do you recognize the man in the photo?” asked Laafrit.

The kid shook his head without looking up from the photo. He stayed silent.

“You’ll be more sure when you see him at the morgue,” said Laafrit. “What’s your brother’s name?”

“Driss.”

Laafrit noticed Abdel-Jalil was trembling in a way that indicated real grief. He was more than twenty years old but he had a bunch of pimples scattered across his face and his appearance indicated he was dirt poor.

It seemed he was trying hard to open his mouth and that he was exasperated by the thoughts that were surfacing. Appreciating the delicate situation, Laafrit kept in check the urge to get some information out of the kid. He got up to leave so Abdel-Jalil could have a chance to calm down.

“What happened to my brother?” Abdel-Jalil asked suddenly in an upset voice.

“He washed ashore here in Tangier,” Laafrit said, filling his voice with grief. “No doubt he told you he was going to hrig?”

Abdel-Jalil lifted the picture and looked at it again in disbelief.

“But,” he said, confused, “my brother hrigged two years ago. He got to Spain safely with a group of guys from our neighborhood. They all live in Almería. He calls us all the time.”

Laafrit was bewildered, and the papers got mixed up in front of him.

“When’s the last time he called you?” asked the detective, unable to control his surprise.

“A week ago. I’m the one who talked to him. He said everything was great.”

Laafrit smiled doubtfully and put an end to the conversation. There had to be a mistake.

“Look, there might be some misunderstanding,” he said, getting up quickly. “We’ll talk after you see the body.”

When they got to the morgue, Laafrit evaded the medical examiner’s questions. He didn’t want to talk until Abdel-Jalil had positively identified his brother’s body. The professor responded immediately. He pulled opened the four freezer drawers nervously and left the observation room with his silent shuffling steps. The coroner’s strange mannerisms only increased Abdel-Jalil’s anxiety. Abdel-Jalil shut his eyes for a long time, unable to get close to the bodies.

“Go on,” said Laafrit. “Do everything you can to get a grip on yourself.”

Abdel-Jalil stayed about half a meter from the bodies. He put his hand over his mouth, unable to stop trembling. He looked at the first corpse and his eyes widened. All of a sudden, he overcame his fear and surged forward to look closely at the four bodies. A strange expression appeared on his face and the shock produced a sharp reaction that rippled through his body. His heart beat furiously and the blood drained from his face. Slapping himself on the cheek a number of times, he staggered backward. Laafrit rushed over to Abdel-Jalil and propped him up, telling him he had to calm down. But the kid started screaming and flailing as if he wanted to hit his head against the wall.

Professor Abdel-Majid came back quickly with a group of assistants. When he saw the hysteria that had seized the kid, he rushed to get the corpses back in the freezer.

“These things happen,” he said to Laafrit. “A lot of people can’t bear to see the dead.”

“They’re all from my neighborhood!” Abdel-Jalil said in a cracking voice.

“Did you see your brother?” asked Laafrit.

The shock had clearly taken its toll on Abdel-Jalil and he looked like he was on the verge of passing out. Laafrit moved away from him and left him with the assistants. He thought for the first time that this kid, in addition to the state of shock, was suffering from stress and insomnia since he had no doubt spent the entire night on the bus and then the train, making his way to Tangier from Beni Mellal, which was about six hundred kilometers south. Maybe Abdel-Jalil hadn’t slept a wink. Maybe he hadn’t had breakfast yet either.

When they left the morgue, Laafrit tried to get the kid’s mind off the tragedy. He asked about the trip and how the police at Beni Mellal broke the news to his family. Abdel-Jalil only responded with mumbles, as if he had tried but failed to extract the words from his lips.

Laafrit parked the Fiat opposite the police station and instead of just taking the kid inside, he walked him over to the café next door and told him gently to have some breakfast. Despite the detective’s insistence, Abdel-Jalil didn’t take more than two sips of his tea and he didn’t touch the raghif he ordered or anything else Laafrit offered him. For his part, the detective was impatient to know exactly what had happened to Abdel-Jalil’s brother.

When they got back to the station, Abdel-Jalil asked Laafrit if he could smoke. The detective put an ashtray in front of him.

“So,” said Laafrit, doing everything he could to deal with him gently, “you recognized the four bodies. You said they’re all from your neighborhood?”

Laafrit paused. Abdel-Jalil wasn’t looking at what was in front of him. He stared off into space as if recalling a distant memory. Laafrit gave the kid a moment to collect himself and then put the question to him another way.

“Can you tell me the names of the others?”

“Mohamed Bensallam, Jamal el-Kaidi, and Hicham el-Ouni,” he muttered, still in a state of shock.

“In addition to your brother, Driss el-Yamani?” asked Laafrit. “You said in the morgue they were all from your neighborhood?”

“Yeah, except for Bensallam’s family. They moved to Hayy el-Falah two months ago.”

“Do the families have any idea what happened to them?”

“No.”

“You sure the bodies you saw in the morgue are them? If you have any doubt, we can go back.”

Abdel-Jalil only took two drags from his cigarette. He put it on the edge of the ashtray and let it sit there burning.

“I’m pressing,” said Laafrit, “because we’ll have to call their families and ask them to come identify the bodies, just as you did.”

Abdel-Jalil nodded.

“Good,” said Laafrit. “You said your brother hrigged two years ago.”

“Yeah, with Jamal el-Kaidi, Hicham el-Ouni, and Jaouad Benmousa.”

Laafrit took out headshots of the victims and put them side by side in front of Abdel-Jalil. The detective asked him to name each one separately so he could write it on the back of each photo. When he got to the picture of the shooting victim, Abdel-Jalil hesitated.

“But Mohamed Bensallam was in Beni Mellal this summer,” he said, confused. “He came back in a big expensive car, bought a house, got married, and had a huge wedding.”

Laafrit found it hard to take in what he had just heard.

“How could a harrag come back to the country just like that?” asked Laafrit, as if doubting Abdel-Jalil. “Did he get legal papers?”

“Mohamed Bensallam,” said Abdel-Majid, “was the first to hrig. That was five years ago. He lived in Almería and worked on a huge farm. Because he was good at what he did, the farm owner got him papers.”

“When’d your brother and the others hrig?”

“Two years ago. The summer before last.”

“The three of them hrigged at the same time?”

“There were four, but Jaouad Benmousa isn’t here with the others.”

“They all got there safely?”

“Yeah.”

Laafrit looked grave.

“If I’ve got you right,” he said, as if reining in his thoughts, “Mohamed Bensallam hrigged five years ago, lived in Almería, and managed to get papers. As for the others,” he went on, turning over the photos so he could read their names, “Jamal el-Kaidi, Hicham el-Ouni, and your brother, Driss el-Yamani, they hrigged two years ago, got to Spain safely, and worked in Almería with Mohamed Bensallam. They’re the four you identified at the morgue.”

“But Jaouad Benmousa wasn’t there with them,” Abdel-Jalil said, letting out a moan.

Laafrit shook his head, trying to understand what was going on. He realized that the case, instead of clearing up, was only becoming more confusing.