7

Detective Hanash had to make a quick transition from his night with Bushra to the challenges of getting to the crime scene—the traffic, the red lights, the impassable streets that were in need of repair. To make things worse, the crime scene was on a narrow downtown alley. There wasn’t space for the police cars, ambulances, and forensics vehicles, let alone anything else. Hanash had to park his car some distance away and navigate through a dense crowd that filled the alley and surrounding streets.

A police officer noticed him and ran toward him, gesturing forcefully to the curious bystanders to clear a path. He stopped a couple of feet away and gave the detective a fervent salute, bringing his heels together with a click that drew everyone’s attention.

“Sir!” he said, standing stiffly in salute, before leading him to the building.

The first thing that struck Hanash was how old the building was. It had damp, whitewashed walls. The windows looked out onto a dark alley that reeked of the acrid smell of urine, despite a sign that read “No Urinating” in coarse letters. He put his hand over his nose as he made his way inside. The alley was swarming with men, and as soon as they spotted Hanash, with his tall stature and bald head, they all straightened up and gave forceful salutes. They all knew that Hanash was a stickler for a proper salute. One of the officers rushed toward him and bowed his head in deference. He then led him toward the building’s rickety wooden door.

“Isn’t there any light?” asked Hanash loudly.

“No, sir. Should I get a flashlight?”

He received no answer. Once Hanash made it into the entryway leading to the stairs it became clear that his vision just needed to adjust. A bit of light snuck in from a side window.

The sounds of footsteps came from overhead, magnified by the wood flooring. When, with his usual confidence, he placed his foot on the first step to head upstairs, the sound made him fear that the whole building was going to fall on his head. He ascended gently, tiptoeing like a thief.

The apartment was teeming with so many officers that Hanash could hardly get in the door. The investigative team was hard at work, and the camera’s flash was constant. The forensics unit, which had recently been reorganized, was moving around arrogantly as if they were some expert team from the show CSI. For a second he felt no one had noticed him, and wondered if his late arrival allowed the others to feel like they could run the investigation without him.

The first thing that annoyed Hanash was the draft. Upon arriving at a crime scene, he always closed the windows, so he wouldn’t catch a cold. He stood in the doorframe as if he had the wrong address. He was astonished by the officers’ silence, and almost yelled at the lead officer.

Inspector Hamid noticed him and, surprised, approached him like a lightning bolt, offering his apologies. He gave a firm salute to draw everyone else’s attention to Detective Hanash.

“Good morning, sir,” he said, bowing his head with the utmost respect. “You got here quickly.”

Normally Hanash took three days off, minimum, when he was with his mistress and claimed to be traveling.

“I got back last night,” he said, unconcerned. “What do we have, then?”

“A gruesome double murder. The victims are one female, one male. The male is named Said bin Ali, thirty years old, and the resident of this apartment. He worked in an electrical cable production factory in Ain Seba. The girl with him was Nezha al-Gharbi, twenty years old. According to the identity card we found in her pocket, she is a student, and lives in the Saada neighborhood.”

“The murder weapon?” the detective asked, moving routinely to the next question.

“We haven’t found it yet.”

Before entering the bedroom to examine the two victims, he was struck by the sight of Officer Qazdabo, who was trembling in the corner. He went up to him and fixed his gaze on him. Qazdabo looked as though he might fall to the ground in discomfort. Hanash had prohibited him from saluting because, in his loose-fitting uniform and with his tiny stature, he looked like a comedian playing the part of a policeman.

“I . . . I’m sick, sir,” he stammered, before Hanash could even ask. “I have a fever, a headache, and diarrhea, God help me!”

Hanash fought back a grin. Qazdabo looked like a cartoon character. He was nicknamed Qazdabo—an unkind reference to how short he was—and he always wore tattered uniforms that he bought secondhand. They were always extremely loose over his thin, short frame. He was in his forties and had been transferred to Casablanca from his native city of Taza as part of disciplinary measures. He took up residence temporarily in a vacated office on the top floor of the police station. For three years now he’d lived in this office because he couldn’t afford to rent an apartment. He sent all his meager wages to his wife in Taza, who was raising their five children.

As he stood in front of the detective his hands were trembling and he was sweating in his thick wool coat, a completely unnecessary garment in this pleasant weather. This coat, in and of itself, was the source of a series of jokes at the precinct. Qazdabo looked off into the distance, not saying anything.

“I’ve told you numerous times not to wear that coat on the job,” Hanash said, looking at him severely.

“Yes, sir . . . but I’m sick today. I was going to arrive late, but I thought it wouldn’t be a good idea for both of us to be absent. If I’d known you were coming, I wouldn’t have come. Sir, I’m really sick. I feel like everything is spinning. I’m barely keeping it together.”

Under a different set of circumstances, Hanash would have found this funny. “You wore this clown jacket because you thought I wasn’t going to be here?” he asked sharply. Without giving him time to answer, he turned to enter the bedroom where the murder had taken place.

“Detective, sir.” Qazdabo stopped him pitifully. “Can I go? I have to visit the bathroom nearly every minute.”

Detective Hanash glared at him, but his anger subsided a bit when he examined Qazdabo’s woeful features, wilting eyelids, and fatigued posture.

“Get out of here,” he said, pointing to the door.

Qazdabo turned to leave, put his hands in his huge jacket pockets, and rushed down the stairs, making a racket.

 

The moment Detective Hanash stepped into the bedroom a look of disgust spread across his face. What he saw surpassed anything he had expected. Blood was everywhere—on the bed, the walls, the clothes strewn about, and all over the floor. He realized some had even reached the ceiling. The two corpses were on the bed, one next to the other. The bodies had been naked, but a sheet had been placed over them. The detective withdrew the sheet and stepped back. Except for the suicide bombing scenes he had attended, where bodies and limbs were scattered everywhere, he had never seen such horror. The male’s abdomen was split open and his intestines were hanging out like those of a lamb on Eid al-Adha. Stab wounds covered every part of his body. It looked like he’d received a blow that had smashed his teeth and broken his nose. The female next to him had a perfectly intact face—she looked like she was asleep. But he couldn’t bring himself to inspect her torso for more than a couple of seconds—her breasts were almost completely detached from her body, each clinging by a thin piece of skin—and he pulled the blood-soaked sheet back up toward her head. He stepped back, speechless.

As he looked again at the girl’s face, he froze. It was familiar to him. The girl with the disfigured corpse on the bed was the girl from Hotel Scheherazade whom he’d caught with the bank manager—he was absolutely certain. He put the sheet back over her face as he tried to hide his reaction from the others. Even in death, her face retained the vigor of its youth. His senses went numb and his lips became dry.

He had to forget that he had previously met the victim, and make sure no one else knew. None of his men had been part of the raids this past Saturday night; that operation had been carried out by the morality police, who rarely worked in the investigative units. If the details of what had happened at the hotel came out—a senior police officer taking bribes—it would be a huge scandal that the press would run with for weeks. He knew he had to take control of this investigation with an iron fist, and he’d have to check all the details, big and small, himself, while allowing it to appear to proceed naturally without undue intervention. There must be no indication that he knew one of the victims, or that there was any link to the raid on Hotel Scheherazade. What happened there hadn’t entered police records, and there was no way that bank guy was involved in this. He was certain the two incidents were not connected.

Detective Hanash understood why an eerie silence had settled over the room. In the face of such brutality, words seemed to lose their meaning. He shook his head in horror and left the bedroom. Hamid led him out, carving a path between the many officers milling about in confusion. He ordered a group of forensic specialists to stop working for a moment so that Hanash could cast his expert eye over the scene. The detective saw a coffee table with empty bottles on top, an ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts. He counted under his breath as he pointed at the bottles one by one.

“There was one other person, or more, with the two victims,” he said, with absolute certainty. “No matter how long they were partying, this is far too much for two people.”

“You’re right, sir,” said Hamid, nodding vigorously. “There are even more empty bottles in the kitchen, and some of the neighbors heard loud noises and music until one in the morning, or later.”

Inspector Hamid was an obedient, opportunistic employee. He was very concerned with his appearance, from top to bottom. His hair was always perfectly combed back to Detective Hanash’s satisfaction and he kept a permanently skeptical look on his face, all in an attempt to get himself noticed. He was in his forties and lived alone with his mother. He wouldn’t even consider marriage until she passed away. Hamid was Hanash’s right-hand man, and tried to memorize his every move as if there would be a test.

“Our men are out taking statements, apartment by apartment. There is another team interrogating neighbors from this alley and the surrounding area. And another is looking for the murder weapon.”

Hanash wasn’t interested in these mundane issues of procedure at this point. “The attorney general?” he interrupted. “Has he been notified?”

No sooner had he asked this question than he heard the sound of voices, footsteps, and greetings coming from the entryway and the stairwell. The atmosphere changed with the arrival of the attorney general and other officials, including the head medical examiner, who only came to the scene of the crime when it was extremely serious.

Detective Hanash hated it when the spotlight shifted off him and landed on a higher-ranked official in the room. Not to mention that he now had to kiss the attorney general’s ass and fill him in on the details. He essentially repeated exactly what Hamid had told him. When the delegation of officials returned from the bedroom their faces were drawn, and everyone was in utter shock. They crowded around Hanash as though they were waiting for him to identify the killer, or killers, in one fell swoop. He didn’t have a clue, but he had to propose something.

“Based on the configuration of this room, there’s nothing indicating any sort of violent struggle. The furniture is in place and there are no broken bottles. Not a drop of beer or wine has been spilled on the rug. It seems that this is the room where the two victims, and someone else, maybe more than one other, hung out for a long stretch. This is clear from the number of bottles and ashtrays overflowing with cigarette butts. My preliminary assessment is that the murderer, or murderers, took the two victims by surprise as they were naked on the bed.”

“There have to be fingerprints,” said one of the officials.

“The forensics unit will find them,” said another, with pride. “They have the latest tools and training to extract them.”

“Right,” the attorney general interjected. “The war on terror has forced us to modernize. Now we have the best forensics lab in all of Africa.”

A heavy man holding a flashlight and wearing what resembled a space suit turned to them. It was clear to everyone that he was the head of the forensics unit.

“Since our lab was modernized we no longer have to seek outside help. Before that, we would have to wait more than a month to get DNA analysis confirmed from labs in Italy. Now we do these analyses locally, thank God. As you can see, the forensics experts are extremely meticulous. They find fingerprints, single hairs, and even traces of saliva. We now focus on details that were considered useless in the past, since we didn’t have the tools to analyze them.”

Hanash noticed that the officials—some of whom he didn’t know—were whispering to one another about the horror of the crime as they shifted closer to the head of forensics. The detective wasn’t about to lose center stage to this guy. He looked over the heads of the officials and caught a glimpse of one of his officers in the apartment’s entryway.

“Zarouq!” Hanash shouted, regaining center stage. “Who is responsible for interrogating the neighbors next door?”

The officer moved toward the group, unfazed by the official presence, and delivered a half salute since the room was so packed.

“Sir, the apartment is empty,” he said. “The residents moved out last month.”

Detective Hanash nodded knowingly, even though he hadn’t expected this response. He started scanning the room as if he were looking for something specific.

“Wherever alcohol and debauchery mingle, crime is just around the corner,” he said, taking on the air of a philosopher.

He looked around and noticed Hamid feigning admiration, as if this were the first time he’d heard him say this.

“Who notified us about this crime?” Detective Hanash asked Hamid in a businesslike tone, signaling that the philosophizing was over.

“One of the building’s residents who we have in custody, sir,” Hamid said, standing straight as an arrow, his hands at his sides. “I did the initial interrogation, sir, and he said he lives on the top floor and discovered the crime scene when he was heading to work this morning. On his way down the stairs, he noticed that the victim’s door was open, so he called out several times. When he got no response, he went inside and discovered the scene.”

“Where is he now?”

“Bu’u is with him in his apartment upstairs.”

There was considerable commotion when the head medical examiner exited the bedroom carrying his tattered leather bag. He was a short, stout man and was wearing a medical apron splattered with blood, like a butcher. He looked exhausted, and was clearly perturbed to find such a huge gathering outside the crime scene. He didn’t know whom to address. He gestured toward Detective Hanash, indicating that he’d like to speak with him.

“What do you think, doctor?” Hanash asked, following him toward the door.

“A gruesome crime, no doubt about it,” the medical examiner said, glancing back at the group. “You’ll find all the details in my report.”

“Could you at least tell me about the murder weapon and when it happened?”

“The crime was committed with a sharp object—a large knife, or maybe even a sword. The time of the murders was between midnight and three in the morning. The autopsy will verify everything with far greater precision.”

The doctor didn’t wait for further questions. He made his way down the staircase without even removing his bloodstained medical apron. After he departed, a group from the coroner’s office entered the bedroom to place the corpses on gurneys and transport them to the morgue. It was a chaotic scene, and the arrival of the coroner and his aides added a few more bodies to the already packed apartment.

Detective Hanash felt a combination of exhaustion and bewilderment. He remembered that he had to call his wife. Work had frequently caused him to miss important family events. He’d known he wouldn’t be present for the birth of his granddaughter, and now he probably wouldn’t be able to attend the celebration they would organize in Marrakesh either.

He snapped out of his daze when the attorney general approached him, motioning that he wanted to speak to him alone.

“What are your thoughts on this bloodbath?” the attorney general asked.

The detective tried to clear his head and refocus on the crime at hand, which was still a mystery. His thoughts were scattered. It wasn’t an option—as it had been with other crimes—to offer a confident hunch, because he feared subsequent developments would prove him wrong. There was also the fact that he knew the female victim. Keeping this fact concealed only intensified his caution.

“I think we have a crime of unprecedented brutality on our hands, the likes of which we haven’t seen since the time of the Zweita serial murders, when the victims were horribly mutilated. The difference is that this is a double murder and the grisly way it was carried out might lead you to assume it was revenge. The evidence in front of us seems to indicate this, assuming that the perpetrators didn’t cover their tracks and shift things around. If we just take into consideration the facts on the ground so far, it looks like a crime of passion whose motivation was jealousy or infidelity. This is my feeling, but we’ll have to wait and see where the investigation leads us.”

This was the answer the attorney general was hoping for, since Hanash was suggesting that it was an isolated incident. What everyone feared was that the crime might be tied to some larger criminal conspiracy. The attorney general relaxed and put his hands in his pockets, smiling at the detective.

“You are well aware of the smear campaign the media is waging against us these days. They’re obsessed with how crime is out of control in Casablanca, and accuse the police of being negligent. But we both know it’s just the opposite. Given this reality, I hope, detective, that you will redouble your efforts to solve this crime as soon as possible. We need an arrest to satisfy public opinion.”

Hanash thought this was all a little premature. He and his men hadn’t even concluded the initial neighborhood sweep, and the preliminary data hadn’t yet been gathered.

“Each crime has its own particularities,” Hanash said, avoiding going any further. “I’m going to give this case my full attention.”

A satisfied look spread over the attorney general’s face. He extended his hand and shook Detective Hanash’s hand vigorously.

“May God help you. Let’s be in touch about this case. As soon as you find out anything new, call me.”

“Of course, sir.”

The attorney general left with his entire entourage in tow. Hanash knew that most of those leaving could care less about this double murder. Even after the two corpses were extracted, the chaos in the apartment continued. The detective now resumed his role as the most senior official in the apartment, and felt a need to reassess the many threads of this case.

Hamid appeared in front of him, awaiting orders. “Should I close the window, sir?” he asked.

This was exactly what was bothering the detective—this light flow of air between the room’s window and the open door. The detective sneezed and nodded. He took another lap around the apartment.

“Doesn’t this building have a guard?” he asked.

“They don’t have a full-time guard. There was a woman who came once a week to clean the stairwell, but she stopped coming a few months ago because the residents couldn’t pay her.”

“How many units are in this building?”

“Ten apartments, sir. According to one of the neighbors this building wasn’t originally an apartment building, but a headquarters of some foreign company in the nineteenth century. It’s more than a hundred years old.”

This old building was pressed between two modern buildings on a dark and depressing alley. Its paint job was equally miserable. The apartments were small and dark, giving the impression of a haunted cellar. Hanash started up the stairwell with his right-hand man, Hamid. He couldn’t believe how filthy the walls and floor were. There was a uniformed officer standing on the narrow landing of the top floor. When he saw Hanash he gave a firm salute that seemed to shake the building. The thud of his boots hitting the floor sounded like a gas tank exploding. For the first time ever, the officers saw a hint of fear in Hanash’s eyes.

“What are you doing up here?” the detective reprimanded him. “Go downstairs and stand guard.”

The apartment’s door was open and its walls were a moldy green from the humidity. It was a single room partitioned into a living space and a bedroom by a cloth hanging from the ceiling.

The man who lived there was wearing a faded suit. His face was as white as a sheet and an unlit cigarette was twitching in his trembling fingers. Officer Bu’u was sitting in front of him. Bu’u had gotten this nickname, which meant the boogeyman, because of his terrifying face and his equally terrifying interrogation techniques, which made even the most hardened criminals confess. He had already thoroughly interrogated this man. As Hanash entered, Bu’u had his hand raised as though he were about to whack the guy.

Before Bu’u could salute, Hanash stopped him, ordering him to stay still, lest the whole building collapse.

Hanash refused to stay in the apartment for more than a minute due to the horrible stench of cat shit, which was intensified by the humidity.

“Take him to the precinct,” he muttered to Bu’u, after taking a look at the fear-stricken man.

Detective Hanash headed toward the door and descended the stairs very carefully. He returned once again to the crime scene, where he spent another five minutes by himself inspecting every detail, looking for anything that had been missed. His mind drifted to a previous crime scene that had ended up being the first in a serial murder case. The murderer had wound up killing three people in an attempt to hide the initial murder. It wasn’t unheard of for a suspect to commit a second or third murder to try to cover their tracks, especially if they feared being tortured by the likes of Officer Bu’u and others on the force. In the old days, most murders were the result of simple arguments or confrontations that got out of hand. It seemed that a major societal shift had occurred of late, perhaps a result of the Internet and the globalization of crime.

Detective Hanash lost his train of thought when his phone rang. He looked at the number and saw that it was home calling.

“Yes, hello?” he answered in a professional and resolute tone, indicating that he didn’t have time to chat.

“Dad, you’re now a grandfather! Atiqa gave birth to a baby girl!” his daughter Manar responded cheerfully.

“What!” he exclaimed, forgetting he was standing in the middle of a crime scene. “How is she? Did everything go well? And didn’t they say she was having a boy?”

“Yeah, that’s what her doctor said based on the ultrasound, but she had a girl. Everything went well, thank God. You can give her a call if you want. We all congratulated her and apologized for not being there, as the baby came early. We promised to visit soon.”

“Your mother, is she feeling all right?”

“She’s upset because she really wanted to be with her for the birth. Are you still in Fez?”

“I returned this morning, but had to go straight to work . . . one of the most horrific murders I’ve ever seen, and I’m up to my ears in it. Is your mother next to you?”

“No, she’s crying in the bathroom. She feels really guilty about not being with Atiqa, even though there was nothing we could do.”

“Stay with her. I’ll call her later.”

Hanash sighed as he hung up. How quickly and unapologetically time passes, he thought. It seemed like just yesterday his firstborn, Atiqa, had been a child herself, clinging to him, her eyes welling up when he tried to leave for work. Now she was a mother in her own right.

He looked over at Hamid, who had overheard the detective’s call from home. He knew Hamid wouldn’t say anything until he delivered the news himself.

“My daughter had a baby girl.”

“Congratulations, sir!” Hamid hugged him, trying to give the impression that he was deeply moved by the news. Hamid then stepped back and saluted him so enthusiastically that he lost his balance. Hanash smiled reluctantly.

“She had a girl even though we were told it would be a boy,” he said, still a bit stunned.

“God knows best, sir,” Hamid replied.

“All right,” said Hanash, shifting back to the crime scene. “Has anything gone missing here? Any chance the crime was motivated by theft?”

“I don’t think so,” said Hamid. “The doors had no visible signs of a break-in, and there is no indication that someone was rummaging around. The male victim who lived here, as you can see, didn’t have much worth stealing.”

There wasn’t much left at the scene for Hanash to ponder. The real work was about to commence at the police station. He was confident his men were working feverishly in hopes of being the first to uncover a clue that could start unraveling this puzzle.