The body of a young Yemeni woman is discovered in the attic of a Bethlehem Road house, in a Jerusalem neighborhood famous for its impenetrability to outsiders. The victim, once a beauty, is no longer lovely -- her face has been brutally smashed.

More than the usual horror greets Chief Superintendent Michael Ohayon in the closed and inscrutable Baka, for an old love and an unfinished romance await him there as well. But much more is concealed beneath the surface of this gruesome homicide -- as tensions between Ashkenazim and Mizrahim, hostility between Arabs and Jews, the half-century-old business of kidnapped Yemenite children, and the al Aqsa Intifada of 2000 add fuel to a terrible fire that might never be contained.

Batya Gur (1947-2005) lived in Jerusalem, where she was a literary critic for Haaretz, Israel's most prestigious paper. She earned her master's in Hebrew literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and she also taught literature for nearly twenty years.

Bethlehem Road Murder

HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

Chapter One

There comes a moment in a person's life when he fully realizes that ifhe does not throw himself into action, if he does not stop beingafraid to gamble, and if he does not follow the urgings of his heartthat have been silent for many a year -- he will never do it.

Chief Superintendent Michael Ohayon did not say these things aloud,but this is exactly what he thought as he listened to the grumblings ofDanny Balilty, the deputy commander of the intelligence division, whogrumbled incessantly while Ohayon leaned over the corpse. He knelt toget a better look at the silk fibers that dangled from the rip in the scarfaround her neck, beneath the face that had been smashed into a pulp ofblood and bone.

Ada Efrati, who had called them, was waiting for them on the landingof the second floor, in front of the apartment she had bought. Themoment they arrived Balilty had battered her with questions that he ultimatelyassured her would be pursued extensively the following day byChief Superintendent Ohayon. He'd failed to notice the look of astonishmenton Michael's face as he climbed up the twisting external stairsbehind him to the second, and top, floor of the building. Even then,when he first saw her in the twilight, Balilty had looked over his shoulderand wondered about her ("Is she worth it or not? What do you say?" andwithout waiting had answered himself: "She's a tough one. She's gotpretty lips, but you see those two lines near her mouth? They say: Notinterested. But did you see that body on her? And those nerves she has?Nerves of steel. We've seen ordinary people after they find a body andshe -- look how she stands there.").

Balilty kept up his grumbling as Dr. Solomon, the pathologist who hadjust come back from a monthlong special training course in the UnitedStates, leaned over the body. In intervals between murmuring to himself as he examined her, Solomon told them about the latest innovations in thefield of DNA that he had brought back from America. He palpated thecorpse's feet and ran a fingernail over the skin of her arm as he recited dataon body temperature into the little microphone of the recording devicehanging around his neck. From time to time he looked over at his baldingassistant, a new immigrant from Russia who followed his superior's everymove and kept wiping his damp hands on his light khaki pants.

The two people from Forensics were also on the scene. Yaffa was takingphotographs from various angles around the huge water tanksbetween which the body sprawled.

"Get a load of this," muttered Balilty as they climbed up the creakywooden ladder to the narrow opening that led out to the attic under thetiled roof. "There's still water here from the siege of Jerusalem in 1948."

Then Yaffa knelt down, and through a rip in her jeans peeped a bit ofwhite skin as from close up she photographed the smashed face and thenthe skeletons of the pigeons and the desiccated dead cat that had beenthrown on top of them. Alon from Forensics, who had been introducedto Michael as a chemistry student ("They say he's some kind of genius, aprodigy, ab-so-lute-ly brilliant," mocked Balilty skeptically; "What hewants with us, I don't know"), shook the cramps out of his legs, rolledthe white chalk between his fingers and ran his hand along the yellowmarking tape. It was evident that he was waiting impatiently for thepathologist to finish and allow them to mark the scene.

When the call from headquarters came in, Balilty and Michael hadbeen in the car on their way to the Baka neighborhood to have a look atthe apartment Michael had just bought. When they arrived in front ofthe building, just around the corner from Michael's new place, Baliltylooked at the rounded balcony and at the arched windows on either sideof it, and with astonishment that he concealed behind pursed lips hesaid: "Is this a castle, this thing? And they've bought it now? Look at thesize of it." Then in the yard they floundered among wild sorrel andweeds and he pointed to a tree that spread large limbs up to the secondfloor and said: "That's a dead tree. It should be uprooted."

Linda, the real estate agent, whom Michael had picked up in their carso she could show Balilty the apartment he had bought, gave him a dirtylook. She stopped in front of the tree and stared at Balilty. "What are youtalking about? This tree is the most beautiful tree in the neighborhood.It's a wild pear that has simply shed its leaves for the winter."

But Balilty, who never liked to be corrected, hastened up the outsidestaircase where Ada Efrati was waiting for them at the top. Even beforethey reached the landing, she said in a shaky voice: "Up there on theroof, there's a woman and she ... she's ... she's dead. They smashed herface in. It's horrible ... I've never seen ... It's awful ... awful."

Balilty exchanged a few sentences with her and hurried into the apartment.He advanced through the spacious corridor into the large roomfrom which the shaky wooden ladder led up to the space under the tileroof.

"Have you called the ambulance?" asked Michael, who hadn't meantto get into a conversation with Ada just then, but she said: "No, she'sdead. I saw that right away ... I ... I've seen dead people before. We realizedwe had to call the police immediately."

Then, as he lowered his head to the walkie-talkie and told headquartersto send out the Forensics people and the pathologist at once, AdaEfrati said: "Michael? Is that you, Michael?"