'We've got plenty of time,' he replied. 'And other leads to check. We don't have to reveal everything, do we?' Bar stopped next to a bin and threw the bouquet into it. 'Listen, Croc, if he realises that he's dealing with a couple of nerds playing at being detectives because they're bored, he won't tell us anything.'

'I'm not playing at detectives because I'm bored,' I said, but Bar was already striding ahead of me into the Sarsur grocery.

We asked Amin whether he knew Warshawski, and he did: he and his wife Dvora were regular customers. They lived near the store, in King David Street. But when we asked him whether his brother had any dealings with the professor, Amin clammed up. It was Friday and there were a million customers to deal with, and he was suddenly too busy to talk.

'Interesting,' said Bar, and we went back to the hospital to look for Tamer. But he wasn't at work, and his next shift wasn't before the middle of next week. Another dead end, in my opinion. It infuriated Bar whenever I said thatand I said it pretty often.

'No, manwe're almost there. Stick with it. All we've got to do is connect Warshawski and Tamer, and then we'll get the link to Guetta.'

'Yeah, but how are we going to do that?'

'We're a couple of bored nerds playing at detectives. We'll find a way.'

On Sunday morning I recorded the Arab guy who had replaced this rather cute cleaner we had at Time's Arrow, a kid with a wispy moustache and a startled look. I wouldn't have given him a second thought except he'd fixed my PalmPilot. After lying dead on my desk for almost a year, my Palm was reborn after a couple of hours in the hands of Fahmi the Cleaner from Kafr Qasimwho'd have thought? I can't even remember how it came about. Once upon a time, he told me, he'd been an electrician. Then he asked whether I was the Croc from Noah's Ark Noah's Ark. Weird to think of Arabs watching it. Anyway, the Belgians had asked for a North African Arab and I suppose if I'd searched hard enough I could probably have found a Moroccan or a Tunisian, but what the h.e.l.l, I thought, let's see what our software can do with a Palestinian accent.

He was a little nervous when he showed up on Sunday, so I told him not to worryno one was going to bite him. He told me he wasn't worried, just a little sick in the stomach. I wanted to say something like 'Too much hummus, eh?' but I managed to stop myself. There's a limit.

I think I used the hummus joke later that day, because it turned out that Fahmi was an all-right kid. He did Palestinian, Egyptian, Jordanian and Lebanese accents, which he'd picked up off the TV. He didn't know a North African accent, but the system got along fine with him. He had a funny 'h.e.l.lo', which he kind of mooed while lowering his head: 'h.e.l.looooo.' I started to imitate him and he laughed and said that at least he didn't keep a broken PalmPilot on his desk for a whole year. At lunch I asked him whether he wanted to let me buy him a falafel and a c.o.ke. The falafel was OK, he said, but not as good as in his village.

'You ever tried the falafel in Tel Aviv?'

'I've never been to Tel Aviv...' he said, and we were interrupted by Bar's arrival. I introduced him to Fahmi and he inexplicably shot me a look as if he wanted to kill me. Maybe he was angry because I was lunching with an Arab. Or just annoyed that I'd forgotten him: it used to drive Talia Tenne nuts when people ordered food without telling her. But he took me aside and told me I was an idiot.

'Don't you get it? He's from Kafr Qasim!'

'Yes, so?'

'The Sarsurs are from Kafr Qasim.'

'So?'

Bar shook his head at me and then his anger dissolved into laughter. 'Oh, man. You're the true heir to Poirot, aren't you? f.u.c.king...Hushash the f.u.c.king Detective is nothing next to the CrocDetective. It never crossed your mind to ask him about the Sarsur brothers?'

'Well, what could he find out?'

'I don't know, Hushash, but we need to try. Don't you think?'

Fahmi and I continued working through the afternoon. Once I'd filled out the test forms, we drank coffee and chatted for an hour in the dining area. His Hebrew wasn't bad and improved as he loosened up: I liked him. He told me about his grandfather, and how he used to ride a white horse through the hills of Samaria. So I told him about Duchi's grandfather, who was in the patrol that b.u.mped into Izz ad-Din al-Qa.s.sam himself in 1935.

'You know who Izz ad-Din al-Qa.s.sam was, right?' I asked.

'Oh, yes.'

'G.o.d,' I said, 'it used to be like cowboys and Indians around here,' which made him laugh.

It was Sunday evening in a deserted Bar BaraBush: Fahmi, Bar and me at the bar. Fahmi was running his finger down an almost empty pint gla.s.s of beer and telling us more about his grandfather, also named Fahmi.

'You know where Beit Machsir is?' Neither of us did. 'These days the Jews call it Beit-Meir. Above Bab al-Wad,' he said.

'Yeah. We know all about Bab al-Wad,' I said.

'He was a teacher who got involved with operations against the British during the thirties. With the Jews he was actually OK, but he hated the British. Because the whole thing was their fault. He killed three British soldiers. But they caught him and put him in the prison in Acre.'

A couple of girls came in who were so good looking they stopped the conversation. One of them approached Noam behind the bar and asked for a couple of o.r.g.a.s.ms. Three heads turned towards her: she was already waiting for us with a smile. Short brown bob, apple cheeks, sweet little pout, a total babe. Torture. She flicked her attention back to Noam, already busily fulfilling her needs, and Fahmi sighed and continued. 'They sentenced him to be hanged. He sat in the prison in Acre and waited for the end. He had to wear these red overalls you wore if you were to be hanged. One day they told him his last day had come. They led him from his cell to the gallows and asked him if he had a last wish. What do you think he asked for?'

'What was it?'

Fahmi pointed to his nearly empty gla.s.s.

'His last wish was a beer. The first time in his life. We Muslims aren't allowed alcohol, you know? So he says: one time, I will try it. They bring him a gla.s.s of beer, just like this, and he starts drinking.' Fahmi broke off and concentrated on his own beer. He seemed to be following a train of thought somewhere else. Bar and I drank quietly.

'Well?' said Noam, from behind the bar. 'What happened after the beer? Did they hang him?'

'No, they didn't,' Fahmi said, coming back to us. 'In the middle of his beer, a miracle happened. An Englishman rode up on a horse and told him he was free to go. They let him finish the beer, made him take off his red overalls and set him free.'

'You serious?' asked Bar.

'Totally serious.'

'Why?' I asked.

'He never knew till the day he died. No one explained, not then, not ever. He thought it was probably a mistake. They'd mixed him up with someone else. But he never knew who or why.'

Bar and I chuckled, and Noam too, his pointed sideburns seeming to smile more widely as he laughed.

'Maybe it was the beer,' I said.

'That's what he always said. So after that he drank beer all the time. Everyone in our family does. And he also stopped hating the British. He never got into any trouble again for the rest of his life.'

'Thanks to the beer, huh?'

'Thanks to the beer. If someone is angry, he needs beer. That way there are no problems. I'm going to take a p.i.s.s.'

'Complete and total horses.h.i.t,' Bar said when he was gone.

'Well, maybe...he sounded kind of honest to me.'

'Yeah, well. I just hope he's not going to bulls.h.i.t us about Tamer Sarsur.'

Tamer Sarsur. I'd almost forgotten why Fahmi was sitting with us in Bar BaraBush. It had been Bar's idea to invite him to Tel Aviv. Fahmi had been nervous initially, worrying about the Jews' att.i.tude. I told him that he'd be with us, and that I'd take him back to Kafr Qasim afterwards, which seemed to do the trick. And after his first ever beer in Tel Aviv he relaxed and started telling his grandfather stories.

When Fahmi came back from the Gents, Bar started in on Sarsur. Did he know a Tamer Sarsur in his village?

'Sarsur? There are many Sarsurs in Kafr Qasim. It's a big family there. But I don't know a Tamer.'

'Or Amin?'

He frowned and thought. 'No, sorry. Why?'

'Tamer and Amin are brothers. They live in Tel Aviv, in Weizmann Street. Amin runs a fruit-and-veg place. Tamer's a nurse in Ichilov. The hospital. We need to find out about him.'

'Well, what do you want to know?'

There was a silence. Bar looked at me. I said, 'Come on, tell him. What harm can it do?' So he briefly detailed the story of Guetta and the attack, Shuli and the Palm (Bar asked Fahmi whether he knew what a PalmPilot was, which made us laugh) and Warshawski and Tamer and Amin.

'We're trying to understand the connection between Tamer, Warshawski and Guetta. You could ask around in Kafr Qasim. Ask about Tamer. Maybe you'll find something, maybe you won't. That's all. I'm not saying you will. I'm just saying it's worth trying. You don't have to. Maybe the two of us could come over and sniff around one day.'

'Are you crazy?' That was me.

'But why are you doing this?' Fahmi asked bewilderedly.

'I promised Shuli I'd find out what Guetta was doing in Tel Aviv that day.'

Fahmi stared at me. 'But this Shuli is dead.'

'It happened after we got going. Her death wasn't in the plan. But we started this thing and we want to finish it.'

He drained the dregs of his beer. 'Don't go to Kafr Qasim. You won't get anything. You know Arabic?' We shook our heads. 'So what are you going to do, walk into the mosque and ask about Tamer Sarsur in Hebrew?'

There was nothing to say to that.

'OK. I will ask. I'll try. Yalla Yalla,' he said, getting up and pulling out the notes he'd earned that day in Time's Arrow, 'are you taking me home?'

'Put them away, I'm paying,' I said, and pulled out my wallet.

40

During the whole long day I spent with the Croc, I told myself time and time again: he's your target. Get close, but don't get attached. Create opportunities, not obstacles.

The work had been easy and the money was good, but he paid for me everywhere. He paid for lunch, for my hamburger in the evening, for my beer, like I was a refugee who needed feeding, like a charity case who has to say thank you very much for every shekel spent on him. I got annoyed and started telling them stories about Grandfather that I just pulled straight out of my a.r.s.e.

Tel Aviv, I had to admit, was full of beautiful women. The bar, they said, was empty because it was Sunday. I ought to come again at the weekend and then I'd see. And I thought that the next time I'd be there the place would be full of pretty girls, and maybe I could send some of the beautiful women of Tel Aviv to h.e.l.l along with the Croc.

But I didn't want to die. I wasn't a shahid. I didn't have that fearlessness, that certainty of will. And how would I do it, if not as a shahid? I'd killed the enemy before, but only from a distance: I'd made plans, made bombs, opened fire from the ridge above the road. I was a follower of instructions. I followed my brother, and my grandfather, and my conscienceI was not a man with a knife in a crowded bar. I tried to tell them that on the phone but they just thought I needed strengthening in my belief in the cause, and started lecturing me about Allah and the Holy Land. It didn't do any good. And that evening in Tel Aviv only worsened my fears: the security guards, the suspicion and the staring, the unbearable feeling of being totally alone, as if I were a dead man already, a spectre spurned by the living.

'No, Dr Hartom. He just isn't responding any more. It's like he's sinking farther away from me. I give him his ma.s.sages and I shine the torch in his eyes, and I talk to him, but there's no response. There's nothing, Dr Hartom!'

'All right, Svetlana.'

'There's no defecation, Doctor. Isn't there something...?'

'It isn't surprising. Not after this length of time. We did think it was going to go either way. Mmm. Pupils aren't...OK: we're going to...'

The next day I started my search for Tamer Sarsur. I had nothing else to do.

Sa'id from the mosque told me that there were plenty of Sarsurs in the village, but most of them prayed in the other mosque. He didn't know any names. So I started asking people coming out of prayers at the other mosque. They were very hostile and impatientthis is the last thing I need, I thought, just as they're beginning to get used to me: someone reporting me to the Border Police. One of them directed me towards an old guy in a keffiyeh.

'Yes, I'm a Sarsur. But you won't find many of them in the mosque.' He laughed, showing tobacco-yellowed teeth. His voice had been dried to a whispering wheeze. 'Farther away from the mosque you look, the better your chances. Get as far from the mosque as you possibly can. Then start looking.'

I went home to call Croc and tell him I'd tried and got nowhere. But as I was hunting out the number he'd written down, I came across Ibrahim Hasuna's. I called him, and discovered that Zahara had already told him I was hanging out with the Jews. I put him straight on that. But he didn't know Tamer either. I tried Majed, my other friend from the packing-house. He thought thought he remembered Tamer. 'But I've not seen him in a long time.' A wild-goose chase. I wandered into the kitchen, where Wasime was having dinner with the boy, and quietly made myself a cup of tea. he remembered Tamer. 'But I've not seen him in a long time.' A wild-goose chase. I wandered into the kitchen, where Wasime was having dinner with the boy, and quietly made myself a cup of tea.

'How are you doing?' she said. 'You seem to have been pretty busy lately.'

'Yes, thanks be to G.o.d.'

'Where's Daddy?' said Atta, staring at me with his big brown eyes. The lower half of his face was covered in egg crumbs and cottage cheese and Egozan.

'He'll be back soon. Oh, someone brought you a parcel today! Said he was your friend. Asked to put it in your room himself. Eat your bread, Atta.'

'What? Who?'

'Weren't you expecting something?'

I went to check and found a brown cardboard box by my bed. I opened it up cautiously. Sc.r.a.ps of cloth and screwed-up b.a.l.l.s of paper with something solid at the centre. Very slowly I exposed it, something smooth and round as an apple and green as olive oil, with the letters 'IDF' stencilled on it. I stared at it in horror: a hand grenade a hand grenade. They were mad. Where did they get it from? Who brought it here, and how did he get into the village? Oh, G.o.d Almighty. How did you operate it? My phone went off and I almost had a heart attack. It was Halil's cousin.

'You got it?'

'Yes, right this moment. Are you crazy? How did you get it here? Who brought it?'

'That's not for you to worry about. You should be thinking about how you deploy it.'

This was a real problem. I didn't want to die. I didn't want to be a shahid. And I didn't want to spend the rest of my life in prison. But I was too afraid to say this on the phone. I said nothing.

'Is there a problem?'