He didn't move for a while, his eyes dissecting my face. Then he let out a low grunt, grabbed his spoon, and began eating. I did the same. We did not speak again until we'd emptied our bowls and the waiter came over to clear them.
"Okay," Meltzer said, drying his lips with a napkin. "What do you want to know?"
"How well do you remember the details of the case?"
"Well enough. It's a memorable crime. The way the body was stretched out on that tombstone with a knife in her chest. Not the sort of image you're likely to forget." He paused and then added, "And I don't like failure."
Which explained his anger with me for keeping information to myself. I would have reacted similarly. Because I, too, hated the idea of a murderer getting away with his crime. And it struck me that this, more than the prospect of a free meal, was the reason he'd agreed to meet with me—to perhaps finally see justice done on this old, unsolved case of his. I was beginning to like this hardened, no-nonsense inspector.
"Maybe you can start by telling me what you think happened," I said.
"That's easy enough. I think someone accosted her as she was passing by the cemetery and forced her inside and killed her. Someone she didn't know."
"A random killing?"
"That's one possibility. Another is that it was someone who saw her act and targeted her specifically."
"A deranged fan."
"Precisely. But there's no indication who he might be."
"If he existed at all," I said. "What about a romantic involvement?"
"There was none."
"Don't you find that strange? A beautiful woman like her?"
"I do, but those are the facts. Maybe she was one of those independent types you hear about sometimes, radicals who swear off men and marriage and children."
The words were derisive, but his tone wasn't. He might have had nothing but scorn for such women, but Anna Hartman was a murder victim and he was not about to mock her.
"Did she ever voice such opinions?"
"Not to my knowledge. But her colleagues said she was a private person, not one to bare her soul."
Which might explain, at least in part, why none of them knew about her alleged affair with Isser Rotner.
"Why do you think she didn't struggle?" I said. "Or make a racket?"
"The killer had a knife. Maybe he put it to her throat, threatened to slash her if she didn't do as he said. She figured her best bet was to obey. Most women would have done the same."
"How did he know where she'd be?"
"Followed her. We managed to track her movements that night. She went to a late movie at Esther Cinema. Alone. The ticket vendor remembered her. The movie ended at midnight. Another twenty minutes back to Trumpeldor Street and then..." Meltzer slapped his hand with moderate force on the table. "The killer pounced."
"And he led her to Meir and Zina Dizengoff's grave. You think there's any significance to that?"
Meltzer drank some lemonade, regarding me over the rim of the glass. "You haven't been to the crime scene, have you?"
"Not yet," I said. "I'm going to once I get back to Tel Aviv."
"Then you'll see why he chose that spot when you do."
It was an obvious rebuke, but I allowed myself a faint smile. "I would have gone there, but I had to get here in time for lunch."
Meltzer let out a chuckle. "That you did."
"What about someone from the theater? You feel certain none of them was the killer?"
"I wasn't able to rule them all out, if that's what you're asking. Some lived alone and had no alibi. But there was no evidence that linked any of them to the crime scene. And for most of them, I could not see a motive strong enough for murder."
"Most of them? Not all of them?"
"There was the actress who got Hartman's parts after she was killed. Not that it's much of a motive, far as I'm concerned." He squinted. "Her name escapes me."
"Ofra Wexler."
"That's it. But I doubt she had anything to do with it."
"Why is that?"
Now it was his turn to bestow a faint smile upon me. "You haven't seen her either, have you?"
"Not yet."
"When you do, you'll understand."
He was enjoying this, I realized, not sharing everything with me. A form of benign retribution for my keeping information from him.
The waiter brought over the potatoes. Quartered and brownish-yellow, adorned with garlands of onion, and bathed in thick gravy. Meltzer picked up his fork, speared a hunk of potato, and deposited it in his mouth. The gravy browned the bottom edge of his mustache.
"Go ahead," he said. "It's good."
I needed no further encouragement and learned a second later that he had spoken the truth. The food was delicious.
"About Eliyahu Toledano..." I said once I'd blunted the edge of my hunger.
"I was wondering when you were going to get to him," Meltzer said around a mouthful of potato.
"The report didn't paint a complete picture."
"It told everything one needed to know. He was a useless witness."
"Tell me more about him."
"All right." Meltzer finished his lemonade. "I first heard of him three days after the murder, when a man who lived by the cemetery rang the station and asked to speak with me. His name was Kimmel. I'd interviewed him the day the body was found. Saw nothing, heard nothing, just like everyone else. But then he thought of something he hadn't mentioned when we'd first talked. Something that seemed unrelated at the time, but that on further reflection, he thought I should know.
"He'd been on his way home from visiting his ailing mother, and was passing by the cemetery at eleven that night, when he saw a man lying on the threshold of the western gate. Two empty bottles of wine lay by the man's head, and he was snoring peacefully.
"Kimmel knew the man. He was Eliyahu Toledano, a sort of neighborhood drunk, and this wasn't the first time Kimmel had seen him sleeping one off outdoors.
"It was a warm night, and Toledano was sound asleep, so Kimmel left him there and went home and forgot all about him. Until it occurred to him that Toledano might have still been there when the murder had taken place. That he might have seen or heard something. That's when he contacted the police."
Meltzer forked another potato piece into his mouth and continued.
"Toledano lived alone in an apartment on the corner of Trumpeldor and Ben Yehuda. A good-for-nothing layabout. No job, no hobbies, even. Apart from drinking, that is. His parents had left him two buildings, and he made his living off the rent.
"You should've seen him when he answered his door. Dirty clothes. Eyes all red and puffy. Unshaved. His hair sticking out. And his breath was so putrid it could have felled an ox. My guess is my banging on his door had roused him from a drunken stupor. He was groggy and hungover. It took a few minutes just to establish a normal conversation with him."
Meltzer's lips twisted in disgust at the memory.
"He confirmed that he'd fallen asleep in the street and didn't seem the least embarrassed by it. Said he hadn't heard anything strange—no scuffling sounds, no screams. Nor had he seen a woman matching Anna Hartman's description that night. It seemed like a waste of time, but then he suddenly got a bit more lucid and began telling me about a man he might have seen coming out of the main gate of the cemetery. Only he wouldn't swear to it not being a dream. And he couldn't even begin to estimate at what time this occurred." Meltzer shook his head. "Not your first choice of a witness, is it?"
He continued without waiting for my response.
"The man, Toledano said, quickly crossed Trumpeldor Street and began walking west. He didn't see Toledano, who was already lying by the western gate, already sloshed to the gills, and Toledano caught a glimpse of him as he passed under a streetlight. Not that this brief sighting proved useful. Toledano's description of the man was maddeningly vague and low on detail. Not too tall, not too short. Not rail-thin, but not fat either. Couldn't remember what he wore, only that it was dark. Couldn't say if he was carrying anything. The only thing he was sure of was that the man had a dark beard. And just to show you how unreliable his observation was, he told me he wasn't sure how long the beard was. Whether it was short and tidy or went all the way to here." Meltzer indicated the bottom of his chest and again shook his head.