Her interview rocked the investigation, revealing missed essential details.
Kika continued to spew out the same story as she did the interview circuit. The various news outlets lured her to speak, hoping that she would say more than what she already had. Each time she was questioned by a reporter she would add a new detail that caused everyone to talk about her, until her dangerous game brought her to the office of the lead detective assigned to the case.
There, everything was squeezed out of her. The police felt that she was causing unnecessary uncertainty and obstructing the investigation. They kept her under guard, and would do so until the investigation was completed, which doubled the curiosity of the press. They suspected the actress knew even more than she was letting on.
Standing on her balcony, being watched by policemen, journalists, and other onlookers delighted her to no end. It placed her in a world she had always wanted. She was like someone playing a role that, this time, she had chosen for herself — a role that could only have been written for her alone.
6. The Disappointed Investigator’s Loss
He had to end his vacation in Tangier just as it had started in order to get back to his office in Marrakech. They told him over the phone that an investigation was awaiting him — something about an important Spanish man who had vanished. On the long road to Marrakech, he contemplated the huge number of cases he had dealt with during his tenure as an investigator. There had never been a case where a foreigner had gone missing. They hadn’t even informed him of the missing person’s name; they only told him that he was an important Spanish man. How am I supposed to deal with a situation like this? he thought bitterly.
The night’s silence surrounded him. The highway was empty save for a handful of cars, allowing him space to leisurely mull things over. When he arrived in Marrakech, he briefly looked over the file before giving in to a power nap. During his short slumber, he dreamed that he was amid a group of people pressing up against him, their intertwined bodies demanding that he solve the case of the missing director that had so disrupted their lives. He woke up disturbed by what he had seen in his dream. He knew that this investigation would be tough.
He reread the file, then headed for the Kenz Hotel in Derb Sidi Bouloukat, mere steps from Jemaa el-Fnaa Square.
He learned from the desk clerk that Mr. Enrique Aldomar had checked into room 9 for one night (although he had spent only two hours there and then left without coming back), and that his name was recorded in the hotel guest register on October 5. The investigator examined the room for a few minutes, then asked the clerk whether the director had been carrying any luggage.
“It was strange — he had no luggage,” the clerk said.
The investigator’s visit to the hotel didn’t provide any answers. It only uncovered a string of questions such as: Why would a foreigner check into a room for only two hours? Why come without luggage? Why would he choose such a sad hotel, in an alley such as this, if he was such a major director?
More questions came as time went on — but the investigation didn’t move forward enough to deduce even the vaguest of answers. Hundreds of reports and testimonies were extracted from suspects taken randomly from the Old Medina. So-called experts attempted to glean answers from these statements, but they couldn’t. That is, until the investigator crossed the street by the el-Baradei Fountain in Freedom Square. Thousands of pieces of paper flew around on the sidewalk or were pasted to the walls, or rolled up in the hands of passersby, or in the hands of coffee-shop regulars who studied them while sipping their drinks. The investigator grabbed one and read it incredulously — it was from the Band of Merry Men!
He sat on the café’s terrace, taking a spot among the customers, perhaps fishing for a stray piece of information here or there about this gang. People in the café were talking about the ransom, surprised that no amount was specified in the communiqué. Soon, they began to joke and one of the wittier customers among them asked whether it was birds that had dropped this paper rain.
“No, it was the sky itself,” someone else replied.
The investigator guessed that the omission was intentional, and that the next communiqué would no doubt be released soon with more information. The investigator thought that the kidnappers were testing the waters to see who was with them and who was against them. He finished his coffee and got up, folding the communiqué before stuffing it into his pocket.
He wandered around after that, driving through Massira and Sidi Youssef Ben Ali. Here he didn’t see the communiqués anywhere. His eyes scanned people’s hands, but to no avail. He got out of his car and asked everyone he bumped into about the Band of Merry Men and their communiqué. No one knew anything about either. He continued in this fashion until he came to the conclusion that the circle was closing around the kidnappers. He started to plan the next phase of his search.
But a second communiqué from the Merry Men gang didn’t allow the investigator time to maneuver. These new papers were distributed in huge numbers across the city. The new text included the ransom amount, set at two million euros.
The communiqué was glued to many doorways throughout Marrakech, including Bab el-Futouh, Bab el-Khemis, Bab el-Jadid, Bab Doukkala, and Bab el-Rouha. No one could solve the riddle of why these particular gates had been chosen. The Band of Merry Men’s demand that the ransom’s sum be paid in euros prompted people to think that the kidnappers might be a group of former immigrants, perhaps people who had come from Spain or Italy. This speculation reached the ears of the investigator, and he immediately recalled the story of some young Marrakechi men who had been kicked out of Spain at the beginning of 2011 because of their undocumented status. However, the story that circulated about them here in Marrakech was something entirely different, especially in Sidi Maimoun, where they had been born and raised. It was said that they had been detained in Spain for their involvement in a plot to steal the World Cup trophy that the Spanish national soccer team had won in South Africa. The Spanish police had arrested them while they were lurking around the Royal Spanish Football Federation headquarters in Madrid, where the World Cup trophy was stored in a safe on the seventh floor. The men confessed to having planned to steal the cup and bring it to their country; they had wanted to melt the trophy down. The investigator laughed every time he recalled this odd story.
He dug deep without reaping any results, and he was beginning to grow despondent. At the beginning of the investigation, he didn’t think that a kidnapping case could be more frustrating and unsolvable than an everyday crime, or a rape, or even a terrorist bombing — that is, if the kidnapping were even real. The communiqué suggested it was, but what was this Band of Merry Men? No one had even heard of them before this.
After nine days, the investigation was wrested from the investigator, just as power had been taken away from the mayor. A new group of men described as resolute, powerful decision makers came from Rabat to take control of the case.
7. The Mysterious Enrique Aldomar Suddenly Appears
His name had been on the tips of a million tongues since his disappearance, and in less than a week, he had become the most famous missing person in the world. The burning question swirling in everyone’s heads: How will this affair end? Everyone imagined the end differently, but Enrique Aldomar alone determined its conclusion.
His appearance was preceded by mysterious hints of his presence in different locations around Marrakech, sometimes even in two different places at once. Many recognized him from the ubiquitous photographs. They were enticed by the high monetary reward that the authorities offered to anyone who discovered his whereabouts. But the most astonishing thing was the testimonies that came in confirming that the director had appeared and then disappeared like a desert mirage. As soon as one person was sure they’d recognized him, he would evaporate into thin air without a trace.