In his dream about the painting, the scene had come alive; it had engulfed him, in a sense. He’d found himself trailing after the chestnut horse on which the pasha rode, while everyone ignored him and jostled him around — what lack of respect for his rank! And in the surrounding chaos — the noise, the fury, the dust — one of the men in the painting had even tried to slip a gunnysack over his head. Yes, a gunnysack, like the secret police used in the old days, in the seventies, the dark years, when they would kidnap politicians, trade unionists, philosophy students. The shame! Him, Chief Hamdouch — gunnysacked! The world had been turned upside down! He woke up full of indignation and covered in sweat, trembling from head to toe.
And now he was eating his bell pepper — and-tomato salad, his gaze fixed on the maleficent painting as if he were trying to wrench some secret from it. In fact, a strange realization had come over him during his nocturnal intrusion into this frozen scene: everyone was looking at the pasha, which in itself was quite normal — even a dog looks at a pasha — but he’d had the impression that all these looks were... fraught. Not one of them expressed simple curiosity, admiration (What a beautiful procession!), or even the famous “reverent fear” that was the foundation on which the entire structure of state authority rested. No, these looks said something else. They were fraught, the chief thought to himself again, frustrated at his inability to come up with a more precise description of what he’d realized; his stock of adjectives was rather limited, in both Arabic and French.
He sat solemnly scrutinizing the painting with his fork in the air, a long piece of bell pepper dangling from it. “I’m opening an investigation,” he mumbled aloud.
Having caught a few indistinct sounds, the proprietor came hurrying over. “Monsieur Chief? More bread? Some water, perhaps?”
Taken aback, Hamdouch coughed, then pointed his fork at the wall, causing the piece of bell pepper to bob dangerously. “Who made this painting?” he asked.
The proprietor looked from the fork to the painting. He frowned. His forehead puckered up — he was pretending to be deep in thought — and he finally replied: “It’s a young man by the name of Brahim Labatt. He lived on a street nearby, across from the blacksmith’s souk.” Driss leaned in closer to the chief and, adopting the funereal air that precedes this type of disclosure, whispered: “He committed suicide a few years ago. God preserve us!” He uttered the macabre word so softly that it could barely be heard. “It seems to have been the last thing he painted before he...” Driss didn’t finish the sentence.
The chief registered the information and mentally opened a file under the name of Brahim Labatt, a young man who’d died under suspicious circumstances. He knew — the statistics didn’t lie — that suicide was rare on Islamic soil. And so, the case would have to be investigated. With a flippant gesture that made the piece of bell pepper, still hanging precariously from the tines of his fork, appear vaguely threatening, he dismissed Driss, who hurried off to welcome a group of Japanese tourists at the door. The proprietor could be heard bragging in his eccentric English, punctuated with little sucking noises, about his restaurant and its cuisine (The best in Marrakech, of course!).
The chief finished his meal, still unable to look away from the work of art — was it, in fact, a work of art, or something else? And in any case, what was art? He began to lose himself in a labyrinth of reflections.
Back at the station, Hamdouch called in one of his employees, Ba Mouss, who’d been nicknamed “The Computer” because he possessed a phenomenal memory, at least when it came to the crimes, misdemeanors, and other incidents of note that took place in the neighborhood. Aside from that, he didn’t know much about anything. Ba Mouss had never been transferred elsewhere, since transferring a computer would mean, in a sense, erasing all the files it contained — and what would be the point of such an operation?
Short and skinny, with big green eyes, the man-machine entered his boss’s office. The chief didn’t bother with preliminaries. “Ba Mouss, have you ever heard of a certain Brahim Labatt? A painter?”
As if Hamdouch had pressed the enter button, Ba Mouss stood to attention, cleared his throat, and recited: “Brahim Labatt, son of Abdelmoula, was a plumber. No high school diploma and the only son of the widow Halima. He lived with her on Derb Dekkak, then stayed there alone after his mother’s death. He was also an amateur painter, you might say. He painted when he was out of work, which was quite often, and showed his artwork on the street, next to the barbershop. He managed to sell a few to some German tourists.” A short sniffle announced a sad turn in the story. “Excuse me, chief... Brahim Labatt committed suicide seven or eight years ago. By hanging. May God have mercy on us!”
Hamdouch nodded his head, frowning. This was his way of thanking his subordinates. “Are we sure it was a suicide?” he asked.
“Only God knows, chief.”
“And aside from God?” Hamdouch was growing impatient. Mouss’s last response had been close to blasphemous — but then again, what kind of computer invokes the name of God? Give us facts and figures, and leave God to the faqihs.
“Your predecessor, Chief Madani, closed the case,” Mouss explained. “The poor painter had—”
“Hold on.” The chief winced. “You say it was Madani who closed the case?”
“Yes. He closed it immediately... well, very quickly,” the man-machine answered. “There was nothing suspicious about it.”
“Very good, that’ll be all. You may go.”
Ba Mouss nodded and left the office without a word.
Hamdouch began to rub his forehead frantically with the fingertips of his right hand. A raging headache was coming on, a sign that one of his many intuitions had arrived, the kind that had helped him solve particularly tough cases throughout his career. His dear departed wife, Hélène, half-mocking and half-affectionate, had called these episodes les migraines de mon Maigret. Ha!
Still, he owed much of his success to his intuition. His most recent transfer from Safi to Marrakech had been a flattering promotion. He had solved several high-profile cases, including the Hay el-Majd killings, which had been all over the newspapers and had given everyone nightmares at the time.
What was presently setting his brain on fire was a coincidence he had just become aware of: the man in his dream who’d tried to put a bag over his head...
But back up, first things first: Madani, the ex-chief, had been forced to retire over a scandalous case of corruption (or embezzlement of public funds... it had all been very confusing) in which he wasn’t directly involved, though he’d tried to cover up for the main beneficiary, who was none other than the ex-pasha Moulay Mimoun.
So, there were two exes in this story, a hanged man, plus a painting that connected all of them.
Suddenly, Hamdouch remembered the man in his dream who’d tried to put a bag over his head: it was Madani himself!
Without even knowing it, Hamdouch had recognized him in the painting — and now his predecessor had resurfaced, in the night, from the depths of his subconscious, with an air of murder about him. “The plot thickens,” he murmured.
The chief rushed out of his office, down Boulevard Fatima Zahra, rounded the corner, and walked into the restaurant. The place was nearly empty at this hour of the afternoon. A cat was asleep in a corner, curled up in a ball. Only three French tourists, three men, were lingering over their cups of coffee.