Omar Yussef shuffled along behind Sami and the priest. Though he was younger than Ben-Tabia, he was conscious that his movements were stiffer, his pace slower. In the silence of this remote peak, without the background racket of the town, his panting sounded prodigious. Sweat formed in his mustache, as he tried to keep up with the others. He promised himself he would take a walk every day to improve his fitness, when he returned to Bethlehem.

The men gathered around the priest as he reached them. Each shook Ben-Tabia’s hand without looking at his face and kissed his cheeks three times, mumbling something to him. A slight hum rolled out of the valley. Omar Yussef heard the regular, echoing beat of a distant pile driver and the call of a single muezzin.

Among the pines on the slope, a lumpy blue and white object was wrapped around the foot of a tree. Omar Yussef pushed his glasses up to the bridge of his nose and squinted at the lifeless body of a man. “Sami, let’s go and look,” he murmured.

Sami put his hand on Omar Yussef’s shoulder and whis-pered. “Abu Ramiz, I took you to the synagogue because I thought you’d be interested in the scroll. I brought you up here because I was in too much of a hurry to drop you at your hotel. But-”

“The scroll was left on the priest’s doorstep and at the same time a body turned up on the edge of his village.” Omar Yussef lifted his finger at the young policeman. “Come on, Sami. You promised me an investigation into the theft of a historic document, but that particular intrigue has been resolved. You owe me a mystery and that body is it.”

Sami shook his head with a gloomy smile and stepped down the rocky slope toward the trees. Omar Yussef followed awkwardly. He bent to support himself with his arm and descended sideways. Slipping in the loose dirt, he struck his knee on a rock. His elbow shook, taking his weight. He sensed the group of Samaritans watching him, but he didn’t look up. He was sweating with embarrassment at his frail condition. When he reached Sami, he wiped his forehead and neck with his handkerchief.