They could both speak English. She used it in her job at the Post Office whilst Uri, the local police sergeant, used it every day in his liaison with the British. At home they spoke Hebrew, which they called Ivrit, and they understood everything that went on around them whether it was in Yiddish or Arabic. They’d been married for five years, she was now mid-twenties and he was approaching thirty. Their parents were eagerly awaiting news of grandchildren. If they’d been religious she might have gone to pray by a Rabbi’s grave in Tsfat, in the north of the country or checked that the mezuzah, the little door amulet, had its parchment in tact and was still Kosher. They knew all the laws and traditions but were selective about the ones they observed; there was enough sadness and restriction in the world without adding to it in the name of religion. They followed only the fun customs that involved food, dancing, more food, songs, presents and sometimes the obligation to get drunk.

‘Shoshanna, enough already. You’re making me crazy with this gossip’.

They were getting ready for work and he would have preferred to plan his day mentally but his wonderful wife was carrying on her favourite conversation since their new neighbour moved in.

It wasn’t often Uri put his foot down. The standing joke amongst husbands was that their one and only opportunity was when they stamped on a glass at their wedding.

‘I’m not interested in what Esther might have heard or what Tsippora thinks she saw, it’s what we know that counts. Now think.’ His left hand came down flat on the table then he raised his left index finger to encourage her to remain silent. ‘If you wanted to go to Egypt how long would it take you? At least five days and that’s if you didn’t have to wait for transport to be repaired, for drivers to arrive for work and for paperwork to be filled out correctly. Five days, minimum, and you know the system, right? So, how do you think a middle aged English woman gets from Suez to Jaffa in three days and manages to move into an apartment that the people from the neighbourhood hadn’t been able to rent?’

Shoshanna opened her mouth to respond but Uri kept up his line of enquiry.

‘She speaks English and some Yiddish but no Ivrit or Arabic and she has no real interest in this mosquito ridden place. Nu? You don’t have any answers? Maybe you and the other gossip mongers could start asking some serious questions instead of wondering whether her hat is from London or Paris or if she will lend you her sewing machine.’

‘You think she’s a spy, maybe?’

‘Oy, really, Shoshanna. No country would put a spy in the same building as you, unless it was a spy in training who needed to learn to withstand interrogation, and that I wouldn’t wish on my enemies. I’m going to work, for some peace with the criminals.’

As he kissed her goodbye he wondered whether he could put in a call to his old friend Eli who now worked in the immigration office at Kantara, the point of entry for passengers disembarking at Suez. Maybe it was a policeman’s instinct or the natural paranoia with which his people were afflicted, but something about this very normal, perfectly pleasant and well groomed English woman didn’t fit.

The difficulty with a telephone call would be that it would have to be routed via the exchange at the Post Office and the last thing he wanted to do was to stoke the engines in the gossip factory.

On his way to work Uri thought back to the day Mrs Harrison had arrived. He smiled, shaking his head, at the power his wife’s chatter had to stay with him even when his mind should be on other matters. They both knew that when he put his foot down the last word would belong to Shoshanna because his life began and ended with her.

Paulina Harrison had arrived in the neighbourhood around 3.30 in the afternoon just over two weeks ago; everything and everyone closed up between 2 and 4. After a hearty lunch it was good for the digestion to take a nap and for nine months of the year the afternoon heat supported that decision. Every neighbourhood has its own afternoon lullabies; there were some couples who would always see the chance for a muffled squabble, animals and birds would fill in silent spaces and someone’s child was usually grizzling but Shoshanna and Uri managed to sleep through all of these. When a car pulled up outside Uri had been first at the window scene to investigate. There weren’t many vehicles in this neighbourhood, the locals didn’t have the need of them and if they did they lacked the funds to meet the need. People had become used to the rumbles of British military trucks but even HM Forces had learnt the value of a Mediterranean nap.

At first Uri thought that it might have been a taxi. There were two people in the back seat and a driver. Then he’d seen the driver signal to a local man who had been woken from his kerbside dozing and who approached the car to see whether the newcomers might spare him some charity. Uri couldn’t hear what was being said but he’d seen something being put into the local man’s hand from the person in the rear seat and guessed that he’d been offered the chance to earn something rather than being given a handout. He recognised the local man as Abdul who made a good living with his sad eyes and cupped hands; he sustained a family of six and had made himself part of the Jaffa landscape. Abdul collected an assortment of luggage from various parts of the car and waited for someone to exit. A woman emerged after having kissed the man in the car goodbye. As the car pulled off leaving Abdul, and the woman they now knew as Paulina Harrison, outside the apartment block Shoshanna and the others stirred to take up their observation posts by the windows. The shutters had been closed against the afternoon sun so the vantage points were concealed but they were experts at peeping through slats and would later pool their intelligence so that the fragments they’d seen enabled them to form what they believed to be a complete picture.

The new arrival might have thought that she was entering a calm, undisturbed environment where she could reside quietly and maintain her privacy. The afternoon nap had ended before 4pm that day and by the time Uri had gone back to the police station for his evening shift he knew the amateur detectives would have formed their opinions and theories. It would distract the women from their usual topics of conversation but it was clear from this beginning that this could become a saga of biblical proportions. He wondered whether anyone, aside from Abdul and him, had witnessed the car and companion, in two weeks of gossip he hadn’t heard a whisper about them. The car had been the type used by dignitaries visiting HM Forces and the man, who Uri had only been able to see in silhouette, wore a naval cap but no insignia were visible.

Uri remembered a British saying he’d learnt; the devil is in the detail. His colleagues from England had had to explain it to him, there wasn’t an exact equivalent in Hebrew. In Uri’s line of work there was always a choice to be made about what might be significant evidence and what might be incidental information that was in fact a devilish decoy.