The Hebrew took out a handkerchief and wiped his eyes.
“You’re hard, Emily,” he said. “What a burial to give a son!”
The woman, Emily, snapped her thick forgers. “He wouldn’t mind. He didn’t believe in God. Is that what’s worrying you?” She brooded, tearing the blade of grass with her sharp teeth. “What did you expect me to do? Leave him there for the police to find? They would be crawling over us like flies on bad meat in no time. Haven’t they done enough harm?”
When he didn’t say anything, she went on. “Who do you think did it?”
“Vengeance is mine, said the Lord,” the Hebrew said, pulling at his long, straggly moustache.
“You don’t fool me,” Emily said. “I know what you’re thinking, don’t I, Max?”
“Do You?”
The two Greeks had lit cigarettes. They were not listening to this conversation. They lolled back on their elbows, their dark faces raised to the sun, their eyes closed.
But Max listened. He sat bolt upright, his long, thin legs crossed like a working tailor, his bowler hat very straight on his pear-shaped head.
“We don’t have to worry about the police,” Emily went on. “He wouldn’t have liked it. We can find out who did it, and we can settle the score, can’t we?”