The Dark Side of Love Read Online Free

commit any sins. And then he had laughed, adding that he had no spare time for sinning.
    Today he gave her a hasty greeting. She looked up briefly from the
old dress she was mending. Soon he was on his way out of the apartment again with his laundered shirts and trousers stuffed into a big bag.
    â€œBut you’ve only this moment come home,” said the widow.
    â€œI just dropped in for my laundry. There’s a lot going on right now. You’ll have heard about the murder in the Bulos Chapel,” he replied, secure in the knowledge that nothing, absolutely nothing that happened within a radius of two kilometres escaped the old lady. Her house in Ananias Alley wasn’t far from the entrance to the Bulos Chapel.
    â€œPeople don’t fear God at all these days. A murder in church! Whoever would think of doing such a thing?”
    â€œI only wish I knew,” sighed the commissioner.

4. In the Jungle
    As Commissioner Barudi sat down at his desk, he remembered the note found on the body. He took it out of its folder, examined the words, absorbed them, closed his eyes and repeated them. Then he said, quietly, “It’s as if the murderer wanted to leave a clue.” He recollected a case discussed as part of the syllabus while he was studying at police academy: a murderer who kept returning to the scene of the crime and even offered to help the police. They kicked him out because he was hampering their investigations. Until one clever commissioner took notice. He accepted the man’s offer of assistance, and very soon the murderer had his statements all tangled up and gave himself away. He wasn’t even upset when he was arrested, he was finished with life, all he wanted was peace.
    Barudi’s friend First Lieutenant Ismail had said jokingly, as they parted, “ Cherchez la femme .” Absently, the commissioner sniffed the paper. The smell was faint, but reminded him slightly of furniture polish. Or was it perfume after all?
    â€˜This piece of paper could well put us on the right track,’ he said to himself, but loud enough for it to seem as if he wanted to communicate his confidence to Adjutant Mansur.

    However, Mansur rolled his eyes. “There’s something weird about the case. A Muslim, and what’s more a Muslim major in state security or whatever it is, hanging in a basket over the Bulos Chapel with a note giving a false name in his pocket? My nose tells me it stinks to high heaven. Don’t get too excited. Hang around a while, or you could burn your fingers on this case.”
    After a year of Mansur, Barudi was sick and tired of his adjutant’s scepticism and caution. He was just waiting for a good moment to remove the old nuisance from his office and appoint a young policeman with a more optimistic cast of mind. Mansur didn’t merely irritate Barudi, he turned his stomach. His heart was as rotten as his teeth. The man was obsessed with the notion of destroying all the mice in the world. On Commissioner Barudi’s very first day at work, Mansur had told him all his mouse-catching theories, and showed him the infernal devices he himself had developed over the years and set every evening. Barudi had to be careful not to trip over one of those cruel traps himself.
    He felt he was in a madhouse. Everyone else seemed keen on Mansur’s machines. Even the boss Colonel Kuga, from whom the recent solving of an almost perfect murder by a prosperous widow hadn’t drawn so much as a weary smile, whinnied with delight when he saw the executed mice.
    Commissioner Barudi had already tried all sorts of ways of getting rid of Mansur. But the old wretch had over thirty years of service behind him, and knew all the tricks of the trade. He never laid himself open to attack, for he carried out every task stolidly but strictly to rule.
    At five in the afternoon – eight hours after the corpse had been identified – the commissioner was facing Colonel