The Missing File (19 page)

Avraham turned to look at him. The extent of the betrayal was only now beginning to dawn on him. Behind every new surprise lay another. “The bag was found in the Dumpster a week and a half after the father's return, not the following day,” he quietly said.

T
hey were silent for a while, all four of them. He had been party to long silences in that office in the past. Silences that had sparked thinking. Silences during which ideas had been tossed around from eye to eye. This was a different silence, the kind of silence that preceded a redeployment, a silence during which all the occupants of the room attempted to assess the new balance of power that was emerging and to consider where and how to position themselves. He tried to calm down, to take the insult on the chin.

“Okay, so tell me what you are really thinking,” he said, lighting another cigarette. “Because what you seem to be saying is that I screwed up the interviews with the parents.”

“Not at all”—Ma'alul immediately tried to calm him down—“we are simply suggesting that all angles should be examined.”

Shrapstein again broke in. “Think about it. If we change the theory of the case and assume instead that Ofer Sharabi went missing on Tuesday afternoon—because that's the last time we know of his whereabouts for certain—the entire picture changes. It means he's been missing since before the father went away. And then the fact that the bag was found in the Dumpster after the father's return is capable of taking on a different meaning. For the bag to turn up two weeks after his disappearance is odd. Don't you think it's worth looking into?”

Avraham could see Ma'alul nodding in his seat, and he tried to layer his words with a matter-of-fact tone.

“It seems so speculative to me,” he said. “We could also assume that he disappeared on Monday and that the figure appearing in the footage from the school cameras is a double, couldn't we? If you believe the parents are withholding information concerning the investigation, then you're casting doubt on my inquiry. There's no other way of putting it. And I'm telling you they aren't withholding any information and are doing all they can to assist with the investigation. I'm the only one who has met and spoken with them at their apartment and has seen what they are going through. We'd be doing them a gross injustice by doubting their statements. I have no intention of doing so.”

“Do you have a different theory to explain why we've been unable to reconstruct the events of Wednesday?” Shrapstein asked carefully.

“I don't have a theory. I'm not looking for theories,” he said. “I took statements from Ofer's parents and I know what they told me. You're the one spinning theories, aren't you? So does this mean you've finally dropped the theory of the neighborhood criminal? And now you've decided to go after the parents?”

Shrapstein didn't respond, and Ilana said, “Enough of that, Avi. There's nothing personal going on here, and no one's being criticized. Let's just get back to thinking about the case in a mature and professional way.”

The room went silent again. He couldn't tell Ilana that he wanted to be dropped from the investigation team because without him there, they'd focus their inquiries on Rafael and Hannah Sharabi, and he wasn't willing to allow anyone else to interview them but himself.

Ilana's cell rang and she whispered, covering her mouth with her hand as she spoke. Ma'alul, meanwhile, used the interruption to change the subject, while Shrapstein pretended to be amused by a text message, though the look on his face said he would never forgive the affront. “Go on, then, let's have it,” Ma'alul said. “What did you do there?” and Avraham said, “Really nothing.”

“What was the police division like?”

“They seemed skilled, but it's difficult to tell. The exchange program fell apart, because the entire division was working day and night on a high-profile murder investigation. They were under intense pressure, but they seem to have done a good job because by my last day there, they had a suspect in custody, the presumed murderer.”

Ilana excused herself from the room to continue her conversation. Ma'alul pushed for more about the Belgian case, and Avraham told him the little he knew. At the start of the week, following the discovery of Johanna Getz's body in a potato field on the outskirts of Brussels, her boyfriend was taken into custody and news of his arrest was published in the media. It was a deliberate ruse. The partner had a solid alibi; he had been at his family home in Antwerp the weekend of her disappearance. The police hoped that the arrest and its publication would cause the real murderer to be less careful. The partner was released two days later, and the police then arrested the owner of the victim's apartment—a retired school principal who lived in the same building, on the third floor, an eccentric-looking individual with piercing eyes and an Albert Einstein hairstyle. Without knowing much French and merely from browsing through the newspapers, Avraham had worked out that former students and colleagues of the man had come forward with sensational information about the principal's oddness and unusual habits. He didn't know if this arrest was also part of the investigation tactics. During his time in Brussels sitting in on meetings at police headquarters, he had seen dozens of construction plans from different times in the history of the building, which went up at the start of the twentieth century, and concluded the police were looking for side entrances, or maybe even doorways that had been blocked up over the course of the years. The assumption was that the assailant or assailants hadn't forcibly removed her from the apartment or the building through the main entrance. The former principal remained in custody until Saturday morning, when a second neighbor was arrested—a Dutch man, in his thirties, unemployed, who had arrived in Brussels a few years earlier. In all likelihood, he was the killer. Jean-Marc Karot had referred to him as a psychopath during their last conversation.

Ilana returned to the room at ease and smiling, and interrupted their conversation—“What's happening? Have I missed the story?” she asked, and Ma'alul said, “But how did they get on to him?”

“Truth is, I don't know,” Avraham admitted. “Perhaps because of her sock.”

“What sock?”

“The body was found with one sock missing—a pink woolen sock. They were obsessed with the sock, and I couldn't work out why. They were sure it would lead them to the murderer. Who knows? Maybe it did. I'll call Jean-Marc this evening to thank him for hosting me and I'll ask him if they ever found it.”

T
he tension had begun to ease and they returned to their discussion of the case. Ilana led the meeting through to the end.

“First things first,” she said. “I'd like everyone to settle down. As I said before, no one is being personally criticized here, and I don't want anything of that sort to hamper the investigation. Okay? We're not drawing any conclusions, and we aren't abandoning any lines of inquiry. We'll wait for the final results from the lab and see if there's anything there to work with. Aside from that, we'll continue to look for witnesses to the dumping of the bag. Eyal, I want you to continue working this line. Avi, you'll call in Ofer's parents for another interview and try to ascertain, with a degree of subtlety of course, if there are any contradictions in their stories, anything that gives off a whiff of concealment or obstruction of justice. For now, I don't want them sensing that we doubt their statements; be sensitive. It's important that you conduct the additional interviews with them. Okay? Does that work for you? If you like, stay behind for a few minutes and we can discuss the interrogation strategy. Are there any other lines of inquiry we'd like to follow?”

Just as they all stood to leave, Avraham suddenly said, “Yes, I think we haven't exhausted our inquiries regarding the neighbor, the English teacher. Ze'ev Avni. He called me in Brussels on Thursday and asked for an urgent meeting. He sounded stressed. He said he had information unrelated to the investigation; still, he insisted on speaking only to me. He wants to talk, and I think has more to tell than he has until now.”

“This sounds like a direction worth pursuing,” Ma'alul said.

“I have a gut feeling that his involvement in this story is more significant than he has let on,” Avraham continued. “And if we're considering wiretaps, I'd go for one on him.”

“So speak to him. I don't see a problem,” Ilana said. “When's he coming in for questioning?”

“I need to call him. I'll ask him to come in today, or tomorrow morning perhaps.”

Ilana seemed calmer, and Avraham wondered whom she had been speaking to on the telephone and what they had spoken about. “I don't see any clash between these two lines of inquiry,” she said. “And we can put wiretaps on anyone we want.”

A
vraham stopped off at the station on his way home and picked up the case file from his office. He then drove to Histadrut Street and parked his car a few buildings from the Sharabi family's apartment block, on the opposite side of the road.

He sat in the car and waited.

Despite Ilana's efforts to conclude the meeting on a conciliatory note, all he had wanted to do was to go home, to sleep an hour or two, to digest—or perhaps forget—what had happened, and to try to rethink how to move forward with the investigation. He had passed on her offer to join her for an early lunch and had remained in her office for just ten minutes after Ma'alul and Shrapstein left. “You were way out of line just now,” Ilana had said, and he had chosen not to respond. “You tried to humiliate him, and he didn't deserve it. He's working on the team with you, not against you. And I want you to know that the idea of reconsidering our theory of the case came from me, not him.” He couldn't see how that was supposed to make him feel better. And if she was indeed the one to propose the reevaluation of their tactics, why hadn't she waited for his return? There was no point in asking, or perhaps he was simply unable to. At least the questioning of the parents was still his.

The shutters on the balcony of their apartment were open. No one stood in the window. He could have knocked on the door but was too tired and agitated, and anyway, he still wasn't sure how to go about “subtly reassessing” their statements, as Ilana had requested.

The air conditioner had cooled the interior of the police car, but the steering wheel burned from sitting in the hot sun. Drivers who passed him by slowed down, assuming he was a cop looking to snag a speeder. A mailman with a red mailbag slung over his shoulder walked from building to building. He couldn't recall if the balcony of Ze'ev Avni's apartment faced the street or the rear courtyard.

A car pulled up alongside him. The driver signaled him to open his window and asked for directions to Jaffa—and just then, Avraham spotted Hannah Sharabi. She came out of the building, turned left, and walked slowly down the street. She was carrying a wallet and wearing gray sweatpants, a yellow shirt, and flip-flops. She went into the grocery store, the same one Ofer would visit every morning. A short while later, he saw her heading back home with two pink nylon bags. The wallet must have been in one of the bags, along with the purchases. Posters bearing pictures of Ofer still hung on the streetlight poles along the road, but she chose not to see them. He followed her with his eyes until she opened the entrance door of the building, where she disappeared into the hallway, and then he drove home.

He slept that entire afternoon and woke to sudden darkness. Later that evening, he called Rafael and Hannah Sharabi to tell them he was back from Brussels and would like them to join him the following afternoon at the police station so that he could update them on the investigation and they could all go through the list of items that had been found in Ofer's backpack. He then dialed the number of Ze'ev Avni's cell phone. His wife answered, and her voice seemed to tremble when she called her husband after he gave her his name. Ze'ev came on the line and Avraham invited him in for a meeting in his office at eight the next morning. He thought he might have to call the wife in for further questioning too.

His computer rested on a white wooden desk in a small room that served both as a study and a storeroom. He sat down and removed the transcripts of the interviews and his notes from the case file. Among the various pages, he found the record of Ma'alul's conversation with the girl Ofer was supposed to see a movie with on Friday, two days after his disappearance. He also came across a copy of the class schedule he had taken from Ofer's room that same Friday when he had spoken with his mother.

He wanted to write to Marianka, but didn't know what to say. His father called to ask how he was doing and about the trip to Brussels, and suggested that he drop by for dinner. Avraham declined the invitation, saying he was bogged down with work.

“You sound very tired,” his father said.

“I just woke up,” he replied. “I barely slept last night, and I was at work all morning.”

“Okay, we're home if you decide to come. Mom's gone out for a walk but should be home soon. Did you see what she bought for you and put in the fridge?”

What could he say to Marianka? Thank her for the tour of the city, of course, but what else? He emptied out the ashtray in the trash can and poured himself a glass of cold water.

“Dear Marianka,”
he began writing in English,
“I returned to Israel and to the case of the missing boy that I told you about (the boy who may be in Koper). I wanted to thank you again for the tour. Since this morning, everybody has asked me about the city and thanks to you I can tell them something about it. And how are you? Are you back in . . .”

He deleted all he had written. She wasn't back at work yet; it was Sunday.

He called Jean-Marc but got no reply, and didn't leave a message.