The Missing File (20 page)

Once again he began writing, once more in English:
“Marianka, I'm writing to thank you again for the tour. It was a good ending to a week that wasn't easy. I hope I didn't take up too much of your time and that you had a nice Sund—”
And again he stopped and deleted the boring and trite lines.

There was no point in trying again.

12

T
hat morning, the blue skies stretched out above them as they made their way to the police station, and the breeze, as light as a feather, that accompanied them on their way remained with him long after the case closed.

The weather broke during the night, and the heat had dissipated. They didn't follow the shortest route but walked along Hankin Street instead. Ze'ev took a seat at one of the steel-topped tables at Cup o' Joe outside the mall and Michal went into the café and returned with two mugs of coffee and a croissant for each of them—butter for her, almond for him. A woman in her forties was sitting at the table beside them, browsing through the job ads. They ate and drank in silence until Michal asked, “Are you worried?” and Ze'ev said, smiling, “Yes, but I'm ready.”

The evening before, similarly, they had spoken very little about what was about to happen the following day. There was nothing more to say. Elie was home again, and the small talk they had shared on various other matters reinforced the sense in both of them that nothing in their lives had changed—or at least kept at bay the fear that something had. Michal had been wonderful to him all weekend, as long as he didn't bring up that one question: Was writing the letters, and then sending them, really a crime?

He could sense the tension inside her, just beneath the calm facade she tried to maintain, for his sake, and sometimes he could see she was on the verge of tears, fighting back a breakdown with tremendous strength and determination. The crisis allowed him to see just how strong she was; it was a big gift, in this way, for both of them.

And there was another scene: a ray of morning sunshine casting flickers of light on the sheets, and his waking up in her arms, his head resting on her right shoulder, which was covered by an old white undershirt. He opened his eyes and immediately recalled what the day had in store for him—and felt a spark of anger. He looked over at Michal sleeping alongside him and knew he had no choice. They had both already informed their respective schools that they wouldn't be coming in, and Michal's mother arrived at 7:15 a.m. to look after Elie, though it was not her regular day. Elie stretched out his small arms toward his father when they left, struggling to get out of the grip of his grandmother. He took him from her and brought his lips up close to the boy's cheek, wanting to whisper something in his ear, but then allowing the moment to pass. It was the first time they had left the apartment together since Michal learned of the letters, and he was praying they wouldn't run into Ofer's parents on the stairs or in the parking lot, more for Michal's sake than his own.

“We haven't decided—should I wait for you here or somewhere else?” Michal said as they stood outside the police station.

“Don't wait,” Ze'ev replied. “Who knows how long it'll take. I'll call when I get out, or as soon as I can.”

“Okay. I may go home, then. I'm not sure,” she said. “Don't be afraid, Ze'evi. No matter what, I'm by your side.”

She waited at the entrance and watched him as he entered the station and closed the heavy glass door behind him.

A
long with Michal's support, the thing that saved Ze'ev from folding under the terrible pressure brought to bear on him that day was the fact that he came prepared. Almost nothing during the course of the interrogation surprised him, aside from the end, which he couldn't have predicted. If a police interrogation is sometimes poetically compared to a game of chess, Ze'ev constantly remained two or three moves ahead of his opponent—until the board overturned on both of them and the pieces came crashing down.

He identified himself to the policeman behind the desk at the entrance. Avraham was waiting for him, and Ze'ev knew the way. He walked down the gray corridor and stopped outside the third door on the left. His fear left him the moment he pressed down on the door handle and the familiar room opened up before him, but seconds earlier, while waiting outside the closed door, he had felt so strange—as if he was about to meet his maker.

But it was only Avi Avraham.

The investigator, dressed in uniform, was squashed in between the desk and the wall. He asked Ze'ev to take a seat and watched the teacher's movements as he placed his bag at the leg of the desk, pulled back the chair, and sat down. Looking at the inspector, Ze'ev felt both excited and relieved. Avraham asked again for his ID card and used a blue pen to jot down a few words on a blank sheet of paper.

“How are you today?” Ze'ev asked, but got no response.

There was a recording device, which remained switched off for now, on the side of the desk next to the wall. Ze'ev waited for Avraham to turn it on and formally begin their talk.

Avraham took his time. He continued writing, putting down the pen only a minute or two later and lifting his gaze from the page. “I understand you'd like to speak to me about a different matter,” he then said. “But I still need to ask you a number of questions regarding the investigation into the disappearance of Ofer Sharabi.”

“What I have to say is not an entirely different matter,” Ze'ev replied, and then went silent for a moment. “Are you turning on the recording device or have we not started yet?” he asked.

He wouldn't be able to repeat what he had to say.

“Do you think I should turn it on?” Avraham asked, and Ze'ev thought he sounded sterner and less intimate than he had the last time they had met, as if he was playing some kind of childish interrogation game with him. There were no barriers or mask between them when they last spoke. For a while, at least, they had had a real conversation, not a question-and-answer session between an interrogator and a suspect, and he had hoped for the same this time too. That's why he had chosen Avraham. He knew he needed to tell him everything right away, without hesitation, just as he had planned. He said, “I don't know if you should turn it on or not—I mean, from a legal standpoint.”

The device remained off.

“I'm listening,” Avraham said.

“Okay, so here it goes. Two weeks ago, the police received an anonymous call in which someone told them they should look for Ofer on the dunes around the H300 building project. I wanted to tell you that I made that call.”

That was the plan—to open with the telephone call, and move on to the letters afterward, precisely in keeping with the chronological order in which things had happened, so that Avraham would understand the chain of events. It was also easier to confess to the telephone call without betraying his soul.

Ze'ev was too tense to accurately read Avraham's expression, but he was able to discern a look of puzzlement in his eyes. He clearly had never considered that Ze'ev might have been the caller. Avraham moved his hand toward the recording device, but then retracted it. “Go on,” he said, the blue pen in his hand once again.

“I surprised myself, too,” Ze'ev said. “And I don't really have much more to say about it. That was just the way it all happened. I hadn't intended saying that the police should look for a body. I planned to say that I had seen Ofer there and that that's where the searches should be carried out. I must have added it because I was agitated. I would like to apologize for that.”

“When did you see him there?” Avraham asked. “What day was it?”

Disappointed by the question, Ze'ev repeated what he thought he'd made clear in his previous statement. “I didn't see him. That's what I'm trying to tell you. What I said on the telephone was fabricated. I made it up. That's what I want to apologize for.”

“Apologize. That's the most important thing,” Michal had repeatedly said to him.

Avraham still did not understand. “If you didn't see him, why did you call?” he asked, and Ze'ev said, “I don't know. I wish I had an explanation. I wanted to speak to you, to try to explain why I think I did what I did. But it's important that you know that I didn't see Ofer, and that the information was made up. And it was especially important for me to tell you all of this face-to-face, not just because you're in charge of the investigation, but also because I sat and spoke with you for two hours previously and concealed it, despite the trust that developed between us and the rapport we had. I should have just told you then. It may already be too late, and if so, I apologize again. That's why I am here. But I honestly had no intention of sabotaging the investigation. Finding Ofer is just as important to me as it is to you.”

H
e was left alone in the room, and not for the last time.

But in fact he wasn't entirely alone, thanks to Michal. During the difficult hours that followed, too, after he lost control over the discussion and the chess pieces came crashing down, she remained by his side. She didn't get mad about his failure to tell her about the phone call. She understood he only wanted to avoid upsetting her even more. She quietly absorbed his rage at being in that room, came up close to him, and whispered in his ear, “You're doing it for me. For us.”

He planned on telling Avraham about the letters when he returned to the room, but when the police inspector entered once again, without explaining his reason for leaving, he immediately turned on the recording device and said, in an official tone, “Interview with Ze'ev Avni. May twenty-second. Eight twenty-two a.m. Please repeat what you said to me just now.”

Ze'ev wasn't sure if he should direct his voice at the silver-colored metal box or the investigator who sat there in front of him. “I said I want to apologize for the anonymous phone call to the police,” he said.

“The phone call regarding what matter?” Avraham asked.

“The matter of Ofer Sharabi.”

“In which you said what?”

“In which I said the police should look for Ofer on the dunes by the H300 building project.”

“That's not what was said in the call to the police.”

“In which I said the police should look for Ofer's body.”

“How did you come by this information about the location of Ofer's body?”

Despite being prepared for questions of the kind designed to trip him up, Ze'ev was both startled and disappointed to hear them from Avraham. For him, this wasn't the purpose of their conversation. “I didn't have any information,” he said. “I made it up. I meant to say something else.”

“What did you mean to say?” Avraham asked.

“That I saw Ofer. But that wouldn't have been true either. It was a mistake for which I take full responsibility and apologize.”

“When did you make the call?”

“On Friday, two and a half weeks ago.”

“Do you recall the date?”

“No.”

“Friday, May sixth?”

“Probably.”

“At what time?”

“I don't remember exactly. In the evening, somewhere between nine and ten.”

“And where did you make the call from?”

“From a public telephone near the beach. I don't recall the name of the street.”

“And according to you, at the time you made the call, you knew you were providing the police with false information, right? So please explain to me why you called.”

Now, these were the important questions, as far as he was concerned, the kind of questions that could spark a real conversation. He hadn't only wanted to meet with Avi Avraham because Michal thought it was the right thing to do; he had tried to find his own justification for going to the police. And that's what he came up with: the justification for it all lay in the chance that, together with Avraham, with his help, he could truly work out what had happened to him. He wanted to go back with Avraham to the moment he saw the police cars parked outside the building and realized they were there for him. When he had spoken to Michal about that tremendous moment, it was as if the words were unfaithful to what he felt and what he truly wanted to say. He had hoped that with Avraham things would be different.

“As I told you, I really don't know what drove me to do it,” Ze'ev said. “There were a few reasons, I think. I know that from the moment I learned that Ofer had disappeared, I felt a compelling need to be involved in the search and to help his family and the police—and Ofer, most of all. I also realized that I wanted to write about the subject. If you are looking for simple explanations, perhaps I was afraid that the police wouldn't take the matter seriously enough, and I wanted to make sure they carried out comprehensive searches. And maybe—and I know that what I'm about to say may sound terrible—maybe I wanted to see what searches look like and how they are carried out, so I'd be able to write about them. But all this explains nothing, and I'm sure there are other subconscious reasons that I'm not even aware of. Perhaps you'll understand better if you hear it all. I have more to tell you.”

“Just a moment,” Avraham said. “Before you do, I'd like to understand what you mean by ‘other subconscious reasons.' ”

“The last time we spoke, I told you that Ofer and I had developed a very close relationship when I was tutoring him, and that I identified strongly with him and what he had been through. You and I met during the search on the dunes on Saturday, remember? And also before then, on Thursday evening, when you came to our apartment to take statements from me and my wife. I already felt then I wanted to be actively involved in the search. I had hoped to tell you about Ofer's personality and what I had recognized in him, but I wasn't able to then. You were also in a rush that day. Perhaps I also feared that if I didn't initiate the search, I wouldn't get the opportunity to speak with you again and tell you about Ofer.”

“You have a wife and child, don't you?” Avraham suddenly asked, breaking his train of thought.

“You met them. Why do you ask?”

“How old is the boy?”

“He'll be a year old soon. But why do you ask?”

Avraham ignored his question. The abrupt questions about Michal and Elie caused Ze'ev more discomfort than any others might have aroused.