The Missing File (3 page)

She didn't lift her head and continued writing. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that I gave him private English lessons for four months.”

“And how was he?”

“What do you mean by ‘how was he'? How was he as a student?”

“As a student, as a person. What was your impression of him?”

Her repetition of the word “impression” was ridiculous.

“I got the impression that he's a child who takes his studies seriously, but that English is not his strongest subject. He is a gentle and pleasant young boy, introverted—like I told you. As I'm sure you can imagine, I meet many young people, but Ofer was unusual. I think we formed a strong connection.”

“And he didn't say anything to you about plans to run away, suicide perhaps, problems at school?”

“Not a word. We spoke mostly about his English, and he didn't say anything about suicide or running away in English.”

“So, you're saying he had no problems?”

“I didn't say that at all. I said we didn't speak about such things. And may I ask you why you are speaking about him in the past tense? It's unnerving.”

“I'm sorry, it's just a manner of speaking,” the policewoman replied, getting up from her chair and adding, “Just a moment, I need to check up on something.”

She went to the kitchen. It was an odd moment: he wasn't sure if he was allowed to stand up in his own home. A moment later she returned with his wife and the senior policeman, but the three of them walked over to the door. That was the third surprise. Ze'ev stood up and joined them.

“I understand from your wife that you gave private lessons to Ofer,” the policeman said. “So I may come by later to ask a few more questions. Thank you very much for your help.”

The stairwell was dark and quiet, as if the investigation had been wrapped up. They stood on either side of the threshold—two police officers on the one side, in the dark, a man, a woman, and a baby on the other, and an open door between them once again. Where was Hannah Sharabi? Was she at home? Alone? Did she have policemen with her?

“You're welcome anytime,” Ze'ev said. “Although I don't know if we have been of much help. I'll be happy to help more—if you need help searching, for example. I don't know what your plans are. Do you intend to go on with the search through the night?”

The senior policeman looked surprised, as if he hadn't considered the option of searching at night. Ze'ev felt for the light switch on the wall next to the door, and with the stairwell lit up, he could see the policeman's name was Avi Avraham. He had taken a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and was playing with it between his fingers.

“Thank you,” Avraham said. “Some searches may be carried out, but we don't yet know exactly where or when. If we do mount searches, we'd be happy to have help from you, and the other neighbors too.” He continued to address Michal more than Ze'ev.

“Do you have any ideas about where Ofer might be?” Ze'ev decided to ask.

Avraham was on edge. “Not yet, unfortunately. We are hoping to find him as quickly as possible.” And he suddenly turned to Ze'ev. “Do you, perhaps?”

The light in the stairwell had gone out, and he turned it on again. For the first time since the police had come in, he felt like someone was actually speaking to him. “I wish I knew” was all he said.

Their front door was the only one in the building that did not have a sign bearing the family's name—only some advertising stickers for locksmiths, plumbers, and electricians, along with a triangular magnet from Pizza Centro. And the policewoman hadn't even asked his name.

“S
o what did they ask you?” Ze'ev offhandedly asked Michal as they bathed Elie.

He was angry. Why hadn't she asked him the same question first? And why hadn't she told him what she and the senior officer had spoken about? His disappointment with Avraham's decision to speak with Michal hadn't abated; instead, it had become more bitter as a result of his brief, provocative exchange with the senior policeman at the door.

“Probably the same questions they asked you,” Michal said. “How well I know Ofer. If I had noticed anything out of the ordinary. If I had seen any of his friends here or people he hung out with who looked offbeat.”

“And what did you say?”

“That I hadn't. That you gave him some private lessons at the beginning of the year, in their apartment. That he hadn't come here, and that he and I never exchanged anything more than hello and good-bye on the stairs. I may have once asked him how he was doing with his English or something like that. I told him that I think I heard a fight or argument coming from there this week, in the evening, maybe the evening before he disappeared, but that I have no idea who was involved or what it was about, or if it even had anything to do with Ofer. It may have been an argument between the parents.”

That was the final surprise. Ze'ev was stunned.

“Did you really hear them arguing?” he asked, and Michal laughed. “What do you think—that I'd say something like that to him for no reason? Didn't you hear it?”

He couldn't remember. “I may have been asleep already. Perhaps it was from their TV?” he asked, and Michal said, “You know what? You could be right.”

T
hey ate a light dinner in front of the television, watching a reality show, after Michal had put Elie to sleep. There was nothing of interest on the news. Michal returned to the balcony to continue working, and Ze'ev opened Ian McEwan's
On Chesil Beach
, an elegiac novel, very short, about missing out on love in an instant owing to reticence. He had been reading it for a few days, in small doses, welling up with sadness every time. He took note of the economical yet precise eye for detail of the British writer, whom he had not been familiar with beforehand. Elie was whimpering in his bed, and Ze'ev went to his room and put the pacifier back in his mouth.

He put off drinking his last cup of tea for the evening. He was waiting for Inspector Avraham and planned to offer him a coffee and drink one with him. The day had fulfilled less than it had originally promised. And he felt like he had so much to say. He heard sounds from the stairwell, people going up and down, but he couldn't know if they had anything to do with the search for Ofer or simply life itself. Neighbors came and went. A doorbell rang and someone said, “It's me.” Doors slammed shut. The light went on and off. There were few cars on the street outside. After 11:00 p.m., the building was cloaked in silence. Avraham wasn't coming. Ze'ev returned the two clean mugs he had left out on the counter to the kitchen cupboard. He went into the bathroom to change clothes, brushed his teeth, and got into bed.

Michal came shortly afterward. She laid her pajamas out on the bed, undressed, and slowly put on her nightclothes in front of him, watching him as he continued reading. His eyes didn't budge from the page, as if he didn't see anything at all while she took off her bra. There was something unseemly in the room. She was undressing in front of someone else, someone she didn't even know.

“Are you thinking about Ofer?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said.

“What are you thinking?”

“That perhaps we'll join the search if they're still searching on the weekend. We'll leave Elie with your mother, or we can take him along in a carrier.”

“Do you think Ofer's run away from home?”

“I don't know. He doesn't give the impression of being independent or strong enough. Running away like that takes a lot of guts. This will be the second night since he disappeared, and he needs to sleep somewhere.”

His words shook her. “His poor mother,” she said. “I can't even begin to imagine how she must be feeling right now. To go through two nights without knowing where your son may be, it's terrible.”

Ze'ev fell asleep before her, dropping off into slumber quickly. One moment he was awake, and a moment later his eyes were closed. She watched his quiet breathing, then went into Elie's room to make sure he was covered. Babbling in his sleep, the infant sighed and stretched out his arms toward her as she wrapped the blanket a little tighter around his small body.

3

H
e was waked Friday morning by a long buzz on the intercom. It was late, a lot later than his usual waking hour, even on his day off.

“A delivery for Avi Avraham.”

In his mouth was that dry, bitter taste that's left behind by too brief a night after a long day, and almost three packs of Time. The flower delivery boy was dressed in a green uniform. His helmet was still on, and he was hidden behind a large bouquet in shades of pink, white, and purple—lilies, lisianthus, and gerberas, interspersed with an abundance of green foliage. He tore off the greeting card and read:

Dear Avi,

Happy 38th birthday.

Wishing you lots of health, happiness, and continued success through life, wherever it may lead you.

Love,

Mom and Dad

He didn't call to say he had received the flower arrangement, which he placed on the kitchen table, not yet in a vase with water. The daylight shining in from the kitchen window was too strong. He placed a finjan with water and enough Turkish coffee to make two cups on the gas stove. The rumbling of the engine of a delivery truck outside the building shook the floor. It was all so different from the quiet he usually woke to.

He generally rose before six, without the need for an alarm. He'd brush his teeth while traipsing around the palely lit apartment, boil water in the kitchen, and go into the living room, where he'd open the shutters and continue brushing as he looked out at the dark street. There'd be hardly any traffic, only frozen cars parked in lines on either side of the road. Sometimes he'd see someone leaving early for work, sometimes he'd even hear the chirping of a stray bird.

Perhaps the noise wasn't coming from the street, but from somewhere within him. He had woken restless, as if the delivery truck had dumped all of yesterday inside him the moment he heard the buzzer of the intercom. All the images, all the conversations. The uncertainty, Hannah Sharabi through the dusty glass door, the endless ringing of his cell phone, the sense that things were getting out of hand, the neighbors looking down at him from the balconies, the drive through the city at night, alone, aimlessly.

H
annah Sharabi had popped into his mind the moment he woke the day before, too. It was 5:50 a.m. He checked his phone and saw that he hadn't missed a call during the night. He couldn't be sure if that was good news or not.

He decided to forgo the walk, instead driving his car to the station. He wanted to be mobile during the day if the need arose. He walked into the almost empty station just before seven thirty. The duty officer informed him that no reports about a missing boy had come through during the night, and that no one had asked him to call any mother in the morning to find out if her son had returned home.

The following two hours were a nightmare. Nothing happened. He sent out e-mails, completed a personal questionnaire he needed to pass on to the human resources department because of his trip to Brussels, read the headlines on the
Haaretz
news website, and browsed through the Kintiev file to prepare for the next stage in the investigation. The sheet of paper on which he had jotted down short sentences from his conversation with the mother the night before was still on the desk, where he had forgotten it, neatly folded into a small square.

The records from the night between Wednesday and Thursday revealed nothing related to Ofer Sharabi. There had been a fire at an insurance agency and the firefighting crew suspected arson. A scooter had been stolen just a few dozen yards from his apartment. He could have called the boy's mother to ease the uncertainty, but a dull feeling inside of him told him not to tempt fate. The fact that she hadn't called may be a sign that all is well, and he didn't want to break that with a phone call. And if not, if a tragedy loomed, it would be best to wait rather than hasten its arrival.

After a while, he left his office to make a cup of coffee and use the copying machine behind the duty sergeant's desk. The station was already abuzz with the morning's activity. Civilians stood in line at the front desk. Two traffic policewomen were in conversation at the entrance to the station. And then he saw her. She was standing outside the station and he spotted her through the dusty glass door. She was in the same clothes he had seen her in the night before—just as he had thought she would be. The shabby leather bag was hanging off her shoulder by its thin strap, and she was clutching the cell phone in her hand, as if she hadn't let it go since they parted. The pain he felt on seeing her took him by surprise.

Ofer hadn't returned.

Avraham froze for a moment—and then left the copying machine and hurried over to her. He thought about placing his hand on her shoulder but then noticed that she wasn't alone. He looked over at the man she was with and quietly asked, “He didn't come home, did he?”

“I'm Ofer's uncle,” said the man at her side. “My brother called me at six this morning and told me what's happening. Are you the policeman who spoke with her yesterday?”

Avraham didn't respond. He turned to Hannah Sharabi and asked, “You haven't heard a thing?” But she remained silent, as if the presence of the uncle had made her presence unnecessary.

“Nothing,” the uncle replied. “You told her that you would begin searches in the morning.”

Avraham quickly ushered them to his room, without anyone noticing.

T
hey remained at the station until late in the morning. His hand hardly let go of the telephone. Again he made calls to the hospital emergency rooms, went through the reports and incidents from the night before, and received updates from the intelligence coordinators in the police district. He left the room a few times to try to get hold of Ilana, but her cell was switched off and the secretary at the Investigations Division told him that she was in meetings at the National Headquarters in Jerusalem. He wanted to consult with her, but mostly he wanted to be the first one to tell her the story.

The mother was even quieter than she had been during their talk the day before. He asked her if she'd like something to drink, and she shook her head to say no. Even when he asked her direct questions about Ofer, the uncle answered instead. Only when he inquired about Ofer's height and the uncle responded, “Five feet four inches,” did she intervene and say, “Five feet six inches.” He weighed around 130 pounds.

With the help of the mother and uncle, he put together a brief announcement about the missing boy. They gave him permission to post it on the police website and Facebook page, and he explained that the same announcement would also appear in the media. The mother then placed a plastic sandwich bag on the table and took out six photographs of Ofer. That moment haunted him later that night, before he fell asleep. He hadn't had time to examine the pictures, and knew that night that he had made a mistake. Could he have seen something in them? Perhaps. And even if not, she had wanted him to look at Ofer, to say something about him. He asked which was the most recent and took them all to be scanned. On his way back to his office, he remembered that Igor Kintiev was supposed to arrive at the station at 1:00 p.m. from the holding cells at the Abu Kabir facility and he called to cancel the interrogation. His remand was for another four days, and the questioning could wait.

The thing that surprised him throughout the morning was that no one had blamed him for anything—neither the uncle nor the mother. They hadn't attacked him for his decision not to begin a search, nor had they reminded him that the night before, there hadn't been a policeman in Israel who knew of Ofer's disappearance, apart from him. The fact that they hadn't blamed him only seemed to heighten the sense of urgency. He managed to put together a temporary team around noon—five officers, including a young policewoman from the Traffic Division who had completed her shift and volunteered to stay for a few extra hours. They were also joined by an investigator from the IT Division who accompanied him on the short drive from the station to Histadrut Street.

This must be the first time Hannah Sharabi has been in a police patrol car, Avraham thought to himself when they got in the car. He looked at her in the rearview mirror as she buckled up in the backseat.

F
rom then on, he felt that things were getting out of control, that he wasn't able to manage his temporary team, his situation, the way he wanted to. And it was all Ilana's fault—at least that's how he felt at the time. Her absence prevented him from thinking things through, and he wasn't quite sure why. In any event, it was scandalous—a Special Investigations Division officer disappearing in the middle of the day and impossible to get hold of.

He tried nevertheless to begin the investigation in an orderly and rational manner. It was his hard-and-fast rule. He wanted to sit down for a quiet talk with Hannah Sharabi, but it was simply impossible. The apartment was a hive of activity. His officers came and went, neighbors came up, and the uncle brought over more relatives and didn't leave the mother's side for a moment, sticking to her like a bodyguard. And the telephones didn't stop—a different ringtone every second, or the same ringtone and three or four people fumbling for their phones in their respective pockets, thinking the sound was coming from there. He instructed the traffic policewoman to restore some order and to stop anyone else from entering. He was sure that was the key. If he could only sit down with the mother for a few minutes and ask her a question he hadn't yet asked and still wasn't aware of, everything would become a lot clearer—a question that would evolve out of the conversation and elicit a piece of information she wasn't aware of having. She'd remember something Ofer had said, a friend she had forgotten to mention, and they'd know where to begin looking. It had been only a little more than twenty-four hours since Ofer's disappearance; anything was still possible.

He sat in the car to think. A call from the station informed him that Igor Kintiev had arrived for questioning. And for the first time that day, he raised his voice, shouting that he had called two hours earlier to cancel the interrogation and giving instructions for Kintiev to be returned to the holding cells. A woman he had seen earlier in the apartment came over to his car and asked if she could put up posters along the street.

He hung out around the building, smoking, trying again to get hold of Ilana. Rinat Pinto, who had been sent to carry out initial inquiries at Ofer's school, returned empty-handed. They met up at the entrance to the building and she asked Avraham if she should question additional teachers and friends. And Ilana remained out of reach. The investigator from the IT Division presumed he had gone back to the station and called him from upstairs. His initial check through Ofer's e-mails and text messages had revealed nothing of any importance, and he asked if he should get the family's go-ahead to remove the computer's hard drive for further examination. “Wait just a moment, I'm coming up,” Avraham replied, returning to the apartment and asking if it would be okay for him to smoke on the balcony.

It was past three when Ilana eventually called. She sounded aloof. Her tone was official. He could hear sounds in the background, coming perhaps from a radio. Was there someone in the car with her? He went out onto the balcony to be alone while they spoke, and lit a cigarette, placing the lighter and pack on the open windowsill. The lighter fell down to the yard. He gave Ilana an update on the start of the investigation without mentioning the mother's visit to the station the previous evening. She said he seemed to be doing all the right things at this stage in the investigation and didn't see any cause for deviating from standard search procedures.

“As far as I understand things, there's no special urgency, right?” she added, and he wanted to roar back, “What do you mean, no special urgency? We have no idea at all where the boy spent the night,” but instead he just asked, “And what about tomorrow?” wondering if she could notice the tension in his voice.

“What do you mean, what about tomorrow?”

She hadn't noticed.

“Tomorrow's Friday. If I want an extensive search, I'll need to bring in personnel.”

“Until you have a concrete lead to follow, Avi, there's no point. And from what you've told me so far, you don't have one for now, right?” He had already told her that he didn't have one, and couldn't understand why she was repeating and loudly stressing the question in the presence of the person sitting next to her. “The moment you have a lead, we'll bring in more personnel; it won't be a problem,” she said.

“Will you be in the area today, by any chance?” he asked.

“I don't think so. I'm on my way back from Jerusalem and have meetings at district headquarters all afternoon. But call me if something urgent comes up. Keep me posted on your progress in the investigation, in the evening and over the weekend too if something new turns up. Okay?”

She was speaking to him in that manner only because of the person or persons sitting beside her. She was with someone important, he thought—the district commander perhaps, or maybe the deputy chief of police. This conversation with her had been useless.

O
nly evening brought quiet to the building on Histadrut Street. Everyone had been released from duty or was done for the day. He asked Liat Mantsur to join him for some questioning of the neighbors. They went from one apartment to the next, but nothing significant came from any of their conversations. No one had heard a thing, no one knew Ofer Sharabi beyond polite small talk on the stairs—everyone apart from the neighbor who had asked his permission to put up posters in the street. She said she was “close to the family,” and that Ofer was a “wonderful boy”—and she cried.

Avraham went up to the Sharabis' apartment one last time before they all left the building. He knocked softly on the closed door, thinking in the few seconds that passed before it opened that every knock had the potential of driving the mother over the edge. “It's Inspector Avraham,” he called out in a loud voice through the door. “Can you open for a moment?”