The Missing File (4 page)

A woman in her fifties opened the door—the uncle's wife, ready for bed. She had assumed command of the situation. The mother was sitting on a leather sofa in the living room, a young girl of around Ofer's age beside her. On the table in front of them were small plates of salted snacks, an open bottle of Diet Sprite, cups with the remains of coffee—like during the shivah after a funeral. The TV was on, Channel 2.

Avraham stood in front of her in the living room, between the sofa and the television. “That's it,” he said. “We're done here for now and I'm going back to the station. You should get some sleep.”

“In a little while,” the mother replied, but her eyes asked him if he really thought she was going to go to bed.

“I'll come by tomorrow morning,” Avraham continued. “And let me know at any time if something happens during the night. You have my cell number, right?”

The aunt accompanied him to the door, whispering that she and her daughter would be spending the night.

H
e dropped off Liat Mantsur at her place, but instead of heading home, he drove around for a while longer, aimlessly.

He had no reason to return to the station.

His failure of the night before had been compounded by another one. He hadn't acted like the commander of an investigation. He hadn't paused to think. He hadn't looked. He hadn't listened. Whatever happens with Ofer, wherever he may be, there was a story here that had started telling itself. And he hadn't listened to the story. Not only did he not know how it would end; he couldn't say how it had started, either. He didn't have a clue who the characters were. That's what he'd have to do tomorrow, to listen to the story—to get to know Ofer Sharabi, and also his mother and his father, who was on a cargo ship somewhere on the way to Trieste, as well as his brother and sister, whom he hadn't yet seen.

Slower, slowly, he whispered to himself again, just as he had done on the way home the night before.

He drove up and down Sokolov, Holon's main commercial street, his eyes on the crowds of young people who filled it. Thursday, 11:30 p.m.—the cafés were packed, with lines stretching outside. The street belonged to the adults during the day, the shopkeepers and the shoppers; but at night the youth ruled. He slowed down almost to a standstill. When he was young, there wasn't a single café in Holon—only one or two ice cream parlors, a few small, failing pizza stands that opened, closed, then reopened under different names, and a confectionery store where he worked one summer. For now, he had no way of knowing whether the cafés or one of their customers were part of the story he needed to listen to.

He stopped off at Struma Square to buy a falafel, parking his car up on the pavement. Despite the late hour, there was a long line. A group of young boys and girls were crowded around a man whose face he thought he recognized from the sports section of the newspaper. He bought half a portion; it was late to be eating, and he didn't want to spend all the cash he was carrying. He ate standing up, close to a group of young people who were leaning against a red BMW, trying to listen to their conversation. He was so much older than them. In fact, as it was past midnight already, he was exactly thirty-eight years old. How long had it been since he last went out at that time of night? He got back into his car and continued to drive, slowing down when he saw someone walking along the pavement alone, stopping alongside a parked car in which a couple were sitting in the dark.

It all reminded him of a different time, and evoked a strange sense of duplicity. He was he, and also someone else that was no longer there. He parked his car below his building on Yom Kippur Street after 2:00 a.m. He turned on the light in the apartment, stared at the silent television set, and then went into the kitchen to pour himself a glass of water. Was this his way of celebrating? The thought amused him. It took him a long time to fall asleep.

T
he buzz of the intercom was followed thirty minutes later by a phone call. By then, Avraham was dressed in civilian clothing—a clean pair of jeans and a wide mustard-colored polo shirt, one of the only ones in which he felt comfortable. “Are you up?” his mother asked, as if she was used to him sleeping at that time. “We wanted to say
mazel tov
. You do remember it's your birthday, right? And that you're coming to our place.”

She didn't mention the arrangement of lisianthus and gerberas. And he too said nothing, although he could have thanked her. She passed the phone to his father, and he wished him well with practically the very same words that were on the card, as if he were reading from a piece of paper: “We wish you only health, wherever life may lead you.”

Did she know no one else would call to wish him happy birthday, and so she did so twice, once with the card and once by phone? Or perhaps she thought he'd get dozens of calls and messages and wanted to be the first?

Before leaving the apartment, he placed the pink, white, and purple arrangement in a jar he had found in the kitchen and filled with water. He left the bouquet still wrapped in the noisy cellophane in which it had arrived.

U
nlike most of his colleagues, Avraham liked going into the station on Friday mornings. He had nothing else to do.

The station was quiet, as it was every Friday. The morning shift's duty sergeant, David Ezra, appeared cheerful. He was speaking to someone on the phone and moved the mouthpiece aside to whisper to Avraham, “Have you come in to work on the missing-persons case? Wait just a moment, then,” and he handed over a short list of calls that had come in overnight about the young boy, along with the names of the callers, their numbers, and a few words on the information they wished to pass on.

“Is that all?” Avraham asked.

Ezra nodded and continued his conversation.

Because of the urgency and the presence of the mother and uncle in his office, he had forgotten to turn off his computer when they left for the building on Histadrut Street the previous day. It was still on. He went through the list of callers, marking a few with a blue asterisk. He then opened the missing-persons section on the police department's Facebook page, and was surprised to see the very small number of responses to the report about Ofer's disappearance. And they were all insignificant—good luck wishes to the police, two offers to help with the search, and one that linked the deteriorating state of the youth in general to the hallucinatory drugs that were being sold at late-night kiosks and the police's inefficient handling of the matter.

He didn't know why he was at the station at all. He could have waited at home for some concrete information to come in. But he wanted to be active. The more time that went by since Ofer's disappearance, the less chance they had of finding him. He sensed he needed to take the initiative, to make things right, to attack, that something would happen in the coming hours. He had promised himself the day before that he would start listening to the story. He jotted down a few questions he planned to ask Hannah Sharabi.

He then called one of the telephone numbers. There was no reply. His fourth call was answered by a child.

“Hello, this is Inspector Avraham Avraham from the police. You left a message regarding a missing boy, Ofer Sharabi,” he said.

“Just a moment, I'll call my mom,” replied the girl. Her childish voice was soon replaced by the deep voice of a man.

Avraham repeated himself.

“Good of you to call,” the man said. “My wife and I saw the missing boy yesterday evening.”

The man went on to say that he and his wife had seen Ofer at a gas station on the road to Ashdod. They had stopped to fill up their tank and buy a cup of coffee at the adjacent convenience store. They had seen a young boy sitting alone at a table outside the store, smoking. The man and his wife had sat at the table next to him for almost ten minutes. The boy had looked familiar, but the man couldn't place him and had simply stared at him until he got up and left. Only afterward, when they were back in the car, did he remember seeing a picture of the boy earlier that afternoon on the missing-persons page of the police website. Avraham didn't ask him why he had opened the police website's missing-persons page in the first place.

“Was he carrying a black bag perhaps?”

“A black bag?”

“Yes. Did you happen to see if he had a black bag with him?”

“I don't remember seeing a bag.”

“And do you remember what he was wearing?”

“Uh, no, not really. A white shirt maybe? My wife would remember.”

“Can you go to the Ashdod police station and make a more detailed statement?” Avraham asked, and the man said, “Ashdod? But we live in Modi'in. We were on our way to a wedding.”

“To the Modi'in police, then.”

“On a Friday? Will someone be there? Can't we just do this over the phone?”

“I'd like you to have a look at some photographs, but Sunday morning would be okay too,” Avraham said, knowing all too well that the man had no more information to share anyway. The important thing was that if he had seen Ofer and could positively identify him, that would be a sign of life.

T
he building he arrived at that afternoon felt strangely like home already. He parked his car in the same place he had parked it the previous day, across from the entrance, but on the other side of the street. The building was an old tenement structure from the 1950s or '60s that had been renovated at some point since, yet still looked neglected—a ship that had run aground and had been left in the sun to rust. Plastic blue-and-white flags still waved in the wind from some of the balconies—leftovers from the Independence Day celebrations a week earlier. He had spent almost the entire day there yesterday, and although he hadn't made an effort to take in the details, some of the familiar decor had sunk in.

The door to the building was closed, and he received no answer when he buzzed the intercom. He suddenly realized that none of the family had called him since the night before. Was there no one at home? He waited a moment and then buzzed the neighbor from the first floor. They went up to the third floor together and knocked. “Hannah, the police are here,” the neighbor called out, and the mother opened the door. She said she hadn't heard the intercom, and Avraham suddenly wondered if he had in fact rung after all.

She was alone in the apartment, which looked clean and tidy—no dishes on the living room table, no visitors. The neighbor looked disappointed when Avraham asked her to leave them alone. He had been waiting for this moment since yesterday, and he didn't know how much time he had before the family returned.

They sat at the counter between the kitchen and the living room. The mother had changed her clothes and her hair was wet. He said yes to a cup of Turkish coffee, with one sugar, and alongside the mug, she placed a small plate of pretzels.

“Any news? Have you heard anything?” he asked, and immediately regretted doing so. She should be the one asking him for news, and he should be the one updating her, not the other way around. He had to convince her—himself too, perhaps—that they were doing everything possible, that he was firmly in control of the investigation.

She shook her head.

“Where's everyone?” he asked, and she said, “I needed some quiet. They'll probably come back.”

He tried to sound official, despite feeling they had known each other for a long time. “I came to update you on the investigation and ask a few more questions,” he said.

“Okay.”

“We are currently conducting the investigation on a number of levels at the same time. The first level is a more passive one. We have started to receive information from people who saw Ofer or say that they saw him, and we are trying to verify this information. I was at the police station this morning and checked out a few things,” Avraham said, wondering if he should tell her about the call from Ashdod—or, rather, Modi'in. “Random information like this very often leads us in the right direction. The second level of the investigation is a more active one. We are questioning Ofer's friends, and we are doing an in-depth examination of his computer. A team of investigators was dealing with this yesterday, and we will continue over the weekend. Something is likely to come up from that too, because every action leaves behind a trail—and certainly an action that has been planned, such as running away. In addition to this, there is the ongoing intelligence level, with the intelligence coordinators receiving updates on the situation, and they, of course, are under orders to pass on to me any relevant information they receive.”

“So you aren't searching for him? With police forces?” she asked.

“All these operations, ma'am, are being conducted by the police. But if you mean searches out in the field, then no, not yet. We still don't know where to look.”

He wanted to tell her that it was impossible to simply send police officers out into the street to call out, “Ofer, come home! Your mother's worried sick about you!” as she would like them to do, but he didn't. She waited for him to continue.

“I'd like to speak to Ofer's brother and sister,” Avraham said. “Where are they now? I didn't see them yesterday either.”

“At my husband's parents.”

“Why?”

“I can't look after them now on my own. I don't have the strength. Maybe I'll bring them home on Sunday,” she answered, and suddenly burst into tears—perhaps because of her thoughts of Sunday and the fact that the weekend would go by without Ofer. Her whimpering was soft, stifled, fragmented, like that of a dog that has been left outside the house and is trying to get in.

“And are you in touch with your husband?”

“I haven't spoken to him today. He's in touch with his brother, who keeps him updated. He'll be back on Sunday.”

Avraham waited for her to calm down.

“I know I have asked you this a number of times,” he continued, “but we have some peace and quiet now, and perhaps you've had more time to think. Are you sure that nothing happened that could be linked to Ofer's running away?”