The Missing File Read online

  But he could not write a word. His pen dropped.

  The file lay open in front of him, and Ze’ev Avni’s handwriting in black ink caught his eye from among the pile of documents. Suddenly, he picked up the pen and began writing:

  Dear Dad and Mom,

  I’m writing to you so you don’t worry about me. I want you to know I’ve arrived safely.

  Despite everything that happened, I’m well. I’m now in Koper, a small and pretty provincial city. I think you’d like it here, Dad, because of the beautiful port. I’ve decided to stay here for now, but who knows, perhaps I’ll be back one day.

  I’m sorry about everything.

  Yours,

  Ofer

  Avraham had no one to send the letter to.

  He crumpled the page and slipped it into his pocket so that no one would find it.

  16

  He replied to Marianka’s e-mail early Saturday morning, from home. He told her the investigation had ended and that Ofer was dead. If and how a search for his body would continue remained unclear. The Cypriot, Turkish, and Greek authorities had been asked to notify the police in Israel in the event that a suitcase containing the body of a dead boy washed ashore or was found out at sea by local fishermen. He added no details because he had decided not to discuss anything that happened with anyone.

  Her reply came after thirty minutes. Marianka expressed her condolences and asked how he was. She ended her short message with the words “Sometimes prayers don’t help.” He responded immediately, writing her that he was not well and that he was planning to take a vacation to get over it all. How was she doing? he asked. This time she answered several hours later, at night, and he read her message at 6:30 the following morning, Sunday, shortly after he woke up. She told him that she and Guillaume had broken up and that she too was going through a rough time. Their shifts together in the traffic police were not making the split any easier. She was also planning a vacation. Not sure if he was writing it just out of politeness, he invited her to spend her holiday in Israel and promised to pay her back for the tour of Brussels. It was 5:30 a.m. in Belgium but she wrote back immediately, one sentence, “Are you serious?” and he answered with one word.

  Yes.

  Reports about the case and its resolution appeared in the newspapers on Sunday, the same day that Rafael Sharabi appeared in court for a remand hearing ahead of his indictment. Ofer’s death came under the headline FAMILY TRAGEDY IN HOLON. No details were given of the circumstances leading up to the violent confrontation and the teenager’s ensuing death, as the court had imposed a gag order covering most of the details of the investigation owing to the involvement of minors; meanwhile, anyone familiar with the case knew why the press was treading relatively lightly with regard to a father who had killed his own son. Rafael Sharabi’s lawyers claimed he was a devoted father, that the tragedy had destroyed him, and one report said that the state prosecutor was considering dropping the charges for obstruction of justice and likely would not oppose a light sentence. Very little was written about Ofer, as if he had been forgotten or had gone missing again.

  Avraham rejected offers from the press office to give TV and radio interviews, and for the two days during which the media followed the story, Shrapstein appeared on three television news shows and several morning radio programs. He was asked about “the complicated investigation, the details of which remain under a gag order,” and smiled knowingly at the mention of “sophisticated investigative tactics that led to solving the case.” He too expressed compassion for the father’s plight, and in response to a question from one of the interviewers said that Rafael Sharabi had expressed heartfelt remorse for concealing the tragedy. When asked to describe his feelings about the resolution of the case, Shrapstein repeated the same line in all the interviews: “It was undoubtedly one of my most difficult moments as an Israel Police investigator . . . but that’s our job.”

  On Sunday evening, just after Channel 10 aired a short report on the “Holon tragedy,” Avraham’s phone rang. He knew who was on the line before lifting the receiver.

  His mother was agitated. “Are you watching the news?” she asked, and he said, “No. Why?” lowering the sound coming from the television set.

  “You took part in the case of the teenager who was murdered by his father, didn’t you? I just saw the report on TV, but they didn’t mention you. I’m sure I’ve seen that father before. I think he uses the same jogging path I do.”

  Avraham confirmed that he had been involved in the investigation. He couldn’t deny it because his parents had heard about his brief television appearance when Ofer was still a missing-persons case.

  “I’m telling you, I felt right from the beginning that the father must have done something to him. I don’t know why, I just had a feeling. Did you interrogate the father yourself?”

  He said he hadn’t.

  “And do you know that officer, Shrapstein? He was interviewed for the report. Do you work with him? He’s a very impressive young man.”

  “He is impressive,” Avraham responded, and she asked, “Do you know how old he is? Is he married?”

  His meeting with Ilana was scheduled for Monday morning. He arrived late and she welcomed him warmly.

  “I was waiting for you,” she said. She was wearing a purple dress that didn’t suit her and that he hadn’t seen before.

  They always met for a postmortem after a big case, generally in her office, but sometimes at a restaurant, for lunch or dinner. They would drink a toast, analyze the investigation process, and look for errors to avoid in future cases. They both knew that was not going to happen this time. There had been too many errors, and there was no cause to celebrate.

  Why did it seem to him that their relationship would never go back to the way it was before the case? Ilana had stood by him, and may even have prevented him from making graver mistakes than the ones he had. She had also supported his decision not to participate in the reconstruction. He couldn’t go back to the apartment. Something deep inside him simply refused to open the door to Danit’s room, from which the mother had shut him out. Shrapstein had taken Rafael Sharabi to the building on Histadrut Street—late Thursday night so as to avoid prying eyes, as much as possible—and had watched as the father shoved Ma’alul, in the role of Ofer, against the wall. Because a long time had passed, they didn’t find any signs of the struggle or remains of the violent confrontation that happened there. Rafael Sharabi pushed Ma’alul against a pink wall partly covered by a dresser with toys, and afterward he pushed him against a second wall, a white one. When Ilana described the reconstruction, Avraham suddenly recalled the statement made by Ze’ev Avni’s wife on the first day of the investigation. They were sitting in the kitchen of the Avni apartment and she was holding their son in her arms. She remembered hearing an argument or fight from the apartment above and was almost sure it had been on Tuesday evening. He hadn’t ignored her statement; he had tried to confirm it with other neighbors, but without success. And yet it had all been there in front of him.

  “When does your vacation begin?” Ilana asked, and he said, “Maybe on Monday. I haven’t given a definite date yet.”

  “And when do you get back?”

  “I haven’t decided how much time to take off.” There were thoughts he was not ready to share with her.

  He liked her office, the photograph of Lions Gate Bridge and the familiar faces in the other pictures, the window that was opened only for him and that had often breathed life into him. But he didn’t want it to be his home anymore.

  Ilana suggested that he refrain from taking on any other cases before beginning his vacation and he nodded.

  “Why do you think this case was so difficult for you?” she suddenly asked.

  “It was difficult for everyone, wasn’t it?” he replied, trying to avoid the question, but she said, “Yes, it was, but for you in particular.”
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  The question troubled him too, and he had no answer. Perhaps it was the geographic proximity, or maybe the feeling of having lost control.

  “I think it’s a sense of guilt,” she said. “You felt guilty toward Ofer and his parents from the start, and it prevented you from seeing what was really happening there. And in the end—well, you know how it ended.”

  But he didn’t feel that he knew. And he believed Ilana was wrong in thinking that guilt was the problem. He didn’t want to continue speaking about himself and asked if the state prosecutor had made a decision regarding Hannah Sharabi. It turned out that she had been released. A decision regarding an indictment against her, if there was to be one at all, had yet to be made. The children had been returned to their mother for now. Ilana told him that Ma’alul’s inquiries with the friends Ofer’s parents had met the evening of the tragedy indicated that Hannah Sharabi had indeed returned home after her husband and not with him, just as she had said. Nevertheless, there was still no proof that she was not in the apartment at the time Ofer was killed.

  None of that interested him anymore.

  He didn’t have any words, and a part of their meeting passed in silence.

  “Are you going away?” Ilana asked, and he said, “Where would I go? I’ll stay at home. Maybe I’ll finally clean the place up.”

  Avraham was unable to get hold of the IT Division when he returned to the station. Someone there needed to take down Ofer’s photograph from the police website’s missing-persons page. The thin boy with the hint of a black mustache looked at him from the computer screen. The other missing people stared at him from their small images too. Some had been there for a long time. There were teenagers, boys and girls, who were last seen in 2008, 1996, 1994. He clicked on one of the thumbnails. Full name: Michael Lutenko. Gender: Male. Born: 1980. Native language: Russian. Other languages: Hebrew. Height: 5'8". Nose shape: Medium. Build: Slight. Skin: Light. Glasses: None. Residence: Ramat Gan. Last seen in: Ramat Gan. Date of disappearance: 23 June 1997.

  There was a soft knock on the door. Lital Levy, the policewoman who had called on his birthday to tell him about the anonymous call regarding Ofer, walked in, saying, “Someone left this for you.” She handed him a brown envelope with black letters addressed To Inspector Avi Avraham.

  “Is he still here?” he asked, quickly getting up from his chair, and she said no. She still managed to ask if he wanted to have lunch with her, but Avraham had already rushed out of the station. Ze’ev Avni was gone.

  He read the letter while sitting on the stairs outside, smoking a cigarette.

  Dear Inspector Avraham,

  A letter from me must surely come as a surprise to you. To be honest, I never imagined writing to you until I saw the newspaper reports about Ofer and realized that I, too, need closure. This period in my life will undoubtedly remain with me forever, but I would like to move on, just as you will move on. More than anything, I’d like to meet and speak with you—not at the police station, but somewhere more pleasant and friendly—and to continue, or rather to begin, the conversation I had hoped to have with you and wasn’t able to, but because that isn’t very practical (is it?), I have resorted instead to writing you a letter, a symbolic (or ironic, some would say) act, of course, in light of the circumstances surrounding our acquaintanceship.

  First, it’s important that you know that I have yet to come to terms with what I did, even after finding out (more or less—I admit that not everything is clear to me) just how central a role I played in exposing Ofer’s parents—and perhaps particularly for that very reason. Obviously, Rafael Sharabi must pay for his crime; I wouldn’t want it any other way, but I do have a problem with the fact that I played a part in the trap you laid for him (am I correct in my assumptions?). In retrospect, I would have liked to have refused your “generous offer,” or, more precisely, to have been the kind of person who could do that. Regrettably, I am not that man yet. When I agonize over the cowardice that led me to accept your “offer,” I try to convince myself that I had no choice—because of both my wife and my son—and I also tell myself that I am now in possession of compromising information about the police. We are almost in equal positions now, don’t you think? You know things about me that I wouldn’t want others to know, and I know something about you that you wouldn’t want revealed (this is not a threat).

  The second thing I wanted to say is that I was deeply disappointed with our meeting. (I hope you are capable of appreciating my frankness.) When we first met, I felt that we could share a true dialogue; apparently I misjudged you. From the first moment you misunderstood me and my intentions, you were quick to judge me, and you turned all I told you about my close relationship with Ofer into suspicions against me—so much so that it is difficult even now to think about my intimate friendship with Ofer without doubting my intentions. And for that, I cannot easily forgive you. In the end, you exploited my faith in you and my appreciation for you to achieve your own objectives. (By the way, have you already been promoted or received a commendation following your “success”?)

  There’s one more thing I need to write—more to myself than to you—and it has to do with the act of writing. What I had begun I shall not continue, do not worry about that, although today I understand the true power of the letters I wrote. In fact, without my knowing anything (do you believe me now?), those letters contained the truth—the literary truth and the factual truth—long before all of you found out. Maybe that’s what people mean when they speak about inspiration. I feel a certain sense of satisfaction (also a shiver) when I think about Ofer’s parents reading his letters, with the accusations he dared to make at them, while concealing their guilt from everyone. This encourages me not to stop writing, despite all the attempts to intimidate me (others’ too, not only yours). I don’t yet know what I will write, but I know it will happen—and not too far down the line, either. Who knows, maybe a book about police investigators? My son, Elie, has reached the age at which he enjoys listening to the stories I make up for him—even if he doesn’t understand everything—and maybe children’s literature is the right direction for me.

  Shall we part as friends?

  Ze’ev Avni

  P.S. If, by chance, you come looking for me, you probably won’t find me at the same address in a few weeks. We plan to move, although no one in our building knows of my involvement (and I’d like it to stay that way). It’s not the kind of place in which we want to raise Elie, and I wanted to move, anyway.

  Should he file the letter in the case file? Throw it in the trash? Keep it for the next case in which Ze’ev Avni turns out to be involved? In all his years on the police force he had never come across anyone like Avni, who had made every effort to become the subject of a police investigation. Apparently Avni had an urge to confess something, but Avraham had been unable to discover exactly what it was. And perhaps Avni couldn’t, either.

  Marianka arrived the following week, on Monday, at 4:00 p.m.

  She was dressed in blue jeans, a pink T-shirt, flowery and short-sleeved, and sneakers. Her brown hair was cut short. They kissed each other on the cheek, twice, and he took her silver suitcase and wheeled it behind him to the parking lot—all the while hounded by thoughts of the suitcase into which Ofer’s dead body was stuffed. He had the feeling she saw the shadow darkening over his face.

  He’d spent the week ahead of her visit getting his apartment in order. Several months had gone by since a woman last visited his place, and it had been almost two years since someone had spent the night there with him. On Thursday, his last day at work before his vacation, he left the station early to go to the Holon industrial area to buy a fold-out bed. He then cleared out the small room that served both as his office and a storage room, moving cartons of old documents—some related to his police work, and others to his personal life—to a storeroom downstairs, and taking the two dusty fans and old stereo system down to the trash room; the small
desk and computer he moved to the living room. As evening fell, he polished the windows by the gloomy light that cleaved through from the dirty glass of the lamp hanging from the ceiling, and hoped he hadn’t missed anything. The following morning he scrubbed the remaining rooms in the apartment, especially the kitchen, and then drove into Tel Aviv to shop for fruit and vegetables, spices and salted snacks at the Carmel market, where he also bought new linens for the fold-out bed, which was delivered on Sunday morning.

  He didn’t know if they’d be eating in. He didn’t even know if they’d be spending all of Marianka’s time in Israel together. To be on the safe side, he spent hours browsing through the Internet on Saturday in search of Tel Aviv’s finest restaurants. He also decided that if Marianka wanted to eat lunch or dinner at home, he would tell her that he usually eats out and suggest they do the shopping together in a local supermarket. He didn’t know whether to make plans for the evenings too.

  Marianka liked the apartment. She stepped carefully through the living room, as if she was walking around the house of a total stranger, looked at the picture on the wall—a framed black-and-white photograph of a father and son riding a bike along a country road—read the names on the CDs arranged on a tall metal stand, and then stopped by the bookcase. “These are the detective novels you told me about, aren’t they?” Almost all of them were translations into Hebrew.

  “Yes, they are. Let me show you the guest room,” he replied and led her to the small room, which—without the carton boxes and computer desk and with the fold-out bed, as well as the blue cushions and small lampshade he had managed to buy that morning—looked spacious and bright.

  He suggested they go to Tel Aviv or Jaffa for dinner, to discuss her vacation plans, but Marianka was tired from all the traveling and the hours spent sitting down on the airplane, and wanted to stretch her legs. She asked if they could walk to Tel Aviv, and he laughed.