“I was preparing for a trip, so I was home for most of the day,” the father said. He woke at 6:00 a.m., and then woke the boys. His wife woke their sister. Still no mention of the disability, as if the sister were a normal child. She gets picked up for school at 7:30 a.m. At this point, Avraham was writing down every word.
“Did Ofer go down to the grocery store?”
“I think so. He goes down every morning. But I don’t remember. Is it important?”
He then drove the younger son to kindergarten. Ofer left for school as usual, on foot. He didn’t know what Hannah had done.
After his stop at the kindergarten, the father had errands to run; he was at the bank, and then drove into Jaffa to renew the license on the car. After he returned home, they went shopping in the industrial area. He had something to eat while they were out. Ofer was the first of the children to return home—at some point before 2:00 p.m., but the father wasn’t sure, as he was napping at the time. He thought Ofer usually ate lunch alone, as his brother and sister returned home later. Perhaps he sometimes ate with Hannah. He couldn’t remember seeing him after he woke from his afternoon nap, but was sure that Ofer had stayed at home, just as the mother had said. He was probably doing homework or preparing for an exam in his room. Rafael Sharabi was in the bedroom, beginning to pack his bag for the trip, with the help of his wife. He hadn’t heard Ofer talking to anyone over the phone. The younger son returned at 4:00 p.m., driven home by the mother of another child from the kindergarten. The daughter got home after 5:00 p.m.
Avraham couldn’t hold back anymore. “So late?” he asked. “Where does she go to school?”
“What? She’s at a special school,” the father quietly responded, looking Avraham in the eyes.
“Why?”
“She has a mental disability. It’s a good school, with a long school day and lots of help.”
Now that the father had told him about her, Avraham felt he had nothing more to ask, as if all he had wanted was for them to stop denying her existence. “So she lives at home, then, not in an institution?” he asked nevertheless.
“No, Hannah wouldn’t have that. She barely agreed to send her to school. She wanted her to stay at home and to look after her herself. That’s how things were until she was seven. That’s why she gave up her job. She used to teach kindergarten.”
“And how did Ofer take it?”
“I thought we should consider a boarding school for her—for the sake of the other children. No, it wasn’t easy for him. But he helped out a lot—both Hannah and his sister. It was more difficult when he was little. He was ashamed, and would tell everyone at school that he was an only child. This was before his brother was born. But in recent years he’s been really good to her.”
Avraham put down his pen and thought about the silent mother. She had left her job to stay at home with the daughter in order to protect her from any harm out in the world, and inside the home from the father, who wanted to send her to an institution—because of the children, or in other words, for the boys.
“What’s her name?” he asked, and the father quietly said, “Ofer was the first to learn sign language, because she has a severe hearing problem. It’s part of her condition. Her name’s Danit.”
Avraham picked up his pen again, and they returned to that Tuesday. The family had eaten at around 7:00 p.m.—everyone together. The father bathed the younger son and put him to bed. Ofer was watching TV in the living room. The wife helped Danit bathe herself and get into bed. Ofer went back to his room after his brother had fallen asleep, presumably to play on the computer, with the volume turned down. The father didn’t think he had seen him writing e-mails and hadn’t noticed if he surfed the Internet, so wouldn’t know which sites he may have visited. He didn’t hear him talk on the phone. At 9:30 p.m., he and the wife had gone out, like they did before every trip. They went to meet some friends, another couple, at a café in the center of town. He had no idea what Ofer did that evening, and only remembered that when they returned home, relatively early, 11:00 p.m. maybe, he was asleep. There was nothing unusual about that; he thought that was the time Ofer normally went to bed.
“Did you have a fight that evening?” Avraham asked.
“Who?”
“You and your wife—or perhaps between the two of you and Ofer.”
“Not that I recall. Why?”
“Just asking.”
“Not that I remember. Things are a little tense sometimes before I go away, but I don’t recall an argument before the last trip.”
“And the next day?”
“I left home at five a.m. I was up already at four fifteen. Hannah also got up and we had coffee together. I then drove to Ashdod and left the car at the port, as always. As far as Hannah told me, Wednesday morning was a regular one too, no different from any other day.”
But on the morning of that Wednesday, Ofer had left for school and didn’t get there, and hadn’t been seen since. The father hadn’t gone into the boys’ room before he left. Nevertheless, he was certain they were both sleeping at the time. He hadn’t heard any sound coming from their room.
Avraham tried to remember if he had asked all he wanted to. “While you were out Tuesday evening, could Ofer have taken any money or a credit card from somewhere in the house without you noticing?” he asked. “Maybe from a drawer in which you hide some cash?”
“I don’t hide any,” the father replied. “There’s always some cash in the inner pocket of a jacket in my closet, and Ofer knows where it is. When I’m away, he and Hannah take money from there. He doesn’t have a credit card. And he didn’t take anything. It was one of the first things I asked Hannah to check.”
Avraham remembered she had told him.
“And you haven’t noticed anything missing from the apartment since your return, right? Something he may have taken with him?”
The pages in front of him were filling up with his handwritten notes—diagonal lines of text in blue ink. This time, however, his fingers were clean. He said, “Is there anything you’d like to tell me that I haven’t asked about?” and the father shook his head to say no.
He hadn’t dared to with the mother, but he felt that Rafael Sharabi was up to it, and so he said, “Tell me, what’s your gut feeling? Where do you think Ofer might be? What could have happened to him? Try to imagine where he might be right now.”
The father’s response was unexpected. “I have no idea,” he said. “I’m angry with him. Do you have any idea what I’d give to know? I told Hannah I thought he decided to run away for a few days. Just to scare us. Maybe we did something to him, hurt him in some way. But I am also angry about what he is putting us through, Hannah in particular. She doesn’t believe me. She thinks something has happened to him.”
Avraham hadn’t expected the father to speak of anger. Maybe it was his way to avoid contemplating the worst, a way to imagine seeing his son again and talking to him as before. Had this anger ever turned into violence? he wondered. Had he ever hit Ofer? Avraham’s eyes were once again drawn to the father’s large hands.
“How is your wife doing?” he asked, and Rafael Sharabi said, “She has dreams, nightmares. And she had to cope alone until yesterday. She’s barely sleeping.”
Ilana had been briefed about Shrapstein’s “interesting direction” and thought it was a good idea to bring the suspect in for questioning.
“What suspect? Who thinks he’s a suspect?” Avraham tried to remain calm.
“We do,” she replied. “Bring him in. Let’s rule out any possibility we can.”
Neither his conversation with Rafael Sharabi nor the picture that was emerging made any impression on her. She was more taken by Shrapstein’s arbitrary shift in action. Avraham knocked on his door, but there was no answer. He then called him on his cell phone and asked if he could return to the station to handle the Ze’ev Avni interview for him.
Shrapstein refused. His inquiries were progressing and he had received important information from the parole officer about the suspect who lived in the neighborhood. Apparently he hadn’t been in touch with her the previous week, contrary to what was required of him.
Avraham had no choice but to wait in his office for Ze’ev Avni.
Perhaps Ilana was right. Despite the open talk he had with the father and the filling-in of some details, he still didn’t have a clear notion of the nature of the relationship between Rafael Sharabi and his son—aside from the absences. When he had asked him if he knew who Ofer’s friends were, the father had shrugged his shoulders and replied, “I don’t think he has many friends. Don’t know.” Apart from pointing out the fact that Ofer had taught him how to use the Internet, there was nothing in his words that spoke of closeness, only of responsibility and duties and mutual assistance. The mother looked after the daughter, and the father, when he was home, helped with the younger son, taking him to kindergarten in the morning and bathing him in the evening. But what about Ofer?
Avraham stared at the walls of his office, with neither a window nor a picture, and thought about Igor Kintiev, who was waiting in a detention cell for his indictment. Suddenly he wanted so much to fly to Brussels. A plane took off from Ben-Gurion Airport and turned westward, flying over the sea, where tiny cargo ships sailed.
Only a few more days—unless something unexpected happened, and unless he canceled the trip at the last minute. What was he going to do for a week in the company of Jean-Marc Karot?
The crazy Belgian police officer who would be hosting him in Brussels had stepped out into the arrivals hall at Ben-Gurion Airport dressed in a black suit and tie. He looked thirty years old, maybe a little younger. He was as tall as a basketball player and as elegant as a movie star. And Avraham stood there like an idiot, carrying a sign that read “Jean-Marc Karot” and dressed in a formal police uniform. It was back in late March, in the afternoon, and the weather was mild.
“Excellent! So let’s drop off my suitcases and go out and find some hookers” were the first words out of the Belgian’s mouth after Avraham had told him that he would take him to his hotel in Tel Aviv and that the exchange program didn’t start until the next day. Avraham was sure he was joking. He subsequently learned that that was the entirety of what Jean-Marc Karot planned to do in Israel. He was married and had two children. Advanced training courses and police exchange programs were of zero interest to him, and he even hinted to his host that he was welcome to join him in a threesome.
Avraham remembered he hadn’t checked to see if his passport was still valid. If it had expired, he’d have to cancel the trip.
There was a knock at the door.
8
It was his first time inside a police station.
He had of course seen the precinct house from the outside a number of times; to him, the gray building—short and flat topped, compressed, as if someone had squashed it—had always represented everything ugly about Holon. From afar, it looked like a handful of trailers that had been joined together in a sandy wasteland. Not an ounce of splendor—a building typical of a city whose inhabitants expect nothing from life other than basic survival. Perhaps because he had never lived among them, Michael Rosen had described them as simple people who led simple lives, Ze’ev thought.
A few years ago, Ze’ev had almost gone to the Tel Aviv central station to file a complaint about a bicycle that had been stolen from a shed in the yard, but was persuaded that the cops wouldn’t do anything about it. This time he had been called in. He opened the glass door. To his left, behind a counter, stood a uniformed policewoman. She was eating a rice cracker. The place looked more dingy and grimy than a branch of the Unemployment Services.
He was tense but felt no fear. Had he been called into the police the morning of the day before, he wouldn’t have been able to handle it. The time that had since passed had left him stronger. The fear had disappeared by the evening, after the writing workshop and the conversation with Michael Rosen. He had felt liberated enough to write.
“I’ve been called in for a meeting at five with Inspector Avraham,” Ze’ev said to the policewoman behind the counter. “Can you tell me where his office is?” and the policewoman asked, “Is he expecting you?” as if his first remark hadn’t implied exactly that.
The police had a single advantage over him: he wasn’t aware of exactly what they knew. He was almost certain they knew nothing about the phone call, despite his slip of the tongue on the dunes. Had they known, they would have picked him up immediately. They certainly didn’t know about the letter. When he left for the station, the letter was still in the Sharabi family mailbox—despite having been there for more than half the day already, plus the fact that Ofer’s father had passed by the mailbox at least twice—the night before, when, standing at the balcony window, Ze’ev had seen him returning home; and in the morning too, because they had met by chance in the stairwell.
There had been something ironic about their encounter. They had gone down the stairs together and had spoken about the searches for Ofer, and because their conversation had gone on until they were outside the building, Ofer’s father hadn’t had a chance to notice the envelope. When Ze’ev returned later from school in the afternoon, the letter was still there. I could simply take it out, flashed through his mind.
Inspector Avraham was waiting for him in a small, dimly lit room in which there was little space for anything other than the desk and the pair of chairs on either side of it. Avraham was in uniform, and didn’t get up to shake his hand.
“Is this an interrogation room?” Ze’ev asked as he sat down, and Avraham said, “It’s my office.”
Ze’ev’s advantage was that he had spent the past few days thinking endlessly about the police. He had been observing them at work since Thursday, first from the window of his living room balcony, and then at the search site. He had been preparing for the meeting with Avraham ever since his promise to return to their apartment. He had thought about Inspector Avraham far more than Inspector Avraham had thought about him—of that he was absolutely certain. He handed over his ID card, at Avraham’s request, and reminded him that the address had yet to be updated. “But I’m sure you remember the correct address,” he said and smiled, not entirely sure that the police inspector had understood the remark.
This was their fourth encounter. The first was on Thursday, at the apartment. Avraham had chosen to ignore him and had spoken to Michal in the kitchen. A rank-and-file policewoman was sent to deal with him. He and the inspector had exchanged a few words at the door. On Friday, they had ignored each other on the stairs. And they had met on Saturday too, at the search site, where Avraham was in charge. During all their previous meetings, Ze’ev had tried to attract Avraham’s attention, without much success. This time, things were different, although the initial questions he faced were formal and dry, and Avraham did appear somewhat switched off. He was asked how long he and his wife had been living in the building, but wasn’t asked where they had lived before then. He was asked about his job and its location, but Avraham stopped him in midsentence.
“What was the nature of your relationship with the missing boy?” Avraham asked, and Ze’ev said, “I was his private tutor. That’s why I’m here, right?”
“You’re here because you asked to be here,” Avraham said. “You said you had information for us regarding the investigation. I’m all ears.”
Michal’s text message, which had come through during the break between the second and third classes, had alarmed him for a moment. She had told him that Inspector Avraham from the police w
as looking for him and wanted to arrange a meeting. She had sent him a number to call. He called during the next break but Avraham wasn’t available. When he tried again later that afternoon, from outside the schoolyard, Avraham invited him to the station for what he termed “further questioning.” Now he was being told outright that he had been called in only because he had asked to be. There appeared to be no reason for any uneasiness regarding his slip of the tongue at the search site—unless it was all an interrogation ploy.
“Not exactly information,” Ze’ev said. “I simply wanted to tell you a little about Ofer, to give you a better picture of who he is. Maybe it will help your investigation. I’m sure you’ve spoken to his teachers at school, but I had a very special insight into Ofer’s life. I tutored him privately, in his room, and I am also familiar with the entire context, his parents, the home environment. That’s a big advantage—in my opinion, at least.”
Avraham asked how he had come to be Ofer’s tutor, and he duly described the circumstances, all the while getting the impression that his words were sparking some interest in the policeman. At this stage in their conversation, he was still unable to read and correctly interpret the facial expressions of the inspector, who glanced from time to time at the modest digital watch on his right wrist. Ze’ev wanted to ask him why his parents had named him Avraham; after all, they must have known that his double-barreled name was likely to attract a degree of ridicule—particularly at a young age, from among the other children. He would have gladly asked him, too, about his decision to become a policeman and what he had studied at university. Had he always known that this was what he wanted to do?
Ofer’s parents had learned that Ze’ev was an English teacher at a Tel Aviv high school. His wife had probably told them. Ofer’s mother had knocked on the door to their apartment one evening, without Ofer, and had asked Ze’ev if he’d be willing to tutor him. It was a few weeks into the school year—still September, probably. The students in Ofer’s class had been divided into groups based on their competency in English, and Ofer had been placed in the bottom group. His parents wanted him to aim higher. His mother, Hannah, appeared particularly concerned with the matter. He hadn’t been sure about it. He had no experience in private tutoring. He had consented in the end because they were neighbors, but primarily because he had been drawn to Ofer’s shyness. He had of course seen him in and around the building. He had offered to begin and see how things went.
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