“Vahaba is on her way to the station and will join us in a few minutes,” he said. And then he asked, “Do you want to tell me in the meantime what it is you need to speak with her about?”
Mali didn’t intend on answering him and wasn’t afraid, not even when Avraham asked her, “Did you come to talk to us about the policeman?”
When he got up and left the interrogation room for the first time, Mali thought he had given up, but after a short time he returned and placed a folder on the table and removed from it the picture of Kobi. “Do you want to look again at the picture we showed you and tell me if you recognize this man?” he asked. She didn’t look. When he said to her, “Ms. Bengtson, I ask that you look at the picture,” he had already raised his voice. “Do you recognize the man in the picture or do you not recognize him?”
She began to speak because she suddenly saw Kobi.
Exactly like then, in room 723 in the Royal Club Hotel in Eilat. Kobi looked at her over Avraham’s shoulder and smiled his smile, which was almost the only thing that hadn’t changed in him, and this is what caused her to answer. She said, “I came because of my husband, Kobi,” and Avraham brought the photograph closer to her and said, “You’re not answering the question, Ms. Bengtson. Do you or do you not recognize the man in the picture?”
This was another sign that she missed, like so many additional signs. She didn’t say to Avraham that the man in the photograph was Kobi, but his next question was: “Ms. Bengtson, do you confirm that that’s your husband?”
There was no longer a man behind Avraham. Kobi disappeared and left her alone in the room.
Avraham gripped the pen in his hand and wrote something and then sighed and asked her, “Does your husband know that you’re here now, Mazal?” and Mali suddenly said, without expecting that this is what she’d say, “Please call me Mali, if you can,” and Avraham looked at her for a moment in silence as if he were thinking about the things she had said to him. And then he just said again, “Ms. Bengtson, I’m trying to understand if you’re here voluntarily.”
Avraham often left the interrogation room in those hours, and Mali thought that this was connected to the fact that he wasn’t ready for what he discovered or to the fact that he was waiting for Esty Vahaba, as she had demanded. But it was exactly the opposite. Vahaba was outside and waited for Avraham’s approval to join the interrogation, and Avraham left Mali behind in the room alone in order to continue spinning the web that she was trapped in without understanding that Kobi had entered into as well.
But this allowed her to think.
Without her wanting it she was again in the room where everything began. She heard the sound of the water flowing into the bathtub. The television turned on. The only sentence she succeeded in saying then, I have two little girls. The interrogation room at the Holon police was almost identical in every way to the room in Eilat where she sat when the policewoman questioned her about the clothes she changed and the party that was held at the hotel before the assault. But now she was different. Daniella and Noy were at day care and school, one without a costume and the other dressed as a princess. And she thought a lot about Kobi. About his appearance in the room and about the fact that he wouldn’t be with her in the delivery room. About the months that they would be far from each other. When she imagined herself driving in the car with the girls and the baby, were they traveling to visit him in the place where he’d be? It was clear to her that Kobi would be angry at her when he discovered what she had done, but she hoped that afterward he’d understand. He would see that he would have been caught regardless and that her confession helped the police to understand him. She planned to tell him about the pregnancy and to ask him to cooperate with the police, so that even if he were punished he’d manage to be released not long after the baby was born and they could simply leave Israel and go to Australia.
The door opened again, and Esty Vahaba stood in the opening. Avraham entered behind her with a chair, but from that moment he allowed Vahaba to ask the questions and was barely involved in the interrogation. And Vahaba’s voice calmed Mali, at least for a while.
“Hello, Mazal. How are you?” Vahaba asked.
She was terrible—but at the same time better than she had been for years.
“I’m happy that you came, Mazal, you know? I had a feeling that you’d come, and I think you did the right thing.”
Mali imagined how the camera was documenting her, and at that moment this gave her strength. When Vahaba asked, “Do you understand that your husband is suspected of impersonating an officer and of harassing rape victims, as we told you?” Mali nodded.
“Did you say anything to him about our conversation? And tell me the truth honestly, because it’s important.”
“I didn’t tell him anything.”
“Does he know you’re here now?”
“No. I told you. But I won’t hide that I was here from him.”
This was correct, because her fear of Kobi also disappeared from the moment she made the decision. And in its place was only sadness and longing.
“So why are you here now? Why didn’t you tell us about him when we were with you the day before yesterday?”
“Because I was afraid that he’d come home. And I also wasn’t sure that he did it. And I came to explain to you what happened.”
“What do you mean you weren’t sure that he did it?”
“I wasn’t sure that was him.”
“And how do you know now?”
Avraham didn’t stop looking at her, but his gaze didn’t frighten her. It was as if she finally succeeded in getting up from the bed in room 723 without waiting, shutting off the television that was on, and turning off the faucet of running water.
“Do you mean that you knew he was impersonating an officer even before we showed you the picture?”
“I knew, yes. But not that he was doing it now.”
“I don’t understand what you’re telling me, Mazal. Explain to me please in a clear manner.”
“I knew that Kobi once did it,” she said, and her voice was clear and didn’t shake.
Vahaba asked, “When was this ‘once’?”
“A few months after what happened to me in Eilat. Nearly three years ago. He did it only one time.”
“And how did you know about this, Mazal? Did he tell you himself what he did?”
Mali didn’t answer immediately, because the questions were getting closer and closer to what was hard for her to say, even though she was no longer afraid.
“Mazal, you said that you came so that we would understand him,” Vahaba continued, “and I’m trying to understand the two of you. Look me in the eyes please. I know what happened to you in Eilat. And also that your assailant wasn’t caught, correct? Did your husband try to catch the rapist?”
Mali shook her head, because that wasn’t the reason. Kobi never mentioned the man who attacked her.
“So what did he want, Mazal? Was he trying to prove something to those investigating your rape? To get back at the police?”
These were the things that were still hard for Mali to speak about, and mainly because of which she didn’t know if she’d manage to enter the station and turn him in. She asked Vahaba, “To get back for what?”
Suddenly Avraham interrupted the conversation and said, “So what the hell was he trying to do? Why would someone dress up as a police officer and harass women who went through something like that?” And then he removed an additional photograph, of a young woman, from the folder. “Do you know this woman?” Avraham asked, and it seemed to Mali that she had seen her face. “Let me tell you who this is. Her name is Diana. She was raped in 2012. Like you, no? Do you want to know what your husband did? He contacted her and introduced himself as a police officer and set up a meeting with her. In her apartment. And forced her to tell him about the rape she experienced in great detail and he also recorded her. And then he also assaulted her. Do you understand this, Ms. Bengtson? Can you imagine what she went through?
What your husband did to this woman?”
What shook her and brought the fear back to her were the things that Avraham said about the assault. She looked at Esty Vahaba in order to understand if Avraham was lying before she said to the two of them, “It can’t be that he hurt her. You don’t know Kobi.”
“How do you know? Did he tell you everything he did, Ms. Bengtson? I’m telling you he did assault her. Cruelly even. Did he forget to tell you that? Do you want to see pictures of what he did to her? Or perhaps he told you and you’re collaborating with him?”
Because of the young woman’s face in the photo that Avraham placed on the table, she recalled the hit-and-run accident that Kobi made up and the woman whom she imagined lying injured in the street. Had he tried hinting to her that he had hurt someone? Maybe unintentionally? She didn’t believe that this was true but nevertheless the fear returned, and she recalled the first night when he put on the uniform. And that was the moment in which the story burst out. Mali closed her eyes, and Avraham spoke to her from out of the darkness. “I’ll ask this one last time, Ms. Bengtson. Before I accuse you of being an accomplice and obstructing justice. Tell me, please, how you knew what your husband was doing and what exactly he did tell you.” But she still didn’t answer him. When he came up to her she opened her eyes, because he was too close when he said, “Why aren’t you talking to me, Ms. Bengtson?” And Mali whispered, “Because he did the same thing to me.”
Silence descended on the room, and Vahaba asked, “What do you mean he did the same thing to you?” And Mali again said, “He did the same thing to me,” before she again lost control of herself.
The hours that came after this are even foggier in her memory.
She does remember that Avraham brought a cup of water up close to her and then mumbled something to Vahaba and left, and she remained in the room with the policewoman and was unable to stop crying. Afterward she told Vahaba everything, not about herself but rather about the woman who wasn’t her, whose face first appeared in the elevator at the hotel, and only now she had managed to erase from all the mirrors. She also remembered the phone call in which she asked Kobi to come to the station, even though she wanted to forget it, and then running on the stairs of the station. Later in their conversation Vahaba even tried to give her a hint as to what Kobi was truly suspected of, but Mali didn’t understand that hint, too. Vahaba waited for her to drink and stroked her hair and asked her, “Do you want to tell me what he did to you?” And when her crying quieted Mali spoke about the woman who wasn’t her who was raped in Eilat, and about her husband who arrived at the hospital the next morning and in the months to come didn’t leave her for a moment. The woman had two small girls and her husband quit his job and stayed at home with her and took care of the daughters by himself and she wouldn’t have gotten through this period without him. Throughout this time he didn’t ask her a thing and only waited patiently for her to recover. And actually when it seemed that she was getting stronger thanks to him and when she decided to return to her job and he stayed home because he hadn’t found another job, their hell began. One evening, after the girls had gone to bed, the husband asked his wife, “Why can’t you tell me what happened there?” And when she asked him, “Where?” he said to her, “There, in Eilat.”
“I don’t know. Why do you want to talk about it?”
She didn’t know how far things would deteriorate, and had she known, she would have responded differently. “At the police you told them everything, no?” the husband asked, and the woman who wasn’t her was silent because she didn’t know what to say.
When he insisted that he had to know what happened there, she said to him, “Enough, Kobi, please,” but the husband wouldn’t let up. “Imagine that you’re at the police again,” he asked, and she said only, “I don’t want to.”
That was the beginning.
And the end as well.
The camera fixed on the wall filmed her, and Vahaba wrote while she spoke, and it seemed to Mali that when she finished talking that everything would be behind her and that she’d be able to go and leave behind in the station the woman she was talking about, and not see her again. Vahaba put down the pen and asked, “And what happened after this, Mali? Did you know that he did the same thing to other women as well?”
“Do you mean back then? I explained to you, he did it only one time,” she said. “And he told me that night. He didn’t want to do it, do you understand? I know you don’t believe me, but you must know Kobi to know. I had a support group of victims and he found the list and went to a woman whose details were there. I didn’t even ask him who. He told me that night and swore he wouldn’t do it again. I told him everything that happened to me that night in Eilat so that he’d stop.”
Something in the words she spoke drew Vahaba’s attention and only in retrospect did Mali understand what. She asked, “Do you still have that list at home?” and Mali said, “Don’t know. I haven’t looked for it in a long time.”
“Do you think you can find it?”
“Maybe.”
“Have you seen it recently?”
“No.”
“Maybe Kobi has it?”
Was Vahaba trying to hint to her what Kobi was truly suspected of when she asked her, “Do you remember if in your group there was a woman by the name of Leah Yeger?” A knock was heard at the interrogation room door and Vahaba left, and when she came back to the room Avraham also returned with her, and some time after this, maybe an hour or maybe more, was the phone call.
The two of them treated her differently now, and Avraham spoke to her in a soft voice and Mali truly thought that everything was behind her, because she told them everything she knew, but when she asked him if she could go, Avraham said to her quietly, “For now, no.”
He asked, “Do you know where your husband is now?” and she explained that Kobi was supposed to be at the vet and that afterward the two of them needed to meet at Noy’s school for a Purim party and then take the girls home, and Vahaba asked if she could call someone to pick up the girls instead of them.
“But why? Do you want to arrest him now? You can’t wait until tomorrow or the afternoon?”
There were endless terrible moments that day but that was the worst. She thought she was helping Kobi, and she had lied to him so many times that week, and even the last lie was supposed to be for his benefit. To lie in order to tell the truth. In order to save him.
“Will you arrest him at home? Is it impossible to wait until he isn’t at home?” she asked, and the two of them were silent.
“Don’t arrest him at home, I beg you. We won’t be able to go back home. We have two small girls. You can’t ask him to come to the station?” And Vahaba asked her, “How? Without telling him he’s a suspect?”
And this, too, she’d never be able to forget, that the idea was hers.
“I’ll tell him to come and meet me here. I’ll tell him that there are developments in the rape investigation and that you asked me to come in.”
They looked at each other, and Avraham left the room, and when he returned he held out her phone to her. Vahaba sat next to her while she called, but Kobi didn’t answer, and she tried him again, and again he didn’t answer, and Avraham walked away from them and said, “We’ll wait a few minutes and call again,” but the cell phone rang before she could try. They looked at the phone and she nodded, and Avraham signaled to her with his hand to answer.
“Hi, Mali, did you call me?”
She heard children in the background and was sure she heard barks as well, and therefore she asked him, “Are you still at the vet?” and Kobi said, “No, not anymore. I’m on the way home. I couldn’t do it in the end.”
She lied to him in order to tell the truth, in order to save the two of them, when she said in a steady voice that she was on the way to the police station on Fichman Street. That they called the bank and asked her to go there urgently, because there’s a development in the rape investigation, without telling her what
development. “Can you meet me there? Do you know where it is?”
There was a moment of silence before Kobi asked, “And what’s with Noy?” and Mali said, “I spoke to my mom. She’ll go to her party instead of us and will take the two of them to her place.”
And those were the last sentences.
Did he know where she was calling from? Or did it take him time to understand? He asked, “Are you already there?” and Mali said to him without her voice shaking, “No, not yet. I’ll be there in two minutes,” and Kobi again was silent before saying to her, “I’m coming right away.”
Afterward she only remembers herself running. Not like at the hotel where she barely managed to walk down the hallway until she reached the elevator.
She was sure that Kobi would arrive in a few minutes, and the police left and took her cell phone with them, but a long time passed before they returned. Vahaba set a bottle of water on the table, and when Mali asked her if Kobi had arrived she said, “Not yet,” and Mali wasn’t sure Vahaba hadn’t lied. She didn’t feel movement in her belly, even though she placed her two hands on it after Vahaba left, and she tried to feel something inside her, and then remembered Australia, because it was clear to her that when everything was over they’d go there. For a moment the two of them were again twentysomething. They walked beside each other among the eucalyptus trees that were so tall that the two of them could hide from the rain in a cave-like hollow that had opened up wide in one of the trunks. They walked and in front of them were two large dogs, their legs not making a sound when they treaded up the forest floor covered in wet brown and yellow leaves. Kobi tried to show her something at the top of one of the trees, a bird perhaps, but Mali wasn’t able to see a thing.
Did all that really happen then? Did she really think about Australia while she waited for him or only after she heard the shot?
The Man Who Wanted to Know Everything Page 19