The Missing File (27 page)
Authors: D. A. Mishani
That wasn't a question of belief.
“Are you listening to me, Avi? I don't understand why you choose to believe the father and not the mother. Did you not consider the possibility that she had been telling the truth? That she found him in his own room, as she said? That Ofer didn't hurt his sister?”
He suspended his dimmed gaze on her. “What do you mean?”
“That Ofer's father lied. After all, he clearly has a motive to do so. The story he told you about Ofer and his sister will surely influence the sentence he receives, right?”
“Yesâand rightly so, don't you think?”
“So you agree, then, that if the fight between them broke out over something else, you'd be treating him differently? What if he came up with the story to give himself a justifiable motive and extenuating circumstances and all of you were drawn into it and failed to listen to what the mother was trying to tell you?”
Shrapstein had been absolutely sure that Rafael Sharabi had cracked to pieces and had told the truth, and that Hannah Sharabi had kept on lying. And everyone had accepted his position.
“I'm telling you, I don't believe that the mother lied,” Marianka insisted. “Ofer's mother told you the truth. You've already confirmed that she didn't lie when she told you she returned home after the father, right? And didn't you wonder about the fact that the father returned home early? This is mere conjecture, but perhaps he was the one who assaulted the daughter? Perhaps he thought that Ofer was sleeping and went into her room, and maybe Ofer was awake or was waked by noise coming from the girl's room and found his father there? That would explain not only why the father killed him but also why it was so important for him to conceal what really happened, to come up with the story of Ofer's disappearance. Did it never occur to any of you that Ofer may have been trying to protect his sister?”
Marianka's words shocked him. “I would never hurt my childrenâno matter who asks me to do that,” Hannah Sharabi had said to him during the interrogation. And he recalled Ilana's description of the reconstruction in which the father had pushed Ma'alul first against one wall and then against another.
“But why would she not have told us explicitly that her husband was lying?” he asked.
“She said she was afraid of him, didn't she? And she did tell you explicitly. You told me she kept insisting that she found Ofer in his own room and that he hadn't harmed his sister. You simply decided to believe the father's version of events and not what the mother told you.”
Ilana didn't answer his call.
He left her a message, asking her to call him, insisting that it was urgent. His whole world was spinning around him. He wanted to get back into the car and go to the station right then and there; he wanted to open the file and watch the video recordings again; he wanted to get Rafael Sharabi back into an interrogation room and question him himself. And he wasn't willing to let go of Marianka. He stood facing her, his back to the old city.
“You can't go,” he whispered, and she said, “I have to be back at work on Monday.”
“So quit your job.”
“And then what?”
Or he could quit. He didn't really want to go back anyway. Leaving the station that night, he had told himself that it had probably been his final case.
“You can't quit,” Marianka said. “Don't you remember saying that even when you aren't a policeman you're a policeman?”
But maybe now he could? He sat beside her on the bench again.
“Don't let a single case break you,” she said. “And I understand how difficult it was. Besides, the investigation isn't over. Didn't you tell me how you can always prove the detective wrong? Didn't you say that the true solution is always different from the one that's given? See? It's happened to you too.”
“It doesn't happen in real lifeâonly in detective novels,” he said, but he hoped that he was wrong.
He saw Ofer again, putting his backpack on the park bench and resting his head on it.
He closed his eyes.
The skies darkened.
They stopped by his apartment to collect Marianka's suitcase, then drove to the airport.
Avraham promised to try to extend his vacation and to come to her, perhaps even in two or three days.
They held each other as if they would never meet again, but that was not true.
They met.
T
o be continued . . .
I would like to thank Claire Wachtel, my editor at HarperCollins, for her insightful reading of
The Missing File
and her meticulous work on preparing the American edition of the novel, and thanks to all the great Harper team members for their exceptional care. I could not have imagined Avraham Avraham in better hands.
To Ronit Zafran, Marianne Fritch, Marc Koralnik, and Eva Koralnik at the Liepman Literary Agency I owe the fact that Avraham speaks English now, along with many other languages that I do not.
Special thanks to my editor and dear friend, Shira Hadad, the most sensitive and encouraging reader a writer can hope for.
D. A. MISHANI
is the editor of Israeli fiction and crime literature at Keter Books in Israel and is a literary scholar specializing in the history of detective literature.
The Missing File
is his first novel and the first in a series featuring the police inspector Avraham Avraham.
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This book is a work of fiction. The
characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author's imagination and
are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons,
living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
THE MISSING
FILE
. Copyright © 2013 by Dror Mishani. English translation © 2013 by HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved under
International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required
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Originally published as
Tik Needar
in Israel in 2011 by Keter Books.
FIRST
EDITION
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.
ISBN 978-0-06-219537-1
EPub Edition © MARCH 2013 ISBN:
9780062195395
13 14 15 16 17 OV/RRD 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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