His first interview was with Abraham Sassoon. The landlord identified both woman and child as his tenants. Sergeant Rivlin went on to interview the rest of the neighbors, workers in various nearby stores where Esther had shopped and at a dance club she often frequented, and her colleagues at the law firm where she'd worked as a secretary. All expressed shock at the murders. All had nothing but good things to say about the victims. None could point the finger at anyone who might wish to see either Esther or the boy they knew as her child dead. At no point did Rivlin interview any Irgun member or any of the other passengers who were on board the Salonika. He never discovered nor suspected that the two victims were living under assumed names.

Rivlin had reached out to police informers to see if they'd heard any chatter regarding the murders. He had also pursued the jewelry angle by visiting pawnshops and bringing known fences in for questioning. Neither effort yielded any results.

Rivlin worked the case hard for two weeks and made increasingly infrequent entries over the next four. But it was soon clear that he had hit a dead end. No leads emerged. No suspects appeared. The case quickly grew stale, then cold. Finally, it was abandoned and set aside.

14

I read the file through twice, scribbling names and dates and places in my notebook, adding my impressions as I went along. Nothing jumped to grab my attention. There was no eureka moment.

I had a look at the English version of the file, but it appeared to be nothing more than a translated copy of the Hebrew report, most of it typed. One thing the English report contained that the Hebrew one did not was a document, dated four weeks after the murders, in which Rivlin detailed his actions during the investigation and explained his lack of progress.

"Where can I find Sergeant Shabtai Rivlin?" I asked Reuben in his office, handing him the investigation file.

Reuben set the folder aside on his desk. He picked up the phone, dialed an internal extension, and asked if Rivlin was around. A moment later he hung up. "There's a café near the corner of Lillenblum and Rishonim. You should be able to find him there. You can't miss him. He's bald and got a big mustache."

"All right. I'll find him."