The Chosen Child Read online

  He choked for air. He wanted to cry out for his mother, to tell her what was happening to him, but he couldn’t. He kicked at his assailant again, but that was all he could manage.

  I’m dying I’m dying I’m dying don’t let me die.

  But then he felt a sharp, painful blow to the side of his throat; and then another; and then another.

  And his very last thought was: Oh Mary, Mother of God. He’s cutting my head off.

  2

  Sarah was blowdrying her hair when Piotr knocked on the door of her room. He knocked so timidly the first time that she couldn’t hear him, and when he did pluck up the courage to bang really loudly she pulled open the door and demanded, ‘What? Hotel’s on fire? What?’

  Piotr stood in the doorway twisting his fingers together like a small boy who has to report to the principal. ‘I’m afraid worse.’

  ‘Worse? What do you mean, worse? Come on in, somebody might see me looking like this and think I’m Ivana Trump.’

  ‘You’re not dressed, Ms Leonard.’

  ‘Not dressed for the street, Mr Gogiel, but perfectly decent. Besides, I don’t know what to wear for something that’s worse than the hotel being on fire.’

  Piotr edged his way into the room, and stood awkwardly next to the window, as far away from Sarah as he could manage. Sarah sat down in front of the mirror and started to brush out her full, blonde bob as if she had borne a grudge against it since childhood.

  ‘The police called me at home this morning,’ said Piotr. ‘They said that somebody was killed on the construction site.’

  Sarah put down her brush. ‘Killed? Oh, my God, I’m sorry. How did it happen?’

  ‘They don’t know yet.’

  ‘I always said that Brzezicki’s safety standards were shit. Didn’t I say that? Half of those guys were walking around without hard hats. I saw one guy knocking down a wall and all he had on his feet were goddamned plastic sandals. I mean, what a bozo. You’d think they were spending the day on the beach, not demolishing a six-storey building.’

  Piotr swallowed. He was a big, gentle young man with a huge round head and very little hair, although he couldn’t have been older than thirty-one or thirty-two. He had the brightest blue eyes that Sarah had ever seen. She liked him a lot, and what was more, she trusted him, which was more than she could say for some of the natty, slick-haired new managers who worked for Vistula Kredytowy. They’d all watched Wall Street too many times, and thought it was true.

  ‘It wasn’t an accident. I’m afraid. Somebody was murdered.’

  ‘Are you kidding me? Not one of Brzezicki’s men?’

  ‘No, no. It was somebody called Jan Kaminski. He’s a radio announcer – quite famous in Warsaw. They found him in a sewer. They said it was totally horrific.’

  ‘Oh, God. It’s not going to hold things up, is it?’

  ‘I don’t know. You’ll have to talk to the police about that.’

  ‘I intend to.’

  She sat down in front of the dressing-table and put on her eye make-up. Piotr didn’t know whether to watch her or to stare out of the window at the stylized trees painted on the blank brick wall of the opposite building. She was worth watching, however. She was a very smart, highly-groomed thirty-year-old with a strikingly pale face. Although she spoke with a brisk Chicago accent, she looked distinctively Polish, which was part of the reason she was here. She had inherited her mother’s high cheekbones and translucent aquamarine eyes, as well as her short upturned nose.

  She dressed behind the closet door, still talking, while Piotr fidgeted in embarrassment. She was wide-shouldered and big-breasted, but the perfectly-cut dove grey suit which she put on made her look leaner and taller than she really was.

  ‘This Jan Kaminski. Should I know who he is?’

  ‘Not really. He does a news show for Radio Syrena... well, a sort of investigative news show with satirical comments, you know? He’s quite popular these days. Well, he was.’

  ‘Are the police still on site?’

  ‘They said they’d talk to you later.’

  ‘Crap. I need to talk to them now.’

  ‘Well... I don’t like to criticize, Ms Leonard, but I don’t think that you can treat the police in the same way as the Wydzial Gospodarki Przestrzennej.’

  He was talking about the planning department which had opposed the original plans for the Senate Hotel. Sarah had gone to meet them and reduced two of the senior officials to tears. The same afternoon the plans were approved with only one minor alteration to the façade. There is no exact Polish word for ‘ballbreaker,’ but that was the day that the men in charge of Warsaw’s architectural planning discovered what it meant.

  Sarah laughed, and gave Piotr a reassuring pat on the shoulder. ‘I don’t intend to make them cry, if that’s what you mean.’

  Piotr followed her apprehensively out of the automatic doors of the Holiday Inn. It was a warm, bright morning, and the streets were crowded. They made their way through the parking lot opposite the hotel, between dilapidated Polonez estates and dented Volkswagens, as well as a few lovingly-waxed Volvos and Mercedes. She walked so quickly that he had difficulty keeping up.

  ‘They said he was killed late last night. Some teenager found him.’

  ‘What was he doing on the site?’

  ‘They wouldn’t say.’

  ‘Why didn’t they tell me earlier?’

  They crossed Marszalkowska and were almost run down by a roaring, relentless bus. It didn’t take more than another two minutes of power-walking before they reached the demolition site. Five or six police cars were parked outside, and the whole of the sidewalk was cordoned off with red-and-white tapes. Sarah pushed her way through the crowds of bystanders with a series of clear, commanding ‘proszes’. When she reached the tape she ducked straight underneath it.

  A policeman immediately came up her with his hand raised. ‘You can’t come in here.’

  ‘Of course I can. My company owns the damn place.’

  ‘Madam, it doesn’t matter if your company owns half of Warsaw. Nobody’s –’

  ‘Who’s in charge here?’ she cut in.

  ‘You’re not allowed in. You’ll have to go back behind the tape.’

  ‘Excuse me? I thought we’d finished with that part of the conversation. I want to speak to the officer in charge.’

  The policeman appealed to Piotr, but all Piotr could do was shrug. ‘She doesn’t understand what “can’t” means.’

  At that moment three detectives came out of the door in the hoarding, followed by a photographer and a man carrying a large aluminium briefcase. One of the detectives stopped when he saw Sarah, and walked over to her. He was a stocky man with white, short-cropped hair. His head was too big for his body, but he was handsome in a craggy, pitted kind of way. He wore a crumpled tan suit and a jazzy red-and-yellow necktie with lightning flashes on it.

  ‘What’s the problem?’ he wanted to know.

  ‘This lady wants to come in, komisarz. She says her company owns this site.’

  ‘There’s no “says” about it,’ Sarah retorted. ‘Are you in charge here?’

  ‘That’s right,’ the detective told her. He took out a Camel and lit it one-handed with a heavy stainless steel lighter. ‘There’s been a murder, I’m afraid, You can’t come in.’

  ‘Can you tell me what happened?’

  ‘No, I’m afraid I can’t.’

  ‘Well, can you at least tell me how long it’s going to be before my contractors can get back to work?’

  ‘I can’t tell you that, either. My forensic people haven’t finished yet.’

  ‘What are we talking about? Hours? Days?’

  ‘I’m afraid that I really don’t know.’ His eyes were unblinking and amused.

  ‘What’s your name?’ Sarah demanded.

  ‘Komisarz Stefan Rej, from the Wydzial Zabojstsw – homicide division.’

  ‘Well, Komisarz Rej, do you realize how much it costs per day to keep this site i
dle?’

  ‘I expect it’s a lot of money.’

  ‘You’re damn right it’s a lot of money. If you worked it out in zlotys, it would have so many damn zeros they would stretch from here to Poznan. And back by the scenic route.’

  ‘Please, madam –’ Rej began, patiently.

  ‘Sarah Leonard. I’m vice-president of Eastern European development, Senate Hotels.’

  ‘You’ll have to forgive me, Ms Leonard. My colleagues and I are very busy at the moment. I’d like to talk to you later, though. Could you tell me how I can contact you?’

  ‘I’m staying at the Holiday Inn, at least until Thursday.’

  ‘And then? You’re not leaving the country, are you?’

  ‘What do you mean? You’re going to talk to me before Thursday, aren’t you?’

  ‘It depends.’

  ‘Depends on what, komisarz? Listen, I happen to be good friends with Inspektor Grabowski.’

  ‘I’m very pleased for you. I wish I was.’

  With that, he turned and rejoined the other detectives.

  Sarah said, ‘Damn it, this is all we need. We’re three weeks behind schedule already.’

  Piotr shrugged. ‘I warned you about the police. The harder you push them, the more unco-operative they are. Also, you’re a woman.’

  ‘What the hell difference does that make?’

  ‘Pph! To a man like Rej, it makes all the difference in the world. He thinks that women are for sex and cooking, that’s all. Look at him. People died to get rid of bastards like him, but they’re still here, all of them.’

  Sarah looked at her watch. ‘Well... there’s nothing else we can do here. We have a meeting with the development people at 11, don’t we?’

  ‘It’s because you’re American, too,’ said Piotr, as they crossed back towards the Holiday Inn. ‘The police don’t think much of Westerners. The chief of police told them to be polite to Westerners, and of course that put their backs up.’

  ‘You know something, Mr Gogiel? You’re a cynic.’

  ‘In Poland, Ms Leonard, we don’t call ourselves cynics. We call ourselves realists.’

  To Sarah’s surprise. Komisarz Rej was waiting for her outside the development office after she had finished her meeting. He was sitting on the wall in the pale yellow sunshine smoking a cigarette.

  ‘Ms Leonard? Perhaps we could have that talk now.’

  ‘You’re very prompt,’ she said. ‘You didn’t have to worry that I was going to leave the country.’

  ‘I know. You’re moving out of the Holiday Inn and into an apartment on Jerozolimskie Avenue. A very fine apartment too. More than I could afford.’

  ‘How did you know that?’

  ‘I’m a detective,’ he said, blowing out a thin stream of smoke.

  Sarah said, ‘I suppose I can spare you a half-hour. But I have to be at the airport by one o’clock. I’m meeting someone.’

  ‘I’ll drive you. We can talk on the way.’

  Piotr came up to them, closely followed by Jacek Studnicki, one of the slick-haired young turks from Vistula Kredytowy.

  ‘Is there a problem?’ asked Jacek, putting an unwelcome arm around Sarah’s shoulders. He was slightly shorter than her when she wore heels, which didn’t help.

  Sarah unwound herself. ‘Mr Studnicki, this is Komisarz Stefan Rej, from the Wydzial Zabojstw. He’s investigating our murder.’

  ‘Well, well,’ said Jacek. ‘I hope you catch your man, whoever he is.’

  Rej gave him a bright, hard look; and smiled. ‘We’ll catch him. We don’t have anything better to do.’

  He walked with Sarah to his car, a ten-year-old Volkswagen Passat with its back seat filled with newspapers and paper bags and other assorted rubbish, including a broken umbrella and a Barbie doll without a head.

  ‘You have kids?’ asked Sarah, noting the doll.

  ‘A girl. I don’t get to see her very much.’

  Sarah climbed in. The vinyl seats were unpleasantly sticky, and the glovebox was hanging open so that it kept knocking against her knees. Komisarz Rej started up the engine, and they pulled away in a cloud of blue smoke.

  ‘I suppose you didn’t know Jan Kaminski?’

  ‘Never heard of him, not until now. He was on the radio, wasn’t he?’

  ‘That’s right. He did a news commentary programme. Quite funny, some of it. He used to take the mickey out of the government, and the TV stations, and LOT airlines, and the Polish football team. Once he even took the mickey out of Senate Hotels.’

  ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘He was quite insulting about you, as a matter of fact. He said that from his experience of Senate Hotels, they might just as well have left the Zaluski-Orbis standing. All we could look forward to was a better class of rudeness.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ said Sarah. ‘And precisely what was Mr Kaminski’s experience of Senate Hotels, did he say?’

  ‘I think he stayed at the Senate Belgrade.’

  ‘Well, yes, we did have some teething troubles in Belgrade. It’s a hell of a job finding the staff. The chambermaids looked like orangutans.’

  ‘Not good publicity, though?’ Rej suggested, as they turned into Oczki Street. ‘There was something else he said, too. He suggested that some of the officials who approved of the Senate Hotel had been given holidays in Florida, and a little help with their bank balances.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous! That’s not only ridiculous, that’s libellous!’

  ‘You’re quite right. But is it true?’

  ‘What kind of question is that? Of course it’s not true.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be unusual.’

  ‘For Senate it would. We don’t do business that way.’

  Rej took out a Camel, tucked it between his lips and pushed in the cigarette lighter. ‘Everybody has to oil the wheels, Ms Leonard.’

  ‘I don’t oil the wheels, komisarz. If they won’t move, I push them until they do. And I’d like to know what you’re trying to suggest. And I’d really prefer it if you didn’t smoke.’

  They had almost reached the end of Oczki Street. ‘You see there?’ said Rej, nodding towards a group of drab buildings with ivy fluttering on them. ‘That’s the old Akademia Medyczna, the medical academy. That’s where Mr Kaminski is now, in the morgue. And you see there? Right next door, Number 1, that’s the Zaklad Medycyny Sadowej, the department of forensic medicine. That’s where they’re going to be doing the autopsy, to find out what happened to him. We could stop and see him, if you like.’

  ‘I don’t like,’ Sarah retorted. ‘And what I like even less is your insinuation that Senate had something to do with this man Kaminski’s death.’

  ‘You’re angry now, aren’t you?’ said Rej, as he turned towards the airport. ‘I suppose you’re going to make a complaint about me to your pal Inspektor Grabowski.’

  ‘Any reason why I shouldn’t?’

  The cigarette lighter popped out of the dash and fell on the floor. Rej leaned forward and tried to find it, but it rolled under his seat. Sarah shook her head in disbelief, and made a point of looking the other way. In the end, Rej threw the cigarette on the floor, too.

  ‘Let me tell you something,’ he said. ‘This is the seventh murder in the centre of Warsaw in three months. Every time it’s the same... the victim is found in the street, or on a plot of waste ground, always in the open. We don’t know who we’re looking for, a man or a woman. But the TV news has started calling the murderer the Executioner, because every time, the victim’s head has been missing.’

  Sarah turned and stared at him. ‘You mean Jan Kaminski’s head was cut off?’

  Rej nodded, and sniffed. ‘They found him in the sewer pipe, down at the bottom of your demolition site.’

  ‘What on earth was he doing down there?’

  ‘Looking for a lost child, apparently. We have a witness who was helping him to search. He left Kaminski to call an ambulance, and when he came back Kaminski was dead.’

  ‘Dead,
with no head?’

  ‘That’s right. The same as all the others.’

  ‘What about the child?’

  Rej shrugged, and took out another Camel. ‘I’ve had the sewers searched half a mile in all directions. No child. But thousands of condoms.’

  ‘What are you trying to tell me? That Polish men are extra-specially virile?’

  ‘I’m just telling you what we found, Ms Leonard.’

  ‘Maybe. But you haven’t told me what you’re looking for.’

  ‘Evidence, Ms Leonard. That’s all.’

  ‘Evidence that Senate Hotels took out a contract on Jan Kaminski because he said rude things about us on a radio show?’

  ‘That’s not what I said.’

  ‘You didn’t need to say it. God, and I thought American police were stupid.’

  Rej hunched over in his seat and started groping for his lighter again. ‘In America, Ms Leonard, the situation is different. Here, we have quite a few years of catching up to do. And there is also the problem of predators. When there’s blood in the sea, what do you get, sharks.’

  ‘Very poetic. You’re talking about gangsters?’

  ‘Gangsters, yes. Only last week we found another headless body in the Vistula. He was involved in pirated software. You see we have the very latest vices, as well as the oldest.’

  ‘Well, I can you assure that Senate isn’t involved in any vices, modern or not.’

  ‘I don’t mean that, Ms Leonard. I mean that there are people in this city who want to have control of everything... from selling drugs to running hotels. If you stand in their way, they will kill you, as quickly as a killing a pig. You’re Polish, I know that. But you were brought up in the United States. You don’t understand the mentality. We’re survivors. We have prosperity now. A market economy.’ He tapped his forehead with his finger. ‘In here, though, it’s still wartime. You should remember that. Every man for himself.’

  Sarah said, ‘I’m going to tell you this just once, komisarz. Senate Hotels had nothing to do with the murder of Jan Kaminski, and I’ll sue your ass from here to the Baltic and back if you even mime such a suggestion.’