The Chosen Child Read online

  Roman Zboinski’s nickname, which he had probably invented himself, was The Hook. It was supposed to date back to his days unloading frozen meat in a warehouse in Gdansk. He still kept his baling hook and he still knew how to use it. A few months ago, Jacek had come across a Yugoslavian trader from Zabowska Street who had tried to take one of Zboinski’s cars without paying for it. He had ended up with only one eye and his cheek perforated through to his tongue.

  Jacek walked over to his Volvo, unlocked the door, and climbed in. The radio started playing ‘Only The Lonely’. One second the sun was shining, the next everything was shadowy and colourless.

  *

  The bodies had been taken away but the scene of the murders was still screened off from the main road with tarpaulin sheets. Rej pushed his way through them and walked to the doorway where Mr Wroblewski had been beheaded. Matejko was hunkered down by the steps, talking intently to the baggy-eyed man from forensics.

  ‘Oh, you’re back,’ said Matejko, with a hint of disapproval.

  ‘I’ve checked the records,’ Rej told him. ‘We don’t have any information on either of the victims. I talked to the people at Senate, too.’

  ‘You mean you paid the delicious Ms Leonard another call?’

  ‘Don’t get funny with me, Jerzy. The Senate connection is the only motive we’ve got for any of these killings.’

  ‘But these two didn’t have any connections with Senate. Neither did any of the other victims, apart from Jan Kaminski.’

  Rej ignored him, and circled around the steps, looking at the dried blood which ran like a dark and turgid river from the edge of the second step, across the alleyway, and down the nearest drain. It was divided into dozens of tributaries, like the Amazon seen from the air.

  ‘Any footprints?’ Rej wanted to know.

  ‘Nothing distinguishable.’

  ‘Any material evidence at all?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  Rej had already talked to the witnesses, Mrs Wroblewski and Mrs Konopnicka. They had both described how Ewa’s arm had been dragged through the mailbox, and how Mr Wroblewski had rushed to help her. After that, they knew nothing. ‘He opened the door, he fell on his face.’ Except, of course, that he didn’t have a face.

  ‘No sign of the head?’ asked Rej.

  ‘Nothing. We’ve checked for bloodspots and torn-out hairs. We’ve sent some sweepings off for testing. You never know. They might contain more than concrete dust and dog crap, just for a change.’

  ‘Did you find the nearest access to the sewers?’

  ‘Right out in the middle of the street, look.’

  ‘And where do they run from here?’

  ‘North-east along Grojecka until they reach the Plac Narutowicza, then they turn sharp right towards Zoliborz.’

  Traffic on Grojecka was being diverted while Rej’s forensic team were dusting the four-pointed manhole cover. He walked across the road and stood watching them, hands in his pockets.

  ‘Any sign that this was opened last night?’

  ‘It’s impossible to say, komisarz. There’s so much heavy traffic along here, the cover’s always being shaken.’

  The baggy-eyed forensics officer shone a flashlight down the manhole. Rej could see the sewage sliding by twenty feet below, a glittering yellow-ochre tide. ‘Let’s put it this way,’ said the forensics officer, ‘I would rather be caught than try to get away down there.’

  ‘Wait... what’s that, caught on the bottom rung?’

  The forensics officer directed his flashlight to the opposite side of the manhole. ‘Nothing. Piece of wet newspaper.’

  ‘Bring it up.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said bring it up. I want to take a look at it.’

  The forensics officer snapped his fingers at one of his colleagues, a wide-eyed young officer in khaki overalls and rubbers. The young officer climbed cautiously into the manhole, and reappeared a few moments later with an expression of total disgust and a sheet of wet newspaper, dripping sewage. Rej took it and laid it flat on the road.

  ‘Now, look,’ he said. ‘It’s only really soaked at one corner,’ he said. ‘And what do you think these are? Bloodstains?’

  ‘We can test them, of course,’ said the forensics officer, his patience deeply tinged with scepticism.

  ‘But here, look,’ Rej pointed out. ‘Yesterday’s date. This paper wasn’t carried here by the sewage... it fell down here last night.’ He lifted it up again, and peered at a pattern of three dark brown blotches. ‘The killer could have used a newspaper to wrap up Kaczimicz Wroblewski’s head, so that he wouldn’t leave a trail of blood. Unfortunately for him, he lost the outer wrapper on the way down the manhole.’

  Matejko came up. ‘There’s nothing more we can do here, komisarz. We’ve interviewed all of the witnesses and we’ve searched Ewa Zborowska’s apartment.’

  Rej showed him the paper. ‘You were right,’ he said. ‘He escaped down the sewers. Call whoever’s in charge of sewage and tell him we don’t want to go down the sewers tomorrow, we want to go now, today. I want a systematic search of all of the sewers within a five-block radius; and if we don’t find anything then, I want to set up a search of every damned sewer in the whole city centre.’

  ‘Do you have any idea how long that could take?’ Matejko asked him. ‘The sewer system... it’s a labyrinth. There were dozens of Home Army soldiers who went down there in the war and never found their way out again.’

  ‘Just get it organized, Jerzy, will you?’ Rej retorted. After the last dressing-down from Nadkomisarz Dembek, Matejko was questioning his authority more and more openly. They still worked well together, but Rej had the feeling that Matejko was wriggling his toes in anticipation of stepping into his shoes.

  He was walking back to the apartment building when Anna Pronaszka and her cameraman came hurrying across to intercept him. ‘Komisarz Rej! Is there any truth in the rumour that you are going to be taken off the Executioner case?’

  ‘Where did you hear that? Did you dial 31-91-21?’ He was making a sarcastic reference to the Warsaw telephone company’s horoscope service.

  ‘I’ve talked to the city president this morning. He’s very unhappy about the way in which you’re handling this investigation.’

  ‘I’m not happy about the way he’s handling the city, but then we’re both entitled to our opinions.’

  ‘Komisarz Rej, I’m going to have to ask you again: how many more innocent people are going to die before you catch this maniac?’

  ‘We’re working on some new leads, Ms Pronaszka. That’s all I can tell you.’

  ‘Is it true that you’re working on the theory that the killer escapes by using the sewers?’

  ‘That’s one possibility, yes.’

  ‘Is it also true that you’re investigating Senate Hotels?’

  ‘I’m not going to comment on that.’

  ‘Have you anything to say to the people of Warsaw, who are now living in constant fear of being attacked and beheaded?’

  Rej turned wearily towards the camera. ‘All I can say is that if anyone has seen anything connected with these killings, no matter how inconsequential it may seem, they should call me at police headquarters.’

  ‘Provided you’re still on the case, of course?’

  ‘Get stuffed, Ms Pronaszka.’

  *

  He went up to Ewa’s apartment. Kaska the cat came mewling around his ankles and rubbing her head against his calves. He knew that Matejko had carried out a thorough search, but he still wanted a last look for himself, if only to get some feeling of who Ewa had been.

  Although none of the circumstantial evidence supported it, he was still sure that something connected all of the Executioner’s victims – whether it was revenge, or numerology, or some kind of ritual sacrifice. He had checked all of the psychiatric hospitals and high-security mental institutions throughout Poland, and none of them had reported an escape. He had checked every prison for escapes and recent releases, a
nd none of them had reported that any murderer had either absconded, finished his sentence, or been let out on licence.

  He had asked for assistance from Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania and Russia. There were several terrorists missing; and two dangerous German bank robbers; but nobody whose movements tallied with those of the Executioner.

  He stood looking at himself in the mirror on Ewa’s wall, as if his image could miraculously give him an answer. Then he went into the kitchen and opened some of the cupboard doors. A jar of instant coffee, a bottle of ketchup, canned peppers, a tin of anchovies. Salt and pepper shakers in the shape of two white mice. He went back to the living-room. He picked up Ewa’s books, one by one. The Life of Chopin; Encyclopedia of Music, The Castle by Franz Kafka; Chance, by Joseph Conrad.

  Chance fell open in the middle, because somebody had inserted a photograph in it. It was a faded black-and-white picture of two men in berets standing in front of a barricade built of cobblestones. They were both wearing cloth arm-bands; one of them was holding a rifle. There was a message scribbled in greenish ink across the bottom of the photograph: ‘To my friend Janusz Zborowski, from Tadeusz Komorowski, July 31, 1944’.

  Some of the lines in the book had been marked in pencil. They read, ‘In fact we had nothing to say to each other; but we two, strangers, as we really were to each other, had dealt with the most intimate and final of subjects, the subject of death. It had created a bond between us.’

  Rej read the lines twice, and then closed the book. He held up the photograph in his left hand, looking at it side-ways, the way that a woman looks in a hand-mirror. Janusz Zborowski, presumably, was Ewa’s father. He could soon find that out for sure. And if this picture had been taken in July, 1944, it had been taken a few days before the Warsaw Uprising, when the Home Army had risen up against the occupying Germans, in the expectation that the advancing Soviet Army would come to help them.

  Tadeusz Komorowski was none other than ‘General Bór’, the leader of more than 380,000 resistance fighters.

  Rej tapped the photograph with his finger. He had the extraordinary feeling that the two smiling men were trying to tell him something, but he simply couldn’t understand what it was. He sat in Ewa’s chair, staring at it for nearly ten minutes, while the light in the room brightened and faded, brightened and faded, as the clouds sailed across the sun.

  Matejko knocked on the door. ‘You have a visitor, komisarz, from the sanitation department.’

  ‘Good. Tell him I’ll be right down.’

  Matejko looked around the room. ‘Is everything all right?’

  ‘Sure. You know me. I was just trying to get a feel for my victim.’

  ‘Pretty, talented, worked hard. Lived on her own.’

  ‘Yes, but she was more than that. She was somebody’s friend, somebody’s lover, somebody’s daughter. She was all kinds of different things to all kinds of people.’ He stood up. ‘The only thing I don’t understand is, what was she to the Executioner? Did he attack her because she was young and pretty, or did he attack her because it’s the second Tuesday in August and she happened to fit into some stupid occult plan?’

  Matejko said, ‘The director says we can borrow four of his sewage workers, as well as protective clothing and breathing equipment. He will also provide maps.’

  ‘That’s very co-operative of him.’

  ‘Well, the director also has a charge of drunken driving pending in the courts.’

  ‘Ah. I understand.’

  They went downstairs. The director of sanitation was sitting in the back seat of a police Polonez, talking to the baggy-eyed forensics officer. He looked like a man who might make a living out of filtering other people’s waste. He was small and greasy with thick glasses and an extraordinary lop-sided snarl on his lips. He wore a shiny bronze suit and sandals; and there were six ballpens tucked in his breast pocket.

  ‘Mr Chwistek, how are you?’ said Rej.

  ‘They tell me you wish to start searching the sewers right away,’ said Mr Chwistek. ‘Can you tell me what you’re looking for?’

  ‘We’re not entirely sure. We’re looking for some sign that somebody’s been down there. There’s also a possibility that we may find some human remains.’

  ‘You’ll have to have experts with you. Some of the pipes are very narrow, you have to crawl on your elbows. Some are obstructed with gratings, too. That’s to catch the lumps! We don’t have any sewage process works in the centre of Warsaw... everything runs to Bielany and flows straight into the Vistula, and we wouldn’t like the same thing to happen to you. It would be such a waste!’

  ‘The sooner we can get down there, the better,’ said Rej.

  ‘Of course. At the moment, it’s comparatively dry. You don’t want to go down there when it’s raining. Nothing worse than drowning in a sewer, don’t you think? Bad enough drowning in the sea.’

  ‘You know what they say, Mr Chwistek. An unlucky man would drown in a teacup.’

  They waited for a moment in silence. Rej waited; Mr Chwistek waited. Then – from behind Mr Chwistek’s back – Matejko made a tippling gesture with his hand, and then pretended to be turning a steering wheel.

  ‘Oh!’ said Rej. ‘My deputy tells me you’ve been having a little trouble with the courts lately, Mr Chwistek. Something to do with drinking and driving.’

  ‘It wasn’t my fault,’ Mr Chwistek protested. ‘They had a serious breakdown at the sewage works at Biaioleka, in Praga – one of the pumps. I had to leave a dinner party to supervise the repairs. I’d had a few schnapps, for sure, but I could drive perfectly well. You’d think the gliny would have something better to do.’

  Rej laid a hand on his shiny shoulder. ‘Don’t you worry, Mr Chwistek. I’ll sort something out. A public-spirited man like yourself – well, he shouldn’t have to worry about petty rules and regulations, should he?’

  ‘Komisarz Rej, you’re a very understanding man. I’ll arrange your search right away.’

  After he had gone, Matejko said, ‘What are you going to do? Talk to Traffic?’

  ‘What? Fuck that. I’m not going to do anything. It serves him right for driving when he’s drunk. If he runs over a child, what’s the difference between him and the Executioner?’

  6

  Sarah was back on site on Marszalkowska when the Germans arrived in two white buses marked Osterreisen. As they disembarked, the Polish workers whistled and catcalled, and three of them tried to block the entrance until they were heaved away by police. In the end, however, the Germans pushed their way through, and the door was locked behind them.

  Brzezicki came up to Sarah in a huge pair of Levis and a red-checkered lumberjack shirt. ‘I’m sorry you chose to do things this way, Ms Leonard.’

  ‘You didn’t leave me much choice, did you? It’s my job to finish this hotel on time, and that’s what I’m going to do.’

  ‘Yes – but just because these Germans don’t believe in the devil, that doesn’t mean it isn’t there.’

  ‘Mr Brzezicki, for God’s sake. I know that it’s a shock, when somebody gets killed. But I can’t believe in any devil.’

  ‘It goes back a long, long way, Ms Leonard. You should ask my mother about it. It goes right back in history. It was a thing that used to obey whoever fed it. If you asked it to take revenge on somebody you hated, then it would kill that person for you; and that person’s parents, and that person’s spouse; and every descendant of that person until there was nobody left alive.’

  ‘Very Biblical,’ said Sarah. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a site to clear and a hotel to build.’

  ‘Ms Leonard, why don’t you talk to my mother? She’ll tell you.’

  Sarah pressed the heel of her hand against her forehead.

  ‘Mr Brzezicki, I don’t want to talk to your mother. I don’t believe in devils of any kind and I can’t understand why you do. You would be doing both of us a very great favour if you tried to overcome all this superstition and got your men back to w
ork.’

  Mr Brzezicki shook his head. ‘I can’t, Ms Leonard. They won’t do it. Not until they see that creature carried out of that sewer, dead.’

  ‘In that case, they’ve got themselves a hell of a long wait.’

  She stepped inside the door into the site. The Germans were milling around, unpacking and shouting to each other. Sarah found their foreman, a big gingery man with eyes like freshly-peeled grapes. ‘Herr Muller? I’m Ms Leonard. I want to thank you for bringing your men here at such short notice.’

  ‘For what you pay, Ms Leonard, kein Problem.’

  ‘The architect and the construction director will be here first thing tomorrow, to tell you what stage we’ve reached and what needs to be done next. The first thing you have to deal with is a broken sewer pipe. The last crew went through it with a mechanical shovel. You can probably smell it.’

  Muller said, ‘How bad is it? Some of those old pipes are pretty difficult to patch. We may have to take out a whole section.’

  ‘I’ll show you,’ said Sarah. She went to the nearest ladder and began to climb down. One of the German workers wolf-whistled, and another called out, ‘Watch out, Muller, she’s after your job!’

  Muller followed Sarah down the ladder and through the basements to the huge broken hole in the pipe. He sniffed at the hole. Then he leaned forward a little way and listened to it.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Sarah asked him.

  ‘You can tell a whole lot about a sewer pipe by listening to it. Its length; how full it is; whether it needs repairs.’

  Sarah listened, too; but all she could hear was the trickling of foul water and a distant booming sound – the echo of buses and heavy trucks trundling over manholes.

  ‘It just sounds like echoes to me.’

  ‘Well... perhaps by the time we’ve finished we can make you an expert.’