Helena Szacka and her funeral. He’s surprised the coffin is so big and adult—after all, his daughter’s still a child.
It’s easier for him to imagine her dead than as a victim of rape. Dragged to some apartment, thrown on an old couch or a designer sofa. Probably by a schoolmate, an acquaintance, who smiled nicely and invited her in for a glass of wine. That could seem better than being hit by a speeding van, certainly better than death. But Szacki had conducted a large number of rape cases, and he knew what happened to the victims. If someone’s car gets stolen, they pull themselves together and buy a new one. Someone who’s attacked in a dark alley is afraid to walk around after dark for a long time, but eventually life goes back to normal. Even victims of attempted murder get back on their feet, with the aid of a furious desire for revenge.
Rape victims don’t recover. He was familiar with the theory. He knew it had been described as post-traumatic stress disorder, that it often happened, and that the trauma excluded the victim from family, social, and professional life. They fairly often ended up in psychiatric wards, where they were given the same treatment as soldiers returning from a war zone who had seen their pals ripped to shreds by IEDs.
He had never heard of any woman who’d suffered rape, then led a normal life and forgotten about it. Every life-threatening and health-endangering crime leaves its mark, but rape, the most brutal personal invasion, the violation of privacy and freedom at every level, reducing its victim to a lump of warm flesh into which someone can thrust his dick, was like being branded with burning metal. Continuously. The echo of the event kept coming back to the victim, not just once in a while, not now and then, but nonstop. Someone was always holding a red-hot piece of metal to the woman’s soul. Perhaps you could get used to it, but there’s no way you could cease to feel it.
Bierut was the first to call back. Nothing had happened. A patrol had explored the black-and-green hole with a thermo-visual camera, but they hadn’t found anything. Another team was going to search the terrain at daybreak.
Then Żenia’s friend called. Szacki watched her face intently as she listened.
“She’s not anywhere,” she said after the call. “They haven’t got her or anyone who could be a rough match. Basia’s on ER duty until morning; she promised to check regularly.”
He nodded.
“What now?” she asked.
“That’s it,” he said. “We just wait. It’s too early to report her missing, and definitely too soon to start a search. She’s not a four-year-old. The statistics are on our side. By morning at the latest she should be knocking at the door, hungover and remorseful—that’s how teenage disappearances usually end.”
“And if not?”
“If not, the best coordinated search for a missing person in the entire history of Poland will begin.”
Midnight.
They were sitting quietly at the kitchen table. Szacki caught himself listening for a noise in the driveway, the gentle creak of the old gate, and his daughter’s familiar footsteps. But outside total silence reigned.
“Could she possibly have run away?” asked Żenia.
He shrugged. He knew how very naive it is of parents to insist they know their own children.
“I doubt it, but if we take an objective look at her situation, she does have her reasons. She’s at a difficult age, she’s been removed from Warsaw against her will, torn away from her usual environment. Forced to live with her father’s new partner and to build new relationships from scratch with kids at school. We thought she was coping, but maybe it was an act. And suddenly something happened to make her crack.”
“Would she have told her mom?”
“I don’t know. If she isn’t found by eight, I’ll call her. I’ll call others in the family, too. I’ll get a hold of her friends in Warsaw.”
“Why not now?”
“Now it’s pointless. If she’s been the victim of a crime or an accident, nobody in the family will know anything about it. They’ll just go apeshit if I call them in the middle of the night. And if she’s with someone she knows, she’s safe. Better talk to people in the daytime than at this hour.”
They went on sitting in silence. And that was why Szacki jumped when the phone on the table buzzed. He glanced at the display and felt physical relief, as if a miraculous drug had suddenly relaxed all his agonizingly tensed muscles.
“It’s from Hela,” he said.
Żenia squeezed his arm tight, and he could tell she was about to burst into tears.
“So where will I have to go and fetch the little brat from?” he muttered, unable to stop his voice from trembling.
He opened the message. No text, just a picture. Weird, almost monochrome. At the center of the picture was a rusty ring. The area outside the ring was gray, and the space inside it was totally black. It looked like a postcard from a modern art museum.
“Is it a joke?” asked Żenia. “Some secret code of yours?”
“I have to go to work,” he said very calmly.
He put the phone in his pocket and stood up. He took his jacket from the back of the chair, put it on, and did up the top button.
“Teo, what’s in that picture?”
“I really can’t say now. I’ll tell you everything later. I’ll be across the road. Trust me.”
His darling Żenia had fear in her eyes, but he couldn’t deal with her right now.
He knew exactly what was in the fuzzy gray-and-brown picture.
It was the open end of a cast-iron pipe.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Wednesday, December 4, 2013
Saint Barbara’s Day. All the Barbaras are drinking, and all the miners, too, in honor of their patron saint. Maybe Jay Z and Cassandra Wilson are drinking, too, because it’s their birthday. The protests continue in Ukraine. President Yanukovych has gone to China, and is hoping the issue will resolve itself in his absence. In Croatia the results of a referendum are announced, in which the majority of citizens have declared themselves in favor of adding a clause to the constitution stating that marriage is purely “a union between a man and a woman.” A Polish emotional statistic: only 16 percent of those polled think of the father as a close friend; 8 percent of those polled associate sex with intimacy. An economic statistic: 57 percent of Poles spend all the money they earn. In Olsztyn the national railroad company is trying to combat a plague of traction equipment theft (five miles of it has already gone missing), and the first operation is performed in a new building at the hospital. A slipped lumbar disc was fixed, and the patient is feeling fine. A PE teacher from a suburban high school is feeling fine, too, after coming first in a poll for Olsztyn’s best teacher. He wins the title “SuperProf 2013” and a stay at a spa. Nature abhors a vacuum, so a new poll was immediately announced for the funniest photo of someone in a Father Christmas hat. The Christmas tree outside the Town Hall has been decked, and the lights are on. It’s 35 degrees, the smell of winter is here, and people keep glancing skyward, anticipating snow. It’s going to fall soon, but for now it’s a day like any other: fog and freezing drizzle.
1
One a.m.
At last he was feeling calm. He shouldn’t have been—after all, he had just found out that his daughter could be dying a horrible death, dissolved by a maniac in a cast-iron pipe with the help of a few bucketfuls of drain cleaner. But at least he hadn’t received a picture of a heap of bones floating in alkaline gloop, just the blurry end of a pipe. That meant an invitation to play the game, and in any game you can win—even if the cards are marked and one side dictates the rules, you can still win. So now he had no choice but to think. And then come out the victor.
It was the logical choice.
He tidied his desk, made a large mug of steaming coffee, placed the files for the Najman case in front of him, and started to think.
Two a.m.
It was very hard to conquer the desire to take instant action. After each thought he wanted to grab the phone and drag Bierut, Falk, and Frankenstei
n out of bed. Talk to them, hand out duties, give orders in a firm tone. Every time it took an almost physical effort to persuade himself not to do it, to work it all out in his head first, draw up a plan, go through it at least four times, and only then put it into action. He had to strategize quickly—he had four or five hours at most.
First and foremost, he assumed he would have to write his own rules for the game. Cheat, and by that he meant win. Like in the famous scene from Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark, when his enemy is brandishing a saber, 100-percent sure he’s going to cut the archaeologist to ribbons, whereupon Indiana Jones pulls out a pistol and takes care of him with a single shot. His situation was analogous. His opponent was twirling a jewel-encrusted saber, pirouetting, and showing off all the swordsmanship he’d spent years mastering, planning how in the next few moves and cuts he would humiliate Szacki and prove his supremacy—but he was going to get a bullet between the eyes. Bang.
That was Szacki’s strategy: bang.
It meant he had to act in an unpredictable way, almost irrationally. Totally contrary to what his opponent was assuming. That was the only way to stick a wrench in the works, foil the killer’s plans, and force him to make a mistake.
Once he had come to this conclusion, he realized that if he wanted to act this way, he would have to make the most difficult decision of his life. Not just professional, but life in general. The killer must be expecting Szacki to use his position as a celebrity prosecutor to whip up a campaign that would become huge news, not just in Poland, but the world over. Experts would analyze the photograph of the pipe, and IT specialists would track down which base transceiver station the message was sent from. Every recording from every security camera on the route between Hela’s school and home would be examined and analyzed. Sniffer dogs would be put to work. The entire police force would be mobilized to interrogate everyone unlucky enough to appear downtown that day who could have seen something. The normal procedure for a kidnapping case would be publicized out of all proportion: pictures of Hela would be shown around the clock on every TV channel, and there’d be live reports from outside her school.
He had a strong desire to act in the classic way, every neuron in his head was screaming for him to go ahead and do it. Every neuron? Almost. But a handful were still holding out, telling him the criminal was bound to have foreseen that sort of typical response. More than that—he must be expecting it. And that was why Szacki had to act in the opposite way. Hide the kidnapping from the world, not inform anyone, solve the riddle himself, and only then strike.
He thought about Falk’s argument with Klejnocki. Falk had said you couldn’t compare this situation to burning at the stake—a murder committed in a cabin in the woods wasn’t analogous with a public execution that would draw in the crowds and let them know what was and wasn’t allowed. Klejnocki had argued that maybe the whole case was only meant to go public when the criminal found it appropriate. And it looked as if he was right. They had prematurely mistaken building a pyre for an execution.
The flame was only meant to catch light when the public was suitably worked up and suitably prepared. That made sense. The pyre was going to be lit as soon as the crowd had filled the marketplace, and the fire wouldn’t go out until they’d been given their dose of blood and horror. What right-minded person would quietly burn a witch without any advertisement, leaving most of the city thinking a small fire had broken out downtown but must have been quickly doused?
The question was, how would the criminal react when he saw that, contrary to his expectations, no major hysteria had been whipped up in connection with the disappearance of the prosecutor’s daughter?
Yes, that was a good question. Szacki got up and started walking around his desk. Outside, it was total darkness. There were no little yellow construction machinery lights twinkling in the black-and-green hole, and the cathedral illuminations had been switched off long ago. Nothing but pitch-black night.
So how would the madman react?
At first he would probably wait. He’d sip his yerba mate, or whatever deranged people drink, something healthy probably, stare at the news on TV, listen to Radio Olsztyn, and refresh the main page of the local news website every thirty seconds. Until noon he’d be calm. After noon he’d start to wonder what was going on, and by the evening he’d realize that Szacki’s and the police department’s behavior must be part of a strategy. If, as Klejnocki suspected, he had any connection with the police or the prosecution service, he’d try to find out what this strategy was. If he couldn’t, he’d start to feel anxious.
And then he might realize that he’d have to alter his plan. And that it was better to carry it out before a reduced audience than not carry it out at all.
Szacki came to this conclusion, returned to his desk, and sat down.
His inner conviction tallied with the result of logical deduction: if he wanted to rescue Hela, he had to do it today, and he had to do it alone. Acquainting anyone whatsoever with his situation and his intentions was too risky.
He had about thirteen or fourteen hours. Maybe less, definitely not more.
Three a.m.
The choice of relevant factors seemed crucial. He could assume the most obvious solutions had been foreseen by his opponent and would bring no result. In other words, seizing Najman’s wife and partner by the throat made no sense. There was a hope that Bierut would manage to find a phantom lover, but he couldn’t allow himself that hope now. Of course, it would help if he found her, but for now he had to believe it wouldn’t happen.
What could he do, what hadn’t he done, and what was imperceptible enough for that goddamn maniac to have failed to foresee it?
For a long while he considered the theory that the case of the wife-beater from Równa Street and the Najman case were connected, that the guy without vocal cords should be added to the same list of victims as Najman and the owners of the finger bones and auditory ossicles. Instinct told him he was wasting time; nobody had dissolved the guy from Równa Street, nobody had even attempted to, someone had simply given him a serious hammering for bullying his wife, not the first such instance, and surely not the last. Probably the victim’s family, a brother or brother-in-law. But it wasn’t a regular hammering. He’d been severely mutilated, and yet someone had gone to the trouble of making sure he didn’t die.
Why?
Maybe because his wife hadn’t died either.
Szacki tapped his pen against the sheet of paper that lay in front of him.
“OK,” he said; his hoarse voice had an unpleasant ring to it in the empty, silent office. He flinched, as if he had discovered someone standing behind him. “Let’s give it a try.”
He decided to consider the theory that some fanatical champion of justice was inflicting punishment on perpetrators of domestic violence. And aimed to put things to rights not in the courts but by setting stakes on fire. Chemical stakes, where the flames would be replaced by sodium hydroxide.
But as he believed in justice, he didn’t murder them at random, but inflicted fair punishments. So he’d mutilated the guy from Równa Street, ensuring that he didn’t die. Lord knows why he’d done it in that way—maybe he knew something that they, as the investigators, did not. Mental abuse, verbal humiliation, aggression, shouting, persuading the woman that she’s worthless. His organs of speech had been removed, so he’d never be able to harm anyone verbally ever again.
Szacki scowled.
What a fanciful idea.
Except that then Najman’s death had to be a punishment for someone else’s death. He shrugged. Najman’s wife was alive, and doing fairly well. So was his child and his business partner too. Neither woman had mentioned any strange events from his past, and once he was dead, neither of them had any reason to be afraid to speak up. Najman wasn’t to be found in any database either; not only had he never had any convictions, but he hadn’t been charged or accused of anything.
Suddenly a thought occurred to him. He reached for the shelf but
realized he hadn’t yet received a copy of the updated penal code. He soon found the right document in his computer instead.
Mr. Looney Tunes wouldn’t be expecting this.
2
There was no way she could tell him out loud, but she hadn’t felt this good in years. She ran a hand over his ridiculously furry chest. The black hairs were very curly, and as she combed her fingers through them, they straightened out, and then coiled again like little springs. In the days when they’d danced, he’d always had a smooth, depilated chest.
She put her index finger to his Adam’s apple and drew a snaking line across his hirsute breastbone, around his navel (he couldn’t bear to be touched there), over his pubic bone, and along his penis, still warm and wet from being inside her.
She was hoping he’d surrender to her touch, but instead he gave her a tame kiss, got up, and went over to the window. He had a boyish build—he was slender in the typical way of those who’ve done intensive physical training in their youth.
“I’ve missed you,” she said.
Edmund Falk nodded, but didn’t turn around to face her.
“Are we going to do something with this?”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning that since we’re living in the same city, it’d be quite easy for us to miss each other less.”
She got up and went over to him. She lived on the top floor of a block in Jaroty, with a fabulous view of the city. All the more fabulous for not being blighted by this particular apartment block.
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