Rage

by Zygmunt Miloszewski

  “I’ve thought about it,” he said; the softness brought about by sex had vanished from his voice. “I’ve considered it at length. And it doesn’t make sense, for many reasons.”

  “Is celibacy compulsory within the prosecution service these days?” she asked scornfully, trying not to betray how much his words had hurt her.

  “You know that’s not the point. I’m still a junior, but once I pass my qualifying exam I might be staying here, or I might get sent to the other end of Poland. In my case, making permanent plans wouldn’t be logical. Getting attached to someone would be cruel. Besides, there’s what I do. I feel as if it’s changing me. More than I thought. I don’t want it to change others, too, especially you.”

  “You’re talking crap.”

  “It’s the logical choice.”

  She didn’t reply. Maybe because before there had been determination in his voice. But in this last comment, there was nothing but sadness.

  3

  Four a.m.

  As he stared at the word BONES underlined several times, he wondered whether there was any way of fitting the individual bones into the overall plan of the Warmian Inquisitor (the media would like that nickname) and if it were possible to identify those remains. Perhaps there was a key that would allow him to narrow down the group of people whose DNA should be compared.

  Two male hands. One interpretation did suggest itself. Maybe a wife-beater had ended up on the inquisitor’s blacklist and had soon lost his favorite tools. Was that all, or had he lost his life too? Impossible to say. So far they’d assumed every victim had lost his life—presumably the handless man had died in the same way as Najman, dissolved alive in lye, as indicated by the marks on the fingers, proof that he’d been trying to get out of a cast-iron pipe at any cost.

  This idea implied that he was dead. Up to this point, Szacki had managed not to think about Hela, or about the sort of situation she was in. He was afraid of going into hysterics, which would make him lose time. But now, as he thought about the cast-iron pipe, suddenly he imagined his daughter, with him since the moment she was born, shut in a thing like that; his throat went tight and tears sprang to his eyes.

  It was a little while before he calmed down again.

  You won’t help her by panicking, he kept telling himself, you won’t help her by panicking.

  He realized that if the owner of the hand had been killed, establishing his identity was practically impossible. But what if he had only been deprived of his hands, maybe after being kept in the pipe for some time? That would explain why he’d tried to get out of it in paroxysms of terror, reducing his fingers to that state. This theory gave him hope. The surgical wards and the prosthesis suppliers should remember a guy who had suddenly lost both hands.

  And the ossicles. That was a real puzzle. A male set and a female set. He couldn’t understand how the organ of hearing could be involved in violence. Someone had failed to listen properly? Was deaf to his wife’s emotional problems? It made no sense, and anyway, one set was a woman’s. Maybe it had to do with children? Parents who hadn’t listened to their children because they preferred to throw barbecues. Szacki couldn’t force himself to go down that track.

  He got up and stood by the window. The darkness was still total, but the city was gradually coming to life; he’d noticed long ago that people got up earlier here and finished work earlier too. He told himself off for letting his thoughts wander to things that didn’t matter.

  Someone dies because he caused someone else’s death.

  Someone loses his voice because he humiliated someone.

  Someone loses his hands because he hit someone.

  All clear.

  Someone loses his hearing because . . . ?

  He turned away from the window and began to pace the room, did a few rings around his desk, sat down, and nervously arranged the transcripts he’d removed from the files in an even row.

  And then it occurred to him.

  Evidently the owners of the ossicles hadn’t reacted in time. The truth had come out, and the Warmian Inquisitor had decided they deserved to be punished. Painfully, but not very, because they had only lost the hearing in one ear.

  Szacki latched on to the thought that if his assumptions were correct, then perhaps he could try to understand the deranged criminal’s motives. Bah, a tiny part of him even sympathized with those motives. Witnesses of violence who stood and picked their noses instead of informing the police that something bad was happening were not culpable in the eyes of the law—the duty weighing on them to report it was a moral one, and nobody ever gives a shit about that kind of duty. Of course, Szacki would have been happy to add to the penal code at least a fine for failing to react, but as no such fines existed . . . well, mutilation might seem extreme, but if someone’s passivity led to a death . . .

  Frankly, he could just about agree with it.

  But how do you find someone who’s been deprived of hearing? Get someone to call around to every ear, nose, and throat department in the region?

  “Fuck,” he said.

  How could he have failed to notice that? He figured he must be getting old.

  Five a.m.

  He realized he needed an ally, even if he didn’t let the ally in on everything. He couldn’t singlehandedly implement the plan he had worked out in his head.

  For a while he hesitated, turning the phone in his hand. Finally he made a decision, and called Bierut.

  4

  Awareness of our own mortality is not innate, it’s acquired. We gain it at about thirty, sometimes sooner if we produce children and suddenly start to fear we might not always be there for them. Of course, intellectually a childless sixteen-year-old understands and accepts the fact that sooner or later she’ll have to die, but emotionally she’s not capable of getting upset about it. Maybe a little, in the same way as we’re upset about the war in Syria when we watch the news. Well, yes, it’s terrible and all that, those children being killed, and the refugees, but I’ve got to go check the lasagna in the oven—the guests will be here soon. And so, after an initial stage of disorientation and terror, Helena Szacka scarfed down the McDonald’s breakfast brought to her by her kidnappers. She usually avoided that sort of food, but she figured this time she was 100-percent absolved. So she ate the weird breakfast sandwiches, drank a huge chocolate shake, and flopped down on the bunk bed with a large mug of milky coffee.

  She tried to think logically. All her life she’d heard her dad say, “First we think, then we act.” Usually, either she didn’t remember that or she couldn’t care less, but now she realized that if anyone’s advice could be useful in her situation, it was the advice of an experienced prosecutor.

  She couldn’t remember being kidnapped. She’d been on her way home past the park on the river, and must have been rendered unconscious somehow, because the next thing she remembered was waking up in the middle of the night in this room. With a hangover and an unpleasant taste in her mouth, which must mean some chemical substance had been used. She had no wounds, no marks implying brutality, no impressions made by ropes, and no bruises. Luckily nobody had sexually abused her either—that was the first panic-stricken thought that had filled her mind.

  In all, a positive balance for the victim of a kidnapping.

  She didn’t wear a watch, and they’d taken her phone away. But from the time she woke up until dawn, about three hours must have gone by. Which meant that from her being kidnapped to waking, about eight or nine hours had elapsed. And that meant she could be anywhere—just outside Olsztyn, twenty miles away, or two hundred miles away. Most likely in Poland, because all the furniture in her cell seemed to have been made there or by common Polish companies.

  The room was on the ground floor of a single-family house, not an old one, but not brand-new either. It smelled as if it wasn’t lived in. Outside the barred window she could see a scrap of neglected lawn and a wall of mixed woodlands. It must be a remote place because she could slightly open the window, which w
ouldn’t be allowed if a scream could alert the neighbors.

  So she didn’t bother to scream. Besides being a waste of energy, it might upset her captor or captors.

  She hadn’t seen anyone. She had no idea whether she’d been abducted by just one person or a whole gang. She’d gotten the food after a little light on the door lock had changed from red to green. For a while she’d stared at it, and then finally she’d pulled on the doorknob. On the other side of the door there was a small gap. A solid door, this time with no handle or lights, separated her area from the rest of the house. She guessed that both doors were controlled from the other side, making the gap a sort of air lock, and meaning she had no contact with her kidnappers. At least not until they wanted it.

  Despite these precautions and her total lack of contact with the kidnappers, she suspected she’d been kidnapped by a woman, or that there was a woman in the gang. The evidence of this was the toiletries provided. Soap, toothpaste, a toothbrush—anyone would think of those. Tampons and sanitary napkins would take slightly more considerate men. And her dad was always saying criminals were morons. After all, there was a reason why they were criminals and not chairmen of the board. But it was hard for her to believe that a man would have thought of makeup remover. You’d have to be a woman to know that was the most important item in the toiletry bag, apart from tampons and a toothbrush.

  The room was clean and tidy, its furnishings very modest. It looked more like a monk’s cell than a hotel room. A bed, a mattress, and bedding from Ikea, the cheapest kind, brand-new sheets, with square creases from being kept in their packaging. A little table and a chair, both of them shabby, secondhand. On the table there was a small lamp, the kind you buy at the home improvement store for ten zloty. She thought perhaps they’d made somebody do some work here or maybe write something.

  She was surprised to see a small Samsung television fixed to the wall. She couldn’t see a remote anywhere.

  In the tiny bathroom there was a toilet, a sink, and a mirror set into the wall. No bathtub or shower. For a while she wondered if that was a good sign or a bad one. On the one hand it was good—anyone who remembered about makeup remover wasn’t likely to keep her for weeks on end in a room without a shower. But was it definitely a good sign? Maybe this was just a midpoint before she ended up on an operating table or in a Turkish brothel.

  For once her own jokes didn’t amuse her.

  Closer inspection confirmed that she wasn’t the first tenant of this cell. After moving the bed aside, just above the baseboard she found the word HELP scratched in the plaster.

  She should have been upset, but she just sighed, recognizing that the previous inmate had been an idiot. Carving that sort of hysterical nonsense was totally pointless. Unless it brought someone relief. She wondered what to use as a tool, then finally pulled the tag off the zipper of her jeans and carved HELA 12.04.13, 6 a.m. +1.

  If anyone discovered this place after she’d been taken away, they’d find out she was here today at about seven o’clock. She was going to keep adding another “one” to mark more or less each hour, as a way of recording the passage of time. This information could be crucial for someone trying to set a range for their search.

  Because she was in no doubt that someone would be looking for her, and that this someone would be her father. This thought comforted her most—the thought that in their unfortunate situation, very few kidnap victims were lucky enough to be the daughter of the Sherlock Holmes of the prosecution service, as she sometimes jokingly called him.

  She loved him, and she was also very proud of him. Proud of the fact that he was on the right side of the barricade and that his work ensured the triumph of justice. And of the fact that he really did have the adventures of a fictional detective. He knew how to solve unusual riddles and get to the truth when nobody else could. She had never discussed it with him, nor did he tell her about his work, but she was very familiar with all the press reports about him.

  It occurred to her that, nevertheless, there was a chance, possibly a big one, that she would never see him again.

  And for the first time since the kidnapping she felt genuinely sad.

  5

  It crossed Szacki’s mind that Hela’s definition of him as characterized by rage was probably far too polite. Rage sounded grand and dignified, while he just went off the deep end very easily. It may not have sounded quite so good, but it was a far better reflection of Szacki’s emotional state, right now, for example.

  Right now he was so angry that he felt like grabbing the head of the man sitting across from him and banging it against the oak table until blood was dripping onto the floor. He felt as if nothing else would bring him relief.

  So just in case, he drew back his chair.

  “I’m very sorry, but I can’t help you, sir,” said Witold Kiwit for the millionth time.

  Szacki shook his head. He glanced at the fancy clock hanging above the fireplace. Half past nine. For half an hour he’d been sitting in a small prewar house, trying to get Witold Kiwit to tell him who had partially deprived him of hearing. To no effect. Even though on the way here he’d been quite convinced it would be just a formality.

  Four hours before Szacki’s arrival, Witold Kiwit, aged fifty-two, was brushing his teeth when Bierut knocked at his door. The sad policeman with the outdated mustache didn’t want to talk. He had introduced himself and gone into the bathroom, where the light was still on and the water was still running. Ignoring Kiwit’s protests, he had told him to rinse his mouth out, and then he’d dug around in it with a cotton swab on a long stick—which for Kiwit had very unpleasant associations with having something stuck in his ear. And then he’d left without a word.

  Twenty minutes later Kiwit’s DNA sample had arrived at Professor Frankenstein’s lab on Warszawska Avenue. An hour and a half later, at about seven, the scientist had called Szacki and told him that Witold Kiwit’s DNA matched the DNA of the male set of auditory ossicles belonging to their skeleton.

  This was how Szacki had carried off his first victory of the day. He had confirmed that Kiwit’s case, one of dozens of minor cases conducted by the prosecution service, was connected with his investigation. By pure coincidence, the case of the entrepreneur who had lost his hearing had been conducted by Falk, who had to inform Szacki about all his work. Otherwise he would have had no idea and wouldn’t have realized that the man’s mysterious injury was linked with the equally mysterious appearance of the auditory ossicles in Najman’s skeleton.

  Szacki had a foothold. And he had a witness he must press hard. And then he could start to take action.

  First of all, he got Kiwit to agree to talk to him, threatening him with criminal charges when the man tried to protest.

  Secondly, he equipped Bierut with the necessary papers, and then sent him off to the court and to Stawiguda to organize a legal experiment—one that would give him a second victory and the next foothold.

  Thirdly, through Ewa Szarejna he had demanded a patrol car. He had no time or strength to drive or to sit in traffic jams. When she had expressed surprise, he’d won her over by spinning stories about his plans for his role as press spokesman, telling her he’d thought it through and realized communication could sometimes be the most important element in an investigation. Because a satisfied public was a helpful public. He had managed not to throw up as he told these lies and was very pleased with this minor victory.

  Finally, taking advantage of his position as Falk’s supervisor, he had demanded the file for Kiwit’s case. He had soon remembered it: Two weeks ago Witold Kiwit—fifty-two years old, wife, two sons, owner of a firm that made tarpaulin—had been brought to the hospital by ambulance. The serious injury to his ear implied the involvement of third parties, so the hospital had informed the police, and at the prosecution service, Falk had taken on the case. Contrary to common sense, the injured man had claimed to have done it himself by accident and refused to identify those responsible. There was nothing to be learned from the
interview transcript—Kiwit had stubbornly stuck to his version of events.

  Sitting in the back of the patrol car on the way to Kiwit’s house, Szacki was sure that as an experienced investigator, additionally equipped with proof in the form of the DNA analysis, he would have no problem prompting Kiwit to tell the truth.

  But after half an hour he felt as if nobody could ever have been so badly mistaken. It would be easier to extract his own intestines through his nose than get anything out of Kiwit.

  “I think you’re wrong, and you definitely can help,” he said calmly, “but you’re not yet aware of it.”

  Behind Kiwit stood a bourgeois dresser with such crystal-clear glass that it looked as if it were cleaned three times a day. Szacki caught his own reflection and adjusted his slightly crooked tie.

  “Well, quite, it was a bad injury of course. It was slippery, and I was walking—”

  “Of course. I heard you. OK, you refuse to tell the truth. Your public responsibility doesn’t appeal to you. Now please listen to the consequences. I will find the people who did this to you. Sooner or later. These people have more on their conscience than just your ear . . .” A shadow of fear crossed Kiwit’s face, identical to the one Szacki had seen the day before in the eyes of the wife-beater from Równa Street.

  “So it’s going to be a major case, highly publicized, with long sentences. In this sort of investigation there’s always some collateral damage along the way. I promise you’ll be part of the fallout. You’ll be officially involved in the case, within the range of interest of the law enforcement agencies, and I will have you charged with withholding information about a crime, and there will be several lesser charges too. It will probably end in a suspended sentence, but you know what it’s like if you have a conviction. The bank withdraws its loans, the tax office takes an interest, and clients head for the hills. In less than a year, you’ll have no company, no prospects, and maybe no family. You’ll be in debt, and you’ll be throwing heart medication down your throat by the handful. Maybe at that point you’ll think it couldn’t possibly get any worse. But you’ll be wrong. Because that’s when I’ll really crank it up. Do you ever read the papers? Ever read about the civil servants who can destroy a man and get away with it, have you?”