Rage

by Zygmunt Miloszewski

  Smaczek was slightly winded, but kept his bureaucratic chin up.

  “Are you refusing to acknowledge my notification that a crime has been committed?”

  “Absolutely. Acknowledging it would mean enabling yet another phase of your officious insanity. It would mean agreeing to cross the line between authority that is clearly stupid and incompetent, and authority that’s evil, persecuting and terrorizing its citizens like in the Soviet Union. What will you think up next? Penal servitude in exile to the Warmian forest?”

  The director touched his file but didn’t pick it up yet.

  “I’m sorry to say that I shall not be leaving it at that. I will be lodging a complaint about your decision. And about your attitude, too. I see I have two lawsuits ahead of me.”

  And a good thing too. It’d be a nice distraction from the prison routine when they took Szacki off to the hearings.

  “I was counting on you. I was afraid the local prosecutors wouldn’t take an objective view of this matter. But you’re from outside Olsztyn, you’re worldly-wise, you should have a broader perspective.”

  Szacki was saved by the phone. He picked it up.

  “Good morning, Prosecutor.” He heard a woman’s voice. “This is Monika Fabiańczyk. Remember me?”

  He frowned. The deep voice and its slightly irreverent tone seemed familiar, prompting a sense of affection and nostalgia. But he was sure he’d never crossed paths with anyone named Fabiańczyk.

  She laughed, and then he recognized her. He quickly hurried Smaczek out of his office.

  “Good morning to you, Editor,” he said, thinking it really was a time for good-byes.

  “I couldn’t resist calling when I read that you’re the press spokesman. It’s like making Hannibal Lecter the head chef in a vegetarian restaurant.”

  He laughed heartily, though the joke wasn’t that great. He asked about her change of name, and whether to congratulate her on getting married. As he listened to her chatter away, he thought how symbolic it was that she of all people had called him now. How long had it been? Eight years. A little longer. He was taken back to that blazing June in Warsaw, and his affair with the young journalist from Rzeczpospolita, which now seemed comical, the typical symptom of a midlife crisis. But it had caused his marriage to fall apart, which was why he’d left Warsaw soon after, broken his ties with the capital, and eventually ended up in Olsztyn.

  Would he be heading for prison today if he’d behaved decently eight years ago—he had been married, after all—and hadn’t gone to meet her at the café on the corner of Nowy Świat and Foksal Streets? He remembered wanting meringue but choosing a slice of cheesecake instead for fear that the meringue would leave crumbs all over him.

  “But anyway, I heard an interview with you on Radio Olsztyn in which you admitted to making mistakes. I talked to some people about it afterward, and they were a little disappointed.”

  “Why?” He was genuinely surprised.

  “I don’t know, in the world of investigative journalists and crime reporters, you’re a bit of a reference point—don’t ask how my husband feels about it. You’re the sheriff, the symbol of justice.”

  “Then surely it’s a good thing I’m honest.”

  “Honesty and justice are two different things. We don’t expect a sheriff to be admitting his mistakes. What we expect is security. A steadfast approach to guarantee law and order, to have evil punished, good rewarded, and to make the world a better place.”

  They talked for a while longer. After that he called Edmund Falk and arranged to meet him in the dissection room at the hospital on Warszawska Avenue.

  2

  Szacki parked outside the beer center as usual, and wincing with every step in his cold, wet shoes, he crossed the few dozen yards of slush separating him from the anatomy department. He’d been hoping to get there first, but ran into Falk on the steps.

  The two men shook hands and went inside, shoulder to shoulder.

  The hallway was quiet and empty, maybe because it was early in the day, so the students weren’t there yet. Or maybe they had the day off.

  They entered the dissection room, which was deserted. Although there was an odor of carrion in the air, there was no corpse, no Frankenstein, or anyone else.

  Falk looked around in surprise.

  “I thought we’d be meeting someone here.”

  Szacki walked over to the cold chamber. They took up more space at the average morgue—every cadaver found in the city had to be kept in there. The one here served didactic purposes, which was why it only had two shelves. Szacki pressed down a chrome handle, opened the door, and cold air and death came wafting out.

  He pulled on the grip, and one of the metal beds slid out silently. A new piece of equipment, state-of-the-art. The Hilton for corpses, as Frankenstein had put it.

  There on the stainless steel shelf lay Wiktoria Sendrowska. Blue, with a livid purple neck. She’d had her autopsy, as could be seen by the crude seam on her torso, a huge Y shape, the arms of which started near her collarbones and joined at her sternum, and the leg of which ran down to her mons pubis.

  “Why are you showing me this?” asked Falk. “I was here for the procedure. I’m the prosecutor in charge of the case.”

  Szacki moved away from the cold chamber, sat down on the high dissection table, and looked at Falk, standing over the girl’s body.

  “I was going to leave it to the others, but I couldn’t stop myself. I realized that after what’s happened we have to sort it out between us. And anyway, I wanted to give you the chance to say good-bye to your old friend and victim. After all, she must have been like a sister to you for years.”

  Falk took off his coat, looked around, and carefully hung it over the back of one of the lecture-hall chairs. Then he looked at Szacki expectantly.

  Szacki wasn’t in a hurry. He suspected Falk was assuming he’d make a long speech, presenting him with his line of reasoning, but he was too tired for that. Apart from anything else, there was nothing to boast about. Not much brilliant reasoning à la Sherlock Holmes, just a lot of prosecutor’s intuition. Earlier on, something in the back of his mind had been wondering why a stickler like Falk hadn’t been through all the necessary procedures in Kiwit’s case, why in spite of Szacki’s instructions, he hadn’t pressed the family. There was also his defiance toward Klejnocki, who had guessed the motives of Najman’s killers. But above all, it was sheer intuition.

  “I could ask you hundreds of questions,” Szacki said. “But I’m only going to ask two. Weren’t you sorry for her? Is the cause really that important?”

  “Very sorry. But it was the logical choice,” said Falk. “Wiktoria had been considering it for a very long time anyway—she was prepared for it. You ought to know she had tried to kill herself many times before. I saved her from one attempt myself. But this was the only way her”—he paused, looking at Szacki with a faint smirk—“sacrifice wouldn’t be in vain. I don’t think I have to explain to you what great significance it has.”

  Szacki agreed. That same night, on the way home, he had understood the significance of Wiktoria’s death. The girl had not been motivated by social justice. Her revenge had a personal motive, thanks to which, sooner or later, sooner more likely, by checking the various databases, they would eventually have caught her and locked her up. Which was a threat to the whole enterprise.

  In practice, her death made it impossible to explain the Najman case. And Falk was right, it was the logical choice. He had probably explained it to the girl so thoroughly that she believed it beyond a doubt. Just as he had provided her with her family’s files at an earlier point and had skillfully fueled her hatred and thirst for revenge. How many years in advance does a criminal genius start planning? How many combinations of moves on a chessboard can he see ahead? Surely a good many.

  “Why me?” asked Szacki.

  Falk rolled his eyes.

  “You know that,” said Falk. “Because you could have discovered the truth. Getting r
id of you was a pretty demanding task, I admit. Murder would be impossible to justify. You are, were, one of the most upright people I’ve ever met. Bribery was out of the question. You’re too smart to manipulate or deceive for years on end—we could have been found out by a stupid mistake. But like this? We have a recording of Najman’s death that will perform its educational task for decades, when shown to the relevant people. With Wiktoria’s death, the only trail leading to us has disappeared. You as her killer are destroyed as a man, finished as a prosecutor, and stripped of all credibility as a witness. It’s the perfect solution.”

  He nodded.

  All that was true.

  “Will you understand if I tell you that the aim of the theatrical production was not actually to eliminate you from the game?”

  Szacki looked at him in amazement.

  “It’s the logical choice,” continued Falk. “We need somebody truly exceptional. Upright, just, charismatic, uncompromising. And an experienced investigator.”

  “We need them for what?”

  “To be our leader.”

  Szacki sighed. “Didn’t it occur to you to ask?”

  “And what would you have said?”

  “I wouldn’t have agreed, then I’d have started an investigation, broken up the whole ridiculous gang, and put you behind bars as a warning to any other screwballs with vigilante tendencies.”

  “And now what would you say?”

  “Now I just won’t agree,” he lied.

  Falk walked past the drawer with the corpse pulled out of the wall, came closer, and stood facing Szacki.

  “Let’s get the ugly part over and done with, agreed? Of course I have a detailed recording of what happened on Wednesday night. Not as a blackmail tool, but as an insurance policy. We’re not planning to use it, but we’ll change our minds if we feel threatened. By now, you’re probably thinking you don’t give a shit, you’re going to make a confession anyway. But nobody lives in a void. Going public would brand everyone who’s close to you for life. I’d like you to remember that, but at the same time to consider my proposal and agree for moral reasons.”

  “Says the blackmailer,” said Szacki, snorting.

  “You’ve been on the side of the law for twenty years now. A long list of successes looks good on paper. But we know what isn’t on paper. Cases so weak in terms of proof that you didn’t even launch them. Or else you did, but immediately dismissed them. Culprits who slipped through a legal loophole. Incompetent colleagues who’ve made us into the most despised institution in Poland, who, thanks to their mistakes and desistance, have not only failed to improve the world, but have made it worse. And the main thing missing from that list is your immense regret that you were supposed to be fighting for a better future. But the best you’ve ever managed to do is to mop up the spilled milk.”

  Szacki gazed at the sermonizing junior prosecutor. His face expressed nothing.

  “But you can stop evil. Break the chain of violence. Save not just one family, but countless families in the future. Make sure that instead of repeating a social ill, people build good relationships with good children. So they won’t end up being fathers or bosses who prompt terror. So they’ll build a positive society. And in a positive society, there’s less evil. It’s exactly the same with cities. In an ugly district, everyone scrawls on the walls and pisses in the alleys. But if a beautiful apartment building suddenly appears there, a few properties down in each direction everything suddenly becomes cleaner too. The same principle applies to families.”

  Szacki jumped off the dissection table. He scowled as his socks made a wet squelching noise.

  “You’re too smart to believe in what you’re saying. That sort of experiment is bound to get out of control. Today you’re slapping evil husbands, tomorrow you’ll get so drunk on righteousness you’ll decide to start straightening out paid-off politicians, drivers who break traffic rules, and students who play hooky. Then someone else will come along who’ll say such lenient measures are ineffective, you’ve got to beat harder and tougher. Then there’ll be someone for whom anonymous tips will be enough to go on, and he’ll start sternly repeating that you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs. And so on. Are you really incapable of seeing that?”

  Falk went up to Wiktoria Sendrowska; even after death and an autopsy, she was still a beautiful girl. A real Sleeping Beauty.

  “Only and exclusively 207. Nothing else. Ever. Just one category of crime, just that article. A narrow specialty.”

  “I thought you wanted to work in organized crime.” He couldn’t hold back the jibe.

  “I lied. It grieves me to state that my colleagues from school are morons, getting all worked up at the thought of organized crime. Long, laborious, usually fruitless investigations that aim to punish one Russki mafioso for doing the world a service by bumping off another gangster in the woods. Waste of time.”

  Szacki frowned.

  “It has always bothered me that the prosecution service only comes into play once the milk has already been spilled. Do you understand what I’m talking about? In a way, prosecuting the perpetrators of crime is the bitterest of professions. Someone has been injured, beaten up, raped, or murdered. They don’t really care if the culprit is caught or not. The damage has already been done, and we can’t undo it. But there is one kind of crime where we can take preventative action. Punish the perpetrator, isolate him from the victims and potential victims, free someone from danger. We can stop the violence before something irreversible happens. We can cut off the inheritance of evil.” He paused, as if searching for the right words. “Two hundred and seven is the only article in the legal code where we really can change the world for the better and not just wipe up the blood and pretend nothing has happened. Working on that is the logical choice. I’m really surprised anyone would want to focus on anything else.”

  Szacki smiled to himself sadly, unable to tear his gaze from the corpse. It’s always the same old story with revolutionaries. The line between saintly madmen and regular madmen is extremely thin.

  “I’ve talked to Frankenstein,” said Szacki. “He told me that it looks as if she actually wanted someone to strangle her. He said her body shows no signs of a struggle. She didn’t scratch or bite or fight for her life. As if she wanted to die.”

  Falk made no comment.

  “You know what, I once conducted a case where a major role was played by a specific form of psychotherapy.”

  “The Telak case. I wrote a term paper on it.”

  “The man who invented that therapy believed that family ties are stronger than death, and that even if people die, their close attachments pass on to their nearest relatives. He was convinced that emotions are passed down from one generation to the next, and so are crimes and injustices. If you believe that theory, Wiktoria did what she did to join her brother and mother because she couldn’t forgive herself for their deaths.”

  “Psychology is a pseudoscience,” said Falk. “Each of us has choices to make in life. And we have to bear responsibility for those choices.”

  Szacki smiled. He slid the drawer back into the cold chamber.

  “I’m glad you said that. Because regardless of what Wiktoria did, and what you’ve all done, I made a choice, and I must pay for it. So let’s do it this way: I’ll go to the slammer, and you can go on fighting whatever you want to fight. Of course your fun and games will end badly, but if a wife-beater or two takes a good whipping along the way, I’m not going to cry over it. I mean it.”

  It cost him a lot of effort to utter this lie with a stony face. But he knew he had to stay in character if he was going to see through the plan that had started to form in his head the moment he had put his arms around his daughter outside that house, as Wiktoria Sendrowska’s body lay cooling inside it.

  Falk clenched his hands into fists.

  “It can’t be anyone with a personal motive,” he said. “It has to be someone who’ll guarantee justice.”

  Szacki shrugged.<
br />
  “What I’m suggesting is supportive action. For a transition period. Please don’t think as a prosecutor, in terms of penalizing and administering justice. Think about prevention, about saving people, about taking action that will make revenge unnecessary. Please think about . . . let’s call it an early warning system equipped with combat functions.”

  Szacki said nothing.

  “Apart from that, who knows better than you what we’re fighting against?”

  Szacki looked at Falk quizzically.

  “Do you think some other gene prompted you to tighten your hands around that young woman’s slender throat? A nobler gene than the one that causes a wife to be thrown onto the bed? A mother to be pushed away, a daughter hit? I’m afraid not. It’s a male gene of readiness to inflict violence on weaker creatures.”

  Szacki buttoned up his coat. He suddenly felt very cold, and he was shivering—he must have caught a chill from the crappy weather and wearing wet shoes. He was truly sick of it all.

  “I must serve my sentence,” he said quietly.

  Falk came up and stood so close to him that their noses would have touched if the junior prosecutor hadn’t been six inches smaller.

  “Fifteen years. That’s probably what you’ll get, right? You can turn yourself in today and start spending them in jail. Everyone loses, nobody gains. Or maybe instead of that you can resign from your job and devote the next fifteen years to making sure the fewest possible Najmans create the fewest possible Wiktorias.”

  “You’re talking as if I had a choice.”

  “We always have a choice.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Wednesday, January 1, 2014

  New Year’s Day. The birthday of King Sigismund I, Stepan Bandera, and Grandmaster Flash. Latvia enters the Eurozone. Five towns in Poland gain city status, but none of the new cities are in the province of Warmia. There’s nothing whatsoever going on—in the world of the Gregorian calendar everyone is asleep. Later they start on their New Year’s resolutions, which most of them break that evening, with the first glass of wine. In Kiev’s Independence Square half a million people sang the Ukrainian national anthem at midnight, as they saw in the new, landmark year. In Garmisch-Partenkirchen Polish ski jumper Kamil Stoch comes in seventh and loses his chance of a place on the podium in the Four Hills Tournament. In Warsaw Prime Minister Donald Tusk gives a New Year’s interview via Twitter. In Iława a man attending a New Year’s party went out onto the balcony for a cigarette, fell from the fourth floor, and suffered no injuries. In Olsztyn all’s quiet—the only fact worth mentioning is that the former mayor of Olsztyn (now a councilman), who was accused of sexual harassment, is top of the ranking for Man of the Year 2013. Well-known clairvoyant Krzysztof Jackowski doesn’t have the best predictions for Warmia. “It’s going to be a tough year,” he says. As a consolation he adds that the winter will be short. For now it’s cloudy, the temperature is around 32, and there’s fog and freezing drizzle.