‘But why, Dr Cohen?’
‘Because one way or another I’m getting out of here as soon as I can, and I can’t take you with me.’
Guilt for so many bad choices I’d made throughout my life chased me to Stefa’s window that night to look up at the few stars that succeeded in penetrating the hazy gloom over the city. I puffed away at my pipe until long after midnight, grateful for the darkness and the quiet – and the comfort of good tobacco.
A first gunshot woke me from my half-sleep. I thought the bang had exploded out of a dream. Then a second shot thudded against the wall. Bina and her mother began screaming. I jumped up from my chair and pulled open my door. Uncle Freddi was slumped on the ground, a dark rose blossoming on his chest.
CHAPTER 25
I pressed both my hands over Freddi’s wound, hard, but the blood sluiced out and ran down his bare chest on to the floor. Bina’s mother was staring at her brother and shrieking his name.
‘Turn on the light!’ I shouted at her, but she didn’t move.
Bina was next to me, on her knees, her hands clamped over her mouth. When I pleaded with her for more light, she jumped up and pulled the cord of the lamp by the bed.
Freddi’s wound was deep. The killer must have hit an artery, because his blood was spilling out like wine from a spigot. The warmth of his life pulsing erratically below my hands made me shudder. His eyes were open, but they weren’t watching anything in our world.
‘Hold on, we’ll get help,’ I told him, but I knew it was too late.
I looked at Bina. Her eyes – darkly lit with terror – had just grasped the imminence of her uncle’s death.
‘Did you get a look at whoever shot him?’ I asked the girl, but as I spoke she turned towards the doorway; neighbours had just appeared.
When I felt a slackening in Freddi’s chest, I moved my hands to his wrist and felt for a pulse, but it was already gone.
While Professor Engal examined Freddi’s body, Ida Tarnowski tried to calm Bina’s mother, but she kept pushing the kindly old woman away. I fled the mayhem for the bathroom and scrubbed my hands over and over, but I couldn’t get the blood out from under my fingernails, since the ghetto soap melted to a useless mush when mixed with water. My legs were shaking, so I leaned back against the wall, staring at the gnarled backs of my hands, wondering if I would ever stop feeling Freddi’s life inside their grip. Then I summoned Bina into the bathroom and cleaned her face, which was splattered with blood. She went limp as soon as I touched her, like a small child, so I sat her on the rim of the bathtub.
‘Did you see who did this?’ I asked her.
She looked up at me as if unable to fit what had happened into her mind.
‘Take your time,’ I told her.
‘It was a man,’ she replied. ‘But it was too dark to see his face.’
She was shivering, so I fetched my coat and draped it over her shoulders.
‘How old was he – this man?’ I asked.
‘I couldn’t tell.’
‘What do you remember about him?’
‘He was small. Maybe only a little taller than me.’
Bina was about five foot two, by my estimation. ‘And did you see him shoot Uncle Freddi?’ I asked.
‘Only the second shot. The first… it woke me up. Maybe the man shot the lock. I’m not sure.’ Her eyes focused inside. ‘Then I saw him, and I knew I was awake but I didn’t understand – I thought maybe you’d come into the room.’ She showed me an inquisitive look, as if waiting for me to confirm that I hadn’t been there.
‘I was in my niece’s room, asleep,’ I told her gently.
‘Yes, I know that now. Uncle Freddi… I saw him standing next to the chair where he’d been sleeping. He spoke to the man. I think he said, ‘What do you want?’ Maybe he also thought the intruder was you. Then I heard a second shot, and Uncle Freddi fell. And then the man ran out and you were holding my uncle, and Mama was screaming…’
I held Bina close to me while she sobbed. When she could talk again, I asked, ‘Was Freddi involved in smuggling?’
‘I don’t see how he could have been. The Germans transferred him to the ghetto just two weeks ago. The only people he knew here were my mother and me.’
Professor Engal and another man carried Freddi’s body to the courtyard. Bina’s mother went with them to watch over her brother. The girl had wanted to accompany her, but her mother had said, ‘There are some things I need to tell your uncle alone.’
I saw such disappointment in Bina’s eyes that I steered her back to bed and covered her with a blanket. ‘Lie there, and I’ll make us some nettle tea,’ I told her.
First, however, I went to the front door. The lock was intact, which meant that both shots I’d heard had been fired at Freddi. Yet I’d only seen one wound; the killer must have missed on his first attempt, which meant he probably wasn’t a professional.
More importantly, he must have used a key to get in. Only Ewa and Izzy – and now Bina – had copies.
When we were seated together with our tea, Bina promised me that she had kept the key in her pocket since receiving it from Izzy and had not lent it to anyone. After I assured her that I believed her, she began to talk about her uncle in a frail, unsteady voice, as though pulling back details from out of the distant past. She told me that he had written a script for Conrad Veidt and had met with the actor at the Adlon Hotel in Berlin in the spring of 1939 to discuss changes.
She needed me to understand that her uncle had been on his way to becoming a famous screenwriter – and that he was irreplaceable.
We owe uniqueness to our dead at the very least, of course.
‘Uncle Freddi had promised to write a part for me when I was older,’ she told me.
‘So you want to be an actress?’ I asked.
‘No,’ she said, ‘I wanted to be a dancer before we came here. But it made Uncle Freddi so happy to think of us together in Berlin that I didn’t want to spoil his fun.’
I could see from the way Bina gazed off that she would write an entire future for her uncle over the next weeks and months. Another movie never to be made.
While I went to the window to see what was happening in the courtyard, Bina walked purposefully into to the kitchen and came back with a pot full of soapy water and a brush.
‘Oh no you don’t!’ I told her. ‘You have to rest!’
‘No, I have to clean up,’ she replied, and she got on her knees to begin scrubbing the bloodstains off the floor. Soon she was in tears again, so I lifted her to her feet, led her back to bed and instructed her to sleep. Now and then she would open her eyes to make sure I was still sitting with her. ‘I’m right here,’ I’d whisper.
When she drifted off, I began lightly caressing her hair. I learned the smoothness of her neck and the shadowed curves of her cheeks. I learned the way her chest would rise once, then once again before easing back down, as though she were overcoming her own resistance to life.
And once I’d learned these things, I walked away.
I took a rickshaw to Izzy’s workshop just after eight in the morning. He came to the door in his winter coat, but with his pyjamas on underneath. Reading in my face that I’d had a bad night, he reached out for my arm. ‘What’s happened?’ he asked, leading me inside.
When I explained about Freddi, he went pale. I sat him down at his worktable, where he’d been drinking coffee out of a bowl. ‘And no one else was hurt?’ he asked.
‘No. Listen, did you ever give Stefa’s apartment key to anyone?’
‘Of course not,’ he replied defensively. ‘I just made the one copy for Bina.’
‘Then Ewa must have given out our key. Or Stefa did.’
‘How do you know that?’
I sat down next to him and took a quick sip of his coffee, but it was too weak to do me any good. ‘The lock on the door wasn’t shot. Freddi’s killer let himself in.’
‘Someone might have taken it from Ewa just long enough to have a copy made,’
Izzy speculated. ‘Ziv works with her and could have easily done that. So maybe you were right about him. Maybe he fled Łódź to get away from the police or something.’
‘Except that Mikael could also have gotten it from Ewa. Though he let me see Adam’s medical file, which I don’t think he’d have done if he were involved in the murders.’
‘Poor Freddi,’ Izzy sighed. ‘He must have made some bad enemies really quickly.’
‘Freddi? This has nothing to do with him! The bullet in his chest was meant for me.’
‘How can you be so sure?’
‘Only you and I knew that Bina’s family moved in yesterday. Though…’ Remembering the talk I’d had with Rowy the previous afternoon, I cut my sentence short.
‘What is it?’ Izzy questioned.
‘Listen to my thinking and tell me if I’m right. The murderer outside the ghetto and his Jewish accomplice must have thought I was still living alone. One of them came to put a bullet in me, or, more likely, sent someone else. Whoever it was panicked when he saw two women and a man in the room. It was dark, and he assumed the man was me. His first shot missed, which may mean he wasn’t a trained killer. We’ll probably find the bullet lodged in the wall somewhere. In any case, his trying to get me out of the way means that our note convinced Mikael, Rowy or Ziv that we were on to him.’
‘So you think that whoever sent a killer knew that what we wrote was made up – and that it hadn’t been sent by his accomplice outside the ghetto?’
‘Yes, though I have no idea how. In any case, since he knew the note wasn’t genuine, he also knew that I had to have sent it.’
‘I don’t follow you.’
‘Because I’m the only one who’s been investigating Adam’s murder! It could only have been me. But listen, Izzy, this also means that Rowy can’t be guilty.’
‘Why?’
‘Because while I was with him yesterday afternoon, he warned me that the Jewish Council would make me take on tenants, and I told him Bina and her family had already moved in – and that I was living in Stefa’s room. If he sent a killer, he would have told him to walk through the main room into the bedroom – that I’d be sleeping there.’
‘Unless the killer panicked and didn’t follow Rowy’s instructions. You said yourself he might not be a professional.’
‘True, but after he took down Freddi, he’d have come for me in the bedroom.’
‘Which makes Ziv our main suspect. We have to figure out how he could have known our note was a trap.’
Izzy and I tossed unlikely speculations between us, dissatisfied and irritable, until there was a knock at the door. He retrieved his gun from his tool chest. When he motioned for me to hide, I slipped behind the curtain that concealed his lavatory.
‘Who is it?’ Izzy called through the door.
I didn’t catch the reply, but I heard the creak of the door opening.
‘Put your hands over your head and take off your overcoat!’ Izzy ordered our visitor.
‘I’m afraid I can’t take off anything with my hands in the air,’ the man retorted in an amused tone.
I recognized his voice immediately and came out of hiding. Izzy had his gun pointed at Mikael, who rolled his eyes as if this were a badly written scene in a Yiddish farce.
‘How about telling your zealous friend to put his weapon down before someone gets hurt?’ he asked me.
‘He might have a gun,’ Izzy reminded me.
‘Are you crazy?’ said Mikael, shaking his head, and he lowered his arms with a sigh.
‘Just take off your overcoat and toss it down,’ I told him. ‘I need to search your pockets.’
‘Erik, I’m here to help you!’ he declared.
‘Just humour me.’
He let his shoulders slump as if we were exhausting him, but he had realized by now we were serious and did as I requested. Finding no knife or gun, I laid his overcoat on Izzy’s worktable. Then I went to Mikael and confirmed that he had no weapon on him.
‘I hope you feel ridiculous!’ he told me in an offended voice as I was patting his trousers.
‘Feeling ridiculous is a sign of life,’ I replied.
‘Talmud, Torah or Groucho Marx?’ he asked – and it was his absurd humour that won him to me again.
‘Sorry,’ I told him, and I motioned for Izzy to put away his gun.
Izzy and I sat opposite Mikael, who looked at me with troubled eyes. ‘Ewa sent word to me about what happened to your new tenant,’ he began. ‘She said a girl named Bina let her know that you’d come here. I need to show you something.’ Grimacing, he added, ‘I think maybe I should have showed it to you before.’
He took a folded sheet of paper out of his pocket. ‘I want you to know I’m risking everything by letting you see this.’ He handed it to me.
The note was typewritten: If you should tell Erik Cohen anything that casts suspicion on me, you will never see your granddaughter alive again.
There was no signature. But many of the letters were faded – as if they’d been made with a badly functioning typewriter.
‘Who is this from?’ I asked Mikael.
‘I can’t be sure,’ he replied, ‘but it must be from whoever is responsible for Adam’s death. Maybe from Rowy. As you and I discussed, Adam and Anna had him in common.’
‘When did you get it?’
‘Three days ago. I’m only showing it to you because I’m worried that another child will be killed. Though, if I’m going to be completely honest, I’d never have gone to your home to show it to you.’
‘But why?’
‘I think Rowy is having me followed. I’ve spotted a man tracking me twice.’
‘What did he look like?’ Izzy asked, undoubtedly thinking – like me – that he might have been the same man who had killed Freddi.
‘Young – maybe thirty. Small, wiry…’
‘How small?’
‘I don’t know – maybe only a little over five feet.’
Izzy and I shared a knowing look.
‘What else?’ I asked.
‘Nothing – it was after dark both times I noticed him. I didn’t see his face. Anyway, this time I took a rickshaw here, and I made the driver take a circuitous route. I don’t think anyone could have managed to follow me.’
‘But why would Rowy be scared of what you could tell Erik?’ Izzy asked.
‘I don’t know. He must think I know something about him that would prove he’s guilty.’ Mikael reached across the table for my hand and gave it a squeeze. ‘Which is why you can never tell anyone about the note or that I came to see you.’
‘No one will ever know,’ I assured him.
‘And you?’ Mikael asked Izzy, who nodded his agreement.
I handed the note back to him.
‘Now that I’ve shown it to you, I want to destroy it,’ Mikael told us, moving Izzy’s glass ashtray closer to him. ‘It feels like a bomb in my pocket.’ Crunching the paper into a ball, he set his lighter to it and dropped it into the ashtray.
I watched flames rising from the paper as if participating in a ritual linking the three of us into a conspiracy.
‘There’s a problem,’ I told Mikael. ‘The person responsible for identifying Adam and Anna to a German or Pole outside the ghetto may not be Rowy. It could be Ziv.’
‘Ziv?’ he scoffed. ‘No, that’s impossible. He’s so… so inoffensive. And Ewa adores him. They’re like brother and sister.’
‘Ziv volunteered to help Rowy identify children for his chorus. And he’s clever enough to have planned the murders. In fact, he once told me he can think a dozen moves ahead.’
‘But what could he possibly gain from killing Jewish children?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Imagine the note you received is from Ziv, not Rowy,’ Izzy suggested to Mikael. ‘Is there something he wouldn’t want you to tell us – or the police?’
He gazed off for a time, considering possibilities, then shook his head. ‘I can’t think of anyt
hing.’
Izzy and I questioned Mikael at length about Ziv, but nothing he told us seemed incriminating until he mentioned that when the young man had gone to him for a medical exam he had confessed that his mother was still alive and living in Łódź.
‘So he’s not an orphan?’ I asked, stupefied.
‘No, Ziv told me that he sends money to his mother every month. He made me swear not to tell anyone, because she disobeyed the Germans and never moved into the ghetto. She’s in hiding in Christian Łódź, with a family she’s paying, and when I talked to him about her, he said she was running out of money. The situation was getting desperate.’
‘When was this?’ Izzy asked.
‘Some time in early January. I’d have to check my files to know for sure – to see when he came for his medical exam.’
‘How does he get the money to her?’ I questioned.
Mikael shrugged. ‘Is that important?’
When I looked to Izzy, he told Mikael just what I was thinking. ‘He’d need the help of a Pole or German outside the ghetto to make sure the money reached her!’
We instructed Mikael to return to his office and said we would be in touch with him later that day. He left the workshop by the back exit.
Ewa and Ziv were both working when we stepped inside in the bakery. We took Ewa out to the courtyard. She swore that she’d never lent Stefa’s key to anyone, which meant that Ziv took it from her handbag and made a copy.
‘Stay here,’ I told her.
‘But why?’
‘I don’t want to risk you getting hurt.’
We went back inside. Ziv was kneading dough on a counter, a paper bag on his head, white with flour from head to toe. I asked him to come into his bedroom with us.
‘What is it you want, Dr Cohen?’ he asked, backing up, fearful, undoubtedly sensing that he might have to dash past me to make his escape.
The Warsaw Anagrams Page 23