“Tarpaulin.”
Szacki nodded. It wasn’t really the sort of activity that prompted the local hoods to insist on their share. But that possibility had to be considered when it came to strange injuries. Of course, the guy could be working on the black market; tarpaulin—what’s in a name?—could be a cover. Having a family would then explain Kiwit’s fear of involving the law.
“I had a quiet chat with him. I explained that if someone’s threatening him, his family won’t be any safer if he starts pretending there’s no danger.” Falk was proving that he was correctly following Szacki’s line of reasoning. “I told him about victims’ rights, and explained what measures we can apply with regard to a suspect. That an injury of that kind and threats were enough for an arrest, and that he wouldn’t have to be afraid for his children. I was hoping to touch a nerve. But no such luck.”
Szacki thought. Something was wrong here.
“What does he look like? Small and skinny?”
“Well built, broad shoulders, paunch.”
“Any other injuries?”
“No.”
The case should really be dismissed right away—there was no point conducting an investigation into a fight when the victim refused to make a statement. If it wasn’t a fight, but the guy was involved in some shady business, with Russians for instance, he only had himself to blame. And Falk had taken a very practical, logical approach. Szacki would probably have done the same.
“Please postpone your decision for two more days,” Szacki said. “If there aren’t any other injuries, then Mr. Kiwit didn’t fall onto anything, or take part in a drunken fight. There must have been at least three of them, to be able to overpower him and poke something in his ear. They may have blackmailed him with threats or physical abuse toward his family. Find out where the ambulance picked him up, put on a show of searching the house for traces of blood, interview the wife and sons, and then put pressure on him again. Best of all, at the central station. A room with a two-way mirror, cameras—let him think it’s a serious matter.”
Falk nodded, as if he understood he’d be making plenty of his own decisions in life. Now was the time for learning. He put away his papers and stood up. He was short, perhaps not unusually so, but noticeably, especially since he came from a generation of well-fed giants. It was either his genes, or his mother hadn’t been able to lay off the sauce during pregnancy.
Short, slight, and thin, with the figure of a dancer. Suddenly Szacki regretted that in asking about Kiwit he’d used the words small and skinny. It was Falk who was small and skinny, on top of which he always dressed in black or dark gray, which caused him to appear smaller. He might have thought his own appearance had prompted Szacki to phrase his question like that.
“You made a fine speech at my old school, Prosecutor,” Falk said on his way out.
“Did you hear it?”
“I saw it. It’s the twenty-first century, you know.” Small and skinny must have hurt him—he didn’t usually take the liberty of making spiteful remarks.
Szacki’s phone rang. Falk left the room.
“Szacki.”
“Good morning, this is Dr. Frankenstein.”
“Very funny.”
“Professor Ludwik Frankenstein, D.Sc., from the university hospital on Warszawska Avenue. You signed an order for an unidentified corpse to be sent to us.”
“Yes.”
“Come see me right away. Anatomy department, square building on the left past the barrier.”
3
For a while Szacki was lost. He remembered Olsztyn’s Warszawska Avenue as a wide road leading out of town past the university, but it turned out to have an uglier sister—a short extension lined with scruffy little tenements right next to the Old Town. He had to turn left by Jan’s Bridge. The hospital was located opposite something that called itself the “regional beer center.”
He showed the guard his ID and found a parking spot between the buildings. This had once been the German garrison hospital, probably of lesser importance, as the buildings of immortal redbrick looked much smaller and more modest than the neo-Gothic blocks of the city hospital. Part of it looked neglected, and part had been renovated, with a modern interior that was nicely integrated with the German architecture. The place had the atmosphere of a building site, arising from the fact that Olsztyn’s university medical faculty had only been up and running for a few years. In a short time a squalid military hospital had been transformed into a clinical marvel. Szacki had been to see Żenia’s mother here last year and had realized that on the whole it had quite a human dimension, compared with the various medical monstrosities he had seen in his career. That had been during a hot spring, when the chestnut trees were flowering among the buildings, and the old brick walls exuded a pleasant chill.
A chill was the last thing he needed now. He did up his coat and quickly walked across to the only square building, exceptionally coated in white plaster. It crossed his mind that if the man was called Frankenstein, he was sure to look normal and behave naturally. It would be a nice change after all the crazy pathologists he had met. Besides, he was a university lecturer, and not some weirdo cutting up corpses all day long. He had to be normal—he taught kids, didn’t he?
A vain hope.
Professor Ludwik Frankenstein, D.Sc., was waiting for him at the top of the stairs, by the entrance to the anatomy department. Well, well—he’d done everything he possibly could to make himself look like a mad scientist. He stood straight as a reed, tall and thin, with the long, aristocratic, classically handsome face of the only good German officer in an American war movie. He had a steely gaze, a straight nose, as if drawn with a set square, a short, fair beard trimmed like Lenin’s, round glasses in very thin wire frames, and a bizarre medical gown with a mandarin collar and a row of buttons down each side like an officer’s greatcoat. To complete the image, all he needed was a pipe with a long stem and some amputated hands protruding from the pockets of his gown.
“Frankenstein,” he said in greeting.
The only thing missing was a clap of thunder.
“Once this was the hospital canteen,” he explained to Szacki, as he led the way through the lab.
“I see,” said Szacki, noticing some small paper plates with the remains of cake and empty champagne bottles lined up against the wall. “So buildings don’t change their habits.”
Soon after, Frankenstein opened a door and they entered the dissection room, without doubt the most modern Szacki had ever seen. There was a chrome-plated table, equipped with all the essential instruments for dissection, as well as video cameras, lamps, and a powerful hoist. He probably couldn’t deal with the smell of the corpse, but perhaps at least he wouldn’t have to toss all his clothes in the washing machine after the autopsy.
There were several rows of high chairs towering around the table—this was not just a dissection room, but also a lecture hall.
“Here,” said Frankenstein in a low voice, “we strip death of its mysteries.”
The professor’s solemn words would have sounded dignified, except that in this temple of death there were more empty champagne bottles standing on the windowsills, balloons were free floating against the ceiling, set in motion by the fan, and colored streamers were hanging from the surgical lights. Szacki passed no comment on this evidence of a party, or on the scientist’s words. He looked at the bones of yesterday’s German laid out on the table. At first glance the skeleton looked complete. Szacki stuck his hands in his coat pockets and tightly crossed his fingers. The scientist had a weird name and looked like a madman, but he might just be a normal guy with an unusual appearance. Down-to-earth, solid, pleasant.
“This table,” said the professor, stroking the chrome surface, “is to a corpse what a Bugatti Veyron is to a seventy-year-old playboy. It’s hard to imagine a better combination.”
A vain hope.
Szacki uncrossed his fingers, swallowed a comment on whether in that case he should apologize for only
providing old bones, and got to the point: “So what’s the issue?”
“You, as a prosecutor, are sure to know the basics of biology, the pseudoscientific version of it that is enough for criminal investigation. How many years does it take for a man to become a skeleton?”
“About ten, depending on the circumstances,” Szacki replied calmly, though he felt rising irritation. “But to be in this state, with no tissue, no cartilage, sinew, or hair, takes at least thirty. Even bearing in mind that corpses decompose faster in the open air than in water, and much faster than when buried.”
“Very good. There are various minor factors, but in our climate, left to itself, a corpse needs a minimum of two or three decades to reach this state. That’s what I was thinking as I laid our rascal out. I also thought the skeleton was complete enough for me to use it as a jigsaw puzzle: I toss various pieces into bags, and the students have to put them together against the clock. I was ready to make the missing pieces myself.” He adjusted his glasses and smiled apologetically. “A little creative hobby of mine.”
Szacki realized where this argument was leading.
“But there are no pieces missing.”
“Exactly. That’s what got me thinking—it’s a mystery. This corpse has been lying there for dozens of years, but not a single bone has gone missing. No rat took even one?”
Szacki shrugged.
“In an enclosed structure made of reinforced concrete.”
“That occurred to me, but I called some friends who take an interest in the history of Olsztyn . . . Are you from Olsztyn?”
“No.”
“I thought not. We’ll return to that. So I called my friends, and they told me it was an ordinary air-raid shelter, a cellar. So it wasn’t hermetically sealed, it had washing facilities, plumbing, ventilation. You could say anything about it, but not that it was an enclosed structure. Which means that rats, fighting for food, should have scattered those remains into all four corners. Why didn’t they?”
Szacki just stared.
“The body has its secrets.” Frankenstein lowered his voice, so nobody could have been in any doubt that he was about to betray one of them. “Did you know that we have taste receptors in the lungs, as well as on the tongue?”
“I do now.”
“And they’re for bitter tastes! The alveoli react to bitter flavors. Which means that the ultimate remedy for asthma may not be some miraculously manufactured substance but something basic, as long as it’s bitter. I don’t envy the guy who discovered that. The pharmaceutical companies have probably put a price on his head by now.”
“Professor, please . . .”
“To the point. But one more fact to take home with you: the cervix has taste receptors too. In its turn, it likes a sweet flavor. Do you think it has anything to do with the fact that to give them vitality, the spermatozoa travel along on a base of fructose?”
Szacki decided the best defense against a madman was attack.
“Curious,” Szacki said, imitating Frankenstein’s tone. “Maybe in that case you’d like to go into business producing huge chocolate vibrators? Your knowledge of human anatomy would be indispensable.”
Frankenstein adjusted his glasses.
“I’ll give it some thought. But let’s get back to the bones.” He folded his hands behind his back and strolled around the table. “Here was an enigma, the key to which was this very corpse. So I set about examining it. At first I hadn’t noticed—”
“Is it a man or a woman?”
“A man, of course. I hadn’t noticed, because sometimes even as a result of decomposition, the phalanges in the toes do not separate but remain stuck together by thin joint capsules and degeneration. Have a look.” He picked up a single bone and tossed it in Szacki’s direction.
Szacki caught it without a second thought; he had seen worse corpses than the professor had.
It was two small bones, one about two inches long, the other shorter, joined together by a thin layer of white transparent cartilage.
“Don’t you see anything surprising?”
“The joint hasn’t decomposed.”
“Try moving those bones.”
He tried, and to his amazement, he could bend them. There couldn’t possibly be any working joints in a corpse that had been rotting for decades.
“And now try to separate them.”
A gentle pull was all it took; in one hand he was holding the shorter bone, which ended in a small metal plate with a hole in it, like the washer that goes under a nut. The longer bone still had its cartilage, tipped with a half-inch square bolt.
“What is it?”
“It’s a silicone endoprosthesis for a metatarsophalangeal joint, also known as a floating endoprosthesis, a modern solution in the field of joint prostheses. A surgical way of dealing with a condition known as stiff big toe. Extremely irritating for sportsmen. And for women, because they can’t walk in high heels. Judging by his cranial sutures, this man was about fifty. So neither a woman nor a sportsman. He probably liked to look after himself.”
Szacki’s brain was working at full throttle.
“Does it have a serial number?”
“Normal ones, yes, silicone ones, no. But there’s only one center in Warsaw where they make these things—they specialize in foot surgery. One of my former students is making a fortune there because there are women who are prepared to pay the price of a car for the perfect anatomical products to go with their high-heeled shoes. I called him out of curiosity.”
“And?”
“So far he has only ever implanted one prosthesis of this kind and size. For a patient from Olsztyn. Who was very much counting on this operation because he loved going for long walks around his beloved Warmia. And how do you find life in Olsztyn?”
“It’s a great place,” muttered Szacki.
He needed names and details.
Frankenstein beamed and straightened up, as if about to get a medal from the Führer.
“I quite agree. Do you know that we have eleven lakes within the city limits? Eleven!”
“Did he say when the operation took place?” asked Szacki, thinking that if the corpse were five or seven years old, the case wouldn’t be very fresh, but would still involve a mystery.
“Two weeks ago. Ten days ago the patient walked out of the clinic and drove home. November fifteenth, to be exact. He was greatly looking forward to his Saturday walk.”
“That’s impossible,” said Szacki, staring at the bones he was holding, from a foot that had apparently been strolling around the Warmian forest just over a week ago. He joined them together and tried bending them again—the artificial joint worked perfectly.
Frankenstein handed him a small sheet of paper.
“The patient’s details.”
Piotr Najman, resident of Stawiguda. Born in 1963, turned fifty a week ago. Or would have.
“Thank you, Professor. Unfortunately I must complicate life for you. You cannot move these remains, and nobody may come in here or touch anything until the police take it to the lab for further analysis. We’ve already contaminated the evidence enough. Let’s leave the room.”
As he headed for the door, he was forming an action plan for the investigation. Of course, Najman might turn out to be watching TV in his slippers—there may have been a curious misunderstanding, or perhaps some bones had gotten mixed up during the party at the university. But he had to act as if that were the least likely possibility.
“Prosecutor . . . ,” said Frankenstein, pointing a meaningful finger at him.
What kind of a goddamned professional did he look like? He returned to the dissection table and put the artificially connected bones back in place.
“I see you people spend your free time in here,” Szacki said spitefully, pointing at the party debris.
“Don’t you read the papers? We won the Grand Prix at the innovations fair in Brussels. For the first time since the days of Zbigniew Religa and his artificial heart. For a project allowin
g a 3-D view of models produced on the basis of combined MRI and CT scanning. A work of genius.”
“And do you always celebrate in the dissection room?”
“Always,” said the professor, as if nothing could be more ordinary. “We mustn’t forget who’s with us every step of the way.”
“Who’s that?” asked Szacki, once they had left the dissection room and were walking down the hallway toward the exit. In his thoughts he was miles away.
“Death.”
Szacki stopped and looked at the professor.
“Can you explain how a corpse can become a skeleton in just a week?”
“Of course. I’m currently considering five different hypotheses.”
“When will you be ready to talk about them?”
Frankenstein stared ahead, as if there were boundless space in front of him and not a lecture schedule hanging on the wall. It couldn’t be a good sign. An expert pathologist would tell him to wait several months for a professional opinion. And a professor with a D.Sc.?
“Tomorrow, at eleven a.m. But you must leave the remains with me. Please don’t worry. I taught most of Poland’s pathologists, and I have equipment here to make the Olsztyn forensics lab look like a children’s chemistry set.”
“I’m not worried,” said Szacki. “See you tomorrow.”
Professor Ludwik Frankenstein, D.Sc., suddenly placed a hand on Szacki’s shoulder and looked him deep in the eyes.
“I like you,” he said.
Szacki didn’t so much as smile. On the steps he took in a deep breath of November air. He felt faint and his head was spinning. Purely because, if not for old habits from his Warsaw days, he would probably have given routine orders for that corpse to be buried, and with it the proof of an unusual crime. Of course, he was mildly disturbed that in that case, justice wouldn’t have been done. But at the thought that he might have deprived himself of the most promising case for years, his legs started to give way.
4
He must have been missing the action. He should go back to the office and tell the boss about this new, difficult, and soon sure-to-be-highly-publicized case. He should bring in the sad CID man, Bierut, and make an action plan. Instantly send someone to Najman’s house and summon the family for questioning. Ask someone from Warsaw to question the foot doctor. Wait for the test results. All in all, an investigation. But instead of these routine measures, he told Bierut to find him Najman’s address; fifteen minutes later he had spoken to Najman’s wife on the phone and was driving down Warszawska Avenue—the real, broad one—toward Stawiguda. As he drove past the university, something began to fall from the sky. This time it wasn’t freezing rain, just wet snow. The huge snowflakes looked as if someone had chewed them on their way down from the clouds, and then spat them out with hatred onto the Citroën’s windshield.
Rage Page 5
