Last Room

by Reah, Danuta

  He got out of the car and stood for a while breathing in the night air. The sky was clear and the moon was full. It was a night for ghosts. He walked past the ornate façade of the funeral home and through the high brick arch of the inner gates.

  Inside the cemetery, there were no lights but the moon turned the pathways into tracks of silver between the shadows of the long grasses that grew among the graves. Though the night was still, the foliage rustled behind him.

  Ghosts.

  He followed the path past the memorial wall and the grave pits that had been dug in the last days of the war. She had waited for him here and they had walked to the entrance of the cemetery together, agreeing to make contact soon as they parted at the gate. They had exchanged a cool handshake, a formal contrast in his memory to their next meeting when they had danced to the hurdy-gurdy on Piotrkowska, and ended the evening in his flat, in his bed.

  He wanted his life back. He wanted a time machine to transport him to that day in the cemetery, when he would walk along the path through the graves, glance at the woman who was looking at the Poznanski mausoleum and pass on by. He had been offered a choice at that moment, and he had chosen a path that led to pain, suspicion, misery and death. If he had never met Ania, he wouldn’t know what he had lost.

  Even thinking it felt like a betrayal. ‘I’m tired, kiciu. This is harder than I thought it would be.’

  Hurdy-gurdy music started to play, and once again, it was the festival and they were dancing on Piotrkowska, spinning round and round, a still point in a blur of colour, the single focus of the universe.

  He shook the image out of his head. He couldn’t bear it.

  He followed the familiar route towards the Poznanski tomb. He was walking through the land of the dead to find his lost love. She would follow him to the world of the living and as long as he didn’t look back, he could reclaim her. The path widened and he was in the open space that surrounded the mausoleum. It loomed above him, a silhouette against the brightness of the moon.

  A cloud drifted across the sky, and he was in darkness. The still air was icy and the cold was starting to eat into him. It was time to go back to his flat and pick up the threads tomorrow. Tomorrow he would follow the path the video files would show him. Tonight, he had had enough. ‘I’m sorry.’ He said it out loud, as if the ghost who was walking behind him through these graves would hear him.

  He was so preoccupied with this thought he didn’t realise at once that the sounds were not in his head. They were real. It was a gradual awareness that made him stop and listen.

  Nothing. Only the stirrings of the night. It was his imagination after all.

  Too many ghosts. He’d been thinking about too many ghosts. He remembered his fantasy about bringing Ania back from the land of the dead, and the stricture imposed on him not to look back or she would be lost forever. Superstitiously, he walked on without checking, and after a moment, the sounds started again.

  He kept moving, turning his head slightly to listen. It was unmistakeable now. Footsteps. There was someone on the path behind him. Whoever it was had no good motive for being there. The follower had stopped when he did, was moving quietly, trying to keep his presence hidden. Dariusz felt the cold clarity of fear as the options raced through his mind. A mugger? What mugger would hang around a cemetery late at night in the hope of some passer-by? A derelict or a vagrant who was planning to make an opportunistic attack? Vagrants were usually drunks, and they weren’t subtle. He felt in his pockets for a weapon.

  All he had were his keys. He wrapped his hand round them and let the ends protrude between his fingers in an improvised knuckle-duster. He had had his share of street brawls and he knew how to fight if he must.

  He measured the distance to the gate. It was too far to gain surprise by speed. He had to factor in enough time to get back to his car and away. He wondered when his stalker had picked him up. As he drove around the streets? He hadn’t been watching for followers then. He had felt oppressed in the café as he waited for Strąk’s e-mail, as though someone was watching him and had put it down to paranoia. Was it? He didn’t know.

  What mattered was someone had been stalking him from the time he left his car and began walking in the direction of the cemetery. He could remember the sound of the grasses rustling in the still night as he walked along the path. The follower must be waiting for him to go deeper into its expanse, as far from the road and any late travellers as possible.

  As soon as he turned towards the gate, the follower would jump him. He stopped, and the sounds behind him stopped as well. He pretended to be looking at his watch, angling it to catch what remained of the moonlight. In his peripheral vision, in the shadows, something gleamed.

  A knife. The person behind him was carrying a knife.

  His decision was made in an instant. He was running down the path towards the memorial wall, relying on memory rather than vision. The undergrowth snagged on his clothes. He could hear the sound of someone running behind him, the feet pounding on the ground, no further need for stealth. His pursuer was moving fast. Dariusz had very little time. As he came out of the path leading through the graves and onto the grassy area, he had only seconds. He had to get away before the other man made it into the open. He headed for the wall and saw the black pool of the grave pits ahead of him, the pits dug by the men who were to lie in them, that had been left as a memorial ever after.

  Maybe they could save him now. He threw himself in and pressed his body into the grass, trying to muffle his breathing. He heard the sound of running feet as someone came along the path, stopped a moment and then ran towards the inner gate. He pulled himself up to the edge of the pit and saw the figure as a dim shape against the light. Then he was out of the pit and running in the shadow of the memorial wall away from the Zmienna gate, towards the Ghetto Field and the main entrance on ul. Bracka.

  His pursuer must have realised almost as soon as he ran through the inner gate that Dariusz hadn’t gone that way. There was no way he could have made it across the open space to Zmienna before the pursuer got there. The man would be back in the cemetery now, looking. He risked a glance over his shoulder, and saw the beam of a flashlight in the darkness behind him. He dropped down as the light traced across the grass close by him, onto the wall above him, away towards the darkness of the graves.

  As soon as it moved away, he stood up and ran again. He could see the entrance in front of him now. It would be locked, but the wall was easy enough to scramble over. Pain shot through his hand as he pulled himself up. A circle of light caught him, then went out. He stopped on top of the wall and looked back, but all he could see was the darkness. He dropped down onto ul. Bracka and ran back towards the corner with Aleja Chryzantem.

  It was dark and overgrown, a country lane in the centre of a city. He moved fast, but quietly now. The street was silent and there were no sounds of pursuit. He kept a watch behind him as he moved forward, keeping to the shadows, keeping out of sight.

  His car was there, parked on the right, pulled off the road into a small lay-by. It looked innocent and abandoned. He wanted to be in it and driving back towards the security of the city centre, but it was surrounded by deep shadows. Caution – fear – held him back, kept him glued to the spot as he peered through the darkness. Everything was still. Everything was silent.

  He clenched his fist round his keys as he reached the car, expecting at any moment the sudden grab, the sharp pain as the knife drove in between his ribs. He had the car door open and was behind the wheel in a moment. His hands were sticky with blood as he fumbled with the keys, and then the engine fired.

  It wasn’t until he was driving through the empty streets on the way back to his flat that he started shaking.

  Chapter 58

  It was getting on for 9.00 p.m. when Will’s phone rang. He grabbed it before the first ring had completed. ‘Sarah! I’ve been…’

  But it was Euan Kingsley, the pathologist who had carried out the second post-mortem. ‘I’
m sorry this is so late, Gillen, but you said you wanted it as soon as I could get it to you. I’ve been in a meeting, and then you weren’t answering your phone.’

  His landline. Kingsley must have been calling the St Abbs number. ‘I’m not there. I’m in Manchester. I’m sorry. I should have…’

  ‘No. My mistake. I realised that but I’d left your details at home so it had to wait until now. I’ve put a copy of my report in the post but I thought you’d want the details as soon as I had them. OK. Now, I don’t know what you were expecting, but there’s nothing definite I can add to what they found in Poland.’

  Will felt the hope inside him start to unravel. ‘Nothing.’ He could hear the flat note in his voice.

  ‘I don’t know what that hospital doctor was trying to tell you. He only carried out an external examination and you know as well as I do that those can be misleading. She was badly smashed up, a fall from that height.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘The window of the room – did it have anything she could have hung onto? Bars? A frame?’

  He thought about the small metal window above the desk with its sloping sill. ‘Only the bottom of the frame. They found her prints there as if she’d clung on, but she couldn’t have held herself for long – seconds, maybe.’

  ‘Right… Could she have got her fingers round the frame, clung on like that?’

  It was hard to talk without the images forming in his mind. ‘No. Why?’

  ‘The fingers of her right hand are dislocated. The problem is, they aren’t just pulled out of place, they’ve been twisted. I thought it might have happened if she was trying to grip round a frame – the weight of her body could have done it.’

  ‘She couldn’t have got her hands round it.’ He could see her fingertips pressing into the metal, slipping, slipping…

  ‘Could she have grabbed something on her way down?’

  She’d smashed her head on the outflow pipe not far below the window. It was unlikely she was conscious after that. ‘I don’t think so. What are you saying?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe nothing. It’s unusual, though.’

  ‘If you were doing the PM for an investigation over here, what would you do?’

  ‘I’d mention it in the report and I’d expect the investigating team to account for it.’

  ‘And the original report?’

  ‘They missed it, or didn’t see it as significant.’

  ‘So what do you think happened?’

  ‘That’s not my remit, Gillen. You know that. You’re asking me to speculate without the facts. It isn’t my job to hunt around for explanations. I link my findings to the evidence the police give me, and point out what doesn’t fit. I can think of several ways it could have happened, but…’

  ‘Euan, I’m talking about Ania, about my daughter. Privately, not part of your report, what do you think?’

  There was silence on the other end of the line. When Kingsley spoke again, his voice was cautious. ‘Listen, I don’t want you to off half-cock, but one of the scenarios I would have to consider is that these injuries were pre-mortem. If they didn’t happen in the fall, and I don’t think they did, then I can’t account for them.’

  There it was.

  At last.

  Chapter 59

  It was getting on for midnight when Dariusz got back. He parked by the side of the road and approached the main entrance to the block aware of the shadows and the darkness where the lights had failed. No one accosted him. Inside the block, the lights were on a time switch. He went quickly up the stairs, checking each landing, but there was no one there.

  He let himself into his flat, locking and bolting the door behind him. Once he’d done that, he felt more secure. He was tired, but his mind wouldn’t let him rest, churning over and over what had happened, and what he needed to do.

  Someone had tried to kill him. He had no illusions about the intentions of the man who had followed him. It was still possible that it had been a vagrant. Łódź, like most Polish cities had a problem with the casualties caused by the social changes of the past decade, but broken-down alcoholics didn’t stalk with calculated intent.

  It had to be because of Ania. There was no other reason. Ania must have been killed to keep her quiet. Whoever was responsible must believe that Dariusz was close to finding whatever it was that Ania knew. So now, he had to be silenced as well.

  He stood to one side of the window and peered out. He couldn’t see anything, but that meant very little. He was beginning to imagine things, picturing armed police officers pressed against the wall beside his door, one of them counting silently to the others: three, two, one…

  Paranoia. His security was good. He had to trust it. He forced himself to relax, knowing that the tension and the uncertainty would exhaust him faster than anything. He was already tired from his night in the cells and the day spent on what was beginning to look like a wild goose chase. He was weary beyond belief.

  His hand was hurting. He looked at it and saw it was cut, a jagged tear that was probably from the glass on the cemetery wall. He washed it with water as hot as he could stand then, gritting his teeth, he poured neat antiseptic into the cut. He put a pad over it and secured it with a bandage, pulling it tight with his teeth.

  He made himself coffee, and realising he was ravenous, put together a sandwich of rye bread, salami and pickle. After he had eaten, he leaned back in his chair and let his eyes close.

  Ania was walking ahead of him down a long corridor. He was trying to catch her up, calling out, Wait for me! But his voice was only a feeble whisper. She was walking into the shadows and he had to stop her. She looked back as if she had heard him, but her eyes contained only cold rejection. I could never let a child killer walk away, she said.

  ‘I didn’t do it!’ The effort to make his voice struggle free of the restraints on it woke him up. The coffee was cold on the table in front of him. Dawn was starting to break and the day stretched ahead of him, empty and bleak. He had slept in his clothes and he smelled of smoke and sweat.

  His hand throbbed. He pulled himself to his feet, every joint in his body complaining and went to the window. There was no sign of the car that had followed him the day before. There was no one on the green spaces and paths that surrounded the block. The waiting and the anticipation would destroy him. He had to do something.

  The idea that had been forming in his mind the day before was coming back to him.

  Chapter 60

  Dariusz showered and changed the bandage on his hand, then sat at the window with coffee and his first cigarette of the day. He knew what he had to do. He had to access the files he had downloaded. He was mulling over the best way to do this – get his hands on some money and buy a new laptop, or borrow one from someone – when there was a knock at his door. He checked his watch. It was eight. He’d been sitting there and thinking for the better part of two hours.

  A quick check through the spy hole gave him the second worse news. It wasn’t a stranger with a knife, but it was the police. There were two of them waiting outside the door. He thought about the files on his pen drive, and his heart thumped. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘The Komendant wants to ask you some questions.’

  ‘Just a moment. I’ll get the key.’

  If they searched the flat, they would find the drive anywhere he chose to hide it. But they probably wouldn’t carry out a search – they’d done that yesterday. They hadn’t arrived mob-handed and they weren’t beating down his door. He made a quick decision and slipped it inside the bandage on his hand, tucking it down into his palm.

  He opened the door. The two men waiting for him were polite enough – a good sign. One preceded him down the stairway, the other flanked him. ‘What you done to your hand?’ he said.

  Dariusz lifted it up and showed him the bruised fingers. The man grinned. ‘Been fighting?’

  ‘No such luck. I fell down.’ The man’s grin broadened but he didn’t say anything else. He seemed to ha
ve accepted Dariusz’ explanation. They remained polite as they assisted him into the car. He had no option but to cooperate.

  ***

  Will’s phone woke him and he sat up, disoriented until memory flowed back. He was in the bed in Ania’s flat. A dim grey light was shining in from the window, and the phone at the side of his bed was ringing. He checked his watch. It was after nine. He’d slept for ten hours straight. He sat up, rubbing his face and trying to collect his thoughts. ‘Will Gillen.’

  ‘Will. It’s Sarah. Sarah Ludlow. I’m sorry I didn’t call you back. I was busy. I’ve got some news. It’s…’

  He interrupted. He didn’t know if Ania’s phone line was bugged, but it could be. ‘I’ll come in. We can talk then.’

  ‘Not the office. I’ll meet you at the university, the School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures. It’s on Oxford Road. Ask for Martin York. Can you get there for twelve?’

  ‘I’ll be there.’

  The news from Euan Kingsley was sitting in his mind like a toad, waiting impassively for him to take it out and observe it, to take on the full implications of what he had heard. He could only do this by keeping it distant, by turning it into an academic problem he had to work out. It was nothing to do with Ania, nothing to do with anyone. It was simply that: a puzzle.

  Why would someone twist another person’s fingers until they dislocated? He knew the answers and rehearsed them like pages from a text book: sadistic murder or coercion. Sadistic murders were carried out for the satisfaction of a sexual perversion or for revenge. There was no evidence of any sexual element to the crime. Could it have been a revenge attack carried out by Haynes’ friends or family? It was unlikely.