The Chosen Child

by Graham Masterton

  ‘So what does it all mean?’ asked Clayton. He might have used mediums before, but he was plainly just as shaken as the rest of them.

  ‘Oh, come on,’ said Marek. He was growing cockier now that the seance was over. ‘It was all done with mirrors.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ put in Rej. ‘That was a real street and a real apartment building. I can locate it, no trouble at all. And if I can do that, we can find out the name of the little girl whose doll this was; and whether she’s really dead, and why.’

  ‘You honestly believe those images were real?’ asked Sarah.

  ‘There’s only one way to find out.’

  ‘But even if they were real, and you find out who she was – what is that going to tell us? I mean, how is it going to bring us any nearer to catching the Executioner?’ asked Sarah.

  Rej grimaced. ‘I don’t know. But as I said before, all I need is one connection. Just one.’

  Clayton said. ‘Whatever it was that broke through that door – did any one of you see that clearly?’

  ‘It was big,’ Marek volunteered. ‘It was bigger than any man I’ve ever seen. And it was dark. Like it was dressed all in black. Except its face was dark, too. That’s if it had a face. I mean I could see it but I couldn’t see it. That’s what made me think it was mirrors.’

  ‘I had that impression, too,’ said Sarah. ‘I felt as if I were looking at it but I couldn’t decide what I was looking at. It was like one of those optical illusions – you know, when you have the silhouettes of two old witches, but it’s not two old witches, it’s a candlestick.’

  ‘That doesn’t surprise me,’ said Rej. ‘Eye witnesses very rarely manage to make any sense out of accidents or violent crime. Their brain is too shocked and surprised by what’s happening; and when they think about it afterwards, their imagination fills in a whole lot of detail they never actually saw. That’s what makes eye witnesses so unreliable.’

  Clayton picked up the headless doll and turned it this way and that. ‘What did this?’ he asked Madame Krystyna. ‘It looks like it’s been cut with a very sharp knife.’

  ‘Maybe she’s hiding a razor blade up her sleeve,’ Marek suggested. ‘And maybe that isn’t blood. Maybe that’s good old tomato ketchup.’

  ‘You want to taste it?’ Madame Krystyna challenged him.

  ‘Well, no thanks. But what we saw there... there’s got to be a way of doing it with projectors or something like that.’

  Madame Krystyna slowly shook her head. ‘The young... you’d think they’d be receptive. Instead, they’re more cynical than we are.’

  But Clayton said, ‘Is there a projector? Is your sleeve really empty? And is that genuinely blood?’

  Madame Krystyna stared him directly in the eye. ‘You believe it was real, don’t you? And you know what a disservice you’d be doing to that little girl, if you didn’t?’

  Clayton stared back at her for a long time. Then he nodded, and gathered up his pen and his notepad, and stood up.

  *

  It was after midnight and Komisarz Jarczyk was still hunched over his desk reading witness reports. He had slept only three hours since taking over the Executioner case from Stefan Rej, and he felt gritty-eyed and exhausted. His case-solving methods usually owed more to inspiration than they did to legwork, and he had imagined that he would be able to read through Rej’s plodding paperwork and almost immediately be able to divine who the Executioner might be. But he was beginning to admit to himself that Rej’s work, even if it wasn’t inspirational, was relentlessly thorough, and yet there was still no clue whatsoever to who the Executioner could be, and why he had embarked on such a strange and grisly series of killings.

  Jarczyk’s stomach growled like a mangy dog. He opened his sandwich-box but it was empty except for a bruised apple and two stale paczki that his mother-in-law had made for him. He picked out one of the doughnuts and began to chew it, but his stomach liked that even less and let out another growl and a complicated gurgle. He could do with a hot shower and a good solid meal.

  More than anything, he could do with a revelation, a blinding insight into the Executioner case. He had secretly hoped that he would solve it within a week and win instant promotion; or an award; or both. But the files remained as cryptic and as unrelated to each other as fourteen half finished jigsaws in an empty room, with no pictures on the boxes to tell him what they were supposed to look like.

  He dropped the half eaten doughnut into his metal wastebasket. As he did so, there was a knock at his office door. It was Ligocki, a uniformed officer from the night shift. He had a neat black moustache and a reputation as a chaser of anything in skirts, even the ugly ones, of which police headquarters had more than the national average.

  ‘Still working, komisarz?’

  Jarczyk leaned back in his chair, clasping his hands behind his head so that he revealed his sweat-circled armpits. ‘If we’re going to catch this bastard, Ligocki, we have to do our homework.’

  ‘We’ve just had a call from the Komenda Rejonowa Warszawa Mokotow. They’ve picked up a car thief.’

  ‘Well, good for them. What do they want, a presidential citation?’

  ‘According to Mokotow, this thief says he knows who killed Antoni Dlubak.’

  Jarczyk slowly lowered his arm and sat up straight. ‘How does he know?’

  ‘You can ask him that for yourself, komisarz. They’re bringing him over.’

  Jarczyk beat on his blotter with his fist. ‘Shit! This is it! This is the break I’ve been looking for! I knew that somebody would have to crack in the end. Jesus! You can’t cut the heads off fourteen unrelated people and expect to get away with it! Not in Warsaw! Not in my Warsaw!’

  ‘No, komisarz,’ said Ligocki, looking absurdly suave. ‘You’re absolutely right.’

  Jarczyk stood up. ‘When he gets here, take him straight to the interview room. Give him a cup of coffee and a cigarette if he wants one. Don’t bully him, do you understand? I’m just going to freshen up.’

  He took out the plastic toiletries bag that they had given him on Lot airlines when he flew to Prague for a police conference. He went to the washroom, filled one of the basins, and stared at himself in the mirror. He thought he looked tired but determined: the kind of officer who stays at his desk, hunting down the truth, when everybody else has gone home. Nadkomisarz material; then inspektor; then – who knew? Nadinspektor?

  If this car thief knew who killed Antoni Dlubak, then he knew who killed Jan Kaminski and all of those other poor bastards. The fourteen half finished jigsaw puzzles would assemble themselves into one large completed picture, and he, Jarczyk, would get the credit for it.

  He shaved with his Russian Superbrytvo electric razor. It didn’t cut much stubble off, but it gave him a fresh, pink look. He combed his hair, and used up his last two or three drops of aftershave by punching the tiny plastic bottle against his cheeks. Then he returned to his desk.

  It was over twenty minutes before Ligocki called him to say that the suspect had arrived, and by then he was almost asleep. He had been dreaming of what he would say at tomorrow’s media conference, when he announced that he had identified and arrested the Executioner, and that the streets of Warsaw were safe once again. Part of the dream had involved sitting in a dimly lit bar drinking cherry vodka and trying to attract the attention of a woman in a tight red dress. The woman had turned around, and her face was a smooth wax mask. He was quite frightened. He knew it was a death mask.

  He arrived at the interview room looking smart but slightly stunned. A man was sitting at the wooden table in the centre of the room, with an untouched cup of coffee in front of him and an unsmoked cigarette perched in an ashtray beside his right hand. Jarczyk put down his folder and pen, drew up his chair, and sat down. The man watched him with an expression like a venomous toad.

  ‘So,’ said Jarezyk. ‘Lukasz Ruba, thirty-four years old, three previous convictions for larceny, two convictions for fraud, and one conviction for violent assault
. Beat up your girlfriend, blinded her in one eye, broke both her arms. That’s quite a record. Better than Miecyzslaw Fogg.’ Miecyzslaw Fogg was a corny and sentimental singer from the pre-war years. ‘Enough to bring tears to a mother’s eyes.’

  Ruba said, ‘I saw them in Saxon Park, that’s all. They were sitting on a bench by the fountain, talking. I didn’t know Dlubak but I knew the guy who was with him. I was going to go up and say hello when all of a sudden they both stood up and hurried off; and I mean they hurried off. The guy had a gun, I’m sure of it.’

  ‘When was this?’ asked Jarczyk.

  ‘Lunchtime yesterday.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say anything before?’

  ‘I didn’t know who Dlubak was, did I? But then I saw his face in the paper this morning.’

  ‘That was this morning. Why wait till now?’

  ‘I wasn’t arrested till now. You don’t think I’d help the gliny out of the goodness of my heart, do you?’

  ‘Did you have any reason to suspect that this “other guy” might do Mr Dlubak some serious harm?’

  ‘Let’s put it this way: he’s the kind of guy who plucks out other people’s nose-hairs, just for a laugh.’

  ‘You want to tell me who he is?’

  Ruba crossed his legs and gave a loud, sarcastic laugh. ‘What do you think I am? A kretyn? First of all you have to give me a guarantee. No criminal charges; and protection afterwards. Yes, and two – no, two thousand five hundred – dollars.’

  Jarczyk shook his head. ‘What are you doing? Giving up car-stealing and taking up comedy? I’m not authorized to give you protection. And anyway, why should I? If you get killed, the police have one less problem. I’m certainly not authorized to give you any money. However, I am authorized to charge you with obstructing justice and wasting police time, for which you will be fined so much that you will have to steal three Mercedes every day for the next twenty years just to make enough money to pay it. Provided, of course, you don’t get caught doing it. In which case, you’ll be fined so much that you’ll never live to pay it back.’

  ‘You can’t do this to me. I know who killed Dlubak.’

  ‘You saw him do it?’

  ‘Of course I didn’t see him do it.’

  ‘You said he had a gun.’

  ‘Yes, but the guy with the gun didn’t do it, did he?’

  ‘Well how the fuck should I know? Especially if you won’t tell me who he is.’

  Ruba picked up his coffee and sipped it noisily, as if he were determined to burn the inside of his mouth. ‘The name of the guy who picked up Dlubak doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Oh, you don’t think so?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so, because he only ran errands for the guy who did kill him.’

  ‘And who was the guy who did do it?’ asked Jarczyk, with deeply sarcastic patience.

  Ruba shook his head. His dark hair was cropped so short that his shingles scars showed through. ‘I’m not telling you that. Not unless you give me a guarantee. No criminal charges; and protection afterwards.’

  ‘I told you, I don’t have the authority to do that.’

  ‘How about letting me go and buying me an air ticket to Stockholm.’

  Jarczyk rubbed the back of his neck, as if the price of an air ticket to Stockholm would jeopardize his entire career. ‘I don’t know..’ he said. ‘You’re supposed to tell us who killed Dlubak because it’s your public duty.’

  Ruba leaned forward, his eyes like nail heads. ‘If you don’t promise to get me out of Poland I’m not saying one more word.’

  Jarczyk thought for a moment, then he nodded. ‘All right, then. An air ticket to Stockholm.’

  ‘You swear it?’

  ‘Cross my heart and hope to die.’

  Ruba said, ‘You’d better not go back on that, because I’ll kill you before they kill me. Give me some paper, and a pencil.’

  Jarczyk pushed his pad across the table. Ruba picked up his pen and wrote a name in Cyrillic letters. Zboinski.

  ‘Roman Zboinski?’ Jarowski asked him. He could feel the paper trembling in his hand.

  ‘Now you know why I want a ticket to Stockholm.’

  ‘You’re sure about this?’

  Ruba nodded, again and again, and kept on nodding while he was talking. ‘The guy with the gun has worked for Zboinski for years, ever since they were stealing meat from the cold stores in Gdansk. I knew him because I dealt in Audis and Mercedes, and he always paid me top dollar. He does anything that Zboinski tells him. Zboinski says bring me a woman, he brings him a woman. Zboinski says bring me Dlubak, he brings him Dlubak. That day, he went to bring Dlubak, and Zboinski killed him.’

  ‘Do you have any proof of that?’ asked Jarczyk.

  ‘It said in the paper that Dlubak was sexually mutilated. That was Zboinski’s specialty. He used a baling-hook, the same hook he used in Leningrad. He’d get hold of some body’s balls, and uh –’ he made a strong twisting motion with his right wrist. ‘Sometimes he’d get them in the eye; or in the ear. But that was his specialty. To make you beg. To make you less of a man.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Jarczyk. ‘I’ve heard all about Mr Zboinski. The Hook.’

  At that moment, Matejko came into the interview room. ‘What’s up?’ he asked. ‘I heard we made an arrest.’

  ‘I’m about to,’ smiled Jarczyk. ‘This gentleman here has given us the identity of the Executioner.’

  Matejko looked at him in disbelief. ‘Just like that?’

  ‘Just like that. He’s had a little difficulty with the police in Mokotow, and he’s anxious not to face charges.’

  ‘Well, who is it?’ asked Matejko.

  ‘Roman Zboinski, our friendly neighbourhood motor trader. This gentleman saw one of Zboinski’s men abducting Dlubak at gunpoint.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘Oh come on, Jerzy, it’s obvious, when you come to think of it. All we had to do was to find out who killed one of them, and then we would know who killed them all. All that paperwork that Stefan kept piling up. All those interviews, all that legwork. All that scribble, scribble, scribble.’

  ‘What’s obvious? All of those fourteen people were completely innocent, as far as we know, and only two or three of them have any connection whatsoever. Why should Zboinski kill people like that?’

  ‘To put us off the scent, of course. To confuse us. If he killed innocent people as well as the people he really wanted to get rid of, he thought that we’d never believe it was him.’

  ‘Witold,’ said Matejko, ‘you really have no –’

  ‘I want twelve officers and two sharpshooters,’ Jarczyk interrupted him. ‘I want to do it as soon as possible, before it gets light. Let’s catch Mr Zboinski with his trousers down.’

  ‘But you don’t have any serious evidence. You haven’t even had the full autopsy on Dlubak’s body.’

  ‘His fucking head was cut off!’ snapped Jarczyk. ‘What more of an autopsy do I need than that?’

  ‘He was also tortured, which none of the other victims were.’

  ‘That, Jerzy, is a detail. Right at this moment, I’m not concerned with details. I’m not concerned with mountains of written witness-reports or searching the sewers inch by inch. I’m only interested in arresting the Executioner, and the sooner I do it, the sooner Warsaw is going to be safe for everybody.’

  Matejko hesitated. ‘Don’t you think I’d better call Nadkomisarz Dembek? You know, before we...’ His voice trailed away. Beads of perspiration were standing out on Jarczyk’s upper lip and Matejko could tell that there was no arguing with him. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll call the duty officer.’

  Jarczyk slapped him on the shoulder. ‘Good man. Let’s have some positive policework around here, for a change.’

  Ruba said, ‘What about me? When do I get my ticket?’

  ‘All in good time,’ Jarczyk told him. ‘You’re a witness, remember. In fact, you’re our only witness. We can’t let you go flying off to God know
s where, now can we? You might forget to come back.’

  ‘You promised me a ticket, you shit!’ Ruba screamed at him.

  ‘Yes,’ Jarczyk, leaning across the table so that they were practically nose to nose. ‘And when I get my sworn evidence that puts Roman Zboinski in jail, you’ll get it.’

  ‘They’ll kill me,’ said Ruba. ‘They’ll do worse than kill me.’

  ‘I don’t suppose your girlfriend will shed any tears.’

  11

  They drove to the intersection of Swietokrzyska and Jana Pawla II. Rej pulled up onto the sidewalk, his front bumper nudging a rusty Skoda, which immediately started a huge bull terrier on the back seat barking and hurling itself from one slobber-coated window to another.

  Rej climbed out of his car, walked up to the Skoda and roared so fiercely at the dog that it sat down, whimpering, and tried to hide its head under a blanket.

  ‘I see you have a way with animals,’ said Sarah.

  Rej lit a cigarette. He hadn’t attempted to smoke when Sarah was in the car. ‘Animals and people, they’re all the same. They just need to know where they stand.’

  Clayton said, ‘This sure looks like the place. All we have to do now is find the right apartment block.’

  ‘I think it’s that one,’ Rej told him, pointing with his cigarette-hand to a narrow six-storey block with square concrete balconies. ‘I’ve been in there before. A man murdered his mother because she served him potato salad every evening for eleven years.’

  ‘You’re kidding me,’ said Clayton.

  Rej shrugged, as if Clayton could believe what he liked. Then he led the way across the sidewalk to the building’s entrance, where a woman in a flowered housecoat was energetically scrubbing the front step.

  ‘Police,’ said Rej, showing his identity card. ‘I’m looking for a little girl called Zofia. Do you know if she lives in any of these apartments?’

  The woman knelt up straight, as if she were about to take communion. She had a circular face and a large mole on her chin. ‘There’s two Zofias. One in 5 and the other in 11.’

  ‘This Zofia has a doll,’ put in Clayton. ‘A knitted doll, like a little farmgirl.’