The Chosen Child

by Graham Masterton

  ‘Clayton says they’ve made a mistake.’

  ‘Oh come on, Kurt. How does he know?’

  ‘He just does, that’s all. He says the gliniarze are rushing this through because they’re embarrassed.’

  ‘So what’s it got to do with you?’

  Marek took out a cigarette. ‘I said I’d help, man, that’s all. Think how many people the Executioner’s murdered. I mean, he’s the mass-murderer of the century, practically. If we can catch him – the real Executioner – think of the fame, man. TV interviews, pictures in the paper. There’s a reward, too.’

  ‘You’re dreaming,’ laughed another of his friends.

  ‘So? What’s wrong with dreaming?’

  ‘Nothing – when you’re asleep.’

  They scuffled and pushed each other as they walked along Piekna. It was just after four o’clock in the afternoon now and the sky was heavy and grey. There was no wind, and the city was warm and humid and hazy with pollution. They started singing, badly off key.

  ‘You’ll still come to Zbylut’s?’ asked Olga, grasping Marek’s arm.

  ‘Maybe later. It depends what Clayton wants to do.’

  ‘Clayton, Clayton, Clayton! Why don’t you do what you want to do?’

  They crossed the street, dodging in between the cars and the buses. And it was then that Marek glanced back, just to make sure that all of his friends were following him, and saw something on the opposite side of Koszykowa that brought him to a halt, even before he had reached the sidewalk. He stood in the road frowning, trying to see between the passing buses and trucks, and the crowds of pedestrians on the other side of the road. A man in grey overalls was lowering the last triangular section of a four-pointed sewer lid. Passers-by were walking around him without taking any notice; and in a moment he had joined the crowds himself, and disappeared. But Marek stood and stared and felt a cold crawling sensation down his spine. The man might have been wearing overalls, but he was white-haired, and very old – in his late seventies, at least. What sewer worker was as old as that?

  Not only that, he must have simply climbed out of the sewer onto the sidewalk. If he had been inspecting the sewer, or working on it, he would have put up a guard rail and a warning sign. What genuine sewer worker appears like a stage genie in the middle of a busy street? And where was his van, and his equipment?

  A car blew its horn at Marek. He turned around and gave the driver the finger. The car blew its horn again, but Marek had already started to run back across the road.

  ‘Kurt! Where the hell are you going?’ called out one of his friends.

  ‘Marek! Come back!’ shouted Olga.

  But Marek ran flat out across Koszykowa and along the opposite sidewalk. He collided with a woman carrying her shopping and then he almost knocked over an elderly man with a suitcase. They shouted out after him, but he kept on running – jumping up now and again to see if he could catch sight of the white-haired man in the overalls. He was sweating and panting, and his leather jacket made a squeaking noise with every step.

  He had almost reached the end of the street when he glimpsed the man turning into the front doorway of a large apartment building. Now he knew for certain that he wasn’t a real sewage worker. He hurried up to the apartment doors, trying to reach them before they closed, but when he was only two metres away, a woman stepped in front of him, and the two of them performed a futile little waltz before Marek was able to get past. Just as he got to the apartment door, it clicked shut, and Marek could see very little more through the reflections in the wired-glass windows than a brown-painted elevator door closing.

  However, he could also make out the illuminated floor numbers. It must have been a very slow elevator, because it seemed to take an age to rise from 1 to 3. At 3, it stopped, and stayed; so at least Marek knew what storey the man lived on.

  He looked at the bell-pushes beside the front door. Only a third of them had names, and only one of those was on the third floor: Gajda. He stepped back. He wondered what he ought to do. This may be nothing more than a ridiculous wild goose chase; his imagination working overtime. But Clayton and Rej had both been sure that the Executioner used the city’s sewers in order to get about without being detected, and who else would climb in and out of manholes like that, except somebody who knew his way around?

  He could call Clayton, but if he were wrong he would be wasting Clayton’s time; and more important than that, he would look like an idiot. He hesitated for a while. At one point he almost gave it up and walked away. But then he pressed the bell-push marked Gajda and waited to see what would happen.

  For almost a minute there was no reply. Then he heard a clicking noise, and a woman’s voice said, ‘Tak?’

  ‘Hallo?’ said Marek. ‘I’m here to replace the light-bulbs.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The landlord sent me, but he forgot to give me the key. I have to replace all the light-bulbs.’

  ‘What’s the matter with the light-bulbs?’

  ‘Wrong wattage. They could cause a fire.’

  There was another clicking noise. Then abruptly the buzzer sounded, and the door was unlocked. Marek stepped inside.

  The entrance hall was airless and totally silent. Marek walked across to the elevator and pressed the call button. Immediately there was a complicated clattering and a penetrating hum, and the elevator began to sink slowly down the shaft. Marek glanced back towards the street. A plump woman in a brown flowery dress was standing outside the apartment door, her brown headscarf fluttering. For some reason she was staring at him as if she thought she recognized him.

  Marek was still looking back at her when he heard the elevator door open. He turned around and jumped in shock. The white-haired man in the grey overalls was standing in the elevator, right in front of him.

  He was much taller than he had appeared on the street; and much more emaciated. His head was like a skull with thin mottled parchment stretched tightly over it, so that Marek could see every wriggling vein in his forehead. Beneath brambly white eyebrows, his eye sockets were as hollow as caves, and his eyes were pale and expressionless, as if too many years of living had worn all the colour out of them, and all of the sensitivity. His nose was bony and narrow: his mouth was a lipless slit. All the same, Marek could see that he must have been very handsome once, in a cold, chiselled kind of way. His overalls must have been black originally, but years of washing had reduced them to a patchy grey.

  ‘Can I help you?’ he asked. His voice was high and tensile, like a steel saw cutting an iron pipe.

  Marek blurted, ‘Gajda. I was looking for Mrs Gajda.’

  The pale eyes blinked, as slowly as a lizard’s. ‘You must mean Mr Gajda. He’s a widower.’ The man stepped out of the elevator with a strange, gliding movement. ‘I can’t think what you would want with him.’

  ‘Well... I have a message for him.’

  ‘A message? I see. I can’t think who would want to send a message to Mr Gajda, can you?’

  ‘It’s private.’

  ‘I see. Private. We all have to have our privacy, don’t we?’

  Marek nodded. The man was still watching him, so he had no alternative but to step into the elevator, and press the button for 3. The man didn’t move as the elevator door clunked shut and the elevator began to judder its way upward. Shit, he thought. This was ridiculous. Here he was, stuck in an elevator in a strange building, delivering a non-existent message to somebody he didn’t even know.

  What was even more absurd, the white-haired man in the grey overalls was probably completely innocent. Maybe he wasn’t a sewage worker, but who was to say that he wasn’t authorized to go down in the sewers and test for gases, for instance, or rat infestation, or toxic chemicals; or that he wasn’t a harmless nutcase who enjoyed walking around Warsaw knee deep in other people’s excrement? The elevator came to a halt, the door opened, and Marek found himself in a high, gloomy corridor, with brown gloss-painted walls, and a single grimy window at the very end, through
which he could just make out the buildings on the opposite side of Koszykowa, like buildings in a faded photograph.

  He walked cautiously along the corridor with his leather jacket creaking. He found a scaly brown door with the name K Gajda on an old business card fastened to the door with a rusty thumbtack. Maybe this was all he needed to do: wait here for a while, and then go back down to the ground floor and get the hell out of here. But supposing the white-haired man asked Mr Gajda if he’d been given a message? He’d be suspicious, wouldn’t he? And if he was the Executioner – well, he’d be well forewarned.

  There was no doorbell so Marek knocked with his knuckles. After a while he heard an internal door open and the brief blare of a television turned up loud – Stop magazine on TVP 1. Then he heard a chain sliding back and a bolt being drawn. The apartment door opened and he was confronted by a handsome middle-aged woman with greying black hair, and a slight cast in her eyes.

  ‘I’m looking for Mr Gajda,’ he said.

  ‘Are you the light-bulb man?’

  ‘Well, not exactly. But I have a message.’

  ‘I don’t understand. Who from? Mr Gajda isn’t well.’

  ‘We’re going to be cutting off the electricity for two hours next Wednesday. For maintenance purposes.’

  ‘Is this a joke? You don’t look like somebody from the electricity company. Where’s your identification?’

  Marek said, ‘They’re short staffed. And they have to tell everybody, by law. So I’m telling you.’

  ‘All right,’ said the woman, suspiciously, and began to close the door.

  ‘Wait!’ said Marek. ‘There are two other people on this floor, aren’t there?’

  She looked at him through the inch-wide gap. ‘That’s right.’

  ‘The problem is I’ve, uh, lost the list with their names on, and I have to report back that I’ve told everybody, or else they’ll sack me.’

  The woman said nothing, but continued to stare at him through the gap.

  ‘Please,’ Marek begged her. ‘I really do need to know.’

  The woman opened the door a litde wider. ‘Down there, in number 1, that’s Mrs Krajewska. Over there, in number 3, that’s Mr Okun. But Mr Okun went out. I heard him go.’

  ‘He went out? What does he do?’

  ‘He’s retired. He doesn’t do anything. Can’t a man go out?’

  ‘Of course he can. I just wondered what he did.’

  ‘I told you. He doesn’t do anything. He sits in his apartment and listens to music.’

  ‘Does he have any friends?’

  The woman frowned at him. ‘You’re asking a lot of questions. I thought you worked for the electricity company.’

  Marek shrugged, and grinned. ‘We’re supposed to prepare this customer profile. You know... how often they cook, how often they entertain. It all helps us to give you a better service.’

  ‘You’re lying,’ the woman told him.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re lying. If you don’t go, I’ll call the police.’

  ‘All right,’ said Marek. ‘If you can’t co-operate...’

  He started to back away; but as he did so, a thin voice called out, ‘Stop!’

  The woman hesitated, and opened the door a little wider. As she did so, an old man in a wheelchair came into view, pushing himself laboriously across the red-and-green patterned carpet. He looked like a scarecrow, wrapped in a thick mustard-coloured dressing-gown with dried soup caked onto the lapels. His hair stuck up in all directions, and his eyes were rimmed with soapy red.

  ‘Why are you asking questions about Mr Okun?’ he demanded, in a high, phlegmy voice.

  Marek started to say, ‘We’re having a power cut next week – I just have to –’ but he could tell at once that Mr Gajda didn’t believe him, either. ‘I’m helping some people look for a criminal’, he said.

  ‘And Mr Okun is a criminal?’

  ‘No, no. I didn’t say that. It’s just that we have to check out a whole lot of people.’

  ‘And Mr Okun is one of them? About time, too.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Mr Gajda coughed, and wiped a long dangling string of saliva from his lower lip. He looked as if he shouldn’t be alive at all. ‘Mr Okun... he’s one of them.’

  ‘Andrzej, don’t be ridiculous,’ the woman interrupted. ‘I’m sorry... he’s old, he’s not very well. He gets these ideas.’

  ‘What does he mean by “one of them”?’ asked Marek.

  ‘I mean one of them,’ spat Mr Gajda. ‘One of von dem Bach’s bastards. Oh, he calls himself Okun, but he doesn’t fool me. He never has. Sometimes, in the night, I’ve heard him talking on the telephone, and what does he speak? Not Polish, you mark my words. He’s one of them.’

  ‘Don’t take any notice,’ said the woman, trying to close the door. ‘He’s old... he lost all of his family in the war.’

  Marek said, ‘All right. Thanks for your help, anyhow.’

  ‘He’s one of them!’ screamed Mr Gajda. ‘If you’re looking for a criminal, start with him!’

  The door closed and Marek was left alone in the half darkness. He heard Mr Gajda and his carer arguing for a few moments; then he heard the television again; then silence.

  He didn’t know what to make of this. He hadn’t paid much attention in history lessons, but even he knew that Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski was the SS general whom Himmler had appointed to crush the Warsaw Uprising in the summer of 1944. It was von dem Bach who had killed tens of thousands of Home Army insurgents, as well as women and children; and it was von dem Bach who had supervised the ruthless reduction of the entire city to rubble. Churches, hospitals, houses, hotels – all pounded into dust.

  Maybe the woman was right, and Mr Gajda was rambling. Marek knew a lot of old people whose sanity had been affected by what had happened during the Uprising. You didn’t easily forget the bodies of your friends and neighbours lying in the street, covered in nothing but newspaper for lack of coffins. You didn’t easily forget young children, shot by snipers, bleeding to death in the dust. You didn’t easily forget the screeching dive bombers and the massive howitzers, a hundred times too powerful for the job they were supposed to be doing, steadily battering your city into mountain ranges of bricks and slates and moonscapes of broken stones.

  Marek turned to leave; and as he did so, he found Mr Okun standing in the gloom, watching him. He shivered with surprise. He couldn’t help it. He hadn’t even heard the elevator.

  ‘Delivered your message?’ asked Mr Okun. His eyes were concealed in shadow.

  ‘Yes, thank you.’

  ‘He’s a sick man, Mr Gajda. He shouldn’t be disturbed.’

  Marek said nothing, but edged past Mr Okun on his way to the elevator. When they were shoulder to shoulder, Mr Okun said, ‘Who are you, really?’

  ‘What’s it to you?’

  ‘You could be a burglar, or a con man. You could be anybody.’

  ‘I’m just delivering a message, that’s all.’

  Mr Okun stared at Marek with those rinsed-out eyes and he was almost sizzling with menace and distrust. Marek returned his stare for a few seconds, and then pressed the elevator button. The elevator opened immediately, and he stepped inside.

  ‘I don’t want to see you back here,’ said Mr Okun.

  Marek didn’t reply, but waited for the elevator door to slide shut; and the elevator to make its way down to the entrance hall. His heart was beating so hard that he pressed his hand over it, and closed his eyes, and tried to breathe slowly and deeply, to calm himself down.

  The hall was utterly silent, but when he opened the door the noise of Koszykowa burst onto him like a welcome shower of rain. He stood on the sidewalk for a moment, still breathing deeply. Then he started to walk north, towards Jerozolimskie Avenue, and the Marriott Hotel. He was less than half way there before he was sweating, and so he took off his leather jacket and slung it over his shoulder.

  *

  Rej sat in the back room
of the Medusa food store on Nowogrodzka Street and watched the bulky grey-haired manageress slicing and wrapping sausage. He was dying for a cigarette but there were No Smoking signs everywhere. The room was bright and clean and overlit, which made him feel more like a character in a 1960s art movie than ever. In the far corner there were stacks of cans of Krakus sauerkraut and Pek meat and Hormex cherries. There was also a calendar with a colour photograph of the Annunciation from the church of St Elisabeth in Cracow: a riot of gilded angels and trumpets and exultant shepherds.

  The manageress kept on slicing and wrapping. She was fat now but once she must have been pretty in that strong, challenging, clearly-defined way in which only Polish girls can be really pretty.

  Rej said, ‘I didn’t really come to talk about Barbara.’

  The manageress weighed another 250 grammes of sausage, wrapped it, and stuck a price label on it. ‘Nobody does. Not the police, not the press. Not anybody. Nobody cares what happened to her.’

  ‘I do. That’s why I’m here.’

  ‘You’ve caught your Executioner. Why should you worry?’

  ‘Because I don’t think we have caught him. I mean the man we’re holding... he’s a car thief, and a murderer, too, more than likely. But he’s not the Executioner. He didn’t kill your Barbara.’

  The manageress stopped slicing and frowned at him. ‘Why are you saying that you’ve caught him, if you haven’t?’

  Rej gave her what he hoped was a disarming smile. ‘They took me off the case. I was the expert... but they didn’t want expertise. They wanted quick results. They arrested this local gangster because he chopped some poor innocent accountant’s head off. Who knows why he did it? Maybe he thought that everybody would believe that the Executioner did it. Maybe it was just a joke. That’s the kind of joke that gangsters enjoy.’

  The manageress came up close to Rej and there was a coronet of clear perspiration on her upper lip. ‘My sister was beautiful, komisarz. She wasn’t bright, but she was beautiful; and she would have had a happy life.’

  ‘I know,’ Rej told her. ‘I saw her pictures. I would have married her myself.’