The last page of the file was a photocopy of ‘that odd fax’. It was typed in English, and it read: Everything in place for next month’s transfer from Gdansk. Find out what’s happened to the shipment from Rotterdam. I’m very pleased with the way things are going. There’s nothing I like better than getting rich by taking my revenge on that Lewandowicz bitch.
Sarah said, ‘You see this? About “that Lewandowicz bitch”?’
Hanna shook her head. ‘I didn’t really understand it. I don’t know anybody of that name; and I never heard Jan mention it.’
‘I know somebody of that name, all right,’ said Sarah, in a grim voice. Through the open french windows, far to the east, the sky was coppery green, and lightning was flickering. ‘That “Lewandowicz bitch” is me. My family name is Lewandowicz, but my father changed it when he emigrated to America after the war. Nobody could pronounce it, so we called ourselves Leonard, instead.’
‘So you know who wrote this fax?’
‘I can guess. Only two people in the New York office knew that my name used to be Lewandowicz... my secretary and my boss, Ben Saunders. I’m ashamed to say that he was more than my boss, too.’
‘Then you think that Zboinski did kill Jan?’
‘He had a motive, didn’t he? But I’ll have to talk to Ben about that. Not to mention the police.’
13
Marek met Clayton on Koszykowa, a few metres away from the apartment block where he had bearded Mr Okun in his elevator. Clayton was wearing a short-sleeved, blue check shirt with a broad stain of sweat across his back, and he wasn’t looking very happy. ‘Don’t ask,’ he said, before Marek could even say hello. ‘I’ve had a crappy day all round. Everybody I try to talk to, they give me sweet smiles and no information whatsoever. My Polish isn’t up to it, that’s the trouble.’
‘Your Polish is excellent, man,’ Marek told him.
‘Don’t flatter me, kid,’ said Clayton, in English. ‘I’m not in the mood. Now, where did you see this guy coming out of the sewer?’
Marek tapped the four-pointed manhole cover with his running-shoe. ‘He just appeared, just like that, as if he did it everyday.’
‘Maybe he does do it every day. He could have been a sewer inspector, couldn’t he?’
‘I don’t think so. It just didn’t look right. I never would have noticed it if you and Komisarz Rej hadn’t been talking about this Executioner using the sewers, but – I don’t know, there was something strange about him. Kind of an aura, you know?’
‘An aura? I’m not surprised. You try walking around in those sewers, and see if you don’t come out with an aura.’
‘No, I’m not kidding. He had a look about him. It was the way he climbed out of there as if it was the most natural thing in the world.’
Clayton said, ‘Keep a look out.’ Then he knelt down on the sidewalk and opened up the pointed flaps of the manhole cover with his pocket-knife. A few passers-by turned briefly to see what he was doing, but most of them took no notice at all. Clayton peered down into the pungent, echoing sewer, and Marek did, too. In the darkness they could just make out the reflection of slowly-running water, and their own shadowy faces, like drowned souls.
‘This manhole has been regularly used,’ he said, swinging one of the flaps backward and forward. ‘There’s no grit in the grooves around the edges, and the hinges are shiny... look, where they’ve been constantly opened and closed. The rungs of the ladder are shiny, too, from somebody climbing up and down them.’
‘So what do you think?’
Clayton started to drop the flaps. ‘Either this is the most inspected manhole in the whole of Warsaw, or else your new friend Mr Okun is using it as a highway to heaven-knows-where. That doesn’t mean he’s the Executioner, of course. But it’s worth checking out.’
‘You think we ought to go down there?’
‘Not just yet. Let’s keep a watch over the weekend; see if Mr Okun repeats the performance. Do you have any friends who’d help you mount a stake-out?’
‘A stake-out?’ said Marek. ‘That’d be so cool!’
‘Sure,’ said Clayton. Expressionlessly, he dug into his back pocket and produced a thick roll of zlotys. He stripped off more than a hundred dollars’ worth, and stuffed them into the pocket of Marek’s leather jacket. ‘That’s to keep you going. Give some to your friends, too, if you can persuade them to help you. If you want my advice, you’ll use that coffee shop opposite. You’ll be able to see most of the street from there. If you see him come out of the manhole, or go down into the manhole, just call me, and I’ll get here pronto with a couple of flashlights.’ He looked down at Marek’s studded, high-heeled boots. ‘And if I were you, I’d change into the crummiest shoes you can find. You don’t want to be wading in second-hand meals in a fancy pair of Cuban dancing-pumps like those.’
‘Cool,’ said Marek. ‘I’ll talk to you later.’
He crossed the street to the Welcome Bar, and pushed open the door. It was hot and tawdry inside, with red plastic seats and a deafening coffee-machine, but it would be perfect for keeping an eye on Mr Okun. Marek found a seat by the window and ordered a cup of coffee and a raisin pastry. He could see Clayton still standing thoughtfully by the manhole, turning around from time to time and frowning.
After three or four minutes, Clayton walked off without waving or even looking at him, and disappeared. Marek settled down for a long evening on his own.
*
At eleven o’clock, five cups of coffee later, the waitress came up to him carrying her pocketbook and said, ‘You have to go now. We’re closed.’
‘What time do you open tomorrow?’
‘Seven o’clock. Why? Don’t you have anywhere else to go?’
Marek gave her a daft, desperate grin. ‘I like it here, that’s all. That’s not a crime.’
The waitress looked slowly around the Welcome Bar in disbelief. ‘Well, no... I suppose it isn’t a crime. But don’t you think you should see a doctor?’
*
Sarah was working on her word-processor when the doorbell rang. She let out a little hiss of annoyance and went to answer it. She had been trying to complete her weekly progress report on the Senate Hotel development for the past two days, and apart from the time she had spent in helping Stefan Rej, everything had conspired to interrupt her – from a long, tedious lunch with a committee of urban planners from Katowice to a promotional presentation to the association of British travel agents, most of whom had been dishevelled and unshaven and suffering from catastrophic hangovers.
She opened the door and a tall, slim girl of about fourteen was standing outside, in jeans and a Björk T-shirt. She had fair silky hair that came down to her waist. She was thin-faced, with big, sensitive brown eyes and a slight overbite, which gave Sarah the impression of a nervous woodland creature from a Disney cartoon. But she wasn’t nervous when she held out her hand and said, ‘Daddy says are you ready yet?’
‘Ready? Ready for what?’
‘Daddy said we were all going riding. He said you won’t need much: just clothes for one night, and a toothbrush.’
‘You’re Katarzyna Rej,’ said Sarah, taking her hand. ‘Come on in. Where’s your father now?’
‘He’s downstairs, waiting. He said you’d understand why he didn’t come up.’
‘You bet I understand. He didn’t tell me he was taking you riding today.’
‘Oh. I didn’t know. But it is all right, isn’t it? You will come?’
Sarah looked across the living-room at her word-processor, with her half-finished report glimmering on it. She also thought about Ben, and Brzezicki, and all the other problems she had to deal with. But it was Saturday, damn it, and she hadn’t been riding since she was in Prague. She could always finish her report on Sunday evening when she came back, and e-mail it.
The phone rang, and that convinced her. She left the answer-phone to take care of it, went through to the bedroom and tugged down her overnight bag from the top of the closet.
‘Somewhere in the country, that’s what he said. One of his friends has a cottage.’
Sarah packed her Versace jeans and the Charles Tyrwhitt polo shirts she had bought in London; a white skinny-rib sweater, clean underwear, and toiletries. Katarzyna sat on the side of the bed watching her, and kept picking up her Chanel lipsticks and – most important – her Guerlain face recontouring serum – ‘wyniki mowia same za siebie’.
‘Your daddy tells me you don’t get to see each other very often,’ said Sarah.
‘He’s always busy, that’s what he says.’
‘He’s not so busy right now.’
‘Well, yes, but I don’t think he likes being a father very much.’
Sarah tossed in her hairbrush and closed her case. ‘That’s not the impression that he gave me. I think he loves being a father, especially your father; but the trouble is that he hasn’t had the chance to see you grow up. He doesn’t know what it’s like, when you’re fourteen, and everybody seems to think that you’re still a child, but you know for sure that you’re a woman already.’
Katarzyna gave Sarah the strangest look: partly defensive, but mostly wondering. Sarah guessed that even her mother had never spoken to her like this. She remembered that when she was growing up, five or six of her friends had come from broken homes, and she knew how insanely possessive their parents had been: each of them trying to pretend that their daughter was still their little precious girl, their property, their very own baby, long after their very own baby had grown into a questioning, developing young woman.
‘Come on,’ said Sarah. She checked that everything in the kitchen was switched off, closed the windows, and left.
Rej was waiting for them outside, quietly sweating in his parked Passat. He was wearing a new white sports shirt which was still creased across the front where it had been folded in its wrapper. He jumped out as soon as Sarah and Katarzyna appeared, and opened the trunk. Sarah came up to him, carrying her overnight bag, and said, in a deadly whisper, ‘You didn’t tell me you were one of those men who takes people for granted.’
Rej took off his sunglasses. He looked hurt. ‘I’m sorry. It was you who suggested that I take her riding. I just didn’t know how to ask you.’
‘It’s all right, komisarz,’ said Sarah; and for the first time she felt really gentle towards him. ‘I’m looking forward to it.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘I’m here, aren’t I? And packed? Besides,’ she smiled, ‘Katarzyna and I are friends already.’
Rej didn’t say anything, but stowed her overnight bag next to the spare wheel and hurried around to open the passenger door for her. She climbed in, and gave him the quickest of smiles. Katarzyna climbed into the back.
‘You’d better tell me where we’re going,’ said Sarah, as they drove through the city. ‘Just in case the office needs to get in touch.’
Rej shook his head. ‘You won’t want anybody to get in touch. We’re going to Czerwinsk, a village that my parents used to take me to, when I was a boy. It’s beautiful.’
Sarah said, ‘I went to see Jan Kaminski’s girlfriend last night. I tried to call you, but you were out.’
‘That’s right. I was fetching Katarzyna. What did she say?’
‘Can we talk off the record?’
‘It depends. If you’re going to tell me that you know the real identity of the Executioner, then no, we can’t.’
‘Well, I don’t know. It may lead to that. The fact is, Jan Kaminski’s girlfriend showed me some of his research.’
As they drove north on Marymoncka Street, Sarah explained how the Senate contingency account was being used to launder the profits from Roman Zboinski’s stolen cars; and how Kaminski had suspected that somebody in Senate’s New York office was guilty either of complicity in what was going on, or was actually organizing it.
Last of all, she told him about the fax that had mentioned ‘that Lewandowicz bitch’, and for the first time he turned and looked at her.
‘Lewandowicz? That’s you? Your name’s really Lewandowicz?’
‘Yes. What’s so funny about that? Plenty of Poles changed their names when they went to America.’
‘Somehow it makes you more human, having a Polish name.’
‘I’m not sure how to take that.’
Rej shrugged, glanced at her, and gave her a sloping smile.
‘When I first met you, you were a representative of American capitalism. You were like a corporate robot, yes? You shouted at people because you knew you had the power to shout. If people didn’t obey you, you had all of those resources behind you, Senate International Hotels; so they’d have to obey you. But I don’t think that’s the real you. Sarah Leonard may be tough and outspoken, but I’ve been watching you, you know. And listening to you, too; and so it doesn’t surprise me that your real name’s something different, something Polish. I’ve heard you talking human; and I’ve suspected that you might be human; and now you’ve told me what your name is, Lewandowicz, I know that you are human, after all.’
Sarah stared at him as he drove out through Zoliborz, once a genteel suburb of 1920s ‘officer’s quarters’ and ‘civil servants’ residences’ – now self-consciously over-developed with cul-de-sacs of new detached houses with neat greenery and well-cropped lawns. Parts of it reminded Sarah so strongly of the outskirts of Chicago that it was hard for her to believe that she was here, and not there. But then why shouldn’t it? All the Polish immigrants who had settled in and around Chicago had a little part of Poland with them. The elaborate net curtains at the windows. The Polonez, part-rusted, part-polished, parked proudly in front of the driveway, nineteen years old if it was a day. The hanging baskets of pink and white flowers. The mother in her headscarf walking hand-in-hand with her child, in the same way that Sarah had walked with her mother when she was a child and the world was nothing like this. No Senate, no Ben, no Mr Brzezicki; no devils and murders and deadlines she couldn’t meet. For the first time in years, she began to feel quite sorry for herself; and ashamed that she had called herself Leonard.
Rej tried to swerve out to overtake a huge tractor-trailer loaded with breezeblocks, but an equally huge truck was coming in the other direction, and so he had to swerve back in again, with only centimetres to spare. The Passat dipped and bucked on its worn-out suspension and Katarzyna complained, ‘Tato...!’
‘All right, all right,’ Rej appeased her. He dropped his speed and allowed the truck to pull further ahead. ‘So who do you think this was, this man who wanted to get his revenge on this Lewandowicz bitch?’
‘I can’t be one hundred per cent certain, but I believe it’s Ben Saunders. I trod on lots of people’s fingers, when I was working with Senate in New York, and there are quite a few people who would call me a bitch. But only a few people would have called me Lewandowicz because only a few people knew what my real name was. Ben, of course, was one of them.’
Rej stuck a cigarette between his lips but made no attempt to light it. ‘So there’s a real possibility that Ben could have been responsible for laundering Zboinski’s money?’
Sarah nodded. ‘I’m not sure why he would take the risk. I always thought his family were pretty rich.’
‘The rich are as greedy as anybody else. But if he was involved with Zboinski and Zboinski killed Antoni Dlubak to conceal that involvement... well, it could be that your Ben is more than just greedy. He could be an accessory to murder, or conspiracy to murder, as well as a racketeer.’
He paused, and then he added, ‘As well as a shit.’
Sarah laughed and plucked the cigarette out of his mouth, and tucked it back into the pack. She had been wondering why she felt so much better, and of course it was being with Rej that was doing it. He made her feel protected in a way that no man had made her feel protected since her father, Victor. In fact, there was quite a lot about him which reminded her of her father, something bruised, yet deepl
y determined, although her father was frailer and thinner and much more elegant than Rej, and her father had never been a communist.
They drove through Zoliborz, past the Bielany Woods. The trees looked as dark and rich as broccoli; and they could see runners and hurdlers exercising in the fields. Then they drove out into the countryside, and opened the car windows so that the warm air buffeted in. Sarah took off her shoes and rested her bare feet on the dash. Rej switched on the radio and all three of them sang along with Tina Turner: ‘You’re simply the best... better than all the rest...’
*
Sarah stepped out onto the cottage verandah and said, ‘I didn’t have any idea.’
Rej came out behind her, carrying two beers. ‘Everybody has to have someplace where they’re still a child, and they can behave like a child; and this is mine.’
The cottage was built in the traditional old-Polish style, with thick white-plastered walls and an orange tiled roof. It had its own small fenced garden, overgrown with weeds and poppies, with four dilapidated beehives and a dovecot. It was at the end of a narrow lane, on the outskirts of Czerwinsk, on the escarpment overlooking the Vistula. Through a thin screen of silver-birches, Sarah could see the wide silver curve of the river; and across to the opposite bank, to the Kampinos Forest, over four hundred square miles of pines and oaks, alders and bird cherries.
The early afternoon breeze lifted Sarah’s hair. It was as soft as being touched by somebody who loves you. And there was a sound in the air, like the greatest clock-shop you had ever walked into, the chittering of thousands of distant birds, singing in the forest, and millions of branches whispering and rustling, aspens and alders, birches and oaks.
‘You like it here?’ Rej asked her. ‘We can go for a walk in a moment. There’s a little place where we can have something to eat. Then maybe we can ride.’
‘Do you have your own horse?’ asked Katarzyna, coming out of the cottage with a can of Coke.
‘I used to, when I was your age. My father used to spoil me.’
The Chosen Child Page 24
