The Chosen Child

by Graham Masterton

  He pulled out into the traffic. He felt hot and sweaty and he needed a shave, but there were a couple of calls he wanted to make before he went back home. The first was to Oczki Street, to talk to Dr Wojniakowski. He wanted to know what had happened to Zofia’s mother. She may have ended up as nothing more than a scorched ribcage in the bottom of an ashcan, but Rej had seen her pictures when she was young and pretty; and that young and pretty girl deserved as much justice as anybody else.

  Dr Wojniakowski was just starting an autopsy on a young girl who had hanged herself in a room at the Dom Chlopa hotel. She was plump and fair with freckles all over her. She looked as she were sleeping, rather than dead, and Rej felt embarrassed for her, lying on that metal table with nothing on, while Dr Wojniakowski stood over her and smoked. Today he had a young assistant with him, a greasy-haired boy with a startling cast in his eyes and an earring.

  ‘Tomasz,’ said Dr Wojniakowski, pointing towards Rej with his scalpel, ‘meet the best detective in Warsaw.’

  ‘I don’t need flattery, Teofil,’ said Rej. ‘I need a cigarette.’ Dr Wojniakowski passed him his crumpled pack of Extra Mocne and Rej shook one out and lit it. The smoke was so strong that he coughed and coughed, and couldn’t stop coughing.

  ‘A man’s cigarette,’ said Dr Wojniakowski. ‘I’ve taken the lungs out of Extra Mocne smokers. They look like lumps of brown coal. So much tar in them you could put them on the fire, and they’d burn for a week.’

  ‘What about my friend Iwona?’ asked Rej. ‘Have you finished your report on her?’

  Dr Wojniakowski nodded. ‘Obviously there were no internal organs remaining, so it’s impossible to determine if she was stabbed or shot, but three of her ribs were cracked, either by several hard punches or a beating with a stick. By the way, we found her pelvis and her leg bones, they were deeper down in the ashes. They don’t tell us much, either, although I’ve sent the whole lot off for bone-marrow analysis, in case she was poisoned.’

  ‘What about her skull? Did you find that?’

  ‘Not a sign of it. Someone cut her head off, with a very sharp instrument.’

  ‘The Executioner?’

  ‘Judging from the evidence of previous autopsies, I’d say yes, almost certainly. I’ve examined her upper vertebrae and her head was cut off with a single right-handed blow, the same as all the others.’

  ‘Would you say that she was killed by the same knife as Jan Kaminski, and all the rest of the victims, or the same knife as Antoni Dlubak?’

  Dr Wojniakowski blew two long tusks of smoke out of his nostrils. ‘I don’t understand the question,’ he said, uneasily.

  ‘What do you mean, you don’t understand the question? You said before that Dlubak was killed with a different knife than all of the other victims. You said the metal traces didn’t match at all.’

  ‘Oh, that! That was a mistake! Two samples were switched.’

  Rej stared at him. ‘A mistake? What are you trying to tell me, Teofil?’

  ‘It’s nothing complicated. We had metal traces from Antoni Dlubak’s neck, and on the same day we had metal traces from a stabbing in the student hostel on Narutowicza Square. They were side by side, waiting for spectroscopic analysis. They were accidentally mixed up, that’s all.’

  ‘Teofil, when did your department ever accidentally mix up anything?’

  ‘There’s always a first time,’ said Dr Wojniakowski, turning his face away.

  Rej walked around the autopsy table so that he could confront him. ‘So what are you saying – that Antoni Dlubak was killed by the same knife as all of the others?’

  ‘It looks that way, yes.’

  ‘So if Witold Jarczyk can prove that Roman Zboinski killed Dlubak, we can assume that he killed all the rest of the victims, too?’

  ‘Well, there’s a problem with that, too.’

  ‘Oh, yes? What problem?’

  ‘Jarczyk was on the phone to me early this morning. It seems that Zboinski has independent alibis for at least five of the murders, and his accomplices are prepared to testify that he couldn’t have committed any of the others.’

  Rej stood and stared at Dr Wojniakowski in silence. His assistant Tomasz shuffled his feet and gave an uncomfortable cough.

  At last, Rej said, ‘Tell me the truth, Teofil.’

  ‘I’m telling you the truth! Why shouldn’t I? Antoni Dlubak was probably killed with the same knife as the rest of the Executioner’s victims, and if Zboinski can establish that he didn’t kill any of the others, then the likelihood is that he didn’t kill Dlubak, either.’

  ‘So what’s happening now?’

  ‘You’ll have to talk to Witold.’

  ‘What’s happening now, Teofil?’ Rej snapped at him.

  Dr Wojniakowski shrugged, and crushed out his cigarette in a stainless steel kidney bowl. ‘They’re taking a statement from Zboinski, then they’re probably going to let him go.’

  ‘They’re going to let him go? For Christ’s sake, Teofil – even if we can’t prove that he’s the Executioner, even if we can’t prove that he killed Dlubak, he shot Jerzy Matejko, blew his brains out in the middle of the street!’

  ‘As I said, you’ll have to talk to Jarczyk. But from what he was saying this morning, Matejko had his gun out and Zboinski’s bodyguard was frightened for his life.’

  ‘I don’t believe what I’m hearing,’ said Rej. ‘First you mix up the slides, then Zboinski has a whole sheaf of alibis, then you’re trying to tell me that those bastards shot Matejko in self-defence.’

  Dr Wojniakowski stared down at the green-swirled linoleum floor and said nothing. Rej came up close to him and said, very softly, ‘How much are they paying you, Teofil?’

  Dr Wojniakowski quickly looked up. There was an expression on his face that Rej had never seen before – defeat, and shame, but desperation, too.

  ‘It isn’t only the money,’ he said.

  ‘How much?’ Rej repeated. He was standing so close to Dr Wojniakowski that he could smell his breath, cigarettes and peppermints.

  ‘You know about my sister, she’s in the nursing home. It’s been very hard to make ends meet. They said they’d help to make her better – or, if I didn’t agree to that –’

  Rej looked as if he had put a bad mussel in his mouth. ‘I know. They’d help to make her very much worse.’

  ‘Come on, Stefan. You know what these people are like.’

  ‘Yes, I know what they’re like. And I know that they only get away with it because people like you won’t stand up to them.’

  ‘Would you?’ hissed Dr Wojniakowski. ‘Would you, if they threatened Katarzyna?’

  Rej looked down at the dead girl lying on the autopsy table. Her lips were blue, her fingernails were black. There were freckles on her thighs, and three bruises that looked like thumbprints. Her eyes were closed, but they looked as if they might open at any moment. But commonsense told him they wouldn’t; and that whoever she once had been, she was gone now, and lost forever.

  He stroked her hair with the back of his hand, and while he was stroking it, he said, still very softly, ‘I don’t suppose you might be kind enough to give me some indication as to who they were? These people?’

  Dr Wojniakowski gave a small, quick shake of his head.

  ‘I could sort them out for you,’ said Rej. ‘No questions asked.’

  ‘No,’ said Dr Wojniakowski. ‘They’re out of your league. You’d just be asking for trouble, that’s all.’

  ‘I’m a police officer,’ Rej reminded him. ‘Nobody is out of my league.’

  ‘Your superiors are out of your league. Nadkomisarz Dembek, for example.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It means, Stefan, that you’re on your own. It means that you’re swimming against the tide. You always were stubborn. You never knew when to call it a day. Forget Zboinski. Forget the Executioner. Enjoy your suspension. Go fishing. Go to the Teatr Wielki and listen to some opera.’

  Rej was filled with such
rage that he could barely speak. He jabbed his finger on the side of the autopsy table as if he were going to make a point, he jabbed it again and again, but he couldn’t find the breath, and he couldn’t find the words. In the end, he turned around, and pushed his way out through the swing doors, past the portrait of Marie Sklodowska-Curie, and along the corridor towards the stairs.

  Dr Wojniakowski came out after him, and called, ‘Stefan! Stefan, stop!’

  Rej stopped at the head of the stairs. The thin light that filtered down from the clerestory windows made him look old, and haggard, and very grey.

  ‘I’ll deny it, Stefan, every single word!’

  Rej looked at him, and felt a sadness that Dr Wojniakowski would never understand. The terrible sadness of losing a friend, because of principles. The terrible sadness of being right; and of never giving in; but of being powerless, too. His ex-wife had always accused him of being weak, but she didn’t know the difference between weakness and justice.

  He stood there in his crumpled summer slacks and his jazzy red-and-yellow short-sleeved shirt, and for a moment he felt beaten. But then he thought of Sarah, and how Sarah never gave in, in spite of being a woman in a man’s world, having to get up every morning and face up to prejudice and bullying and suggestive remarks. He thought of the cushions in front of the fire, in the cottage in Czerwinsk, and the roundness of her breasts.

  He went down the stairs, and the sharp-faced woman was sitting in reception, pecking away at her word-processor. He stopped by the counter and stared at her.

  ‘I’m leaving now,’ he announced. ‘You’re supposed to know that I’ve gone. Security.’

  She stared back at him, her mouth pinched. ‘Very well, then. Goodbye.’

  He waited, and waited. Eventually, she managed to say, ‘Sir,’ and he left, without a word.

  He walked into his office and found Jarczyk with his feet on his desk, drinking coffee and laughing with two of his junior officers. As soon as Rej came in, the laughter stopped, and one of the younger officers suddenly remembered that he ought to be checking up on a Romanian car registration plate. The other retreated into a corner by the filing cabinet.

  ‘Stefan!’ said Jarczyk. ‘Can’t stay out of the office, can you?’

  ‘I’m trying to,’ said Rej. His voice was dry with tightly-contained anger, and Extra Mocne tobacco. ‘But I hear that you’re letting Roman Zboinski go free.’

  Jarczyk let out a nasal whinny, and tried to challenge Rej with his eyes. ‘We didn’t have any choice, did we? You said yourself that the evidence was far too slim.’

  ‘I did, yes, you’re absolutely right. Because I never thought for one single moment that Roman Zboinski was the Executioner, and neither did you. You thought you could sweep all of those killings under the carpet, just because Zboinski chopped one man’s head off.’

  ‘It turns out that he didn’t chop anybody’s head off,’ Jarczyk retorted.

  Rej banged his fist on the desk, and glared at Jarczyk as if he could incinerate him with a single, concentrated stare. ‘You know damned well that he did; and you know why he did it; and you know that Teofil was bribed and bullied into changing his forensic evidence; and for all I know you’ve been bribed and bullied too.’

  ‘Now look here!’ Jarczyk shouted, swinging his feet off the desk and standing up. ‘You can’t come in here making accusations like that! I had a good lead. I had every possible justification to make an arrest. At least I collared somebody, for Christ’s sake! You didn’t even have a suspect!’

  ‘No, you’re right,’ said Rej. ‘I didn’t have a suspect. And the reason that I didn’t have a suspect was because I didn’t have sufficient evidence; and neither did you. But you organized a stake-out, didn’t you, like some half-baked Hollywood movie, and you bungled it, you damn well bungled it, and you killed Jerzy Matejko. You! You killed him, you asshole, as much as if you blew his head off yourself!’

  Jarczyk came storming around the desk, his fists raised, his eyes bulging with anger. ‘Come on, then!’ he demanded. ‘Come on, then! Come on! Let’s see who’s the asshole, shall we?’

  Rej faced him with his arms by his sides and didn’t flinch. ‘How much?’ he said, in the same quiet voice that he had used when he spoke to Dr Wojniakowski.

  ‘What the hell are you talking about, how much?’ Jarczyk shouted at him.

  ‘Just what I said. How much did they pay you to say that Roman Zboinski had a watertight alibi for five of those murders?’

  Jarczyk flourished his fists; but then he realized that Rej wasn’t going to put up any kind of a fight, and slowly lowered them. He was sweating, and his cheeks were burning crimson. ‘I don’t know what you’re trying to imply, but nobody has paid me anything.’

  ‘Payments have been made,’ said Rej. ‘Payments, and threats. Carrots and sticks, they call it.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about that.’

  ‘Who gave Zboinski his alibis?’

  ‘Independent witnesses... people who saw him out and about. The Zebra Club, he’s always there. Sometimes the Valdi, on Piekna Street.’

  ‘That was good work, Witold. And quick, too. How many witnesses did you manage to find?’

  ‘Several. What’s it to you? You’re off this case.’

  ‘No, I’m not. The day you killed Jerzy Matejko, you gave me an open invitation to come back on this case, and I’m never going to be off it, ever, until it’s solved, and I find out what the truth is, or else I die.’

  ‘Christ, you’re over-dramatic,’ said Jarczyk, pacing backward and forward.

  ‘You’ve taken money,’ Rej told him. ‘If you hadn’t taken money, you wouldn’t be so agitated.’

  Jarczyk stopped pacing and took a deep breath. ‘Listen to me, Rej. I made a mistake. Roman Zboinski didn’t kill any of those people. He may have killed Dlubak, but you try proving it. There’s no forensic, and nobody’s saying anything, except some small-time car thief who may or may not have seen one of Zboinski’s runners take Dlubak away. It’s all hypothetical!’

  ‘How much?’ Rej repeated. In the corner, the junior officer had pressed himself against the wall, desperate not to get involved.

  Jarczyk took three deep breaths. Then he said, ‘Are you going to repeat that accusation in front of Nadkomisarz Dembek?’

  ‘I’ll repeat it in front of the Pope, if you like.’

  Jarczyk said nothing for a while. Then he snapped his fingers at the junior officer, and flapped his hand at him to leave the room. When he had gone, Jarczyk said, ‘Listen, this is one of those situations where we have to turn a blind eye.’

  ‘Go on,’ said Rej. He reached into his pocket for his cigarettes and then he realized that he didn’t have any.

  ‘This is all tied up with the government... with foreign investment. There’s millions of dollars involved. Antoni Dlubak was just a little boring clerk who got the idea that he was some kind of – I don’t know, some kind of medieval knight, charging into battle against the evil dragons of international business. He found a technical irregularity at Vistula Kredytowy. They were writing off losses when they shouldn’t have been writing off losses. No big deal: no investors suffered. Nobody lost any money. But of course Antoni Dlubak had to make it into a crusade.’

  ‘So he deserved to be tortured, and to have his head cut off? He asked for it?’

  ‘It was unfortunate,’ said Jarczyk. ‘But it wasn’t Roman Zboinski who did it, and nobody can prove that it was.’

  ‘I seem to remember you telling me that the sharp instrument that was used to torture Dlubak was the same baling hook that you found in Roman Zboinski’s apartment.’

  ‘Mistake.’

  ‘He stuck it right through his goddamned cock, for God’s sake!’ Rej roared at him. ‘How could that be a mistake?’

  ‘It was another baling hook. Just ask Teofil Wojniakowski.’

  ‘Another baling hook? I don’t think I’ll bother. Teofil has been fed with the same carrots that you have; and threaten
ed with the same stick.’

  ‘Don’t insult me, Stefan.’

  ‘I don’t have to,’ said Rej. ‘You insult yourself. You insult your job. You insult your colleagues, and you insult your friends. You insult me.’

  Jarczyk said nothing, but kept pulling at his face as if he expected the skin to tear off, like it did in horror movies.

  ‘How much did they pay you?’ Rej demanded.

  ‘Why? Are you jealous, because they didn’t make an offer to you?’

  ‘How much, Witold?’

  Jarczyk couldn’t help smirking. ‘More than you’ll make in the next ten years. That’s how much.’

  ‘So who was it?’ asked Rej.

  Jarczyk let out a loud, false laugh. ‘They always said you were obstinate, and they were right! Dogged, determined, they always allowed you that much. You plodded and you plodded and you got your man. It didn’t matter that it took you six months to make a case that most of us could wrap up in six days.’

  Rej was about to bellow back at him; but then he clenched his fists, and took a deep, snorting breath, and decided not to. Jarczyk was right, in a way. He was stupid, not to have realized who was paying off Dr Wojniakowski, and who was paying off Jarczyk, and who knew how many other city and government officials. He had guessed, of course – he had known, really – but he had a natural aversion to jumping to conclusions, and a deep suspicion of ‘hunches’. A long time ago, he had shot a young skinny student in front of the statue of St John of Nepomuk, close to Bankowy Square, based on a ‘hunch’, and he had stood alone waiting for an ambulance while the young men bled across the sidewalk, and a crowd gathered all around, and he had known that he was wrong.

  Who would have arranged for an exorcism on the site of the Senate Hotel, if they hadn’t known that Roman Zboinski was going to walk free? After all, if the Executioner had been caught, and imprisoned, why bother? Who had the power to use Senate’s contingency account as a way of laundering Roman Zboinski’s profits? And who was determined to bring down ‘that Lewandowicz bitch’, and make himself rich, both at the same time?

  Of course Rej couldn’t have known that he was echoing the words of the old lady who had approached Jan Kaminski, trying to catch a bus to Czerniakowska. But he said, bitterly, ‘It’s worse than the old days.’