The Warsaw Anagrams (33 page)

‘So you were the one who put the string in Adam’s mouth and the gauze in Georg’s fist?’

‘Yes. I had to think of something to stop more children from being murdered. When did you understand what my clues meant?’

‘Only today. You were incredibly clever.’

‘I couldn’t risk anything obvious,’ Jesion replied, taking off his apron and folding it neatly, ‘but I’d heard that the Jews inside the ghetto were working in anagrams these days, so I thought that someone in the Jewish police might just turn
linka
into Lanik and
Flor
into Rolf. And that they might be able to stop the bastard. Only a Jew would know both Polish and German well enough to understand that
linka
was string and
Flor
was gauze, so I felt that the right person would figure out Lanik’s whole name.’

‘But you left nothing on Anna,’ Izzy interjected.

‘She was the first. I was too shocked and upset to think of how I might leave a clue behind. Only when Adam was left with me did it occur to me how I could do it without risking too much.’

‘If Lanik had discovered the string or gauze, what would you have said?’

‘That it was carelessness on my part. He wouldn’t have guessed. The Germans aren’t talking in code like the Jews.’

‘That was a good and brave attempt to help me,’ I told him. ‘Thank you.’

‘After what I’ve done, you’re thanking me?’

‘Under the circumstances, you did the best you could.’

Jesion grimaced, then raised a quivering hand to his head, dizzy. We sat him down at his table, and he leaned over and cried as if life were spilling out of him.

At length, I asked him, ‘How many children have been murdered so far?’

‘Four – three boys and a girl.’

‘Then there’s one I don’t know about,’ I told him.

‘Probably the first of the boys – he came in just after Anna. He wasn’t from the ghetto. Lanik told me he and his family had been in hiding.’

‘How did Lanik find him?’

‘Christians denounce Jews in hiding all the time. It’s become the national sport.’

‘The body of this boy … Where was it left?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know. I don’t ask.’ Jesion sneered. ‘The son-of-a-bitch has his chauffeur bring the dead children here at night, and he tells me what I’m to do. When I’m done, he takes the body away. That’s all I know.’

‘And how does Lanik kill them?’

‘My guess is that he offers them poisoned food. He once told me they come to him famished.’

‘Have you ever heard of Mikael Tengmann?’ I asked.

‘No, who’s he?’

‘A doctor in the ghetto – an old friend of Lanik’s. He’s the one who identifies children who have birthmarks or blemishes.’

‘I see. So how did you find me?’

‘A courageous girl helped me figure out who the murderer was.’

‘Was it Lanik’s stepdaughter Irene?’ he questioned.

‘You know her?’ I asked in astonishment.

‘She and her mother often come into town to buy their meat from me.’

‘So did you tell Irene that her stepfather was ordering you to cut up the children?’

‘No, it wasn’t me. I couldn’t risk that. I was careful not to let on.’

‘Then one of them must have overheard Lanik discussing the murders or seen the skin you’ve taken from the children. Or Irene figured things out from other clues we’ll never know about.’

‘Does Lanik photograph the skin?’ Izzy questioned.

‘I’m not sure. All I really know is that it has something to do with a transfer he wants to a more important job. When the first boy was brought to me, he told me that he needed the skin around his birthmark for a present he would be carrying with him to a camp – to Buchenwald. As best I can figure out, he’s eager to work there so that he can perform experiments on the prisoners – medical experiments involving how to cure burns. That’s his speciality, as I understand it. I think he left a couple of days ago for there. I’m betting he took the children’s skins with him, though he talked of bringing them to a craftsman in leather before going and I’m not sure he’s had time to do that yet.’

‘Who’s the gift for?’

‘Someone at Buchenwald, but I don’t know who. Whether he hopes to prove some racial theory with the Jewish skin or simply ingratiate himself to some madman there, I haven’t any idea.’

‘Why did he pick you to desecrate the children for him?’ I asked.

‘Lanik found out that my mother was Jewish. He threatened to have her and the rest of our family sent to the ghetto. Mama is seventy-seven years old. She wouldn’t survive a week in there. I didn’t have any choice.’

‘Do you know where Lanik’s office is?’ Izzy asked.

‘Yes, it’s across the street – the second door to the left of the church. He’s on the first floor, but getting to him will be risky for you. His patients are all collaborators and Germans – soldiers, Gestapo officers … I go there to make deliveries on occasion, and he keeps a heavily armed guard by the door.’

‘Where does he eat lunch?’ I questioned.

‘I’ve seen him at a German restaurant nearby – a kind of beer garden.’

‘Is it crowded?’

‘Sometimes.’

I wasn’t sure what to do, but Izzy saved the day; he took out the note he’d typed at home and handed it to me. It read:

At the bottom, Izzy had forged Mikael’s signature beautifully, having found it at the end of Adam’s medical file.

‘You make a better detective than I do,’ I told him gratefully.

‘Those who lead a double life learn the ways of stealth,’ he replied. A one-line poem he’d wanted to tell me for decades, I guessed.

I handed the note to Jesion. ‘Go ahead, read it,’ I told him.

When he was finished, Izzy said, ‘Lanik doesn’t yet know that we’ve identified Mikael Tengmann as his accomplice, and he’ll believe the appeal for help is real. They’re old friends, so he’ll go to Praga.’

‘Do you know if there are Germans patrolling the bridges over the river?’ I asked the butcher.

‘Sometimes, but you should be safe at lunch time. With so many people going back and forth, they don’t usually make trouble. But do you intend to kill him in the Praga Cathedral?’ he asked in a horrified voice.

‘If you can tell me how to lure him to a synagogue,’ Izzy told him with a crafty smile, ‘I’ll happily shoot him there.’

Jesion put our note in an envelope and took it across the street to Lanik; he planned to say it had been dropped at his shop by a ghetto courier. Ten minutes later, he was back, out of breath.

‘I gave the note to him, but he didn’t read it in front of me,’ he told us worriedly.

‘But you
did
tell him that the courier had said it was urgent?’

‘Of course.’ The butcher grimaced. ‘He asked me what the man looked like, and I couldn’t think of how to reply, so I described Jan Kiliński on his statue in Krasinskich Square – with that peasant hat and heroic moustache. It was all I could think of.’

Izzy had a good laugh, which made Jesion smile. ‘I didn’t foul things up?’ he asked us.

‘No, you did good,’ I told him.

‘What’s Lanik look like?’ Izzy asked.

‘He’s tall, over six feet, and he has dark brown hair that he wears very short, parted on the left.’

‘That’s it then,’ Izzy said cheerfully. ‘We’re off!’

Jesion reached for him. ‘Listen, I’ve been thinking,’ he said. ‘A gun makes a lot of noise, but a knife …’

The steel blade was four inches long, slightly curved, the handle polished ebony. It fitted into my hand as if it had always been mine. I kept it in its leather sheath, concealed in the inside pocket of my overcoat.

Jesion’s last words to me were, ‘If you free me from that son-
of-a
-bitch, I’ll bless you in my prayers for ever!’

We encountered no difficulties on the bridge to Praga and headed straight to Jaśmin’s apartment, but she wasn’t home. The caretaker of her building told us she sometimes returned for lunch, usually just after noon.

To kill time, we sat at a café sipping weak coffee that had the unlikely aftertaste of smoked fish, then waited for Jaśmin down her street. Izzy and I hardly spoke; the murder we’d planned was too greedy for our attention.

Jaśmin never showed up. At 12.35 we couldn’t wait any longer and made our way to Floriańska Street, and from there to the cathedral. We found it nearly empty. Two elderly women sat in the first pew – sisters, I guessed, since they had the same tight bun of grey hair and finchlike compactness. A balding middle-aged man with a bandage over his left ear sat in the third-to-last row, his sullen lips sculpting prayers, his eyes closed. We spotted no priests.

Izzy sat in the last pew. I stood just to the side of the main door. I put down my briefcase and held my knife behind my back.

At a quarter past one, Lanik stepped inside. I hadn’t expected him to be in uniform. That troubled me – it was as if he now had an unfair advantage.

He took off his cap and brushed his hair off his forehead with abrupt, irritated flicks. He obviously thought it a burden to have had to travel so far from his office.

He had an intelligent face and large dark eyes. Stepping to the end of the centre aisle, he surveyed the pews.

Izzy turned to face him and stood up, just as we’d agreed. I crept left, towards the entrance, so that the German’s back was to me. The dark moistness of the cathedral seemed to enter me, as if I were becoming a shadow – and as if my change of form was meant to protect me.

I was squeezing the handle of my knife so hard that my hand ached.

‘Are you Dr Lanik?’ Izzy asked.

I remember his eager tone of voice – as if he had pleasant business with the Nazi. Izzy proved himself an extraordinary human being that day.

‘Yes, did Mikael Tengmann send you?’ Lanik replied.

I rushed forward in what I remember as a mad charge, but in truth, I must have been too slow; before I reached the German, he turned to face me. I’d intended to lunge at him and thrust the blade into his back while Izzy spoke to him, but that was impossible now. Instead, I jabbed the knife into his throat, so hard and deep that my fist pounded against the taut firmness of his neck.

Blood sprayed on to my face. I tasted the salty wetness of him on my lips.

He fell back on to the floor, hard, his head knocking into a pew. His cap went flying. I heard myself gasp.

Did the sisters in the front pew turn towards us? Did the balding man stop praying? I’ll never know; I never took my eyes from Lanik.

With desperate hands, he reached up and yanked the knife out of his flesh. If he was able to think at all, he must have been puzzled as to why Mikael Tengmann would send a killer after him.

Blood seeped from his wound. I’d been unlucky; I’d failed to hit an artery. He’d die slowly. Or if help came, he might even outlive Izzy and me.

Lanik looked at me imploringly as he tried to speak, making gurgling noises – as if a knot were lodged in his throat. He fought to sit up, pulling on the back of the last pew, and after he’d managed this feat, his eyes pleaded for mercy. ‘
Hilfe!
’ he mouthed in desperate German.
Help me!

Was he thinking he might never see Irene and his wife again?

I was stunned by how much life we have inside our bodies.

I knew it was now I should speak Adam’s name, but I couldn’t talk – proof that you can never predict how you will behave when you stand before the tower of vengeance you have erected.

Izzy retrieved my knife, which was streaked with blood.

‘He might not die,’ I whispered to him. Hearing my own voice made me shiver, and my hand clutching his arm was my request for help.

‘Don’t worry, Erik,’ he replied.

How could he speak so calmly? I never asked him, though once he told me he had never felt more alive than when he stood over Lanik and realized what he had to do.

Sometimes I think that Izzy was the strongest person I ever met.

Kneeling down, he told the German, ‘There was a beautiful boy named Adam, and he had birthmarks behind his ankle.’

He spoke sweetly and slowly – as if his words were the beginning of a children’s story that Lanik still had time to read.

The Nazi shook his head as if he knew nothing about my nephew.

Was it his denial that incensed Izzy? He grabbed Lanik by the hair and smashed his head against the floor.

I cringed on hearing the cruel thud – like two billiard balls knocking together.

The German groaned, and blood spilled over his lips, as though he were vomiting his last chance for life.

Leaning down, Izzy spoke into Lanik’s ear: ‘Adam and Anna say hello.’

And then, using both hands, he planted the blade as deeply as he could in the Nazi’s chest.

In the weeks to come, I would often wonder how I could have known Izzy nearly all my life and never suspected how good he would be at murder.

A black Mercedes was parked outside the church, obviously waiting for Lanik to return. A dark-uniformed chauffeur was inside, reading a newspaper spread into wings. Remembering Schrei’s advice, we didn’t run. We walked east. I never looked back.

Izzy carried my briefcase; I’d left it behind and he’d gone back for it.

Rain splattered around us but didn’t feel wet against my skin. Its relentless pounding seemed the world’s way of insisting on a justification from me for my very life.

Izzy opened our umbrella and summoned me to him, but I needed to be by myself. I was listening for a policeman’s voice to call out to us in Polish or German and demand we stop. I would have turned round and begged to be shot on the spot.

The voice never came.

I remember passing railroad lines. Did we zigzag along sidestreets to keep from being seen? What happened to my bloodstained overcoat? I can’t recall, but I must have left it inside the church; I remember being chilled and noticing at some point that I no longer felt the protection of my muffler around my neck.