The Amber Knight (18 page)

‘Good. I hope that means we’ll have a quiet night.’

‘The mattress is thin.’

‘After the boards we’ve slept on for the past couple of nights it will feel like a feather bed. And we’ve Josef’s luxurious accommodation to look forward to tomorrow.’

‘What time would you like me to call you?’ She stepped back into the living room.

‘What time do you normally get up?’

‘Five, the boys leave for school at half past six.’

‘Five will do.’

‘You know where the bathroom is?’

‘Yes.’

‘Adam, I do appreciate your concern for my safety…’ she hesitated.

‘It sounds like you’re about to put a “but” in there.’

‘It’s what you said to the boys.’

‘All I suggested was they might make use of an obsolete computer that’s destined for the garbage can.’

‘It’s not just the computer, it’s the offer to use the museum’s facilities after school.’

‘What’s wrong with that?’

She knew that what she was about to say was cruel, but she went ahead and said it anyway. ‘There are ways for rich Americans to get kicks in Poland that don’t involve dispensing charity to poor disadvantaged natives.’

He crossed his arms and met her steady gaze. ‘Is that what you think of me?’

‘Can you blame me for not wanting the boys to grow up thinking the only way to get on in the world is by acting as a doormat to the rich?’

‘Who’s rich? I live off my salary.’

‘And you can spend every last grosz, secure in the knowledge that if you need more all you have to do is fax your family.’

‘So this is about resentment?’

‘It’s about the boys. I’m all they have, and I want them to receive the right kind of education. One that will equip them for this rotten, corrupt world.’

‘I was trying to help.’

‘You were setting them on the same road Brunon is travelling down. It’s easy to be honest when you’ve no reason to steal, but I’d like to see how you’d behave if you’d been born into this cesspit.’

‘You’ve survived.’

‘Because I’ve worked hard. Twenty hours a day and more. I want the boys to learn the same lessons I have. That privileges have to be earned, not stolen or begged from wealthy benefactors.’

‘That puts me in my place.’ He folded back the quilt. When he looked up she’d shut the door and closed the curtain. Pulling the gun from his holster, he checked the chamber before stowing it beneath the mattress. Leaning against the rails he lit a cigar. When his eyes became accustomed to the distortions of the plastic sheeting and the gloom, he gazed down the dizzying heights to the grid of street lights twenty floors below. They illuminated a miniaturised world of diminutive, matchstick figures and toy-like cars.

The accusations Magdalena had made simmered in his mind. Did she really see him as some kind of corrupting godfather-like figure? Was he using his position as director of the Salen Institute to massage his ego? Was he self-indulgent, patronising, looking to boost his “feel good” factor by dispensing largesse to the poor? Was it a subconscious ploy to restore his self-esteem after Courtney’s betrayal?

The seeds Magdalena had planted germinated into poisonous thoughts that tainted the pleasure he’d taken in everything he’d thought he’d achieved in Poland.

He finished his cigar, stripped off his shirt and shoes, made a pillow of his bag and lay on the mattress. He was tired, but not tired enough. Magdalena’s face, contorted by bitterness and anger persisted in intruding into his mind and, all the while, he was conscious of the light burning in the room behind him and the incessant drone of not only Magdalena’s television, but what sounded like a chorus of every other television in the block.

After four hours he felt suffocated by the plastic sheeting and yearned for fresh, cold, clear air. He sat up and examined the roof. It had been bolted into an aluminium frame, but by dint of careful manoeuvring he managed to slide one of the top panels open. Above him a pale gold sliver of new moon shone down surrounded by a fine powdering of stardust. He felt in his shirt pocket for another cigar. A shout echoed from somewhere below. He waited but there was no answering cry. He had thought the old quarter of Gdansk noisy but compared to this concrete wasteland and rabbit hutch of a building it was a mortuary.

An alarm rang somewhere in the building. He pressed the button on his watch. Three thirty. The televisions were still buzzing and, tiny, shadowy figures moved beneath the street lights far below. There were so many noises in the building it was difficult to determine whether any were sinister or not.

‘Coffee?’ Magdalena opened the door and handed him a mug.

‘You can’t sleep either?’

‘The change of guards outside the door woke me, and I heard you moving around in here.’

He slipped his shirt on. She was wearing a thin cotton dressing gown. The intimacy embarrassed him after the formality she insisted on in the office. Even during their incarceration they had never been alone, or seen one another without the all-enveloping boiler suits.

‘Is the building always this noisy?’

‘Always. The walls are paper thin. That’s why most people keep their televisions on all night. They’d rather hear what’s on the box than the neighbours fighting.’

‘Is Mrs Dynski asleep?’

‘She’s been snoring for hours.’

He sipped the coffee. It was freshly ground and tasted superb. ‘There doesn’t seem much point in trying to get back to sleep.’

‘I doubt that I could. I think I did all my sleeping in advance in that cell.’

‘In spite of Elizbieta’s gripings?’

‘She’s not that bad.’

‘I thought you two didn’t get on.’

‘What I said to you earlier about rich benefactors. I’m sorry. I’m just angry about what’s happened to Poland. Westerners coming in and buying up all the best houses next to the sea and lakes. Our works of art, everything that we as a country should value, being shipped out. And Poles who should know better queuing up to sell our heritage to any foreigner with cash in their pocket. At least you are trying to help us to hang on to our history.’

‘I thought I was, but after what you said I’m not too sure.’

‘I was angry.’

‘You were also right. One of the reasons I live here is that it does make me feel good. It came as a shock to realise the natives had found me out.’

‘Without the Salen Institute…’

‘I’m not the Institute, just one of the workers. I’ve been kidding myself that I was the one doing the giving. After you closed the door on me I did some thinking. Poland’s given me far more than I can ever give back to the country through my work. The truth is I’m here because I’ve fallen in love with the place.’

‘Poland or Gdansk?’

‘Both. I like living in an old city. Every time I walk through the streets I see something that reminds me of the great tides of humanity who’ve lived, worked and died here throughout long centuries we Americans can only dream of.’

‘I never had you down as a romantic.’

‘Hasn’t it occurred to you that westerners flock to Poland because they envy what you have here? You’ve managed to hold on to something we lost a long time ago.’

‘Poverty?’ she mocked.

‘A sense of family, of tradition, of belonging not only to a people but a place. I’m happier here than I ever was in the States. Here, I have time to think, to live life instead of talk about it.’

‘That’s down to lifestyle, not the country you’re living in.’

‘One day you’ll visit America and meet a breed of people who are too busy looking for the meaning of life to enjoy it while they have it. They’re all terrified of missing out on something, just like the down-and-out who won’t eat what’s on the plate in front of him in case there’s something better stuck to the tablemat beneath it.’

‘You’re painting a harsh view of your fellow countrymen.’

‘You met Courtney and Georgiana.’

‘Met – I don’t know them.’

He held up his hand to silence her. Twitching aside the curtain he was just in time to see the living room door burst inwards. A man stood framed in the doorway. Dressed in a police officer’s uniform, he pointed a gun at gibbering, terrified Mrs Dynski.

Adam shoved Magdalena behind him and yanked the Glock out from beneath the mattress. The intruder walked to Magdalena’s rumpled bed and pushed aside the bedclothes. Adam brushed aside the curtain at the same instant Wiktor opened the boys’ bedroom door.

The officer swung round and cocked his gun in Wiktor’s direction. Wiktor threw himself to the floor. Adam didn’t wait for a second opportunity. Setting his sights in the centre of the intruder’s back, he fired.

The room was suddenly filled with noise and flame. Flashes of light and bullets pierced the balcony walls, thudding into the plastic and shattering the glass door. Grabbing Magdalena, Adam pulled her into the living room and lay over her, protecting her body with his own. Slivers of lead and shards of glass hailed down all around, drowning out Mrs Dynski’s screams and Wiktor’s sobs, yet all he was conscious of was Magdalena trembling beneath him, and a fear born of absolute terror.

‘The surgeon said you recognised him?’

‘His name is Casimir Zamosc. He’s an artist.’ Adam closed the boys’ bedroom door behind him and sank down on one of the chairs.

Josef was standing in the middle of the room, barefoot and bare-chested. He’d taken charge as soon as he’d appeared, dishevelled and panting, minutes after the first shots had been fired; if the police surgeon or the officers who’d crowded into the apartment saw anything humorous in their overweight captain directing a murder enquiry dressed in nothing but a pair of trousers with an unzipped fly, they were either too polite, or too wary of their superior, to show it.

‘My sister introduced us,’ Adam explained. ‘He’s one of her protégés.’

‘Was one of her protégés.’ The police surgeon rose to his feet. ‘Bullet in the back of the skull. Body temperature and angle of entry endorses Mr Salen’s statement. Straightforward shooting of intruder. You couldn’t have done it better, Mr Salen. Death was instantaneous.’ A blood-chilling scream echoed from the boys’ bedroom followed by high-pitched hysterical laughter.

‘Are Magda and the boys all right?’ Josef asked.

‘As all right as you’d expect them to be after something like this. That’s Mrs Dynski,’ Adam explained.

‘You said you’d surprise me, and you did. I’ll need your gun so we can cross-match the bullet.’

Adam handed Josef the Glock.

‘Very nice. You have a permit for it?’

‘The papers are in my apartment.’

‘I’ll look them over later,’ Josef said, ensuring he was in the surgeon’s earshot. ‘I wonder who this guy was working for.’

‘And I wonder where your guards were?’ Adam said dryly.

‘The two in the car downstairs noticed nothing out of the ordinary.’

‘And the three outside the door?’

‘I cut them down to two for the graveyard shift. They’re in the stairwell.’

Something in the tone of Josef’s voice checked Adam’s anger. ‘Dead?’

Josef nodded grimly. Murdered villains were an everyday fact of life, murdered police officers, especially men he worked with, were not.

‘You can move this one out, Josef.’ The surgeon tossed his instruments back into his bag. ‘I’ll take a look at the others.’

‘Bag that carefully, don’t remove the silencer,’ Josef ordered a sergeant who’d snapped on rubber gloves and opened a plastic bag in readiness to remove the gun from Zamosc’s hand. ‘I want a comparison match between the bullets that killed the guards with ammunition fired from that weapon.’

‘Anything on the hail that came through the balcony?’ Adam asked.

‘Nothing in the block across the street except empty casings. The fingerprint boys are working there now. Not that they’ll find anything. This is the work of professionals.’ Josef stepped aside to allow two men to lift the body onto the stretcher. After the surgeon and officers left, the apartment fell suddenly and eerily silent.

‘Was Zamosc a professional?’ Adam asked.

‘If he was, he wasn’t known to us. But we’ll run his prints through the records in the station. Does Magda keep brandy? You look like shit.’

‘I’ve never killed a man before.’

‘Next time shoot to maim, we might have wormed something out of him.’

‘I tried, I’m a lousy shot. And I’m not waiting around for a next time. After seeing Polish police protection in action, I’m shipping Magdalena and her brothers out on the first available plane.’

‘She’s prepared to go?’

‘I haven’t told her yet.’

‘We’ll never resolve this bloody case without her.’

‘Find someone else to play decoy.’

‘You two making my decisions for me again?’ Magdalena emerged from the bedroom.

‘Adam’s sending you out of the country.’

‘Is he?’ Avoiding the chalked body outline on the floor Magdalena went to the sink and filled the kettle.

‘You can’t stay here.’

‘I have a job to do.’

‘You’re on leave as of two hours ago. Take your brothers, pick up Brunon’s grandmother, and take them anywhere you like. The States…’

‘The boys have school examinations.’

‘We’ll find them another school.’

‘I can’t just up and change my life at a moment’s notice.’

‘You’re damned lucky to have a life left!’ Adam exclaimed.

‘Shouting isn’t going to help,’ Josef said quietly.

‘And don’t you dare say another word.’ Adam turned on Josef. ‘Not while we’re standing in a room littered with the results of your protection.’

‘I agree with Josef, shouting isn’t helping.’ Magdalena poured a pot of tea and carried it to the table.

‘Packing your bags will,’ Adam declared.

‘Do you really think I’ll be safe anywhere after this?’ Magdalena’s face was grave.

‘Yes, on my grandfather’s ranch. He’s installed more security measures than Fort Knox. In fact, they have the same advisor.’

‘He has a nervous disposition?’ Josef reached for the sugar and heaped three spoonfuls into an empty cup.

‘A daughter snatched and murdered by kidnappers.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Josef murmured sincerely.