Fog Read online

  About the Book

  She thought she was done with the trances. She risked too much. Not just her own life, but also the lives of others.

  When a young woman is found murdered in her Warsaw apartment, the investigating detectives—Marcin Sawicki and his new colleague, the talented but enigmatic Ada Rochniewicz—are under pressure to close the case quickly. But Ada’s powers of intuition have already got her into trouble once before. And the sexist police force is not on her side.

  As the investigation proceeds, we meet the victim’s jilted lover, a mentally unstable working-class youth; her cleaner, a Chechen refugee in desperate circumstances; the man who broke her heart and joined a cult. And let’s not forget Ada’s eccentric sister, Kasia, nor her grumpy cat Albert-Amelia.

  Getting to the truth becomes a darker and more complex matter than Marcin and Ada can imagine, as they confront a corrupt political and religious establishment.

  Contents

  COVER PAGE

  ABOUT THE BOOK

  TITLE PAGE

  PROLOGUE

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

  56

  57

  58

  59

  60

  61

  62

  63

  64

  65

  EPILOGUE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

  COPYRIGHT PAGE

  PROLOGUE

  He was seeing Zofia at eight. She’d called that morning and asked to meet. He thought: No. He said: ‘Okay.’ He regretted it, but it was too late. She sounded nervous. She was stuttering and he could hear her trying to catch her breath.

  ‘I need to talk to you,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.’

  As always he was disarmed by the sound of her soft, low voice, the way she pronounced things so correctly—the nasal vowels that were a bit too nasal, sitting like little animals at the back of her mouth, their dangling tails tickling her throat. He yielded to his emotions, before remembering that all those nice-sounding syllables didn’t belong to him anymore. Dainty, refined Zofia with her charming speech impediment no longer knew he existed. And yet she’d called…Why? What had happened? Again he was seized by anxiety. There’d always been something enigmatic about Zofia. It’s what had attracted him from the moment they met.

  On those Thursdays, she was always the last to arrive. She would sit to one side during the sessions. She didn’t talk much, and afterwards slipped away without saying goodbye to anyone. At first it bothered the group, but everyone got used to her silent presence. Every now and then the facilitator would ask her a question, and she’d give a brief, businesslike answer. The others quickly lost interest in her. Everyone except him. He would wait for Zofia every Thursday. He’d sneak looks at her pale hands, her glistening hazel eyes, the brown hair that screened her face. After a month, without asking permission, he changed places in the circle and took a seat next to her, against the wall. That day he asked her if she’d like to get a coffee. Two weeks later the facilitator called them in for a private conversation. He forbade outside contact between them and insisted they sit apart in the circle. He spoke sharply, saying he wouldn’t put up with disobedience in the group. He talked mainly to Zofia.

  ‘I’ve had my eye on you for some time,’ he said. ‘I don’t understand why you even come. You’re a bad influence on the rest.’

  She heard him out coolly, then picked up her coat and bag.

  ‘Okay,’ she said from the doorway. ‘I won’t be back.’

  He ran after her. He knew he’d have to give up the sessions, but he didn’t care. That was how the most beautiful three months of his life began.

  He lowered his head and started, as if the sight of his own hands had frightened him. His old feelings came flooding back. Three months. He pulled a face. Three months during which he’d come to believe he truly mattered to someone. It wasn’t long. The relationship ended as abruptly as it had begun. They hadn’t even had time to get to know each other properly. He knew so little about her…But he hadn’t asked any questions. He preferred to let love bloom slowly, grow in strength. He didn’t want to make demands, or rush anything. He dreamed of holidays together, he waited for her to finally introduce him to her parents. Then he’d move in with her, they’d renovate her apartment, put in a double bed…In due course they’d buy a larger place, for the children…For three months he made bigger and bigger plans for the future, feeling calm and confident. And then, all of a sudden, it was over. Zofia didn’t answer her phone. He went round to see what was going on. He knocked. She didn’t answer, but he was convinced there was someone inside. As he sat on the stairs he heard the muted sounds of a conversation, footsteps and the creak of the floorboards. For the first time in three months he thought about the Thursday sessions and was scared. He returned home. The next day he went over again. She opened the door, but wouldn’t let him in. It occurred to him at once that she must be hiding someone. A lover? He was overcome by despair, and felt so weak he had to lean against the wall. Zofia gazed at him.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I shouldn’t have done it like that, but…’

  He heard his own loud, uneven breathing. His head spun.

  ‘Something’s happened,’ she said categorically. ‘We can’t see each other anymore.’

  And that was that. Like a guillotine coming down. No explanations. They met one more time and she repeated the same thing: that certain changes had occurred in her life and the two of them were through. Her eyes had lost their old gentleness; they’d become cold and hard. ‘Certain changes’ could only mean someone else—of that he had no doubt.

  The following Thursday he’d tried to rejoin the group. They wouldn’t take him back, but the facilitator set him up for individual sessions, admitting he was concerned. He said that the shock brought on by his relationship with Zofia could have serious repercussions, not only for him but for the whole group. He talked about responsibility, obligations, respect for the rules. Then he asked about the relationship: what they had done over the course of those three months, where they’d met and what they’d talked about. He found the facilitator a little too pushy, but he did his best to respond. Not much came of it. He had a strange kind of amnesia. In his memory, nothing was left except hopelessness, which gradually transformed into rage and uncontrollable jealousy. If Zofia didn’t want to be with him, she couldn’t be—she had no right to be—with anyone else!

  What did today’s call mean? Had she decided after all to apologise to him? His heart pounded. For him to go back to her, make up, after she’d used him then rejected him? What was she thinking? He felt humiliated at the thought of the past weeks, all that begging for contact, the teary phone calls, the letters, the sleepless nights, when he had kept on trying to see her, to force her to talk, to return to their old closeness, which after all couldn’t simply have vanished… He had continued to believe he would find the right words, convince her, charm her, and then he’d see the dainty Zofia from before—his Zofia! But she had remained the same: indifferent, distant, alien…

  He jumped up from his chair and walked around the room. He went to the window and looked out at the ugly wet city: the squares covered in mud and melting snow, the grey pavement, the colourless façades of the apartment buildings across the street. She’d used him like he’d been a lifeless, disposable object, not a living, feeling person. A man, he corrected himself. He paced the room again and came to a stop by the window once more. Did she know, did she have any idea, how much she had hurt him?

  The whole day he was completely on edge. He tried surfing the net. He watched two episodes of Brigade, a Russian series about the mafia. In the early afternoon he went to the nearby gym. He ran for an hour, then did some weight training, working on his abs. He tried to put everything out of his mind, to think only about Sasha, Cosmos, Honeybee, and Phil, the fearless heroes of the series. At home he took the milk from the refrigerator and sat at the table. He drank straight from the carton in long, slow mouthfuls. His irritation had turned into brute rage. Once again he went over the morning’s conversation, and decided that Zofia hadn’t called with the aim of making up. Her voice had sounded uncertain, but not contrite. Short, matter-of-fact sentences, no ‘I’ve missed you’ or ‘I’m looking forward to seeing you’. A casual ‘See you later’ at the end. Bitch, he thought, watching an aeroplane as it climbed into the sky, its ragged trail cutting across the dense grey clouds. What could Zofia want from him, he asked himself for the hundredth ti
me. Whatever. It would be his moment. She’d invited him, so she’d sit and listen to what he had to say to her. He imagined going into her apartment, telling her to sit down and explaining tersely, emphatically. And she, at last, would understand…But what if she refused to listen? He might hit her, tie her up even. Tape her mouth and watch her cry soundlessly, at his mercy. The plane rose higher and disappeared into the clouds.

  It was almost half past six. He dressed warmly, pulled up his hood. Outside there was a stinging wind; the wet snow went straight through his sneakers. All the same, he didn’t turn into the metro. He walked doggedly down the pavement along KEN Avenue, without stopping and without getting out of anyone’s way. He could see Zofia’s face, her broad mouth, straight nose, the little mole in the corner of her eye, and the way her eyes strayed as she said: ‘Look, you have to understand I don’t want anything more to do with you.’ He remembered the burning sense of rejection. How deeply he’d been humiliated, made ridiculous…He quickened his pace, until in the end he broke into a run, driven by resentment and powerless anger. ‘Fuck your mother! Eat shit!’ he repeated in Russian, imitating the voice of one of the guys in Brigade. He didn’t stop until he got to Dąbrowskiego Street. Just beyond the school sports field he turned into the entranceway of the building and almost collided with an older man in a thick woollen coat and fur hat.

  ‘Go screw yourself!’ he snarled in Russian—‘Idi na khuy!’—then pushed his way past, forcing the man against the wall.

  He caught his breath with difficulty. The thoughts plaguing him were making him dizzy. His face was bathed in sweat.

  Zofia arrived home before five. She put her bag of shopping on the kitchen table, took off her soaking shoes and, leaving wet footprints on the floor, went into the bathroom. She ran the bath and lay in the tub, thinking about how complicated her life had become in the last three months. And whose fault was it, she wondered as she squeezed out the sponge. ‘Whose fault?’ she repeated aloud. She attracted bad luck like a magnet, she thought, as she stood and picked up the soap. The more I like someone, the crazier they are. What if, for some strange reason, it’s only lunatics who are attracted to me? Or do I seek them out myself? She rinsed off and got out of the bath. She studied her face in the mirror. ‘What am I supposed to do now?’ she asked her reflection.

  The person in the mirror didn’t look tired or unkempt. Zofia placed a finger on each cheek and pulled the skin gently up towards her temples. She raised her eyebrows, then reached for the blusher and mascara. She put her make-up on carefully, then went to the kitchen to make tea. She put out two teacups and a plate of French biscuits. All of a sudden, she stopped and stared at the laid table as if she were trying to settle a crucial question in her mind. After a moment, she picked up her mobile phone and dialled the same number twice, without success.

  ‘I want to call off our meeting,’ she said to a messagebank, on her third attempt, lowering her voice to sound more assertive. ‘Something important’s come up. I’m really sorry. I’ll call tomorrow.’

  She glanced at the phone. She had no guarantee the message would be received. She stood drumming her fingers on the windowsill, then shrugged and dropped into the window seat. It was nearly seven. She looked down at the little fog-covered square and the deserted building site fenced off from the street. A solitary rook squatted on the dark branch of a maple. She ought to make some concrete decisions and see where they led her. But nothing that made any sense came to mind. No theoretical solution to her problems. She’d found herself in a trap with no way out. The rook shook its head, ruffled its feathers and waddled sideways towards the bough of the tree. The wind blew an empty plastic cup along the street.

  At seven-fifteen the intercom rang. She sighed, pushed the buzzer without a word, and unlocked the door. Then, driven by a sudden impulse, she grabbed her handbag from the coat hook. With a decisive movement, she took out a doctor’s certificate. As she walked back to the bathroom, she tore it into little pieces and threw it in the toilet.

  ‘I’m in the bathroom,’ she called as she heard the knock at the front door. ‘I’ll be right there.’ She flushed the toilet.

  At that moment she felt a strong blow to her temple. One, then another. It didn’t hurt. She wasn’t afraid. She was overcome by immense tiredness. ‘Who is it?’ she wanted to ask before she passed out, but blood came from her open mouth instead of words. She tried to turn around and look at her attacker, but she could only groan and sink into darkness.

  At eight o’clock a bitter wind blew up from the icy-cold Vistula. At eight-thirty a power outage caused the lights along the banks to go out. Everything went dark. Only in the middle of the river, where the current was strongest, was there the brighter outline of a drifting ice floe. At nine a string of car lights moved rapidly across the surface of the water and disappeared in the fog. In the bushes a sharp cry came from a bird that had woken up. Above the banks the city rose, encased in a glow. A second river flowed over it, broad and dark. A bright, slick moon sailed slowly out onto it and floated among the clouds.

  1

  She emerged from sleep like she was crawling out of a well. She opened her eyes and noticed she was lying next to a polar bear. It wasn’t a big one. But Ada knew that polar bears, even small ones, are among the most dangerous animals on the planet. She turned gingerly onto her left side and curled into a ball amid the excrement that covered the sheets. It must have been relieving itself on the bed all night long, she thought to herself. Something’ll need to be done about that in future, buy a litter box or whatever…The bear sat up heavily, slipped onto the floor and began walking around the room, sniffing about as it passed the piles of snow.

  ‘Up you get, it’s time for breakfast.’ A pale woman with messy hair sat on the other side of the bed. She took an infant from her breast and laid it on the pillow. ‘Do you think I can leave her here?’ she asked.

  ‘Sure.’ Ada was glad Kasia hadn’t noticed the dirty bedding. Otherwise she wouldn’t have put the child down in the middle of all that filth. ‘Sure,’ she repeated. ‘The bear’s as gentle as a lamb, he loves babies.’

  She was convinced she was telling the truth.

  They put on their slippers, closed the door behind them and moved down a dimly lit hallway. The unplaned floorboards creaked under their feet. The kitchen was cramped and dark, with a tiled floor the color of tomato soup. The small barred window gave onto a fenced square. There was a smell of burning and musty clothing. Kasia made tea in glasses and prepared some bread and cheese. Only when they were on their way back to the bedroom did Ada remember that the previous day the bear had eaten the neighbour’s cat and her two puppies. It was too late to do anything about it. She opened the door. The white creature lay on the bed, licking its muzzle. There was a bloody stain on the pillow where the baby had been.

  ‘Kasia,’ she whispered, taking hold of her sister’s arm. ‘Kasia…’

  She was woken by a cry of distress. Albert-Emilia was at the foot of the bed, miaowing. Kasia doesn’t have children, was her first thought. Feeling a sense of relief, she sat up, ran her fingers through her short, tangled hair and stroked Albert-Emilia. Then she got up and headed for the kitchen, stumbling over the cat, who kept getting in her way. The first cold patches of daylight lay on the windowsill. The garbage truck had pulled up outside the building, and somewhere high in the grey sky terns were screeching. The kitchen looked nothing like the one from the dream. A bright, clean floor of white-painted boards, wooden cabinets, a large square window; it was all like something out of the IKEA catalogue. She took two ice cubes from the refrigerator and wiped her face with them. Five minutes later she was standing in front of the open wardrobe. Perfectly ironed shirts and pants hung in coloured rows: beige, grey, dark blue, green, like in an upmarket apparel store. Even the panties on the shelves were folded into neat white cubes. Ada picked out a pair of skinny jeans, an orange T-shirt and a brown jumper with a broad polo neck. She dressed quickly and sat down at her antique-style dressing table.

  She was close to forty, but had kept her slim figure and lithe, girlish way of moving. She’d grown used to the idea that she still looked like a student. Ten years ago that had still been true, but time had left its unforgiving mark on her pale, small-featured face, although she stubbornly chose to ignore it. The skin on her cheeks had sagged a little around the jaw. Her eyes, dark and watchful, had lost their former lustre, leaving an expression of cool, matter-of-fact confidence, while her broad mouth with its odd, seemingly upside-down shape was framed by some tentative wrinkles. Ada took out foundation, blusher, mascara. A few brief, decisive strokes of the brush gave her the look of someone whose age is impossible to tell. She swept her dark ragged fringe to one side, tucked her hair behind her ears, then nodded to her reflection as if she were giving a cool but respectful greeting.