‘Nor do you, Roza,’ muttered Anselm, pressing on.
To use John’s expression, she’d ‘turned’. A deep sadness lay beneath her words. It had soaked into the paper of her statement, persuading Anselm that if Roza was to be restored, deeply and comprehensively, then she’d need more than a colour picture of Otto Brack in a prison cell. She’d need to deal with this underlying longing linked to children: their absence, caused by the brutal murder of her husband, Which brought Anselm face to face with his own mission, and its importance: to find the informer and persuade them to co-operate with an abused and abandoned widow There was nothing left for Roza to hope for. Anselm instantly rehearsed the final part of his telephone conversation with Sebastian. It had not gone smoothly.
‘Frenzel doesn’t think FELIKS was the informer.’
‘Who, then?’
‘Bernard.’ his son.’
‘If the cap fits, make him wear it.’
There’d been a note of impatience in his voice. Sebastian hadn’t quite chimed with Anselm’s disgust at the man who loved the taste of the sea.
‘Easier said than done,’ Anselm had replied. ‘If Bernard handed over Roza in a bid to get out of prison, the whole truth would have to come out: that Edward had made the same move.’ years back, to save Bernard’s education. It’s not a pretty picture. I doubt if Bernard would look at it for long… not after he sees the blood drain from his mother’s face.’
‘That’s not your problem.’
‘Yes, it is. Because Brack made it Roza’s problem.’
Sebastian’s replies had been quick and mechanical, like the fall of a guillotine blade. He didn’t seem to realise that Roza would have to be there for any public execution of Bernard: she’d have to stand with the baying crowd.
It was an eventuality that would almost certainly come to pass. This was the unhappy point at which Anselm and Frenzel had found an uncomfortable agreement. If Roza’s statement was meant to guide John to the door of the informer — and it was — then the use of names would be an important feature. Numerically, Father Nicodem Kaminsky was top of the list with 20 references, but he could be excluded from suspicion because of his direct link to the Shoemaker. It was Bernard who clocked in next with 14. Edward staggered home with a mere five. All the signs suggested that the rebel student who’d once defended Professor Kolakowski had switched sides when the struggle turned personal. He’d kept his place in Solidarity but he’d changed irrevocably: he’d become Brack’s man, for the love of a child born into a crisis.
Anselm shelved his deliberations. He’d arrived at the crime scene.
Mokotow prison had all the demoralising features that characterise any place of detention: high surrounding walls, the dull brick curiously hard on the eye; stolid buildings set back with narrow, dark windows; a heavy sense of compressed humanity; the embodiment of architectural aggression. It was all fancy, of course, but Anselm had the impression that birds didn’t fly over the leaden airspace.
As site-visits go, Anselm wasn’t expecting to discover much. But buildings speak. They, too, have a memory, and he wanted to listen to the echoes of Roza’s time. He began by examining the species of trees that flanked the perimeter walls, all the while turning to check the rows of windows sufficiently elevated to afford a view on to any foliage. After half an hour he found himself back at the main entrance, a large blue gate almost as high as the wall of yellow bricks. There’d been no cherry trees. Not one.
Suddenly the low buzz of an electric surge came from the gate’s lock mechanism. The iron clanged and scraped. Moments later a straggling group of relatives left the premises. They were mainly women, several pushing a pram or holding a boy or girl by the hand. Apart from one or two joking teenagers, their facial expressions wore shades of darkness, the tell-tale hollows of dejection. Anselm had arrived in time to catch the end of visiting time, the departure of innocents torn apart by the crimes of someone they loved.
He stepped off the pavement to make some room, but a woman lunged towards him, someone whose age and appearance fell somewhere between the laughing youngsters and the gloomier adults. Her skin was pocked and smudged with make-up. She wore tight stonewashed jeans and white, dirty trainers. The long, red tongue on a Rolling Stones T-shirt seemed to stick out beyond the open, padded jacket. She grabbed Anselm’s arms, her eyes drawn to his habit. For a moment he thought he was back at Wormwood Scrubs, or any of the other prisons where he’d bumped into the people who stuck by his clients. The young woman spoke quickly, shoulders hunched, one hand jabbing at the monolith behind her, as if she hoped to punch a hole in the State’s defences. She began to cry, tattooed fingers tidying her hair as if improving her appearance might sway Anselm’s mind. What did she want? An advocate? Prayers? A miracle?
‘I’m sorry,’ murmured Anselm. ‘I don’t understand… I’m a stranger
… I’m just passing by.’
On hearing his voice, realising that he didn’t speak her language, she suddenly stopped crying. Her emotions were sucked back inwards. A numb, glazed appearance displaced the turbulence. Looking through Anselm, she pushed past him on to the street and wandered aimlessly away.
Anselm looked down and saw that his hands were shaking. Powerlessness doesn’t erase a sense of responsibility, and he felt he owed something to the woman whose cries had fallen on ears attuned to desperation but not meaning. She’d given him something important, even if he didn’t recognise it. In a most dramatic and disturbing way, she was, for him, Roza Mojeska. The past had returned to the present, and Anselm had been there to see her walk away from Otto Brack. He’d seen all the women walk out of all the prisons in the world.
At that very moment, Anselm received a sort of kick to the stomach. Deconstructive insights aside, he at last understood why he’d found something incongruous with Roza’s statement. It was obvious, really.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The rich crimson carpet of the lobby bar reminded Anselm of the fractured pattern in the restaurant, making him wonder if Frenzel was nearby, listening while he licked his fingers. The interior design people had plumped heavily for variants of red. Scarlet fixtures, ruby lights, cherry napkins. The choice seemed incongruous. Anselm would’ve picked green. Something to do with spring. Outside the evening sky was a tender, pale orange, visible through vast glass panelling.
Before turning to the question of money raised by Frenzel.’ Anselm decided to resume his last conversation with Sebastian. The driven lawyer had listened on the phone to Anselm’s anger and disgust with the former SB officer, but there’d been too many moments of silence on the line and too few return shots of indignation. Anselm had waited, bracing himself, but the ball had simply died on the other side of the net. He wanted to know why He sensed a rift between them.
‘Strange man, Frenzel,’ began Anselm, pouring fizzy water into two glasses, making sure the distribution was fair.
‘Yes.’
‘Can’t imagine how his mind works.’
‘No.’
‘I’m not sure I want to.’
‘No.’
‘But I’m still intrigued.’
‘I’m not.’
‘Really?’
‘No.’
‘What about the dark places? Don’t you want to understand why he does what he does?’
‘No.’
Dressed in tatty jeans, split trainers and an expensive pink shirt, Sebastian looked as if he owned the place and was thinking of selling. He sat, elbow on the chair rest, his hand locked in his tousled black hair. Anselm advanced a little further.
‘You surprise me. Maybe it’s just a monk’s view on to the mental engine, but I wouldn’t mind a quick look beneath the bodywork to see the state of his shock-absorbers.’ Anselm watched the irritation grow on Sebastian’s face. The lawyer reached for his glass as if he didn’t like water.