Robert Knightly - The cold room

‘I thought,’ she told me as she unwrapped them, ‘that we might do better than a bag of stale doughnuts.’

She was right, and I showed my gratitude, once our breakfast was consumed and I’d cleaned my fingers, by reviewing the items I wanted our impending interview with Tynia Cernek to include. Sister Kassia was slated to conduct the interview, which meant she and Tynia would be speaking Polish. The point was to establish trust, to head off any last-minute resistance when I finally came knocking on that door in Astoria.

This time around, I was unable to banish Adele, at least not entirely. She continued to work on me, an itch I couldn’t scratch. The worst part was that the dangers she’d described were very real. Aslan would kill me if he could.

The nun and I were still at it when a stretch limo, a white Mercedes, rolled up to the townhouse across the street. Ten minutes later, the Portola family emerged. Margaret was dressed in a dark suit which she’d complemented with pearls at her throat and ears. Leonard also wore a suit, double-breasted, black and immaculately tailored, over a blood-red shirt. By contrast, David’s olive-green suit fitted him badly and his striped tie was poorly knotted and askew. Dress-up was not his favorite game and he was unable, or unwilling, to fake it.

I rose from the bench as the limo turned onto 82nd Street, draped my bag across my shoulder, finally offered my hand to Sister Kassia. Together, we walked to the door of the townhouse, which opened before I could knock.

I followed the nun inside, past Tynia, who slid the door closed behind us. Tynia was wearing an apron over her blue dress and she wiped her palms across the front, but did not offer her hand. We were standing in a large entrance hall paneled in dark wood. There were side chairs flanking the door leading into the house, with oval seats and backs, and four oil paintings on the wall above the wainscoting. The paintings, all landscapes, were surrounded by enormous gilt frames and seemed vaguely familiar.

Without a word, Tynia led us to a stairway against the northern wall, then down into a basement kitchen. I came last, hanging back when I reached the bottom of the stairs. For a moment, I failed to register any of the kitchen’s details except for one. On the other side of the room, directly across from where I stood, a wooden door rose to the height of my head. The door turned on hinges made of hammered iron and the gap between door and frame was sealed with rubbery gray insulation.

I waited where I was until Tynia and Sister Kassia were seated at a long table, lost in conversation. Then I crossed the room to run the fingers of my right hand over the front of the door. The faint mahogany stain was flaking and the surface felt dry and rough. Around the handle, a black semicircle attested to decades of wear. Setting down my bag, I gave the handle a yank. It released with a satisfying ka-chunk and the door turned effortlessly on its hinges. I was left staring into a room about ten feet deep, with shelves and bins, some open, some covered, to my left and right. The room was narrow, not more than four feet wide, including the bins, and I had to turn my shoulders when I stepped inside.

Instinctively, I reached out to keep the door from shutting, but I needn’t have bothered. Unlike most refrigerator doors, which close by themselves if left ajar, this door was weighted to swing outward. Just as well, because there was no inner latch. If the door shut behind me, I’d have to rely on a red button, labeled EMERGENCY, mounted on the wall.

The button was a great idea, no question, but as a means of escape, it depended entirely on the good will of the individual, or individuals, on the other side of the door.

The cold air cut its way into my skin as I edged toward the back of the refrigerator. I found myself wanting to jam my hands into my pockets. Instead, I began to pull out the bins, to examine them closely, along with the shelves beneath them. I was looking for blood evidence, which I didn’t find, but I was struck by the number of empty bins. There was a lot of food in the refrigerator, including a dozen varieties of cheese and enough fruit to stock a pushcart, but the unit was only a third full. Clearly, it was too large for a single family.

My fingertips and toes were growing numb by the time I gave up the search. My forearms were rapidly following suit. I was wearing a short-sleeved polo shirt, loosely woven, and lightweight tropical slacks, both seemingly as porous as fishnets. The temperature inside the refrigerator could not have been more than a few degrees above freezing.

For a moment, I stood in the doorway, letting warm air from the kitchen wash across my body. Sister Kassia and Tynia were still seated at the table, still engaged in intense conversation. But now the empty space in front of Tynia was taken up by a set of silverware, a service for twelve by the look of it. Tynia was working on the knives, one at a time, coating them with polish, then buffing them until they gleamed. She worked quickly, leaving me to suppose that she’d been assigned a number of duties, and that she faced consequences if they were not completed before the return of her employer.

‘Sister?’ I waited until the nun turned to me. ‘I’m going to close the door. I want you to open it in five minutes. Not before, understand?’ I shifted my gaze to Tynia. Initially, I found her eyes questioning, but then her doubts were replaced by simple recognition. We understood each other now.

When the door closed and the refrigerator went dark, I took several steps back. I couldn’t shake a feeling that the room was contracting around me and I instinctively hunched over, as if avoiding a blow. In that moment, the cold became organic, an alive and hungry parasite burrowing down through my skin.

I was tempted to fight back, to jog in place, to flap my arms, as I knew Mynka had been tempted, as Tynia had been tempted. But there was just so much oxygen in that little room and the harder I worked the sooner it would be exhausted. The only question was which would kill me first, would I freeze to death or would I suffocate?

But these were questions that didn’t need answering. After a time — which I was unable to measure — I began to shiver, a reflex which became more and more intense as the seconds ticked by. Eventually, conserving oxygen ceased to be a viable option. I started to run in place, slowly at first, than faster, until my body produced enough heat to drive the cold away. The effect, as I well knew, would only be temporary. As long as that door remained closed, the cold was an enemy that couldn’t be defeated, or even kept at bay for any length of time.

Literally blind, I groped my way toward what I hoped was the room’s door, only to discover myself up against the back wall. I turned on my heel, aiming to re-trace my steps, but was unable to walk a straight line. I kept lurching into the bins on either side as I shuffled along. By the time I reached the door, I was breathing hard. Because the adrenalin was pumping? Or because my lungs weren’t getting enough oxygen?

I let my index finger rest on the emergency button, wondering how many times Mynka had stood here, how many times she’d pushed the panic button? I wondered if she’d become angry when no one responded. Whether she’d held the button down, smashed her fist on the door, demanded release. Or if she was in fear of some greater punishment, something worse than the cold room.

When I pressed the button, a buzzer sounded on the other side of the door. The buzzer was loud even in the sealed refrigerator; in the kitchen, it must have been ear splitting. I tried to imagine Mynka’s tormentor on the other side of the door, knowing it might have been Margaret or Ronald, or both.

The sound of the buzzer, of course, would only inspire a true sadist to persist, to confine Mynka long enough, before she was killed, to produce an unforeseen consequence. I’d noted this consequence at the crime scene, as had Dr Hyong at the autopsy: lividity that should have been purple-black was rosy pink. That single anomaly, more than any other factor, was responsible for my presence in the Portola townhouse.