Richard Zimler - The Warsaw Anagrams

And once I’d learned these things, I walked away.

I took a rickshaw to Izzy’s workshop just after eight in the morning. He came to the door in his winter coat, but with his pyjamas on underneath. Reading in my face that I’d had a bad night, he reached out for my arm. ‘What’s happened?’ he asked, leading me inside.

When I explained about Freddi, he went pale. I sat him down at his worktable, where he’d been drinking coffee out of a bowl. ‘And no one else was hurt?’ he asked.

‘No. Listen, did you ever give Stefa’s apartment key to anyone?’

‘Of course not,’ he replied defensively. ‘I just made the one copy for Bina.’

‘Then Ewa must have given out our key. Or Stefa did.’

‘How do you know that?’

I sat down next to him and took a quick sip of his coffee, but it was too weak to do me any good. ‘The lock on the door wasn’t shot. Freddi’s killer let himself in.’

‘Someone might have taken it from Ewa just long enough to have a copy made,’ Izzy speculated. ‘Ziv works with her and could have easily done that. So maybe you were right about him. Maybe he fled Łódź to get away from the police or something.’

‘Except that Mikael could also have gotten it from Ewa. Though he let me see Adam’s medical file, which I don’t think he’d have done if he were involved in the murders.’

‘Poor Freddi,’ Izzy sighed. ‘He must have made some bad enemies really quickly.’

‘Freddi? This has nothing to do with him! The bullet in his chest was meant for me.’

‘How can you be so sure?’

‘Only you and I knew that Bina’s family moved in yesterday. Though…’ Remembering the talk I’d had with Rowy the previous afternoon, I cut my sentence short.

‘What is it?’ Izzy questioned.

‘Listen to my thinking and tell me if I’m right. The murderer outside the ghetto and his Jewish accomplice must have thought I was still living alone. One of them came to put a bullet in me, or, more likely, sent someone else. Whoever it was panicked when he saw two women and a man in the room. It was dark, and he assumed the man was me. His first shot missed, which may mean he wasn’t a trained killer. We’ll probably find the bullet lodged in the wall somewhere. In any case, his trying to get me out of the way means that our note convinced Mikael, Rowy or Ziv that we were on to him.’

‘So you think that whoever sent a killer knew that what we wrote was made up – and that it hadn’t been sent by his accomplice outside the ghetto?’

‘Yes, though I have no idea how. In any case, since he knew the note wasn’t genuine, he also knew that I had to have sent it.’

‘I don’t follow you.’

‘Because I’m the only one who’s been investigating Adam’s murder! It could only have been me. But listen, Izzy, this also means that Rowy can’t be guilty.’

‘Why?’

‘Because while I was with him yesterday afternoon, he warned me that the Jewish Council would make me take on tenants, and I told him Bina and her family had already moved in – and that I was living in Stefa’s room. If he sent a killer, he would have told him to walk through the main room into the bedroom – that I’d be sleeping there.’

‘Unless the killer panicked and didn’t follow Rowy’s instructions. You said yourself he might not be a professional.’

‘True, but after he took down Freddi, he’d have come for me in the bedroom.’

‘Which makes Ziv our main suspect. We have to figure out how he could have known our note was a trap.’

Izzy and I tossed unlikely speculations between us, dissatisfied and irritable, until there was a knock at the door. He retrieved his gun from his tool chest. When he motioned for me to hide, I slipped behind the curtain that concealed his lavatory.

‘Who is it?’ Izzy called through the door.

I didn’t catch the reply, but I heard the creak of the door opening.

‘Put your hands over your head and take off your overcoat!’ Izzy ordered our visitor.

‘I’m afraid I can’t take off anything with my hands in the air,’ the man retorted in an amused tone.

I recognized his voice immediately and came out of hiding. Izzy had his gun pointed at Mikael, who rolled his eyes as if this were a badly written scene in a Yiddish farce.

‘How about telling your zealous friend to put his weapon down before someone gets hurt?’ he asked me.

‘He might have a gun,’ Izzy reminded me.

‘Are you crazy?’ said Mikael, shaking his head, and he lowered his arms with a sigh.

‘Just take off your overcoat and toss it down,’ I told him. ‘I need to search your pockets.’

‘Erik, I’m here to help you!’ he declared.

‘Just humour me.’

He let his shoulders slump as if we were exhausting him, but he had realized by now we were serious and did as I requested. Finding no knife or gun, I laid his overcoat on Izzy’s worktable. Then I went to Mikael and confirmed that he had no weapon on him.

‘I hope you feel ridiculous!’ he told me in an offended voice as I was patting his trousers.

‘Feeling ridiculous is a sign of life,’ I replied.

‘Talmud, Torah or Groucho Marx?’ he asked – and it was his absurd humour that won him to me again.

‘Sorry,’ I told him, and I motioned for Izzy to put away his gun.

Izzy and I sat opposite Mikael, who looked at me with troubled eyes. ‘Ewa sent word to me about what happened to your new tenant,’ he began. ‘She said a girl named Bina let her know that you’d come here. I need to show you something.’ Grimacing, he added, ‘I think maybe I should have showed it to you before.’

He took a folded sheet of paper out of his pocket. ‘I want you to know I’m risking everything by letting you see this.’ He handed it to me.

The note was typewritten: If you should tell Erik Cohen anything that casts suspicion on me, you will never see your granddaughter alive again .

There was no signature. But many of the letters were faded – as if they’d been made with a badly functioning typewriter.

‘Who is this from?’ I asked Mikael.

‘I can’t be sure,’ he replied, ‘but it must be from whoever is responsible for Adam’s death. Maybe from Rowy. As you and I discussed, Adam and Anna had him in common.’

‘When did you get it?’

‘Three days ago. I’m only showing it to you because I’m worried that another child will be killed. Though, if I’m going to be completely honest, I’d never have gone to your home to show it to you.’

‘But why?’

‘I think Rowy is having me followed. I’ve spotted a man tracking me twice.’

‘What did he look like?’ Izzy asked, undoubtedly thinking – like me – that he might have been the same man who had killed Freddi.

‘Young – maybe thirty. Small, wiry…’

‘How small?’

‘I don’t know – maybe only a little over five feet.’

Izzy and I shared a knowing look.

‘What else?’ I asked.

‘Nothing – it was after dark both times I noticed him. I didn’t see his face. Anyway, this time I took a rickshaw here, and I made the driver take a circuitous route. I don’t think anyone could have managed to follow me.’

‘But why would Rowy be scared of what you could tell Erik?’ Izzy asked.

‘I don’t know. He must think I know something about him that would prove he’s guilty.’ Mikael reached across the table for my hand and gave it a squeeze. ‘Which is why you can never tell anyone about the note or that I came to see you.’

‘No one will ever know,’ I assured him.

‘And you?’ Mikael asked Izzy, who nodded his agreement.

I handed the note back to him.

‘Now that I’ve shown it to you, I want to destroy it,’ Mikael told us, moving Izzy’s glass ashtray closer to him. ‘It feels like a bomb in my pocket.’ Crunching the paper into a ball, he set his lighter to it and dropped it into the ashtray.