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:
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.
I watched flames rising from the paper as if participating in a ritual linking the three of us into a conspiracy.
‘There’s a problem,’ I told Mikael. ‘The person responsible for identifying Adam and Anna to a German or Pole outside the ghetto may not be Rowy. It could be Ziv.’
‘Ziv?’ he scoffed. ‘No, that’s impossible. He’s so… so inoffensive. And Ewa adores him. They’re like brother and sister.’
‘Ziv volunteered to help Rowy identify children for his chorus. And he’s clever enough to have planned the murders. In fact, he once told me he can think a dozen moves ahead.’
‘But what could he possibly gain from killing Jewish children?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Imagine the note you received is from Ziv, not Rowy,’ Izzy suggested to Mikael. ‘Is there something he wouldn’t want you to tell us – or the police?’
He gazed off for a time, considering possibilities, then shook his head. ‘I can’t think of anything.’
Izzy and I questioned Mikael at length about Ziv, but nothing he told us seemed incriminating until he mentioned that when the young man had gone to him for a medical exam he had confessed that his mother was still alive and living in Lodz.
‘So he’s not an orphan?’ I asked, stupefied.
‘No, Ziv told me that he sends money to his mother every month. He made me swear not to tell anyone, because she disobeyed the Germans and never moved into the ghetto. She’s in hiding in Christian Lodz, with a family she’s paying, and when I talked to him about her, he said she was running out of money. The situation was getting desperate.’
‘When was this?’ Izzy asked.
‘Some time in early January. I’d have to check my files to know for sure – to see when he came for his medical exam.’
‘How does he get the money to her?’ I questioned.
Mikael shrugged. ‘Is that important?’
When I looked to Izzy, he told Mikael just what I was thinking. ‘He’d need the help of a Pole or German outside the ghetto to make sure the money reached her!’
We instructed Mikael to return to his office and said we would be in touch with him later that day. He left the workshop by the back exit.
Ewa and Ziv were both working when we stepped inside in the bakery. We took Ewa out to the courtyard. She swore that she’d never lent Stefa’s key to anyone, which meant that Ziv took it from her handbag and made a copy.
‘Stay here,’ I told her.
‘But why?’
‘I don’t want to risk you getting hurt.’
We went back inside. Ziv was kneading dough on a counter, a paper bag on his head, white with flour from head to toe. I asked him to come into his bedroom with us.
‘What is it you want, Dr Cohen?’ he asked, backing up, fearful, undoubtedly sensing that he might have to dash past me to make his escape.
‘Indulge me,’ I told him, enjoying my power over him. ‘I need to ask you something.’
Tears flooded his eyes. ‘What… what have I done?’ he stammered.
‘That’s what we’re going to find out,’ I answered.
By now, all the bakery workers except Ewa had gathered around us. Ziv still didn’t move, but he glanced away for a moment, which was enough time for a skilled chess player like him to plan a strategy.
‘Get into your room!’ I told him harshly, determined to interrupt his thinking.
Taking the paper bag from his head, the boy turned and shuffled ahead of Izzy and me. Sacks of flour lined the back wall of the storeroom he lived in, and the wooden shelves were stacked with tins and jars. I shut the door behind us and turned the bolt to lock it.
Ziv’s cot was topped by a bright yellow blanket. His alabaster chessboard rested on top of his pillow. A photo of a dashing young man in a tuxedo was tacked to the left wall, and it was signed in blue ink by the chess champion Emmanuel Lasker. Below it was an old wooden chest. I started looking there.
‘What are you searching for?’ Ziv asked in a thin, apprehensive voice.
I made no reply. I began looking through his underwear.
‘If you tell me,’ he continued, ‘I’ll give it to you. Do you want the money I’ve saved up? I’ll give you everything I have.’
I continued hunting for evidence, tossing the clothing I’d already examined to the floor.
