The fan inside the computer case wheezed. The sound resembled the shallow, broken breathing of an asthmatic. Paweł Dąb hated that sound. It bored a hole straight through the middle of his forehead, just above the bridge of his nose.
The commissioner took a sip of coffee. Cold. The grounds grated between his teeth like sand.
03:12.
Files were stacked across the desk, but Dąb wasn't touching them. Paper lied. Paper was patient, it accepted any nonsense scrawled down by some beat cop who just wanted to finish his shift. The truth, if it existed at all, hid in zeros and ones. In the raw code of the KSIP database.
Dąb typed in another query. His fingers struck the keyboard with mechanical precision.
Category: Offences against life and health.
Case status: Discontinued / Acquittal.
Reason: Procedural deficiency / Procedural error / Fruit of the poisonous tree.
The screen flickered. Thousands of names. Thousands of faces of people who had walked out of court smiling, giving the finger to the system. Dąb tasted acid in his mouth. Heartburn scorched his throat. He didn't take tablets. Pain helped him focus.
He added another filter.
Person status: Death / Disappearance.
Period: Last 7 years.
Enter.
The hourglass on screen turned slowly. The police system, an archaic behemoth that remembered the days of Windows 98, surrendered data reluctantly, as though chewing on old concrete.
Dąb leaned his elbows on the desk. The surface was sticky. Someone had spilled cola there a week ago and the cleaner had skipped that corner. His forearm bonded to the laminate. He peeled it away with a soft, wet sound.
The results appeared on screen.
Twelve records.
Dąb blinked. His eyelids felt heavy, as though someone had rubbed lead into them. He leaned forward. His nose nearly touched the monitor. The radiation warmed his skin.
Marek "Cyna" Cynarski. Charged with triple homicide. Acquitted: procedural error in the search warrant. Status: Death. Traffic accident. Two months after the verdict. Jerzy Kroll. Rape with particular cruelty. Acquitted: missing DNA samples. Status: Death. Carbon monoxide poisoning. Faulty gas heater. Six months after the verdict. Artur Bemski. Human trafficking. Acquitted: statute of limitations following reclassification of the offence. Status: Disappearance. Last seen in the Bieszczady Mountains. Four months after the verdict.
Dąb scrolled down the list. The mouse wheel squeaked.
More names. More "fortunate" acquittals. And more, banal endings.
Drowning during a fishing trip.
Fall from height during renovations.
Insulin overdose.
Statistics is a bitch, Dąb thought. But this wasn't statistics. This was an anomaly.
Twelve people. Every one of them guilty — Dąb knew most of these cases, he remembered the fury of the detectives when the judges threw up their hands. Every one of them had escaped punishment because someone had put a comma in the wrong place or misplaced a stamp.
And every one of them had vanished from the face of the earth within a year of regaining their freedom.
The commissioner rose abruptly. His chair rolled back with a bang, striking the metal cabinet behind him.
He began to pace. Step, step, turn. Four square metres of cage.
He pulled out a pack of cigarettes, then remembered the smoke detectors. He crushed the carton in his fist. The cardboard split under the pressure of his thumb.
This was not coincidence. Accidents are chaotic. Scattered in time and space.
Here there was rigour.
He noticed something else.
The dates.
The intervals between the deaths.
Six months. Seven months. Five months.
The regularity of a metronome.
Someone was cleaning up.
No — that was the wrong word. Cleaning up implied dirt.
Someone was correcting errors.
Dąb walked to the map of Warsaw hanging on the wall. It was old, yellowed, marked with districts that no longer existed.
He touched the spot where Kania had been found. Then moved his finger to Praga, where Cynarski had lived. Then Wola — Kroll.
No break-ins. No signs of struggle. No murder weapon.
"Accident."
A skeleton key of a word. A cop shows up, sees a drunk who fell down the stairs, writes a report, the prosecutor stamps it, case closed. Saves taxpayer time and money. Everyone satisfied.
The perfect murderer is one who makes the system clean up after the victim itself.
Dąb felt a chill on the back of his neck. The hairs on his forearms stood up.
This was not a maniac with a knife. This was not a madman hearing voices.
This was death's accountant.
He returned to the computer.
He clicked on Bemski's name.
Report from the site inspection at the location of disappearance.
"Only a backpack and the remains of a campfire were found at the shelter. No evidence of third-party involvement."
Photograph no. 4. Close-up of the fire pit.
Dąb enlarged the image. The pixels dissolved into grey blotches.
Something was lying there. Beside the charred wood.
A small, white speck.
Could be litter. Could be a piece of tissue.
Or it could be a feather.
He took out his phone. The screen lit up the darkness of the office, stabbing at his eyes. He selected Maja Sęk's number.
He hesitated. His thumb hovered over the green receiver icon.
If he told her this, there would be no going back. If he set this in motion, the machine would start turning. And the machine ground up not only perpetrators, but also those who operated it. Maja was barely on her feet as it was. This discovery could finish her. Or give her a purpose.
He looked at the list of twelve names.
Twelve bodies no one had mourned. Twelve sons of bitches the world didn't miss.
Did he miss them?
No.
But the law is not emotion. The law is a line drawn in the sand. When someone erases it, the jungle takes over.
He pressed the call button.
A ringtone. Long, monotonous.
"Pick up, Maja," he whispered. His voice was rough, unused for hours. "You need to see this balance sheet."
In his other hand he was still gripping the crumpled cigarette pack. The tobacco had spilled onto the floor, forming a brown, irregular pattern. Like blood that had dried and turned to dust.