The gravel on the driveway of the old steelworks did not crunch. It screamed beneath the tires. Maja switched off the engine, but her hands remained clenched on the steering wheel for a moment longer. The skin across her knuckles had gone white, stretched to its limits. She took a deep breath. The air inside the car tasted of old plastic and the mints she chewed compulsively since quitting smoking.
She got out.
The November wind off the Vistula hit her in the face like a wet rag. Żerań at this time of year was a graveyard of industry. Rusty crane skeletons, broken windows gaping black, the smell of river mud and grease. She pulled her collar up. The cold crept under the wool and touched her spine. She shivered. It was a reflex. Pure physiology.
Paweł Dąb was standing beneath the police tape. His usual stoop was gone — his posture was unnaturally straight. He was smoking. The smoke fled horizontally, torn apart by the squall.
"Prosecutor." He did not flick away the cigarette. The ember was creeping toward the filter.
"What do we have, Paweł?"
"Theatre."
He moved toward the great sheet-metal gates. She followed. Her heels on the concrete beat a rhythm that echoed back from the high ceiling of the hall.
Click. Click. Click.
Inside, half-darkness reigned, cut through by shafts of light from police halogens. Dust swirled in those columns of brightness like something suspended in time.
There was no smell. That was the first thing that struck Maja. The absence of smell. No blood, no feces, none of the sweetish odor of decay that usually accompanied her work. The air was dry, almost sterile.
The victim was sitting in the center of the hall.
Witold Kania. Developer. Philanthropist. A week ago he had walked out of court with a smile that cameras had broadcast to every screen in the country. Insufficient evidence. The court had not believed a twelve-year-old girl. Maja remembered that day. She remembered the taste of bile in her throat as the judge read out the ruling.
Now Kania sat on a plain wooden chair. He was wearing the same suit he had worn when he left custody. Navy blue, wool, immaculate. His hands rested on his knees, palms open, facing upward. His head was tilted slightly to the left, as though he were listening.
Maja stepped closer. The forensic technician moved aside without a word. She looked into Kania's face. His eyes were closed. His skin, already drained of circulation, had taken on the shade of wax. He looked peaceful. More peaceful than he had ever looked in life.
"Cause of death?" Her voice was rough. She had to clear her throat.
"At first glance? Nothing," murmured Dąb, stepping up beside her. "No stab wounds, no gunshot wounds, no signs of strangulation. Clean. As though he simply switched himself off."
Maja leaned over the body. She noticed something on the victim's neck. A thin, red line just below the jawline. It was not bleeding. It was precise, almost invisible — as though drawn by a scalpel that had only grazed the skin.
She waited for the nausea. She waited for that familiar contraction of the stomach, for the weight that always came when she looked at death. She knew her own body. She knew how it responded to evil.
But her stomach stayed loose.
Her heart, instead of accelerating, slowed. It beat steadily, strongly, calmly. The tension in her neck — that dull ache radiating to her temples, which she had been carrying for a week — suddenly eased. As though someone had cut an invisible string.
She felt a rush of warmth in her fingertips. Blood returning to her extremities.
That frightened her more than the corpse.
She stepped back. Her shoe scraped on the concrete. The sound was too loud.
"Who found him?"
"Building security. Routine patrol. They claim the doors were open. No signs of a break-in. Locks undamaged."
Maja looked around the hall. The space was enormous, overwhelming. And yet at this particular point, around the chair, there was a mathematical order. No rubbish, no rubble. The floor around the chair looked swept.
"This isn't a crime scene, Paweł," she said quietly.
"Then what is it?"
"An altar."
Dąb looked at her, narrowing his eyes. The halogen light reflected in his pupils. He pulled a new pack of cigarettes from his pocket and tore off the cellophane. The rustling was grating.
"Kania had protection. Two former special forces men. They've disappeared. The cameras at his house? On a loop. They recorded the same image for four hours. Whoever did this knew more about security systems than the people who installed them."
Maja looked at Kania's hands again. Open. Waiting. She took latex gloves from her bag. The rubber pulled tight across her fingers with a quiet snap. She touched the victim's wrist. Cold. Rigid. Rigor mortis fully developed.
Then she noticed it.
Beneath Kania's left fingernail — perfectly manicured — something black was lodged. A speck. Not dirt.
She leaned down so close she caught the scent of the expensive cologne he had worn. She took a pair of tweezers from the technician's kit without asking permission.
"Light," she said.
Dąb directed his torch at the hand.
Maja carefully extracted the speck. It was not soil. It was a bird's feather. A tiny, black, downy feather. From a raven.
She straightened up. A rushing sound had started in her head. Not from fear. From excitement. A tingling ran down her back from her lower spine to the nape of her neck. She felt... light.
Kania was dead. The system had failed, the law had failed, she had failed. And yet justice had been made flesh. Cold, dead flesh on a wooden chair.
"Take him away," she said. Her voice was hard, professional. The mask had slipped back into place. "Post-mortem tomorrow at eight. I want to be there. And find me those bodyguards. Alive or dead."
She walked toward the exit without looking back. She needed to get outside. She needed to smoke, despite not smoking. She needed to wash away this feeling. This monstrous, soothing relief.
The wind outside had picked up. It struck the sheet-metal walls of the factory, which groaned like a great wounded animal. Maja leaned against the bonnet of her car. The metal was ice-cold. She pressed her forehead against it. She closed her eyes.
In the darkness behind her eyelids she saw only those open hands.
And she knew this was only the beginning. Whoever had done this was not finished. He was only tuning his instrument.