The snow had been falling steadily for the past three days since our bungled operation at partisan’s hill. The cobbles around the Christmas market now had at least an inch of powder white snow covering them. I walked through the brightly lit stalls, the blaring Christmas songs and the overwhelming smell of bad mulled wine; carefully avoiding the wooden cabin manned by the nuns from the sisters of mercy church, who with a combination of hard selling and an ability to inflict some kind of Christian based shame on me had resulted in my purchasing of 37 ugly wooden Russian dolls. I had been keeping a low profile since the events of the other night; Don Blanco had to put it mildly been less than sympathetic when we had arrived back at the hotel. He had taken one look at me in my soaking wet three piece Tweed and flung his Panama hat to the floor. I had stood there quivering with a mixture of cold and abject fear as the Don had stormed back and forth along the floor of the hotel lobby before stopping in front of me his eyes wild with rage.
“Signor Sempleton, since i have employed you all you have done is suck those blasted lemon drops and now been swimming, Santa Maria Augusta, Socrates, the next time I see your face it better be giving me some solid information, or?”
The Don had drawn his ivory pistola from his pocket and fired it into the air, sending the glass chandelier above crashing to the floor and the poor hotel manager, who had finally deemed it safe to return to his desk, running for cover again.
The resulting three days had bought no leads as to where Torado might be being held or by whom. I had however enjoyed a lot of lovely grilled and smoked mountain cheese from the stall adjacent to those terrible nuns. I was also very pleased with the lovely table cloth covered in drawings of leaping reindeer that I had bought for mother to place on the Christmas luncheon table. As I walked further into the market past the sizzling Kielbasa sausages, and vats of pickled cabbage, it occurred to me that there was a slight danger that I might bump into Don Blanco doing his Christmas shopping, this would be ill advised as so far I had no new information, so feeling the need for a hot drink and the cover of their smoke filled rooms I ducked into the small café Literacka on the northern side of the Rynek. I nodded at the waitress who returned my greeting with the usual look of disdain I suspected she reserved especially for me, then went on through the glass door to the windowless room full of the smells of different tobaccos coming from the pipes and cigarettes of its patrons. I found my favourite table unoccupied and sank down into the red cushions of the chair and looked at the posters in a language I had still not managed to grasp a single word of, that jostled for position overlapping each other on the tiny wall behind the coat stand. I lit my cigarette and removed the deerstalker as the waitress slammed my espresso and an ashtray down on the small round table and waltzed off. I took in a long deep drag of the burning tobacco and let out a sigh, it felt good to be safely ensconced in the windowless room, away from the screaming children and the smell of the fatty sausages that had filled the December air of the square. Leaning forward I rubbed my shin which still stung from the moment it had hit the immovable velvet encased foot of Gilberto that had sent me crashing into the icy waters of the pond only three nights earlier.
More and more people starting to flood into the room, their loud voices piercing the small clouds of smoke that hung over the tables. The café was the haunt of the intelligentsia, local actors and artists whose voices projected loudly across the room, so one would notice them and the lithe young women draped in their arms.
I decided now would be a good moment to fashion some fictitious report for headquarters back home, being careful to omit any actual facts regarding retired drug lords, secret cults, missing Mexican footballers and fraudulent nuns. I settled on another report concerning the recent scarcity of wild mushrooms at the local market and posed the question to my superiors whether they thought this was a deliberate control tactic by the local government or simply a result of the changing season.
But no sooner had I got my notepad out of the satchel Uncle Gerald had bought for me last Christmas when a familiar face hoved into view. It was my friend the madman from the café in the Jewish quarter. He clasped his hands together with joy at the sight of me and immediately launched into a bizarre monologue
“Da Vinci, Shakespeare, yes yes writers we are my English friend, what is my pleasure you see it is good to see the snow, when did I see you again, thank you for lighting my smoker it is old good boy”
I had absolutely no idea what he was saying but was sure there were a number of grammatical errors that needed pointing out in the sentence he had just ejected from his mouth. The bespectacled lunatic enthusiastically sat in the matching red armchair facing me and started to pull out sheet after sheet of paper from the dirty old yellow carrier bag he had with him. They seemed to be all covered in scribbles and indecipherable hieroglyphics that looked like they had been written in some unknown archaic tongue. He kept picking up a page, dropping it then picking up another before thrusting it under my nose.
“Shakespeare, look, read is good you see my old boys no?”
My mother had always told me when faced with people gripped by insanity it was best to try and placate them so I did. I held the pages in my hand, under the small light above the table and pretended to read, nodding and murmuring as if deep in thought and appreciation. This performance was clearly unconvincing as the madman angrily snatched the papers from my hand gathered them in a pile and then hurled them into the air across the café. I watched as the white pages flew through the air like giant snowflakes floating down onto the floor, paralyzed by the very British emotion of acute embarrassment. Looking down at the table in front of me I tried to avoid the amused faces of the other patrons and the burning eyes of the madman who was leaping around the room, raving about colonial invaders. As I stared more and more carefully I saw the words written on the last piece of paper still left on the table. Just three words written over and over again.
Torado, boat, Gdansk, Torado, boat, Gdansk, Torado, boat, Gdansk, Torado, boat, Gdansk, Torado, boat, Gdansk ,Torado, boat, Gdansk, Torado, boat, Gdansk, Torado, boat, Gdansk
I leapt up, snatching the sheet of paper, grabbing my lunatic friend who only seconds before I had wished would leave me alone and pressed the paper against his face and shouted.
“Why did you right these words, answer me?”
The madman suddenly started to shake and tremble, his eyes rolling up and down as if he was having some sort of fit, he kept groaning and groaning, the other people in the café shot me disapproving looks as I shook the man, I let go patted his shoulders and helped his trembling body back into the chair.
“Would you like a drink old boy” I asked in a soft manner “Scotch” came the short reply, his head still rocking from side to side maniacally.
I called out to the waitress who was trying to pass our table as swiftly as her little legs could muster.
“Coffee and a Scotch, a large one please”
I sat and watched as the man held the whiskey glass in his hand, just staring at the golden liquid, then in one swift action he moved the glass to his lips and emptied it in one gulp. The Scotch had worked and the shaking and trembling seemed to stop, the people on the surrounding tables lost interest and returned to their conversations.
Holding up the page with the name of the missing Mexican midfielder on it I calmly asked my strange friend what had made him write these words.
Wiping his lips the man just said “Whiskey, more Scotch” Then another and another I sat there patiently watching him empty glass after glass each time with a single gulp. Finally he leant over towards me and pulled me close, I could smell the strong scotch being breathed onto my face; the experience was not in the least bit pleasant by I needed to find out what this man knew. In hushed tones he started to whisper into my ear.
“At night I never sleep, I am haunted by visions so terrible, then I fall into a trance when I come too, in front of me are these pages”
He pointed to the hundreds of hieroglyphic filled pages that were now spread across the floor of the café.
“Then I spend the hours of daylight drinking to erase the terrifying visions of the previous night”
“And this” I said indicating the word Torado “what does this mean?”
The man’s face took on a look of sadness “I do not know, what any of it means, I cannot understand the words only how I felt before I was taken by the trance.”
Impatiently I asked “When did you write this”
“Last night, it was after my room had filled with the scent of death”
I stood up, folded the piece of paper and slid it inside my breast pocket and put on the deerstalker, leant forward and kissed the man on the forehead. I dropped two hundred Zloty notes in front of him and told the waitress to give him all the Scotch he could drink and took my Tweed jacket from the coat stand.
I hurried across the white blanket covering the market square avoiding the expectant looks of the nuns who were waving Russian dolls in front of my face and made for the team hotel with haste. I had cracked the case.
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