The Bald Man ordered a sumptuous dinner at Bistro Trójka on the second floor of the Palace of Culture and Science. The carpet under his feet reminded him of the one he’d had in his former flat in a housing block, although the restaurant itself looked exclusive enough. The carpet was probably exclusive too – it just looked as if it had come from some old welfare housing development.
He ordered a forty zloty starter without baulking. The Grey-Haired Man paid him well enough to dine in expensive places, even the Rondo Royal. And it was only going to get better. The more those two lawyers snooped, the greater the probability of a steep rise in his earnings. They’d reach their peak the moment his boss gave him the go-ahead to start operations.
How many people had he killed? He had no idea. He didn’t count his victims; he didn’t remember their faces. More often than not they were anonymous individuals whom he only saw for a moment; sometimes he didn’t even make eye contact. If he could claim a speciality, it was making ‘accidents’ happen. It didn’t take much to make a car fail just when you needed it to; all you needed was a knack for mechanics, some experience in car maintenance and a good dose of inventiveness. People like Chyłka handed him everything on a plate. They parked their cars in accessible places, and left them completely unattended, sometimes for twelve hours at a time. You could do anything you wanted then.
He never had to worry that his handiwork would be discovered. In a country where more than a dozen people died on the roads every day, it was easy to hide your victim in among the statistics.
If the Bald Man were to decide a car accident was the right solution to his current problem, the young man could be an issue, as he didn’t have a car. He’d have to wait until both he and his lawyer boss got into that X5, or arrange an alternative ‘random accident’. The boy spent very long hours at work every day; something bad could easily happen to him on the way to the bus stop.
Today, the Bald Man decided he’d give the trainee a taste of what was to come, and the boy would find out what it is like to be caught in the crosshairs.
His boss had stressed that he wasn’t to overdo it: he definitely wasn’t to kill him. They didn’t need the police involved at this stage.
The Bald Man paid the bill and left a large tip. If the worse came to the worst, he would dispose of the body, and it wouldn’t even cross anyone’s mind that a murder had been committed.