The Opel's engine died with a shudder, as though the car had breathed its last, choking on the thick, stagnant air of Sierpc. Julia sat motionless for a moment, hands still clenched on the steering wheel. The skin over her knuckles was white, stretched to its limits, contrasting with the black of the synthetic trim. The interior cooled slowly, and the silence that had forced its way in after the ventilation cut out was not a comfort. It was heavy. Physical. It bored into her ears like water under high pressure.
She got out. The heat struck her like a wet rag. This was not the warmth of a summer afternoon; it was a swelter, sticky and dirty, smelling of hot asphalt, diesel fumes, and something sweetish that recalled rotting fruit in a ditch. Sierpc greeted her with its stench. Tysiąclecia Square spread before her like a frying pan on which the tenement buildings were cooking, their facades bleached pale. They were pastel, renovated at EU expense, but beneath the fresh paint you could sense old, crumbling brick. They looked like corpses made up for a funeral.
She swung the bag onto her shoulder. The strap bit into the muscle — a familiar pain that helped her focus. Hotel Mazowianka stood on the other side of the street. Three stars that had probably fallen from the sky in the nineties and shattered on the cobblestones, leaving behind nothing but a neon sign with two burned-out letters. The building had something of a bunker about it, a squat block wedged between the historic surroundings, an architectural tumor that had grown into the fabric of the town.
She pushed through the glass door. It was dirty at handle height, hundreds of greasy fingerprints layered one on top of another — a map of local indifference. Inside there was a half-light and a chill that brought no relief but raised goosebumps. It smelled of cheap lemon-scented detergent and old dust that had been settling into the carpets for decades. The reception desk was a wooden counter, too tall to be welcoming and too dark to inspire trust.
Behind the counter stood a man. Andrzej Mazur. Julia recognized him from the photographs in the files she had studied in Warsaw. In person he looked worse. His face was puffy, doughy, the color of cigarette ash. His eyes, small and watery, swept the lobby with habitual suspicion. When he looked at her, she saw no curiosity in them — only calculation. He was weighing her with his gaze, appraising the cost of her clothes, estimating the trouble she might cause.
"Reservation under the name Nieznane," she said. Her voice sounded alien in that acoustic void — too loud, too assured.
Mazur did not reply at once. He dragged a finger across the computer screen, slowly, with an irritating meticulousness, as though searching for a reason to turn her away. His nails were bitten to the quick, the skin around them reddened.
"You're from Warsaw," he muttered at last, without looking up. It was not a question. It was an insult disguised as a statement of fact.
"That's right. Single room, three nights. With the option to extend."
Mazur sighed as though she had asked him to donate a kidney. He reached for a key hanging on the board behind him. The brass fob struck the counter with a metallic clink that echoed through the empty lobby.
"Two-oh-four. Second floor. The lift isn't working." He looked at her at last. There was something viscous in his gaze. "Have you come to write about us in the paper?"
Julia placed her hands on the counter. She felt the roughness of cheap laminate under her fingertips.
"Is there something worth writing about, Mr. Mazur?"
The man froze for a fraction of a second. His pupils contracted minimally. It was a physiological reaction he could not control. Fear. Or anger. In this town the boundary between the two seemed blurred.
"People talk all sorts," he muttered, turning his gaze back to the monitor. "But we're quiet here. Always have been. Breakfast from seven to nine. If you sleep in, the kitchen closes."
Julia took the key. It was heavy and cold. She felt Mazur's eyes on her back as she walked toward the stairs. He was not looking at her legs. He was looking at her neck, the way a predator assesses the spot where it would be best to sink its teeth. The steps creaked under her weight — each footfall an intrusion upon the silence of the night, despite it being the middle of the day.
Room 204 was a time capsule. Beige wallpaper was peeling in the corners, exposing grey plaster beneath. The bed was covered with a spread the color of dried blood. Julia dropped her bag on the floor. Dust rose in the column of light falling through the window. She walked to the pane. It was filthy, coated in a layer of urban residue that turned the world outside into a low-contrast film.
The market square. Tysiąclecia Square. From above it looked like a chessboard on which someone had arranged the pieces and then forgotten about them. Several pensioners sat on benches, motionless as statues. A mother dragging a child by the hand — the child was crying soundlessly behind the glass of her window. But what struck Julia most was the windows of the tenement buildings. They were dark. Covered with heavy drapes, blinds drawn down to the sills, or simply black — like the eye sockets of a skull. No one was looking out. No one was airing their rooms. The city of closed windows. As though all the residents had entered into a silent pact: we see nothing, we hear nothing, we do not exist.
She felt a prickling at the back of her neck. Instinct, honed by years of digging through the dirt of human nature, was screaming. Someone was watching her. She moved her gaze across the facades of the buildings opposite. In one of the windows, on the third floor of a tenement the color of spoiled mustard, a net curtain stirred. That was all. A faint twitch of fabric, and then stillness. Someone was standing there. Someone who had known she was here before she had even had time to unpack.
She stepped back from the window. Her heart was beating against her ribs in a steady, strong rhythm. Adrenaline. Her old fuel. She took the dictaphone from her bag, checked the batteries. Then she pulled out the pepper spray — large, gel-based, the kind that would stop a bear. It weighed in her hand as much as a promise of safety. She slipped it into her jacket pocket.
She had to go out. The walls of the room were beginning to close in. The air in here was dead, breathed by hundreds of guests before her.
She went out into the street, giving the reception desk a wide berth, though she sensed that Mazur knew her every step regardless. She headed toward the café Pod Wierzbą. That was where she had arranged to meet Grzegorz Nowicki. A journalist on the local paper. A man who should have been seeking the truth but who, according to Mateo, wrote paeans to the mayor and reports on harvest festivals.
The café occupied a corner of the square. The tables set outside were empty. No one in their right mind would sit in that scorching heat. She went inside. The air conditioning was working at half capacity, blending the smell of coffee with stale beer and frying oil.
She spotted him immediately. He was sitting at the back of the room, his back to the wall. A strategic position. Grzegorz Nowicki. He looked to be thirty-five, but his face bore the marks of weariness typical of a man of fifty. He wore a crumpled shirt with the sleeves rolled up and glasses in fashionable frames that clashed with the rest of his appearance. In front of him sat a half-drunk glass of pale lager and an ashtray full of stubs, despite a no-smoking sign standing on the table.
Julia approached. Nowicki looked up from his phone. His smile was practiced, broad, but it did not reach his eyes. His eyes remained cold, appraising, cynical.
"Ms. Julia!" he called out, without getting up. "The star of Warsaw podcasting in our humble backwater. Please, sit down. Such as we have, though I'd warn you the coffee here tastes like dishwater, so I recommend the beer. Local, from the Kasztelan brewery — the pride of the region."
She sat down opposite him. The chair wobbled on the uneven floor. The table top was sticky with spilled juice. Julia kept her hands on her knees, avoiding contact with the surface.
"Water will do, Grzegorz. And let's skip the pleasantries. I have little time, and you, I imagine, have rather too much of it."
Nowicki gave a short, bark-like laugh. He took a sip of beer, licking the foam from his upper lip. His movements were nervous, though he was trying to project an air of ease.
"Straight to it. I like that. Warsaw style. You lot come here, stir things up, then drive away and leave us to deal with the mess. What's this about, Julia? About Weronika? Because if so, you've wasted your petrol."
"Weronika didn't run away, Grzegorz." Julia leaned toward him. She lowered her voice. "She disappeared. Without a trace. She left her phone, her documents, her asthma medication. Who runs off with a lover without their inhaler?"
The journalist waved his hand as though shooing away an irritating fly. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes, tapped it against the table, then remembered the no-smoking rule and put it away again. His fingers were trembling. Minimally. But Julia saw it.
"You don't know the girls from around here." His voice turned patronizing. "Here in Sierpc, time moves differently. It suffocates you. Young people want to escape at any cost. Weronika? I knew her father. They drank, they fought. The girl dreamed of London, of washing dishes, of anything, as long as she didn't have to look at the sugar factory chimney. She found some lorry driver, maybe someone from Płock, and she went. The phone? So her parents couldn't track her. It's simple. Occam's razor — you've heard of it?"
"I've seen the photographs of her room," Julia cut across him, ignoring his tone. "There was an open biology textbook on her desk. The chapter she'd been set for the next day. A mug of half-drunk tea. The mould on the tea showed it had been sitting there for a week. That doesn't look like a planned escape. It looks like someone being cut off mid-sentence."
Nowicki sighed deeply, theatrically. He leaned his elbows on the table, tilting toward her. She caught his smell — a mixture of tobacco, cheap cologne, and sour sweat.
"Look, Julia... can I use first names?" He didn't wait for an answer. "You're looking for a sensation. I understand that. Clicks, listeners, Patronite. The machine has to keep turning. But there's no serial killer here. No X-Files. There's poverty, alcohol, and runaways. Last year one disappeared too. Gośka. Everyone cried, the police ran through the forest. And then a month later Gośka posted a photo from a beach in Brighton. With a bump. Weronika will do the same."
"And if she doesn't?" Julia fixed him with a steady gaze. "If she's lying in the forest right now, covered in branches? Or in someone's cellar? Superintendent Nowak closed the investigation after two days. Why? Why isn't the local press asking questions?"
Nowicki's face hardened. The smile vanished without trace. For a moment he looked older, more worn. A shadow of something that might have been fear appeared in his eyes, then was quickly covered over with a layer of cynicism.
"Nowak's a good cop. He knows this town. He knows when to dig and when to let people be." Nowicki drained his beer in one go. He set the glass down with a crack. "And the press? I have to live here, sweetheart. I have to buy my bread at Hanka's, fill up at the Orlen, and look the mayor in the eye at council sessions. I'm not going to set people against me over some teenage whim."
"So it's fear," Julia stated coldly. "You're afraid. Of what?"
Nowicki laughed, but this time the sound was hollow. He glanced over his shoulder, scanning the room. It was empty save for a waitress polishing glasses behind the bar, staring blankly at the television.
"I'm not afraid, Julia. I'm a realist." He leaned so close she could feel the warmth of his breath on her cheek. "This town doesn't like it when you root around in its guts. There are old arrangements here. Old families. Old soil. The people here... they have their own memory. And their own ways of dealing with outsiders. My advice: have some lunch, sleep it off at the Mazowianka, and in the morning get in that Opel of yours and drive back to Warsaw. Leave Weronika be. For her sake. And for yours."
Julia felt cold in the pit of her stomach. This was not friendly advice. It was a threat — subtle, wrapped in cotton wool of concern, but sharp as a razor blade.
"What do you know about the Sokołowski butcher's?" she asked abruptly, changing tack. It was a shot in the dark, a test.
Nowicki's reaction was instantaneous. His pupils dilated, his hand involuntarily tightened on the empty glass. For a fraction of a second the mask dropped completely, exposing terror.
"Marek?" His voice trembled, then he cleared his throat. "Best sausage in the district. Everyone buys from him. What's a butcher got to do with a missing teenager?"
"I don't know. You tell me. Apparently his van was seen near Weronika's house on the night she disappeared."
Nowicki stood up sharply. The chair scraped across the floor. He pulled a crumpled banknote from his pocket and threw it on the table.
"That's nonsense. Gossip from old women. Marek's a decent citizen. An oddball, but harmless." His hands were shaking openly now; he made no effort to hide it. "I have to go. Deadline. The paper won't put itself together."
"Grzegorz." She stopped him with her voice, without getting up. "If you know something and you're staying silent, you're an accomplice."
The journalist stopped mid-step. He did not turn around. His back was rigid, his shoulders raised high, as though bracing for a blow.
"There are no guilty parties here, Julia," he said quietly, almost in a whisper. "There are only those who survive, and those who ask too many questions. Don't be the second kind."
He left at a quick pace, nearly bolting, clipping a chair on his way out. The café door closed behind him, cutting off the flow of hot air from outside. Julia was left alone at the sticky table. The waitress behind the bar had stopped polishing the glass. She was looking at Julia. Her gaze was blank, fish-like, drained of all emotion. She was simply looking.
Julia took out her phone. No signal. Of course. In this wretched concrete bunker the signal died, just as hope died. She put the phone away and pulled out a notepad. She wrote one word: Fear. She underlined it twice. The pen broke through the paper.
She went outside. The square was drowning in afternoon sunlight that now seemed to tint everything red. Shadows were lengthening, crawling across the cobblestones like black tentacles. She looked toward the town hall. Then at the Church of St. Wojciech. Its tower cast a shadow directly onto the entrance of Hotel Mazowianka, like the crosshairs of a rifle scope.
She felt watched. The sensation was physical, like ants moving across her skin. She turned slowly, scanning the tenement windows. Still closed. Still dead. But now she was certain that behind those panes, in stuffy rooms, people were standing and watching. Not the square. Her. A foreign element in their perfectly sealed ecosystem.
She returned to the hotel. Mazur did not raise his head when she passed reception, but she heard him stop typing the moment she set foot on the stairs. He was listening. Counting her steps.
The room was even more stifling than before. She opened the window, but the air from outside brought no relief. It brought a smell. Faint, barely perceptible, carried on the wind from the direction of the northern forests. The smell of smoke. And something else. Something metallic. The smell of raw meat.
Julia stood in the middle of the room. She pulled a map of Sierpc from her bag and taped it to the wall with masking tape, straight over the faded wallpaper. She uncapped a red marker. She circled Weronika's house. Then the hotel. Then the café. And finally she drew a large question mark where the Sokołowski butcher's shop ought to be.
Her hands stopped shaking. Her mind shifted into working mode. The fear that had tried to paralyze her downstairs had now converted into fuel. Cold, precise fuel. Nowicki was lying. Mazur was watching her. The town was silent.
"All right," she whispered to the empty room. "You want to play hide-and-seek? Let's play."
She reached into the bag for her laptop. She needed to connect with Mateo, find a way around the lack of signal — a satellite perhaps. But before she lifted the lid, her gaze fell on the mirror hanging above the desk. On the dusty surface of the glass, someone had written a single word with their finger. The letters were crooked, unsteady.
LEAVE.
Julia did not scream. She stepped closer. The trace was fresh. The edges of the letters were sharp — the dust had not yet had time to settle back. Someone had been here while she was talking to Nowicki. Someone with a key. Or someone for whom locks were not a problem.
She touched the letter L with her fingertip. Cold glass. She wiped the inscription away with one decisive sweep of her palm, smearing the grime. She looked at her own reflection. Her eyes gleamed in the half-dark. There was no fear in them. There was fury.
She went to the door and turned the lock. Then she wedged a chair under the handle. It was a symbolic gesture, she knew that. If they wanted to come in, they would come in. But she was not going to make it easy for them.
She sat on the bed, back to the wall, facing the door. She took the pepper spray from her pocket and placed it on the pillow beside her. Night was coming. And with it, Sierpc would shed its daytime mask of a dull provincial town and show its true face. The face of a wolf.
Outside the window a silence fell — so deep she could hear her own heartbeat and the rush of blood in her ears. The waiting had begun.