A Grain of Truth (23 page)

“Let’s not forget Piasecki,” put in an ageing man who was standing at the back; his coat and hat gave him the look of an American reporter from the 1950s.

“Sacred words,” the man with black hair responded excitedly. “A terrible Jewish crime, unexplained to this day. All the more deplorable since the victim was Piasecki’s innocent son. They knew that would be worse for him than his own death.”

“How do you know it was a Jewish crime if hasn’t been explained?” asked Szacki impulsively.

“Excuse me, if you gentlemen could explain…” One of the hacks was feeling lost.

“Bolesław Piasecki,” the black-haired man was quick to clarify. “Please look him up, he was a great Pole, active in the nationalist movement before the war, and after it head of PAX, the Catholic organization…”

“An anti-Semite and a Jew-baiter,” grunted one of the cameramen, without taking his eye off the viewfinder.

As the black-haired man started telling the rest about Piasecki, it occurred to Szacki that after forty years of not believing in the weird and the wonderful, now he would have to start believing in genetic memory. What the hell were all these people on about? If it wasn’t the pictures in the cathedral it was ghetto benches to segregate Jewish students, if it wasn’t ghetto benches it was pogroms, if it wasn’t pogroms, it was Piasecki, if it wasn’t Piasecki, it was 1968, if not 1968, then – Szacki made a mental pause – it was sure to be Michnik and Geremek, it couldn’t be otherwise. Those two influential people – the editor of the liberal newspaper
Gazeta Wyborcza
, and the former foreign minister,
both from Jewish families – were always to blame for everything in some people’s minds. He bet himself a decent bottle of wine that before five minutes were up, these Jewish-mafia hunters would get on to Adam Michnik.

“…in 1957 the Jews from the secret police kidnapped and murdered Piasecki’s son. The prosecutor is surprised the crime has never been explained, and of course officially it hasn’t, officially no Communist crime has ever been explained. Does that mean Father Popiełuszko is alive and well, and that no one was injured at the Wujek coal mine?” Oh, so now he’s going to say the Communist secret police who killed the dissident priest and shot at the striking miners were all Jews, thought Szacki.

“The killing of young Piasecki may not have been explained,” the man went on, “but strangely enough, it just so happens that the names that surfaced in this case were secret police officers of Jewish descent. I would also point out that in Polish tradition there is no custom of murdering children to punish the parents.”

“There’s no such custom in any culture,” growled Szacki, as the familiar red curtain gradually fell before his eyes. He hated stupidity, which he regarded as the only truly harmful trait, worse than hatred. “Please don’t talk nonsense. You probably aren’t aware there are laws against that.”

“You can’t silence me,” said the black-haired man, proudly sticking out his puny chest under the tank-top. “I know the authorities like it when there’s only one right way of thinking. And nowadays the way of thinking of Messrs Szechter and the late ‘lamented’ Lewertow is the only correct one.” Ah, here it is, thought Szacki – Michnik (his father was called Szechter) and Geremek (his father was called Lewertow) are indeed the villains of the piece.

“But luckily nowadays we can tell the truth,” the lunatic continued. “If the blood ritual is back, and if Polish blood is soaking into the soil of Sandomierz, we can tell the truth. If we don’t like the fact that the Poles are being pushed into the role of a minority in their own country we can say so.”

Szacki felt tired. Very, very tired. So much so that he couldn’t even be bothered to wonder what sort of wine he had won himself. He just
replied from force of habit, from years and years of fatherly reaction, which bids one explain the obvious and keep saying that no, the sun does not revolve around the earth, and no, my dear child, you cannot have your own opinion on the matter.

“Among other things, it’s thanks to Messrs Michnik and Geremek that you can say what you want nowadays. Unfortunately.”

The black-haired man went red.

“Weeell, I see Mr Prosecutor is aware of what’s going on after all.”

Mr Prosecutor felt tarnished by being in the lunatic’s favour. He could feel he was drowning. Drowning in the river of bloody Polish xenophobia, which never stopped flowing under the surface, whatever the historical moment, and was always just waiting for the opportunity to pour out on top and flood the surrounding area. It was a mental Vistula, a dangerous, unregulated sewer of bias and prejudice, just like in that drinking song about the Vistula flowing across the Polish land – “For the Polish nation has this special charm, everyone’s love for it stays forever warm.” Charm, more like harm – bugger the lot of them, on their patriotic hobby horse, the collectors of contempt.

Szacki was getting more and more wound up inside, and the tank-top-wearer was looking at him with the sympathetic smile of a man who has found his long-lost brother. The more he smiled, the more wound up Szacki became, until finally, he furiously spat out words he regretted before they had even squeezed past his larynx, but it was too late to stop them.

“Yes, right, I’m aware that Michnik and Geremek sold Poland up the river along with the rest of their Jewish gang. Listen up, because I’m not going to say this again. I am an official of the Polish Republic, and there’s only one single thing I’m interested in: finding the perpetrator of these crimes and bringing him to trial. I don’t give a damn if it’s Karol Wojtyla come back from the dead, Ahmed from the kebab stall or a skinny Jew of your type baking matzos in the cellar. Whoever it is, he’ll be seized by his lousy side-locks, dragged out of the miserable hole where he’s hiding and made to answer for what he’s done. I can guarantee you that, ladies and gentlemen.”

All the blood had drained from the black-haired man’s face, but the furious Szacki didn’t see that, because he had turned on his heel and, feeling his hands go stiff with rage, entered the prosecution building. The door slammed shut. He didn’t know that in the monitors of the cameras trained on him it looked just like the famous scene from
Camera Buff
which he had thought of that morning.

VII

“How about a nice profiterole?” Maria Miszczyk offered him a silver tray with some small cream puffs arranged on it in a neat pyramid.

Szacki felt like saying bugger the profiteroles, but they looked so appetising that he reached out a hand and put one in his mouth. And then another one immediately – the pastries were obscenely, unimaginably delicious. Considering the fact that there wasn’t a single place in Sandomierz with good sweets – not counting the boxes of chocolates at the Orlen petrol station – and that for a week Szacki had been feeling like a drug addict in detox, he felt like jumping for joy and shouting: “Hallelujah!”

“Tasty,” he delivered his sparing verdict.

Miszczyk smiled warmly, as if she had no doubts the profiteroles were perfect, but understood that it wasn’t appropriate for him to go into pretentious raptures. She looked at him enquiringly.

“The good news is that we have more, much more,” Szacki began his account. “Above all, we know that Elżbieta Budnik was murdered in the same building – the place is full of her blood. We also have material to test for fingerprints and trace evidence. Things aren’t so good with the biological evidence and DNA material, the building is filthy dirty, bordering on collapse and has been inhabited by all sorts of animals for years. So that sort of test will be useless. For the same reason we can forget about odour analysis tests. The police provisionally put the prints through the database, but unfortunately nothing came up.”

“A man?”

“It won’t be possible to confirm that on the basis of the fingerprints. The trainer footprint is size 39.5, which doesn’t tell us anything either.”

“But you’d need a good deal of strength to drag someone upstairs.”

“Not necessarily.” Szacki set out the photographs taken at the crime scene in front of his boss. “Only part of the ceiling between the storeys is still there – where it’s missing they found a pulley system, and considering the tracks left in the dirt we can be fairly sure it was used to haul the victims up there. Mrs Budnik and her husband were both small in stature, so a woman could have done it. Not a puny one, true, but it’s possible.”

“What was the direct cause of Budnik’s death?” Miszczyk asked, reaching for a profiterole and biting into it too quickly; whipped cream blossomed on her lower lip in the shape of a cotton flower. Very slowly and very thoroughly she licked her lips; the gesture was so sensual that Szacki felt aroused, though he had never thought about his motherly boss in a sexual context before. Suddenly he saw the image of her riding him furiously, the folds of her ample body happily smacking together, her breasts swinging every which way, jumping and bouncing off each other like puppies at play.

“The cause of death, Prosecutor.”

“Blood loss. He’d earlier been injected with a strong sedative, Tranquiloxyl.”

“How did…” Miszczyk hesitated, “how did it look, you know, under the barrel?”

“Better than I was expecting,” Szacki replied truthfully. “Budnik bled to death through severed arteries in the groin – the barrel was just for fun and effect, a stage prop. Of course the nails had cut and scratched him in several places, but they weren’t the cause of death.”

“And the numbers scrawled in blood?”

“Basia and I are going to deal with that this evening.”

Even if Miszczyk was surprised to hear him warmly calling her “Basia”, she didn’t let it show.

“All right, now the bad news. But first a profiterole to improve the mood.”

Without needing encouragement, Szacki reached for one. The small pastry puff was perfect. The fresh, chilled, slightly tart whipped cream melted in the mouth and blended with the egg-scented pastry, flooding his taste buds with ecstasy – Miszczyk’s profiteroles were an absolute work of art, the Platonic ideal of all profiteroles.

“First of all, our suspect was bled to death in a way that made him look red and white, to the glory of the anti-Semitic legend of blood. Which means the media hysteria will soon be uncontrollable, and that fascist nutters and Jewish-conspiracy hunters will be descending on this place from all over the world, as well as fanatical defenders of political correctness. I’ve just had a taste of it downstairs.”

He ate another profiterole, and decided to break up the bad news this way.

“Secondly, he was our one and only suspect. We don’t know of anyone who would have had a motive to kill Mr and Mrs Budnik. I did consider the hypothesis that Budnik could have killed his wife, and then been murdered by her lover, Jerzy Szyller, in revenge. But that’s unlikely. Szyller wouldn’t have had any reason to replicate Budnik’s modus operandi. I’d sooner believe Szyller murdered both of them. There was something odd and nasty going on between the three of them.”

“And right now Mr Szyller…”

“Remains at liberty, but is under permanent police observation.” Szacki could feel his boss’s hard stare, and added that this time police observation meant that to disappear he would have to evaporate or squeeze through a drainpipe.

A profiterole.

“Thirdly, so far we’re not entirely sure how the victims ended up at the crime scene. We’re certain no car has driven onto the property, nor did we find any signs of anything being dragged through the bushes, no handcart or wheelbarrow tracks – there aren’t even any footprints, not counting the ones left by the old man who found Budnik’s body.”

“So where did you get the size 39.5?”

“Printed in the blood upstairs.”

And another. The profiteroles were like heroin – with each one he ate, Szacki needed the next one even sooner.

“Fourthly, the numbers scrawled in blood might indicate that we’re dealing with a madman who wants to play at riddles, American films, heavy breathing down the phone and making himself a coat out of human skin.”

“What do you think about that?”

Szacki made a face.

“I’ve studied cases of serial killings, and the murderers are only criminal geniuses in Hollywood. In reality they’re disturbed individuals addicted to killing. It excites them too much for them to play at theatrical performances or little games with the investigators, and above all they apply themselves to planning the murder and then covering up their tracks. Of course they try, but they make mistake after mistake, and the problem with catching them comes from the fact that they aren’t from criminal circles, known to the police, and it’s hard to get a fix on them.”

“In that case, what can this be about?”

“Honestly? I haven’t the faintest idea. Definitely something other than murder for the sake of murder. Mrs Budnik was a local community worker, Budnik was a well-known municipal politician, both of them had strong ties to this city. The site of the crimes is right in between three of the biggest local monuments: the castle, the cathedral and the town hall. Both bodies were found in the Old Town. If I had to bet on it, I’d put my money on us finding the solution to the riddle in these old walls rather than in the mind of some madman.”

“Would you bet a lot on it?” asked Miszczyk, reaching for one of the three remaining profiteroles.

“Not a very big sum.”

She laughed, and a puff of cream flew down onto her unappealing foot, trapped in an unappealing court shoe. Miszczyk took it out of the shoe and started wiping it with a paper tissue; the foot was large and shapeless, and the toe of her tights was damp with sweat. Unfortunately, since the vision of her large, sagging breasts bouncing off each other, something had burst inside Szacki, and now he regarded this sight as perversely attractive.

“We have to check out the Jewish lead.”

Miszczyk gave a loud sigh, but nodded with understanding.

“Whether we like it or not, we’ve got to look in that group, check up on descendants of the old Jewish community.”

“They’re going to fuck us rigid,” said Miszczyk quietly. Coming from someone with the bearing of a royal nanny, this sounded very odd. “They’re going to fuck us rigid when it comes out we’re examining the Jewish community in search of the killer. They’ll hail us as fascists, Nazis, prejudiced Poles seething with hatred who believe in the legend of blood. All the media are already jawing away about anti-Semitic provocation, and it’s still Sunday. Tomorrow they’ll really get going.”