A Grain of Truth (43 page)

“Budnik, Budnik née Szuszkiewicz, Szyller,” she read aloud, broke off for a moment and looked at him suspiciously. “Wilczur, Miszczyk, Sobieraj, Sobieraj née Szott.”

“Do those names mean anything to you?”

“Not all of them.”

“But some?”

“Of course. Do I really have to have my academic degrees tattooed on my forehead or cut off my tits for one of you big male historians to take me seriously?”

“It would be an irreparable loss…”

She looked at him the way a butcher looks at a side of meat.

“…to disfigure a forehead with such an incisive, analytical mind behind it.”

V

“Are you there, Commissioner?”

“Of course.”

“Sorry it took so long, but I had to check it all precisely with the IT department.”

“Right.”

“So each of the entries from the user ‘Nekama’ was sent from the IP address that’s the GSM gateway for the Orange network. The entries were sent from a Skyfire browser opened on a Symbian system.”

“Which means…”

“Which means someone used their phone, a Nokia, to take pictures and write the words, called up Kontakt on the phone and sent it all to the Internet from that phone.”

“OK, I get it, maybe you could give me the numbers so I can check them with Orange?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Oleg, please, you know it doesn’t work like that.”

“It’s the last time, I promise.”

“Oleg, with you it’s the last time twice a week! Can’t you just once, just one single time do it the right way? Send an official letter with a stamp and wait for the answer? So I’d have something in writing, some sort of back-up, so I could say: ‘Yes, Commissioner Oleg Kuzniecow from Wilcza Street is sending us an official letter too.’”

“Really, fancy saying such things to a relative.”

“We’re not related.”

“What do you mean? You’re my wife’s cousin’s sister-in-law!”

“You call that being related?”

“So has it come up on your screen yet?”

“I don’t believe I’m doing this, but listen… it was all sent from number 798 689 459, a prepaid SIM card bought on the twenty-fourth of March somewhere in Kielce, not at a showroom, so I haven’t got any precise data. The number has rarely logged on to the network, always to BTS number 2328 in Sandomierz, which is located… just
a moment… on a water tower on Szkolna Street. The owner uses a Nokia E51 phone, the popular business model, on sale anywhere.”

VI

He remained true to his decision to forgo painkillers, but on the way from the hospital to the prosecution building he told the taxi driver to stop at the Kabanos deli, where he bought himself a small bottle of Jack Daniels. Partly as a painkiller, partly for relaxation, and he could dose himself more precisely with that than with Ketonal. The first thing he did in his office was to pour a little into his Legia mug and knock back a few shots of the bourbon almost in one gulp – it stank of burning. Oh yes, he needed that a hundred times more than a holiday in Sandomierz hospital at the expense of the National Health Fund – despite the persuasions, insistence and threats of Dr Ross. He really was called that, and Szacki only stopped himself from asking about Dr Greene because he didn’t want to annoy the doctor, who must have heard that joke from every single patient he had ever met in his entire career.

He fetched the case files out of the safe (the Glock was in police safekeeping for the time being) and spread the documents out on the desk in front of him. Hiding in them somewhere, he felt sure of it, was the answer to the question of who had murdered three people, who had been leading him by the nose for the past two weeks, and who had very nearly finished him off in those blasted vaults. Yes, it was hard for him to get yesterday’s images out of his head, but that was good – very good, he thought. Good because it really was the only situation that hadn’t been stage-directed, the only one that hadn’t been nicely prepared for Prosecutor Teodor Szacki.

And so from a brand-new file he took out copies of the photos the technicians had taken today and spread them under the lamp. The entrance by the seminary, the blood-stained stretcher lying on the floor of the loess corridor, the narrow staircase, the carcasses of the mongrels, Szyller’s body covered in dust, the dog cages deprived
of their doors, and protruding from the rubble in the side corridor, Dybus’s leg. Every glance at the photograph made his hand hurt more. But that was good, very good. He had to examine yesterday’s expedition minute by minute, analyse every gesture and every remark made by his companions.

He sat down and started to write out everything that had happened yesterday.

After working for two hours he had filled several sheets of paper with writing, but only a few elements were circled in red. He wrote them out on a separate page:

LW scared and tense from the start. First time like that.

BS looks at her watch and worries what the time is, just before the sound of the cages opening is heard. Then insists on going back.

LW mentions that Szyller should be trussed like a lamb, not a pig, because pork isn’t kosher. He also uses the word “
treif
”. Knowledge of Jewish customs. Just as earlier at Szyller’s house and at the cathedral.

Neither LW nor BS want to explore the vaults, they go on my orders. LW and BS let everyone go ahead just before the encounter with the dogs.

BS insists on leaving “Szyller’s room” ASAP.

LW ditto, he keeps staring at his watch.

LW didn’t notice when Dybus left, but as soon as he did, he reacted violently, hysterically.

BS had no problem finding her way out of the labyrinth.

LW wanted to say something during the evacuation. To confess something important. He also noticed immediately that we had turned the wrong way.

BS admitted at the hospital that Dybus was not meant to be a victim, and was behaving oddly.

He tapped the red felt-tip pen against the page and thought. All these things were clues, very weak clues, maybe not so much clues as just flashes of intuition. But his intuition rarely let him down. He
remembered that icy morning two weeks ago, slipping on the cobblestones in the market square and scrambling through the bushes to Mrs Budnik’s corpse. Who was waiting there? Prosecutor Barbara Sobieraj and Inspector Leon Wilczur. Coincidence? Perhaps.

The old policeman could have retired long ago, or had himself transferred to another HQ, got a promotion. But he had decided to stay in this hole. Beautiful, yes, but a hole. Especially for a policeman. Szacki read the crime report in the
Echo
every day – the theft of a mobile at school was a big event round here. And yet Wilczur had stayed. Coincidence? Perhaps.

Each of them had vied to share with him their knowledge of the citizens, the town, and the relationships. In fact, everything he knew, he knew from them. Coincidence? Perhaps.

Each of them had hung about the sites of all these crimes, leaving evidence of themselves there and thus gaining an explanation for the presence of a hair or a fingerprint. Coincidence? Perhaps.

Both of them were from Sandomierz, they knew the town inside out, its major and minor secrets. Coincidence? Perhaps.

Or maybe he shouldn’t be examining them separately? Maybe there was something else that connected them besides this investigation? What might they not have told him about? What might they have kept secret? After all, as Sobieraj’s father, the old small-town prosecutor, had said, they all tell lies.

Nodding off now and then, Szacki suddenly awoke. Sobieraj’s father had said something else too. When he was talking about the Zrębin investigation, he had mentioned how he and the militia captain had hesitated before putting all their money on a single card. Could it be? The age was right, old Szott and Wilczur could have been colleagues thirty years ago. And what if Wilczur took part in solving one of the most famous crimes in Communist Poland? That would also explain his unbelievably high rank – who had ever seen an inspector in a county CID?

Szacki stood up, set the office window ajar and shivered as he let in a cloud of air, which must have strayed into the neighbourhood in February and not found its way back yet.

Even if… Even supposing Wilczur and Sobieraj’s father worked together on the Połaniec case. Even supposing in connection with this, both of them carry some sort of baggage. Supposing they’re linked by a homicide, the death of a pregnant woman and perjury. Supposing it’s a splinter off that case. Supposing Sobieraj is helping her father with some twisted criminal plan, vengeance, or fuck knows what, then…

Then what?

Nothing.

What was the point of murdering people who couldn’t possibly have had anything to do with those events, because they were quite simply too young?

What was the point of committing murder because of an emotional triangle? The husband, the wife and that third man. Was there a fourth man, or woman? Wasn’t that rather over the top, even for this highly sexed province?

And above all, what was the point of stylizing it according to an anti-Semitic legend? Sure, stirring up media hysteria always helps, but to put yourself to that much trouble? Those barrels, those vaults, those dogs – absolutely pointless.

Klejnocki, the profiler, had explained that it didn’t have to be a smokescreen or the work of a madman – it could be a deliberate action which justified the killings in some convoluted way, explained, or provided the motivation.

The motivation. The motive. There wasn’t even a hint of a motive, no suspicion of one, not a single thread for him to latch on to and follow along to the answer to the question: why? If he made any step at all in that direction, the answer to the question “who?” would be merely a formality.

He sighed, opened the window wider, poured the rest of the bourbon from his mug into a flowerpot and went to make himself some strong coffee. It was coming up to midnight, his body was clamouring that it was payback time, but he meant to keep reading the documents until he found the motive.

VII

The motive was already well known to Roman Myszyński, except that for the time being getting in touch with the prosecutor was rather low down on his list of priorities. Despite her pugnacious manner, the Senior Inspector at the Kielce branch of the Institute of National Remembrance was not entirely inaccessible, and instead of acquainting himself with her rounded handwriting, Myszyński was at her Kielce flat, getting to know some very different rounded qualities of hers, neatly packaged in an awesome red Chantelle bra.

What a pity, because if he had spent a few minutes on the phone to Teodor Szacki and summarized for him how a little hatred, a few lies and a few coincidences had led to the destruction of a Jewish family in Sandomierz in 1947, he’d have spared the prosecutor, already far too put-upon by life, a sleepless night.

But on the other hand he’d have deprived someone else of a peaceful night, so maybe there was a degree of justice in it.

10

Friday, 24th April 2009

Israel is celebrating its independence and breaks up a Palestinian demonstration against the “security fence”, Armenia remembers the Armenian genocide in Turkey and the Catholic Church commemorates Saint Dode’s Day. Research shows that fifty-three per cent of Poles do not trust the prime minister and sixty-seven per cent do not trust the president. MP Janusz Palikot compares the chairman of Law and Justice, the leading opposition party, to Hitler and Stalin. The Institute of National Remembrance admits it made an error and withdraws its demands to change the name of Bruno Jasie
ń
ski Street in Klimontów. Earlier it had called the poet Jasie
ń
ski a promoter of Stalinism, and his torture and death internal strife within the Communist Party. Football team Wisła smash Górnik 3-1 in a match that starts the twenty-fifth round, racing driver Robert Kubica does pretty well in practice for the Bahrain Grand Prix and the Silesian Stadium unveils a hedgehog mascot, still hoping that someone will play there during Euro 2012. In Sandomierz a criminal act is reported involving the theft of a mobile phone from the trousers of a sixteen-year-old left outside the gym. The weather is without change, maybe a touch colder.

I

They were holding him on a lead like a dog and they were treating him like a dog too. They kicked, pulled, called him the vilest names and finally pushed him into a cage. Welded out of reinforcing bars, the cage was too small for him, he had to bend his head painfully at an improbable angle to fit inside it, but even so it wouldn’t close; someone started banging the door to force it shut, the door struck his protruding hand, causing appalling pain; he managed to retract it, but the door was still thumping away, the monotonous sound was filling his skull. He didn’t know what was happening, who they were or what they wanted from him. Only when someone opened a can of Pedigree Chum and he saw Szyller’s face inside did he realize it was a dream, and woke up with a start.

Unfortunately, the pain in his hand hadn’t disappeared, nor had the pain in his neck, caused by the fact that he had fallen asleep and spent the night with his head resting on the documents. Nor had the thumping gone, but it was quieter and had changed into insistent knocking at the door. Moaning and groaning, he dragged himself out of the swivel chair; at the door stood a pale and sleep-deprived, but clearly happy Roman Myszyński.

“I spent the whole night at the archive,” he said with an odd smile, waving a wad of photocopied pages.

“Then you’ll have a cup of coffee,” mumbled Szacki in reply, once he had managed to unglue one lip from the other, and fled to the kitchen to tidy himself up.

Fifteen minutes later he was listening to an unusual story, which his special affairs archivist was telling him, not without flair.

“The winter of 1946 came early, because before the end of November it had already ice-bound and snow-coated land where, not long ago, smoke had been rising from the burning ruins. In alarm, people looked into their neighbours’ terrified eyes, their empty larders and a future where nothing but pain, hunger, illness and humiliation lay ahead of them.”