Blind Eye (40 page)

Jaroszewicz must have seen him staring, because she said, 'A gift from Uncle Stalin. Are you hungry?'

'Kind of. Are we--'

'We will eat on the train.'

The Palace of Culture sat in the middle of a vast square, surrounded by buildings that looked as if they'd been thrown up by some city planner who'd had one too many vodkas. And the closer they got to Uncle Stalin's gift, the slower the traffic got, until they were crawling along. Rain drumming on the roof, windscreen wipers going full pelt, watching the people stomping past on the pavement.

Everyone looked suicidal.

Aberdeen could be miserable in the rain, but it was
nothing
compared to Warsaw.

Jaroszewicz jerked the steering wheel and squealed the car across a set of lights and down a little alleyway, threading round behind an ancient-looking hotel. Parking next to the bins.

'Now,' she said, reaching through into the back of the car and pulling out a large shoulder bag, 'train station.'

They got Logan's luggage out of the boot and tramped back to the main square in the pouring rain, across four lanes of traffic, and down into the station.

It didn't look too bad from the outside, but inside it was Bedlam. A collection of low-ceilinged concrete corridors, lined with booths selling everything from science fiction novels, to doughnuts, to hardcore pornography. The smell of kebab meat and hot falafel, the smoky tang of grilling sausages and frying onions. Voices. Shouting. People bumping into one another. Yellow and red lights blazing out of every shop front.

Up till now, it hadn't been too bad - pretty much like any modern European city - but suddenly Poland was a very foreign country.

Jaroszewicz marched up to a booth with a handwritten sign saying '
N
IE
I
NFORMACJA
' Sellotaped to the glass. No information. He couldn't understand a word of the ensuing argument as Jaroszewicz and the man behind the counter shouted at each other, but eventually she stomped away from the booth with a pair of tickets and seat reservations.

'Bloody place.' She wandered through the throngs of people and joined a small crowd staring at a poster covered in a bewildering array of stations and times. Two minutes later she said, '
Peron
five.' And then headed off for a dirty grey escalator down to a dirty grey platform.

Logan hurried after her. 'What do you know about the victims?'

She shrugged, settling back against an information board. 'Before 1989 it looks political. We do not have much detail, but all the victims were accused of undermining the Communist regime: union leaders, clergy, activists, people like that. After 1989 there is a gap, then it starts up again: mostly small-time crooks.'

The platform started filling up, a mixture of businessmen and students.

Jaroszewicz dumped her bag at her feet. 'What about yours?'

Logan went through the Oedipus victims one by one, finishing up with the fact that none of them would talk to the police. 'They're all still terrified, even though we've got the guy in custody.'

She shrugged. 'I am not surprised.'

An announcement crackled out of the platform speakers - and everyone started shuffling towards the edge of the platform. Then a battered green diesel engine rumbled out of the dark tunnel, dragging behind it ten lilac-and-white carriages, the bright orange 'ICC PKP I
NTERCITY
' logo painted on the side.

A whistle blast and the doors opened. Jaroszewicz pulled out their tickets and squinted at them. Then dragged Logan down the platform and onto carriage number nine.

Inside, it was like something out of a transport museum: a corridor stretched down one side of the carriage, lined with sliding glass doors that opened onto little individual eight-seat compartments.

She checked the tickets again, then hauled a door open and stepped inside. It was already crowded. Six students sprawled on the seats, laughing and sharing a loaf of bread - ripping off handfuls and popping them in their mouths.

Jaroszewicz swore, hauled her bag up onto the overhead rack and told a man with long brown hair to get out of her seat. Then told his girlfriend to get out of Logan's. They just shrugged, then moved.

Logan apologized his way between everyone's knees to the window seat, and manhandled his suitcase up onto the rack.

Another announcement. Then a clunk. And slowly the train pulled away from the platform, through another dark tunnel, and out into the rain-soaked evening.

Senior Constable Jaroszewicz made small talk for a while, mostly about movies she'd seen, and then lapsed into silence, staring out of the window as the graffiti-covered sidings drifted past.

A girl sitting across from Logan, slumped down in her seat, exposing pale thighs as her skirt rode up. Tattoos poked out of the top of her V-neck jumper.

Samantha. How was he supposed to know she had scars high up on the inside of her thighs? What was he, a mind reader? He shifted in his seat. And how the hell did you get scars there anyway?

The student looked up and saw him staring at her tattooed chest. Their eyes met and Logan looked away, embarrassed. Great, now she thought he was a pervert.

'
Bilet.
'

Logan looked up. An official-looking man in a dark blue uniform was standing in front of him.

'Erm...'

Jaroszewicz dug about in her handbag, 'He wants to see your ticket.'

'Oh right...'

The conductor made his way around their little compartment, stamping everyone's ticket, before lurching back out into the corridor, pulling the sliding glass door shut behind him. As soon as he was gone, Jaroszewicz stood and rattled off something in quick-fire Polish to the students.

They complained, but she didn't seem to care. She pulled out a police ID and flashed it at them, then gave them another earful.

The students got to their feet and shuffled out of the compartment, full of bad grace, angry backward glances, and mutterings of, '
Kurwa, komucha...
'

Jaroszewicz waited till the door was closed before dragging her bag out of the rack and collapsing back into her seat, grinning. 'They say I am a Communist bitch.' She pulled a swollen, green folder from her bag and handed it over. 'This is everything I could find.'

Logan removed the elastic band holding the file together, and opened it up. A bundle of photographs sat at the front

- each one showing someone's mutilated face in graphic close up. Most were taken pre-hospital as well, the sight making Logan's stomach lurch in time with the train on the tracks. The damage was identical to the Aberdeen victims: Ricky Gilchrist had copied the MO perfectly.

He flipped past, finding dozens of reports, statements, interview transcripts... Somewhere in this lot would be the connection between Gilchrist and whoever mutilated these poor sods.

And Logan couldn't read a word of it.

42

Outside the carriage window there was nothing but fields and trees. Every now and then they'd pass a village - little more than a handful of houses with wooden outbuildings slumped in defeat. Chickens strutting back and forth in the mud.

The rain had stopped about an hour out of Warsaw, but the landscape still lay beneath a lid of heavy grey clouds.

'And this was the last one.' Jaroszewicz poked the file in Logan's hand. 'He was a baker in Sromowce Nizne. Arrested two times for drug dealing. They found him in the garage: he hanged himself six months after he was blinded.'

There was a photocopy of the note he'd left, and a police photo of the body dangling from a roof beam.

Logan stuck them back in the file. 'Twenty-three victims since 1974. So if it's the same man doing them he's got to be, what ... mid fifties, early sixties by now?'

'
If
it is the same man.' Jaroszewicz accepted the folder and put it back in her bag. 'Before 1989 all our victims are dissidents, and after 1989 they are all criminals.' She snapped her bag shut and hefted it into the overhead rack. 'I think the men who are doing this are copying what happened under the Communists. It is a warning to everyone who will not do what they are told. In Poland it is not a serial killer, it is mob enforcement.'

By quarter past eight they were in the dining car, getting scowled at by the evicted students. Jaroszewicz sat with her back to them at one if the five long tables that stuck out from one side of the carriage, leaving an aisle at the end just big enough for the waitress to walk down, carrying plates of food from the little kitchen by the door. The smell of frying chicken filled the air.

A couple of businessmen sat at the other end of their table, poking away at laptops and drinking bottles of lager. Everyone had to perch on little bar stools that had been bolted to the floor, as the train swayed and rattled its way across Poland.

'It will be too late to do anything when we get to Krakow,' Jaroszewicz was saying, 'so we will start first thing tomorrow morning. Hit the local police for information.'

'Information?'

'Addresses for the Krakow victims.' She took another mouthful of unpronounceable beer. 'The only records I could get in Warsaw are out of date. They...' She stopped talking as a smiling woman in an apron appeared at the table with their food - flattened slabs of chicken fried in breadcrumbs, mashed potatoes covered in dill, and pickled gherkins. Served on paper plates with plastic cutlery.

A long way away from British Rail sandwiches.

Outside the sun was setting, a heavy orb of red fire just visible between the clouds and the fields, gilding a three-storey house made entirely of breeze blocks, all on its own in the middle of nowhere.

Logan scooped up another forkful of mash. 'If the records are out of date, how do you know the victims are still alive?'

'I do not.' She took one look at the expression on Logan's face and laughed. 'Relax, they cannot all be dead. I spoke to the
Komisariat Policji
yesterday, there is at least one they have heard about recently. Now eat your chicken.'

The first sign of Krakow was the local football team's name, scrawled in red spray-paint on a dilapidated building at the side of the railway tracks, just visible in the fading glow of a setting sun. The distant sparkle of houses gave way to huge blocks of concrete apartments, with the chimneys of a massive steelworks in the background - crowned with blinking red and white lights to ward off aircraft.

Then mile after mile of densely packed houses and tower blocks, sulking beneath thick grey clouds.

The students braved a return to the carriage, grabbing their luggage and grumbling as the train pulled into the station. Not quite defiant enough to make eye contact with Senior Constable Jaroszewicz.

Logan followed her out onto the platform. A cold wind whipped a discarded newspaper apart and sent it dancing across the expanse of grey concrete. Warsaw had been depressing, and right now Krakow didn't look much better.

The taxi dropped them outside a hotel in the old city, on a street packed with people, bars and kebab shops. The high buildings and narrow streets cut out the worst of the wind, and it was almost balmy. Tourists wandered through the fading twilight wearing T-shirts and shorts, taking photographs.

Logan couldn't blame them, it was actually pretty impressive, just the way old Eastern European cities were supposed to be. Cobbled streets, ornately carved frontages ... like something out of a
Hammer House of Horror
film. Well, except for all the neon and flash photography.

Jaroszewicz pushed through the wrought-iron gates into the hotel, and after a pause, Logan followed her. 'So, what's the plan for tonight then?' Hoping it would involve beer.

She puffed out her cheeks and made a deflating noise. 'I am going to have a bath and go to bed.' She checked her watch. 'You can meet me for breakfast at eight o'clock.'

Upstairs in his room, Logan pulled the net curtains wide and stared out at the street below. He'd already unpacked everything and laid it away, played with the room's safe, checked out the contents of the mini-bar, thought about stealing the little plastic bottles of shampoo and conditioner, and read all the tour leaflets.

And then he remembered to switch his phone back on. Three messages, all from DI Steel, telling him to phone her back, urgently.

He checked his watch: half nine. That would make it half past eight back home. He dialled Steel's number and rested his forehead against the window, watching a pair of drunken girlies staggering out of what looked like an off-licence.

Then Steel's voice barked out of the earpiece:
'What took you so sodding long?'

'Had my phone turned off. Airline safety rules.'

'Blah, blah, blah. I went to that address you got from your fat pornographer, and you know what I found?'