Entanglement (12 page)

He passed the legendary Amatorska Café, ran across Nowy Świat at an illegal point and reached Foksal Street. Monika Grzelka was already waiting in the café garden. She noticed him immediately and waved.

“I see you walk at the swaggering pace of a cavalryman,” she said as he came up to the table.

“But I haven’t got a coat with a crimson lining,” he said, offering his hand in greeting.

“The cruel Fifth Procurator of the City Centre?”

“Have no fear - I think the people of Warsaw will prefer to let the beautiful woman go rather than Barabbas.” He couldn’t believe he was spouting such nonsense.

She burst into sincere laughter, and Szacki suppressed a smile, unable to shake off the shock. What if she’d chosen a different story? One he didn’t know? He’d have made a proper fool of himself. He sat down, trying to look confident and a little blasé. He hung his coat on the back of the neighbouring chair. He looked at the journalist and wondered if he hadn’t judged her too harshly yesterday. She had a freshness and energy about her, which added to her appeal. Wearing a blouse with a black gemstone decorating her neckline, she looked charming. He felt like paying her a compliment.

“Nice tie,” she said.

“Thank you,” he replied, and thought he’d get revenge by saying how great she looked in that blouse, but he didn’t respond. He was afraid it would sound like “Hey, babe, I’d like to screw you standing up”.

She ordered a latte and a piece of
kaimak
cake, he asked for a small black coffee and spent a while wondering what cake to choose. He’d have loved a meringue, but he was afraid he’d
make an idiot of himself as soon as he tried cutting it and sent meringue flying in all directions, and would end up paying more attention to the food than to the conversation. He chose a cheesecake. How original you are, Teodor, he dressed himself down mentally. Go on and ask for instant coffee and a packet of Sobieskis, and you’ll be a real Polish prosecutor through and through.

She didn’t ask why he had called her, but even so he explained that he felt ashamed of how he’d behaved yesterday. He praised her article, at which she just made a face - she must have realized it wasn’t in the world champion’s league.

“I didn’t know enough,” she said, and shrugged.

Then she told him a little about her job. That she was worried about whether she’d manage, that she felt nervous dealing with people from the police, the Prosecution Service and the courts.

“Some of them can be brusque,” she sighed in a surge of sincerity, and blushed.

Just then his mobile rang. He glanced at the display. It said “Kitten”, in other words, Weronika. O God, could it be possible women were telepathic? After all, he had called her to say he’d be late. Hadn’t he? He wasn’t sure any more. Rather than answer it, he just turned off the phone. Tough - at worst he’d make something up later.

Miss Grzelka asked if there was any news on the murder case on Łazienkowska Street, adding at once that she wasn’t asking for professional reasons, but out of personal curiosity. He wanted to tell her the truth, but he knew it would be injudicious to do so.

“Yes, there is,” he said, “but I can’t talk about it. Please forgive me.”

She nodded.

“I do have something else for you though - let’s call it a present to say sorry.”

“I thought the coffee was my present.”

“On the contrary, coffee in your company is a present for me.” She fluttered her eyelashes comically, and Szacki found it charming. “I’m now writing the indictment for a murder case, and next week we’re going to send it to court. It’s a very interesting case, I think it might make a good contribution to an article on domestic violence.”

“Who was the killer? He or she?”

“She was.”

“Any details?”

“I’d prefer not to tell them now. Not at a café table. I’ll give you a copy of the indictment - it’ll all be in there. Then we can talk, if you’ve got any questions.” He thought that sounded as indifferent as he could make it, and that she wouldn’t be able to detect any hint of hope in his voice.

“Can you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Give someone a copy of an indictment?”

“Of course, it’s a public document prepared by a civil servant. The trial starts from the indictment, and the entire court proceedings are open, as long as the court doesn’t have some reason to decide otherwise.”

They went on talking for a while about court and prosecution procedures. Szacki was surprised she was so interested. For him it was a laborious bureaucratic burden and a pointless waste of time. Every prosecutor should really have an assistant to take care of all that rubbish.

“Do you read crime novels?” she suddenly asked, just after they’d ordered a glass of wine each and requested an ashtray. It turned out the girl smoked, and Szacki was glad he still had two cigarettes left.

He did read them, yes. Some of their tastes were different - he liked the tough guys such as Lehane and Chandler, and she liked the writers who played with the genre such as Leon
and Camilleri - but as for Rankin and Mankell, they were one hundred per cent in agreement. For the next half hour they talked about Inspector Rebus adventures. When Szacki glanced at his watch, mentally telling himself off for doing so, it was coming up to seven. She noticed his action.

“I don’t know about you, Mr Szacki, but I’ve got to fly now,” she said.

He nodded. He wondered who should suggest they call each other by their first names. On the one hand, she was a woman, and on the other he was about ten years older than her - traditionally either the woman or the older person should do it. What a silly situation. Maybe next time they met it would come up somehow. He reached into his jacket pocket for a business card, scrawled his mobile number on it and handed it to her.

“Please feel free to call if you have any questions, Miss Grzelka.”

She smiled roguishly. “Even in the evenings?”

“If you have any questions,” he repeated emphatically, thinking at the same time of his switched-off phone and how many messages Weronika would have left by now.

“In fact I have got a question, a personal one.”

He made a gesture encouraging her to go ahead.

“Why do you have such white hair?” she asked.

Yes, that was a personal question. Could he tell her the truth? How when Helka was three years old she’d fallen ill with a blood infection. How she’d lain in the hospital on Niekłańska Street, barely alive, her thin little body pale to the point of transparency, hooked up to a drip. How he and Weronika had wept in the hospital corridor, huddled together, not sleeping, not eating, as they’d waited for the verdict. How the doctor hadn’t promised any improvement. How they had prayed ardently for hours on end, though neither of them was a believer. How he’d fallen asleep in spite of himself and then woken up terrified that he’d
slept through the moment when his daughter died and that he hadn’t said goodbye to her. Barely conscious, he’d run into the ward where the little one was lying. She was alive. It was seven in the morning, December, pitch black outside. He’d seen his reflection in the mirror and given a silent scream, because in a single night his hair had gone completely white.

“Genes,” he replied. “I started going grey when I was still at school. I console myself that it’s better to have white hair than be bald. Do you like it?”

She laughed.

“Hmmm. It’s sexy. Maybe very sexy. Goodbye, Prosecutor Szacki.”

You have three new voice messages: “Hi, call me”; “What’s the point of having a mobile if either you switch it off or you don’t take it with you? Call me as soon as you get this message”; “Hi, guess who. If you’re still alive, get a loaf of bread on the way home and some cigarettes for me, because I forgot. If you’re not, come and see me in a dream and tell me where your insurance policy is.”

As he listened to the last one he started laughing. At moments like these he remembered why he’d fallen in love with this girl, the only one who’d been able to regard him with pity when he’d made a monkey of himself at college. God, how many years was it now? Ten years since the wedding, and how long had they known each other? Fourteen. More than a third of his life. Almost half. He could hardly believe it. At the last minute, just before nine, he’d made it to the shop and got a loaf of bread and some cigarettes. The saleswoman - the same one as eight years ago - had smiled at him. Strange, but they never exchanged a word more than what you usually say when you’re shopping. Briefly he thought of saying something else - they’d known each
other for so many years, but he paid without a word and left. At home he walked straight into the inner circle of hell.

“Daddy, Daddy, why can’t I have my birthday at Mc-Donald’s?”

“Why haven’t you gone to bed yet?” he replied smartly.

“Because Mum didn’t tell me to.”

“Seriously?”

An armchair creaked in the sitting room.

“That brat is as big a liar as you are,” shouted Weronika from inside the flat.

Szacki looked at his daughter, who was standing in the hall with an angelic expression on her face.

“I never tell lies,” he whispered.

“Neither do I,” whispered Helka.

Weronika came up to them and looked helplessly at the little girl with chestnut-coloured hair.

“Do something, you’re her father after all. Tell her she’s got to brush her teeth and go to bed, and that she’s not having her birthday at McDonald’s. Over my dead body.”

“Everyone has their birthday at McDonald’s,” said Helka.

“I don’t care what everyone does,” muttered Weronika. “And I’m not interested in you two either. Where have you been all this time?” she asked Szacki, kissing him on the nose by way of greeting. “Have you been drinking?” she added, frowning.

“I had to meet up with Oleg and I drank tea and apple juice,” he lied glibly - he suffered from the usual prosecutor’s aberration; he thought everyone told lies, and he did his best to recognize exactly when they were doing it, but he also knew that, unless you tell them straight out they’re being deceived, or unless you’re spouting horrendous, improbable nonsense, normal people take everything at face value.

“You should have invited them over, we haven’t met up for ages. I wonder how Natalia’s doing?”

Szacki hung up his coat and jacket. It was a relief to take off his tie and shoes. Maybe I should learn how to go to work in a T-shirt and sandals after all, he thought - it’d be much more comfortable. The whole time Helka went on standing in the hall with her head drooping and her arms crossed. He picked her up and cuddled her.

“And what if we find a really fabulous place?” he said. “A hundred times better than McDonald’s, with a huge playground? Where you can run about and all that?”

“There aren’t any places like that,” replied Helka.

“But what if we find one?”

“I’ll think about it.”

“In that case will you go and brush your teeth now and give us some time to look?”

She nodded in silence, let him put her down and ran to the bathroom. He wondered where they were going to find a playground where they could hold her birthday party for a reasonable price.

He went into the kitchen, took a can of beer out of the fridge, opened it and stood beside Weronika. She cuddled up to him and began to purr.

“I’m hardly alive.”

“Just like me,” he said.

They stood without talking, until the silence was broken by a bleep announcing a text message.

“That’s yours,” muttered Weronika.

Szacki went into the hall and took the phone out of his jacket. “Thank you for a wonderful evening. You’re a very rude prosecutor, but a very nice one too. MG.”

“What is it?” asked Weronika.

“Just an advert. Send a hundred texts and you might win a mug. Something like that, I deleted it.”

The final remark was actually true.

 

Argentina beat Brazil 3-1 in the World Cup qualifying stages. The first child is born whose mother had part of an ovary transplanted from another woman. Archbishop Stanisław Dziwisz visits Kraków and announces that he will not burn any of John Paul II′s notebooks. In Popowo, the suburban site of the women’s prison, a conference is held on “women in prison”. Up to a third of those convicted are murderesses, usually victims of domestic violence. From today anyone who identifies those guilty of killing cormorants at the bird sanctuary on Lake Jeziorak will be rewarded with a home cinema and 10,000 zlotys. An advertising code of conduct is established for Polish breweries: they will not be allowed to use the images of people or characters who have a particular influence on minors. In Warsaw a big gala is held to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Palace of Youth, within the Palace of Culture; a twenty-foot-high monument is erected on Ujazdowskie Avenue in memory of General Stefan “Grot” Rowecki; and at Pawiak, the Second World War prison, the bronze sculpture of an elm tree is unveiled, which was a symbol of freedom for the prisoners. The police broke up a gang of criminals making alcohol out of windscreen washing fluid. Ten thousand litres of the drink were seized and two people were taken into custody. Maximum temperature in the city - thirteen degrees; no sun and a little rain.

Teodor Szacki had always been surprised by the number of corpses they crammed into the Forensic Medicine Unit on Oczko Street. Besides Telak, there were three more bodies on the other dissection tables, and four more waiting by the window on hospital stretchers. There was a smell of steak tartare in the air, seasoned with a faint odour of faeces and vomit - the result of examining the intestines and stomach. The “necrophiliacs” who were going to deal with Telak were quite young. The older one was about forty, the younger looked as if he’d only just graduated. Szacki stood by the wall. He’d never been fascinated by autopsies, though he knew a good pathologist could tell more from a corpse than the entire Forensics Laboratory (of which the City Police Headquarters were so proud) could from evidence secured at the incident site. All the same, he wanted it to be over as soon as possible.