Entanglement (14 page)

“I have a daughter too,” he said.

“Only you have a daughter,” she replied, drank some water and carried on: “I am not capable of telling you what happened later. I remember that we thought it was an accident. An illness, a heart attack, a haemorrhage - that sort of thing can happen to young people too, can’t it?”

Szacki said yes. He was trying to listen, but he could still see the image of the sliced-up organs being stuffed into the belly with some newspapers as wadding.

“But the doctor told us the truth. Then we found the letter. There was nothing in it, at least not to interest you. A few vague sentences, no explanations why she’d decided to go. I can remember the shape of each letter written on that page torn from her Polish exercise book. First in large, fancy letters, ‘Dearest Family’, and an exclamation mark. Under that it said: ‘Don’t worry’. Full stop. ‘I love you all, and You, Dad, the most’. Full stop. ‘You’ and ‘Dad’ with capital letters. A flourish that looked like an infinity sign drawn with a red felt-tip. And the last sentence: ‘We’ll meet again in Nangijala’. With no full stop. And right at the end: ‘Warsaw, 17th September 2003, 22:00’. Just like in an official letter. She even put the time.”

“In Nangijala?” asked the prosecutor.

“It’s a fairytale land you go to after death. It’s from a book by Astrid Lindgren. If you don’t know it, do buy it and read it to your daughter. It’s a beautiful story. Though I’m not very fond of it myself.”

“How did your husband take it?”

She gave him a cold look.

“I realize I’m being interviewed as a witness in a murder case but I’d be grateful if you’d limit the number of stupid questions,” she hissed. “Naturally, he took it very badly. He almost died - he spent two weeks in hospital. What would you have done? Taken your wife on holiday?”

She took out a cigarette and lit it. He offered her a cup to have somewhere to tap the ash, and thanked providence for sending his office mate on medical leave. Indeed it was a stupid question, but at least something was starting to happen.

“Did he feel guilty?” he asked.

“Of course.” She shrugged. “So did I. I still do. Every day I think of all the things we must have done wrong to make it happen. I think about it many times a day.”

“And did you blame your husband for your daughter’s death?”

“What sort of a question is that?”

“A simple one. She wrote in her letter that she especially loved her father. Maybe their relationship was closer, perhaps you found reasons for her suicide in it?”

She stubbed out her cigarette, closed her eyes and gave a deep sigh. When she looked at Szacki again, he almost ducked in his chair to escape that gaze.

“Forgive my language, but what the fuck are you trying to insinuate? What on earth are you thinking in that bloody civil servant’s, badly paid head of yours when you say ‘closer relationship’? And please be sure to record what we’re saying word for word. Otherwise I won’t even sign the page giving my personal details.”

“Absolutely.” Instead of pulling away he leaned even further forwards over the desk, never letting his gaze drop from her eyes, cold as the Baltic Sea in June. “But please just answer the question instead of showering me with insults.”

“My late husband and my late daughter got on perfectly. Better than anyone else in the family. Sometimes I was jealous, I felt left out. It was incredible, they could read each other’s thoughts. Whenever they went sailing together they just sent a postcard. Whenever I went on holiday with the children, Kasia made me call her dad every day. You know what it’s like. People always say they love all their children equally, and the children also say they love their parents the same. But it’s not true. In our family Kasia loved Henryk the best, and Henryk Kasia. And when she committed suicide, half of Henryk died. The murderer didn’t so much kill him as finish him off. If by some miracle you ever track him down, maybe you’ll petition for a lower sentence because he didn’t murder a man - it was a semi-corpse.”

She spoke the final word in a tone that made shivers go down Szacki’s spine. He didn’t want to go on with this conversation, but he couldn’t just drop it.

“I understand,” he said politely. “Now please answer the question.”

“What question?”

“Did you blame your husband for your daughter’s death?”

She lit another cigarette.

“No one was as close to her as he was. No one knew her or understood her as well. How come he wasn’t able to prevent it? I’ve often wondered about that as I’ve watched him kneeling by her grave. Does that answer your question?”

“Let’s suppose so,” he agreed graciously and told her briefly how the therapy had gone on Łazienkowska Street. When he finished, her face looked like a death mask. He couldn’t see a trace of emotion in it.

“We weren’t the perfect happy couple. And I often felt I wouldn’t have had much objection if Henryk had found someone else and left me. But what you’re saying… I have never heard such horrendous nonsense. To say our daughter killed herself and
our son has a lethal illness because Henryk wasn’t at his parents’ funeral? Can you actually hear what you’re saying? That it’s as if I know that, and desire his death? And what happens? The woman from the therapy feels for me so strongly that she takes your ‘sharp instrument’ - in other words a kitchen skewer, as I had to find out from the newspaper - and sticks it in his head? Do your superiors know about these ideas of yours?”

She lit another cigarette. Szacki took one out too. His first one.

“Please understand me. Murder isn’t like the theft of a car radio. We have to investigate every lead thoroughly.”

“If you made as much effort as this for the theft of car radios, maybe there’d be less of it.”

In his heart Szacki agreed with her. He knew it didn’t make sense to continue the therapy theme. Maybe later, once he knew more. He questioned her cautiously about any potential enemies, but she denied that Telak had any.

“He was pretty colourless, if I’m being honest,” she said. “People like that rarely have enemies.”

Curious. It was the second time he’d heard that, and the second time he felt he was being deceived.

“May I collect my husband from the mortuary?” she asked on the way out, after closely reading and then signing the statement. Before that he had to add the usual formula at the end, “That is all I have to testify in this matter”, and thought that wasn’t necessarily in keeping with the truth.

“Yes, any day from eight a.m. to three p.m. You have to call in advance and make an appointment. I’d advise you to instruct your undertakers to do it. Please forgive my frankness, but after an autopsy a person is, if possible, far more dead than before it.” He remembered how Kuzniecow had once told him that on Oczko Street there’s no atmosphere of death at all, just the atmosphere of a mortuary. “Better have the professionals dress
him, tidy him up and put him in his coffin first. Even so you’ll have to identify him before the coffin is closed and removed from the forensics lab. Those are the rules.”

She nodded to say goodbye and went out. And although she left his room as an exhausted woman filled with nothing but grief and pain, Szacki couldn’t forget the abuse she had hurled at the ideas that had emerged from his “bloody civil servant’s head”. If she had started to threaten him at that point, he’d have been terrified.

He glanced at his watch - twelve. Telak’s son was coming at one; luckily his mother hadn’t insisted on being present at his interview. In theory she had that right, but in practice it was only exercised during interviews with children, not great big fifteen-year-olds. He had an hour. How ridiculous. If he had two, he could write the inquiry plan; if he had three, the indictment in the Nidziecka case. But in this situation he didn’t want to get anything started. Once again he felt tired. And on top of that he still had the feeling he’d overlooked something crucial - as if he had some piece of information, maybe even already recorded in the files, that he had failed to notice. He should carefully read through all the material gathered so far. He should also ask around to see if anyone knew of a place with a ball pit where they could hold Helka’s birthday party. Anyway, what a bloody stupid fashion. In his day everyone got together for birthday parties at their own homes and it was OK. Had he really thought “in my day”? Oh God, was he really that old?

He made himself coffee.

He took a look at the newspaper.

Bugger all was happening. President Kwaśniewski was appealing to Cimoszewicz to run for President. Why bother to write
about such boring stuff? Szacki reckoned there should be a ban on the daily reporting of politics. A two-column article once a month would be quite enough.

Politicians lived in an isolated world, convinced they were doing something madly important all the time, which they absolutely had to describe at a press conference. Then they were given confirmation by excited political commentators, convinced of their own importance, who also believed in the significance of the events, probably just to rationalize their pointless jobs. Even so, despite the efforts of both groups and the mass attempt of the media to present unimportant information as essential, the entire nation couldn’t give a shit about them. In the winter Szacki, Weronika and Helka had gone on holiday - they’d been away for two weeks. All that time he hadn’t read a single newspaper. He’d come home and everything was the same as before. Absolutely nothing had happened. But when he looked at the press, it turned out the world had been collapsing on a daily basis, the government was toppling, the opposition was tearing its hair out, the Internal Security Agency had compromised itself, the polls were indicating a new line-up every hour, the parliamentary committees were talking themselves to death, etc. The effect: zero.

Just then Maryla came in.

“From the Regional Office on Krakowskie Przedmieście,” she said, put a memo down in front of him and left without another word.

Szacki read it, cursed, picked up his coffee and ran out of the room. At a fast pace he walked past the secretary, who hadn’t clopped her way back to her desk yet, knocked on Chorko’s door and, without waiting to be invited, went inside.

“Good day, Szacki,” she said, peering at him over her glasses, without removing her hands from the computer keyboard.

“Good day. They’ve refused the draft dismissal of the
Sienkiewicz murder case a third time,” he said, putting the memo from the regional office on her desk.

“I know.”

“It’s nonsensical. If I write an indictment, the court won’t just drop the charges against them, they’ll make fun of us. And those pen-pushers are perfectly aware of it. They’re only interested in statistics and nothing else: to submit an indictment and get it off their plates, then let the court worry about it.” Szacki was trying to keep his cool, but the tone of resentment was all too audible in his voice.

“I know, Prosecutor,” confirmed Chorko.

The Sienkiewicz murder case was a typical central-Warsaw drinking-den killing. They’d been drinking in a threesome, and woken up in a twosome, the third one having had his throat slashed, preventing him from coming round again. All three men’s fingerprints were found on the knife. The two who were still alive swore in unison that they couldn’t remember a thing, moreover they had called the police themselves. It was clear one of them was the murderer, but it wasn’t clear which - there wasn’t even a hint of circumstantial evidence to identify the culprit. And they couldn’t charge both of them. It was an idiotic situation. They had the murderer, and yet they didn’t.

“You are aware that if we charge them jointly, even the stupidest lawyer will get them off. If we draw straws and charge one of them, he won’t even need one. They’ll drop the charges at the first deadline.”

Chorko took off her glasses, which she only used for writing on the computer, and tidied her fringe. Her curls looked as if they’d been transplanted from a poodle.

“Prosecutor Szacki,” she said. “I am equally aware of what you are saying and of the fact that the prosecution system has a hierarchical structure. That means the higher up the hierarchy,
the closer to our boss, who is usually…” She pointed at Szacki, wanting him to finish the sentence.

“A halfwit with a political title, sent here to gain points for his pals in the polls.”

“Exactly. But please don’t say that to the press, unless you want to spend the rest of your days in the General Correspondence Department. And that’s why our officious colleagues from Krakowskie Przedmieście…” She pointed at Szacki again.

“Are already gearing up for a change of guard, and just in case are trying to be more radical, more uncompromising and tougher than the single egg the Kaczyński brothers emerged from.” The twin politicians were famous for their rigid attitudes.

“So if you understand it all so well, Prosecutor Szacki, why do you come in here and make a fuss? I’m not your enemy. I simply understand that if we refuse to kowtow once in a while, we’ll be put out to grass, and less reliable people will be put in our place. Do you think that’d be better for this colourful city or for the Warsaw City Centre District Prosecutor’s Office?”

Szacki crossed his legs, straightened his trouser crease and gave a deep sigh.

“I’ll tell you something in confidence,” he said.

“Is this going to be juicy?” she asked.

He didn’t smile. Janina Chorko was the last person on earth he’d want to flirt with.

“A week ago I had a call from Butkus.”

“The Lithuanian gangster?”

“In person. They’ve set the date of his trial for two months from now. He said he isn’t sorry, and that if for example I wanted to change the trimming on my gown from prosecutor’s red to barrister’s green, he’s ready to pay twenty thousand for the mere fact of taking on the defence, ten thousand for each extended trial date and an extra fifty for an acquittal.”