Authors: Zygmunt Miloszewski
A Grain of Truth (25 page)
Szacki quickly downed the rest of his coffee and they almost ran back to his bachelor pad, where he could still smell Klara’s perfume. Klara – the best match in Sandomierz.
By trying various combinations, on this quarter of the globe (latitude north, longitude east), they managed to mark several spots in the desert in Libya and Chad. Other experiments took them to the Namibian wilderness and the waves of the Atlantic Ocean.
“Let’s try fixing a spot in Poland,” said Sobieraj, leaning over his arm. Her ginger hair tickled his ear.
“Libya in Poland?”
“I mean let’s see where these longitude lines cross Poland. You know, like
In Search of the Castaways
.”
In Jules Verne’s book it was actually about a parallel, but Szacki soon saw the point. Indeed, if all three numbers did denote geographical latitude, they would cross this part of the world. 19°16′21″ ran from Bielsko-Biała in the south, through the western suburbs of Łódź in the middle of the country, to the Vistula Spit on the Baltic coast. Then 21°22′25″ started further to the east, quite near Krynica Zdrój, ran right through the middle of Ostrowiec – here they exchanged knowing glances as this city was nearby – crossed the eastern districts of
Warsaw and ran via Mrągowo to the Russian border. 24°19′21″ was entirely outside Poland, but still within its pre-war borders, passing slightly east of Lviv, Grodno and Kaunas.
“Ostrowiec is something,” Sobieraj muttered into his ear, trying at any cost to prove that for a true optimist even a broken glass can be half full.
“And I know what that something is,” said Szacki, standing up suddenly.
“Hmm?”
“It’s a load of shit. A smokescreen. Lies. A great big load of shit the size of Australia, a vast pile of crap!”
Sobieraj tucked her hair behind her ears and watched him patiently, waiting for him to calm down. Szacki paced the room from wall to wall.
“In the American films some genius always shows up who tries to think like the murderer, right? He frowns, walks about the crime scene and in abrupt, black-and-white flashbacks we see how his mind attunes itself, how he works out exactly what happened.” Something flashed between the wardrobe and the wall, something that looked like a silver wrapper, and Szacki had to fight the temptation to check if it was a condom wrapper, or an empty condom wrapper.
“Hmm?” This time Sobieraj supplemented her mumbling with an encouraging gesture. With one hand she tapped something out on the keyboard.
“Except that films follow a different logic from real life. They have a logic which has to reach a solution, a denouement so the killer is caught in an hour and a half. But now let’s feel our way into the logic of a real case and of our murderer. He certainly doesn’t want us to catch him in an hour and a half, so if he isn’t completely and utterly fucked up he’s not going to leave riddles we only have to solve in order to find him.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning either he’ll leave a riddle that sends us off on a completely false trail. Or – which from his, or her, point of view has to be a more amusing solution – he or she will leave a riddle that makes no sense. The kind that has no solution and leads nowhere, but just makes us
waste time looking at satellite pictures of the Libyan desert. And with every minute he or she is sure to be further and further away, safer and safer.”
“OK,” said Sobieraj slowly, rocking on a chair, with her hands entwined under her chin. “And what do you suggest?”
“Let’s go to bed.”
Sobieraj slowly raised one eyebrow.
“I haven’t brought my lacy underwear, so if you’d be willing to postpone until another day…”
Szacki snorted with laughter. He really was getting to like her more and more.
“You people are terribly randy in this province.”
“Long winters, long nights, there’s no cinema and just boring stuff on TV. What can you do?”
“Sleep. Let’s go to sleep, get a rest. Tomorrow we’ve got the profiler, the data will come through from the lab, recordings from the urban security cameras, maybe we’ll get something extra.”
Sobieraj turned her laptop towards him.
“First look at this.”
He went over to her; the comment about the underwear meant that first he looked at her, differently, but he saw the same thing as usual. Jeans, thick hiking socks, a black fleece, no make-up. A textbook example of the one-hundred-per-cent Catholic girl guide. The only lace he could imagine in her context would have to be on the Virgin Mary’s veil. But she smelt nice, he thought, as he leant over her – more of shampoo than perfume, but it was nice.
In the browser window the words
Konspiracyjne Wojsko Polskie
were entered – meaning the Polish Underground Army. Yes, of course, the KWP. Some scraps of superficial historical knowledge sprang to mind – the “cursed soldiers”, post-war partisans fighting against the Communists, underground tribunals passing sentences, and anti-Semitic goings-on. Szyller?
“I’ll leave you with the problem of whether this might be a smokescreen or not, and I am indeed off to bed now. I’ll let you know when I’ve changed into something sexier. Kiss kiss.”
She kissed him on the cheek in a friendly way and left. He waved to her, without tearing his eyes from the computer.
A few hours later, when he lit his first cigarette of the day at the open kitchen window, and the smoke mixed painfully with the sleep in his eyes, he already knew far more about the KWP. Enough to stick one more theory in the file, an ominous one, which assumed more than any other that the whole case involved bloodthirsty Jewish revenge. And which unfortunately provided for the possibility that it didn’t have to stop at two corpses – quite the opposite.
Dawn announced its arrival as the first vague shapes appeared in the pitch-black courtyard, dark patches against very dark patches. Szacki was reminded of a few nights ago, when he’d been smoking in this very same spot, and to his vexation Klara’s red fingernails had appeared on his fleece. He thought about that night, he thought about her, and how she had told him to turn around that morning as she clothed her statuesque body. The moisture forced from his eyes by tiredness and smoke was joined by a few tears of sorrow. Once again Prosecutor Teodor Szacki had fucked something up; once again he was all alone, with no one and nothing.
But maybe that was for the best.
Orthodox Christians are celebrating Easter Monday, and Catholics finally have a day off, not counting those of extreme right-wing views who are celebrating Adolf Hitler’s 120th birthday. The remaining People of the Book are not being idle either: the Muslims are celebrating Mohammed’s 1,442nd birthday and the Jews are listening as the President of Iran delivers an anti-Semitic speech at a UN conference on the fight against racism. In Poland forty-eight per cent of Poles claim there is no party in the Sejm – the Polish parliament – that represents their interests, and thirty-one per cent claim that none of the parties expresses their political views. India launches an Israeli-made spy satellite into orbit, Russia warns NATO that military manoeuvres in Georgia are unnecessary provocation, and in Italy Juventus are penalized for the racist chants of their fans, and their next match will be played behind closed doors. In Sandomierz a thirty-seven-year-old man parks his Fiesta in a plumbing supplies shop on Mickiewicz Street, and nearby the diocesan stage of the XIII Bible Knowledge Contest begins. All forty-four finalists have already won a one-day formative holiday stay at a hermitage in Rytwiany. It is a little warmer, but nothing to get excited about – during the day the temperature is only about thirteen degrees, and to add insult to injury it’s fine and sunny.
I
Szacki was having some idiotic dreams. Idiotic nightmares. He was back at the Lapidarium club again, but instead of rock music there was a non-stop stream of hits from the 1980s.
Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go
was still ringing in his ears as he reached for the bottle of water that always stood by his bed. As he gradually gained consciousness, the memory of the dream rapidly faded, but not rapidly enough to wipe the surprise from his sleepy face. Wham! had been playing, and he had been dancing with various women – Judge Tatarska, Klara, Weronika and Basia Sobieraj were definitely all there. Basia was wearing nothing but lacy red underwear, and it would all have been very sexy, if Adolf Hitler hadn’t appeared – right on the words “you put the boom boom into my heart” – the real life Adolf Hitler, with a toothbrush moustache, in a Nazi uniform, a small, funny little man. He may have been small and funny, but he was a shit-hot dancer, copying George Michael’s moves like the god of disco-dancing; the girls made room for him on the dance floor, everyone was clapping in a circle and Hitler was dancing in the middle. Suddenly he grabbed Szacki by the arm and they started dancing together – he could remember how the feeling of the inappropriateness of dancing with Hitler fought with the feeling of pleasure in his dream – Hitler danced superbly, sensually, letting himself be led a bit, and inventively reacting to every move. The final fading image was of a laughing Hitler throwing his arms in turns above his head, giving Szacki a flirtatious look and squealing “come on baby, let’s not fight, we’ll go dancing and everything will be all right”. Or something to that effect. What nonsense – Szacki shook his head in disbelief as he dragged his rumpled, forty-year-old body to the bathroom. As he peed, he finally gave in to the demand rising in his throat and wheezed the words of the chorus into the mirror.
* * *
He resolved the eternal dilemma of whether to take a shower or eat breakfast first in a manner worthy of Solomon, by throwing on some clothes and going out shopping, to get a bit of fresh air and gather his thoughts before the meeting with the profiler. Basia had worked with him once before, but Szacki only knew him by repute; the guy came from Krakow, and in southern Poland he was legendary, renowned as much for being a genius as an eccentric. Szacki didn’t like that, he didn’t like stars; he always preferred people who weren’t conspicuous but did their job carefully. A good investigator had to be like a consistent goalkeeper, who might not save a shot that was impossible to save, but didn’t let the rubbish through either. There was no room in the justice system for a Barthez or a Boruc.
As he stood in the checkout queue at the co-op, his hand kept instinctively tapping out against his thigh the start of the Wham! hit – pa, pa, pa, pam pam – and his eyes went wandering over the charcuterie displayed at the cold counter. How sad it looked. He really had never seen such miserable sausages as in this shop. Most of them didn’t look real – more like plastic imitations made on a broken injection press. And the ones that did look real were by contrast too real, changing colour, dried out or gone moist. On top of that, they had strangely low prices. So although he felt the urge for a bit of pepperoni to have with his breakfast, he went on standing in the queue, clutching a tub of cottage cheese, some pre-packed Jarlsberg, some tomato juice and two rolls, and listening to the conversation two women were having behind him.
“He’s a good kid, but his favourite reading matter is the Gospel of St John, all those last judgements and horrors – for him it’s as good as fantasy fiction. But the contest doesn’t include John.”
“Is the contest today?”
“Yes, at the institute. It’s just starting – I even feel a bit nervous myself. We revised it all again yesterday, and he asked if Mary Magdalene was Jesus’s wife. Where do they get it from?”
“From Dan Brown. Mary Magdalene’s supposed to have manifested herself in Biłgoraj, isn’t she?”
“What, at Palikot’s place?”
The women giggled at the idea of Mary Magdalene appearing before the colourful MP who was from Biłgoraj, and Szacki smiled too. At the same time this conversation set something going in him, and he felt the familiar itch in his head. Dan Brown, yesterday’s riddles, the magic stone, the Kabbalah. Once again something was eluding him; he should either sleep more, or swallow some magnesium.
“Would you like to try some cold meats?” said the checkout lady, smiling as radiantly as if she’d found her long-lost son. “We’ve got some delicious Żywiecka sausage, but rather than me going on, why don’t you try a bit?” She stood up from her till and cut a hefty slice. “A bloke’s got to have strength, not just eat that light stuff, like a model.”
Szacki thanked her politely and chewed the sausage, though he hated eating anything before his first sip of coffee. The sausage was vile and unpalatable, despite which he smiled sweetly and took a hundred grams. He looked around discreetly in case there was a television in here by any chance; in forty years no one had ever been so exceedingly polite to him in any shop before. But no, there weren’t any cameras, just him, the beaming checkout lady and the two high-school mums. One of them smiled at him, and the other blinked and nodded approvingly. Totally surreal. When he was dancing with Hitler, at least he’d been sure it was a dream, but now he was afraid he was going barmy. He paid up as fast as he could.
It was freezing cold again. Lured by the sun, Szacki had only put on a light top, and now he was shivering, despite which he dropped in at the little bakery too. He had to have a doughnut, though he knew it wouldn’t taste good.
“Good day,” said an old man as he passed him, tipping his hat courteously and bowing to Szacki.
Szacki returned the bow automatically, thinking things really were strange, and went into the bakery. At the till stood an old lady, entirely dressed in funereal black, and on seeing Szacki she moved away from the counter.
“Please, go ahead, I haven’t made up my mind yet.”
He didn’t say anything, chose a large, oddly bloated doughnut and took a handful of change from his pocket.
“No need,” said the shop girl, smiling. “Special offer today.”
“What special offer?” he asked, unable to restrain himself. “Buy one, get it free?”
“A special offer for our prosecutor,” added the old lady from behind him. “And for me, Natasza, that sausage roll, the well cooked one.”