Entanglement Read online

  He drove under a crumbling viaduct, turned into Łazienkowska Street and parked outside the arts centre, after a fond thought about the soccer stadium that stood two hundred yards further down, where the capital’s warriors had only just made mincemeat of Wisła, the Kraków team. He wasn’t interested in sport, but Weronika was such an ardent fan that, like it or not, he could recite by heart the results of all the Legia matches for the past two years. Tomorrow his wife was sure to head off to the match in her tricolour scarf. The semi-final of the cup, wasn’t it?

  He locked the car and glanced at the building on the other side of the street, one of the weirdest constructions in the capital, next to which the Palace of Culture and the Żelazna Brama estate seemed like examples of far less invasive architecture, quite discreet really. There used to be a parish church here, the Virgin Mary of Częstochowa, but it was destroyed during the war, when this was one of the points of resistance during the Warsaw Uprising. Left unreconstructed for decades, it had been a creepy place full of gloomy ruins, the stumps of columns and open cellars. When it was finally resurrected, it became the epitome of the city’s chaotic style. Anyone who drove down the Łazienkowska Highway got a view of this redbrick chimera, a cross between a church, a monastery, a fortress and Gargamel’s palace. And now a corpse had been found here.

  Szacki adjusted the knot in his tie and crossed to the other side of the road. It began to spit with rain. A patrol car and an unmarked police car were standing by the gate. A few rubbernecks emerged from the morning mist. Oleg Kuzniecow was talking to a technician from the Warsaw Police Forensic Laboratory. He broke off the conversation and came up to Szacki. They shook hands.

  “Off to Party headquarters on Rozbrat Street for cocktails afterwards, eh?” quipped the policeman, straightening the facings of his jacket for him.

  “The rumours about the politicization of the Public Prosecution Service are just as exaggerated as the gossip about extra sources of funding for Warsaw’s police,” retorted Szacki. He didn’t like people making fun of his clothes. Whatever the weather, he always wore a suit and tie, because he was a public prosecutor, not a greengrocer.

  “What have we got?” he asked, taking out a cigarette - the first of the three he allowed himself daily.

  “One body, four suspects.”

  “Christ, not more alcohol-induced slaughter. Even in this bloody city, I didn’t think you could find a drinking den in a church. And to cap it all they’ve done it on a Sunday - there’s no respect.” Szacki was genuinely disgusted, and still furious that his family Sunday had fallen victim to the killing too.

  “You’re not entirely right, Teo,” muttered Kuzniecow, turning in every direction to try and find a spot where the wind wouldn’t blow out his lighter flame. “As well as the church there are all sorts of businesses in this building. They’ve sub-let space to a school, a health centre, various Catholic organizations, and there’s also a place for religious retreats. Different groups of people come here for the weekend to pray, talk, listen to sermons and so on. Right now a psychotherapist has hired the rooms for three days with four of his patients. They worked on Friday, worked on Saturday and parted ways after supper. This morning the doctor and three of the patients came to breakfast. They found the fourth one a little later. You’ll see what state he’s in. The rooms are in a separate wing; it’s impossible to get there without going past the porter’s lodge. There are bars on the windows. No one saw anything, no one heard anything. And so far no one’s confessed either. One body, four suspects - all sober and well-to-do. What do you say to that?”

  Szacki stubbed out his cigarette and took a few steps over to a dustbin in order to dispose of it. Kuzniecow flicked his own dog-end into the road, straight under the wheels of a number 171 bus.

  “I don’t believe in stories like that, Oleg. It’ll soon turn out the porter slept half the night, some yob went in to steal some money for booze, bumped into the poor neurotic on the way, got even more scared than he was and stuck a knife into him. He’ll crow about it to one of your narks, and that’ll be the end of it.”

  Kuzniecow shrugged.

  Szacki believed in what he’d said to Oleg, but he felt rising curiosity as they entered through the main door and headed down a narrow corridor to the small classroom where the corpse was lying. He took a deep breath to control his nervous excitement and also his fear of coming into contact with a body. By the time he saw it, his face was the picture of professional indifference. Teodor Szacki could hide behind the mask of an official, a guardian of law and order in the Polish Republic.

  IV

  A man in a pale-grey suit, aged about fifty, a bit stout, with lots of grey hair but no bald patch, was lying on his back on the floor, which was covered in a greenish lino that didn’t go with the low cross-vaulting at all. Next to him stood a grey old-fashioned suitcase that didn’t have a zip to close it, but two metal locks, and was also secured by some short straps done up with buckles.

  There wasn’t much blood, almost none at all, but Szacki didn’t feel any the better for that. It cost him a lot to take a firm step towards the victim and squat down next to his head. He let out a bilious belch and swallowed his saliva.

  “Fingerprints?” he asked nonchalantly.

  “None on the murder weapon, Sir,” replied the chief technician, kneeling on the other side of the body. “We collected some in other places, and some trace evidence too. Should we take some odour samples?”

  Szacki shook his head. If the deceased had spent the past two days with one of the people who had killed him, his odour wouldn’t help at all. They’d refuted that sort of circumstantial evidence so many times when he’d tried it in court that it wasn’t worth bothering the technicians for nothing.

  “What exactly is this?” he said, addressing Kuzniecow and pointing at the spike with a black-plastic handle that was sticking out of the victim’s right eye. It was a relief that thanks to the question he could turn his gaze on the policeman, instead of looking at the dark-red-and-grey matter that must once have been the man’s eye, but now had congealed on his cheek in a shape that stubbornly made Szacki think of a Formula One racing car.

  “A meat skewer,” said Oleg. “Or something of the kind. There’s a whole set in the same style in the dining room. Knives, a cleaver, forks and spoons.”

  Szacki nodded. The murder weapon came from in here. So what were the chances that the murderer came from the outside? Practically none; theoretically the court might think there was as big a crowd in here as on busy Marszałkowska Street, which no one had noticed. But all possible doubts… etc.

  He was wondering how to play things with the witnesses, or, in fact, suspects, when one of the uniformed policemen looked in the hall.

  “Superintendent, his wife’s here. Would you?”

  Szacki went outside with Oleg.

  “What was his name?” he whispered to Kuzniecow.

  “Henryk Telak. The wife’s called Jadwiga.”

  By the patrol car stood a woman of the kind men describe as handsome. Quite tall, slender, wearing glasses, with slightly greying dark hair and distinct facial features, she was dressed in a bright-green dress and sandals. She must have been a beauty once, and now proudly carried her fading charm.

  Kuzniecow went up to her and bowed.

  “Good morning, I am Oleg Kuzniecow, I’m the Police Superintendent. This is the Public Prosecutor, Teodor Szacki, who’ll be conducting the investigation. Please accept our deepest condolences. We promise to do everything in our power to find and convict your husband’s murderer.”

  The woman nodded. She looked absent, and must already have taken something to sedate herself. Perhaps she wasn’t yet fully conscious of what had happened. Szacki knew that the first reaction to the death of a loved one is disbelief. The pain comes later.

  “How did it happen?” she asked.

  “Assault and robbery,” lied Szacki with the self-confident glibness that had sometimes led people to advise him to take u
p advocacy. “So far it looks as if a burglar broke in at night and ran into your husband by accident - he may even have tried to stop the man. The thief killed him.”

  “How?” she asked.

  The two men swapped glances.

  “Your husband was struck in the head by a sharp object.” Szacki couldn’t stand crime-related Newspeak, but it was the best language for depriving death of its drama. It sounded milder than “Someone stuck a meat skewer into his brain through his eye”. “He died instantly. The doctor says it happened so quickly he can’t have had time to feel any pain.”

  “That’s something at least,” she said after a moment’s silence, and looked up for the first time. “Can I see him?” she asked, gazing at Szacki, who immediately remembered the grey stain, the shape of a racing car.

  “There’s no need.”

  “I’d like to say goodbye to him.”

  “They’re still collecting evidence,” added Kuzniecow. “It’s not very private in there, and besides, please believe me, it’s not a pleasant sight.”

  “As you wish,” she agreed resignedly, and Szacki held back a sigh of relief. “Can I go now?”

  “Of course. Please just leave your details. I will have to talk to you some more.”

  The woman dictated her address and phone number to Kuzniecow.

  “What about the body?” she asked.

  “Unfortunately we’ll have to do an autopsy. But on Friday at the latest the undertaker will be able to collect it.”

  “That’s good. Maybe it’ll be possible to arrange the funeral for Saturday. A man’s got to be buried before Sunday, otherwise another family member will die the same year.”

  “That’s just superstition,” replied Szacki. He took two business cards from his pocket and handed them to the widow. “One has my phone number, the other has the number of a centre that offers support to the families of crime victims. I advise you to call them. It might help.”

  “Are they any good at resurrecting husbands?”

  Szacki didn’t want the conversation to continue in this direction. Bizarre remarks such as these were usually a prelude to hysteria.

  “No, they resurrect the living. Bring them back to life, to which they often don’t want to return. Of course you’ll do whatever you feel appropriate. I just believe that they are people who can help.”

  She nodded and put both cards away in her handbag. The cop and the prosecutor said goodbye to her and went back into the building.

  Oleg asked Szacki if he wanted to question the people from the therapy group now. Szacki was in two minds how to play it, and although as a first reaction he had decided to talk to them as soon as possible, right here even, now he thought it would be better to put it off for a while, to let them sweat for a bit - the good old Lieutenant Columbo method. He wondered what they were thinking about in their cells. Cells - how apt. They must all be mulling over every single word and gesture from the past two days, looking for signs that show which of them might be the murderer. Except for the actual murderer - he (or she) must be wondering whether he has betrayed himself by word or gesture over the past two days. But all this makes the sensational assumption that one of them really did do the killing. Could the idea that the murderer came from the outside be excluded? No, it couldn’t. As usual at this stage nothing could be excluded. Yes, it might be an interesting case, a nice change after all those run-of-the-mill city murders. A nasty stench, some empty bottles, gore on the walls, a woman who looked thirty years older than the age on her ID sobbing on the floor, the surprised dopey pals, unable to believe one of them had knifed a mate in a drunken daze - how many times had he seen that?

  “No,” he replied. “I’ll tell you what we’ll do. Question them now - after all, that’s the usual procedure. But you do it, not some constable who was still living with mummy and daddy in the suburbs of Siedlce a fortnight ago - calmly and casually, treating each one as a witness. When did they last see Telak? When did they meet? What did they do last night? Don’t ask about what connects them, about the therapy - let them feel safe, and I’ll have a reason to call them back again a few times.”

  “You’re full of ideas,” said Oleg huffily. “You’re telling me to play with them to prepare the ground for you. Make transcripts, write clearly, have it read through...”

  “Get some lady constable to write it out for you in nice round letters. Let’s meet up in the morning at Wilcza Street; we’ll exchange documents, have a chat and decide what next. I was meant to be going to the sentencing for the Pieszczoch case, but I’ll ask Ewa to go for me.”

  “You’re buying the coffee.”

  “For pity’s sake. I’m an underpaid civil servant, not a corrupt traffic cop. My wife is a civil servant too. We make ourselves instant coffee at work, we don’t buy it for anyone.”

  Oleg took out a cigarette. Szacki only just stopped himself from doing the same. He didn’t want to have just one left for the rest of the day.

  “You’re buying the coffee, there’s no argument.”

  “You’re a filthy Russki.”

  “So they’re always telling me. See you in Gorączka at nine?”

  “I hate that flatfoot’s dive.”

  “At Brama then?”

  Szacki nodded. Oleg saw him to his car.

  “I’m afraid this might be a tough one,” said the policeman. “If the murderer didn’t make any mistakes, and the rest of them didn’t see anything, it’s pretty hopeless.”

  Szacki couldn’t resist smiling.

  “They always make mistakes,” he said.

  V

  He couldn’t remember when the weather in the Tatra mountains had ever been so kind to him. From the summit of Kopa Kondracka he had a perfect view in all directions; only far above the Slovak part of the High Tatras could he see some tiny clouds. Ever since he had parked early that morning in Kiry, taken a short walk in the Kościeliska Valley and started to climb up the Czerwone Wierchy - the four “Red Peaks” - the sun had been with him the whole time. From halfway up, where the path began to climb more and more steeply, the dwarf mountain pines gave no chance of shade, and there were no streams nearby, the hike had turned into a route march across a red-hot frying pan. It reminded him of stories he’d heard about American soldiers in Vietnam, whose brain fluid got cooked during the day under their sun-baked helmets. He had always thought it must be nonsense, but now that was how he felt, except that his head was protected not by a helmet, but a beige hat, a souvenir brought back from a trip to Australia long ago.

  As he neared the ridge, black spots started dancing before his eyes, and his legs went weak. He cursed his own stupidity - that of a seventy-year-old who thinks he can still do as much of everything as before. Drink as much, make love as much, hike in the mountains as much.

  On the ridge he sank to the ground, letting the wind cool him, and listened to the frantic rhythm of his heart. Tough, he thought - better to croak on Ciemniak Peak than on Marszałkowska Street in central Warsaw. Once his heart had calmed down a bit, he thought it would be better yet to die on Małołączniak Peak, across the saddle, because it sounded like the name of a bird - much better than being killed by bloody Ciemniak, meaning “ignoramus”. If he died there, they’d go on telling jokes about him long after. So he dragged himself over to Małołączniak, drank a little coffee from his thermos while trying not to think about his muscle number one, and by sheer impetus reached the top of Kopa Kondracka. It was quite amazing, but it looked as if his weak heart combined with his old man’s stupidity weren’t going to kill him this time either. He poured himself another mug of coffee, took out a sandwich wrapped in tin foil and gazed at the pot-bellied thirty-year-olds coming up the poor old Kopa with as much effort as if it were twenty thousand feet high. He felt like advising them to bring oxygen with them.

  How can they let themselves go like that? he thought, as he disdainfully watched them barely trudging along. At their age he could run the route from the shelter in Kondratowa Valley up the
Kopa and back again first thing in the morning, via the dip called Piekło, meaning “hell”, just to get warm and work up an appetite for breakfast. Yes, those were the days. Everything was clear, everything made sense, everything was easy.

  He stretched out his tanned calves in the sunshine - covered in grey hairs, they were still muscular - and switched on his mobile to send a text message to his wife, who was waiting for him at the guesthouse near Strążyska Valley. The phone had only just found a signal when it rang. The man cursed and answered it.

  “Yes?”

  “Good morning, this is Igor. I’ve got some bad news for you.”

  “Yes?”

  “Henryk’s dead.”

  “How did it happen?”

  “I’m afraid it was a nasty accident.”

  He didn’t waste a moment considering what to say in reply.

  “That really is sad news. I’ll do my best to come back tomorrow, but you must place a condolences announcement in the newspaper as soon as possible. Got that?”

  “Of course.”

  He switched off the phone. He no longer felt like texting his wife. He drank the rest of the coffee, put on his backpack and set off towards the pass below the Kopa. He’d have a beer at Kalatówki Clearing and think how to tell her they’d have to go back to Warsaw. Almost forty years together, and he still found that sort of conversation stressful.

  VI

  Prosecutor Teodor Szacki had some trouble firing up the powerful three-litre engine of his Citroën V6 - the autogas installation was playing up again - waited for the hydraulic system to lift his dragon off the ground, and set off towards the highway along the River Vistula, intending to cross over Łazienkowski Bridge. At the last moment he changed his mind, turned towards Wilanów and stopped the car at the bus stop near Gagarin Street. He switched on the hazard lights.

  Long ago, ten years ago, which meant ages ago, he and Weronika had lived here, before Helka was born. It was a studio flat on the second floor, and both windows looked onto the highway. A nightmare. In the daytime one huge lorry after another came, after dark it was the night buses and little Fiat 126s going at seventy miles per hour. He had learned to distinguish makes of car by the sound of their engines. A layer of thick black dust would collect on the furniture, and the window would be dirty half an hour after cleaning it. It was worst of all in summer. They’d had to open the windows or else suffocate, but then it was impossible to talk or watch television. It was quite another matter that in those days they made love more often than they watched the news. And now? He wasn’t sure they made it to the national average, which had once amused them so much. What? There really are people who only do it once a week? Ha ha ha!