Entanglement. Part 28

It was a few minutes after three p.m. Prosecutor Teodor Szacki was sitting in his office, revelling in the silence, which had fallen the moment his colleague had rushed off to take her child to an allergy expert. He had made no comment. Her departure meant he didn't have to go on listening to Katie Melua oozing out of her computer ("I hope it won't disturb you if it's just on very quietly?") and the conversations she had with her mother on the phone ("So tell them that for eight hundred zlotys you can carve the letters on Daddy's stone yourself. Tell them that. Crooks, bodys.n.a.t.c.hers, grave robbers").

Exactly a month ago Cezary Rudzki had been taken away by the police from the monastery on azienkowska Street. A few days later Szacki had interrogated him in the "inquiry against Cezary Rudzki". The therapist had repeated word for word what he had said in front of the camera in the cla.s.sroom, and the prosecutor had written it all down precisely, pretending to accept it all as the honest truth. However, he did have to ask why Rudzki was so convinced of Telak's guilt. What did he know about the background to his son's murder?

"As I said earlier, it was an accident, one of the thousands of inexplicable coincidences that we run into every day," said Rudzki, dressed in beige prison uniform in the interview room at the remand centre on Rakowiecka Street. He looked a hundred years old, and not even a hint of his proud posture and piercing gaze was left. "I was giving therapy to a man suffering from bone cancer, in the terminal stage, and three months later he died. The man was poor, from the lower social orders, and I took him on for free as a favour for a friend at the Oncology Inst.i.tute. He wanted to confess to someone. He was a criminal, a petty one really, petty and careful enough never to have ended up behind bars. He really only had one sin on his conscience - he had taken part in the murder of my son. He may not have laid hands on him directly, but he and the murderer had broken into our flat together, he had witnessed the torture and the killing. He shook with fear, he claimed they'd only been paid to frighten him and rough him up, but in the end his 'boss' had decided they had to rub Kamil out 'just in case'. It was a shock. I came completely unstuck before this bandit, and told him who I was - we cried together for hours. He promised to help me find his 'contractor'. He gave me an exact description of him, and all the circ.u.mstances of their meetings, all their conversations. He said it might have been about a woman, because one time the contractor had let it escape that 'now he'd be able to get her'. At once I thought of Jadwiga - Kamil was madly in love with her, though she was a few years older than him. I found her and also took Telak's photo. The man recognized him one hundred and twenty per cent."

Teodor Szacki wrote down the suspect's lies word for word, without so much as batting an eyelid. Rudzki signed the statement, also without the slightest wince. They both knew the danger to their families if the truth were revealed - and above all if an inquiry were initiated. However, when it was all over Szacki told the old therapist what he knew about Henryk Telak's work in the Communist security services, about the "department of death" and about the still-operative SB organization. And asked for the truth.

The patient with bone cancer was real, so was his guilt and his confession. The accidentally overheard remark about how "now he'd be able to get her" was also true. But the instruction was different. They were supposed to terrify and rough up the boy "as firmly as possible" - which was tantamount to an order to kill - so that his father would desist from activities that could damage state security. They were persuaded that it was a matter of the highest importance, that they'd be heroes, that perhaps they'd be secretly decorated. They didn't give a s.h.i.+t about being decorated. For carrying out the job they got a pile of cash and a guarantee of impunity, and could also plunder from the flat anything that took their fancy. At the start, when no specifics were mentioned, they had met with three officers, including Telak. Then Telak had seen them twice more on his own. He had given them all the details, the exact date and time, and instructed them how they were to tie him up and hurt him.

On completing the job, when they came for their money, he'd been very upset. He said there had been a mistake in the reconnaissance. He gave them more than they were initially going to receive, and warned them that if they didn't disappear for two years without trace, someone else would find them the way they had found the boy. So they had vanished.

Szacki told him what he had heard from Karol Wenzel: the activities of Department "D" were so top-secret that mistakes really did occur in the reconnaissance and in sending people out on operations. The hired thugs also made mistakes. That was probably how Telak could justify within the firm the fact that an innocent man had been murdered. Oh dear, an accident at work.

The prosecutor and the therapist shook hands in parting and embraced sincerely. They both owed each other something. Above all, silence.

Two weeks after the interrogation at the remand centre, Cezary Rudzki died. He had felt ill and been taken to an isolation cell, where he felt even worse. He died before the ambulance arrived. A ma.s.sive heart attack. Teodor Szacki would even have believed it was an accident, if not for the fact that next day a courier brought him a bottle of twenty-four-year-old whisky. He poured the whole lot down the sink and threw the bottle in the waste bin by the pedestrian crossing near the prosecutor's office. He'd been expecting it. He had believed that SB b.a.s.t.a.r.d when he'd said he and his colleagues only stepped in if there was no alternative. And he believed they preferred peace. But a man in prison is not a guarantee of that kind of peace. He gets too bored, he talks too much, it's all too likely that one day he might think his freedom is worth a bit of a risk. Could Szacki feel safe himself? As long as he did nothing stupid, he probably could. He didn't go to the funeral.

That same day he had called Monika. Though he mentally cursed himself for his own stupidity, someone was guiding his hand as it dialled the number, and someone else spoke the words for him, suggesting they meet. Since then he had met with the journalist on several occasions, and although each time Szacki drove to see her, convinced it was their final meeting, and that this time he had to break off the affair because it made no sense, he had less and less control over it. He was afraid of what would happen next, but also curious about it.

He switched off the computer and realized there really was nothing to do. Chorko was on leave, people had left the city for their summer holidays, and Warsaw had temporarily stopped being the capital of crime. The indictment against Kaim, Jarczyk, Kwiatkowska and Mrs Telak was almost complete. He had s.h.i.+fted the burden of guilt onto Rudzki, which allowed him to charge the rest with nothing but withholding information from the organs of the judiciary. He also hid the fact that on the night of the murder the therapist and his patients had stood over the corpse and wondered what to do. According to the official version of Telak's murder, Kwiatkowska, Jarczyk and Kaim had only found out when Barbara Jarczyk found the body on Sunday morning. He rarely admired criminals, but when he discovered that Rudzki had forbidden them to talk about it and told them all to behave at breakfast as if they didn't know a thing - so they'd come out as well as possible later during their interviews - he almost bowed his head. In the hands of a murderer, knowledge of the human psyche is the most powerful weapon.

He had always thought the penal code existed so that anyone who broke it could be punished with full severity by the state - so that others would clearly see what was the outcome of crime. Now here he was falsifying the case of Henryk Telak's murder to the advantage of the people mixed up in the inquiry. And he was disgusted with himself, because he knew this wasn't going to make up for his greatest fault - giving up. Because he had no intention of doing anything that might strike at "OdeSB".

He picked up the receiver. He wanted to talk to Weronika and Helka, who since Sat.u.r.day had been sunbathing at Olecko in the Mazurian lakes, and he preferred to do it now than for his wife to call at the exact time when he'd be at Monika's.

He was halfway through dialling the number when someone came into his office. It was Jadwiga Telak.

II.

Sad as usual, elegant as usual, in the first instant colourless as usual, but soon making a dazzling impression.

As she took a cigarette out of her handbag he almost snorted with laughter. How did it go? And of all the lousy offices of all the underpaid prosecutors in this rotten city, she had to come into mine. He took an ashtray out of the drawer and lit up himself. That's my second, he thought out of habit, though since his encounter in the Italian restaurant he had stopped rationing the smokes. He didn't speak, he just waited.

"You know, don't you?" she said.

He nodded. Not from early on, but when they'd all met a month ago in the cla.s.sroom at the architectural monstrosity on azienkowska Street, he knew. Because he trusted Wrobel when he claimed that none of the partic.i.p.ants in a constellation would be inclined to commit murder, because such an act would destroy the order. And the constellation works because the partic.i.p.ants strive towards order. Because she was the one who had the most to gain from her husband's death - in terms of life, emotionally and financially. Because during the murder she said she'd been watching a film on television that - as he later checked - was on the day before. Because she said she had listened to her son playing racing cars in his room, when Bartek was banging away at Call of Duty. The sounds of machine guns, exploding grenades and the groans of dying soldiers could not be confused with the roar of engines. Just circ.u.mstantial evidence. A bit of intuition. The memorable remark: "If someone in the constellation seems to be good and someone else bad, it's almost always the other way around." And the itching in his head when Cezary Rudzki took the blame on himself.

"I thought now that the case is closed, you are owed some explanation."

He said nothing more. He didn't feel like it.

"I don't know if you have ever been in love. Really and truly. If you have, you're a lucky man. If not, I envy you like the devil, because you have the greatest adventure of your life ahead of you - perhaps. Do you know what I'm talking about? It's like with books. It was great to read The Master and Margarita at grammar school, but I'm green with envy to think there are adults who still have that ahead of them. I sometimes wonder: what would it be like to read Bulgakov for the first time now? Never mind. Anyway, if you want to reply: 'I don't know', it means you haven't loved yet."

Curious, he thought, that's just how I'd answer, if I felt like talking. He shrugged.

"I have loved. I was twenty-five when I met and fell in love, reciprocally, with Kamil Sosnowski. He was three years younger. It makes me want to laugh when I think I couldn't sleep because of the age difference. I was afraid those three years would spoil it all. The whole time I was afraid something else would spoil it, that it was impossible, that such things didn't happen. There's no point in my describing it to you - that state of mind is indescribable. But you should know that almost twenty years have gone by, and I can still describe every moment of our friends.h.i.+p just as it happened and repeat every remark we uttered, word for word. I can remember what books we read and what films we watched. Every last little detail."

She lit another cigarette. Szacki no longer felt like smoking.

"Do you know, he was waiting for me that day? We had arranged to meet for supper. He was going to whip up some food, and I was going to get hold of something to drink and a 'Warsaw Delight'. Do you remember those? Chocolatey stuff with broken wafers inside, a bit like a big fairy cake crossed with a Wedel's Medley. Our magic pudding. Other people have special songs, we had our 'Delight'.

"When I ran over to his place, deliriously happy, they were already there. I knocked and knocked, but no one opened the door. I stood there for an hour, maybe two, but no one came. I went home and called every half hour. I knew something must have happened and he'd had to leave with his parents and sister, but I still kept calling and going round there. When I called for the umpteenth time, Hanna answered. You can imagine the rest for yourself. At least try. The worst thing was knowing he'd been there all the time, and that they were there, bullying him. If only it had entered my stupid head to call the militia... everything might have been different."

Szacki lit up after all. What else did he have to do? Somehow he couldn't get worked up about this melodrama.

"In a way I died with him. Henryk was at my side the whole time. Tender, sympathetic, understanding, ready to forgive anything. He didn't interest me, but he was there. I got used to him. I married him. I soon fell pregnant. Kasia was born and I started living for her. Then Bartek. Sometimes it was better, sometimes worse. That's family life. It ended with Kasia's death. I'm ashamed, but if I could resurrect just one person, it would be Kamil. And then his father appeared, d.a.m.n him, with his truth and his justice. I wish that day had never dawned."

She lit another cigarette, and the small room was filled with smoke. Combined with the oppressive heat, it was getting unbearable.

"I don't know why I went to azienkowska Street that evening. I can't explain it. But I went. I came in as he was packing. He confessed to me what he'd found out during the constellation. He was badly shaken, crying and saying he'd almost committed suicide. I thought that was the best thing he could have done, and I asked if he shouldn't complete the therapy, for Bartek's sake. He refused to. I ran out of his room and went into the kitchen for a drink of water, because I thought I was going to be sick. You know what happened after that."

Not long ago, in spite of everything, he would have wanted to take her to court. Now he didn't care. So much so that he didn't even feel like responding. She went on staring at him in silence, nodded her head and stood up.

"I'd like to know, were your motives for the deed purely emotional?" he finally asked.

She just smiled and left.

Prosecutor Teodor Szacki got up from his chair, took off his jacket, opened the window wide and tipped the dog-ends from the ashtray into the bin. He opened the drawer to put the ashtray away, and his gaze fell on a piece of paper where he'd written out an extract from a newspaper interview with Bert h.e.l.linger, probably from Gazeta Wyborcza.

I'm always being asked to condemn the perpetrators of all sorts of crimes, but I know the only way to cope with the presence of evil is to admit that they are people too, in spite of everything. We should find a place in our hearts for them as well. For our own good. That doesn't free them of responsibility for their acts in the least. But if we exclude someone, we deny them the right to belong, we put ourselves in the place of G.o.d, we decide who is to live and who not. And that is quite extraordinary.

III.

On the way to Monika's place in Chomiczowka he stopped at Wilson Square to buy two cream puffs at Blikle's patisserie - those were their favourite cakes. As he stood in the queue, he thought about Jadwiga Telak and her Warsaw Delight, and felt very, very tired. Tired by this case, tired by his work, tired by the lover who didn't really entirely interest him. There was something missing again, but what?

Justice, he thought, and was startled by this idea. It sounded as if someone next to him had said it aloud. He looked round, but the oliborz old-age pensioners were standing meekly in line, examining the cold counter full of pastries and the shelves full of cakes in mute concentration. Justice, meaning what? He hoped the voice would answer him. But this time he didn't hear words - instead an image appeared. The image of the metal cylinder from which he had extracted the twenty-four-year-old whisky. He thought of Karol Wenzel, who lived on the way to Monika's. Maybe he should pay him a call? Maybe there was a way to deal with the senders of exclusive Scotch? What was the harm in checking? Surely a chat with a slightly nutty historian was too little for them to rub him out?

He bought the cream puffs, called Wenzel, who happened to be at home, and drove up to the house on eromski Street. As he was getting out, he took the cakes with him; he felt silly turning up empty-handed. He was walking towards the stairwell between the garages and a dustbin, when a little girl Helka's age came flying out of a side alley on a scooter, almost ramming into him. He jumped out of the way, but the handlebars caught on the packet of cakes. The paper tore open, and one of the cakes fell out and smashed on the tarmac. The little girl, really very like his daughter, stopped, and when she saw the cake lying on the wrinkled tarmac, the corners of her mouth turned down in dismay.

"I'm terribly sorry, little one," he said quickly. "I didn't see you coming, I was miles away and I whacked you with my cakes. Are you all right?"

She nodded, but there were tears in her eyes.

"Phew, that's a relief. I was afraid one of my cream puffs might have hurt you. Do you know, cream puffs can get really cross? They suddenly go for you, just like weasels. That's why I keep them in this packet. But perhaps this one's not dangerous - what do you think?" He leaned tentatively over the cream puff and prodded it with a finger.

The little girl laughed. He took the surviving cake out of the torn packet and handed it to her.

"Have it to say sorry," he said. "But eat it carefully so it doesn't get cross."

The little girl looked round uncertainly, said thank you, took the cream puff and rode away, finding it hard to keep her balance. She really was very like Helka. Did he really want to go and see Karol Wenzel, dig up the case and risk the lives of his loved ones? He remembered what the historian had said during their conversation: "So if you're thinking of getting at them in any way, back off right now. Think about it in the morning, and in the evening you'll be crying over your daughter's body."

And he froze.

He hadn't told him he had a daughter.

He thought about little Helka Szacka, about the smell of fresh bread and about a skull opening with a hideous squelch on the dissection table.

Only seconds earlier he'd been sure this story had to have a continuation.

He was wrong.

Author's note.

My sincere thanks to the prosecutors who told me about their difficult and, unfortunately, underappreciated work. I hope they do not bear me any grudges for the things I have invented or twisted to make reality fit the needs of fiction. My thanks too to Dorota Kowalska of Newsweek for her article 'In the Service of Crime', without which this book would have been completely different. To those interested in constellation therapy I recommend Bert h.e.l.linger's Ordnungen der Liebe (The Orders of Love) (Carl-Auer-Systeme Verlag, Heidelberg 2001), and to anyone wanting to know more about the secret services in Communist Poland, Henryk Gbocki's excellent Policja tajna przy robocie (The Secret Police at Work) (Arcana, Krakow 2005).

BITTER LEMON PRESS.

end.