Part 2 (1/2)
”I'm ninety-nine per cent certain,” he began in a serious, solemn tone, ”the butler did it.”
Szacki laid his knife and fork against the edge of his plate and sighed heavily. Communicating with policemen was sometimes like being a teacher with a cla.s.s full of children suffering from ADHD: it took a lot of patience and self-control.
”Are you going to get to the point?” he asked coldly.
Kuzniecow shook his head in disbelief.
”You're such a petty bureaucrat, Teodor. Read for yourself exactly what they said. No one knows anyone, no one knows anything, no one saw anything. They're all very sorry, they're shocked. They met a week ago; only Rudzki, the psychotherapist, had known him for longer, a year or so. They all noticed that the deceased was introverted and depressed. They spoke so convincingly that I found myself wondering if he hadn't committed suicide.”
”You must be joking. By sticking a skewer in his eye?” Szacki wiped his mouth on his napkin. The omelette hadn't been bad at all.
”Right, it's hardly likely. But if people are capable of shooting themselves in the head or biting off and swallowing their own tongues, you see what I mean. Anyway, ask the pathologist. And on the subject of tongues, have you heard the one about the lady speech therapist who had such a well-trained tongue that she choked on it while doing her exercises? Not bad, eh?”
”So what are your impressions?” asked Szacki, without commenting on the joke.
Kuzniecow smacked his lips and fell into thought. Szacki waited patiently. He knew that few people were as sharp or had as astute a sense of observation as this larger-than-life, far-too-jovial cop with the Russian name.
”You'll see for yourself,” he said at last. ”They all made a very good impression. None of them was unnaturally self-controlled, or unnaturally excited and shocked. And often that's how you can tell a murderer. Either he pretends to be cold as ice or mad with despair. Any departure from the norm is suspicious, but they're all on the level. More or less.”
”Or else one of them knows how to behave himself,” suggested Szacki.
”Yes, the therapist, I thought of that too. Besides, he knew the victim the longest - he might have had a motive. I was even ready to lock him up for forty-eight hours if he'd betrayed himself in any way, but nothing of the kind. He's a bit superior and arrogant, like all shrinks - b.l.o.o.d.y nutters, the lot of them. But I didn't feel he was lying.”
In other words we've got a load of s.h.i.+t, thought Szacki, putting out a hand to stop the waitress from taking his roll and b.u.t.ter away with the empty plate. He'd paid enough - he was going to eat every last crumb of it.
”Maybe it really was a blunder while a burglar was on the job,” he said.
”Maybe,” agreed Kuzniecow. ”They're all educated, intelligent people. Do you believe one of them would decide to commit murder in such a theatrical place? They don't have to read crime fiction to know we'll keep sniffing around them to the bitter end. No one in their right mind would ever kill in such an idiotic way. It's senseless.”
Kuzniecow was right. It had promised to be interesting, but it looked as if they were seeking a petty thief who had accidentally become a murderer. Which meant they'd have to follow the usual routine, thought Szacki, making a mental checklist.
”Tell the press we're looking for people who were hanging about there that night and might have seen something. Interrogate all the watchmen, security guards, priests, anyone who was working there at the weekend. Find out who's king of the castle and who rented the place to Rudzki so I can talk to him. I was planning to go there in the week anyway to take a good look at it all.”
Kuzniecow nodded - the prosecutor's instructions were obvious to him. ”Just write it down for me when you get a moment so I've got confirmation in writing.”
”Fine. And I've got one more request, without confirmation.”
”Yes?”
”Keep an eye on Rudzki for the next few days. I've got absolutely nothing to charge him with, but for now he's the main suspect. I'm afraid he'll do a runner and that'll be the end of it.”
”What do you mean? Don't you believe the bold Polish police force will track him down?”
”Don't make me laugh. In this country you only have to leave your registered address to disappear for ever.”
Kuzniecow laughed out loud.
”You're not just a petty bureaucrat, you're a cynic too,” he said, getting himself ready to go. ”Give my best to your lovely s.e.xy wife.”
Szacki raised an eyebrow. He wasn't sure if Kuzniecow was talking about the same woman who trailed around the house complaining of new pains every day.
II.
On the way to his room Szacki got a doc.u.ments file from the office. Catalogue number ID 803/05. Unbelievable. In other words soon they'd have a thousand registered inquiries and break last year's record by miles. It looked as if a small area of central Warsaw was the blackest spot on the crime map of Poland. Admittedly, most of the inquiries conducted here were to do with economic, financial and accounting scams that were handled by a separate unit - the result of the fact that perhaps eighty per cent of all the businesses in Poland had their head offices between Unia Lubelska Square and Bankowy Square - but there was no lack of ordinary criminals either. Almost twenty prosecutors in the ”First ID”, or the First Investigative Department, worked on thefts, muggings, rapes and a.s.saults - and also on plenty of cases that the guys from organized crime at the regional prosecutor's office were supposed to deal with. In practice the stars from organized crime - or ”OC” as it was known - chose the more interesting incidents for themselves, and left the ”everyday shootings” to the district office. As a result, the OC Prosecutor from the regional office had a few cases on his books, while the District Prosecutor had a few dozen. Or in fact a few hundred, if you included ongoing inquiries, ones that had been shelved, ones that depended on finding a particular witness and ones that were waiting to be heard in court but had been postponed for the umpteenth time. Szacki, who even so was in a fairly comfortable position for a district prosecutor because he really only dealt with murders, had tried last week to count up all his cases. It came to 111, 112 with Telak's murder - 111 if the sentence were pa.s.sed today in the Pieszczoch case, and 113 if the judge decided to send the case back to the prosecutor's office. He shouldn't - it had all been prepared perfectly, and in Szacki's view Chajnert was the best judge in the Warsaw district.
Unfortunately, relations between the Prosecution Service and the courts had been getting worse from year to year. Even though the prosecutor's work was closer to a judge's job than a policeman's, and the Prosecution Service was the ”armed forces” of the judiciary, the distance was increasing between officials with purple tr.i.m.m.i.n.g on their gowns - the judges - and officials with red tr.i.m.m.i.n.g - the prosecutors. A month ago Szacki's boss, Janina Chorko, had gone to the regional court on Leszno Street to ask for a date to be set as soon as possible for a well-publicized case concerning multiple rapes at a sports centre on Nowowiejska Street. She had been given a dressing down and told that the courts are independent and no prosecutor was going to tell them how they should do their job. It was laughable - not so bad when insults were the only result of such hostility, but worse when it was the verdicts that suffered. Sometimes Szacki got the impression that only a case where the accused confessed all on the first day of the inquiry and then repeated his confession three times in the courtroom was one you could count on winning. All the rest were a lottery.
He tossed his umbrella into a corner of the room, which for the next two weeks he didn't have to share with the usual colleague, because she had gone to a sanatorium with her sickly child, for the third time this year. In fact he had been given two of her cases, but at least he didn't have to look at the mess she made around herself. He sat at his desk, which he always tried to keep in impeccable order, and took out a sheet of paper listing the phone numbers of the people from azienkowska Street. He had his hand on the receiver when Maryla, his boss's secretary, put her head round the door.
”Your presence is requested in the parlour,” she said.
”Be there in fifteen.”
”She said, and I quote: 'When he says he'll be there in fifteen, tell him I mean right now!'”
”I'll be there in a moment.”
”She said, and I quote-”
”I'll be there in a moment,” he said firmly, pointing meaningfully at the receiver he was holding. Maryla rolled her eyes and left.
He quickly made appointments for the afternoon with Barbara Jarczyk and Hanna Kwiatkowska - there were just minor problems with Euzebiusz Kaim.
”I've got a meeting today outside town.”
”Please postpone it.”
”It's a very important meeting.”
”I see. Should I write you a sick note or have you arrested at once?”
There was a long silence.
”Actually it's not that important.”
”Excellent. In that case, see you at three o'clock.”
The therapist wasn't answering. Szacki left him a message and felt a nasty cramp in his stomach. He hoped the guy had just unplugged the phone for a while. He preferred not to think about other eventualities. He called the mortuary on Oczko Street too, found out the autopsy was due to take place on Wednesday morning at ten and left the room.