Part 9 (1/2)

”I don't care what everyone does,” muttered Weronika. ”And I'm not interested in you two either. Where have you been all this time?” she asked Szacki, kissing him on the nose by way of greeting. ”Have you been drinking?” she added, frowning.

”I had to meet up with Oleg and I drank tea and apple juice,” he lied glibly - he suffered from the usual prosecutor's aberration; he thought everyone told lies, and he did his best to recognize exactly when they were doing it, but he also knew that, unless you tell them straight out they're being deceived, or unless you're spouting horrendous, improbable nonsense, normal people take everything at face value.

”You should have invited them over, we haven't met up for ages. I wonder how Natalia's doing?”

Szacki hung up his coat and jacket. It was a relief to take off his tie and shoes. Maybe I should learn how to go to work in a T-s.h.i.+rt and sandals after all, he thought - it'd be much more comfortable. The whole time Helka went on standing in the hall with her head drooping and her arms crossed. He picked her up and cuddled her.

”And what if we find a really fabulous place?” he said. ”A hundred times better than McDonald's, with a huge playground? Where you can run about and all that?”

”There aren't any places like that,” replied Helka.

”But what if we find one?”

”I'll think about it.”

”In that case will you go and brush your teeth now and give us some time to look?”

She nodded in silence, let him put her down and ran to the bathroom. He wondered where they were going to find a playground where they could hold her birthday party for a reasonable price.

He went into the kitchen, took a can of beer out of the fridge, opened it and stood beside Weronika. She cuddled up to him and began to purr.

”I'm hardly alive.”

”Just like me,” he said.

They stood without talking, until the silence was broken by a bleep announcing a text message.

”That's yours,” muttered Weronika.

Szacki went into the hall and took the phone out of his jacket. ”Thank you for a wonderful evening. You're a very rude prosecutor, but a very nice one too. MG.”

”What is it?” asked Weronika.

”Just an advert. Send a hundred texts and you might win a mug. Something like that, I deleted it.”

The final remark was actually true.

4.

Wednesday, 8th June 2005.

Argentina beat Brazil 3-1 in the World Cup qualifying stages. The first child is born whose mother had part of an ovary transplanted from another woman. Archbishop Stanisaw Dziwisz visits Krakow and announces that he will not burn any of John Paul IIs notebooks. In Popowo, the suburban site of the women's prison, a conference is held on ”women in prison”. Up to a third of those convicted are murderesses, usually victims of domestic violence. From today anyone who identifies those guilty of killing cormorants at the bird sanctuary on Lake Jeziorak will be rewarded with a home cinema and 10,000 zlotys. An advertising code of conduct is established for Polish breweries: they will not be allowed to use the images of people or characters who have a particular influence on minors. In Warsaw a big gala is held to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Palace of Youth, within the Palace of Culture; a twenty-foot-high monument is erected on Ujazdowskie Avenue in memory of General Stefan ”Grot” Rowecki; and at Pawiak, the Second World War prison, the bronze sculpture of an elm tree is unveiled, which was a symbol of freedom for the prisoners. The police broke up a gang of criminals making alcohol out of windscreen was.h.i.+ng fluid. Ten thousand litres of the drink were seized and two people were taken into custody. Maximum temperature in the city - thirteen degrees; no sun and a little rain.

I.

Teodor Szacki had always been surprised by the number of corpses they crammed into the Forensic Medicine Unit on Oczko Street. Besides Telak, there were three more bodies on the other dissection tables, and four more waiting by the window on hospital stretchers. There was a smell of steak tartare in the air, seasoned with a faint odour of faeces and vomit - the result of examining the intestines and stomach. The ”necrophiliacs” who were going to deal with Telak were quite young. The older one was about forty, the younger looked as if he'd only just graduated. Szacki stood by the wall. He'd never been fascinated by autopsies, though he knew a good pathologist could tell more from a corpse than the entire Forensics Laboratory (of which the City Police Headquarters were so proud) could from evidence secured at the incident site. All the same, he wanted it to be over as soon as possible.

The older doctor gave him a derisive look as he pulled on his latex gloves.

”Was it you who asked us to check if the deceased had stuck the skewer in his own eye?”

For pity's sake, thought Szacki, spare me a wisecracking pathologist. That's too much so early in the day.

”We have to know,” he replied calmly.

”A very cunning theory,” said the doctor, smiling mischievously, and began to give the body a thorough examination.

The a.s.sistant took notes.

”There are no signs of bruising, cuts, stab wounds or lacerations or bullet holes on the limbs and trunk,” dictated the pathologist. He carefully lifted the sunken eyelid under which Telak's eye had once been. ”Right eye missing, fragments of vitreous body and cornea visible on the cheek.” He put a finger in the eye socket and dug out the remains of something grey; Szacki squinted to lose focus. ”Skull bone behind right eye socket crushed, pushed inwards, in all likelihood by a sharp instrument.” He lifted the head and examined it closely, parting the hair. ”Otherwise the head shows no evidence of other injuries.”

”I'm shuddering at the thought of the next instruction,” the surgeon said to Szacki, as with a confident movement he made a Y-shaped incision in Telak's ribcage and belly, folded back the skin and hooked it on the chin; meanwhile his a.s.sistant ”scalped” the skull. ”Now let's think, maybe this'll be it: 'We want you to establish if the deceased, found with his head cut off under a tramcar, could possibly have cut it off himself with a pair of scissors, then lain down on the tracks and waited for an approaching vehicle'.”

”People do all sorts of things,” said Szacki, raising his voice to shout over the noise of the electric saw the younger pathologist was using to cut the skull. As usual at this moment he wanted to leave - he couldn't bear the wet squelch that went with opening the head. He belched biliously when he heard the loathsome sound. Just like the noise when you try to clear a blocked sink.

Szacki was expecting more jokes, but the surgeons concentrated on their work. The younger one was tying something up deep inside the trunk, while with expert movements the older one was using an instrument deceptively similar to a bread knife to remove Telak's internal organs and put them on a spare table top at the corpse's feet. Then he went up to the open skull.

”Good, cutting up the offal can wait - there's nothing there anyway. Let's take a look at this head.” He moved a small aluminium table up to the open skull, gently removed Telak's grey-and-red brain and put it on a tray. He peered inside the skull. Suddenly he frowned.

”He must have found it intolerable - maybe he really did kill himself,” he said seriously. Szacki took two paces closer.

”What is it?” he asked.

The doctor rummaged inside Telak's head, clearly trying to pull something out that was putting up resistance. A scene from Alien appeared before Szacki's eyes. The pathologist twisted his hand, as if trying to turn a key in a lock, and slowly withdrew it. There between his fingers was a rolled-up condom.

”I think he had an obsession but he couldn't live with it. Poor guy...” The doctor lowered his head pensively, while his a.s.sistant shook with suppressed laughter, and Szacki bit his lip.

”You must be aware there's a paragraph in the penal code about desecrating corpses,” he said coldly.

The pathologist threw the condom in the bin and gave Szacki the sort of look children in cla.s.s give the teacher's pet.

”How do you people manage to be such boring bureaucrats?” he asked. ”Do you get special training?”

”We have psychological tests during our studies,” replied Szacki. ”Will you carry on, or do I have to call the office and ask for two days' leave?”

The doctor didn't answer. In silence he examined the inside of the skull and, very carefully, the brain, then cut the internal organs into slices. Szacki recognized the heart, lungs and stomach. He belched again. He should have drunk tea that morning, not coffee, he thought. Finally the surgeon looked inside the stomach; the air was filled with a sour odour.

”Your client was sick shortly before he died,” the doctor told the prosecutor. ”Pretty thoroughly.”

Szacki immediately thought of the empty bottle of sleeping pills found in his room.