Part 20 (1/2)
”What about Kamil Sosnowski?”
”No.”
”Pity. Please don't be surprised by the next question, I'm not joking, I'm checking an important lead in the inquiry.”
”Pity. I was getting fond of your jokes.”
”In that case there's a prosecutor who'd say you were the first person ever to do so. Do you remember, either from your student days, or maybe Henryk Telak told you about even earlier times, the women he used to date? Did he have a great love? Did some great tragedy occur that affected both him and her, an alarming, traumatic experience?”
”I know nothing about that. The polytechnic was never any good for that sort of observation, there weren't many girls there, but I do remember that Henryk very rarely came along when we went out - forgive the expression - 'after p.u.s.s.y'. A couple of times he dated someone for a few months, though I wouldn't say it was anything serious. On the whole he was quite shy. In the final year of college, I guess it was 1984, he fell madly in love with Jadwiga. She didn't want him. He went about in a daze. It's a miracle he defended his thesis. But straight after that we parted ways, and then the next time we met, they were already married. They got married in 1988 or 1989.”
”Was it a successful marriage?”
”We didn't see each other often enough for me to judge.”
As soon as Kuzniecow had left the company headquarters, Igor went into his office. He wasn't wearing a jacket.
”What a b.l.o.o.d.y oik, enough to make me come out in a sweat. I felt a shudder run through me every time he opened his mouth. I hate people like that. Did you hear it all?”
He said yes.
”It looks as if we can't go on pretending. They're not just blundering about in the dark. I went cold when he asked about him. I never thought they'd get onto that.”
The Chairman stood up and went over to the window. Indeed, it was an inconvenience, but compared with other threats he'd had to face in the past few years it was nothing to get upset about. He gazed at the concrete funfair that stretched out below and thought that if he had divine power, in a single instant he would reveal all the secrets hidden in the walls of this sad little city. All of them. Not just the major ones - he was their depositary too - that had to be kept for the sake of state security. But all the commercial frauds, disloyalties, marital infidelities, flirtatious lies, parents' half-truths and children's concealments. Just like that, at the click of his fingers, it would all be exposed. Would there be a single person left after that who would dare to repeat the words of the feeble little G.o.d they wors.h.i.+pped so blindly, ”the truth will set you free”? He doubted it.
”You're right,” he said, turning away from the window. ”Time to start taking action. In my view Kuzniecow is harmless, but we need to know as much as possible about Prosecutor Szacki: where his wife works, where the daughter goes to school, who he's shafting on the side, who he meets for a beer and who he doesn't like at work. I think before the end of the week it'll be necessary to pay him a visit.”
”How long have we got?”
”Until Wednesday morning. After that it might already be too late.”
IV.
Cezary Rudzki had recovered and returned to his stylish Hemingway look. A thin polo neck, fluffy-looking hair that had mostly gone white, beard, piercing pale-blue eyes and therapeutic smirk, kindly and mocking all at once. His entire appearance seemed to say that this man would definitely listen to you with interest and understanding, but he'd keep a healthy distance and restrain himself from invading your most personal territory. Yes, Cezary Rudzki could have appeared on billboards advertising psychoa.n.a.lysis.
Szacki had started a conversation about hypnosis, and the therapist had been giving long wordy answers, until finally the prosecutor had had to ask him not to explain his theories to him in such detail, but just answer the questions.
”Are you able to hypnotize your patients?”
”Of course. I rarely make use of it, because in my view the therapeutic process should be fully conscious. But often the source of the condition is such a firmly denied memory that there is no other way of reaching it than by making the patient regress. I treat it as a last resort.”
”Regress?” Szacki preferred to make sure he and Rudzki had the same thing in mind.
”Taking the patient back into the past. It's a delicate operation, demanding caution and tact. And courage, because the patient often brings up the memories that have set the most firmly in his mind or been the most strongly denied. It can be shocking. I once had a patient who had been abused in childhood by the carers at a children's home, a terribly badly scarred woman. But I didn't know about that. In a way, neither did she. During the regression, when she suddenly started telling me in the voice and words of a little girl about the details of the orgy she had been forced to take part in - just imagine, I vomited.”
”Perhaps it's better we can't remember certain things.”
”I think so too, though many therapists are of a different view. I think our brain knows what it's doing when it tells us to forget. Though of course there are deeds that we're not free to erase from memory. You know best about that.”
Szacki frowned.
”What do you have in mind?”
”Deeds for which their perpetrators must suffer the penalty. Crimes, offences.”
”And did you inform the police or the prosecutor's office about the carers at the children's home?”
”The patient was almost sixty.”
”But if during hypnosis you came upon information about a recently committed crime and you knew that keeping it a secret would be better for your patient, what would you do?”
”I'd keep it a secret. I am guided by the patient's well-being, not society's.”
”That's where we differ.”
”So it would seem.”
Szacki discreetly glanced at his watch; it was half-past three. He'd have to speed up the pace of the conversation if he didn't want to be late for his meeting with Monika.
”And could you hypnotize someone so that afterwards - regardless of their own will - they did something they wouldn't normally be capable of doing?”
This was one of his theories, which in spite of everything seemed to him more credible than the idea of Hanna Kwiatkowska committing murder. The charismatic therapist exploits his natural influence on people and uses hypnosis to settle his own scores by means of the patient's hands. All right, it's more fantastical than a TV crime series, but who said something like that couldn't happen? The reasoning had lots of weak points: first and foremost there was the lack of a motive, and apart from that it was hard to answer the question why Telak would have gone to have therapy with someone who had a score to settle with him. But Szacki felt instinctively that this case was not going to have an obvious solution and that he'd have to consider every theory, even the ones that at first sight looked the most idiotic.
”I don't know, I've never tried; I'm a doctor, not a conjuror, my dear Prosecutor.” Rudzki was clearly hurt by the question. ”But please don't believe what Dean Koontz describes in his trashy novels. Programming someone to make them do something against their own will and conscience would require not hypnosis, but plain old brainwas.h.i.+ng. A lot of hypnotism sessions, probably combined with pharmacological back-up, aimed at rebuilding the patient's personality so that he might behave according to an imposed programme. But even then success is not guaranteed. In any book about hypnosis you will find the information that it is virtually impossible to force someone to act against his morality. To give you a well-known example: during cla.s.ses at an academy the lecturer had to leave a patient who was deep in a hypnotic trance in the lecture room, so he put her in the care of a student. Of course the student immediately told her to undress, at which she woke up and hit him in the face. You see yourself, if it were that simple, hypnosis would be used by every firm to stop the employees from wanting to go out for a cigarette, gossip or play patience.”
Teodor Szacki automatically agreed, wondering the whole time if he should tell Rudzki about Kwiatkowska pretending to be Telak's dead daughter. He had already spoken to Wrobel about it, so he didn't need a psychologist's opinion. But he could check something else. He asked Rudzki for total discretion and played him Telak's recording.
”Absolutely incredible,” said the therapist, not looking at all shocked or horrified. Quite the opposite - he was flushed with excitement. ”Do you know what that means? That the field can be stronger than anyone could have imagined. If the recording is from eleven p.m., four hours after the session ended, it's simply extraordinary.”
He stood up and started pacing the room. Or rather skipping around in circles, as the size of the room did not allow for long walks or even a couple of energetic steps.
”Such a strong identification four hours after the session that it's hard to believe. You might suppose Miss Kwiatkowska's personality was in some way similar to that of Henryk's daughter, so that a link was made, but even so! Do you know what a potent force this attests to? I wouldn't be surprised if the theory of the field went beyond psychology and became the embryo of a new religion!”
Rudzki was getting more and more excited; meanwhile it was already three forty-five.
”a.s.suming she's not pretending,” Szacki coldly put in.
”Sorry? I don't understand. What do you mean, 'pretending'?” The doctor stopped skipping about and looked at the prosecutor in amazement.
”Please don't forget that the conclusion of your therapeutic experiment was a body lying on the floor with his eye spilled down his cheek. Someone killed him and I won't conceal the fact - though I hope this will remain between us - that Hanna Kwiatkowska is my main suspect. Just take a look - it all fits. She plays the role of the daughter who committed suicide because of her father; her identification with her doesn't stop; she asks him to come to her, but he escapes; she can't bear that, so she seizes the skewer. It all fits.”
Rudzki sat down.