A Grain of Truth (18 page)

“Where did they film that? It’s definitely not in our town. They make such a to-do, and then all he does is ride his bike about the market square, there and back again. I don’t envy him riding it on those cobblestones.”

Mrs Rojska didn’t get drawn into the debate; she had stopped taking any notice of her husband’s grumblings twenty years ago, halfway through their joint adventure. Nowadays her brain was so good at turning it into background noise that it didn’t even drown out what the characters were saying on TV.

“Or the start? Did you see Father Mateusz opening a new cinema? A priest! A cinema! In Sandomierz! It’s the Black Mafia’s taken away our cinema near the cathedral. Soon as it turned out all that’s church ground, they got hold of it and made it into a community centre, where bugger all happens, just so the bishop won’t be shocked when he looks out of the window and sees the young people off to watch American
films. And so then what? So then there’s no cinema in Sandomierz. Except in
Father Mateusz
.”

“Don’t blaspheme.”

“I’m not blaspheming. I never said a bad word against God, but I can say whatever I like about the clerics and the scriptwriters. Polish crime shows, honest to God, it’s the same with crime as with everything else. What sort of a crime show is it, when bugger all happens, and on top of that you know from the start what’s going on?”

“So why are you watching?”

“I’m watching because I want to see my town on the telly. And naturally I can’t, because apparently they film it somewhere just outside Warsaw, and neither the church nor the vestry’s actually here, just that bike and the market square. And the police station at the tax office, that’s good. Besides, remember how we went for coffee and they were filming? We’ve got to watch, because we don’t know which episode we’ll be in, I’m recording them all just in case.”

“Oh look, that’s Marek Siudym.”

“He’s not in bad shape neither, I can’t think why those scribblers have put him in an old folks’ home.”

“He’s the manager.”

“Oh, I see. Do you think our children will put us in an old folks’ home too? I know it’s not a nice subject, but maybe we ought to suggest it ourselves? I know we feel young, but I’m already seventy and you’re sixty-seven, and you can’t just avoid talking about it. Getting up to our second floor every day is a challenge for me. And I’m sure it’d be easier for them, there’d be someone taking care of us, so they’d have peace of mind. And actually the old folks’ home doesn’t scare me, as long as we’re together.”

Mrs Rojska grabbed her husband’s hand; they were feeling the same emotion. On the screen, Artur Żmijewski was in his Sandomierz church outside Warsaw, asking the congregation to pray for the lonely and the afflicted, and to know love, saying that it is never too late to love and be loved. Mr Rojski stroked his wife’s forearm; sometimes she wondered why her husband never stopped talking to her when they could communicate perfectly well without words. It was a mystery.

“You know what, I was thinking about Zygmunt.”

“The one in the series?” The victim in the programme was called Zygmunt.

“No, our Zygmunt…”

“Strange, isn’t it, how everyone with that name is at least seventy. Even on the telly. Can you imagine a baby called Zygmunt? No, they’re always silly old codgers.”

“I was thinking maybe we should go and pray for the lonely, for them to fall in love again. Zygmunt is so odd – he’s aged about fifteen years since his Ania died, and I worry about him. And I was thinking there are lots of people like that.”

For a while they watched the series in silence. Mrs Rojska thought about all her lonely friends, Mr Rojski thought about how his wife’s kind heart would never cease to surprise him and that he was the luckiest man in the world, because this baker’s daughter with the plaits down to her waist had once wanted him.

“So shall we go today? Say our prayers and get mass over and done with, then tomorrow we won’t have to go.”

“No, not today. I’d still like to make a meat loaf for tomorrow, and Krysia might drop in, and besides, you know what I think – you have to go to church on Sunday. We’re not Jews or the like, keeping the Sabbath on Saturday.”

He nodded; true, true enough. But what he found most convincing was the meat loaf – his wife could conjure real works of art out of beef; if the cow had seen them she’d have been proud to have given up her life for something so wonderful. At every opportunity Mr Rojski repeated the hackneyed phrase that if cholesterol were going to kill him, he’d go with a smile on his face. Because it was worth it.

“It seems dormant conscience is suddenly awake,” said the on-screen Bishop of Sandomierz in the voice of actor Sławomir Orzechowski. “That is not pleasant, for it leads to a sense of helplessness, resentment and pain. And then He helps us to rise from our knees.”

Irena and Janusz Rojski did not go to church that day; what decided it for her were her views about life, and for him it was the meat loaf.
Cuddled up to each other, they watched a lovely bird’s-eye-view shot of Sandomierz in the final scene of the episode, and thought how peaceful and innocent their city was.

V

Beneath the façade of his bold and controversial opinions, Szyller was incredibly shallow, and his erudition turned out to be nothing more than a bit of dexterous juggling with stereotypes. Those were the conclusions Szacki reached as he listened to the man’s arguments about Germany. As an honorary member of the Union of Poles in Germany he had a lot to say on the subject, but none of it was of any interest – nor was it all that positive; he suggested that the Poles were a persecuted minority there. On top of that, he had a particular way of talking that probably appealed to women, but which Szacki found immensely annoying. Regardless of the scale of the matter, he expressed everything with commitment and careful emphasis, in quite a raised tone, which might have made him come across as a virile fellow, sure of himself and his views, who knew what he wanted and usually got it. But actually Jerzy Szyller was just a self-focused egotist who loved the sound of his own voice, which was why he put so much effort into the lines he was uttering.

Verbal masturbation, Szacki thought to himself, as he listened to Szyller’s family history. He was descended from one of the first members of the Union, hence his high standing and honorary membership. He was born in Germany and had a small house in North Rhine-Westphalia, near Bochum, where the leadership of the Bund, as he put it, was located. But he spent more time in Sandomierz or at his flat in Warsaw, which he kept calling “the servant’s room”, as if it was meant to be funny.

“Do you recognize this symbol?” Szacki took a print-out of the “
rodło
” emblem from his briefcase, reluctantly, afraid he would wince at the next emphatic “naturally”.

“Naturally! That’s the ‘
rodło
’, the symbol of the Bund – for us it’s
nigh on a sacred symbol. I don’t know if you’re aware of how it came into being – I actually had the honour of hearing it from the lady who designed it herself, Janina Kłopocka…”

“I am aware of it,” Szacki interrupted. “I’m sorry if you find my question stupid, but in what form do you use the ‘
rodło
’? Flags, crests, letterheads, shirts, lapel badges?”

“We’re not a sect, you know – naturally the ‘
rodło
’ is on show wherever the Union makes an official appearance, but we don’t hang it next to the White Eagle. Ostentation is never advisable.”

Szacki took out a photograph of the badge that the victim had been holding. He had specially prepared a fairly ordinary one, which didn’t suggest it was an important piece of evidence in the case. He showed it to Szyller.

“Do members of the Union often wear this sort of thing?”

Szyller looked at the picture.

“Only those who are actively involved, and perhaps distinguished members. You won’t buy this from a Turk – you can only get it from the chairman of the Bund.”

“You have one, naturally?”

“Naturally.”

“May I see it?”

“Naturally.”

Szyller stood up and disappeared into the house. Szacki waited, thinking with trepidation about all the paperwork ahead of him after this conversation. He’d have to listen to the recording, pick out the relevant bits, write them down and get it signed. And do a separate exhibit form. Jesus, why didn’t he have an assistant?

“It’s a strange thing…” Szyller was standing in the doorway; in the warm afternoon light his snow-white shirt looked peach-coloured.

“But you can’t find it,” added the prosecutor.

“No, I can’t.”

“Where do you keep it?”

“In a box with my cufflinks. I only wear it on special occasions.”

“Does anyone know about it? Girlfriend? Close friends?”

Szyller shook his head. He looked genuinely surprised. That wasn’t a good sign. Szacki would have preferred him to start scheming, saying it was in his jacket in Warsaw, anything.

“And may I ask where you got it?” he finally asked the prosecutor.

“We took it out of the victim’s hand.”

“Elżbieta,” Szyller corrected him automatically, but the careful emphasis was gone from his voice.

“Elżbieta, the victim.”

Szyller plodded over to the sofa, and sat down opposite Szacki without saying a word. He gave him an enquiring look, as if waiting for Szacki to advise him what to say.

“Where did you spend the Easter holiday?”

“On Sunday I was at my sister’s house in Berlin, I flew back on Monday morning, and by one in the afternoon I was here.”

“Where were you on Monday and Tuesday?”

“At home.”

“Did anyone visit you? Friends, acquaintances?”

A denial. Szacki just gazed at length, and kept silent, planning how to continue the conversation, and suddenly a striking thought occurred to him. It was a stupid thought, without any foundation, born purely of his instinct, yet disturbing enough to make the prosecutor stand up and start slowly walking about the room, carefully looking around it. What he was looking for in this tasteful museum of the landed gentry were signs that a man of flesh and blood lived here – wine stains, photos on the wall, crumbs left over from breakfast, a dirty coffee cup. Some kicked-off muddy shoes, a rug to wrap round you in the evenings, a cap thrown on the window sill. He couldn’t find anything. Either the house was never used, or it had been extremely carefully tidied. To remove dirt? Or someone’s presence? Or evidence of inconvenient events? To avoid saying any more than what the host had to say about himself? At a hysterical rate the thoughts went flashing through Szacki’s mind. If he was going to press Szyller, he must assume some hypothesis, suppose he was lying about a specific matter, and attack on that very point. Unfortunately, for the time being,
the hypothesis that was pushing forwards the most firmly in his head was the most absurd one.

“Do you often have visitors?”

“I’m not particularly sociable. As you heard, I spent half of Easter alone. And this place is special to me, a sort of refuge. I like being here on my own, I don’t want parties, noisy conversations, other people’s smells.”

The mantelpiece above the fireplace, the spot where dust and dirt usually collect seconds after cleaning, was sterile too. Szacki ran a finger over the varnished oak board – nothing. The bookshelf was the same. There was no television. Neither man had said anything for quite a while, and Szacki was feeling uneasy. He was alone in an empty house with a guy twice his size, who could perhaps be a murderer. He glanced at Szyller. The businessman was watching him alertly. If Szacki had been paranoid, he might have thought he was following his movements, getting ready to attack. Szyller noticed the prosecutor’s gaze, and adopted a slightly startled expression.

“Do I take it this doesn’t look good?” he asked.

“When did you last see the victim?”

“I had a meeting with Elżbieta about two weeks before the holidays. We talked about the summer vacation – she wanted to set up a seasonal cinema in the Small Marketplace, and we chatted about how to persuade the residents. You know what it’s like, people are always against. They’d like to have a lot going on, but not under their windows.”

Szacki took a decision. You only live once – at worst he’d miss the goal and Szyller would write a complaint against him. Not the first, and probably not the last time in the white-haired prosecutor’s career.

“Could I see the photograph that was standing on the mantelpiece?”

“I’m sorry?”

“I’d like to see the photograph that was standing on the mantelpiece.”

“There wasn’t one…”

“Are you going to show it to me or not?”

Szyller didn’t reply, but his face took on a serious look. Oh well, that’s the end of the little anecdotes for the prosecutor, we’ll never be friends now, thought Szacki.

“I’ve been talking to people about you. Nothing but superlatives. A model citizen. A philanthropist. A businessman with a human face.”

Szyller shrugged. If he had been trying to play the role of the preoccupied, mildly alarmed citizen, this was the moment when he dropped that pose. He finally rolled up his shirt sleeves, and the muscles of his tanned forearms twitched ominously. The local philanthropist took good care of his patriotic body, and no mistake.

“Highly cultured. Highly intelligent. It would seem you ought to understand your position. A brutally murdered woman was clutching in her tightly clenched fist a rare badge of a type that you own but cannot find. And you are unable to explain what could have become of it. Nor do you have any way of proving where you were at the time when the murder was committed. But despite all this you’re lying. I find that very surprising.”

“You are easily surprised, Prosecutor. Does such a childlike trait come in useful in your profession?”

Szacki shook his head in disbelief. What a cheap quip – maybe he’d overestimated Szyller.

“I ought to lock you up, press charges and then wonder what next,” he said, almost laughing, for the second time in as many days – what a rotten town full of crooks! Bloody hell, did anyone tell the truth here?