Polychrome

by Joanna Jodelka

  On top of all this, through the rear-view mirror he saw someone blatantly trying to join the traffic, first choosing the fast lane to turn left then playing the fool as if he didn’t know he had made a mistake – anything to outsmart.

  The news ran on as though an accompaniment to the situation on the roads. The ready-made lessons in respect, cooperation, parliamentary babble repeated day after day worked miracles – the wily feather-brain had numerous imitators.

  He switched over to a music station and, half an hour later, arrived at headquarters.

  He met Maćkowiak in the doorway.

  ‘Well, did you get anywhere with Wieczorek? Do we know who Mikulski argued with?’

  ‘Not so fast. I’ve just driven him home. He said he’d had enough for the day, so it’s enough, although I don’t know who was more tired – him or the man working with him. The granddad’s stubborn and keeps saying that’s not it. It’s not easy to outtalk him, I know something about it.’

  ‘Maybe he can’t remember?’

  ‘Don’t even say that to him or he’ll send you off to be examined. He’s healthy even though he's well over eighty. At that age, my mother used to ask me where my brothers were and I’ve only got sisters – four of them. Maybe he just needs time.’

  ‘Maybe. We’ll see what happens tomorrow. Anything else?’

  ‘Nothing interesting as far as I know. Polek’s not back yet. But, talk of the devil,’ he added as Polek appeared at the door with Lentz.

  ‘Nothing as far as I’m concerned. Can somebody make some tea or coffee? The heating’s gone in my car – like the airconditioning in summer – and they say I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth. Tea might be better.’

  ‘Raspberry syrup or just lemon?’

  ‘I know you’re doing your best, Maćkowiak, and I thank you for it. Carry on working. Ok, who wants coffee or whatever? I’m making it. I’ve just done some classes in politeness. What have you got?’

  ‘Not much. Ah, here’s the new prosecutor.’ Maćkowiak nodded towards the man searching for the phone ringing in his pocket. He searched long enough for everyone to hear the annoying buzz of a fly terminated by the loud slap of a fly swatter – three times.

  ‘I didn’t see him yesterday. Who is he?’ asked Bartol.

  ‘Jan Pilski. He was here yesterday with prosecutor Maczek but was in a hurry to get back to his fiancée. He’s getting married and has moved here for her sake, or so he boasted to somebody, as if it was worth boasting about. We’re going to have to get used to him. Maczek had an attack of the pancreas last night and is in intensive care,’ replied Polek.

  ‘Well, well. The pancreas, just like that.’ Lentz clearly came to life.

  ‘No, he liked his tipple, in relative moderation though, compared to the norm around here. Could happen to anyone.’ He looked at Bartol and Maćkowiak, then at Lentz and regretted his last sentence. Lentz started to massage his stomach with interest.

  Pilski finally took the call. They couldn’t help hearing what he was saying because he started to walk in the same direction as them, a metre ahead.

  ‘Hello, darling. I can’t talk long, I’m at work… Briefly, it’s important… all right. Choose it yourself… yes, yes, I know we’re supposed to decide together… I know, I think pale pink will look good on the invitations… Yes, especially with dark pink lettering… I’m not just saying ‘yes’… Who had some like that… what film was he in… Fine, we’ll go to the printers this afternoon. Yes, love you, bye.’ He moaned as he slipped the phone back into his pocket and loosened his tie as though wanting to believe that was what was stifling him.

  The men looked at each other and smiled in sympathy. The squashed fly suited the situation perfectly.

  Pilski walked on to the chief’s office while the rest of them entered the briefing room.

  ‘Olaf, did you hear the happily engaged man?’ Maćkowiak laughed with his entire body.

  ‘I heard. He’s still got six months to go – if he makes it, cos it’s going to hurt. If I’ve got the name right, he’s fallen in love with the daughter of a used car dealer. She’s a token employee of her father’s company while her mother is a living symbol of the history of sheet-metal work. Now both women have something to do from morning to night. They’re probably testing whether he’ll bear up to it. The wedding, apparently, is in June. I know her father, he’s a good guy. Assembles model airplanes after work. This one here’s going to be assembling, too.’ They all laughed. ‘He made the choice, he gets the deserts.’

  Only Bartol stopped laughing and looked at Polek. The latter quickly changed the subject; the issue of conscious choices was not so self-evident of late.

  ‘I must have questioned all the traders I know and one numismatist. Nobody’s heard of Mikulski. He didn’t sell or buy anything, nor did he exchange coins. Someone remembered him from his days as a restorer but apparently he was quiet. He had a brother high up in the Party so nobody really spoke to him much in case he informed on them. I’m not surprised. The man who remembered him thought he’d died long ago. And you, have you got anything? What about that piece of fingernail?’ he asked Polek.

  ‘It needs to be checked out but I think I know the woman it belongs to,’ answered Bartol.

  ‘How do you know it’s a woman’s? Is technology so advanced it can tell that fast?’ asked Polek.

  ‘Traditional circumstantial evidence. There were traces of pink nail varnish on the fingernail, as far as I know,’ Pilski replied, smiling broadly as he stood in the doorway. The door to which he had made his way earlier must have been closed.

  The expression on Polek’s face seemed to say he’d just decided they weren’t ever going to like each other.

  The fly started buzzing again. Pilski muted the ring-tone but his move was unsure, as if he was scared of what he was doing. A moment later, he changed his mind; turning towards the wall he took the call and justified himself quietly. Polek wanted to comment but Bartol forestalled him.

  ‘Before we check, we can take it that it belongs to Krystyna Bończak. She’s the woman who cleaned the windows,’ he said, recalling her broken and badly painted fingernails.

  ‘That would fit. It lay near the curtain,’ said Polek, looking pointedly away from the prosecutor.

  ‘Could it have anything to do with the case?’

  ‘We have to take a close look. She’s got talented sons. Got a boarding scholarship to Rawicz jail, but personally I don’t think so. I spoke to her an hour ago.’

  Perhaps he would still have added something but refrained, seeing that the new prosecutor, having finished his conversation, was trying to make his presence known and cover up the indelible impression he’d made.

  ‘I’m new here and haven’t met everyone so let me introduce myself. Jan Pilski, prosecutor. I’ve been assigned to the case in Prosecutor Maczek’s absence.’ Slowly his voice began to assume acquired gravitas. ‘An absence which, as you know, may be considerably prolonged. I’ve already acquainted myself with the post-mortem and preliminary technical reports. Please forgive me if the non-legal questions I ask seem banal but – was really nothing found at the scene of crime, no traces apart from the fingernail?’

  For a while nobody answered; they looked at him dumbfounded. He differed from them, not only by his pink tie and hair gel. It occurred to Bartol that life wasn’t easy for these cultured types either and he didn’t intend to make it any harder, so he was quick to answer first – not to give Polek, who was already getting ready, a chance.

  ‘The question isn’t banal. In ninety percent of cases there’s always something – a fingerprint, hair, skin, even vestigial traces – which we can multiply and send off for analysis but this time, apparently, there wasn’t and that’s what’s so strange about this already strange case. To sum up: we have two women fairly loosely connected with the event but we’re going to look into it. One important lead is the man described by Edmund Wieczorek. We’re making up an identikit. Apparently he visited the dece
ased a week before his death and they had an argument. As for now, he’s our chief suspect. Apart from that we’re examining the material in which the dead man was partially wrapped. It’s quite interesting, as Lentz remarked. I’ve sent it off for analysis, which he knows, along with the flowers, which he doesn’t yet know.’

  Lentz was a little surprised but didn’t say anything, nor did the others. All just listened, while Pilski pretended to listen even while tapping something out on his phone.

  Bartol had taken a long time, certainly longer than usual, trying to explain his suspicions, yet Polek still asked: ‘Come on. Do you seriously think those Latin words mean anything? If he wanted to tell us something, he’d have written it in large print.’

  ‘Perhaps the show’s not for us, perhaps it’s a coincidence, I don’t know and have no idea how to check. So, for the time being, let’s be conventional and concentrate on the argumentative man. If all goes well, we’ll have the identikit ready by tomorrow.’

  All didn’t go well. Edmund Wieczorek paid headquarters several visits even though drawing up an identikit only takes a few hours at the most. Sometimes he didn’t feel well, sometimes his eyes caused him trouble, sometimes he changed something he’d already changed before. He infinitely taxed everybody’s patience, which already seemed taxed to the limits. Nobody, however, could do anything about it – he was elderly and clearly taking advantage of it. Meanwhile, despite numerous interrogations, he was the one and only person who could add anything to the case. The fact that everybody had grown to like him a little wasn’t without significance either. As soon as he arrived someone would make him tea with four teaspoons of sugar, the way he liked it, without even asking. They also liked to repeat the cutting retorts he made left, right and centre, which sounded especially amusing coming from an old man. The prosecutor let himself in for it with his ringtone, infallibly associated with his future wife and dreams of eventually doing away with her. The unsuccessful and poorly thought-out replacement in the form of birdsong, which Wieczorek also had the opportunity to hear – Pilski’s phone rang frequently

  – didn’t help. He acknowledged it with one sentence: the man shouldn’t have any illusions, there wouldn’t be any birdsong after the wedding, at most only croaking.

  All this allowed him to be tolerated for longer. There were also many indications that in spite of his age he had a very good memory.

  After many obstacles – the greatest of which was not that the age of the young man in question turned out to be about forty, which seemed natural only to Edmund Wieczorek and amused half of headquarters – they had more than a good identikit portrait of the suspect.

  It seemed only a matter of time before they found the ‘young man’ although no-one suspected it would happen so fast.

  Maćkowiak almost choked on his biscuit when, for what could potentially have been a boring interrogation, the last to turn up was one of the lawyer’s clients who’d left the office on Góralska Street precisely at the time in which they were interested; he’d been abroad previously.

  It was a matter of routine questions but Maćkowiak didn’t have time to ask them. He recognised the face of the man being interviewed as that of the suspect. The identikit portrait lay on his desk; he always kept these portraits so as to ram the image into his head and remember it when needed – he had no memory for faces. Yet never before had he recognised anyone so quickly. Now a man sat in front of him who differed from the one depicted on paper only by his strange suntan – an angrily red nose and white rings around his eyes; the desired effect, it later turned out, of a skiing trip. Maćkowiak obtained a detention warrant in record time; it was a question of murder, too many facts spoke against the identified individual, Przemysław Górniak. Not only did he clearly answer to the identikit but had been at the scene of crime at the time corresponding to the event.

  The man was completely outraged and horrified by the allegations. He insisted he’d never been to Mikulski’s house, that he didn’t know who Mikulski was and that he didn’t even know the man existed. Nor could he remember whether he’d gone straight home after visiting Przewalski’s office or not. He shouted and broke down in turn: that it was all some sort of farce, that he was going to turn forty in two days and that they were finally to reveal those hidden cameras; and if it was all a silly joke he’d even take his own wife to court.

  He stubbornly maintained that he had nothing to do with the case. All that remained was to confront him with Edmund Wieczorek. Polek and Lentz went to collect the old man, having first phoned to congratulate him on his successful identikit. The first thing to surprise them was that he wasn’t at home even though, on previous occasions, he’d opened the door before anyone even had time to ring the bell, as though he’d nothing better to do than wait for them.

  They returned to their car and drove away, parked on a neighbouring street and twenty minutes later arrived at Wieczorek’s door again. This time they didn’t ring, only patiently listened. After a while it became clear that the old man was at home, only didn’t want to open the door; after ten minutes of persuasion he was in the car on the way to headquarters. He didn’t utter a word and didn’t want to say why he hadn’t opened.

  Nobody had expected such a turn of events. Some of the information they’d gathered and which started to form a whole – surprising even the most experienced police officers – came from the suspect Przemysław Górniak with whom, as it turned out, it had all begun and, for the time being, ended. The rest Edmund Wieczorek unwillingly confirmed himself and thus became a legend. The story was repeated many times on various occasions and at numerous police training sessions, just as before it had been repeated at estate agents’ training sessions.

  Przemysław Górniak’s presence in the vicinity of the murder could have been considered a complete coincidence, something which could not be said of the previous address of his office as financial advisor. Nine years earlier his office had been right next to Edmund Wieczorek’s apartment. Górniak had inherited the apartment from his grandmother and that’s where he started working. Just as the location had suited him perfectly, especially in those days, so quite soon it proved to be too small. He’d decided, therefore, to start chatting up his neighbour, asking whether he wasn’t planning to sell his place in exchange for something smaller and cheaper. Perhaps it hadn’t been too polite a move but Górniak had needed to make a decision and breaking through to the neighbouring apartment had seemed the best solution. Edmund had been a little offended initially but after a couple of days paid him a visit, saying that perhaps it was a good idea; however, he wouldn’t move until he’d found the right place, and for this he needed help, obviously.

  And that’s how the whole dance had started. For Przemysław Górniak it lasted nearly six months. The apartment was too important for him and maybe that was why it took him so long to admit that perhaps Edmund had no intention, and probably never had had the intention, of selling his apartment; he was simply enjoying himself, looking – at least once a week – at apartments to which he was driven, all the while holding pleasant and interesting conversations, seasoned with his own reminiscences.

  Górniak hadn’t concluded the matter very politely, so he admitted. He’d finally sold his own apartment and bought another which, to this day, served as his headquarters; and had no regrets. He recounted the story many times later on; he once even got talking to somebody he knew whose wife worked in property. He’d been very amused to hear that Mr Wieczorek had really got going. It wasn’t only apartments he was looking at now; he was also interested in houses out of town, and when you look at a house, you might get lucky and be offered tea and cake. The journey, too, took longer with more time for reminiscing.

  Estate agents hadn’t worked so closely with each other at the time, and Wieczorek’s property was very attractive in those days and easy to sell as an office, which pulled the wool over everybody’s eyes. All he needed to do, after all, was find another place. Many agents were taken in and it took a
long while before news spread through the grapevine about a pleasant, elderly gentleman on Matejko Street who was having a good time in a most original way. As far as Górniak knew, Edmund had, quiet recently, been agreeably driven around by a newcomer on the market. Edmund Wieczorek more or less confirmed all this, absolutely denying, however, that he’d never planned to exchange his apartment. On the other hand, he did admit to not knowing Mikulski very well, and knowing him only because he’d once been a postman in Mikulski’s neighbourhood. He remembered their son when he was still little; the boy hadn’t been to his mother’s funeral; and Wieczorek later learned from Mikulski that he’d died abroad. Wieczorek had read about Mrs Mikulska’s funeral in a newspaper and had gone in the hope of meeting someone he knew, but hadn’t met anyone. He’d phoned Mikulski a couple of times, counting on his wanting some company. Mikulski hadn't wanted any.

  He passed on his information totally offended, like a child. Only the threat of being punished for making false statements put him into an excellent mood; perhaps it was the very thought of being taken to court – where he’d never been – or that of new friends in prison where, as they all realised, he’d no chance of going.

  The only thing that worked was constantly reminding him of the importance of his statements. All he didn’t want to say was why he’d picked on precisely Górniak; but he did say that next time he would chose somebody who was dead so that they wouldn’t turn up so quickly.

  The situation could have been considered comical although it wasn’t in the least. The sole natural suspect had evaporated in a most original manner.

  There were more employees from the funeral parlour at Antoniusz Mikulski’s funeral than people who’d come for the ceremony. Neither did any potential beneficiary appear.

  The search for Mr and Mrs Mikulski’s son also brought poor results from an investigative point of view. They established with some difficulty that he had, indeed, been to the United States and, surprisingly, had realised the American dream: he’d started working in a small computer company which had expanded enormously and brought fabulous profits for shareholders and, consequently, for him.