Blind Eye lm-5

by Stuart MacBride

  No messages from DI Steel or Finnie. And nothing from DCS Bain either… Mind you, nominations for DI Gray's replacement didn't have to be in until tomorrow, so Bain probably wouldn't make the announcement until next week.

  Logan hit the 'NEW EMAIL' button and wrote a message to Samantha. Deleted it. Started again. Deleted that one too. Replied to Rennie's invitation instead.

  Two minutes later he had a response:

  Were you been? No footy for us, been another blingding! Just got out the breifign ~ another polish bloke!!! ACC going mental: All leave canselled. Oops, got to go, Finny's on the warpath. Can only see Pirie's feet now, he's so far up the DIC's arse!!!! LOL;-)

  Logan read the email three times. Trying to convince himself that Rennie was just having a joke. There wasn't really a new Oedipus victim. There couldn't be another Oedipus victim: Ricky Gilchrist was in custody, he'd confessed, the threatening notes were on his sodding computer.

  Logan pulled out his mobile and called Finnie. 'Is it true? Someone else's been blinded?'

  'No, I made it up for a laugh. Of course it's true. Where are you?'

  'Krakow.' He told the DCI about the lack of living victims in Warsaw, and Senior Constable Jaroszewicz's opinion of the local police. 'They're not really cooperating.'

  'And what, exactly, do you expect me to do about it? Do you not think I've got enough to worry about, without you adding to it? Is that it? Not enough excitement in my life with the wrong man in bloody custody?'

  'Wrong man?'

  'Ricky Gilchrist, who did you think I meant, Ronald Mc-Sodding-Donald?'

  'Well… it…' Logan slapped his hand on the table. Eureka. 'This new victim, it could be the people who attacked Simon McLeod.'

  'God, that's brilliant, Sergeant! I hadn't thought of that. Gosh, what a good idea, maybe it was the same person. Only victim number seven is a Polish roughneck with BP. And he was found on a disused building site in Torry. We even got the gloating phone call. It's definitely Oedipus.'

  'Damn.'

  'That's an understatement. The press haven't got hold of it yet, but when they do…' Finnie went quiet for a moment. 'What a cock-up.'

  'We're not letting Gilchrist go, are we?'

  'Do I look like an idiot? Goulding's already started paperwork to have him sectioned. He's either going to prison or a secure psychiatric facility for the rest of his unnatural, twisted, little life.' Logan could hear the background noise change. The babble of voices giving way to an echoey silence. Probably Finnie leaving the incident room for the corridor outside. Now the DCI's voice sounded almost desperate. 'I need you to find something out there, OK? I don't care what, but you find me something I can use to catch this bastard.'

  'We're trying to chase up alternatives sources of info: see if we can track down our two possible survivors. But like I said, local plod aren't cooperating. Wouldn't hurt if you could put in a good word…?'

  'Anything else?'

  'Might be best if you leave Senior Constable Jaroszewicz's name out of it. Apparently Krakow and Warsaw can't stand each other.'

  'I'll call them now. Just make sure you find me something, understand?'

  And then the DCI hung up.

  According to the computer, Logan still had another five minutes before his money ran out, so he called up a fresh email and forced himself to write something to Samantha. Apologetic, but not crawly. At least this time he managed to send it.

  Then he grabbed his jacket and wandered out into the afternoon.

  Just after five and the streets were beginning to liven up: locals tramping past on their way home from work; yet more tourists with their cameras; little old ladies standing on the street corners selling smoked cheeses in bizarre, slightly phallic shapes. He was wandering back towards the hotel, pausing to read the menu outside every restaurant he passed, when his phone went off — Jaroszewicz.

  'I found somebody! I cannot believe it!'

  Logan listened to her babbling on about how difficult it was and how many newspapers she'd had to read, and how many phone calls she'd had to make.

  'So,' he said, when she finally paused for breath, 'who is it?'

  'Lowenthal's brother. And do you want the good news? He is meeting us tonight. Nine o'clock!' Quarter to ten and there was still no sign of him. Logan and Jaroszewicz waited in a little basement bar on Florianska — just up from the hotel — a brick catacomb with red table cloths and white napkins. Candles. Red-stained pine booths, the wood going pale at the edges where the varnish had worn off. A big oil painting of a bald man in militaristic clothes with a green cockade hat, moustache and vast mutton-chop sideburns.

  The air was thick with cigarette smoke.

  Jaroszewicz was slumped over a half-empty pint of Guinness, poking a lonely peanut across the tabletop. 'He said he would be here.'

  Logan finished his beer and pointed at her glass. 'You want another one while we wait? Half, or something?'

  She shrugged and he went back to the bar, watching goldfish swimming around a tiny beer-sponsored aquarium while the barman poured him another pint of Tyskie and a half of draft Guinness.

  Voices behind him.

  Logan turned to see Jaroszewicz on her feet, talking to a man with the kind of moustache a walrus would be proud of.

  Jaroszewicz introduced him. 'This is Henryk Lowenthal.'

  They shook hands, and Logan said, 'Good evening.'

  The man looked puzzled, and Jaroszewicz shrugged. 'He does not speak English.'

  Oh… OK,' Logan tried again, 'Dobry wieczor.'

  'Ah!' Smile, nod. 'Dobry wieczor.'

  They sat at the table, under the watchful gaze of the military man in the painting. Lowenthal cleared his throat, took a deep breath, then rattled out a long speech that Logan couldn't understand a word of.

  Jaroszewicz: 'He says we have to remember that no one in his family had any idea what his brother was doing. None of them have ever been in trouble with the police before. They are good people and are very ashamed.'

  'Ask him where his brother is now.'

  She stared at him. 'What did you think I was going to do?'

  'OK, OK. Sorry.'

  She fired off the question, and got another speech in reply.

  'He says he does not know.'

  'Oh for God's…' Sigh. 'Ask him if he's got a telephone number, or an email address.'

  Stony silence. 'Now why did I not think of that?'

  'I didn't mean-'

  But she was already talking over the top of him. Lowenthal's brother said something back and then they both laughed.

  'What? What did he say?'

  'He said that all you British are the same — you never bother to learn anyone else's language. You think you can still rule the world by shouting slowly at the natives.'

  'What did he say about the number?'

  More Polish.

  'He says they cut off all ties with his brother years ago. He was drunk all the time, violent, on drugs, he stole things.'

  The evening got worse from there. Jaroszewicz and Lowenthal's brother talking for longer and longer in Polish, leaving Logan to sit on the outside drinking lager and waiting for a translation. Pressing her to ask more questions.

  In the end she turned to him, eyes flat as knife blades and said, 'Sergeant McRae: I am perfectly capable of questioning a witness without you pointing out the obvious every two minutes. Now sit there, shut up, and concentrate on looking pretty. OK?' She gave him a nasty smile, then turned her back on him, sharing another joke with Lowenthal in Polish.

  So much for international cooperation.

  44

  Seven thirty, Wednesday morning. Logan lay on his back and stared up at the hotel-room ceiling. What a great idea this trip was. He killed the alarm on his phone and slumped back into his pillows. She was a nightmare. The evening had gradually deteriorated to the point where Logan might as well have been on his own in a strange pub in a foreign country. Only a lot less pleasant, because he was pretty sure Senior Consta
ble High-And-Mighty Jaroszewicz and Lowenthal's brother were laughing at him. And they weren't even doing it behind his back — they were doing it to his face.

  'I am a professional,' he told the bedside lamp, 'I promise I will not sulk.'

  Like hell he wouldn't.

  He dragged himself through the shower and down to breakfast, disappointed to see that Jaroszewicz was already there, tucking into another bowl of muesli. For a brief moment he thought about giving her the cold shoulder and grabbing another table, but he'd made a promise to his bedside furniture.

  The scrambled eggs were going to be every bit as alternative as yesterday's, but he ordered them anyway.

  Jaroszewicz watched him eat in silence for a minute. 'I was thinking, I was unfair to you yesterday.'

  'Really.'

  'It's not your fault you do not speak the language.' She shrugged. 'But you cannot read the documents, and you cannot question witnesses. So…' She reached into her cavernous handbag and dug out a pile of tour brochures. 'Go do something. See Krakow. Lowenthal's brother gave me some addresses to try, I will call you if I get anything.'

  Logan was feeling too petty to argue with her. The bedside light could go screw itself. The sun was a chip of gold, shining between slivers of white cloud. Logan sat on a park bench and grumbled and swore: Who the hell did she think she was, telling him to go see the sights, as if he was a child who needed to sod off so the grown-ups could talk? Detective Sergeants should be seen and not heard.

  He ripped another chunk from the bread he'd bought from a brown-faced old woman on a street corner, and hurled it at a bunch of stupid-looking pigeons. Doing his best to hit one of them and failing miserably. Bloody Jaroszewicz.

  A group of nuns tottered past, dressed in the traditional black and white penguin outfits you never saw in Scotland any more. No, in Aberdeen it was all grey twinsets and sensible shoes.

  What was the collective noun for nuns? Flange? Flock?

  Logan watched as they stopped to harangue a young man for dropping his McDonald's wrapper on the path. The guy held out for a whole thirty seconds, before grabbing up the wrapper and hurrying away to the nearest bin.

  A Terror of nuns.

  Logan had another go at braining a pigeon with a chunk of crust.

  The park would have been a nice place to sit and watch the world go by, if he'd been in a better mood. A two-mile-long avenue of dusty green that encircled the Old Town, lined with huge trees, their leaves dappling the sunlight, making it almost cool on Logan's bench as he tried to concuss birds.

  The next lump of bread bounced off a pigeon's head and Logan awarded himself twenty points. This was such a waste of time. He was a police officer, surely there was something he could-

  His mobile phone rang. Probably Jaroszewicz checking to see if he was away sightseeing like a good little boy. But it wasn't her, it was Finnie: 'Where were you? I've been trying for an hour.'

  'Twiddling my bloody thumbs. Jaroszewicz won't let me-'

  'I've spoken to the Krakow police and they don't have anything on Gorz-kie-wicz?' Sounding it out. 'Too long ago — as far as they know he's pushing up Polish daisies somewhere. But they know all about Lowenthal.'

  Logan jammed his phone between his shoulder and his ear, pinning it there while he dug out his notebook and pen. 'Go ahead.'

  'They fished him out of the river eight months ago. Turns out he crossed someone over a shipment of rocket-propelled grenades heading for France. Beat him to death with his own white stick.'

  'Oh.' So Logan had put up with all that humiliation last night for nothing. 'Then we're out of victims. Everyone's either dead or gone.'

  'Well that's just perfect. We spent a fortune sending you out there and what do we have to show for it? Nothing. Finish up and get yourself on the next flight home. We'll try and pretend this whole disaster never happened.'

  'There isn't anything to finish, I-'

  But Finnie had already hung up.

  Logan snapped his phone shut, scowled at it for a bit, then stuck it back in his pocket. Wonderful. This was going to look so good when they were deciding who got the new DI's job. I know: let's give it to Logan who's just wasted a couple of thousand pounds with a pointless trip to Poland.

  Gibowski was in America. Wisniewski was dead. Bielatowicz — missing for years. Lowenthal — dead. And Gorzkiewicz was anyone's guess.

  Sodding hell.

  Logan tore the last of the bread up and hurled it at the birds, feeling petty and vicious. And then guilty. He stood, apologized to the pigeons, and mooched back towards the Old Town. At least he wouldn't have to put up with Senior Constable Jaroszewicz for much longer. A quick goodbye, pack his bags and off on the next train back to Warsaw. She could stay here and sod about if she liked: he was going home.

  Back in the main square, wood smoke drifted out in scented wafts from food stall braziers. He stopped to buy a little paper plate of grilled, smoked cheese served with a dollop of cherry jam.

  Logan finished the lot before crumpling up his plate and dropping it in a bin — not wanting a row from any passing nuns — then froze. There was a pamphlet lying amongst the litter, advertising some sort of concert. It was all gibberish to him, but one thing did stand out loud and clear — the band had written their name in the same red, blobby, run-together block capitals Solidarity used. They even had a little flag-like scrawl over the 'N' in their name, just like the union.

  Gorzkiewicz — his file said he'd been active in Solidarity while Poland was under Communist rule.

  Logan looked out across the town square, then down at the poster again. A smile spread across his face. Maybe he could salvage something from this disaster after all.

  45

  It took longer than he'd thought, but eventually Logan managed to track down the local Solidarity headquarters, just off the main square in Krakow. And best of all, the woman behind the reception desk spoke English.

  She gave Logan a seat and a cup of coffee, then told him the person he needed to talk to would be down in about fifteen minutes. And he was.

  Gerek Plotkowski certainly looked the part — squarely built, greying hair, massive soup-strainer moustache, handshake like a steelworker. In thickly accented English he invited Logan to follow him to a nearby cafe for a drink. 'Is all herbata and coffee in office. When it is hot like this a man needs something cold. No?'

  Yes.

  They got a table on the edge of the square, not far from someone who'd painted himself gold and was standing motionless on an upturned bucket, pretending to be a statue. Plotkowski ordered two beers from a waiter, then sat and scowled at the statue-impersonator. 'We fight Communist oppression for years, for what? So idiota like that can exist.' He took a big mouthful of beer, leaving a high-tidemark of foam on his moustache. 'What do you want to know?'

  'They told me you were in Solidarity from the very start. I'm trying to find a man who was a member back in the early eighties.'

  'Ah…' the big man got a misty look in his grey eyes. 'They were good times. Hard, but we stood shoulder to shoulder. Like this…' He held his two fists up, side by side. 'We mean something.'

  'The man I'm looking for is called Gorzkiewicz. Rafal Gorzkiewicz. Did you know him?'

  The misty look disappeared, replaced by something much harder. 'Why?'

  'I'm a police officer.' Logan pulled out his warrant card and slid it across the table. 'Gorzkiewicz was attacked in 1981 — somebody blinded him.'

  'I do not know this man you are talking about.' He wrapped his pint in one huge fist and threw half of it down his throat. 'I must to get back to work.'

  Logan grabbed the man's sleeve… took one look at the scowl it got him, and let go again. 'Please, it's important. Where I come from, people are being attacked just like he was: someone cuts their eyes out and burns the sockets. Shopkeepers, businessmen, fathers.'

  Plotkowski turned his face back to the living statue. 'They should not be allowed on the square. It cheapen everything we fight for.'


  Logan let the silence stretch.

  'We…' Plotkowski coughed, took another drink, 'Not everyone agreed with getting rid of Communists through political protest. Some thought armed struggle was only way. A revolution. Solidarnosc, written in blood on cobbled streets of Krakow.' The big man shook his head. 'Gorzkiewicz — he was explosives expert in army. The Communists sent him to Afghanistan in seventy-eight… He come back two years later with a hole in his thigh size of fist. Bitter. "Political is too slow," he say. "Blood is only thing these Russian bastards understand."'

  Plotkowski finished his beer and called for another — getting one for Logan as well, even though he was nowhere near finished his first pint — and two shots of vodka too.

  The big man didn't say anything more until the drinks arrived, handing Logan a shot glass of clear spirit, so cold it steamed in the warm afternoon. 'Na zdrowie!'

  He knocked his vodka back in one and Logan followed suit.

  'Gorzkiewicz want Solidarnosc leadership to call for armed resistance, but they would not. Too much violence and Russia will use excuse to march in, like they do in Afghanistan. Soviet soldiers with Soviet tanks and guns… We want our freedom the right way.' He was silent for a minute, looking not at Logan, but at a time nearly thirty years ago. 'He want to blow up anything that support Communist regime. And he have enough friends to make him dangerous.' The big man seemed to shrink a bit. 'On twenty-sixth of November 1980 there was explosion at the SB headquarters.'

  Logan must have looked confused, because Plotkowski said, 'SB is stand for Sluzba Bezpieczenstwa. They were Security Service of Ministry of Internal Affairs: Communist secret police who try to make dead anyone that stand up to regime.' He leant over and spat at his feet. 'When SB headquarters explode authorities say it gas leak, they do not want people to know it is really bomb. So they start rounding up members of Solidarnosc… Beatings. Disappearings.' His huge shoulders rose and fell. 'Police Station in Kazimierz blow up two weeks later and Communists declare stan wojenny: martial law. Close the borders, curfew, censor our mail, tap our phones, arrest our teachers, shut down newspapers. Then the riots start.'