The Dead Hand of History

by Sally Spencer

  Paniatowski sighed. ‘So what is the point?’

  ‘Warren Tompkins will do anything to take over our business. Anything at all!’

  ‘You’re wasting my time,’ Paniatowski said.

  ‘But don’t you see?’ Jenny demanded, with astonishment evident in her voice. ‘Isn’t it obvious to you?’

  ‘Isn’t what obvious to me?’

  ‘Stan didn’t kill Jenny and Tom at all – someone who was working for Tompkins did!’

  ‘You’ve lost your mind,’ Paniatowski said, with disgust.

  ‘Think about it,’ Jenny insisted. ‘Think about who was killed. The managing director and the head baker. Why them? Because they were the cornerstones of the business!’

  ‘They weren’t killed because they were bakers,’ Paniatowski said. ‘They were killed because they were lovers.’

  ‘I didn’t believe you the first time you made that wicked, wicked suggestion, and I don’t believe you now,’ Jenny Brunskill told her. ‘It’s simply not true. It can’t be true.’

  ‘You need to get away from all this for a while, Jenny,’ Paniatowski said softly.

  ‘Get away?’ Jenny Brunskill repeated, as if the words were totally meaningless to her.

  ‘Getting away will allow you to find another perspective on what’s happened. I promise you, you’ll see things differently once you’re somewhere else. So go, Jenny. Please! Spend some time with friends or relatives . . .’

  ‘My only relative’s been murdered,’ Jenny said. ‘And my only friend’s been arrested for killing her. And now they’re gone, who’s left to run the bakery? There’s only me.’

  ‘Listen, Jenny . . .’ Paniatowski began.

  ‘When will you arrest the people at Tompkins’ who murdered my sister?’ Jenny demanded.

  ‘They didn’t murder your sister, and I’m not going to arrest them,’ Paniatowski said firmly.

  ‘Then I will make a complaint,’ Jenny said. ‘I’ll complain at the very highest level.’

  ‘I hope you do,’ Paniatowski said.

  And she meant it, because while it was not her place to try and have Jenny Brunskill sectioned under the Mental Health Act, somebody in authority should certainly see that it was done.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  ‘Doesn’t it bother you that you’ll probably end up going to prison for the rest of your natural life?’ Paniatowski asked Stan Szymborska across the table in the interview room.

  ‘Yes, it bothers me,’ Szymborska admitted, in a voice which was so flat and unemotional that it was almost robotic. ‘But it does not bother me for any of the reasons you might imagine.’

  ‘So you won’t mind being locked up twenty-four hours a day?’ Paniatowski asked, deliberately taunting the man in the hope of getting a reaction – any reaction – out of him. ‘You won’t mind not feeling a soft summer breeze on your face, and the sun on your back, ever again? You won’t mind losing the right to make any choices of your own?’

  ‘No,’ Szymborska said.

  And he put so much conviction into that one simple word that she almost believed him.

  Again!

  ‘It will bother you once you’re there,’ she said harshly. ‘Believe me, it will bother you then!’

  Stan shook his head slowly and sadly from side to side. ‘You can only miss those things you still want,’ he said. ‘The part of my life I cared about came to an end with my Linda’s death. I am already in prison. And what does it matter if I lose the right to choose for myself when there are no longer any choices I wish to make? Besides, though I will have been imprisoned for a crime I did not commit, I have done things in my life for which I deserve to go to jail.’

  ‘Your sister-in-law, Jenny, thinks that you’re innocent, you know,’ Paniatowski said.

  Szymborska smiled sadly. ‘I knew she would.’

  ‘How did you know? Was it because you, better than most people, know just how gullible she is?’

  ‘No, it isn’t because of what I know about her, it’s because of what she knows about me – and she knows that I would never kill my Linda.’

  ‘You care about Jenny, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I do care about her. Like my darling Linda, Jenny has a deep inner beauty.’

  ‘But unlike your Linda’s inner beauty, Jenny’s was never allowed to emerge? Unlike your Linda, she’s still living in the shadow of her father?’

  ‘Yes. I tried to help her – but perhaps I did not try hard enough. And for that, I feel a guilt which I will carry with me to the grave.’

  ‘You can help her now,’ Paniatowski said. ‘If you really want to, you can help her without even leaving this room.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘She thinks some of the people who work at Tompkins’ Bakery were behind your wife’s murder. Does that surprise you?’

  For a moment, Szymborska was silent.

  Then he said, ‘No, it doesn’t really surprise me – not when I stop to think about it. The bakery is Jenny’s world, you see, and anything that happens in the rest of the world can only be explained in terms of the bakery.’

  ‘But you’ll admit that believing someone in Tompkins’ Bakery had Linda killed is delusional?’

  ‘Of course it’s delusional.’

  ‘Then help Jenny to escape from that delusion by confessing – by showing just how delusional the idea is.’

  ‘If I confess, you’ll stop looking for the real killer,’ Szymborska said. ‘And then my Linda will never get justice.’

  ‘We’ve already stopped looking for the real killer – because we’ve got him in custody!’

  ‘Perhaps you may think that now,’ Stan Szymborska said calmly, ‘but if I continue to maintain my innocence, you will find seeds of doubt starting to grow within you. And eventually – even though I have been convicted of the crime – you will open the investigation again.’

  ‘Now that really is delusional,’ Paniatowski said.

  And yet, she thought, those seeds were already there, and his very certainty was starting to make them grow.

  But it was all bollocks, of course, she told herself angrily. He was playing her now, just as he’d played her all along. Well, it was time to show him that he couldn’t pull on her emotional strings any longer – that she finally saw him for what he truly was.

  ‘Tell me about the hands,’ she said.

  ‘I did not kill my Linda, and I did not kill Tom Whittington, and so I know nothing about—’

  ‘Not those hands!’ Paniatowski interrupted contemptuously. ‘The other hands. The ones you cut off in the prisoner-of-war camp!’

  For the first time in the interrogation, Szymborska looked as if he’d been knocked off balance.

  ‘How did you . . . who told you . . .?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter, does it?’ Paniatowski asked. ‘I do know. All I’m missing is the details. So why don’t you fill me in on them?’

  ‘No,’ Szymborska said firmly.

  ‘Why not?’ Paniatowski asked, in a hectoring voice. ‘Because you’re ashamed of what you did? Because that’s one of the things that you think you deserve to go to prison for?’

  ‘Because if I tell you, you will only use it as a prop to shore up your suspicions about me.’

  ‘I don’t need any prop to shore up my suspicions,’ Paniatowski told him. ‘Why should I? I already know you’re guilty as sin. So why not come clean! Why not be a man about it!’

  ‘All right, I will tell you,’ Stan said, suddenly weary. ‘But not because of your bullying and your pathetic mind games.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No! I will tell you because it will show you, for good or bad – and only you can decide which it is – what kind of man I really am.’

  It surprised Paniatowski to discover that her heart had begun to beat a little faster, and that the room was suddenly stuffier.

  Stan was right, she thought. She had tried to bully him into telling her this story – but now that he was about to tell it to her, she was no long
er sure she wanted to hear it!

  ‘Come on, then, let’s have it, Mr Szymborska,’ she said. ‘I haven’t got all day!’

  ‘You were wrong when you talked about hands earlier,’ Szymborska said. ‘The truth is that there was only one.’

  He told Paniatowski about the prisoners’ growing suspicion that there was a spy in their midst, and how they had searched Tadeujz’s belongings and found the chocolate bar. And then he told her about the hatchet that Stefan had produced from the hiding place in the wall.

  ‘And you thought it was a jolly good idea, did you?’ Paniatowski asked, still hectoring.

  ‘No,’ Szymborska said seriously. ‘Not at first.’

  Stan looks down at the hatchet, glinting in the pale light of the oil lamp.

  ‘But you’re not going to . . .’ he says.

  ‘If thy right hand offends thee, cut it off,’ Stefan quotes, almost in a whisper. ‘In this place, we are all each other’s right hands.’

  ‘But you can’t . . .’

  ‘This vermin has caused the death of two good men,’ Stefan says. ‘But I will not inflict his righteous punishment on him unless everyone agrees.’ He raises the hatchet high in the air, so that all the other prisoners – with the exception of Tadeujz – can see it. ‘Do you all agree?’ he asks.

  Everyone except Stan says they do.

  ‘Well?’ Stefan asks.

  ‘What if I say no?’

  ‘If we do this, we will probably be shot for it,’ Stefan says. ‘And that means that if you agree to it, you are almost certainly choosing to die. And none of you – my comrades – should be forced to make such a decision. So if you do not give your consent, Stanislaw, it will not happen.’ Stefan puts his hand on Stan’s shoulder. ‘If you say no, none of us will hold it against you. I can promise you that.’

  Stan believes him. If he says that Tadeujz should be spared, Tadeujz will be spared. And none of the others will blame the man who saved the traitor – because they will respect his right to choose life for himself.

  Then Stan thinks of Józef, who was training to be a doctor before the war. And of fat, jovial Piotr, who was one of the kindest men he ever met.

  ‘It is the right thing to do,’ he says. ‘It is just. Betrayal must be punished. Give me the hatchet, Stefan.’

  ‘So, in a heartbeat, you went from not wanting it done at all to wanting to do it yourself?’ Paniatowski asked sceptically.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘What better way can a man convince himself that he has made the right decision than by making himself responsible for carrying out that decision?’

  So far, Tadeujz has only heard the words, and though he knows that something bad is about to happen to him, he has no idea what. Now Stanislaw steps in front of him, and he can see the hatchet. His eyes widen with fear. He struggles harder, but it is useless. He tries to scream, but the gag will not allow him.

  Stan brings down the hatchet with tremendous force, severing the hand at the wrist. Blood spurts everywhere.

  The two men holding Tadeujz release their grip. He falls to the floor, blood bubbling from his severed limb like water from a fountain.

  ‘What happens now?’ Stan asks.

  Stefan shrugs. ‘He has no friends here – no one who wishes to help him. If he can make it to the wire, perhaps his new friends, the guards, will save his life. If he cannot . . .’

  He cannot. He bleeds to death on the floor, without ever regaining consciousness.

  She was starting to like Stan again, Paniatowski thought. She was starting to admire him again!

  And that was bad!

  ‘It’s a cracking story, I’ll give you that,’ she said. ‘But, you see, it just doesn’t add up.’

  ‘Doesn’t it?’ Szymborska asked.

  ‘No, it certainly doesn’t. If it was true, you’d have been shot the following morning, wouldn’t you? Yet here you are, sitting in this room, still alive and telling me the tale.’

  ‘When Stefan said that we would be shot, he was forgetting one important thing,’ Stan told her.

  ‘And what was that?’

  ‘Just how much the camp commandant – the man with the power of life and death over us – despised Poles. All Poles!’

  When morning comes, and the body is discovered during a routine check of the hut, the prisoners are all marched into the yard, where they are addressed by the commandant.

  ‘Whoever killed this man will be punished,’ he says. ‘The killer should give himself up now to spare the others.’

  None of the Poles moves.

  ‘If one of you does not admit to the crime, I will consider you all guilty – and have you all shot,’ the commander says.

  He nods to the guards, who raise their sub-machine guns and point them directly at the prisoners.

  And still the Poles say nothing.

  The commandant turns to go away.

  ‘Should we shoot them now, sir?’ one the guards asked.

  The commandant thinks it over for a second, and then shakes his head. ‘The dead man was only a Pole,’ he says. ‘Why should we waste our good German bullets to avenge his death?’

  ‘Does the story add up now?’ Stan asked.

  ‘Yes, it does,’ Paniatowski admitted. ‘And yes, you were right when you said it would point even more convincingly to your guilt. Tadeujz betrayed you, didn’t he, and you cut his hand off.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And when Linda betrayed you, exactly the same thing happened to her.’

  ‘Linda did not betray me,’ Stan said.

  ‘Oh, come on now!’

  ‘Not in the way that Tadeujz did.’

  ‘You’re surely not going to start denying she had an affair with Tom, are you?’

  ‘It was a moment of weakness,’ Stan said. ‘In my mind – in my heart – I had already forgiven her, even as I stood watching her drive away, the night that she was killed.’

  ‘Why did she drive away?’

  ‘Because we’d had an argument.’

  ‘Over the affair?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You confronted her about it?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘And what did she say?’

  ‘She denied it.’

  ‘And you left it at that? Why? Couldn’t you just have said you didn’t believe her, but that it didn’t matter, because you forgave her anyway?’

  ‘Yes, I could have – but she wasn’t ready for my forgiveness. She needed time alone. Time to come to terms with what she’d done – to conquer her shame.’

  ‘Conquer her shame!’ Paniatowski repeated. ‘That’s really a very good line. I really must remember it. But tell me, how do you know she had any shame to conquer? How do you know she hadn’t fallen in love with Tom, and no longer gave a damn about you?’

  ‘If she’d had no shame, then what would have stopped her from admitting the truth?’

  ‘You see, that’s where the cosy picture that you’ve been trying to paint of your marriage breaks down,’ Paniatowski said. ‘You say that you loved her and that you trusted her . . .’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Yet when she tells you there was nothing going on between her and Tom Whittington, you refuse to believe her. How much trust does that show? And how much does it reveal of a jealous nature which had probably been eating away at you for years?’

  ‘She was having an affair with him,’ Szymborska said. ‘You know that yourself.’

  ‘Yes, I know it, because I’ve got witness statements to prove it. But you had no proof at all, did you? And you didn’t need any! Because for a jealous man like you, even the hint – even the merest suspicion – that she’d been unfaithful to you was enough to drive you into a rage.’

  ‘I had proof,’ Stan Szymborska said firmly.

  ‘And what proof might that have been?’

  ‘Someone – I don’t know who it was – sent me a photograph of them together.’

  ‘Oh, well that’s it
, then,’ Paniatowski said scornfully. ‘Imagine – a photograph of them together! And I’ve got a photograph of me and my inspector. Does that mean we’re having an affair? Of course not. But for someone with your nature, even the most inconsequential trifle is proof enough.’

  ‘They were kissing,’ Stan Szymborska said.

  ‘Ah, I see where you’re going now,’ Paniatowski said.

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘Yes. You’ve finally given up hope of getting away with murder, and now you’ve begun the process of justifying yourself. I can almost hear what your brief will be saying in court. “My client is guilty of a terrible crime, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, but he is not accountable for his own actions. Imagine, if you will, how he must have felt when he saw this photograph. He temporarily lost control of himself. And who among us could say, with absolute certainty, that he would not have done the same?” Something along those lines, do you think?’

  ‘You don’t understand me at all,’ Szymborska said.

  ‘Did you show this photograph to your wife?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because in the face of such damning proof she would have been forced to confess.’

  ‘And you didn’t want her to?’

  ‘Not then. I wanted her to confess when she truly believed that it was the right thing to do.’

  ‘Where’s this photograph now?’ Paniatowski asked. ‘Do you still have it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Now isn’t that convenient!’

  ‘You have it,’ Szymborska said. ‘It was in my wallet, which your officers took away from me.’

  Colin Beresford was reading a copy of the Whitebridge Evening Chronicle when Monika Paniatowski finally entered the public bar of the Drum and Monkey, but the moment he noticed her coming towards him, he rapidly folded it up and slipped it on to his knee.

  Paniatowski sat down, and held her hand out across the table. ‘Let’s have the paper, Colin,’ she said.

  ‘You don’t want to spoil a victory piss-up by reading what’s written in that rag, boss,’ Beresford said, uncomfortably.

  ‘Ah, but you see, I do,’ Paniatowski replied. ‘A good battering from the newspaper is just what I need to round off the day.’