Polychrome (10 page)

It wasn’t easy to get to Mościnno. The village was behind
another village which itself was out-of-the-way and separated
from the main road by a forest. Strange it should even have
a name, consisting as it did of barely a couple of scattered
houses. Yet even here one could feel everything was about
to change. It was dangerously close to the city, which had
already sent its first scouts to divide up the land and change it
forever. Or so announced the foundations of an immodestly
huge future house which would forever shame the couple
of dilapidated peasant buildings, once so proud of their
enterprising owners who’d miraculously managed to mix
their sweat in with the cement they’d procured in order to
build identical blocks, unable and unwilling as they were
to differ from others.

Seeing several parked police cars, Maciej Bartol drove up
to one of the houses.
He showed his ID to some officers he didn’t know – probably
from the local station – and learned that ‘the ones from Poznań’
were already inside. Slowly, he approached the outer staircase,
a practical answer to an impractical ground floor half-sunken
into the ground with the aim of deceiving administrators of
the past era into believing it was a large cellar with windows,
because who needed a bigger house? After all, everybody was
supposed to be equal. He remembered his mother explaining
many such peculiarities of the former system which it was
difficult at times to imagine. He remembered a fair amount
but not enough not to wonder how it was possible to live in a
country of such absurdities. His mother didn’t miss the old days
either, unlike many retired teachers of her age, even though she
frequently said present-day reality was also absurd but at least
offered a more attractive wrapping.
This particular reality hadn’t managed to find an attractive
wrapping, he thought as he climbed stairs eaten away by salt
and age. He still had time to run his eyes over the farmyard
where a small, spotted mongrel – probably not there by chance
– stole between the shrubs, its tail between its legs. It seemed
to Bartol as though the dog lay low waiting for all those people
to leave so that it could return to its post and bark like crazy
scaring away postmen, neighbours and other colleagues – as
its vocation dictated.
He was just going to go in when he heard a car arrive. Polek
and Maćkowiak.
‘Hi, here already?’ shouted Polek from afar.
‘As you can see. And what happened to you – lost your way?’
Bartol replied with a question.
‘Guessed right. Bad signposts. I was just the driver. It’s Polek
kept getting the directions wrong like a little miss,’ added
Maćkowiak, his belly shaking with laughter.
‘Let it go. I only got it wrong once. Big deal. And don’t say
"little miss" because my daughter never gets it wrong and I hope
she’s reconciled with her gender – although I’m not so sure. Nail
extensions yesterday, paintballing today,’ Polek complained as
he mounted the stairs.
‘Any of us here already?’ asked Maćkowiak.
‘Since you’ve only just arrived it can only be Lentz inside,’
answered Bartol.
‘What’s happened?’ asked Polek.
‘I know as much as you. Haven’t been in yet.’
‘And what, you’re just standing on the stairs admiring the
view?’
‘Don’t play the wise guy and let’s have a look for Lentz,’
decided Bartol.
Lentz appeared of his own accord and informed them from
the threshold: ‘We’ve got to wait a bit. The prosecutor’s upstairs
and there’s not much room. It’s hard not to trample over each
other. They’ve marked out a very narrow access path for the
time being. Want to safeguard as much as possible.’
As he said this he rummaged in all the pockets of his
jacket in search of cigarettes. Bartol smiled to himself as he
watched him struggle. Lentz hadn’t smoked much in the past
but recently, having diagnosed problems with his circulation,
he’d started to chain smoke.
‘The body’s sitting at a desk. We’ve got another loner,
strangled successfully for no apparent reason – at least I can’t
find one, or my cigarettes for that matter,’ Lentz added to
himself.
‘What do you mean, sitting at a desk?’ asked Polek in
disbelief.
‘Literally!’ he retorted, now clearly annoyed.
‘Who found it?’ asked Bartol coming to terms with the fact
that there probably wasn’t going to be a better description.
‘The old woman next door.' Lentz calmed down and, with
a gesture, scrounged a cigarette off a passing technician. ‘She
couldn’t stand the dog howling. Maybe she meant that doggie
over there.’ He pointed to the mongrel lurking in the bushes;
everybody turned. The dog also turned as though it knew they
were talking about it, and hid deeper in the undergrowth. ‘I
don’t know if we’ll manage to talk to her today. The emergency
operator couldn’t get any sense out of her. Every other word
was a plea for God’s help and now she’s moved on to Our Lady.
They’ve given her a sedative so maybe she’ll finally leave Our
Lady in peace, too. Besides, somebody’s sent for her son, maybe
he knows something.’
‘I’ll go there later,’ decided Bartol.
‘Is there anything more on the deceased?’ asked Polek.
‘Not much. His name’s Mirosław Trzaska. He moved in a
couple of years ago, bought all this for a pittance. There weren’t
many buyers. There was nobody left on the farm. Someone had
been quick to get rid of it. Mirosław Trzaska – from what they’ve
managed to ascertain – worked in Poznań in a night shelter and a
couple of other places, too. He was some sort of community worker
with a very good reputation. All those who talked to him last and
whom we called, spoke of him this way. We’ve got quite a bit of
questioning to do. The address book on his mobile is endless.’
‘Unlike Mikulski’s,’ said Maćkowiak.
‘We’ve no reason to connect the two murders yet.’ Hearing
Maćkowiak’s last comment, prosecutor Pilski, who’d just
appeared in the doorway, joined in the conversation. In his
long coat and bizarrely tied colourful scarf with its Oriental
pattern, and hair smooth with gel, he didn’t fit in again.
‘Nobody intends to connect them,’ said Polek, throwing
him, or rather his scarf, a look of disgust.
‘Of course, one could draw vague connections…’ Pilski
backed out awkwardly.
‘Well then, we’re drawing them and that’s it,’ Polek snapped
back.
He’d been in conflict with Pilski for a long time without any
obvious reason. This was how he described it: 'I hate pink ties
because I feel as though I’m talking to someone who’s just got
away from a garden party and since I don’t have a garden, only
a balcony, we’re worlds apart.’
The rest of them, on the whole, kept Pilski at a friendly
distance.
‘I’m going inside. It’s freezing,’ said Bartol after a while.
‘I’ll take a look around, too.’ Maćkowiak joined in. Polek
turned without a word and walked ahead.
‘I’ll do the rounds of the neighbours. There aren’t that many.
Then I’ll phone around. When are we meeting back in the
office?’ asked Lentz, tossing a cigarette butt practically under
Pilski’s feet.
‘Seven, I think,’ replied Bartol.
Although they were now talking between themselves, both
glanced at Pilski out of the corner of their eye.
The latter stood there for a while, then crushed the still
glowing cigarette butt with his shoe and left. It was hard to
know what was going on in his mind.
When Pilski was no longer there, Lentz passed on some
more information he’d acquired and went to question the
neighbours.
They formed a tight team.
If one of them allocated themselves a task which was essential
anyway, nobody opposed. Besides, they knew that Lentz and
Maćkowiak were better at talking to people and gathering all
sorts of generally available information, while Polek was in his
element searching for shady sources whose shadiness nobody
even intended to look into and which he sometimes didn’t
want to disclose. Bartol proved best at bringing it all together –
although recently he couldn’t boast about spectacular success.
They’d come to a halt with Mikulski’s case despite the fact that
never before had they called for so many expert opinions.
They’d not committed any apparent procedural mistakes;
nobody blamed them. Nobody but himself.
He was afraid the same was going to happen here.
Like the time before, he slowly made his way into the depths
of the house and looked around. The area across which they
were allowed to move wasn’t large, as was the case with the
whole house. The corridors were too narrow, the rooms too
narrow, everything was somehow too small, cramped. Even if
he hadn’t known there was a dead body sitting at a desk, all this
would have been strange enough.
Like a stage set again.
There had been too many things in Mikulski’s house – a
lovingly stored and dusted collection of his entire life. Here
there was absolutely nothing. As though someone had stepped
onto a train with a good luck charm then suddenly decided to
end his journey.
From initial information it appeared that Trzaska had
bought the old farm along with the dilapidated house. There
must have been a huge amount of objects, both necessary
and unnecessary. The walls must have borne the weight
of many successive layers of wallpaper. Renovation would
have been understandable but what Bartol saw couldn’t
qualify as renovation. It looked rather as though someone had
begun by lighting an enormous fire and the memory of the
previous owners had gone up in smoke. Then, where it had
clung hard to the walls, he had clumsily torn the wallpaper
down along with the plaster, and painted everything white, not
caring about uneven surfaces. Then brought in astoundingly
little furniture.
Bartol stared at the extent to which one’s needs could be
cut. He loved objects and their beauty. Never would he have
thought that somebody could, of their own volition, find them
totally unnecessary, that somebody could reduce their role and
number solely down to their essential function. He’d heard
about contemplative religious orders but here and now this
seemed absurd.
In no way, however, could he deny what he saw: one bed,
one stool by the bed. In the kitchen: one table, one chair, one
wall-shelf – small but still too spacious for one shallow plate,
one bowl, one pot, one glass, one set of cutlery. He couldn’t see
any fridge or television set. Walking through successive rooms,
almost as empty and equally whitewashed, he reached a small
room furnished with a small table and no chair. He couldn’t
believe what he saw. On the table stood a computer. Real in this
practically unreal reality. An ordinary, modern object which
existed in these old-fashioned surroundings. Nor were there
any of what one could have considered necessary accessories, no
CDs, printers, pads, mouse. It stood there alone and appeared
terrifying, as though someone had locked the whole ordinary,
familiar world into some extraordinary, familiar form.
He didn’t know what to make of it all. He was even pleased
to see Gawroński, the chief technician. A rare occurrence since
they weren’t exactly fond of each other.
‘What do you make of it all?’ he asked simply as if he simply
expected a reply and not a taunt – although that was how it
usually ended when someone accosted ‘Gawron’, ‘the Rook’,
at work.
‘I’ve no idea. I’ve probably got too much junk at home.
The boys are pleased. They’ll be done quicker.’ He lost
himself in thought; the contemplative atmosphere seemed to
affect everyone. ‘Maybe a life like this is better, who knows?’
Gawroński asked after a while. ‘Have you seen him yet?’
‘No. Is it okay to enter now?’
‘Yes, you’ll see him from the hallway, through the open door.
It’s a small room. It’s already well secured and photographed.
There’s no need for you to rummage around. A chair, a small
cross and him.’
‘What sort of cross?’ asked Bartol.
‘Ordinary. Free-standing, for praying probably? Oh, and
there’s a Bible – I think. He’s got his hand on something like
that. Spick and span apart from that.’
He waited a moment longer for more comments but none
came. Both looked at the walls blankly.
‘I think I’ll go upstairs now,’ Bartol spoke first.
‘Go on. And how’s it going with Mikulski, anything
becoming clear, my friend?’
Maciej merely muttered that he was working on it, and
started to climb the stairs. He knew perfectly well the question
was spiteful, which didn’t surprise him in the least. He hadn’t
expected Gawroński to be all that serene.
He passed a few people; most of them perfunctorily
acknowledged his presence and returned to their monotonous
brushing, shining of lamps, dusting with powders, most of
which were unknown to him.
He approached the door to the room where the murder
had taken place and couldn’t say anything other than that the
man was sitting at his desk. Almost naturally, as though dozing
and about to wake up at any moment. Gawroński was right;
his entire hand rested on a Bible. Bartol saw the typical gold
lettering on the thick cardboard of a cover which enclosed
hundreds of thin, evenly cut pages. The Bible was closed but
he noticed coloured ribbons, bookmarks perhaps, inserted
between specific pages. This wasn’t the time to open them;
there was still work for the technicians to do.
He stared at the scene for a long time, one thought racing
through his mind: were two chairs excessive? He had seven, and
hundreds of objects which seemed to have a more interesting
life than his own. He adored them without ever really using
them. In fact he was asking himself the same thing Gawroński
had asked a moment ago: did he have too much junk at home,
or was it a good thing he had it, otherwise he’d go mad?
What did he actually see? A man who was neither praying
nor reading, simply sitting at his desk as though painted in 3D.
Again he had the same impression as in Mikulski’s case: that a
curtain would shortly be drawn, that this wasn’t the real world.
He walked up closer. A blue mark around the man’s neck, a
slightly contorted but on the whole unremarkable expression
on his face. Glasses perched on his nose. There wouldn’t have
been anything odd in this – he could have been about sixty
and, theoretically, could have been reading – were it not that
someone must have put the spectacles on his nose after his
death. Bartol was wondering why when his attention was
riveted by the long metal plate on the frame. He was used to
larger and smaller logos but this one was certainly a little too
long, the frame wasn’t all that modern. He strained his eyes and
slowly began to read:
Speculator adstad de sui
.
He went downstairs calmly but his voice was no longer calm
when he spoke to Gawroński.
‘I want to know everything about the glasses on the man’s
nose. Literally everything. Where they’re from, what they’re
made of and where the metal plate with the writing or whatever
you call it could have been manufactured, and anything else
you can deduce from them.’ He spoke quickly and decisively,
thus offending Gawroński who was himself in the process of
giving instructions and didn’t like being interrupted.