Sniff. She ran a palm across her eyes. 'I told you they hated us 'freaking yuppies'.'
The taxi driver stuck his head out of the car window and said something too quickly for Logan to catch any of it, but Jaroszewicz rattled back a brittle reply, then climbed into the back, saying, 'Are you hungry?' Lunch was in a labyrinthine restaurant called Chlopskie Jadlo, five minutes walk from the main square, with some sort of witch carved out of dark wood standing guard outside. The place was nearly deserted, just a woman and a small child stuffing themselves with dumplings. Jaroszewicz picked a table in another room, far away from the roaring fire.
She slumped into her chair and sighed at the menu. 'So that is it, we are finished. You had a wasted trip. I am sorry.'
'You seem to be taking this very… personally.'
She shrugged, eyes scanning the menu. 'You should try the pierogi — potato dumplings. Very good.'
'Come on, you were nearly in tears back there.'
'I…' Pause. 'This is a big case for me. If I… My sergeant says that if I do not get this one right, my career is over.' She turned the menu over in her hands. 'Do you want a drink? I want a drink. Let us get something to drink.'
There was a pause, then Logan stuck out a hand. 'Let me see those files again.'
'Why?'
'Because I'm not going home without a connection between Ricky Gilchrist and what happened here. And I don't care how tenuous it is — there has to be something. He didn't just come up with the exact same MO as your Polish mobsters by accident.'
She dug the file out of her cavernous handbag. Then went back to the menu.
Logan spread the individual case files out on the table. It was a cut down version of the huge stack he'd seen on the train from Warsaw, with all the non-Krakow victims removed. Five victims: all men.
He arranged them in date order, '1973, 1981, 1993, 1997, and 2004. Five victims. Gibowski is in America, Wisniewski's dead, and no one's seen Bielatowicz since 2003. Which leaves us Gorzkiewicz in eighty-one, and Lowenthal in ninety-seven.'
The waiter turned up, but Logan hadn't even looked at the menu, so he let Jaroszewicz order for them both, and went back to the two remaining files, trying to remember the details. Lowenthal was allegedly involved in people-trafficking from Russia to the UK, and the odd spot of gun-running. Ex-Soviet weaponry being sold off on the cheap by soldiers who hadn't been paid for months, then passed on at a huge mark-up to gangs all over Europe.
Gorzkiewicz was a different kettle of borscht entirely. He'd been a lance corporal in the Polish army, under the Communists, invalided out after some sort of accident. A law-abiding citizen whose only transgression was being active in the Solidarity movement in the early eighties.
Logan pulled Lowenthal's file to the front. 'Right, this is the guy we have to concentrate on.'
She sniffed. 'Why him? Why not Gorzkiewicz, surely he would be more-'
'No he wouldn't. Gorzkiewicz was blinded in 1981: while the Communists were still in power. Anything we got out of him would be nearly thirty years out of date. And if this is mob enforcers copying what happened back then, it wouldn't help us anyway. But Lowenthal was done in 2004. What he knows might still be worth something.'
'But we have no idea where he-'
'We hit the land registry, census records, telephone books. We talk to informers, known associates.'
She sat back and frowned. 'Oh… I had not… Yes. Of course.'
The waiter returned with two large glasses of beer and a wooden board covered in bread, a tub of what looked like lard, and a huge knife. Jaroszewicz thanked him, then handed Logan one of the beers, their fingers touching on the cold glass. A droplet of condensation ran down the side and dripped onto the tabletop.
'Er… thanks.' Logan took a mouthful, pretending not to notice that Senior Constable Jaroszewicz was blushing. 'I'll call my DCI after lunch: get him to speak to whoever's in charge in Krakow. If they won't play with the Warsaw police, maybe they'll cooperate with Aberdeen?'
She helped herself to bread and lard. 'Just make sure you tell him not to mention me. If they think a freaking yuppie is using Aberdeen to put pressure on them, they will deny everything.'
43
The room was too hot to concentrate, sunlight streaming through three huge, dirty windows into the airless space. Stifling and soporific. A big lunch of beetroot soup and potato dumplings hadn't exactly helped. Krakow's municipal records hall was undergoing some sort of refit, the huge stacks of files and documents relocated to a grimy four-storey building, sandwiched in the middle of a row of other grimy four-storey buildings that overlooked two construction sites and a tram stop.
The City Council obviously didn't believe in air-conditioning: a single electric fan sat in the middle of the room, oscillating back and forth — hummmmmmm click, hummmmmmm click, hummmmmmm click — doing little more than stirring up a cloud of dust in the oppressive summer heat. The only other sound was the low murmur of American tourists, tracing their ancestors through stacks of old town records.
Logan's head snapped back to the upright position. Blink. Shudder. Yawn.
Jaroszewicz didn't look up — she was pouring over a stack of newspapers from 2004, looking for coverage of the Lowenthal blinding. If they were lucky it would at least give them an area of the city to start looking. Cross reference it with the listings for Lowenthal in the Krakow phone book and they might actually be on to something.
Logan stretched out in his chair, making the ancient wood creak. 'Are you sure I can't do anything?'
'Why,' she turned to the next page of yellowing newsprint, 'have you learned to read Polish since the last time you asked? Or the four times before that?'
Logan sighed. 'I'm not doing anything here.'
He could see her gritting her teeth. 'Then go do something else. Please. And let — me — work — in — peace!' He found a little internet cafe, just off the main square, paid his twenty zloty, and checked his email. There were the usual memos; directives; calls for witnesses; a couple of missing persons; a leaving do for DI Gray in Archie's next Friday; something from the Witness Protection people saying Kylie and her sister Tracey were doing remarkably well on the rehab programme; something from Big Gary saying if Logan didn't get his expenses in by the end of the week there'd be trouble; and a huge email from Staff Sergeant Lukaszewski with attached background reports for all the Aberdeen victims. Logan spent five minutes wading through the data, then forwarded it to Finnie. Let him do some work for a change.
Last up was one from Rennie, complaining about being dumped with DI Steel's 'Sperminator' inquiry and finishing off with an invite to join half of CID to watch the football on Saturday, followed by dodgems, curry, and lots of beer.
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
