"Nothing. Somebody must have borrowed it 'for a moment' once - for so much of a moment that it hasn't even been noted down - then they forgot, so the files are lying in some forgotten cupboard in Mostowski Palace. It happens. But if you're free this evening you can go and see the militiaman who handled the case - you're neighbours."

"Where does he live?"

"On Mot Street."

"Good, send me the details by text, I might drop in on him. And if I don't, you go tomorrow, or send one of your guys. I really shouldn't get involved in things like that. Sorry, Oleg, I've got to go. I'll call."

"Say h.e.l.lo to her from me."

"Say h.e.l.lo to my a.r.s.e."

Twenty past four. He was just entering the cafe, imagining Monika getting ready to leave with a sour look on her face, when the phone rang again. This time it was Kitten. He sighed, answered it and went back outside towards Bracka Street.

"Where are you?"

"Out," he grunted, "I've been for something to eat, now I'm going back to work."

What a fine remark. One-third true, one-third half-true - he really had been to eat something earlier - and one-third a downright lie. What a bargain for a philosopher.

"Please, I beg you, pick up Helka from playschool. I've got to stay, I've got a meeting, there's a very important trial tomorrow, involving very big money. If I leave now I won't be able to get back again."

He held the phone at arm's length, covered it with his hand and cursed out loud. A nice buxom blonde, who was walking past pushing a stroller with twins, gave him a pitying look.

"What about your mum?"

"I called them, they went to Wyszkow this morning to visit friends and they're still there. There's no way. Please, Teo, say you're not in the middle of interviewing a serial murderer..."

"OK, OK, what time do I have to pick her up by?"

"The playschool is open until half-past five, but please try..."

"I'll try," he interrupted her. "Don't worry. I've got to go. Big kiss."

"Bye, thanks."

Twenty-five past four. In a panic he ran into Szpilka, forgetting about putting on a show of cool. She wasn't downstairs. He looked on the mezzanine - not there either. She's gone. Great. So much for his flirtations with attractive young women. He should find himself a forty-year-old married woman who's bored with her old man and doesn't expect much from life any more, and drop in on her when her husband goes off to his air-conditioned office and the children have left for school. One good turn for another, a nice neat situation. But at least Helka wouldn't be the very last child to be collected from playschool. He knew all too well what that was like. You sit on the floor, play half-heartedly and jump up every time the main door opens. The teacher furiously reads her paper at the desk and looks at her watch now and then. When's that daddy coming, then? Oh dear, our dad hasn't exactly distinguished himself today.

He turned round and b.u.mped into Monika.

"You're in a trance, Teodor," she laughed. "You keep running to and fro without noticing me. Surely you didn't think I'd sit inside on a day like this? Too few people would have seen me there." As she said this, she twirled on her toes in the same sandals he'd complimented on Sat.u.r.day.

He thought he should retract everything he'd said about her figure. Her legs weren't bandy, her shoulders too broad, or her b.r.e.a.s.t.s too small. Everything about her looked absolutely perfect, and the credit couldn't only be due to her thin linen dress. Slit in all the places where it should be slit. He was reminded of the Russian fairy tale where they try to test the heroine's wisdom by telling her to come to the castle both dressed and undressed at the same time. The clever girl comes wearing nothing but a fishing net. Standing in the sunlight, Monika seemed to be dressed in not much more. Once they had sat down at a table, he could still discern the outline of her body and her white underwear.

"You really did get changed," he remarked idiotically.

"Do you hold it against me?"

"I'm just sorry I didn't bring a camera."

"No worries, I can put it on for you again one day."

"But without underwear," he automatically blurted, and almost fled on the instant. This isn't Weronika, you fool, it's a girl you've only known for a week. Control yourself.

"Hmm, I didn't know we were that well acquainted," she said with a laugh, plainly pleased, which shocked him almost as much as his own words had. He started to apologize, but she just laughed even louder and put her finger to his lips to make him stop.

"OK, it's a deal," she said, and moved back in her chair.

"What's a deal?" he asked unconsciously, still feeling her touch on his lips.

"Without underwear."

You've only yourself to blame, he thought.

VI.

At a quarter to six he entered the playschool. Helka joyfully threw herself round his neck as if she hadn't seen him for ten months, not ten hours. She was the last child to be collected. Luckily the teacher, Miss Marta, didn't say anything, but just gave him a knowing look.

At home he let the little one switch on the telly. He felt too guilty to forbid her anything, and too distracted after the meeting at Szpilka to play with her. He and Monika had mainly talked about work again; she'd asked him about all sorts of details, claiming she needed them for her book. However, she was less interested in the technical details of a prosecutor's work and more in the emotions that go with it, and by drawing on confidences their meeting had become more intimate than he would have wished. On top of that there was a constant undercurrent of flirting.

"There's one thing I don't understand," she had said as they were getting up from the table. "You're a civil servant, you're thirty-five with a wife and a child, and white hair. Can you explain to me why I keep thinking about you and nothing else?"

He had replied that it surprised him too, almost as much as the fact that whatever spell she was under evidently worked in both directions. And had fled.

At home he had tried to call the retired Civic Militia captain Stefan Mamcarz, but his phone must have been out of order or disconnected, because all he got was a recurring message that the connection couldn't be made. Weronika came home a few minutes before seven, and he realized that Mamcarz offered the perfect excuse for him to get out of the house. He was afraid she'd read in his eyes everything that had happened that afternoon, every word heard and uttered.

Oleg was right. They were neighbours. He saw the hideous ten-storey block on Mot Street from his windows every day, unfortunately, and getting there only took him a couple of minutes. He tapped out "46" on the entryphone, but no one answered. He was going to give up, when a s.h.a.ggy teenager with an intelligent and handsome, though rather spotty face and an eight- or nine-year-old fair-haired girl with the devil in her eyes came up to the entrance. Helka would definitely have loved her at first sight.

"His intercom doesn't work. I'll let you in," said the boy and tapped a code into the panel.

Szacki should have said thank you but he was tongue-tied. He always reacted like that when dealing with disabled people. The nice teenager uttered his remark incredibly slowly, dragging out his vowels infinitely. In his version the remark was so long that he said it in three stages, drawing breath along the way: "His intercom" - inhale - "doesn't work" - inhale - "I'll let you in." Poor kid, it must have been some speech-centre defect, rather than anything else. After all, his parents wouldn't have put him in charge of his little sister if he were seriously handicapped.

He pulled himself together and said thank you, trying to speak very slowly and clearly, but the boy looked at him as if he were mad, and the little girl ran through the open door onto the landing.

"Race you?" she asked, jumping up and down the whole time. Maybe she had ADHD. Szacki thought fate was really putting this family to the test, by giving them beautiful but ailing children. Instead of replying, her brother gave her a pitying look.

"You don't want to race because you're fat," she blurted as all three of them waited for the lift.

The boy smiled and addressed Szacki.

"Please" - inhale - "take no notice" - inhale. "She's still" - inhale - "little."

"I'm not little!" she squawked.

They all got in the lift. The boy looked at him inquiringly.

"Which floor is forty-six on?" asked Szacki.

"Fourth floor," said the teenager, pressing the b.u.t.ton. The lift was old and dilapidated and it stank of p.i.s.s. Unfortunately, soon he'd have reason to believe the stink was probably thanks to Captain Mamcarz or his friends.

"I'm not little," whispered the small blonde girl again spitefully, and kicked her brother.

"You are" - inhale - "a little" - inhale - "midget," he said, smiling the while, and tried to stroke her, which put the little girl into a fury.

"Get off!" She slapped his hand, which naturally made no impression on the teenager. "You'll get punished, you'll see! They won't let you eat fat, kiddywink."

Teodor Szacki found this discussion highly amusing, but unfortunately the lift stopped. The amiable siblings got out with him and disappeared behind the door of one of three flats on the same floor. As they parted the boy looked at him in amazement, then at the door he was standing outside. The prosecutor understood that look. The door had no lock and stood slightly ajar; there was a dreadful stench of p.i.s.s coming from the other side of it, and two c.o.c.kroaches were sitting quietly on the threshold. Captain Mamcarz clearly wasn't his neighbours' favourite person.

The bell didn't work, so he knocked hard. He wasn't expecting anyone to answer, but moments later there was a haggard man... woman... standing in the doorway - Szacki could only tell by the earrings that it was a woman in front of him. She could easily have played Mrs Morlock in The Time Machine without any make-up. She looked not quite sixty, but she could just as well have been forty. A square figure, a square peasant face and thick black hair most probably cut by herself. An evil expression in her eyes.

"Yes?" she asked. She had a pure, sweet, artificially polite voice, accustomed to asking favours.

"I'm looking for Stefan Mamcarz," he replied.

The woman moved back and opened the door to let Szacki in. A stale, filthy stench hit him in the face, making him feel sick, but he went inside. He knew he'd get used to it in a few minutes, just like the odour of corpses in the mortuary. But this knowledge was poor consolation.

The flat was a small dark studio with a kitchen annex, where there was a gas canister standing next to an out-of-order stove. Evidently his host's gas had long since been cut off. And the electricity. It was still light, but the stearin candles stuck in puddles of wax probably weren't intended merely to create an atmosphere over an evening gla.s.s of wine. Empty bottles of which stood neatly under the window, with the red-plastic tops in a neat row on the window sill.

"Someone to see you, Captain," she shouted into the interior, in a tone leaving no doubt about who wore the trousers in this dump.

A very small man with a tiny face got up from the couch. He was dressed in a striped shirt and an old jacket. He had a surprisingly pleasant, sad expression. He came up to Szacki.

"I don't know you," he said in alarm.

Szacki introduced himself - at which the man's alarm greatly increased - and briefly told him what brought him there. The retired captain nodded, sat down on the sofa bed and pointed Szacki to an armchair. He sat down, carefully concealing his disgust and trying not to stare at every spot where he saw a c.o.c.kroach scuttling past. He couldn't stand the creatures. Spiders, snakes, slimy slugs, seafood - nothing aroused such revulsion in him as the small brown, unexpectedly speedy c.o.c.kroach, which produced a horrid crunch when you trod on it, and which then died slowly in a pool of white sticky gunk. He was taking shallow breaths, trying not to smell the odour of the flat, but at the same time wanting to take deep breaths in order to get over his phobia of the insects. For a while he struggled with himself, then finally took a gulp of air and slowly let it out again. Better. Not much, but better.

Mamcarz was lost in thought. Mamcarz's woman - he doubted if she was his wife - offered Szacki a cup of coffee, but he refused. Even so he was sure she'd ask him for money when he left. He preferred simply to give a handout than pay for something that he probably wouldn't be able to swallow anyway.

"Do you remember that case at all?" he prompted Mamcarz.

"I do, Prosecutor. You don't forget a murder. Of course you know that."

Szacki nodded. It was true.

"I'm just trying to remember as many of the details as I can. It was almost twenty years ago, you see. I'm not sure which year it was, but it was definitely the seventeenth of September. A bigwig came to visit us from the USSR, and we were laughing behind his back that the Russkis only ever come on the seventeenth of September."

"1987."

"Maybe. Certainly before 1989. Just a moment. I must think."

"Hurry up, Stefan," snapped the woman, and then added in a sugary tone: "The prosecutor isn't going to sit here for ever."

Szacki summoned up his iciest facial expression.

"Please don't disturb the Captain," he said. "I'm giving you good advice."

The threat was vague, so she could take it as she wished. She muttered an obsequious apology and withdrew into the depths of the room. Despite which Mamcarz bucked up and started talking, glancing nervously towards his concubine, now hidden in the dark. Or maybe she actually was his wife. Szacki interrupted him.

"I'm truly sorry, Madam," he addressed the woman, "but would you mind leaving us on our own for a quarter of an hour? I beg your pardon, but this inquiry is extremely important for the prosecutor's office and the police."

The use in a single sentence of the words "inquiry", "prosecutor's office" and "police" did the job. In less than fifteen seconds the door had closed behind the woman. Mamcarz did not react. He was still thinking.

Teodor Szacki gazed out of the window to avoid noticing the insects frolicking on the carpet. He smiled to himself, because the balcony looked as if it had been stuck on from another flat. Nice and clean, its railing and bal.u.s.trade were freshly painted blue, and there were petunias growing abundantly and neatly in green boxes. Along the sides, there were flowerpots filled with roses on wire stands. How was it possible? And was it his doing, or hers? He was curious, but he knew he wouldn't ask about it.

"I'm sorry, I haven't got much for you," replied Mamcarz eventually. "I was the first officer to arrive at the scene, I got to the flat on Mokotowska Street where there was just a decaying corpse, his sister in a catatonic state and two beat cops who kept telling her over and over not to worry. The body looked terrible. The boy was lying in the bath with his throat cut. He was bound and naked - his hands had been tied behind his back and then strapped to his tied-up legs. The flat had been turned upside down, and as we discovered later, when the victim's parents arrived, very thoroughly robbed, surprisingly thoroughly. All the valuables had gone.

"Why was that surprising?"

"Usually burglars act in a hurry. They take whatever's lying on the surface and whatever they can fit in their bags. No one wants to risk taking longer than they have to. Here the thieves had more time, thanks to the fact that they found someone at home."

Szacki asked him to explain.

"I think that when they broke into the flat and found the boy there, Kamil, they were surprised at first, then they quickly overpowered him and tied him up. Maybe they tortured him for fun. Though I think to start with they didn't want to kill him. They found out that the rest of the family weren't coming back sooner than the day after next. They had time. They may have sat there for quite a while, because they wondered what to do with the prisoner, who had got such a good look at them. During this time they looked into every drawer and took out every ring."

"Until finally they killed him?"

"Until finally they killed him."

"Did you consider any other possibility apart from a.s.sault and robbery?"

"No. Maybe to begin with, but we pretty quickly found out in the city that some shady character from that suburb, Gocaw, was boasting that they'd tied this sucker up and cut his throat while they were doing a flat. But the trail went dead, apparently the shady guy wasn't local, he was just staying in Gocaw. It all led to nowhere, there wasn't a splinter for us to hang the inquiry on. No tip-off, no clue, no fingerprints. In less than a month it got shelved. I remember being wildly angry. I can't have slept for a week."

Szacki thought the story of the investigation Mamcarz had conducted was strangely reminiscent of his own inquiry. He had had enough of these coincidences by now.

"What sort of flat was it?"

"Not large, but full of books. Quite intimidating, at least for me. I'm a simple guy, I felt awkward when I went to see them and they served me coffee in a fine elegant cup. I was afraid I'd break it if I stirred it, so I didn't add any milk or sugar. I remember that room full of books, Sosnowski's parents (they'd sent the daughter off to the family in the country) and the taste of bitter coffee. I had nothing to tell them except that we were 'temporarily suspending' the investigation, and that we were in no position to find the culprits. They looked at me as if I were one of the murderers. I left as soon as I'd drunk the coffee. I never saw them again."

"Do you know who they were?"

"By profession? No. I must have known at the time, I must have filled in the boxes in the witness-statement forms. But it can't have been crucial to the case, or I'd have remembered."

"Have you ever seen them again?"

"Never." Mamcarz got up and shambled into the corner to fetch a bottle of Golden Goblet sweet fruit wine. He filled two gla.s.ses and handed one to Szacki. The prosecutor took a sip, surprised that although he was almost thirty-six, it was the first time he'd ever drunk apple wine. He was expecting it to taste like Domestos, but in fact it was quite bearable. A bit like Russian sparkling wine without the bubbles. And sweeter. But he didn't fancy the idea of getting drunk on it.

"That is, I thought I saw Sosnowski on television once. At our friends' house," he added, noticing Szacki visually sweeping the room in search of a telly.

Szacki imagined Mamcarz with his girlfriend on his arm and a bottle of apple wine in his hand, marching along the back streets of the Praga district to drop in on their "friends". What a glamorous scene. He wondered if it was hard to overlook the moment when you turn onto the path that leads to drinking apple wine by candlelight in the company of an evil woman and a regiment of c.o.c.kroaches. It probably was. It started with cheating on your wife.

"What was he doing on television?" he asked, strangely sure that once again he wouldn't learn anything specific.