"Of course I didn"t!" she said, raising her voice. "That"s a wicked insinuation."
He did not react.
"It prompts the question why during your previous interview you did not mention the late-night conversation with Mr Telak. It would have stuck in my memory."
She lowered her head and pressed her fingertips to her brow.
"I don"t know. I can"t explain it," she said quietly. "I really can"t."
He took advantage of the fact that she was staring at the floor to glance discreetly at the phone display. "In that case I"m nipping off to change. C U @ 4 in Szp. Mo."
"Please believe me, I"m telling the truth now," she whispered. "Why should I lie?"
I"d like to know that myself, thought Szacki.
"This question might seem odd to you, but where did you grow up?"
She raised her head and looked at him in surprise.
"Here, in Warsaw, but my parents are from od."
"Which district?"
"In the City Centre, not far from the police station on Wilcza Street. But I moved to the suburbs, to Grodzisk, in my early twenties. Ages ago."
He leaned slightly towards her. He didn"t want her to avert her gaze as he asked the next question.
"Does the name Kamil Sosnowski mean anything to you?"
She didn"t drop her eyes. She didn"t blink. She didn"t frown.
"No," she replied curtly. "Who"s that?"
"An unlucky guy. It doesn"t matter."
Hanna Kwiatkowska looked far more presentable than a week ago, nor was she quite so jittery. Perhaps her poor state hadn"t been caused by neurosis, but the weekend therapy ending in the discovery of Henryk Telak"s body. She seemed an energetic person, content with life, which made her more attractive. Szacki thought that objectively she was much prettier than Monika, though eight years older. Her answers to the non-essential questions that he asked to launch the conversation were brief and to the point. Once she even ventured to make a joke, but Szacki did not react. So she didn"t try that again. It turned out Leszek was right, and Kwiatkowska had grown up near Konstytucja Square, though now she was living in Grochow, in the eastern part of Warsaw, not far from Szembek Square. Szacki felt like asking her if she felt exiled, like him, but he dropped the idea. However, he did ask her if she knew the name Kamil Sosnowski. She denied it after a moment"s thought. She didn"t want to know why that interested him.
"Do you know what voiceprint a.n.a.lysis is?" he asked.
She scratched her cheek.
"No, I don"t," she replied. "But I would deduce from the name that it"s something like fingerprint a.n.a.lysis, but to do with sounds. It must be a forensic technique involving recognizing voices. Am I right?"
"One hundred per cent. Why do I ask? Because in the course of our investigations we have succeeded in securing" - he mentally reproached himself for using Newspeak - "Henryk Telak"s Dictaphone. I can let you into the fact that for him it was a sort of notebook and diary all in one. He recorded business meetings and personal reflections on it. What proved of most interest to us was something he recorded after the therapy on Sat.u.r.day."
Kwiatkowska shook her head.
"I wouldn"t want to hear what he recorded. It was dreadful enough for us, and far worse for him."
"I"ll tell you briefly. Mr Telak was in a very bad way; he thought he was hearing voices; he reckoned he was having illusions, hallucinations. He decided to record them to check if they were real."
He broke off, closely watching Kwiatkowska"s reactions. She didn"t say anything, but her relaxed manner vanished. Her right eye blinked a few times. He asked if she would like to comment on that at all. She shook her head to say no, and adjusted her gla.s.ses. Again Szacki felt a tickling in his cerebral cortex. Either I"m no longer able to put two and two together, or I must go and see a neurologist, he thought.
"Listening to the tape, in the first instance we were shocked, because Telak had recorded a conversation with his daughter who died two years ago. The material was subjected to voiceprint a.n.a.lysis and the conclusions are unambiguous. The person who was standing outside the door of Telak"s room pretending to be his dead daughter was you. Can you comment on that?"
Kwiatkowska had gone grey.
"This is some kind of joke," she gasped. "I don"t believe it."
Prosecutor Teodor Szacki felt tired. He"d had enough of all this fibbing.
"Now look here," he said more firmly than he had intended. "I"m not giving you my hypothesis, just the facts. And the facts are that after a therapy session that was extraordinarily tough for Henryk Telak you pretended to be his dead daughter at his door, suggesting to him that he should come and join you - that is, his daughter - and shortly afterwards Mr Telak recorded a suicide letter to his wife and swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills! Please don"t tell me what you believe, just comment on the facts, for G.o.d"s sake, before I start thinking you decided to use the skewer because you had failed to induce Mr Telak to commit suicide, and simply lock you up."
He wasn"t bluffing. After finding the recording and confirming that it was Kwiatkowska"s voice, the schoolteacher had become the prime suspect. Just in case, in his desk drawer he had a ruling signed by Chorko to press charges on Kwiatkowska. He was ready to make her an official suspect in the inquiry, search her flat thoroughly, put her under police surveillance and send her for psychiatric tests. Two things were stopping him: instinct and the fear that he"d lose hands down in court at the very first hearing. Instead of hard proof he could only provide foggy circ.u.mstantial evidence and idiotic theories bordering on the esoteric.
The woman suddenly stood up and began to pace rapidly round the room.
"Well, this has to be a bad dream," she was saying to herself. "It can"t be true, it can"t."
She stopped and stared at Szacki.
"It"s hard for me to believe you"re not lying. But I do, because after all, what would you have to gain? Please record in writing that, aware of all criminal responsibility, or however you say it, I swear and insist with all my heart that I do not remember standing outside Henryk Telak"s door and pretending to be his daughter. I swear it. You can have me tested by a lie detector, you can send me for psychiatric tests, I"ll agree to anything."
If you don"t now ask what exactly you are supposed to have said to Telak through the door, I"ll press charges against you, thought Szacki and opened the drawer.
"But first of all," said Kwiatkowska, pointing her finger at the prosecutor, "I demand that you show me that recording. I want to know what I"m being accused of."
He took a CD out of the drawer and inserted it in an old boom box standing on the window sill. He played Kwiatkowska the "conversation with a ghost". After the first words he had to pause the recording, because the woman had an attack of hysteria. He gave her some water, lay her on the floor, shoved his rolled-up jacket under her head and sent away the colleagues who had come in, alarmed by the loud crying; he wondered if it was possible to fake it that well. Fifteen minutes later Kwiatkowska said she was feeling better and would like to listen to the recording right through.
She was pale, and her fists were clenched tight, but she wasn"t crying any more.
"Over to you," he said, switching off the CD player.
"I recognize my own voice, but I feel as if someone"s just about to leap out of the cupboard and shout "Got you!", and you"ll hand me the bunch of flowers you"re hiding under the desk. I can"t explain it, I don"t know how it"s possible; my only memory of that evening is that I brushed my teeth with my finger because I"d forgotten my toothbrush, and then I went to bed. I realize you might not believe me, but it"s the strangest thing that has ever happened to me in all my life. I can hear my own words that I never uttered."
He noted it down and handed her the transcript. Before signing, she read it through twice, very carefully.
"I"m not going to press charges on you, though I could and no one would argue with me," he said. "But I"d like you to know that at this stage of the inquiry you are, let"s say, under close surveillance. And so please do not discuss this with anyone and do not leave Warsaw. If I get the slightest hint of a suspicion that you are obstructing legal proceedings, you"ll end up in custody that very day. Is that clear?"
The door had not yet closed behind Hanna Kwiatkowska when Teodor Szacki began to regret his decision. Trusting in instinct will be the end of you, he told himself. You should have locked her up and seen what happened next.
III.
He gave his secretary instructions not to put through any calls, switched off the computer and sat back comfortably to listen via the intercom to the conversation going on in the next room. He was sorry they didn"t have cameras installed at the office - he"d like to see the bear-like inspector interviewing Igor. If the cop suspected even a hundredth part of what Igor knew, what he was mixed up in, he certainly wouldn"t have showed up here without an anti-terrorist squad. He felt like laughing at the thought that even if the cop had come up with such an idea, he would never have let it happen. One phone call would have been enough.
"Nice sword. Is it samurai?"
"A gift from one of our clients. It"s an authentic eighteenth-century antique from j.a.pan. If I were you I"d put it down, Inspector. Easy to do yourself an injury."
"I"m quite used to that. Yesterday I hurt myself cleaning fish. Last time I ever buy something that"s not a fish finger. Do you know, some nursery school children in the States were once asked to draw fish and some of them drew rectangles? Not bad, eh?"
"Yes, indeed, fascinating. But in this particular case injuring yourself might mean losing a few fingers, or at least half the tendons in your hand. Please take a seat. You"ll be more comfortable."
"I"ve spent so much time sitting down today I"ve got corns on my a.r.s.e. Will it bother you if I keep walking about for a while? You"ve got a bigger office than the yards in plenty of Polish prisons."
"It"s hard for me to tell, I"ve never had the pleasure."
"Don"t praise the day until the sun goes down, as the ancient Chinese used to say. Or was it the Romans? I"m not sure. Anyway, let"s get down to business."
"Gladly. I won"t hide the fact that my agenda is pretty full."
"Please tell me about Henryk Telak"s finances. I understand you were his accountant."
"Investment adviser. We are a consulting firm, we don"t fill in tax returns."
"Pity, they say it"s a lucrative business. You could buy a paper knife, it"d go nicely with the sword."
"We ran an investment account for Mr Telak, and he also deposited his life-insurance policy with us."
"Investment account, meaning?"
"We had power of attorney to manage the money accrued there to a set percentage quota. In this case fifty per cent of the total at the end of the previous half-year, but not more than the average of the last two years. Which means that the more we earned for Mr Telak, the more we could invest, but if we hadn"t got it right and Mr Telak had lost, we wouldn"t be able to reduce his account below, let"s call it, the safety quota."
"Did you often lose?"
"Mr Telak never earned less than twenty per cent of his accrued resources annually. Of course after his death we stopped making new investments. What happens to his money next depends on his widow. She might close the account, she might withdraw part of the money, or she might entrust us to carry on dealing with her finances on the same or new terms."
"How much is there in the account at present?"
"Almost five hundred thousand zlotys in cash and six hundred thousand in a.s.sets."
"Sorry?"
"Altogether about one million one hundred thousand. Of course, this sum changes on a daily basis, depending on the share prices, currency rates and so on. Some investments are long term, so if Mrs Telak wanted to cash it all in as soon as possible and withdraw the money, it would probably be about a million."
"And the policy?"
"Half a million."
"It looks as if the widow won"t have to ask for cheaper Polish subst.i.tutes at the pharmacy."
"Henryk Telak was our client, but also a good friend of mine for many years. And his wife too. I would ask you to choose your words more carefully."
"Did she know about the life-insurance policy and the investment account?"
"No."
"Are you sure?"
"She may have found out from Henryk."
"Has she already been to see you?"
"We saw each other at the funeral, but we didn"t talk about money. She merely promised to drop in next week."
"That"s a bit strange, don"t you think?"
"No. As far as I know, Jadwiga isn"t short of money for everyday expenses."
"I see. And you knew Henryk Telak for a long time?"
"We met while we were students at the polytechnic, I think it was the late 1970s, definitely before martial law. Then our paths diverged for some time. I got a bit of work through a friend at one of the foreign-trade offices, I was interested in economics, and he remained loyal to printing. We met again by chance after 1989."
"So this is your company?"
"I am one of the partners and also vice president."
"And did you deal with Mr Telak"s finances for a long time?"
"Over ten years, since 1994."
"Can anyone just come in off the street to you?"
"They can, though there"s no guarantee that we"ll act for them. We"re a small firm, but elite. We don"t have many clients, and none of them is - how shall I put it? - working their way up. They all came to us on recommendation. We"re able to make a lot of money for them, but our fees are not among the lowest. Nevertheless, we have never known anyone to be dissatisfied with our services."
"You"re not a secret sect, are you?"
"Meaning?"
"Initiation rites oozing with s.e.x, hostesses dressed in nothing but two hundred-dollar bills, the rhythmic beating of the drums and banging in general..."
"I know nothing about anything like that."
"But maybe you know if Mr Telak had any enemies, people who envied him his status and money?"
"I know nothing about that."
"Do the names Cezary Rudzki, Euzebiusz Kaim, Barbara Jarczyk or Hanna Kwiatkowska mean anything to you?"
"I"ve seen Rudzki a couple of times on television, I think he appeared as an expert on some talk show. And my wife has his book about solving family problems. The other names mean nothing to me."