Chyłka returned to Warsaw the following day, she in her X5, McVay in his Lexus, racing all the way down National Road 7. Although the boss had much more horsepower under the bonnet, her strategic manoeuvring gave Chyłka the lead, and she reached the capital first.
The journey would have been the ideal occasion to mull over recent events, but Chyłka’s mind was preoccupied with juvenile racing antics. When she was leaving Warsaw the previous day, she’d been ready to rip Zordon’s guts out and hang them out on telegraph poles across the country. Initially, she couldn’t think rationally, because when he had appeared in her office – a beaten puppy with its tail between its legs – and told her the whole stupid story, it was as if she’d been hit on the head with a blunt instrument herself. Her talk with McVay calmed her down. It was then that she realised two things: firstly, that Zordon had lied out of concern for her, and secondly, that the deadline could be extended.
If anyone had put pressure on Oryński, this was grounds for setting a new date for filing the cassation appeal. They only had to prove that he had been coerced in some way – and that wouldn’t be difficult. Beating Kordian up should have ensured victory for the other side, but it was likely to be their undoing. In addition, Oryński had met Jacek from whatever-department-it-was outside the Skylight building, and he could confirm that Oryński was about to take the file to court. No judge should have a problem with granting a new deadline for Langer’s appeal.
After passing the Welcome to Warsaw sign, Chyłka flashed her lights to thank McVay for the race. She drove through the capital’s streets straight to Białołęka prison.
The visit had been arranged previously, but Joanna wasn’t sure whether her relations with the Prison Services were good enough to allow Harry to come in as an additional visitor at such short notice.
They parked outside the prison, got out of their cars and stretched their limbs. Chyłka lit a cigarette and looked at the grim edifice.
‘I don’t know if I’ll manage to get you an entry pass,’ she warned McVay.
‘You don’t have to,’ he replied, flexing his back. ‘I rang them on the way.’
‘And?’
‘And I am the partner of one of the leading law firms in this country,’ he replied, as if surprised he needed to explain anything.
Soon they were both sitting in the visiting room, sipping vending machine coffee and waiting for Langer. His arrival was heralded by the sound of opening locks and the clanking of chains. Two warders cuffed the prisoner to the chair and looked at Chyłka. As usual, she encouraged them to leave with a pointed glance at the door.
‘Good morning, Mr Langer,’ began McVay, as if he was greeting a potential client. ‘My name is . . .’
‘I know who you are,’ replied Langer.
‘Great,’ said Chyłka. ‘That’s the formalities done, so we can spare ourselves any further bullshit.’
‘Tactful as always,’ said Harry.
Chyłka looked at Langer expectantly. She had no idea how he would react to the presence of one of her bosses. Lately he had started cooperating at long last – even admitting that he hadn’t known the victims. Joanna, however, found him hard to believe.
‘Well,’ said the Englishman. ‘I don’t know if you’ve heard about what happened recently?’
The prisoner glared at him, and Chyłka recognised the former Langer. Langer the murderer. Perhaps that had been the real Langer all along, and maybe that was why she couldn’t bring herself to trust him.
Whether your client was guilty or not, you had to do your job as best you could. And not just because the law required it. Even if you were defending someone like Breivik or Josef Fritzl, it soon turned into an ambitious struggle, a case of to be or not to be. It all boiled down to whether or not you could defeat the other party. It didn’t matter whether it was an article 148 crime, robbery, rape or causing a traffic accident, at the end of the day it was simple rivalry. The individual themselves? His or her life? No one cared, that wasn’t the aim of the game.
McVay started speaking, revealing more and more to the prisoner. The lawyers had agreed that the situation required total openness; it was hard to say if it was a prudent idea, but it was definitely necessary.
Piotr listened to the story with indifference.
‘As you can see, we’ve got a problem.’ Harry summed it up. ‘I don’t know who committed the murders, but they have no scruples, and they have a whole range of tools to help them implement their plans.’
‘Yes.’
‘What did you say?’
‘Yes, I agree with you,’ said Langer dispassionately.
McVay looked at Chyłka, raised his eyebrows, and clasped his hands on the table. Chyłka knew he wanted more of a reaction. He’d been talking for a good quarter of an hour.
‘I see that you don’t take easily to new people,’ said the Englishman.
‘Maybe.’
‘In prison, that’s an advantage.’
Chyłka coughed. ‘Langer . . .’ she said. ‘I trust this man. Even more than Zordon, at the moment.’
Piotr kept his gaze fixed on the Englishman. ‘I don’t know him,’ he said finally.
‘You’ll have the chance to get to know him. I vouch for him, Langer.’
For a moment, the prisoner remained silent.
‘What do you want from me?’ he asked eventually.
‘Answers to a few questions,’ replied McVay. ‘Firstly, we’d like to find out who these people are.’
Piotr shrugged his shoulders.
‘I thought we were past that stage,’ said the Englishman, looking at Joanna.
Before she could say anything, Langer spoke. ‘I couldn’t tell you anything, even if I wanted to.’
‘Why?’ she asked.
‘You are bound by attorney – client privilege,’ he said. ‘But he isn’t.’
‘You can be sure . . .’
‘I’d only be sure if I put your two children on the line. Amelia and Jakub, if memory serves. You might wonder how I know, but it’s probably best not to think about what I could do if they undid these chains and I was able to escape from prison.’
‘Is that it?’ asked McVay.
‘Yes.’
Harry yawned, opening his mouth wide and stretching. It triggered Chyłka, who yawned too. Langer, however, kept his stony expression.
‘You can stop trying to catch me out,’ he said. ‘I’m not sleepy, so I won’t yawn. And just because I don’t, it doesn’t make me a psychopath.’
‘You’ve watched too many American TV shows.’
‘Actually, I got it from a British one.’
Joanna remembered how Italian scientists had found that yawning was contagious, something to do with mirror neurons primarily responsible for empathy and sympathy. Another theory said that if someone didn’t ‘catch’ a yawn easily from another person, it pointed to a greater chance of psychopathy.
For a few moments, all three of them were silent.
McVay finally spoke. ‘Well, in that case, I’ll leave you two alone.’ He tapped his fingers on the table, took another look at the prisoner, then got up and left the room.
Chyłka immediately noted the change on Langer’s face. ‘I guarantee we can trust him.’
‘Let’s get to the point,’ Langer said. ‘I know who those people are.’
She waited for more, but he fell silent.
‘And?’ she asked.
‘And that’s all I can tell you,’ he replied looking at the camera in the top corner of the room.
‘That crappy set-up doesn’t record sound, Langer.’
He smiled wanly, as if to tell her that it didn’t mean there wasn’t a bug installed somewhere.
‘What have they got on you?’ she asked.
‘Who?’
‘You’re in prison, what can they do to you? Put you in solitary confinement? You’re in for murder, no one will touch you, even if they send other prisoners to sort you out.’
‘These people don’t need to have anything on anyone.’
‘Bullshit!’ she exclaimed. ‘And you’re not scared to mention them?’ she said, looking at the camera in the corner. ‘Maybe they’ll burst into this room and sort you out themselves?’
Langer looked at the door. Chyłka knew that if she didn’t calm down, the meeting would be over. She had failed to get any practical information from her client. The mere fact that Piotr knew the perpetrators did not help her in any way.
She rose from the chair and walked to the wall. Leaning her back against it, she looked at the prisoner. He sat there motionless, as if he couldn’t wait for the visit to finish.
‘Who are you so scared of, Langer?’
His response was more silence. Joanna focused her gaze on his face. It was unnerving, as always, and to make it even more disturbing he had started to blink nervously. The tic showed that beneath the man’s ostensibly calm exterior there lurked an obsessive anxiety.
‘Do you want justice?’ she asked.
‘Justice is to experience what you have done to others.’
She raised her eyebrows. ‘The Bible?’
‘No, Aristotle.’
Before she could answer, a warder entered the room and escorted the silent Langer back to his cell.
Chyłka watched him leave the room, regretting that she had played it that way.