6

‘And nobody knows where the shopkeeper moved to?’ asked Harry McVay when Kordian and Joanna appeared in his hotel room at the Holiday Inn. They weren’t surprised that the boss preferred to operate from his hotel room rather than his house in Elsnerów. In addition to the obvious, it was much closer to the Skylight building.

‘No,’ replied Kordian. ‘He vanished into thin air, taking all his baggage with him.’

‘And no curtain-twitching granny saw him and asked where he was off to in such a hurry?’

‘Over there? I don’t think it’s that sort of neighbourhood.’

‘Unbelievable,’ said McVay, rifling through the minibar. One of the advantages of having a room close to your place of work was that you didn’t have to drive. One of the disadvantages was the ridiculously small size of the bottles.

‘He’s gone to ground,’ added Oryński, shrugging his shoulders.

‘But you said he had quite a lot of stock,’ responded the Englishman offhandedly. ‘So it must have taken him a bit of time to get his kit together. It’s unbelievable that none of the neighbours saw him go.’

‘All his stuff was packed and driven away by a removal company,’ said Chyłka.

‘No doubt paid for by the Collective,’ concluded McVay, fishing a tiny bottle of Johnnie Walker out of the minibar.

‘I’m not sure about that name,’ said Joanna, opening the window. She leaned out and lit a cigarette. ‘It sounds like a hipster band playing punk rock.’

‘To me, it sounds more like an Afro Collective,’ said Oryński.

‘What in God’s name is that?’ she asked, taking a drag. ‘No, I don’t think I want to know. It’d probably be something in your style, so I’d rather live in blissful ignorance.’

Kordian squeezed in next to Chyłka and also tried to lean out of the window.

‘I see that the make-up sex has been successful,’ said Harry, and didn’t wait for either of them to deny it. ‘Excellent. In that case, I can get straight to the point. We have a new deadline. It took persuasion, a touch of blackmail and a bit of calling in old favours, but I eventually got what I wanted. I had the biggest problems with Artur, who has clearly got it in for you, young man. But all things considered, everything is OK now.’

‘But how did you . . . ?’

‘I convinced one of the honourable judges of the Supreme Court that before submitting the appeal you were held up by . . . well, by a superior force, though not vis major in the contractual sense,’ replied the Englishman and chuckled. ‘Though it wouldn’t be a problem anyway,’ continued McVay, ‘because I had Chyłka’s written statement that the cassation appeal was well-founded and, to the best of her knowledge, should be heard. So the legal side was settled. All we had to do was get an equivalent document from the procedural side and prove that our failure to meet the deadline was not deliberate. We even went one better, saying it was the result of a crime.’

‘But . . .’

‘Yes, unfortunately,’ said McVay, looking at the trainee. ‘This will have to be handled as a criminal matter, but all in good time. You’ll have to report it as a crime. In fact, you should already start doing the paperwork. For the time being, I’ve submitted a written statement to the effect that I have full knowledge of the affair and am able to verify it. If need be, a colleague of mine has all the right papers.’

‘So for the time being, I’m the culprit?’

‘Yes,’ said Harry, shrugging his shoulders. ‘The court knows you are at fault. Contrary to the wishes of the client and his lawyer, you failed to deliver a procedural document. That is sufficient. The judge won’t conduct an investigation personally, that’s not his job. That’s a job for the Crime Division, regional or district, I don’t remember which.’

‘What can I expect to get?’

‘A reprimand,’ declared McVay. ‘But due to the fact that you have good relations with your employer, and your employer has good relations with the rest of the legal establishment, you have been granted a letter of safe conduct, thanks to which you can continue to navigate the great convolutions of the law.’

Kordian was a bit confused, and the Englishman’s metaphors didn’t help. ‘Can I still be part of the trial?’

‘Nobody’s going to stick you in jail,’ said McVay nonchalantly. ‘But that’s for the law firm and the client to decide. Even with all your flaws, I’ve nothing against you representing Langer, and it just so happens, neither has he.’

‘Great,’ remarked Joanna. She had already heard all this in Kraków, when Harry first presented his plan to her. Back then, there had been a good many question marks, chiefly concerning favours and gestures of goodwill, but McVay was certain the matter would be settled quickly. And it had been, though sooner or later Kordian would have to appear in court not only to answer charges of negligence, but also to face the people who had threatened his life. The two cases were inextricably linked.

‘So what about witnesses?’ asked the Englishman, looking at Chyłka and Oryński.

‘There’s plenty to choose from,’ started Chyłka. ‘On Langer’s staircase there are at least ten people willing to testify, including a bloke who lives directly above him and a lady who lives below. This is a modern building, so the walls are paper thin, and the neighbours constantly heard all sorts of sounds coming from Langer’s apartment. He was hardly into peace and quiet, but appeared to love loud music and the opposite sex. And yet during those ten terrible days, they heard nothing.’

‘Nothing at all?’

‘Not a dickie bird.’

‘How is that possible?’ asked McVay, frowning. ‘Even if Langer didn’t kill those people, someone must have heaved those bodies there. Are you saying someone entered the building unnoticed, with two corpses, placed them inside the flat and arranged the whole scene? And no one heard anything?’

‘Or saw anything,’ added Chyłka.

For a moment they were all silent.

‘Alternatively, someone could have killed them inside the flat,’ suggested Oryński. ‘It would have been considerably easier.’

‘Let’s assume that’s what happened,’ said the Englishman. ‘Then it seems even more improbable that no one heard any noise coming from the apartment. The bodies of the victims were mutilated, so much so there were problems identifying them. According to the police report, their bodies were abused over a long period of time.

Oryński refrained from asking McVay how he knew what was in the police report. He probably wouldn’t have been given a straight answer anyway.

‘And what about surveillance cameras?’ asked Harry, but with little conviction.

‘They are trained on the perimeter fence and the back wall,’ explained Joanna. ‘In theory, the security guards look after the rest of the premises, and the main gate is guarded 24/7.’

‘OK,’ said the Englishman. ‘And you believe the Collective have an insider there?’

‘My slashed tyres are proof that they do. And bear in mind that it’s not easy to get into those premises. Zordon and Kormak had considerable difficulty, and they were representatives of the law firm defending one of the residents.’

‘Maybe it’s one of the security guards?’

‘Or one of the residents,’ suggested Chyłka. ‘In fact, it could turn out that the brains behind the whole operation is someone living in the same block as Langer.’

The three lawyers fell silent. Oryński looked at the ceiling, wondering what he had got himself into. The professor teaching them criminal procedure repeatedly warned them never to work for corporations. Do anything, they said, even become a tax adviser, but never join a large law firm. The lecturer had been a good person, one of the very few who actually believed the students would make something of themselves when they graduated. He had enough faith to speak of justice as if it was a value, and also spoke of having a ‘mission’, a concept that back then was more generally associated with getting exam credits. He encouraged students to become prosecutors or judges, because out of the three evils of legal life, those were the least hypocritical and deceitful.

Slowly but surely Kordian was realising that he would have to repeat everything he had told his two lawyer colleagues before the court. Then they’d start the tedious process of determining what lay behind the legal world’s favourite oxymoron: ‘the objective truth’.

The Collective would do everything to destroy him. And its members had demonstrated they knew how to do their job.

The ‘Afraid to Shoot Strangers’ guitar solo shook Kordian out of his thoughts.

McVay nodded in time with the music as he sang along with Bruce Dickinson. Clearly he was no stranger to British heavy metal.

Chyłka pulled out her phone, glanced at the display and pressed it against her ear. She did not look pleased. For a moment she listened to the caller, then put the phone back into her pocket without a word.

‘Powirska,’ Joanna said in a grave tone.

‘What did she want?’ asked McVay.

‘She won’t testify. She’s leaving the country, and if she’s summoned to court, we’ll be informed in writing,’ explained Chyłka, her face pale. ‘Then she hung up, as you can imagine.’

A heavy silence that had been circling like a vulture over the decaying hope of winning the case now descended on them. The three lawyers had no doubt that someone had been advising Powirska, because leaving the country was the only possible justification for not appearing in court after a summons.

Oryński turned to the window and lit another cigarette. Joanna joined him. They all remained relatively calm, although two of their most important witnesses were now unavailable.

‘Serious shit,’ Kordian finally said.

‘Blackmail?’ asked Chyłka, exhaling smoke.

‘Perhaps,’ said Harry. ‘From what you tell me, she’s a fairly promiscuous girl. Maybe they took compromising photographs, maybe they’ve put pressure on her, or maybe they’ve kidnapped her and taken her out of the country.’

‘We have to find her,’ said Joanna.

McVay agreed. Two cigarette butts flew out of the window towards Złote Tarasy, and shortly afterwards the duo left the hotel room.

Powirska was not at home – the security guard told them that she had left the estate shortly before their arrival. None of the neighbours knew where she had gone.

Kordian was comforted by the fact that at least they were still willing to talk to them.

At least for the moment.

The following day, none of the residents would even answer their phone calls.