An hour later, Chyłka and Oryński were sitting in the conference room, along with Artur Żelazny, Harry McVay and Kormak. The door was closed and the windows were soundproof.
‘I take it you’ve seen our findings,’ said Artur.
Langer’s former defence lawyers didn’t answer.
‘It’s a painful and uncomfortable matter for us all,’ said Harry. ‘Perhaps it would have been less troubling if Langer had been less refined in his methods, if he had actually tried to convince people of his innocence. But we have no option, we have to face the truth. We were the ones who did all his work for him.’
‘Don’t get us wrong,’ said Żelazny. ‘You had a duty to do that work, and you did it to the best of your abilities. You deserve applause and presidential awards regardless of whether Langer is guilty or not.’
‘That’s patently obvious,’ muttered Kordian.
‘Never mind that,’ said Joanna. ‘It’s not important. Langer could have killed two people or two dozen, and we would have defended him with the same tenacity. I’m more worried about how he managed . . .’ She paused for a moment and shook her head. She really wanted a cigarette. ‘How he managed to be so two-faced?’
Żelazny looked at McVay, while McVay turned his head to look at Kormak. It was Wednesday. The photographs had been taken on Friday, so Kormak had had enough time to do some serious research. But he said nothing, so Chyłka took the initiative.
‘Tell us what you know.’
‘Or first, how much you know,’ added Oryński.
‘A lot,’ replied Kormak, fixing his gaze on the light wood conference table. He ran his hand over its rough surface, took a deep breath and looked up.
‘Recently, we started getting information that Langer, well, that he was planning something on the side,’ said Żelazny rather than Kormak. ‘As one of our most valuable clients, he should have informed us to give us enough time to prepare.’
‘Don’t give them a lecture on our little investigation,’ said McVay, raising one hand and placing the other on the table. ‘We sent out our bloodhound, with the most powerful surveillance equipment money can buy.’
‘With it, I was able to track down Langer and the Grey-Haired Man,’ said Kormak. ‘And then I found out the details of their . . . joint venture.’
‘Joint venture?’ exclaimed Kordian.
‘Did you bug them?’ asked Joanna. The three of them slowly lowered their heads, effectively confirming that they had.
‘I managed to gain access to Langer’s computer. You won’t believe how much information he got on it the moment he became a free man and came back from the prison underworld.’
‘Get on with it!’ said Chyłka.
Her tone made Kormak want to stand to attention and salute; it had a similar effect on the owners of the firm.
‘I hate to say this,’ began Kormak, ‘but we’ve been well and truly had. Do you want me to tell you in chronological order, or the order in which I pieced it all together?’
‘Chronologically,’ decided McVay.
Kormak nodded obediently, took another deep breath and launched into the monologue for which the duo had been waiting.
‘Piotr Langer did kill those people,’ began Kormak, all but withering under Chyłka and Kordian’s gaze, as if he felt guilty for not discovering the truth earlier. ‘All three of them, together with Antoni Wansel, met at the climbing wall in Mokotów. They laughed together, climbed together, and then Langer suggested that they should have a drink together. It started off quite well at the Opera in Theatre Square, in the VIP section, and ended tragically in Langer’s Mokotów apartment. At one point he had suggested the party move to his place, and all three eagerly agreed. And everything would have been all right if Langer hadn’t started coming on to Agata Szylkiewicz. She was no prude, but she wasn’t up for it, especially not with him. A scuffle ensued . . .’
‘I don’t believe this,’ growled Oryński. It all sounded surreal, quite unrelated to the reality they’d been living over the last few months.
Kormak started nervously stroking the table top again.
‘Keep going,’ said Chyłka.
‘Langer, who was completely drunk, started touching her up anyway. She was actually the girlfriend of someone else in that group, Daniel Relichowski. However, it wasn’t Daniel but Antoni Wansel who was first to react. And that was the greatest mistake of his life. He rushed to intervene, but Piotr knocked him out, presumably with his bare fists. Then he used one of the murder weapons on Relichowski; the hammer or the knife, I don’t know which came first. I haven’t been able to find out either what was happening with the woman at that time, because neither Langer nor the Grey-Haired Man mentioned her in their conversations, and there are no other clues. I assume she was in shock, or perhaps begging for her life.’
‘Either way, she didn’t scream, because Agnieszka Powirska would have heard her,’ said Oryński.
Kormak looked at him, and then turned to Żelazny for help.
‘My guess is Agnieszka Powirska heard everything,’ said Joanna, looking absently into the air. ‘She never really intended to testify. That’s why she disappeared. The Grey-Haired Man drove her somewhere far away on Piotr’s instructions.’
‘Was she in league with them?’ asked Oryński.
‘I think so,’ said Kormak. ‘She clearly wasn’t the airhead we took her to be.’
‘And clearly she was closer to Piotr than we assumed,’ added Joanna, and swore under her breath. ‘She talked about him in such a familiar way. It should have made us think. She knew his habits, and it seemed like she’d known him for a long time.’
‘And maybe she was scared,’ suggested Kordian. ‘She knew Piotr would be released sooner or later.’
Kormak nodded and took a deep breath.
‘After the fact, Langer cleaned himself up, and left his apartment with the three bodies inside. He bought a prepaid phone at the supermarket, then contacted the Grey-Haired Man and told him the situation. Then after ten days he came back unnoticed.’
‘But how did they manage to . . .’ began Kordian, but eventually gave up trying to verbalise his question. Kormak knew what he was trying to say anyway.
‘That’s quite important. I’ll explain it at the end,’ said Kormak. ‘But to continue the narrative: Langer calls the Grey-Haired Man and causes quite a bit of consternation. Suffice to say, the last thing they needed at that stage was three corpses. There was no way to get them off the estate, because firstly there was CCTV, secondly, there were security guards all over the place, and thirdly, there were residents milling around. On top of that, dead bodies are always discovered. The Grey-Haired Man suggested they should set it up to look like murder.’
‘They didn’t have to make it look like murder, it was fucking murder,’ said Joanna.
‘Well yes, but you know what I mean. They wanted it to look like straightforward murder at first glance, but on closer inspection to look as if it had been a set-up. They knew Langer could end up in prison, they even devised the strategy of him staying silent. He was told not to defend himself and to create the impression that he was being blackmailed and that those responsible for the crime were holding a relative of his hostage: a lover or an illegitimate child. It didn’t get to that stage because you didn’t read his Morse SOS in time. The Morse bit was Langer’s own idea, because he sailed.’
‘All right, spare us the bloody Morse code,’ said Oryński.
‘OK. The two of them knew they had to arrange everything in such a way that it would take a very thorough investigation before anyone realised things were not as they seemed. It couldn’t be too immediately obvious, because no one would believe it. Have you heard of passive aggressive methods?’
‘Stick to the point, and tell us what you know,’ said Chyłka this time. She’d had enough, and wanted concrete facts. Kormak nodded, and stopped stroking the table.
‘Initially, they thought that they could manage without having to single out a specific culprit. The investigators would eventually realise something was not right, and that that would be enough. The court would conclude that a third party was responsible and acquit Langer. But they soon realised that this wouldn’t work, and they needed to find a scapegoat. First they tried to incriminate Langer Senior, but unfortunately for them, he wasn’t long for this world. Then they decided it should be the Grey-Haired Man, and he was ready to do it. But you didn’t pick up the Morse Code signals that Langer, who was already in prison at the time, was sending you. Beating up Zordon was the first decisive move they made to give the impression there was a conspiracy against Langer. And you have to admit, their ploy worked. But you still hadn’t managed to track down the Grey-Haired Man, which is why they had to arrange your meeting with him.’
‘And the whole business about not submitting the cassation appeal . . . all that coercion not to file it in time?’ asked the trainee.
‘The Grey-Haired Man’s lawyer knew the deadline would be extended. That was the plan from the start,’ replied Kormak. ‘All of it was to make the idea of a third-party conspiracy all the more plausible.’
‘And it actually did exist,’ said Chyłka thoughtfully. ‘Except that it wasn’t against Langer, but for his benefit.’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’ she asked. ‘Why was the Grey-Haired Man ready to sacrifice himself?’
‘Because the Langer empire that we see on the tax returns and balance sheets is just the cherry on the cake. The real revenues come from Piotr’s unofficial activities.’
‘In league with the Grey-Haired Man,’ said Joanna.
‘Not exactly. The Grey-Haired Man was his most trusted man, more of an employee than a partner. Their relationship was hierarchical . . . or rather still is.’
‘What do they do?’ asked Oryński.
‘Chiefly smuggling young Ukrainian, Belarusian and Lithuanian women across the eastern border.’
‘Human trafficking?’
‘To a large extent, but there’s more to it,’ said McVay. ‘They trade not only live goods, but also anything of value, that’s worth the risk. Langer laundered his illegal revenues through charities and his father’s firm. Even now, when we have gathered quite a bit of information, everything still looks pretty clean.’
‘Do the police know about this?’ asked Oryński.
‘Or the prosecutor’s office?’ added Chyłka.
‘No,’ replied Kormak, feeling as if someone had stolen his microphone. He glared at his boss, and continued. ‘The police are aware of the activities, but so far they have been unable to put a face or name to the information at their disposal. Now they have the Grey-Haired Man. And Langer has come out of it very well. Firstly, all the charges against him have been dropped, and secondly, he has practically guaranteed that the police will leave him alone for the rest of his life. Now, everyone believes that he is the victim, and if he had anything to do with the Grey-Haired Man, it was only because the latter had tried to frame him for a double murder with exceptional brutality.’
‘Why the brutality?’ asked Kordian, shaking his head.
‘I don’t know. I assume he did it out of blind fury, or to give the case publicity. And so that he would initially be seen as a monster, because now, by contrast, he has become a hero, a man wrongly accused and sent to prison, where he suffered brutal treatment, only to be cleared of all charges. Moreover, a person with enough loyalty to Poland not to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg for wrongful conviction or whatever you call it.’
Kormak paused to draw breath.
‘That explains why he was still pretty much OK after allegedly being assaulted in prison,’ he added. ‘If a gangster in prison wanted to bring someone down a peg or three, he’d just do it.’
Chyłka closed her eyes and hung her head. At the time, her client indeed did not look as if he had been through the wringer in prison. In fact, the markings and bruising on his face could have been self-inflicted.
‘How did they get Wansel’s body out?’ she asked. ‘And why?’
Kormak ran his hand through his hair.
‘I presume he didn’t die in the flat,’ he said. ‘Langer knocked him unconscious, then Gorzym or some other thug got him off the estate. The autopsy showed that Wansel died of a drug overdose. No one suspected murder.’
‘Did they force him to take the drugs?’
‘Yes, or injected him with them. There are so many possibilities.’
‘And family, friends? No one reported him missing, even though two of his friends had been murdered by the Sadist of Mokotów?’
Kormak shook his head. ‘Wansel had moved here from Łódź two weeks before his death. He got to know Daniel Relichowski and Agata Szylkiewicz soon afterwards.’
‘So why was he buried in Bródno?’ asked Joanna.
‘Because he was originally from Warsaw. He had moved away a few years earlier, because of a girl, or work, or God knows what.’
Silence descended on the conference room again. From time to time, it was broken by someone moving on their chair, or Kormak clearing his throat.
‘So what can we do about it?’ asked Kordian. It may not have been a particularly insightful question, but it was probably at the back of everyone’s mind. It was met with two stern looks of disapproval.
‘Nothing,’ said Żelazny.
‘And I don’t think it needs to be explained,’ added McVay.
Even a novice lawyer knows they have a statutory duty to act in favour of their client, but never against them. Of course, you could decide to ruin your own career and take the story to the media, but by doing so you would also risk sinking the whole firm. And not only the firm, but all its employees, who would become a collective persona non grata in the legal community.
‘Is that clear?’ asked Żelazny.
The lawyers nodded.
‘Well, that’s all from us,’ he said, then he and Harry stood up. ‘If you want to keep tormenting Kormak with questions, go ahead.’
‘He’s all yours,’ added McVay, and the firm’s owners left the conference room.
Chyłka supposed they were able to leave without worrying because they’d hidden a tiny microphone somewhere and were recording every word they said.
‘Anything else to tell us?’ asked Joanna.
‘No,’ replied Kormak. ‘That’s all we’ve managed to find out, and the rest we can only assume. One thing is certain: Langer hoodwinked us big time.’
‘Bastard,’ Chyłka seethed. ‘We went to so much trouble to defend that arsehole.’
‘But just think how much trouble they went to,’ said Kormak. ‘It was an ingenious plot, and it must have taken a hell of a lot of effort.’
‘Have you tracked down the Grey-Haired Man?’ asked Kordian.
He had no intention of talking about Langer, it was pointless. Piotr had manipulated them, and the fact that the courts had been duped too was meagre compensation.
‘No,’ said Kormak. ‘He disappeared soon after the business at the shopping centre. Langer has probably sent him abroad somewhere, out of gratitude for taking the rap and being prepared to risk going to prison.’
‘Why didn’t he do it immediately?’ asked Oryński, more to himself than to the others. ‘He could have said straightaway that he had done it.’
‘That wouldn’t have been credible, and the police would have suspected collusion,’ said Joanna. ‘And the way they did it, that son of a bitch could pretend to be the victim.’
The three of them fell silent; there was nothing more to add.