A Grain of Truth Read Online Free Page A

looked up.
    “For goodness’ sake, I’ve known her since nursery school – she can’t lie there like that.”
    “I knew her too, Piotr. It doesn’t really mean anything now.”
    Prosecutor Barbara Sobieraj gently raked aside some leafless twigs and kneeled beside the corpse. Tears blurred her view of it. She had often seen dead bodies, usually dragged out of car wrecks on thebypass, sometimes even the corpses of people whom she knew by sight. But never anyone she knew personally. And certainly not an old friend. She knew, surely better than others, that people commit crimes and that you can fall victim to them. But this – this couldn’t be true.
    She coughed to clear her throat.
    “Does Grzegorz know yet?”
    “I thought you’d tell him. After all, you know…”
    Barbara glanced at him, and was just about to erupt, but she realized the Marshal – as this policeman was known in Sandomierz – was right. For many years she had been a close friend of the happy couple, Elżbieta and Grzegorz Budnik. At one time there had even been a rumour that if Elżbieta hadn’t come back from Krakow when she did, then who knows – some people had already heard hints that Barbara and he were an item. Gossip and ancient history, but actually, if anyone was going to tell Grzegorz, it should be her. Unfortunately.
    She sighed. This wasn’t an accident, it wasn’t a mugging or an assault or a rape committed by drunken thugs. Someone must have put himself to a lot of trouble to kill her, then carefully to undress her and lay her in these bushes. And that too… Barbara was trying not to look, but every now and then her gaze went back to the victim’s mutilated neck. Slashed repeatedly from side to side, her throat looked like a gill, thin flakes of skin, with bits of the veins, larynx and oesophagus visible between them. Meanwhile the face above this macabre wound was strangely calm, even smiling a little, which, combined with the unusual plaster whiteness of the skin, gave it an unreal, statue-like quality. It occurred to Barbara that maybe someone had murdered Elżbieta in her sleep, or while she was unconscious. She seized onto this thought and tried hard to believe it.
    The Marshal came up to her and placed a hand on her shoulder.
    “I’m awfully sorry, Basia.”
    She gave him the nod to cover up the corpse.
    IV
    Holes like this one do have their good side: nothing’s ever far away. As soon as he got the call from the boss, with a sigh of relief Szacki abandoned Klara and left his rented bachelor pad in the apartment block on Długosz Street. Small, ugly and neglected, it had one advantage – its location, in the Old Town, overlooking the Vistula and the historic secondary school founded by the Jesuits in the seventeenth century. He emerged from the building, and walked to the market square at a rapid pace, slipping on the wet cobblestones. The air was still bracing, as in winter, but one could sense this was already the tail end of it. As the fog grew thinner with every step, Szacki hoped today would be the first of the beautiful spring days. He really did need some positive emotion in his life. Some sunshine and warmth.
    He walked across the entirely deserted market square, passed the post-office building located in a fine tenement house with arcades, and reached Żydowska Street, with the glow of the flashing blue lights already visible from afar. It struck a sensitive chord in him – the sight of police light-bars in the mist was part of a ritual. The early morning call, extracting himself from Weronika’s warm embrace, getting dressed in the hallway in the dark, and planting a kiss on the sleeping child’s forehead before leaving. Then a drive across the capital as it came to life, the street lamps going off, the night buses driving down to the depot. On site, Kuzniecow’s sceptical smirk, then the corpse, and coffee at Three Crosses Square. And a clash with his grouchy lady boss at the prosecution service.