Stuart Macbride - Blind Eye

According to Allan Rait's statement, Krystka Gorzalkowska was acting. There was no rape. It was all make-believe. The magic of cinema. Logan stuck the transcript back in the folder. 'What does Krystka say?'

'What the hell do you think? Like interviewing Marcel Marceau.' Steel slumped back in her chair. 'If she made a complaint I could nail them to the wall, but right now we've got fff… sod all.'

She scowled for a bit, drumming her fingers against her forehead. Then: 'What about the company who hired her out?'

'Kostchey International Holdings Limited.'

'Aye, you got that address yet?'

'Er…' Logan dragged his phone out and checked for messages from Zander Clark. 'No.'

'Oh for God's sake! You're now officially in my bad books.'

'Oh, come on. That's not fair-'

'Boo-hoo. Life's not fair.'

'It's my day off-'

'Want to know how you can get back in my good books?' She pulled out the empty plastic cup and stuck it on her desk.

Logan groaned. 'Not again with the sperm!'

'Aye, again with the sperm. You've got millions of the wriggly little buggers, you'll no' miss a couple of tablespoons, will you?'

'Tablespoons?'

'Oh don't be such a drama queen.' She dug a hand into her shirt and started hauling on her bra strap. 'Susan's being a complete nightmare. Now she wants to cash in all our savings, sell my car, and go pay for artificial insemination in the States.'

'Well, maybe that's not a bad-'

'If I don't want Rennie's sperm, why the hell would I want some American tosser's? Gene pool's bad enough as it is.'

There was an uncomfortable silence.

Logan stood. 'Well, I'd better get going, you know: day off and-'

'Not so fast. What else we got on Kostchey International Whosit?'

Shrug. 'Nothing.'

'What about that mobile number we got from Gary the Toilet Diver?'

'Pay-as-you-go — no registered details.'

She hauled at her bra for a bit. 'What did the Polish police say?'

'Eh?'

'You were supposed to chase them up! You forgot, didn't you?'

'Well… McPherson's the liaison officer, and he's still off on the sick…'

Steel spoke very slowly and very clearly. 'And it never occurred to you to phone them yourself?'

'Er… well, I-'

'For God's sake, you're supposed to be a Detective Sergeant!'

'But if Krystka Gorzalkowska won't make a complaint, how does it-'

'Don't be an idiot: half the girls they import are probably from Christ-knows-where-istan. Illegal immigrants. People trafficking. And the mucky film industry's no' exactly booming in Aberdeenshire, is it? So what happens to the poor cows who can't be porn stars?' She tapped her desk with a finger. 'Do the words "forced into prostitution" mean anything to you?'

Logan opened his mouth, but the inspector got there first: 'And before you say anything, you'll phone them because I sodding well told you to. Me: organ grinder, you: monkey, remember?'

Silence.

'Now get the hell out of my office.' Detective Inspector McPherson's room was a mess of file boxes, sandwich wrappers, and random bits of paper. Coffee mugs lurked on various surfaces, full of brown-green scum, evolving their own life forms in the heat of the radiator: turned up to full. The whole room smelled musty and stale.

Logan cleared a copy of Monday's Aberdeen Examiner off the chair and settled — carefully — behind the desk, looking at McPherson's piles of paperwork and plague of Post-it notes. The contact details for the Polish Liaison Officer had to be in here somewhere.

Not that Logan really wanted to touch anything.

There was a half-eaten Mars Bar in the top drawer and a stack of ancient receipts. Next drawer: notebook, paperclips, pens, hundreds of random business cards. He dragged open the bottom drawer. It was meant to be for files, but McPherson seemed to be using it as a paperwork glory hole.

On top of the pile was the same memo Logan had seen on Steel's desk: the one asking for nominations for a new Detective Inspector. Blah, blah, blah, regret to inform you that DI Gray has tendered his resignation; blah, blah, blah; opportunity to reward performance; blah, blah, blah; suggestions by next Wednesday.

McPherson had scribbled, 'BEATTIE?' in the margin in red biro.

Idiot.

Logan stuck the memo back in the drawer. Detective Sergeant Beattie couldn't arrest his own backside with three patrol cars and a search warrant.

The Polish contact details were nowhere to be found, so Logan fired up McPherson's computer. Hacking into the inspector's email wasn't that difficult — the idiot had left his password on a Post-it stuck to the monitor. DI Gray wasn't the only one who needed replacing.

McPherson's computer files were every bit as disorganized as his real ones, but eventually Logan found one marked 'Staff Sergeant Cyrek Lukaszewski ~ Warsaw FHQ'. Telephone number and email address.

He was tempted to fire off a quick email and escape, but that would just give Steel another excuse to whinge. So he picked up the phone, made sure there was nothing sticky on the mouth or earpiece, then dialled Poland.

Strange foreign bleeps, that went on and on and on and- a bored voice: 'Posterunek Policji, Kryminalne Biuro Sledcze, slucham.'

Logan did his best. 'Hello? I mean: dzien dobry, czy pan mowi po angielsku?'

'Yes, I speak English.'

Thank God. 'I need to speak to a Staff Sergeant Cyrek…' He had a stab at the surname, 'Wookas-view-ski?'

'Lukaszewski?'

'Yes, that's right: Lukaszewski.' Hurrah.

'No: is Saturday. Try again Monday.' Not Hurrah.

'Oh… Can I leave a message? I need details on a "Kostchey International Holdings Ltd."'

The officer on the other end laughed. 'You are joking, yes?'

'No. Why would I be-'

'In Poland, Kostchey is lord of the underworld. Kostchey the Deathless.'

'You don't have anyone called Kostchey over there?'

More laughter. 'Criminals and gang-people all want to be Kostchey the Deathless. Think it make them sound tough. Is not real name.'

Another dead end. Logan put his hand over the mouthpiece and swore. Steel wasn't going to be pleased.

'Hello?'

'Give me a minute…' There was a memo on the cluttered desk from Finnie, telling McPherson to get his finger out and chase up the list of Oedipus victims with the Polish police. McPherson had scrawled 'DO THIS FIRST THING MONDAY!!!' at the top of the sheet. And then 'MONDAY' had been crossed out and replaced with 'TUESDAY'. By which time the silly sod would have been flat on his back in the hospital, sleeping off a concussion. Which probably meant it still hadn't been done.

'Hello? You are still there?'

'Yeah, sorry. Look, we've had a bunch of blindings recently-'

'Blin-dings?'

'Blindings: eyes cut out and burnt?'

Logan could almost hear him shrugging.

'All the victims are Polish, we need to know if there was any connection between them. Can you get someone to do a background check for me?' Then he went through the names, making the man on the other end repeat them back to him.

'OK, I tell Lukaszewski when he come in on Monday.' And then the officer hung up.

So much for that. Logan shut down McPherson's computer, switched off the lights, and closed the door on the inspector's pigsty. Now he'd have to go tell Steel the bad news. Thankfully she wasn't in her office, so he scribbled a note and left it on her desk: 'POLISH POLICE THINK "KOSTCHEY" IS A JOKE NAME. THEY'LL PHONE BACK MONDAY.'

And escape.

Sunday morning dawned… and was ignored. It was half past ten before Logan and Samantha surfaced, rumpled and still pleasantly tired from the night before.

He stuck the kettle on while she bumbled about in the shower.

Breakfast: croissants, cream cheese, smoked salmon from Marks freshly ground coffee from a little shop on Little Belmont Street; and a dusty jar of black cherry jam from the back of the cupboard. He laid it all out on the coffee table in the lounge, then whipped the dust sheet off of the sofa and draped it over the stepladder in the corner.