Stuart Macbride - Blind Eye

A couple of businessmen sat at the other end of their table, poking away at laptops and drinking bottles of lager. Everyone had to perch on little bar stools that had been bolted to the floor, as the train swayed and rattled its way across Poland.

'It will be too late to do anything when we get to Krakow,' Jaroszewicz was saying, 'so we will start first thing tomorrow morning. Hit the local police for information.'

'Information?'

'Addresses for the Krakow victims.' She took another mouthful of unpronounceable beer. 'The only records I could get in Warsaw are out of date. They…' She stopped talking as a smiling woman in an apron appeared at the table with their food — flattened slabs of chicken fried in breadcrumbs, mashed potatoes covered in dill, and pickled gherkins. Served on paper plates with plastic cutlery.

A long way away from British Rail sandwiches.

Outside the sun was setting, a heavy orb of red fire just visible between the clouds and the fields, gilding a three-storey house made entirely of breeze blocks, all on its own in the middle of nowhere.

Logan scooped up another forkful of mash. 'If the records are out of date, how do you know the victims are still alive?'

'I do not.' She took one look at the expression on Logan's face and laughed. 'Relax, they cannot all be dead. I spoke to the Komisariat Policji yesterday, there is at least one they have heard about recently. Now eat your chicken.' The first sign of Krakow was the local football team's name, scrawled in red spray-paint on a dilapidated building at the side of the railway tracks, just visible in the fading glow of a setting sun. The distant sparkle of houses gave way to huge blocks of concrete apartments, with the chimneys of a massive steelworks in the background — crowned with blinking red and white lights to ward off aircraft.

Then mile after mile of densely packed houses and tower blocks, sulking beneath thick grey clouds.

The students braved a return to the carriage, grabbing their luggage and grumbling as the train pulled into the station. Not quite defiant enough to make eye contact with Senior Constable Jaroszewicz.

Logan followed her out onto the platform. A cold wind whipped a discarded newspaper apart and sent it dancing across the expanse of grey concrete. Warsaw had been depressing, and right now Krakow didn't look much better. The taxi dropped them outside a hotel in the old city, on a street packed with people, bars and kebab shops. The high buildings and narrow streets cut out the worst of the wind, and it was almost balmy. Tourists wandered through the fading twilight wearing T-shirts and shorts, taking photographs.

Logan couldn't blame them, it was actually pretty impressive, just the way old Eastern European cities were supposed to be. Cobbled streets, ornately carved frontages… like something out of a Hammer House of Horror film. Well, except for all the neon and flash photography.

Jaroszewicz pushed through the wrought-iron gates into the hotel, and after a pause, Logan followed her. 'So, what's the plan for tonight then?' Hoping it would involve beer.

She puffed out her cheeks and made a deflating noise. 'I am going to have a bath and go to bed.' She checked her watch. 'You can meet me for breakfast at eight o'clock.' Upstairs in his room, Logan pulled the net curtains wide and stared out at the street below. He'd already unpacked everything and laid it away, played with the room's safe, checked out the contents of the mini-bar, thought about stealing the little plastic bottles of shampoo and conditioner, and read all the tour leaflets.

And then he remembered to switch his phone back on. Three messages, all from DI Steel, telling him to phone her back, urgently.

He checked his watch: half nine. That would make it half past eight back home. He dialled Steel's number and rested his forehead against the window, watching a pair of drunken girlies staggering out of what looked like an off-licence.

Then Steel's voice barked out of the earpiece: 'What took you so sodding long?'

'Had my phone turned off. Airline safety rules.'

'Blah, blah, blah. I went to that address you got from your fat pornographer, and you know what I found?'

Outside, one of the girls slipped and clattered bum-first onto the cobbles. Her friend started laughing. 'No idea.'

Steel blew him a big, wet raspberry. 'That's what. No' a damn thing. The whole place was empty.'

'You sure you went to the right-'

'Finish that sentence and you're getting a shoe-leather suppository. Of course we went to the right place: manky wee Portakabin on Greenwell road, backing onto the railway line. Anonymous and sodding empty. A rest home for spiders and dead wasps!'

'Oh… Sorry.'

'Aye, well "sorry" doesn't help Krystka Gorzalkowska, does it?'

Logan closed his eyes and counted to ten.

'You still there?'

'Did you want me to phone you back urgently just so you could shout at me?'

'Don't get lippy.' Pause. 'Susan wants you to come over for dinner when you get back.'

And he knew what that meant. 'Ganging up on me?'

'Nope. Just a nice family dinner, couple bottles of wine, and if you still don't want to get Susan up the stick you can tell her your-self.' Then she hung up.

Logan snapped his phone shut. Swore. Then doinked his head gently off the window.

Sod it. He hadn't travelled one thousand, two hundred and sixty-seven miles just to sit in a hotel room. It was time to see what the local pubs were made of. The alarm on his mobile phone sounded as if someone was trying to ram a xylophone up a chicken. Half past seven. Logan cracked one eye open and prepared for the hangover to hit. He'd stayed in the nearest bar till nearly midnight, drinking the local beer and experimenting with different kinds of flavoured vodka until the place shut. So he should have been feeling dreadful this morning. Only he wasn't.

Shower, shave, and down to breakfast. Still waiting for the other shoe to drop on his head from a great height.

Senior Constable Jaroszewicz was already sitting at a table for two, eating a huge mound of muesli. She pointed at him with her spoon. 'Your hair is wet.'

He helped himself to the buffet — ignoring the cold meat in favour of cheese, gherkins and bread, then sat down and perused the menu. Looking for a vegetarian fry-up. There wasn't one, so he settled for the scrambled eggs with mushrooms.

'I was thinking,' he said, while Jaroszewicz went back to her muesli, 'how well known are these blindings?'

She chewed for a while. 'No idea.'

'Well, how would someone from Aberdeen find out about them?'

'The Internet?'

'I tried that before I left yesterday and couldn't find anything.' A waitress turned up with his scrambled eggs. 'Oh, thank you. I mean: Dziekuje.' The young woman smiled at him and wandered off. Then Logan saw what he'd actually been served.

Jaroszewicz watched him pulling faces. 'What?'

'This isn't scrambled eggs… Looks like someone's sneezed on the plate.' Instead of a fluffy mound of yellow, it was a ribbony mix of white and yoke, oozing out across the plate, speckled with brown lumps. Not exactly appetizing.

'We will go to the police station straight after breakfast.'

He risked a bite. It actually wasn't that bad. 'What about jurisdiction?'

'Juris…?'

'Are you allowed to interview people here? Or do we need a local officer to hold our hands?'

'Pffffff. Warsaw and Krakow do not get on very well. We call them "villagers" they call us "freaking yuppies". They sulk because they used to be the capital of Poland, and now we are.' She shovelled in another spoonful and chewed. 'We are unlikely to get any help from the local police. I will be amazed if they even give us addresses for the victims.'

Somehow that didn't exactly fill Logan with confidence. The street outside the hotel was a lot less crowded than it had been last night; the kebab shops dark and lifeless, the tourists still asleep, or enjoying a leisurely breakfast of something almost entirely unlike scrambled eggs.