Stuart Macbride - Blind Eye

Back in the main square, wood smoke drifted out in scented wafts from food stall braziers. He stopped to buy a little paper plate of grilled, smoked cheese served with a dollop of cherry jam.

Logan finished the lot before crumpling up his plate and dropping it in a bin — not wanting a row from any passing nuns — then froze. There was a pamphlet lying amongst the litter, advertising some sort of concert. It was all gibberish to him, but one thing did stand out loud and clear — the band had written their name in the same red, blobby, run-together block capitals Solidarity used. They even had a little flag-like scrawl over the 'N' in their name, just like the union.

Gorzkiewicz — his file said he'd been active in Solidarity while Poland was under Communist rule.

Logan looked out across the town square, then down at the poster again. A smile spread across his face. Maybe he could salvage something from this disaster after all.

It took longer than he'd thought, but eventually Logan managed to track down the local Solidarity headquarters, just off the main square in Krakow. And best of all, the woman behind the reception desk spoke English.

She gave Logan a seat and a cup of coffee, then told him the person he needed to talk to would be down in about fifteen minutes. And he was.

Gerek Plotkowski certainly looked the part — squarely built, greying hair, massive soup-strainer moustache, handshake like a steelworker. In thickly accented English he invited Logan to follow him to a nearby cafe for a drink. 'Is all herbata and coffee in office. When it is hot like this a man needs something cold. No?'

Yes.

They got a table on the edge of the square, not far from someone who'd painted himself gold and was standing motionless on an upturned bucket, pretending to be a statue. Plotkowski ordered two beers from a waiter, then sat and scowled at the statue-impersonator. 'We fight Communist oppression for years, for what? So idiota like that can exist.' He took a big mouthful of beer, leaving a high-tidemark of foam on his moustache. 'What do you want to know?'

'They told me you were in Solidarity from the very start. I'm trying to find a man who was a member back in the early eighties.'

'Ah…' the big man got a misty look in his grey eyes. 'They were good times. Hard, but we stood shoulder to shoulder. Like this…' He held his two fists up, side by side. 'We mean something.'

'The man I'm looking for is called Gorzkiewicz. Rafal Gorzkiewicz. Did you know him?'

The misty look disappeared, replaced by something much harder. 'Why?'

'I'm a police officer.' Logan pulled out his warrant card and slid it across the table. 'Gorzkiewicz was attacked in 1981 — somebody blinded him.'

'I do not know this man you are talking about.' He wrapped his pint in one huge fist and threw half of it down his throat. 'I must to get back to work.'

Logan grabbed the man's sleeve… took one look at the scowl it got him, and let go again. 'Please, it's important. Where I come from, people are being attacked just like he was: someone cuts their eyes out and burns the sockets. Shopkeepers, businessmen, fathers.'

Plotkowski turned his face back to the living statue. 'They should not be allowed on the square. It cheapen everything we fight for.'

Logan let the silence stretch.

'We…' Plotkowski coughed, took another drink, 'Not everyone agreed with getting rid of Communists through political protest. Some thought armed struggle was only way. A revolution. Solidarnosc, written in blood on cobbled streets of Krakow.' The big man shook his head. 'Gorzkiewicz — he was explosives expert in army. The Communists sent him to Afghanistan in seventy-eight… He come back two years later with a hole in his thigh size of fist. Bitter. "Political is too slow," he say. "Blood is only thing these Russian bastards understand."'

Plotkowski finished his beer and called for another — getting one for Logan as well, even though he was nowhere near finished his first pint — and two shots of vodka too.

The big man didn't say anything more until the drinks arrived, handing Logan a shot glass of clear spirit, so cold it steamed in the warm afternoon. 'Na zdrowie!'

He knocked his vodka back in one and Logan followed suit.

'Gorzkiewicz want Solidarnosc leadership to call for armed resistance, but they would not. Too much violence and Russia will use excuse to march in, like they do in Afghanistan. Soviet soldiers with Soviet tanks and guns… We want our freedom the right way.' He was silent for a minute, looking not at Logan, but at a time nearly thirty years ago. 'He want to blow up anything that support Communist regime. And he have enough friends to make him dangerous.' The big man seemed to shrink a bit. 'On twenty-sixth of November 1980 there was explosion at the SB headquarters.'

Logan must have looked confused, because Plotkowski said, 'SB is stand for Sluzba Bezpieczenstwa. They were Security Service of Ministry of Internal Affairs: Communist secret police who try to make dead anyone that stand up to regime.' He leant over and spat at his feet. 'When SB headquarters explode authorities say it gas leak, they do not want people to know it is really bomb. So they start rounding up members of Solidarnosc… Beatings. Disappearings.' His huge shoulders rose and fell. 'Police Station in Kazimierz blow up two weeks later and Communists declare stan wojenny: martial law. Close the borders, curfew, censor our mail, tap our phones, arrest our teachers, shut down newspapers. Then the riots start.'

He stared into the depths of his glass. 'People shot in the streets… It was too soon, we did not want this. But Gorzkiewicz say, "This is progress! Now we will have freedom." He want to blow up more police stations… We have no choice.'

The old man finished his second beer in silence.

Logan pulled out his notebook and pen, and put them on the table. 'Do you know where Gorzkiewicz is now?'

Plotkowski scribbled an address down, then got up and left without another word. Logan pushed his way back into the records office. Jaroszewicz was sitting at the same desk as before, the electric fan still making its soporific hummmmmmm click, hummmmmmm click, hummmmmmm click…

He pulled out a chair on the other side of the desk and settled into it. 'Find anything?'

She scowled up at him. 'Nothing. I went to all the places Lowenthal's brother mentioned and no one knows where he is.'

'That's because Lowenthal's dead. They dragged his beaten body out of the river eight months ago.'

Jaroszewicz slammed the document she was reading down on the desk, and swore. 'Then it is true,' she said, 'this was all a stupid waste of time!'

Logan took his notebook from his pocket, opened it at the relevant page, and placed it on the table in front of her.

She picked it up, frowning as she read. 'What is this?'

'That's where Rafal Gorzkiewicz lives.'

And Jaroszewicz started swearing again. 'Why are you looking at me like that?' Jaroszewicz shuffled forward two paces in the queue.

Logan looked up at the towering bulk of St Mary's Basilica. The huge red-brick cathedral sat at a jaunty angle on the edge of the old town square, surrounded by tourists, bathed in the smell of charcoal-grilled meat. 'You want to pray before we go see Gorzkiewicz?'

She shuffled forwards again. 'You think you are so perfect.'

'It's not exactly standard police procedure where I come from.'

'Well, you are not where you come from. You are where I come from, and this is how we do things.'

'Thought you said you were from Warsaw.'

'I moved there when I was a little girl. I was born just outside Krakow.' They were nearly at the entrance now, a pair of stout wooden doors in an ornate hexagonal porch. 'Are you a Catholic?'