Stuart Macbride - Blind Eye

'Nope.'

'Then you cannot use this door. It is for worshippers only. You will have to wait outside.'

Logan took another look at the sun-drenched square. 'You going to be long? Only it's baking out here.'

'Then go and have a beer, or a coffee, or something.' And then she stepped into the darkened porch, leaving Logan on his own outside. Except for the queue of the faithful and another one of those bloody living statues.

Logan wandered down the side of the cathedral, following a small clot of American tourists to a sign that said visitors were permitted to use the side entrance. If they bought a ticket. Why not?

Inside it couldn't have been more different from St Peter's back in Aberdeen. Instead of austere white walls, this place was done up in cheery shades of blue and gold, plastered with statues, friezes and paintings of saints. Hundreds of them.

The nave was cut in half by a waist-high set of wooden barriers, keeping the faithful at the back safe from the heathens at the front. Logan scanned the faces of the men and women deep in prayer on the dark wooden pews, but there was no sign of Jaroszewicz. Probably still in the queue, or lighting a candle or something.

He found an empty seat and sank into it, looking up at the incredible display of shiny stuff around him. The walls were covered in biblical scenes, all painted directly onto the stonework. The pulpit was festooned with spines and dripped with gold. A huge crucifix hung between the nave and the presbytery, where there was even more gold and gaily coloured paint. Like a gaudy fairground ride, only with pictures of martyrs and Madonnas instead of ripped-off Disney characters.

He'd never seen anything like it.

Logan peered back over his shoulder… There she was, just kneeling down on one side of confessional stand number fourteen — it said so on a little beige sign taped to the wooden screen. In a way the setting was appropriate, because God was probably the only person who knew what had got into her. Logan certainly didn't. Ever since he'd shown her Gorzkiewicz's address she'd been twitchy.

Which probably wasn't a good sign. But it was too late to worry about that now.

Jaroszewicz was mumbling, head down, hands clasped in prayer… and then Logan realized she was actually fiddling with her mobile phone: texting while she confessed. That was modern Catholicism for you.

Five minutes later his bum was starting to go numb, so he stood, sneaked his own mobile out of his pocket — if it was good enough for true believers, it was good enough for him — and took a couple of photos while the man in charge of stopping people doing just that was looking the other way. Then Logan wandered back outside into the sunshine. It wasn't long before Jaroszewicz joined him.

'Right,' she said, sticking her hands deep into her pockets, 'we have to pick up two things, then we can go.'

Stop number one was the off-licence opposite the hotel, for a litre bottle of good vodka; stop number two was the hotel itself. She told him to wait for her in the lobby, and disappeared into the lift. When she came back her face was set like a painted martyr. The taxi beetled down the dual carriageway, heading East with the sun at its back. Half past six and the traffic was starting to get a little better, even if the road was getting worse — the taxi rolled about on the rutted tarmac like a ship at sea. The driver turned to grin at Logan. Early twenties, long dreadlocks, thin face, and a pierced nose. 'You can always tell when driver is drunk in Poland: he drive in straight line, not swerve to avoid pothole. Ha!' The car bounced through a pothole.

Sitting in the back seat next to him, Jaroszewicz had gone a worrying shade of grey.

'Are you OK?'

She glanced at him and then back out of the window again. 'It is probably nothing. Nothing to worry about. Nothing at all.'

'When people tell me not to worry, that's when I start worrying.'

'It is just not the best part of Krakow…'

The taxi driver laughed again. 'Is not part of Krakow at all. Is Nowa Huta!' He grinned at Logan again. 'Where you from? America? Like on Friends? Like Joey and Chandler?'

'No, Scotland, like Sean Connery…'

'Ah! James Bond. Very good. Shaken not stirred.' And as if to emphasize the point the car lurched through a series of tarmac ruts. 'Nowa Huta is mean: "New Steelworks." Uncle Joe give them as gift to people of Krakow. Make them suffer for being broken bourgeois.' He leant on his horn and hurled abuse as a little black Trabant puttered by on the inside lane. 'You want go to milk bar? I know nice place.'

Jaroszewicz waved a hand at him. 'Just take us to the address.'

He shrugged, and the car lurched again.

She went back to staring out of the window, clutching her massive handbag to her chest.

Logan was beginning to get a very bad feeling about this.

The taxi pulled a juddering U-turn on the wide, tree-lined street and roared away in a cloud of oily smoke, leaving Logan and Jaroszewicz standing outside a block of flats. Five storeys of grimy grey, with white-painted window frames. The word 'HUTNIK' was daubed in red paint next to an archway that led all the way through the building and into some sort of square on the other side.

'This it?'

Jaroszewicz checked the bit of paper he'd given her, then walked through the archway. On the other side it opened up into a little park of paving slabs and trees, a rickety children's play area that looked about ready to collapse in the corner. The green space was surrounded on all sides by walls of identically bland apartments.

One half of the square looked much cleaner than the other and when Logan asked why, Jaroszewicz just shrugged, mumbled something about it depending on which way the wind from the Steelworks was blowing, then marched across to a plain blue door.

She glanced over her shoulder at the empty windows surrounding them. 'Stalin built it like this so people would spy on their neighbours. Every house overlooks at least a dozen more.' She dug into her handbag, brought out something wrapped in a paisley-pattern handkerchief, and handed it over. 'Here.'

Heavy. And worryingly familiar.

Logan peeled back one edge of the cloth and slapped it back again.

'Why do I need a gun?'

'Just keep it…' She pointed at his pocket. 'In case.'

'What's going on, Jaroszewicz?'

'Please, call me Wiktorja.'

'Either you tell me what's going on, or I'm turning round and walking out of here.'

She pulled another bundle from her bag, slipping it into her coat pocket. 'This man, Gorzkiewicz, he is dangerous.'

'He's blind.'

'He knows dangerous people. And dangerous people are looking for him.' She blushed. 'I… ahem… I do not want you to get hurt.'

She scanned the list of names on the intercom, running her finger lightly across the handwritten labels. 'He is not here: no Gorzkiewicz.'

'Well, if dangerous people are looking for him, he's not going to put his real name on the buzzer, is he?'

Her finger froze over one. 'Zegarmistrz… Ah.' And then she pressed the button.

Silence. Then a crackle. Then silence again.

Logan put a hand on the door and pushed. It swung open.

It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the dark. There was a short corridor with a block of letter boxes on one pistachio-green wall, three doors leading off to separate apartments, and a set of concrete stairs with wrought iron balustrades and a scarred wooden handrail.

Jaroszewicz — Wiktorja — pointed up, then started to climb.

Each landing had a small square window set into the thick wall at knee height, but they didn't do much more than emphasize how gloomy it was in here. The apartment doors were all different, some elaborately so, trying to impose a little individuality on this communist workers' paradise of grey bland buildings.