Entanglement. Part 27

Szacki went up to the policeman and took him by the arm, at which he blew a gentle kiss in his direction. Szacki made himself a mental promise to murder the cop afterwards, and led him to point X, right in the middle between Kwiatkowska, and Jarczyk and Rudzki, very close to Jadwiga Telak. He positioned him so that he and Jadwiga were looking at each other. The woman gulped and motioned as if wanting to withdraw.

"Please stay in place," barked Szacki.

"Please let me see her at once," cried Jarczyk, trying to lean so that she could look at Kwiatkowska. "Please let me see her at once, do you hear me?" Her voice was quivering, and she was on the edge of tears.

"You're playing a dangerous game, Prosecutor," hissed Rudzki, at the same time putting his arm around Jarczyk. The woman huddled up to him. "You don't know what forces you're toying with. I'm glad this entire 'experiment' is being recorded, I hope you know what I have in mind as I say those words. And please hurry up."

"Yes, you really should hurry up," muttered Kuzniecow, gulping. "I don't believe in fairy tales, but if I don't move from this spot instantly, I'll faint. I feel truly awful, as if the life were leaking out of me."

Szacki nodded. Victory was close. Kuzniecow took a deep breath; opposite him Jadwiga Telak had tears pouring from her eyes. She was following Szacki's instructions and standing on the spot, but she was leaning her body in an unnatural way, trying to get as far as possible from Kuzniecow. However, she had not averted her gaze. Jarczyk was trying hard to control her sobbing in the arms of Rudzki, who was staring fearfully at the prosecutor. Now he could no longer have any doubts what Szacki was intending. Kwiatkowska had not stopped staring at Kuzniecow's broad back for a moment, and was smiling gently. Kaim stood quietly with his arms crossed on his chest.

"Well, yes, but are we now playing Mr Telak's family, with the inspector as Henryk Telak?" asked Kaim. "To tell the truth, I don't fully understand who is who."

Szacki took off his jacket and hung it over a chair. f.u.c.k elegance, he was sweating like a pig. He took in a deep breath. This was the key moment. If they kept calm once he had said who they were playing, if they had foreseen it and knew how to behave, that was the end, and he'd have nothing left to do but bid them a polite farewell and write a decision to suspend the case. If he surprised them and they broke - one of them would leave the unwelcoming religious cla.s.sroom in handcuffs.

"Superintendent Kuzniecow is indeed the key figure in this constellation," he said. "But he's not Henryk Telak. In a way, quite the opposite - he's the man who died because of Henryk Telak."

Jadwiga Telak groaned, but Szacki ignored that and went on talking.

"You," he said, pointing at Kaim, "are this man's best friend, his confidant, confessor and mainstay. You," he addressed Jarczyk and Rudzki, "are his parents. You," he quickly turned to face Kwiatkowska, "are his sister, who in dramatic circ.u.mstances discovered her brother's death. And you," he looked sadly at Mrs Telak, "are this man's greatest, truest, sincerest love, and his name was..." He pointed at her, wanting her to carry on.

"Kamil," whispered Jadwiga Telak, and tumbled to her knees, gazing adoringly into Kuzniecow's face, who also had tears running down his cheeks. "Kamil, Kamil, Kamil, my darling, how I miss you, how much I do. It was all meant to be different..."

"Show me my daughter," yelled Jarczyk. "I can't see my daughter, he can't keep my daughter hidden from my sight - he's not alive, he's been dead for so many years. I beg you, please show me my daughter, I want to see her."

Szacki moved Kuzniecow back a few paces so that he wasn't standing between Jarczyk and Kwiatkowska. Without a word, Kwiatkowska, smiling sadly throughout, followed the policeman with her gaze; Mrs Telak held an arm out towards him, as if wanting to detain him; Jarczyk calmed down, and gazed at her daughter. Only Rudzki stared with hatred at the prosecutor, standing to one side.

"I demand that you stop this immediately," he said coldly.

"I don't think in the present situation you can demand anything of me," replied Szacki calmly.

"You don't realize what this means for these women. Your experiment could leave a permanent mark on their psyches."

"My experiment?" Szacki felt his blood pressure rise abruptly, and found it hard to control himself. "My experiment? It has just turned out that for the past two weeks of the inquiry you people have been lying to the police and the prosecution. It's not my job to worry about the psyche, especially yours, but to bring people who break the law to justice. Besides, we haven't yet discovered the answer to the most important question: which of you committed the murder of Henryk Telak in this room on the night of the 4th to the 5th of June this year? And I a.s.sure you I will not stop 'my experiment' until I'm sure one of the people present is going to be led away by the police."

"We didn't want to kill him," said Hanna Kwiatkowska, speaking for the first time since entering the room.

Prosecutor Teodor Szacki slowly let the air out of his lungs.

"So what did you want to do?"

"We wanted him to realize what he'd done and commit suicide."

"Shut up, girl, you haven't a clue what you're saying!" screamed Rudzki.

"Oh, stop it, Dad. You have to know when you've lost. Can't you see they know everything? I've had enough of these endless plans, all these lies. For years and years I lived as if I were in a coma, until I finally came to terms with Kamil's death - you have no idea how much it cost me. And when at last I was starting to live normally, you appeared with your 'truth', your 'justice' and your 'compensation'. I never liked your b.l.o.o.d.y plan for revenge from the start, but you were all so convinced, so sure, so convincing." She waved her hand in a gesture of weariness. Szacki had never heard so much bitterness in anyone's voice. "And you, and Euzebiusz, and even Mum. Oh my G.o.d, when I think what we've done... Please, Dad. At least do the decent thing now. If we go any deeper into these lies, there really will be 'permanent marks' on our psyches. And believe me, they won't be caused by the prosecutor's doings."

She sat down resignedly on the floor and buried her face in her hands. Rudzki stared at her sorrowfully and silently; he looked crushed. Yet he said nothing. They were all silent. The stillness and silence were perfect; for a moment Szacki had the strange impression that he wasn't taking part in a real event, but was looking at a three-dimensional photograph. He watched Rudzki, who in his turn stared back at him with his mouth clenched shut and waited. The therapist had to start talking, though G.o.d knows how much he didn't want to. He had to, because he had no alternative. As they stood without dropping their gaze, both men were fully aware of that.

Finally Rudzki gave a deep sigh and started to talk.

"Hanna is right, we didn't want to kill him. That is, we wanted him to die, but we didn't want to kill him. It's hard to explain. Anyway, perhaps I should speak for myself - it was I who wanted him to die, and I forced the others to take part in it."

Without a word Szacki raised an eyebrow. They had all seen too many American films. Murder is not like firing wads of paper in the cla.s.sroom. You can't just get up and take the blame on yourself, so your pals will be pleased and the teacher lady won't suss it out.

"How exactly was it meant to look?" he asked.

"What? I don't understand. How was the suicide meant to look?"

Szacki shook his head.

"How was it meant to look from the beginning, ever since you hit upon the idea of driving Henryk Telak to suicide. I realize such things are not prepared in a weekend."

"The hardest bit was the beginning, in other words getting close to Telak. I ordered leaflets at his company for a lecture on life after the death of a child, to catch his interest. Then I made a scene at Polgrafex saying they hadn't done things the way I wanted, which wasn't true, of course. I demanded to see the director. I succeeded in steering the conversation so that he started talking about himself. I suggested meeting at my office. He was defensive, but I persuaded him. He came. He kept coming for half a year. Do you know how much it cost me, week in, week out, to get through a whole hour with that b.a.s.t.a.r.d who murdered my son? To conduct his b.l.o.o.d.y 'therapy'? I sat in my chair and the whole time I kept wondering whether to just hit him with something heavy and get it over and done with. I kept imagining it non-stop. Constantly."

"I understand we can put the word 'therapy' in quotation marks," put in Szacki. "The aim of your sessions was not any kind of cure, was it?"

"Henryk was in a terrible state after those meetings," said Jadwiga Telak quietly, staring intently at Kuzniecow throughout. "I thought it was worse after every session. I told him to stop going, but he told me it had to be like that, that was how it worked, and that before an improvement the crisis always worsens."

"Did you know who Cezary Rudzki was?"

"No. Not at that point."

"And when did you find out?"

"Not long before the constellation. Cezary came to see me and introduced himself... He brought back all the ghosts from the past. Really. He told me what Henryk had done and what they wanted to do. He said they'd leave him alone if that was what I wanted."

She fell silent and chewed her lip.

"Was that what you wanted?"

She shook her head.

"You're right, the aim of the therapy was not therapy at all," said Rudzki, quickly picking up his thread, evidently in order to draw Szacki's attention away from Mrs Telak too. "At first I wanted to find out if it was definitely him who had caused me to lose my son. I had fairly complete information, but I wanted to confirm it. The b.a.s.t.a.r.d admitted it at the very first session. Of course he skirted around it somehow, maybe he was afraid I'd go to the police, but his confession was unambiguous. Then... Never mind the details, but my aim was to arouse the greatest possible sense of guilt in Telak for the death of his daughter, and to persuade him that if he departed too, it might save his son. Which was in fact true."

"And did you talk to him again about Kamil, about your son?"

"No. We probably could have, if I'd pressed him, but I was afraid I wouldn't be able to. I concentrated on his parents, on his present family; several times I threw something in to increase his sense of guilt. I was quietly counting on succeeding in manipulating him like that so he'd commit suicide without a constellation, but the b.a.s.t.a.r.d clung to life tightly. He kept asking when he'd be better. As G.o.d is my witness, those were hard moments for me.

"Finally I prepared the constellation. I spent a long time writing the scenario, various versions, depending on how Telak might behave. I a.n.a.lysed the session that had led to the suicide of h.e.l.linger's patient in Leipzig dozens of times, and sought out the strongest emotions, the words that would prompt them. I had to do the whole thing as a dry run - practising that on people would have been impossible and cruel. Barbara and I came to the conclusion that it'd be easiest for that coward to swallow some pills, and that he wasn't likely to go for hanging or cutting his wrists. That's why after breaking off the therapy at the worst moment for him we offered him some pills, b.l.o.o.d.y strong ones."

"We were walking down the corridor," Jarczyk suddenly cut in, ignoring her husband's reproachful look, "I was barely alive, he was grey in the face, hunched, devastated, with his head drooping. For a moment I felt sorry for him, I wanted to give up and tell him not to lose heart. But then I remembered Kamil, my first-born child. I gathered my strength and said I was sorry about his children, and that in his place I'd prefer to die than live with it. He admitted he was thinking about that too - that in fact he was only wondering how to do it. I replied that I would take pills, and that in my case it would be easy, because I took strong sleeping pills anyway. I'd only have to take a few more. I told him it was a beautiful death. To fall asleep peacefully and simply never wake up. He took the bottle from me."

Jarczyk fell silent and glanced fearfully at her husband, who ran a hand through his grey hair - it occurred to Szacki that he did exactly the same himself when he was tired - and went on describing the sophisticated murder plan.

"I wouldn't be saying this if not for that b.l.o.o.d.y Dictaphone of his and his mania for recording everything, but as it has been revealed anyway, I must. The idea of Hanna imitating Telak's dead daughter was a bit theatrical," - Kwiatkowska gave her father a look that left no doubt that 'a bit' was not the right phrase - "but I realized it would be the straw that broke the camel's back. I knew after something like that Telak would run to the bathroom, take the pills and that would be it. Vengeance taken."

Teodor Szacki listened with outward calm. He had enough self-control not to show his disgust. Once again he felt sick. The aversion he felt for Rudzki was almost physical. What a cowardly old fool, he thought. If he wanted to get revenge, he could have shot him and buried the body, and counted on succeeding. It usually works. But not him - he had to drag his wife into it, then his daughter, making himself resemble Telak in the process, and he dragged in Kaim too. What for? To blur the responsibility? To burden them with the blame? h.e.l.l knows.

"You can congratulate yourselves," he said sarcastically. "Henryk Telak recorded a farewell letter to his wife, in which he said he was planning to commit suicide for the good of Bartek, and then he went back to his room and took the pills. The whole bottle. You almost succeeded."

Cezary Rudzki looked shocked.

"What? I don't understand... But in that case why..."

"Because immediately afterwards he changed his mind, vomited, packed and left his room. Maybe he chickened out, or maybe he was simply putting it off for a few hours to say goodbye to his family. We'll never know. Anyway, it doesn't matter. What matters is that at about one a.m. Henryk Telak finishes packing his case, puts on his coat and quietly leaves. He walks down the corridor, goes into the cla.s.sroom, where only a few hours ago the therapy took place, and..." He pointed an encouraging hand at Rudzki, and felt his stomach turn, as the stain the shape of a racing car appeared before his eyes again.

The therapist had become subdued. The jacket that had hugged his proudly erect figure had suddenly become too big, his hair had gone dull, and his gaze had lost its haughty expression and wandered to one side.

"I'll tell you what happened next," he said quietly, "if you'll answer a couple of my questions first. I want to know how you know."

"Please don't make me laugh," bristled Szacki. "This is a trial experiment, not a detective novel. I'm not going to tell you exactly how the inquiry proceeded. If only because it's a laborious procedure involving hundreds of elements, not one brilliant investigator."

"You're lying, Prosecutor," said the therapist, smiling gently. "I'm not making a request, but setting a condition. Do you want to know what happened next? Then please answer my question. Or I'll start insisting I can't remember."

Szacki hesitated, but only for a short while. He knew that if they dug their heels in now, it would be impossible to prove their guilt in court. He'd even have a problem with the legal cla.s.sification of their twisted revenge.

"Four elements," he said at last. "Four elements that I should have linked up much earlier. Curiously, two of them are entirely accidental, they could have appeared at any point. The first element is the constellation therapy, which for you has proved a double-edged sword. You could manipulate everyone, but not Telak."

"Who did you consult?" put in Rudzki.

"Jeremiasz Wrobel."

"He's a fine specialist, though I wouldn't invite him to give a lecture at a seminary."

Szacki didn't smile.

"Throughout the therapy Telak was stubbornly staring at someone. Who was it? I had no idea. I was misled by the principle that, if they haven't been allowed to depart, former partners are represented by the children. And that a child from the next relationship symbolizes the lost partner. I was sure Henryk Telak had a former lover whom he had lost in dramatic circ.u.mstances. I suspected that he might have felt guilty about her death. With Dr Wrobel's help I established that this was extremely likely. And that in an unconscious way Kasia Telak identified so strongly with his lost love that she followed her into death. And Bartek was heading the same way, to remove his father's guilt and fulfil his wish of joining his beloved sister. But all the police's efforts to dig into Telak's past brought no result. No trace of any lover or any great love was found. It looks as if the only woman in Henryk Telak's life was you -" he pointed at the widow. "It would have been a blind alley, if not for Henryk Telak's wallet - leaving it behind was a big mistake on your part. And this is the second element. The most interesting thing in it were the lottery coupons on which he regularly repeated the same set of figures. It meant nothing to me, until I discovered the date and time of Kasia Telak's death. Then I realized that the numbers on the coupon were a date - to be precise, the seventeenth of September 1978, or the seventeenth of September 1987, and the time was ten p.m. That same day, at that same time, on the twenty-fifth or sixteenth anniversary the girl committed suicide. I started looking through the newspapers and among many others I found information about the murder of Kamil Sosnowski. In theory, there was nothing to connect the cases, but at some point I started wondering if the missing link could be a man. Did that mean Henryk Telak was gay? Or maybe all that time I'd been focusing on the wrong half of the Telak marriage? What if the missing link in the constellation was the dead lover of Mrs Telak? Henryk's rival? His death would have been one of the luckiest moments in Telak's life. Lucky enough to use the date for his lottery numbers.

"At this stage I reckoned there was a sort of twisted meaning to it all, and the whole therapy did indeed have a causative power. h.e.l.linger claims that a person wishing to remain faithful to a deceased partner goes after them - into death, into illness. That would make sense, except in this case Mrs Telak was replaced by her daughter. In addition, the ABC of constellations is the principle that if a woman loved some man very much in the past, she often sees him in her son. Which in turn explained Bartek's illness. Your son had a weak heart too, didn't he?"

Rudzki nodded.

"I myself can't say how it's possible," continued Szacki, "but I came to believe in a fantastic hypothesis: Henryk Telak was in some way - perhaps as directly as possible - mixed up in the death of his wife's lover in the late 1980s. During the therapy he discovers that the crime he committed led to his daughter's suicide and is connected with his son's fatal illness. In some inexplicable way, thanks to the 'knowing field', his wife senses that too. Her emotions, including hatred and a desire for revenge, are so strong that her representative in the therapy, Barbara Jarczyk, picks them up, and commits the murder. It's neat, but I didn't even have circ.u.mstantial evidence to link Telak and Sosnowski, or Mrs Telak with the victim from the past. The police were unable to locate his family, and the files from the old inquiry are missing - end of the line. Besides, something kept bothering me, all those little cracks. The mistakes you made in your art during the constellation, the pills, the recording on the Dictaphone. Too many coincidences. And here we reach the third element - my daughter."

Kuzniecow gave him an anxious glance. Pretending not to notice, Szacki went on.

"Of course, she has nothing to do with this case, she's just very like me and not at all like her mother - next to her she looks adopted. It's amazing how very dissimilar children can be from their parents. I was thinking about it one day, and I was also thinking how very different your son -" he indicated Mrs Telak again - "looks compared with you or your husband. Sometimes it's just tiny gestures, using similar phrases, a manner of intonation, things that aren't noticeable in a conscious way that bear witness to kinship. And suddenly it leaped out - I had both your interviews before my eyes." He nodded towards Kwiatkowska and Jarczyk. "Two completely different people, different types of appearance, different - now I think perhaps deliberately exaggerated - ways of talking. Yet the identical sight defect - a slight astigmatism - and a one hundred-percent identical way of adjusting your spectacles. Leaning your heads to the left, frowning and blinking, straightening the frames with both hands, and ending by pressing them to your nose with your thumb.

"As we're on the subject of my daughter," said the prosecutor, smiling at the thought of his little princess, "fathers and daughters are linked by an exceptional, special bond. That also set me thinking, when during our one conversation you leaped on me to defend Miss Kwiatkowska. In the first instant I thought you were lovers, only later did I understand. As often happens when some things go wrong, everything does. When some things start to fall into place, everything else does too. At the same time, it turned out Henryk Telak was mixed up in Kamil Sosnowski's murder, though he didn't do it with his own hands - perhaps that case will be pa.s.sed on for a separate hearing, and you'll be interviewed again." Szacki was lying through his teeth - he knew nothing would be 'pa.s.sed on for a separate hearing', and even if it was, the matter would be hushed up within a week. The whole time he took great care not to say or let any of the others say anything that could mean he'd have to launch an inquiry into the murder case from the past.

"The police checked the civil-registry files. Barbara Jarczyk, born in 1945, and Wodzimierz Sosnowski, born in 1944, got married young, in 1964, when she was only just nineteen. A year later their son Kamil was born. The same year Euzebiusz Kaim was born too, his later friend at primary school, high school and college. The boys were five when Hanna Sosnowska was born. When Kamil died tragically in September 1987, his family went abroad - is that right?"

Rudzki shrugged.

"What else could we do in that situation?"

"They probably came back in the mid-1990s, because that's when the next entries appear in the civil registry. Barbara and Wodzimierz Sosnowski got divorced. She went back to her maiden name. He became Cezary Rudzki - the officials had no problem acceding to his request because Mr Sosnowski had published under that pseudonym before 1989 and had also used that name in France. Hanna Sosnowska married Marcin Kwiatkowski, but her marriage didn't last long; they divorced in 1998, but she kept her husband's name. I don't know if all this name-shuffling resulted from the fact that you were already planning your revenge then, or whether it was an accident that later turned out to be an unexpected gift."

"The latter," said Rudzki.

"As I suspected. As for Mr Kaim, in the first instant, when I read the death notice from 1987 signed 'Zibi', I didn't twig at all that it could come from the name 'Euzebiusz' - after all, 'Zibi' was the nickname of Zbigniew Boniek, the football player, and sometimes it's short for Zygmunt. Only later, when I hit upon the idea that you were all tied together, did I remember the name 'Zibi'. The police easily checked where you were at school and college, and with whom. Your friends confirmed that you and Kamil were practically joined at the hip. Am I right?"

Kaim smiled and made a gesture as if removing the hat from his head.

"I hang my hat up to you," he said.

"The phrase is 'take my hat off to you', birdbrain," muttered Kwiatkowska.

Prosecutor Teodor Szacki didn't feel like saying more. He knew one of the people present would leave the gloomy room in handcuffs. He'd have to press charges on the others too, but for the mental hara.s.sment of Telak and for obstructing the inquiry rather than for collaborating in murder. After all, only one of them had run into Telak that night, only one of them had killed him. The rest, even if they had desired his death and wanted to cause it, did not take a direct part in it. But there was another reason why Szacki didn't feel like saying more - yet again, his human conscience had clashed painfully with his civil servant's conscience. He thought of Kamil Sosnowski's corpse - the b.l.o.o.d.y body in the bathtub, with his hands and feet tied from behind. He thought of the body of Kasia Telak, stuffed full of pills. He thought of Bartek Telak, rapidly heading towards the end of his life. He believed the girl would not have died or the boy fallen ill if it weren't for the terrible deed their father had once let happen, cynically and with calculation, in order to win their mother. How had it happened? Then, in the 1980s? He couldn't ask about that. Not now. He wasn't even free to mention it.

"Can we sit down now?" asked Kaim.

"No," replied Szacki. "Because we still don't know the answer to the most important question. And Mr Rudzki hasn't finished his statement." At the last moment he bit his tongue because he almost said "his story".

"I'd prefer to do it sitting down," said the therapist, and looked at Szacki in a way that made the prosecutor frown. Something wasn't right. Something definitely wasn't right. He felt he might be losing his grip on it all, that Rudzki was planning a dodge he couldn't control, but it would be preserved on tape and he'd never be able to hush any of it up. Concentrate, Teodor, he kept telling himself. He agreed to let them sit down, in order to gain time. Soon they were sitting in a semicircle, so that the camera could see all of them. But Szacki was imperceptibly starting to tremble, because he still didn't know what was wrong.

"The whole idea was mine," Rudzki began. "It was I, through a totally incredible accident, who found out why my son had been killed and by whom. At first I tried to come to terms with it, to rationalize it - after all, I am a trained psychologist, the time I've spent supervising patients adds up to years by now. But I couldn't - I couldn't. Then I simply wanted to kill him - go and shoot him and forget about it. But that would have been too simple. My son was tortured for two days, and that b.a.s.t.a.r.d was going to die in a split second? Impossible.

"I thought about it at length, at great length. How to do it to make him suffer. Suffer so much that he'd finally decide on his own death, being unable to take the pain any more. So I thought up the therapy. I knew it might not work, that Telak wouldn't commit suicide, and would go home as if nothing had happened. And I agreed to that. I agreed, because I knew that after the therapy he would go on suffering like that for ever.

"That night I couldn't get to sleep. I walked up and down my room and wondered: has he done it? Has he swallowed the pills yet? Has he gone to sleep yet? Is he dead yet? Finally I went out into the corridor and crept up to his door. It was quiet. I was revelling in that silence, when I heard a rush of running water, and Telak came out of the bathroom at the far end of the corridor. He was pale, but unarguably alive. He frowned when he saw me, and asked what I was doing at his door. I lied, saying I was worried about him. He didn't comment, but just said he was breaking off the therapy and getting as far as b.l.o.o.d.y well possible from this whole f.u.c.king shambles - I'm sorry, but I'm quoting him.

"And he went into the room for his suitcase. I didn't know what to do. Not only was he still alive, he didn't even look like someone dying of pain and guilt. It had all flowed off that b.a.s.t.a.r.d like water off a duck's back. I went into the kitchen to have a drink of water and calm down, and I saw that skewer... beyond that I can hardly remember a thing, my brain refuses to admit those images. I went to the cla.s.sroom, and he was there. I think I tried to explain to him why I was doing this and who I really am, but when I saw that hateful face, that cynical glint in his eye, that mocking sneer... I just struck out. Oh G.o.d, forgive me for doing it. Forgive me for not feeling guilty. Forgive me, Jadwiga, for murdering the father of your children, regardless of who he was."

With a dramatic gesture, Cezary Rudzki - or rather Wodzimierz Sosnowski - hid his face in his hands. Now the room should have been filled with a silence thick enough to cut and impale on a skewer, but it was the middle of the city. An old Fiat 126 was rattling its way down azienkowska Street, a clapped-out Ikarus bus came to a noisy halt at the bus stop near the church, the Vistula Highway roared monotonously, someone's heels clattered, and a child cried as its mother told it off - but even so Teodor Szacki could hear everything clicking into place in his head. The human conscience and the prosecutor's conscience, he thought, then hesitated, but only for a millisecond, before nodding to Kuzniecow, who stood up and switched off the camera. Then he went out and soon returned with two policemen in uniform, who led Rudzki away.

Without handcuffs, in spite of everything.

12.

Monday, 18th July 2005 International Courts and Prosecution Day. Abroad, a court in Belgrade sentences the notorious Milorad "Legija" Ulemek to forty years in prison for a.s.sa.s.sinating the Prime Minister of Serbia, Zoran Djindji, in 2003. Saddam Hussein is formally charged at last, for the time being with the extermination of a Shi'ite village in 1982. Roman Polanski testifies from Paris to a London court in a case against Vanity Fair, which wrote that straight after the tragic death of his wife, Sharon Tate, he had tried to seduce a Swedish beauty queen. In Poland a court in Wrocaw bans a publishing company from printing Mein Kampf, and the Prosecution Service in Biaystok charges left-wing politician Aleksandra Jakubowska with falsifying a draft media law. In Warsaw the prosecutor demands a life sentence for a former shop a.s.sistant accused of a mysterious murder at a shop called "Ultimo". Her lawyer calls for an acquittal. Apart from that, on Stawki Street a plaque is unveiled in honour of the Home Army soldiers who liberated nearly fifty Jews during the first few hours of the Warsaw Uprising, and the Zachta Gallery decides to advertise itself via sweets that will be sold in grocery shops. The Palace of Culture and Science is getting ready for a big fete on 22nd July, when it will be fifty years old. Twenty-five degrees, no rain and actually cloudless.

I.