A Grain of Truth Read Online Free PDF

rising.
    “Does that help only cover carrying out your duties, or something else on top? We don’t know each other, so it’s hard for me to judge how kind-hearted you are.”
    Only now did Leon look at the prosecutor for longer.
    “Not very,” he replied without smiling. “But I’m extremely curious to know who butchered that clown Budnik’s wife and threw her in the bushes. Intuition tells me you’re going to find out. But you’re not from round here. Everyone will talk to you, but no one will tell you anything. Maybe that’s a good thing – less information means a purer mind.”
    “More information means the truth,” put in Szacki.
    “The truth is the truth – floating in a cesspool of superfluous knowledge doesn’t make it any truer,” wheezed the inspector. “And don’t interrupt me, young man. Sometimes you’ll be struggling to understand who really did what with whom and why. And then I will help you.”
    “Are you friends with all of them?”
    “I’m not good at making friends. And don’t ask me questions that aren’t relevant or I’ll lose my good opinion of you.”
    Szacki had a few relevant questions to ask, but he kept them for later.
    “And I’d prefer us to remain on formal terms,” concluded the policeman; Szacki didn’t let it show how very much he liked that proposal. He nodded his consent.
    VI
    There were more and more gawpers, but luckily they were standing there politely. Szacki caught the name Budnik coming from the conversations being held in hushed tones. For a moment he wondered if he needed to know who the victim was right now. He realized that he didn’t. What he needed now was a very careful inspection of the crime scene and the body. The rest could wait.
    He and Inspector Leon, who in the meantime had acquired the surname Wilczur, stood next to the body, which was now surrounded by a screen, while the technician from Kielce took photographs of it. Szacki carefully examined the precisely slashed throat, which looked as if it had been carefully sliced to make anatomical specimens to go under slides, and was furious that he still couldn’t identify the unbearable buzzing in his head. Something wasn’t right. Of course he would find out what, but he would prefer to understand it before he got down to the interviewing and the search for experts. The head of the inspection team came up to them, a friendly thirty-year-old with bulging eyes and the look of a judo fighter. After introducing himself, he fixed his fish-like gaze on Szacki.
    “Just out of curiosity, where have you landed from, Prosecutor?” he asked.
    “From the capital.”
    “From the Big Smoke itself?” He didn’t try to hide his surprise, as if the next question were going to be whether Szacki had been kicked out for drink, drugs or sexual harassment.
    “As I said, from the capital.” Szacki loathed the expression “the Big Smoke”.
    “But did you get into trouble, or something like that?”
    “Something like that.”
    “Aha.” For a moment the policeman waited for this heart-to-heart to continue, but he gave up on it. “Apart from the body there’s nothing, we haven’t found any clothes, handbags, or jewellery. There are no signs of dragging, and no evidence of a struggle either. It looks as if she was carried here. We’ve made casts of the tyre tracks lower down and the footprints that were fresh. It’ll all be in the report, but I wouldn’t count on much, except from the autopsy.”
    Szacki nodded. Not that he was particularly excited. He had solved all his cases by relying on personal, not material evidence. Of course it would be nice to find the murder weapon in the bushes and the murderer’s identity card, but he had long since realized that nice wasn’t an everyday occurrence in Teodor Szacki’s life.
    “Commissioner!” yelled one of the technicians rootling about in the bushes on the escarpment.
    The goggle-eyed man indicated for them to wait, and ran off towards the remains