"Are you asleep?" "Has Grzegorz been told?" "I thought perhaps you would..." "I'm really sorry, Basia." "Excuse me, but she's my friend." "She was your friend." " Where are the forensic guys?" " Wojtus will be here any moment." "Operational officer?" "I know it's foggy and dark and you can't see a thing." "But all your old pals in these houses..." "and your buddies in those ones... have to be questioned by noon." "Excuse me, but are you conducting this case now?" "Yeah." "And might I ask why?" "Because it doesn't involve the theft of a cell phone at a junior school?" "I'm going straight to Misia." "Is somebody coming from C.I.D.?" "Do they star work at ten?" "I'm right here, son." "Teodor Szacki." "Wilczur, Leon." "Have you ever lived outside Warsaw before?" "Not until now." "So you know fuck all about life." "But it's not a sin." "I'll help you." "All you have to do is carry out the instructions of the prosecutor in charge of the case." "I'd like to know who butchered that clown Budnik's wife." "Instinct tells me you're going to find out." "But you're not from here." "They'll all talk to you, but they won't tell you anything." "Sometimes you'll be trying to figure out who's really with whom and why." "That's when I'll help you." "You could have lost your fingers." "You could have contaminated the murder weapon with your blood, you cretin." "How do you know it's the murder weapon?" "I'm conjecturing." "As we've found a woman with her throat slashed under one bush, and this... razor-machete under another, there might be a connection, don't you think?" "Please try one." "I put a really thin layer of plum jam under the meringue." "I still have some left from the fall." "All right, Basia, tell us what this is about." "I'd like to understand why." "I've been conducting my own inquiries for seven years at our prosecution service, and now I'm being taken off Ela's murder." "I'd like to know why Mr Szacki is going to run it, who doesn't know the town and its special features." "And I'd like to say that" "I was sorry to find out about it this way." "You might at least have warned me, Misia." "I know, Basia, I'm sorry." "Normally a case like this one would have been for you." "But this isn't a normal situation." "Ela was a close friend of yours, and you were connected with Grzegorz too." "The defense could use that against us." "Besides, emotions aren't much help in a homicide investigation." "Fuck all you know about my emotions." "It's blissful ignorance." "You can snipe at each other later, my dears." "Now I'm going to explain your professional position." "I hope..." "Prosecutor Szacki will run the inquiry." "Because I want to avoid a situation where the victim, the suspects and the investigator are a crowd of old friends who only the other day were chatting over the barbecue." "But as Mr Szacki is new here, you're going to give him advice about everything to do with the town and its residents." "Welcome to all you aficionados of cold steel, fans of slashing, devotees of slicing, stab wound enthusiasts..." "In this edition of Thrust!" "video-magazine" "I've got a really sharp rarity for you:" "we're gonna meet a writer who hand-crafts his own Samurai swords!" "There's also no lack of curios, like this whip, which might seem exotic, but these have been braided in Poland since ancient times." "And the moving story of the Kriegsmarine dagger that saved the honor of one Mazurian peasant girl." "As I always say, show me your knife, and I'll tell you who you are!" "You've caused enough trouble already." "Please leave!" "Do you think I want to be here?" "The prosecutor told me to come." "The body wasn't on our grounds." "I don't want any fuss here." "So do you want the archive surrounded by police tape, a search warrant and twelve forensic expers who'll spend a week looking for trace evidence?" "So if I've got it right, people hire you to travel round the boondocks looking for documents about their ancestors, is that so?" "Yes." "And they pay for that?" "As long as the ancestors are the right ones." " The right ones?" " Meaning, no illiterate peasants, not to mention Jews." "They want aristocrats-some of them will be happy with decent bourgeoisie, but that's rare." "There has to be a coat of arms." " And do you always find one?" " Yes." "But round here they're all descended from peasants, surely." "Give me a name and the records will turn up." "Once you star digging around in history, you can soon find just about anything in there." "Sometimes it's the truth." "Sometimes it's the shocking truth." "And sometimes it's the slightly stretched truth." "Look, it's here." "Did anything happen before you saw the corpse?" " Do you know who did it?" " No." "And I have no idea who could have done it." "I'd say nobody from round here, if not for the fact that it must have been someone from round here." "I don't believe in the idea of a wandering stranger putting himself to so much trouble." "There's one thing you have to understand..." "Nobody here likes Budnik." "You know the loud-mouthed do-gooder type who's always in the middle of some great crusade?" "He's that type." "Never mind if he's right or not, he's always bloody infuriating." "What about her?" "Mother Elzbieta of the Angels, that's what they called her." "A madwoman?" "The total opposite." "Goodness personified." "This is Poland-she must have been hated for something." "No, she wasn't." "Have you questioned him?" "I asked him a few technical questions, but I'm leaving the rest to you." "Where was he yesterday?" "At home." " What about her?" " She was at home too." " I'm sorry?" " So he says." "They watched T, snuggled up" "and went to sleep." "When he got up in the morning she wasn't there." "That's crap!" "The dumbest lies I've ever heard in my entire career." "Yeah..." ""OPEN"" "Was there any gas?" " Hi, it's me." " Hi, I can see that." "What do you want?" "I'm just calling." "How are you doing?" "How's Helka?" "She's fine, I'm hassling her to do her homework, she's got a test tomorrow." " What's the test?" " Nature." "Teo, is there something in paricular you want?" "I'm quite busy." "In paricular?" "In paricular I want to know when my daughter's coming here." "I get the impression you're making it hard for her to see me." "Don't be paranoid." "You know she doesn't like going there." "Why is that?" "Because as soon as she does, her step-father will have some competition, and your shiny new relationship won't be quite so shiny?" "Teo...?" "Well, all right, but she's got to understand that I live here now." "You explain it to her." "Maybe I'll come see you." "Maybe." "As you wish." "Teo... please, if there's nothing in paricular..." "No, thanks, give her a kiss for me." " OK?" " OK." " I asked about one single knife." " I know, I know all that." "But it's just that I've spent years trying to get them to put me on the list of experts" " in cold steel..." " Cut to the chase!" "Your "razor-machete"" "is a chalef, a knife used for the ritual slaughter of animals, as used by a shochet a Jewish butcher." "This is a small one, for poultry." "Yours, the XXL version, is for cattle." "There's also a medium-sized one, for lambs." " Are you cerain?" " One hundred percent." " It's my passion..." "And as an expert..." " Please." "Only one tool has this paricular shape." "You ought to know that only a perectly sharp knife can sever the esophagus, the larynx and the arery at a single stroke, and those are the conditions for kosher ritual slaughter." "Because?" "Maybe the point is that the animal shouldn't suffer?" "I fell head-over-heels in love, without a hope" " a provincial civil serant and a big-city girl who'd been to stage school." "But two years later we got married in Sandomierz cathedral on Divine Mercy Sunday." "Unforunately we never had any kids, though we very much wanted to." "When it turned out we'd have to go through all those medical procedures, we considered adoption, but finally we realized we'd still be looking afer children in our social work." "We spent most of the last few days together." "We worked very hard in the winter, so we decided to spend Easter on our own." "On Sunday we slept in too late for the Resurrection Mass, had a modest but festive breakfast, did some reading, talked a bit and watched T." "That evening we went for a walk, after that we looked in at the cathedral, but not for mass, just to pray for a while by the Tomb." "We actually spent all of Monday in bed, Ela had a sore throat it was real cold over Easter." "On Tuesday she was still feeling sick, we had no obligations, so we stayed home." "That evening we watched a Rober Redford movie on channel one, about a jail," "I don't remember the title." "And we went to bed." "Early." "I had a headache." "When I woke up, Ela wasn't there." "Before I'd had time to get worried, Basia Sobieraj called." "I'm glad you're questioning me." "It could be hard for Basia." "I'm questioning you because I'm in charge of the inquiry." "Emotional considerations have nothing to do with it." "What happened to your forehead?" "I tripped and hit it on a cooking pan." " We'll have to do a forensic examination." " It's just a scratch." "Not because we're worried about you." "We have to check it isn't the result of a fight or a wounding." "Don't you believe me?" "You know of course that you can refuse to make a statement or to answer specific questions?" " Yes." " But you prefer to tell lies." "Why is that?" "When was the last time you saw your wife?" " I've said..." " I know what you said." "Now please tell me when was the last time you really saw your wife." "If you don't, I'll detain you for 48 hours, charge you with murder and apply for an arrest warrant." "You've got thiry seconds..." "Twenty..." " Ten..." " But I've said..." "This is Szacki, please..." "On Monday." " Why did you lie?" " We'd had a row, we'd shouted and hurt each other's feelings..." "O God, when I think that the last words I ever said to her were that she should take her sorry ass back to Krakow..." "I didn't run afer her, I didn't go looking for her, I was furious." "I didn't want to apologize, I didn't want to say sorry, I wanted to be alone." "On Tuesday evening I started to miss her, but my pride wouldn't let me call her." "Didn't it occur to you that these facts might be important to the investigation?" "Doesn't finding her killer matter to you?" "No." "Nothing matters to me now." "Have you ever seen this tool before?" " Is that...?" " Please answer the question." "Mister Prosecutor..." "Please stop bugging me-it's the court that draws up the list of experts." "But that's not what I've come about." "As I've explained, it's my passion, you see." "I've got the best collection in Poland." "And I just wanted to ask, no obligation..." " No." " But why..." "No." "Goodbye." "You'll be sorry..." " The guy's obsessed!" " What's up?" "Nothing, just a screwball trying to get the murder weapon off me for his collection." "Why couldn't the Budniks have children?" "He couldn't, right?" "Right." "Why do you ask?" "The way Budnik mentioned it, as if just in passing." "That's how men talk when they've so ofen been told it doesn't matter that they almost believe it." "My husband can't have children either." "I tell him it doesn't matter too, and that other things count." "And do they?" "Less." "I've got a 10-year-old daughter." "She lives in Warsaw." "I feel as if from day to day she's becoming more and more of a stranger to me, fading out." "Even so I envy you." "This is a disabled parking place." "Hear." "I probably couldn't have given birh anyway." "You're going to have to trust somebody eventually." "Teodor." "Baska." "Tell me you're joking." "You have no idea what that means, do you?" "It means that whoever dropped that knife was hoping the fact would leak out to the media and stir up some Polish-Jewish hysteria, making things harder for us." "It's not going to be ordinary hysteria." "If anyone, God forbid, mentions ritual murder, that'll be the end." "Ritual murder is a fairy tale that was told to children to make them behave, otherwise the big bad Jew would come and gobble them up." "Wake up, Teodor." "Sandomierz is a place where accusations of kidnapping children and pogroms were once as regular as the seasons." "Where the Church endorsed that sort of bestial attitude." "Where to this day there's a painting hanging in the cathedral showing Jews murdering Catholic children." "Covered up, of course." "I've never seen anything like it before." "Take a look." "The body's dry, there's almost no blood." "How is that possible?" "The perect slaughter, like at an abattoir." "Somebody must have stunned her, hung her upside down, slashed her throat and let out the blood." "We must look for the blood." "You should find out what this is." "She had it in her clenched fist." "On Sunday they definitely did go for a walk." "Before six the camera on Mariacka Street caught them." "Everything looks OK, doesn't it?" "On Monday, when in theory Mrs Budnik had lef her husband... she's not on any of the cameras." "Nor is he." "On Tuesday it's the same." "But on Wednesday her corpse is on the other side of town." "Where is that?" "Zydowska Street." "The camera's on the wall of the synagogue." "Right by the spot where Mrs Budnik was found." "The recording is from Wednesday morning, a few minutes before we got the report." "You know what used to be in the spot where Mrs Budnik was found?" "The old city walls?" "The Jewish cemetery." "Her corpse was lying right in the middle of it." "Don't you like having your photo taken?" "The bathroom mirror is distressing enough." "Which way exactly did your wife go out?" "Sorry?" "She didn't go down the street - she's not on the video sureillance." "She can't have jumped over the 10-foot cathedral wall." "Or out of the window, because there are bars." "Hence my curiosity." "Now that you say it," "I do in fact remember something." "Which way she went out on Monday." "Through the door." "You should probably take a close look at it from the other side." " Do you suspect me of something?" " Of murdering your wife." " Why don't you arrest me?" " Are you going to confess?" " I'm innocent." " Pity." "Do you recognize this symbol?" " It's a "Rodlo"." "Didn't you go to school?" " Have you got a badge like this?" "Not a drop." "Nobody's so much as scratched themselves in that house for the past six months." "Why don't we lock him up?" " It's him." " I know." "But it's too little." "I have to know why, and I have to know how." "He won't tell us that in the can." "Keep an eye on him." "Mister Inspector..." "Give me a break, Gasiorowski." "How many times is it now?" " And it always ends the same way, right?" " Well, yes, but..." " But what?" " But it's a week now since Tolo's been gone." "Gasiorowski, for pity's sake." "The police chase bums away, they don't go looking for them." "And cerainly not bums from another county." " Yes, I know, but..." " There's nothing more to say, goodbye." "We've got to find out where the blood from the cadaver has gone." "Into the matzos." "My husband explained it to me." "Look, it symbolizes the shape of the River Vistula on the map of Poland." "It turns right, then runs a long way upward at an angle, then right again." "The little tassel is where the Vistula flows through Krakow." "The Union of Poles in Germany designed it as their emblem in 1933." "They persuaded the Nazis that it was their version of the swastika." " And?" "Does this union still exist?" " Yes, it's quite an active society." "Apart from that, the "Rodlo" is also a symbol of being Polish" " several scout packs use it, and a couple of nationalist organizations." "Nationalist meaning anti-gay?" "No, more like the reasonable nationalists," " the patriotic types." " Reasonable nationalists?" "Are we playing at oxymorons?" "It may be unfashionable in Warsaw, but in the provinces some people like to feel proud of the fact that they're Polish." "Jerzy Szyller is an honorary member of the Union of Poles in Germany." "And who exactly is Jerzy Szyller?" "You're joking, surely?" "Szyller." "Not a week goes by without someone coming to complain about him." "Last time it was that his dog had crapped at the foot of the statue of John Paul Il, offending the religious feelings of the Catholic citizens of Sandomierz, and breaking aricle 196 of the Penal Code." " Is that a joke?" " No." "Nor is it an exception." "I wish I had a zloty a month from every citizen of Sandomierz who hates him like poison." "Do they hate him for any specific reason?" "He's rich, good-looking, he's got a big house and a flashy car." "Round here that can only mean one thing:" "that he's a crook who oppresses the poor and made his money at the expense of others." "And what's the truth?" "Be my guest..." "The truth is that Jerzy Szyller is a businessman who's clever with real estate." "He's clean." "What was his relationship with the Budniks?" "The guy's a patriot, a philanthropist, he financed her shows for children." "Szyller..." "A Jew?" "If you believe the informers, yes, 100 percent." "Also a pederast, who practices bestiality and worships Satan." "Not on the wet..." "I found my birthday." "That's not a birthday." "That's a prediction of how you'll meet your end." "Are you a patriot?" "Of course." "Aren't you?" "Do you like the patriotic paintings in the cathedral?" "I'm not sure if this is relevant to our conversation... but I think the greatest and most harmful idiocy in the history of Poland is the identification of patriotism with that pedophile sect." "Patriotism without the Virgin Mary?" "You're inventing a new quality." "It only takes a bit of common sense to see that the Church is behind all our worst disasters." "That bloodthirsty myth about being the bulwark of Christianity, all that pornographic lust for martyrdom, the idleness, envy, and sexual neuroses." "Polish law is drawn up according to the dictates of that onanistic mafia in black skirs." "I am a patriot, but please don't insult me by suspecting me of placing one particular superstition above others, and calling it patriotism." "Are you familiar with this symbol?" "It's a "Rodlo" - for us it's really a sacred sign." "Do your Union members often wear something like this?" "Only those who are actively involved." "You won't buy that off a Turk." " You have one, naturally?" " Naturally." "May I see it?" "That's odd..." " But you can't find it." " No, I can't." "We removed it from the victim's hand." " Elzbieta's hand." " The victim, Elzbieta." "Where were you on Monday and Tuesday?" "At home." "Did anyone visit you?" "Friends, acquaintances?" "Do you often have visitors, on the whole?" "I'm not particularly sociable." "And this place is special to me, a sor of refuge." "I like being here on my own." "May I see the picture that used to stand on the mantelpiece?" "I'm sorry?" "I'd like to see the picture that was standing on the mantelpiece." " There wasn't any..." " Are you going to show it to me or not?" "A woman who's been brutally murdered had a badge in her clenched fist that you can't find." "And you can't explain what might have happened to it." "Nor can you prove where you were when the murder was committed." "And yet you're telling me lies." "I find that very surprising." "You're easily surprised, Prosecutor." "Does such a childish trait come in useful in your profession?" "I should lock you up and then wonder what next." "What's stopping you?" "I can't see a reason why you would have killed your lover." "Especially in that way." " Stop playing the fool." " The picture." "You don't understand a thing." "This is a small town." "They're always going to say" " she was a whore, a loose woman." " The picture." "Right now." "Was the victim planning to leave her husband?" "Did you discuss it?" "It can't have been pleasant for you." "Knowing that she got into bed with him every night, gave him a goodnight kiss and did what married couples usually do." " On Monday I was expecting her." " Sorry?" "On Easter Monday she was going to come to me for good." "On Tuesday we were going to leave and never come back." "Does that mean she was going to tell her husband about you?" "I don't know." "Mr Budnik, open up, it's the police!" "Mr Budnik!" "I've studied in Warsaw, I've studied in Göttingen," "I've done a lot of travelling, I've lived in three capital cities." "I won't hide the fact that I've had a lot of men too." "Every single one of them was a great guy." "Even if we came to the conclusion that we weren't necessarily suited, they were still great." "You're the first real dick to have stood in my way." "A civil serant who's twenty years older than you, who's been through the mill." "What could you hope to build with me?" "Nothing anymore." "But I wanted to." "I was feeling keener by the day to give you more." "But you saw me as a provincial cocksucker." "There's no need to be crude." "You're the one that's crude, Teo." "In every thought about me you're a crude, vulgar, boorish mysoginist and common sexist." "A sad little pen-pusher too." "Turn around." "Stop it..." "Janek..." "Szacki, Szacki..." "Mister Prosecutor," "Mister Prosecutor, a word of comment please?" "There'll be a press conference tomorrow, we'll tell you the whole story." "Is it a serial killer?" "Tomorrow." "Today I'd have nothing but hearsay for you, tomorrow we'll have information." " Hearsay will do." " No it won't." "The man wanted for the previous murder has been killed." "Does that mean the investigation is at a standstill?" "Not in the least." " You should close the schools." " Why close the schools?" "To protect the children." " I'm sorry, from what?" " From the blood ritual." "Have you gone crazy?" "I don't understand why we haven't got the courage to wonder out loud if afer all these years ritual murder hasn't returned to Poland?" "You're out of your mind." "I'm not asserting it, I'm just asking." "Ritual murder is an anti-Semitic legend, not a reality." "In every legend there's a grain of truth." "In legal history a lot of people were legitimately convicted for kidnapping and killing children in a similar way." "And so were lots of witches." "Do you think witches have come back to the Most Serene Commonwealth too?" "Are they screwing with the devil and plotting to dethrone Christ the King?" "That's just political correctness, it won't change the facts." "And the facts are two bodies, murdered according to the old Jewish blood ritual, practiced for centuries all over the world." "A rabbi's son from Rome wrote that it really happens, there's proof, statements by witnesses, it's not a medieval legend..." "Please listen to me, because I'm only going to say it once." "The one and only thing that interests me is this:" "finding the culprit and bringing him to trial." "I couldn't care less if it's Karol Wojtyla come back from the dead," "Ahmed from the kebab stall, or some bloodthirsty Jew, baking matzos in a cellar." "Whoever it may or may not be, he'll be dragged out of hiding by the side-locks, braids or whatever, and made to answer for what he's done." "You have my guarantee." "OK, once again." "Not old phone numbers." "Not police ID numbers." "Not passport or ID card numbers from the KWP series." "Nothing like that." "Not social security numbers." "No database known to our bureaucracy is bringing up any results that might make sense." "Dates?" "No, unless it's a sort of prediction about the 23rd century." "Geographical coordinates?" "Libya." "The killer cerainly doesn't want us to catch him, so if he's not totally round the twist, he's not going to leave a riddle we only have to solve in order to find him." "Unless he is round the twist." "What about the underground passage?" "The fire fighters failed to dig through to anywhere." "They gave up." "Too risky." "The miners can start on Tuesday." "So what now?" "Let's go to bed." "I haven't brought my lacy underwear, so if you'd be willing to postpone until another day..." "You guys sure are horny out in the provinces." "Long winters, long nights, no cinema, boring stuff on TV." "What can you do?" "Sleep." "This is Szacki." "I've got a client who wants you to do some digging around in the archives." "At this time of day?" "Who's that?" "KWP?" "Konspiracyjne Wojsko Polskie." "(Polish Underground Army)" "Good day, Mister Prosecutor." "Congratulations!" "These days it takes a lot of courage to say these things straight out." " Don't forget, we're all behind you." " Who?" "We ordinary, real Poles." "Good luck!" ""I'll drag him out of hiding by the side-locks!" "Guaranteed!"" "...hundreds of miles of corridors, underground chambers, storerooms and cellars." "An eerie labyrinth dug out over the centuries... which nobody has ever fully explored to this day." "They stretch far beyond Sandomierz and go down many levels." "According to legend, Halina Krepianka went mad with grief, because she had lost everyone she loved and everyone who loved her Just a moment..." " I want to talk to you." " But I don't want to talk to you." "Please." "I'm the one to say please." "Please don't try proving to me that as well as being a shit, you can also be a pathetic limp dick." "In that case I'm going back to work." "Please Miss, the boys heard howling." "Just imagine, lately I took part in a contest for the most Polish word of all." "Do you know what I suggested?" "The word zolc, meaning "bile"." "For two reasons." "Firstly, it consists of nothing but accented letters that only exist in Polish." "Secondly, it symbolizes the true nature of our society." "Embitterment, frustration, lack of fulfilment, constant dissatisfaction." " Why have I brought this up?" " We're all wondering about that." "Because apar from the crime of passion, there's also the crime of bile." "Passion is a sudden outburst of emotion, isn't it?" "Bile is something else." "Bile accumulates slowly, in tiny droplets." "Eventually there's nothing else inside of us." "We'd do anything not to feel any more of this bitterness, this humiliation." "And I think that's what we're dealing with here." "So we're getting down to facts." "Absolutely, surely you didn't think I'd screw the entire day away like this?" "Well..." "If not for the undoubted fact that the culprit is one and the same person," "I'd suggest that in the case of the second murder we're dealing with a copycat." " There are too many differences here." " Such as?" "Both victims bled to death." "Apparently a similarity." "But let's look at the details." "The male victim has precisely severed femoral areries." "An elegant solution, the blood flows rapidly, down the legs, and that's it." "Whereas the female victim has her throat slit so that it looks like a gill, which means lots of frenzied slashes." "He wanted to punish, humiliate, and disfigure her." "So the first crime was one "of bile", in theory it should have closed the matter." "Once the murder's committed, the bile flows out with the victim's blood, then comes peace, followed by guilt, pangs of conscience." "So why did he kill again?" "For now we don't know, but I advise accepting that the key to the riddle is the first murder." "Is he going to attack again?" "He doesn't fit the profile of a serial killer." "It looks more like the fulfillment of a plan, naturally vengeance is the motive that suggests itself." "What is there to imply that?" "The inscription left at the scene of the crime." "If the matter were closed, he wouldn't feel like playing little games." "So it's a little game?" "Or a way of communicating what the revenge is about." "Often for those seeking revenge, death is not enough." "Infamy is imporant too, the world has to know what the victims were punished for." "Supposing there is still someone on his list, who might it be?" "Someone from his family, or maybe a long-standing friend..." "Yes?" "You won't believe it." "We can't blame ourselves." "We didn't have enough to lock him up." "And house arrest, even so, it was a couresy on his par." "No signs of a struggle." "Either he walked out, or he was carried out." "Issue an arrest warrant?" "No, we've had enough humiliation for one case." "I don't want to find in a shor while that our new chief suspect is hanging on a hook somewhere." "Inform the media that we're looking for an important witness, and we'll stick to that version." "Don't move." "Screwed-up joker." "What's the origin of matzos?" "When they fled from Egypt, they hadn't time to wait for the dough to rise they had to bake something to eat quickly, and the result was matzos." "Do you think this is a serial killer?" "That he won't stop?" "That he's going to go on kidnapping, murdering and blood-letting?" " Pick all this up." " Where are you going?" "To the church." "Not on the wet." "Hey!" "That's not allowed!" "Every inch has to be photographed and examined, even if you guys star fainting with exhaustion." " It must be some sort of code." " I even know which-it's an alphabet." "Do you know Hebrew, Father?" "The first and third words are ein, the middle one is tehet or tahat." "Unforunately I don't know what they mean." "Ein could be one, like in German, but then it would be Yiddish, not Hebrew." "Yes, we had Bible studies with elements of Hebrew at the seminary." "But I wasn't always listening, it was the first class of the day, we were tired afer the pogroms..." "Teo..." ""This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. "" "I need a copy of the Bible." "On the double!" "Which books of the Bible star with the letter K in Polish?" "Kaplanska [Leviticus], Krolewskie [Kings], Kroniki [Chronicles] and Koheleta [Ecclesiastes]." "In the New Testament we have the two letters to the Koryntiany [Corinthians] and one to the Kolosany [Colossans]." " Which of those books is part of the Torah?" " Leviticus." " Chapter 24, verses 19 to 21." " Oh, of course..." ""If a man causes disfigurement to his neighbor, as he has done, so shall it be done to him" " fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth;" "whoever kills a man shall be put to death. "" "W must be for Wyjscia[Exodus], chapter 21, verses 22 to 25." ""If men fight, and hur a woman with child, so that she gives birh prematurely, he shall pay as the judge determines." "But if any harm follows, then you shall give life for life, eye for eye... "" "And a book starting with P, it's Prawo, right?" "Poworzonego Prawa [Deuteronomy]." "Chapter 19, verses 16 to 21." ""If a false witness testifies against any man of wrongdoing, then you shall do to him as he thought to have done to his brother:, so you shall put away the evil from among you." "And those who remain shall hear and fear, and not again commit such evil:" "life shall be for life, eye for eye. "" "It seems the meaning of the message has been explained." "An eye for an eye..." "You were right." "It's all there in the past." "I need names." "I still have to go to two more archives tomorrow." "Today." "You've had practise at sitting up all night." "If they give you any trouble, call this number." "We must hurry." "The deputy minister." "He's been warned." "Killing, the death of a pregnant woman, perjury." "Look for those." "JEWISH CEMETERY, HALL OF MEMORY IN LUBLIN" "Good evening, I'm looking for Rabbi Zygmunt." "I've come to see your father." "A Pole with a sense of humor, that's great." "Glass of wine?" "Coffee." "I don't like talking about the Shoah." "I don't like the fact that every conversation between Catholic Poles and Jews goes back to... that." "As if there hadn't been 700 years of shared history before that, and everything after it." "Just dead bodies and nothing else." "Imagine coming home, and finding a man living in your house who blackmailed Jews hiding during the war, who caused your entire family to die in a camp." "Your wife and children." "Could you restrain yourself?" "Forgive him?" "Love him as yourself?" "Do you have a family?" "Yes." "I did have." "Until recently." "Then you can imagine those emotions better than I can." "For me it's abstract, academic consideration." "Matzos..." "With chocolate, delicious." "Want some?" "Do the initials KWP mean anything to you?" "Komenda Wojewodzka Policji [District Polish HQ]?" "What about Konspiracyjne Wojsko Polskie [Polish Underground Army]?" "The anti-communist partisans." "Flawless heroes for some, troublemakers for others, for yet others Jew-baiters who organized pogroms." "Were there incidents of that kind?" "They were generally right-wing units." "That sor of pre-war, nationalist right was shot through with anti-Semitism." "But the "cursed soldiers"" "also fought against functionaries of the state apparatus." "Jews were killed in the fighting, because there were lots of them in the secret police." "Of course you know why I'm asking all these questions?" "Because you're wondering if it might be the work of a Jew, obsessed with the desire for revenge." "And you want to know if it's possible." "If we were talking about someone normal, I'd say no, but anyone who has two people's blood on his hands is a madman." "And with madmen anything's possible." " There's another thing too..." " Yes?" "All this..." "Sandomierz, the painting, the quotes, the knife for shechita, the corpse in a barrel..." "You can't acquire all that knowledge in a weekend." "In theory you'd have to be a Jew." "Why in theory?" "Because in practise someone's putting a lot of effor into fooling the prosecutor." "That's my impression." "That's het, the eighth letter of the Hebrew alphabet." "It's the mirror image of a correctly written letter." "No Jew would write it that way, not even a mad one." "Just as even if you were very drunk you wouldn't write a B with the loops to the lef." "See?" "I think someone's just cunning, trying to resurrect enough demons to be able to hide among them." "The question, my dear Prosecutor, is whether in the crowd of phantoms you'll be able to make out the face of the killer." "I need your help." "Even if this is just a bad dream, I'm telling you for once and for all..." "Even if it's a dream it's not one in which I'm interested in your emotional state." "I need your help as a prosecutor." " Just tell me it's..." " Exactly." "A matter of life and death." " Good morning." " Good morning." "This place was built as the junior clerical seminary, it's called Nazareth House." "During the war the Gestapo was in here, afer the war the secret police, and now it's a hostel for clerical students." "Why are we going in here?" "Because if the prosecutor is right, this holy building contains the gates of hell." "Listen, just here, behind this wall is the tourist route." "So if the prosecutor is right and the kids really did hear noises... we should be hearing them even louder." " Can you tell where that is?" " The echo is misleading, but I'd say to the west, towards the synagogue." " Where are we now?" " Here, under the walls, with the Old Town on our lef." " Let's keep going." " Let's go back." "What are we looking for anyway?" "Szyller." "So far whenever someone has disappeared in this case he's been found later on trussed like a piglet..." "You mean like a lamb." "Pork's not treif." "Not kosher." "At any rate we've got a chance of finding someone sooner this time." " How do you know there's a connection?" " Howling, barking, it all fits." "Are you crazy?" "Where the hell does barking fit into this?" "What's in that painting?" "Victims with their throats slit, or rolled in a barrel of blood, and remains being thrown to dogs." "What haven't we seen yet?" "Oh God." " Got a gun?" " Yes." " Let's go back!" " No!" "I have to see where they ran from." "But there's no more howling!" "Quick, let's get him down!" "Szyller, who was it?" " Who was it?" " Teo..." " No... no... no... no..." " Stop!" "Faster, Teo, please!" "Rush to the surace, fast as you can, call an ambulance." "Quickly!" " I can't do it." " Yes you can, just a bit more." "If I don't make it, there's something you should know." "Fuck it, man." "Let's just get out of here." "Excuse me, but why do I have to find out you're in hospital from the TV?" "I'm fine." "I'm not asking how you are, because I don't give a shit." "I'm asking why my daughter is calling from school in hysterics, but I don't know what's happened." "Are you really all right?" "Just bruises." "Sorry, I was asleep." "I had no idea there was anything in the media." "Well, now you know there is." "About you, about an underground explosion, and some shooting." "Have you gone completely mad?" "Have you forgotten you have a child?" "All right, if you're having a mid-life crisis, get yourself a fucking motorbike, man." "It's bad enough being a divorcee, I don't want to be a widow too." "How does that sound?" "As if I were 60." "I don't think you can be a widow if you're divorced." "Don't you tell me who I can and can't be - those dark days are over, luckily." " Wera..." " Let me know when you getout, OK?" "That everything's all right." "So I can tell Helka." "So she won't be worried." " And look afer yourself." " OK." "The old man's fine." "He'll outlive us all." "They did some tests and sent him home with orders to have a large drink and sleep it off." "She's alive." "But if she'd reached the operating table a few minutes later they'd never have saved her." "They've put her in a drug-induced coma." "We shouldn't have gone down there, we should have sent the forensic expers." "Teo, we're civil serants, not some sort of agents." "What kind of a sick action was that?" "We thought there was a chance of saving Szyller." "Yes, but we were wrong." "I'm sorry." "Really?" "Easily said." "I did as you said." "I looked at all the serices and checked who was first to issue the news from Sandomierz." "One blogger was always first." "The others picked it up afer him." "First the websites, then the TV, then everyone." "This is the first entry, about the body below the synagogue." "The very first entry on the blog." "This is the killer's blog." "At that time not even I knew about the incident" "I got the call just before five." "Or it's the blog of one of the investigators." "Or both." "Sometimes you'll be trying to figure out who's really with whom and why." "That's when I'll help you." "I've been running my own inquiries for seven years, and now I'm being taken off Ela's murder." "Nobody here likes Budnik." "You're going to have to trust somebody eventually." "Her corpse was lying right in the middle of the old Jewish cemetery." "There's something you should know..." "I know who did it." "And I know why." "In spring 1946... the country had been devastated by the war, there was no food, but there was the new communist regime." "There was an empty space where the Jewish district had once been, and the best houses had been occupied by Poles." "The real estate had all been claimed, so had the possessions left behind in safekeeping." "Every returning Jew meant a pang of conscience..." "Just before Easter, before Passover a Jewish family arrived here." "They were strangers, no one in Sandomierz had seen them before." "He was a doctor, named Wajsbrot," "Chaim Wajsbrot." "The fact that they were strangers helped them." "They weren't returning to their old haunts, no one had to look them in the eye and explain away the new sideboard" " they were just victims of war, and he could help out too." "Before the war the mansion on Zamkowa Street belonged to Dr Weiss, a Jewish doctor who was greatly respected." "And it was here by chance that Wajsbrot and his family settled." "So why is it empty?" "Officially because of ownership issues, unofficially the place is haunted." " Haunted?" " By ghosts." "We're just coming to it." "As Wajsbrot cured one child afer another of TB, the news quickly spread." "According to rumor, he had penicillin." "From America." " Wajsbrot was approached by..." " Let me guess:" "the "cursed soldiers"?" "Exactly." "The KWP." "They approached him, demanding a contribution for their fight against the Red invaders, in the form of antibiotics." "Wajsbrot told them to get lost..." "Apparently they only managed to save their doctor by a miracle." "But the KWP major couldn't swallow the insult of being refused by a Jew." "So he came back and killed him?" "He denounced him." "To the loathsome Reds." "It didn't take much, he just had to mention the American penicillin..." "Fall came," "Mrs Wajsbrot's delivery date was approaching." "Wajsbrot's wife was, as they say, of a frail constitution." "The doctor knew they wouldn't let him go, but he begged them to let her come to the jail for a few days so he could deliver the baby." "I read the transcripts, they're shocking." "He spilled some made-up names and promised to expose an international band of imperialist contacts if they'd only let him deliver the baby." "But they didn't." " And Mrs Wajsbrot died?" " Yes, though she needn't have." "The neighbors fetched the best midwife in the district..." "As bad luck would have it, she'd come with her daughter." "Zoska!" "Nooo!" "Don't leave me!" "I've got a theory that evil is the result of gossip." "If the little girl hadn't kept hearing about those barrels in which the Jews murder children to make matzos..." "They say to this day you can hear her screaming and the baby crying on Zamkowa Street." "Wajsbrot hanged himself next day in his cell." "Jerzy Szyller?" "His father was the KWP major." "Grzegorz Budnik?" "Son of the secret police chief." "And Mrs Budnik?" "Her mother was from Zawichost, born in 1941." "So when the Wajsbrots died, she was six." "A little girl who could have been extremely frightened when she saw a terrifing barrel in a ruined Jewish house." "And the Wajsbrots' son?" "You're wrong, Prosecutor." "You've got it very wrong." ""Fathers shall not be put to death for their sons' sins, nor shall sons be put to death for their fathers' sins." "Each shall die for his own sin. "" ""For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the sons to the third and fourh generations. "" "The same book, but a few chapters earlier." "But what matters is that you're wrong." "We'll meet tomorrow at your interiew." "What pointless vengeance..." "At least be sure to answer for it all with style." "You don't like me, and I even know why." "Come on..." "Excuse me." "Yes?" " I'm looking for the girl who was in here." " Are you a relative?" "I'm the prosecutor." "She passed away at daybreak." "I'm sorry." "Hello!" "Hello!" " MrGasiorowski?" " Who's asking?" "The state prosecutor of the Polish Republic, that's who the fuck's asking!" "Yes or no?" "Darek Gasiorowski." "That pal of yours, the bum." "Was he found?" " No." " What's his name?" " Tolo." " Anatol?" " Yes." " Then what?" "Fijewski." " I can describe him, if you..." " No need." "Passpors" "Good morning." "Ticket and ID card please." "Thank you." "Mr Anatol!" "Do you know what real love is?" "The kind that means nothing else matters?" "Not in the least bit?" "Making you capable of the greatest sacrifices... and the greatest crimes?" "Please stick to the facts." " Ela and Szyller..." " Please use full names." "My wife Elzbieta Budnik and Jerzy Szyller... better?" "I wanted to kill my wife Elzbieta Budnik and Jerzy Szyller." "I really did." "It gave me pleasure." "Afer all those months imagining what they were doing together." "Afer hearing all those lies, all those stories about work meetings with actors." "You don't know what it's like, how that hatred grows from day to day, every minute, every second, the whole time I knew" "she wasn't really mine, but when she finally told me to my face," "it was terrible." "I decided that if I couldn't have her, nobody was going to have her." "It won't work." "I don't understand." "It has already worked." "Playing at paragraph four won't work." "Killing that poor hobo, making yourself look like him, all those theatrical crimes - that took weeks to prepare." "That kind of premeditation excludes extreme agitation justified by the circumstances." "You're wasting my time and this paper." " Acting the madman won't work either." " Why not?" "Because you've put too much effor into rational activities aimed at escaping criminal responsibility." "You're not a bad player, are you?" "I knew killing them would be easy." "The problem was how to avoid jail." "Stirring up all that Jewish hysteria could help, this is Sandomierz after all, but I needed to be sure nobody would be looking for me." "When it finally struck me that nobody would be looking for a corpse, the rest was just an exercise in creative thinking." "I felt sorry for that hobo," "I really did." "But I wanted the crime to be perfect." "The ar of illusion." "You were looking at a marionette." "The barrel, the plaster on the forehead." "So you didn't see the hands and the strings moving the puppet." "The formal identification was done by the one person who didn't know me well." "I said: full names." "Prosecutor Teodor Szacki!" "Did you deliberately incriminate Leon Wilczur?" "That was your initiative too, Prosecutor." "Well, let's say I gave you a gentle push in the right direction." "I knew who he was, my father told me the truth on his death bed." "All his life it bothered him that he hadn't let Wajsbrot out of jail." "He was afraid of a Jewish curse." "And when I met Ela, he was sure it was Wajsbrot, demanding justice from beyond the grave." "Stupid superstitions?" "Why not admit it?" "I came very close to committing the perect crime." "You people always come very close." "Will you be sad?" "I don't know," " will you?" " What about you?" "Maybe a little." "I don't know." "That case had already been closed." "How did it occur to you?" "A grain of truth." "In every legend there's a grain of truth?" "There isn't really." "I realized that this case was just like the legend of ritual murder that everything about it was a lie." "It's all so creepy, that those people's fates should have come together again." "As if some dybbuk..." "I don't believe in ghosts." "There's nothing about them in the Penal Code."