A Grain of Truth by Zygmunt Miloszewski

Author:Zygmunt Miloszewski [Lloyd-Jones, Antonia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781908524034
Publisher: Bitter Lemon Press

III

Chief Commissioner Dr Jarosław Klejnocki was sitting with his legs crossed, puffing on a pipe and looking at them with a calm gaze, hidden behind thick glasses. The glasses really were thick, thick enough to show the bulging shape of the lenses, and to make the bit of the profiler’s face visible behind them seem much thinner than the rest. As well as that he had short grey hair, an equally short beard, below it a polo-neck top, a tweed jacket, suit trousers and black sports shoes in the style of House MD.

His clothes hung on him loosely, and it crossed Szacki’s mind that he must have been fat until quite recently – he looked rather haggard, with a touch of surplus skin on the cheeks, and his way of dressing and slow movements testified to the fact that for years he had been used to his own corpulence. Which he must have lost to illness, or a compassionate wife who had realized she didn’t want cholesterol to make her a widow prematurely.

Present in the conference room at the prosecutor’s office, as well as Klejnocki and Szacki, were Basia Sobieraj and Leon Wilczur, who had earlier shown the profiler around the crime scenes. The windows were shielded by blinds, and pictures of the corpses were being projected on a large folding screen. Sobieraj was sitting with her back to the screen, refusing to look at it.

Klejnocki puffed on his pipe again and set it down on a special little stand, which he had produced from his pocket earlier on. If someone had held a competition to find the archetypal Krakow boffin, the chief commissioner would offer a simple choice – either first prize, or chairman of the jury. Szacki suddenly felt irritated. He could only hope there was some substance behind this ideal academic appearance, and not just clairvoyance.

“Can you imagine, I recently took part in a competition to find the most typical attribute of the Polish character. Do you know what I suggested?”

Bloody-mindedness, thought Szacki, smiling politely.

“Spleen,” said Klejnocki emphatically. “Spleen – it covers certain generalizing features, and in a symbolic way it determines the nature of the community that, admittedly not all that often, employs it.”

Fucking hell, this can’t be true, thought Szacki. He couldn’t possibly be sitting here listening to this lecture, no way.

“Spleen reflects a certain mental and psychological state that is characteristic on the banks of the Vistula. Embitterment, frustration, sneering underlined with negative energy and a sense of one’s own lack of fulfilment, being on the ‘No’ side, and constant dissatisfaction.”

Klejnocki broke off, shook the ash from his pipe, and pensively began to fill it again, taking the tobacco from a small velvet pouch the colour of the cloth on a billiard table. A scent of vanilla wafted about the room.

“So why have I brought this up?”

“We’re wondering that too,” said Sobieraj, unable to hold back.

Klejnocki gave her a polite bow.

“Of course, dear lady. I bring it up because I have noticed that apart from crimes of passion, there is also such a thing as, let us call it, a crime of spleen.

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