Entanglement by Zygmunt Miloszewski

cameras?”
    Szacki buried his face in his hands.
    “Sorry, Oleg, I’m having a rotten day. That therapist’s given me a headache - for all I know he’s infected me with something. What’s more I’ve forgotten why I’m here.”
    “You wanted to see me because you like me,” said Kuzniecow, stroking the prosecutor’s white hair.
    “Fuck off.”
    “Aaaww, what a rude prosecutor.”
    Szacki bust out laughing.
    “Someone’s said that to me every day lately. I was going to take a look at Telak’s things, mainly his wallet, and I wanted to tell you to take fingerprints from the bottle of sleeping pills and question the people at Polgrafex. Any enemies, conflicts, badly placed investments, relationships at work. You should also show them pictures of Rudzki and the whole fabulous threesome. Rudzki was there once, they should recognize him, but if they recognize any of the others, that’ll be something. I’ll
show them to Mrs Telak and her son. It might turn out they weren’t strangers at all.”
    Kuzniecow grimaced.
    “I doubt it too,” replied Szacki, pulling a similar face, and he drank the dregs of his tomato juice. Only now did he remember that he liked it best with salt and pepper.
     
    He had only seen Henryk Telak’s face once and he’d done his best to do so for as short a time as possible, despite which he could be sure the daughter looked incredibly like him. The same thick eyebrows meeting gently above the nose, the same nose with a thick bridge to it. Neither the former nor the latter ever made any woman prettier, so the girl staring at him from the photo looked common. And also provincial, which she undoubtedly owed to the coarse features she had inherited from her father. Telak’s son looked as if he’d been adopted. Szacki couldn’t find any features to connect his boyish appearance with his father and sister. Nor was he particularly like his mother, who didn’t look transparent and ethereal, which seemed from the picture to be her son’s main characteristics. Surprising how very dissimilar children can be to their parents.
    The girl and boy were not smiling, though these weren’t passport photos, but two pieces of a family photograph taken at the seaside, with waves visible in the background. The photograph had been cut in half, and there was a black velvet ribbon running through the half showing Kasia. Szacki wondered why Telak had cut the photograph in two. He must have been afraid the mourning ribbon would imply that both his children had died.
    As well as the photos, the wallet contained an identity card and a driving licence, from which it emerged that Henryk Telak was born in May 1959 in Ciechanów and that he knew
how to ride a motorbike. A few credit cards, two marked “business”, surely for company accounts. A prescription for Duomox - an antibiotic for tonsillitis, if Szacki remembered correctly. A speeding ticket - 200 zlotys. A postage stamp with a picture of the Olympic ski-jumper Adam Małysz - Szacki was surprised it had ever been issued. A card for the Beverly Hills video library in Powiśle. A card for collecting points from BP. A card from the Coffee Heaven chain, almost entirely filled. Just one more stamp and Telak would have got his next coffee for free. A few faded, illegible till receipts. Szacki did the same - he’d buy something, take the receipt as a guarantee, and the saleswoman would advise him in a friendly way to photocopy it, or else it’d fade, so he’d agree, stick the receipt in his wallet and forget about it. Two lottery tickets confirming that bets had been placed, and two lottery forms filled in by hand. Evidently Telak believed in the magic of figures rather than random luck. He had some lucky numbers too. On each coupon and each form one set was identical: 7, 8, 9, 17, 19, 22. Szacki wrote down these numbers, and after thinking for a while he noted down all the sets of numbers Telak had listed for Saturday’s lottery. After all, no one had