Wojcik propped his head on one hand, shielding his eyes with the other. In the last hour he had nearly nodded off half a dozen times. He tried splitting his attention between covertly watching Ivan and pretending to read his files, but both bored him senseless. At one point he even fished the newspaper from his coat pocket, only to find the print swimming before his eyes. He almost wished his new Detective Sergeant were an ordinary, lazy rookie who would quickly twig that these were nothing more than make-work cases — trivial thefts and petty damage that could sit in the archives indefinitely, forgotten. Something to keep new boys occupied. Any normal copper would have clocked that and found a way to kill time: doodling, cracking jokes, stirring the office dust. Farnicki was not that sort.
In the first hour Ivan had pored over the thin folders with meticulous care. Then he produced a pen and notebook — Wojcik hadn't noticed where they came from; he must have dozed for a moment — and began taking detailed notes on each case. He reviewed his summaries, murmuring under his breath as he cross-checked facts. Finally, he picked up the phone and dialled the numbers listed in the files. That was when Wojcik surrendered to exhaustion and let his eyes close.
Carl had done damn all.
Ivan was doing far too much.
Yet Wojcik could not bring himself to reprimand the boy for his zeal. At least Farnicki cared about something. Passionate about the job, of all things! Telling him his efforts were pointless would be cruel, and Wojcik knew it. He had been a rookie once; he still remembered the sting of being dressed down in front of the entire office for doing too much — for simply doing his job. The embarrassment, the humiliation had come almost daily until one day he changed. He became the man who understood it wasn't worth it. That good intentions counted for nothing.
Curiously, that very shift had got him promoted — not through brilliance, but because he had learned when to keep his mouth shut, when to turn a deaf ear, when to look the other way. Edmond felt no shame for those choices; he wasn't built that way. But nor was there much to be proud of. So, he let Farnicki do as he pleased with the hopeless cases he had been handed. No point snuffing out the young man's fire. Not yet. Perhaps Ivan might even clear a few files. Wojcik wasn't holding his breath.
Thirty minutes remained until lunch. Thirty more minutes of this drowsy quiet, after which he could lock himself in the Lada and sleep for a full hour. Nothing was supposed to shatter the peace in that half-hour. But it did.
Agnes Gott.
Edmond had almost forgotten her. He hadn't truly believed she would come back. He thought he had made himself plain when he told her his officers would not waste time on her dead cats. The cheek of the woman: marching in, demanding to see the chef, filing a report for animal cruelty. She insisted someone was deliberately poisoning her pets. Even if it were true, she had to know — deep down — why. She had lost four already. Four cats, for God's sake. Which meant she still had more. Yet she behaved as though she could not fathom why a neighbour in her five-storey block might object to living alongside her feline horde.
At first Wojcik had been courteous, hearing her out patiently. She dismissed every reasonable point, accusing him of siding with abusers. Eventually, worn down, he accepted her report. It joined the pile of dead-end files destined for oblivion — somewhere at the back of Farnicki's desk, most likely.
And now here she was again. Thinner than before, her greying hair as wild and uncombed as ever, dressed in the same tailored blue frock dotted with white daisies. They were roughly the same age, both in their forties, but she looked a decade older. If she had any softness to her, Wojcik thought, she might almost have been striking. But she was Agnes Gott — the mad cat woman he had come to despise after one encounter.
She strode straight to his desk, dark eyes wild, boring into him.
"Inspector Wojcik, any news on my case?" she demanded without preamble.
"First, good day to you, too, Miss Gott," he said, irritation rising. "And no, I have no news."
"But you promised!" Her voice cracked, loud enough to turn every head in the room.
"What did I promise? I said we would look into it if we could. Clearly, we couldn't."
"You were asleep when I walked in!" she shrieked. "Of course, you have no time for anything!"
"Why don't you investigate it yourself if those bloody cats matter so much? Take their food to a lab - let them tell you if it's poisoned."
"I haven't the money for that!"
"Oh, so you think the government has spare cash lying around to test cat food?!" Wojcik snorted. "As I told you before, Miss Gott: when - and if - we have time, we might do something. Maybe."
He lowered his voice, noticing how distraught she looked, trying to mask his contempt. Too late.
Agnes seemed deaf to everything but her rage. She only had eyes for her archenemy: the cold-hearted, pockmarked asshole sitting behind the desk. She stepped forward and swept her arm across his desk organiser. The plastic tower crashed to the floor, compartments scattering, papers fluttering free and sliding under desks and chairs. She hurled abuse at him — lazy bureaucrat, leech, discriminator — until someone tried to intervene. Then she collapsed into a nearby chair, sobbing.
"Please," she choked out. "It can't be that hard. I lost another today. I love them. They're all I have. They have a right to live! The neighbours don't mind me or the cats — if you think it's them, you're wrong. I clean every day; there's no smell. This one was just a kitten. Don't you see? Someone's poisoning them. If you won't do it for the cats, do it for public safety. The poison's left where they can reach it. Neighbourhood children play with them — follow them into the basement, everywhere. Those kids are in danger, too!"
She had a point; Wojcik hadn't considered the children. But she had pushed every button he had, and he was done listening. He gestured sharply for one of the constables to escort her out.
When she saw his expression, she spat one last curse — "filthy pig!" — and shoved the approaching officer aside. She stormed from the room, somehow slamming the heavy door behind her with enough force to rattle the glass.
Wojcik crouched and began gathering the scattered files. By the time he had them sorted, lunch hour had arrived. He turned to tell Farnicki it was time for a break — only to find the desk empty.
For some reason, that made him smile. At least the boy had something recognisably human about him: the good sense to clock off for lunch.