Orzsak turned and went into the kitchen. They found him sitting with a quart mug of tea in front of him on a plain wooden table. Valentine recognized the kitchen of a lonely man. Shaw noted that the rear window was barred too, and that an electric Maglock had been fitted to the rear door, just like the one on the front. A plate lay on the draining board covered in burnt crumbs. Rubbish collected in a black bag slumped in the corner like a corpse. There was a wine rack, not a flimsy dozen-bottle one, but a solid homemade piece of furniture. Shaw estimated it had held up to a hundred bottles. Now, perhaps twenty. There was an echo of an image in his mind – the faint shadow of the criss-cross marks on the wall in the flooded basement of the men’s hostel.
‘What’s happened here?’ asked Shaw. ‘Have you reported this?’
‘A Sunday,’ said Orzsak. ‘They know that on a Sunday I am out all day. Mass at St Casimir. Then the Polish Club. I get back at ten – sometimes later. I found all this. They cut the power – so the locks pop. It’s an old system – cheap. They are better now.’
‘You think someone cut the power to do this – to you?’
‘Who did this?’ asked Shaw, still incredulous. ‘And why didn’t you report it?’
Orzsak laughed silently, the folds of fat around his neck shaking. ‘The same as always. Each year – on that day. The dogshit through the letterbox. The rotting rubbish over the fence into the yard. The broken window. The telephone calls when no one is there.’ He studied his mug and Shaw noticed that it bore a picture of Pope Benedict.
‘On that day?’ asked Shaw. ‘The day Norma Jean disappeared?’
This time when he laughed the tiny mouth opened to reveal milk teeth.
‘Yes. Eighteen years ago.’
‘Why didn’t you come to us?’ asked Valentine.
The change in Orzsak was frighteningly quick. He was almost across the table, the chair legs screeching on the lino, his face congested with blood.
‘Never.’ He hit the table, the mug of tea slopping over. ‘I am never going back to that place.’ He shook a finger at Valentine. ‘Men like you,’ he said, looking at Valentine.
‘You were interviewed – about Norma’s disappearance,’ said Shaw.
Orzsak looked away.
‘Who does this?’ asked Shaw. ‘Is it the Judds – Andy, the boys?’
But Orzsak was smarter than that. ‘I didn’t kill the boy.’ He laughed. ‘He knew – as do I – who killed Norma Jean.’ Blood flushed into his face. ‘Andy Judd knows who killed Norma Jean.’ His eyes bulged. ‘When we were friends, Norma and I, we talked.’ He laid one hand on top of the other, showing how close they had been. ‘How he beat her. Beat the boy. I knew both the children. Their father killed Norma Jean. They fought – I know this. I’ve said this to his face.’
Orzsak tapped a pudgy finger on the table. ‘Bryan knew too. And one day, I think, he would have told me why he knew.’
‘What makes you say that?’ asked Shaw.
‘He had no part in his father’s feud with me. Never. He stood apart. I think that each year it was harder for him to keep his silence. But now…’ He cut his hand through the air like a cleaver. ‘Silence for ever.’
Orzsak looked at Valentine, his large head on one side. ‘Once – eighteen years ago – you, people like you, took me to a police station and beat me. They said I killed this girl. I told them the truth then, I tell you the truth now. I did not.’
Shaw set his jaw. ‘We need a statement, Mr Orzsak,’ he said. ‘And we need to talk to people who can verify where you were last night.’
But Orzsak wasn’t listening. ‘Because I tell the truth the people here want to push me out. As others drove us out… the Russians, the Nazis, always… pushing us on.’ He hit the table and his mug slopped again on the Formica top. ‘But this is my home.’
‘But it wasn’t always,’ said Valentine, smiling. ‘You used to live at number 6.’
Orzsak looked down at his hands and Shaw could see he was calculating something before he spoke. ‘Mother’s house. When she died I didn’t like those memories, and the house was noisy. So I moved when I could. But not away. I will not run away.’
Orzsak licked his lips and Shaw sensed he’d been going to say something else, but had checked himself. He pulled a face, and sipped tea to dispel the bitterness.
Valentine was standing by the kitchen window. He looked out on the yard, strewn with rubbish, and the high fence of the electricity sub-station, a fig tree, leaves sticky and shiny in the sunshine. He dotted his pencil on his notebook. ‘Names, sir. Times. Specifically between seven and nine yesterday.’
‘Alone?’ asked Shaw.
‘Alone.’ He drank from the mug.
‘See anyone you knew?’ pressed Valentine.
He didn’t seem to understand the question. Shaw guessed that Jan Orzsak didn’t collect casual acquaintances.
‘Mr Orzsak – we’re going to have to talk again,’ said Shaw. ‘And I’m going to ask our forensic crime unit to check the house; not least to see if we can find any finger-prints belonging to the people who did this – to the fish. And the car. Do you have any objections to us checking that out too?’
Orzsak stood, one hand on the table for support. He shook his head, then led the way to the front door.
‘But one question now,’ said Shaw. ‘Do you ever pray at the church across the street?’
They could see him struggling with the question, trying to work out what the answer should be. Finally, he nodded. ‘Not often. Because of Andy Judd. He is there, sometimes, praying, like a Christian.’ He shook his head.
Shaw couldn’t stop himself coming to Judd’s defence. ‘He wanted Norma Jean to keep her baby. So on that, presumably, you’d have both agreed?’
Orzsak’s jaw worked, eating food that wasn’t there, struggling with that contradiction.
‘And the priest…’ He left some unknown accusation unsaid. ‘I do not have time for him. But yes, sometimes
Valentine lit up on the kerb. The sun was high now and their shadows crowded round their feet. The street reeked of the town – hot pavements, carbon dioxide, and something rotting in the drains. He spat in the dust. Was he braced for the inevitable question, thought Shaw, or did he think Orzsak’s casual accusations of police brutality would be left hanging in the air between them?
Shaw looked into the distance, up towards the T-junction and the abattoir. ‘So, George – they roughed him up. First night of what looked like a child-murder inquiry, tempers fray, lot of pressure from upstairs, right – to get a conviction, get the press off your back. What’s a couple of broken fingers against the slim chance Norma Jean was still alive somewhere? Maybe you were there…’
Valentine’s eyes were in shadow. His bladder was hurting, and he wanted – more than anything – to walk to the Crane and use the loo. Then buy himself a pint.
‘Wasn’t my case. I wasn’t in the room. I think I did some of the house-to-house next day – maybe.’ But he wasn’t going to let it lie there. Why should he? He looked Shaw in his good eye. ‘But if I had been in the room,’ he said, stepping closer, so that Shaw could see the ash which had blown into his thinning hair, ‘I’d have twisted his little fingers till they snapped just as happily as they did.’