Bogdan Jankowski

Bogdan Jankowski enters the story at a point where money owed, threatened deportation and a sudden job offer converge. Later, as he considers the murder of Tony Curran, his recollection of his father’s death gives his response a starkly unsentimental cast: death may come by different means, but its arrival is what remains certain.

Identity and Circumstances

Ian Ventham owes Bogdan £4,000 and has been putting off repayment while hoping Bogdan will be expelled from the country. That hope has not come to pass. At their meeting in a Waitrose café in Tunbridge Wells, Ian spots Bogdan by the window, waves to him, and approaches the counter; the debt and the possibility of deportation form the practical background to their conversation.

The Offer to Replace Tony Curran

Ian tells Bogdan that he is on his way to fire Tony Curran and needs someone to take Curran’s place, then asks whether Bogdan wants the position. Bogdan answers with a low whistle. The exchange links his precarious circumstances to Ian’s business plans, but the scene does not establish whether Bogdan accepts the offer. It leaves him at the threshold of a new role rather than showing what he makes of it.

Response to Curran’s Murder

After Tony Curran has been murdered, Bogdan sits on a swing chair on Ian Ventham’s patio and thinks through the suspects and their possible reasons for wanting Curran dead. He knows that people are shocked, but says nothing surprises him. The contrast places him apart from the surrounding reaction: he approaches the killing as something to consider, not as an event that overturns his understanding of life.

That understanding is bound to the death of his father, who fell from a dam near Krakow when Bogdan was a child. Whether his father fell, jumped, or was pushed remains unresolved; Bogdan says the uncertainty does not alter the fact that he died. His reflection ends in fatalistic certainty that something will eventually get everyone. The remembered ambiguity does not solve Curran’s murder, but it helps explain why Bogdan can turn directly to its suspects while others are still absorbed by the shock.