No, it’s not the Kafka novel – my new track is something I tried to write three years ago after serving on the jury in a murder trial. I felt that the subject deserved a song but couldn’t get to the heart of the matter, so I shelved it. Years later it came back to me – because a murder trial never leaves you.
Anyone who wants to look into the case can look up Grzegorz Pietrycki online and you will find articles, mainly in Polish. Grzegorz was a young Polish man living in a shared house in Wood Green. He was found slumped on a nearby doorstep bleeding to death from a savage knife wound to his neck. There were other knife wounds on his body.
The song highlights the fact that at the end of the trial the motive for this murder was still unknown. No witnesses were able to shed light on what actually happened that night other than the obvious fact of Grzegorz’s death. There was nothing showy or glamorous about the trial – just the facts and witness statements. The jury did their best with the material presented to us.