"We have here the homicide."

These aren't words you really want to hear while you're travelling overseas. Nor do you want to glance over the shoulder of the dour plainclothes detective who's just spoken them, to see a pile of bloody surgical gloves and the body of your dead landlord in the living room. Your absolutely stark naked dead landlord.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. My wife Narrelle and I were taking some time out from the constant blur of travel. To replenish our funds, we'd taken short-term English teaching jobs at a private college in Krakow, Poland. This was just a few years after the fall of communism, and housing was generally cramped and expensive, but we had been lucky enough to land an apartment on the top floor of a house that had been divided in two. We lived up top, our landlord and his elderly father lived below.

There were a few oddities to the arrangement: we shared a telephone line, the heating rose and fell unpredictably, and the landlord had lots of visitors who called around at all hours. Note that last point well, because soon enough we wished we'd paid more attention to the strange cars coming and going down Cicha Street. Which, ironically enough, means "Quiet Street" in Polish (Cue mocking laughter here).

One chilly evening in November, we came home from work to find a police car at the end of the street, and people swarming up and down our stairs. These included uniformed police, but our mental alarm bells didn't sound. "There's been a domestic," we figured, and headed on up.

However, we were stopped at the first landing, where it was quickly established that neither of us spoke much Polish. Thus the immortal words mentioned above were uttered, followed by the interesting sight of a deceased naked body whose modesty was covered by a small cloth. How thoughtful.

Thinking about it now, I don't think Krakow's finest had anticipated the arrival of a couple of clueless Australians on the scene, and were unprepared to deal with this twist in the plot.

We weren't allowed to go to our apartment or call anyone, and had to wait for a translator to arrive. A long wait, on a couch on the landing. We tried a bit of small talk, but our attention kept getting diverted by the nearby room and the aforementioned corpse. It lay in the middle of the floor, an unwitting nucleus of activity. Policemen were going through cupboards, ripping up carpets and unhinging doors. It was like an unfathomable cop show with foreign subtitles - CSI: Krakow.

It was also quite unreal. To be frank, our thoughts shifted between horror, a feeling of violation, pity for the dead man, detached curiosity about the gruesome details, and concern that the leaking tap and unreliable heating system would never be fixed.

Eventually, with no translator in sight, Narrelle got tired of sitting on the cold stairs and told the police she needed to use the bathroom. Faced with this further dilemma, they let us go upstairs. The young policeman accompanying us spoke fair English and was very pleasant, and I busied myself making coffee for the investigating team. All we had was a chipped jug and a jar of instant, but that sufficed. And by the way, unlike in the movies, they don't all drink it black.

A policewoman who spoke reasonable English turned up at about 11pm. She translated while two men went through a few of our cupboards which contained some of the landlord's possessions. They seized an old address book, and a business card for something called "The Viking Club". Now this was more like the movies. A Nordic connection, maybe? A cartel of ruthless reindeer rustlers, or gangsters trying to smuggle horned helmets past Customs?

They were also very excited to find an envelope full of US dollars taped to the underside of a cupboard. This looked like a real clue, but actually the greenbacks were ours. Slightly disappointed, they handed it over rather than pocketing the cash and telling us to go whistle for it. I think they were starting to realise we weren't the stuff great investigations were made of.

Then they filled out a report. The policewoman asked: "Our search, is okay?" "Sure, very good," I said. To Narrelle, I added, sotto voce: "Compared to all the other murder investigations I've been involved in."

Then they left, leaving a summons requiring our presence at the police station the next day. So we called our boss at the college just after midnight. "You're not going to believe this..." At least someone knew where to send Amnesty International if we disappeared.

Bright and early the next day, we were at the station. It was forbidding, a dreary brick building that looked like just the sort of place that difficult suspects disappeared from. Not realising we would be giving separate statements, we had had no chance to rehearse our stories. Would we be tripped up on our links with the exclusive but shadowy Viking Club?

Eventually a translator arrived and we gave our statements. This was the embarrassing part.

"Did you know the landlord?"
"No."
"Do you know what he looked like?"
"Not really."
"Did he have a lot of visitors?"
"Oh yes. People phoned and called around at all hours."
"Do you know who any of them were?"
"No."
"Could you recognise any again?"
"Uh... no."
"Did you ever notice any cars out the front?"
"Well, yes."
"Could you describe any?"
"Ah... no."
"Fine. Can you tell us anything at all?"
"Um... let me see... hmm... No."
"Thank you very much. Good day."

We had visions of the cops tearing up our statements in disgust five minutes after we left.

But we were upset by more than not being able to assist the police with their inquiries. We were both great fans of the Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. We'd even been members of the Sherlock Holmes Society of Western Australia, almost the Sherlock Holmes versions of Trekkies. And what was it Holmes had once said disparagingly to Watson? "You see, but you do not observe."

Watson was the Emperor of Observation compared with us. Sure, we had excuses. We were foreigners, who couldn't communicate much beyond "Dzien dobry" ("Good morning") and therefore ceased to be curious about the landlord after a month. But, still… to neither see nor observe a thing! Holmes would have been disgusted.

Well, that was sort of that. I'd like to tell you we resolved to make up for our cluelessness by becoming fluent in Polish, brandishing our magnifying glasses and tracking down the landlord's killer no matter where he had fled to. No bolthole would be safe, no refuge secure for this heartless criminal once we vowed to hunt him down. No, not even the headquarters of the Viking Club.

But I guess you know how it ended. The way real life often does – vaguely and without resolution.

We never had to give alibis, fingerprints, any of the exciting stuff, and we learned later that the landlord had been a dealer in stolen goods. We thought about moving, but his estranged wife took over the building before we could act. She installed security locks on the front gate, and fixed the water, gas and heating. All in all, we ended up pretty comfortable.

Now, with the passage of years, the disturbing incident has faded to a point where it seems like the plot of an unconvincing and meandering foreign film.

And let's face it - unless you're Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot or Jessica Fletcher, this kind of thing only ever happens once in your life.

Probably.