Where the Devil Can't Go

by Anya Lipska

  Oskar levered himself up from the table on powerful arms with a sigh. “Some of us have man’s work to do,” he told Janusz. “I’ll put your name on a dozen cases, kolego, but if you can get cash for more by tomorrow, let me know.”

  Oskar departed, trailed by his clutch of new recruits, but at the café’s threshold he turned.

  “Remember what we used to say when we were skinny-arsed conscripts shivering in the barracks?” he shouted to Janusz. ‘Life is like toilet paper...’”

  Janusz finished the saying for him “...very long and full of crap.”

  . . .

  The rectangle of oak slid open and Janusz bent his head to the aperture.

  “I present myself before the Holy Confession, for I have offended God.”

  He shifted in his creaking seat and coughed, a bassy smoker’s rumble. Through the wire mesh, he could make out Father Piotr Pietruzki’s reassuring profile, topped by his unruly shock of white hair.

  “It has been, uh, three months since my last confession,” he said.

  “Six, faktycznie,” corrected the priest. “I did hope that we would see you at Midnight Mass, at least.”

  “I’m sorry, father. I’ve had a lot of...business to attend to.”

  Unconsciously, he clenched his right hand, stretching the grazed knuckles white.

  The priest tugged at his earlobe – it was a familiar gesture, but whether it signalled resignation, or exasperation, Janusz never could tell. He felt a surge of affection for the old guy: Father Piotr had always looked out for him, from that first morning more than two decades ago when he’d showed up here after a 48-hour bender, rain-soaked, wild-eyed, and stinking of wodka.

  Back then, before every inner-city high street had its own Polski Sklep, homesick Poles had beat a path to St Stanislaus, hidden away down an Islington back street. English Catholic churches, all modern steel and concrete, were unappealing, but St Stan’s was solid, nineteenth century, its stone structure curvaceous as a mother’s cheek, and since the masa was conducted in Polish it had felt almost like being at home. And the shop in its crypt where you could buy real kielbasa, cheesecake and plums in chocolate, didn’t hurt either.

  These days he wasn’t even sure he still believed in all the mumbo jumbo, so why did he still come? Partly, he supposed, because the Church felt like the last remaining pillar of the old Poland, a place where respect and honour were valued above all else. Or maybe because he’d never forget how Father Piotr had found the drunken boy a bed, fed him lemon tea, and later on, put him in touch with a foreman looking for site labourers.

  Even if it meant the old bastard never got off his case.

  “Have there been any recent incidents of violence?” asked the priest.

  “One scumbag who was beating his wife. She came to me for help.”

  “And?”

  “I like to help women. I helped her. He decided to get another hobby,” Janusz shrugged, pressing a smile from his lips. Better not to mention the woman in question was his girlfriend.

  The older man sighed. It was never straightforward with this one: his methods might be unsanctionable, but his instincts were often sound.

  “Anything else to trouble your immortal soul?” Janusz detected a trace of sarcasm.

  “Sins of the flesh, father.” A sudden image: a rumpled bed, the rosy S of a woman’s naked back, Kasia’s, framed by an oblong of light. “The normal things.”

  “These ‘things’ are not normalnie. You are a married man: that sacrament is indissoluble!” – the priest actually rapped out each syllable with his knuckles on the mesh.

  The old fellow had – unusually for him – raised his voice, stirring up a little rush of whispers from outside the box, where, Janusz knew, a bevy of old dears would be waiting to confess their imagined sins. Maybe the priest was right, but what was he supposed to do? He and Marta had read the last rites over their marriage long ago, and he wasn’t cut out to be a monk.

  “Yes, father,” Janusz bowed his head a fraction. The exchange didn’t alter much with the years. It was a pain, yes, to be lectured, but like the church’s smell – incense, spent candlewicks and ancient dust – it was strangely comforting, too.

  “I know you and Marta have been estranged for many years”, Father Pietruzki continued, his voice lower, but still firm. “Nonetheless, you must try again – for the sake of the boy, at least. Build some bridges with her, hmm?”

  Janusz moved his head in a gesture that he hoped might pass for assent. The priest waited for something less ambiguous – in vain.

  “Say three Hail Mary’s and the act of contrition”, he said, blessing Janusz with his right hand, “And I’ll meet you at The Eagle in half an hour”.

  Janusz stood and stooped to leave the box, the step loosing off a gunshot crack. The ladies outside rustled with excitement, like birds disturbed at their roost.

  “Dzien dobry, Panie,” he bowed, recognising many of the faces. They chirped greetings back, but one, sitting in the middle of the pew, grasped his arm as he tried to pass.

  There was no escape. Pani Rulewska’s upright posture and the deference of the other women marked her out as their leader, even though she was in her late fifties, a good couple of decades their junior. He paused, bowing his head a fraction.

  She wore a dark red skirt suit of some rich, soft material, which even he could see was beautifully tailored. He recalled that she owned a designer clothes factory in the East End, and never let anyone forget that a gown created by her Polish seamstresses had once graced the shoulders of Princess Diana.

  “Now, Panie Kiszko, I hope that we can count on your support in the forthcoming patriotic event?” she demanded in her rather grating voice.

  Patriotic event? He felt a flutter of panic, like he was eight years old again, and unable to remember the next line of his catechism.

  “The election?” she prompted. “The older people, of course, can be relied on, but the youngsters, the ones here, they are another matter. They are away from home and family, they are led astray by straszne English habits. Drinking, sex, drugs...” Pani Rulewska shook her head. “This is no longer the England we once loved.”

  The other women bobbed their heads, murmuring assent. He nodded, too, and not entirely out of politeness: the England he’d found a quarter of a century ago might have been duller and greyer, but hadn’t it also been gentler, and more civilised? Or am I just getting old and cantankerous? he wondered.

  “You are known, and respected – mostly...’ she qualified. “You can reach the young ones, tell them how the new president will rebuild the country and give them all jobs back home where they belong.”

  Despite Janusz’s instinctive distrust of politicians, The Renaissance Party candidate did seem to offer Poland a way out of the predicament it found itself in after twenty years of democracy. Sure, the economy had bounced back after decades of Communist mismanagement, but there still weren’t enough well-paid jobs to prevent the exodus of a million or more young people overseas, most of them to the UK. The country’s graceful Hapsburgian squares were fast disappearing beneath a deluge of fast food chains and gangs of stag-partying Brits, and unless Poland’s exiled generation could be lured back home soon, he feared for his country’s identity.

  Janusz liked the Partia Renasans’ big idea, a massive regeneration programme to create jobs and attract the exiles home – and the way it reunited the alliance of the Church, unions, and intelligentsia, which in the Eighties had defeated the Communist regime under the Solidarity banner. The Party had already won the Sejm and the Senate, and now its leader, Edward Zamorski – a respected veteran of Solidarnosc, a man who’d endured repeated incarceration and beatings during the fight for democracy – looked set to become President.

  Which was all well and good, but knocking on people’s doors wearing a party T-shirt wasn’t really up Janusz’s street. So after murmuring a few vague words of support, hedged with protestations of masculine busy-ness, he gave the old dears his most
gallant bow, and made a quick exit, feeling their eyes on his back all the way up the side aisle.

  At the last alcove, he paused under the gentle gaze of a blue-gowned plaster Mary, lit by a shimmering forest of red perspex tea lights, and, asking forgiveness for his white lie, crossed himself.

  With an hour or more to go before the evening rush, the only sound in The Eagle and Child opposite Islington Green was the clink of glasses being washed and stacked.

  Janusz ordered a bottle of Tyskie for himself and a bisongrass wodka for the priest. When he’d first arrived in London, over two decades ago, these drinks were exotic, practically unheard-of outside the Polish community, but the mass influx of young Poles that followed EU membership changed all that. It still made him chuckle to hear English voices struggling to order Wyborowa, Ocokim, Zubrowka.

  He took the drinks out to the ‘beer garden’, a stretch of grey decking pocked with cigarette burns, ringed by a few wind-battered clumps of pampas grass. He took a table under a gas heater: it was a bitter day, but a drink without a smoke, well, wasn’t a drink.

  “More sins of the flesh?” said Father Piotr Pietruzki, clapping Janusz on the shoulder just as he was lighting his cigar. The old man’s manner was friendly, mischievous even, now he was off duty.

  “To your health,” said the priest, taking a warming sip of wodka. “So how is... ‘business’?” – the sardonic apostrophes audible.

  “Not so good. A few cash flow problems – till I collect from a couple of bastards who owe me.”

  The priest locked eyes with Janusz over the lip of his glass.

  “Using no more than my persuasive skills, Father.” A conciliatory grin creased his slab-like face.

  “To think you were once the top student in your year. And not just at any university: at Jagiellonski!” mused the priest, for perhaps the hundredth time.

  Janusz permitted himself a brief glance skywards.

  “Such a fine brain, you had – Professor Zygurski told me,” said the priest, shaking his head. “Of course, theology would have been more fitting than science, but, still, what a waste of God-given talent.”

  “It wasn’t a time for writing essays,” shot back Janusz. “How could I sit on my backside in a cosy lecture theatre talking about Schrodinger’s Cat while people were getting beaten to pulp in the streets?” Pushing his free hand through his hair he added in a brooding undertone, “Although maybe I should just have carried on fucking about with Bunsen burners.”

  The priest pulled at his earlobe, decided to let the profanity go.

  The early Eighties had been a disruptive and dangerous era for everyone, he reflected – especially the young. The protests organised by Solidarity adhered largely to the principle of peaceful protest but were met, inevitably, by the batons and bullets of the Communist regime. In more normal times, Janusz might have gone on to match, or even outshine, the achievements of his father, a highly-regarded professor of physics at Gdansk University, but soon after General Jaruzelski declared martial law, the boy had abandoned his studies to join the thrilling battle for democracy on the streets.

  Then, just as suddenly, he had left for England – abandoning the young wife he’d married just weeks before. When he turned up at St Stanislaus’ he was clearly a soul in torment, and although Father Pietruzki had never discovered the root of the trouble, one thing was certain – whatever happened back then cast a shadow over him still.

  He studied the big man with the troubled eyes opposite him. This child of God would never be a particularly observant Catholic, perhaps, but the priest was sure of one thing: he was possessed of a Christian soul, and when the new government was elected – by God’s Grace – it was to be hoped that men such as he would return home to rebuild the country.

  He leaned across and tapped Janusz on the back of the hand.

  “I may have a small job for you,” he said. “Something honorowy – to keep you out of trouble, and to use that brain of yours. A matter that Pani Tosik brought to me in confession.”

  Janusz raised an eyebrow.

  “And expressly permitted me to take beyond the sacred confines of the confessional. One of the girls, a waitress in the restaurant has gone missing.”

  “With the takings?”

  “No, no, a God-fearing girl,” said the priest. “She always attended Masa. She’d only been here a few weeks, waiting tables, plus a little modelling work,” ...Janusz raised an eyebrow and grinned through his cloud of smoke.

  “Yes, a very beautiful young woman, but a good girl and a hard worker. She disappeared two weeks ago without a word, and Pani Tosik is worried out of her skin. She doesn’t want to call the police, naturalnie.”

  Janusz inclined his head in understanding. Maybe Poles were insubordinate by nature, or maybe it was a reaction to forty years of brutal foreign rule – either way, they didn’t roll out the welcome mat for the cops.

  “So? She’s found a boyfriend who’s getting rich doing loft conversions,” he said, flicking a fat inch of ash off his cigar.

  “Maybe, but the girl’s mother back home hasn’t heard from the girl and Pani Tosik feels terribly guilty. She wants her tracked down,” he met Janusz’s eyes, “And she’ll pay good money.” Janusz couldn’t help smiling at the old man’s transparent look of guile as he delivered his trump card.

  Finding a missing person was hard work and involved lots of schlepping round on the Tube, which he loathed – but it was common knowledge that Pani Tosik was loaded, and he could certainly do with the cash.

  Father Pietruzki drained the last of his drink and stood to go to the bar.

  “Anyway, I suggested you - God forgive me.”

  TWO

  The sky over the Thames was a milky, benevolent blue, but a freezing wind raked Detective Constable Natalie Kershaw’s face as the fast-response Targa tore over the steely water. As the speedboat swept under Tower Bridge, engine noise booming off the iron stanchions, the uniformed helmsman sneaked a sideways look at her profile, the blonde hair scraped back in a businesslike ponytail. He wondered if he dared ask her out. Probably not – she looked like a ball breaker, typical CID female.

  Kershaw was miles away, thinking about her Dad, scanning the southern bank for the Bermondsey wharf where he had hauled coke as a warehouseman in the Sixties – his first job. He’d pointed it out to her from a tour boat – an outing they’d taken a couple of years ago, just before he’d died. She finally clocked his warehouse – hard to recognize now its hundred-year old patina of coal smoke had been sandblasted off. Fancy new balconies, too, at the upper windows: all the signs of the warehouse’s new life as swanky apartments for City bankers – Yeah, a right bunch of bankers, she heard him say. He’d be pleased as Punch to see her now, a detective out on her first suspicious death.

  When her DS had dropped it on her that morning she’d been a bit hacked off – she already had to go up west for a court case, and this job meant her racing straight back to Wapping. Anyway, surely a floater pulled out of the Thames was a job for a uniform? But telling the Sarge that, however diplomatically, had been a Bad Move, she realised, almost as soon as the words were out of her mouth. Worse, she was on early turn this week, so this had all gone off at 0730 hours, and DS Bacon, known to his constables, inevitably, as Streaky, was not a morning person. He had torn a big fat strip off her in front of two of the guys.

  “Let’s get one thing straight, Kershaw – you’ll do whatever fucking job I throw at you and say thank you, Sarge, can I get you a cup of tea, Sarge. If I hear any more of your cheeky backchat I’ll have you back on Romford Rd wearing a lid faster than you can say diversity awareness.’

  Streaky was in his fifties, old school CID to his fag-stained fingertips, and Kershaw suspected that in his book, female detectives were good for one thing: interviewing witnesses in rape, domestic violence, and broken baby cases.

  Of course she could complain to the Guv, DI Bellwether. Streaky’s Neanderthal management style – the swearing, the borderline sexi
sm, his old school insistence on addressing DCs by their surnames – it was all a total no-no these days, but she’d rather keep her mouth shut and get on with it. You needed a thick skin to be in the job. If she got stick now and again for being a young, blonde female – and therefore brainless – she could give as good as she got. Anyway, everyone copped it for something. Being fat, thin, Northern, ginger, having a funny name, having a boring name, talking posh, talking Cockney, anything. At her first nick, one poor bastard had made the mistake of letting on that he did Karate, and the next day his desk disappeared under a deluge of Chinese takeaway menus and house bricks. She couldn’t even remember his real name, because after that everybody – even the girls on switchboard – called him Chop Suey.

  Giving – and taking – good banter was about bonding, fitting in, being part of a unit. If you couldn’t take friendly abuse from fellow cops you were finished, game over. One thing she was sure of: Natalie Kershaw wasn’t going to end up one of those sad cases moaning about sexism at an employment tribunal. If she hadn’t made Sergeant by the time she turned thirty, in three years’ time, she’d pack it in and do something else.

  Anyway, once she’d had a proper look at the job Streaky had thrown her, she thought maybe it wasn’t so lame after all. The floater had come up naked, and you didn’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to know that suicides don’t generally get their kit off before chucking themselves in the river. So maybe it was a good call to send a detective to have a look before the pathologist started slicing and dicing – Streaky might be a dinosaur in a bad suit, but occasionally he showed signs of being a good cop.

  The Targa overtook a tourist boat – the occupants craning to check out the cop at the helm and his attractive plainclothes passenger – and within seconds, they were pulling up at a long blue jetty on the north shore in front of Wapping Police Station. Kershaw gave the uniform a smile, but ignored his outstretched hand to step down from the bobbing boat unaided. She headed for the nick, a Victorian building with more curlicues and columns than a footballer’s wedding cake, but after a few steps his shout made her turn. Grinning, he pointed across the jetty to an oblong tent of blue tarpaulin, then, revving the Targa’s engine unnecessarily he sped off.