Where the Devil Can't Go

by Anya Lipska

  The guy was clearly a psychol, thought Janusz. “Don’t worry,” he told the girl. “Guys like him are usually all talk.”

  She nodded, not entirely convinced. “And Nika said she’d phone me, but I’ve heard nothing, not even a text.”

  A child cried sharply somewhere in her block and she shivered, then said in a rush: “It’s freezing – can I make you a coffee? Or maybe you’d like a wodka?”

  That was unexpected. Was she propositioning him? He sensed a fear of rejection in her averted face. Compassion, good sense – and yes, temptation, too – wrestled briefly in his heart, and then a vision loomed up before him – the stern face of that old killjoy Father Pietruzki.

  He shook his head. “Another time, darling, I’ve got a lot on tomorrow.”

  “You’ll let me know when you find out where Nika is?” said the girl, anxiety ridging her forehead.

  “You’ll be the first to hear,” he said.

  He watched her walk into the block, and two or three minutes later a first-floor light came on in what he guessed was her flat. He lingered, thinking that she might appear in the window, but then got distracted by the screech of a big dark-coloured car pulling out from the estate. Gunning its engine, it tore off down the street. When he looked back up at the block, the curtains had been closed on the oblong of light. Feeling a pang of loneliness, he threw down his cigar stub and left.

  EIGHT

  For DC Kershaw, the following day would turn out to be what her Dad might have called a game of two halves.

  As she stretched herself awake in the pre-dawn gloom, her triceps and calf muscles delivered a sharp reminder of how she’d spent the previous evening – scaling the toughest route on the indoor wall on Mile End Road, handhold by punishing handhold. It was worth it, though. Climbing demanded a level of concentration so focussed and crystalline that it left no headspace for stressing about the job. And she was getting pretty good, too – last summer she’d ticked off her first grade 7a climb, up in the Peaks. She hadn’t been tempted to mention her feat at work, obviously, because that would mean the entire nick calling her Spider woman…like forever.

  Still half-asleep, she stepped under the power shower, and found herself assaulted by jets of icy water. Gasping, she flattened her back against the cold glass and spun the knob right round to red, but it didn’t make a blind bit of difference. A quick tour of the flat revealed all the radiators to be stone cold, too – the boiler must be up the spout. Cursing, she pulled on her clothes, then her winter coat, and hurrying into the miniscule galley kitchen, turned on all four gas rings.

  While she was scaling K2 last night, the rest of the guys had gone out on a piss-up to celebrate Browning’s birthday. She’d almost joined them, but luckily Ben Crowther tipped her off – with a look that said it definitely wasn’t his thing – that the birthday boy wanted to hit a lap dancing club in Shoreditch later. No thanks. Being ‘one of the guys’ in the office was one thing, but she could live without the sight of Browning getting his crotch polished by some single mum with 36DD implants and a Hollywood wax.

  The milk she added to her brewed tea floated straight to the surface in yellowy curds. Bugger. After making a fresh cup, black this time, she took it into the living room. As she sat on the sofa in her coat drinking the tea – too astringent-tasting without the milk – she fretted about how she would find time today to hassle the letting agents, let alone wangle a half-day off for the boiler repairman. Life had been a lot less stressful when Mark had lived here. Not that he was some spanner-wielding DIY god. No – Mark drove a desk in a Docklands estate agents and the only gadgets he’d mastered were the remote controls for the telly and the Skyplusbox – but it was so much easier when there were two of you to sort out the tedious household stuff.

  As she attacked her last surviving nail, unshakeable habit and source of much mickey-taking at the station, her gaze fell on the dusty surface of the TV cabinet and the darker rectangle where the plasma screen used to sit. She’d let Mark take it when they split up last month.

  How did I get to be sitting alone in a rented flat that I can’t afford, drinking black tea in my coat? she thought suddenly, and felt her eyes prickle.

  She reminded herself how unbearable the atmosphere between her and Mark had become in those last few weeks, when their dead relationship lay in the flat like a decomposing body which they stepped over and around without ever acknowledging. By comparison, the previous phase had been preferable. The rows had started a couple of months ago, after she got the job at Newham CID and started coming home late and lagered-up two or three times a week. If she was in luck, he’d be asleep when she crawled into bed beside him, but if he was still awake, there’d be trouble. He’d complain she reeked of booze and fags, but they both knew that wasn’t the real issue. Mark never really accepted her argument that she went drinking with the guys because bonding was fundamental to the job, not because she fancied any of them. The argument would get more and more heated, and then he’d start in on her language – Since you joined the cops, Nat, you talk more like a bloke than a bird.

  The last accusation hit home: but you couldn’t spend all day holding your own with a bunch of macho guys, then come home and morph into Cheryl Cole. Sometimes she felt like she’d actually grown a Y-chromosome over the last few years.

  Anyway, Kershaw had always felt more comfortable around men – probably because she’d been brought up by her father. The photos of her as a kid said it all – playing five a side with him and his mates in the park…holding up her first fish – a carp – caught at Walthamstow Reservoir…draped in a Hammers scarf on the way to the footie. Dad told her, more than once, that he never missed having a son, because with her he got the best of both worlds – a beautiful, clever little girl who could clear a pool table in under ten minutes.

  Two years ago, when they told him the cancer was terminal, he confided, in a hoarse whisper that tore her heart out, that looking back, he had one regret. I should have remarried after your Mum died, he said, so you had someone to teach you how to be a lady.

  Checking her watch, Kershaw gave a very unladylike sniff, wiped her face, and told herself to stop being such a wuss. Then, gulping the rest of the lukewarm tea down with a grimace, she picked up her bag.

  As she closed the front door behind her, she heard her Dad’s voice.

  Up and at ‘em, girl, it said, up and at ‘em.

  Parking in the miniscule car park attached to Newham nick was the usual struggle, and it didn’t improve her mood to see Browning’s car was already there. The little creep always got in early for his shift.

  There was an email from Waterhouse in her inbox. The PM report had come back, and even better, the lab must have had a quiet week because they’d already done the tox report on DB16. It confirmed the cause of death as overdose by PMA – the dodgy drug Waterhouse had mentioned. Yess! She printed out the report, and surfing a wave of adrenaline, made a beeline for Streaky’s desk.

  Later on, Kershaw would reflect it might have been better to wait till Streaky had downed his first pint of brick-red tea before she put the report under his nose.

  He didn’t lift his gaze from the racing pages. “Sarge…” she tried, hovering over him, “Sorry to…”

  “Fuck off, I’m busy,” he replied, without looking up.

  “The PM report on the floater…”

  He lowered the paper, and fixed her with a bloodshot stare.

  “Which part of the well-known Anglo-Saxon phrase ‘Fuck off’ don’t you understand? Go and wax your bikini line or something.”

  With that he swivelled his chair to turn his back on her and circled a horse in the 230pm at Newmarket. Face radiating heat, she slipped the report into his in-tray, and returned to her desk by the window. Browning, who occupied the desk facing her, caught her eye, his face a study in faux-sympathy.

  “Hangover,” he hissed, leaning across the desk. “It turned into a bit of bender last night.”

  “Oh yes?” said Ke
rshaw, opening her mailbox.

  “You should have come,” he said. “We had a good laugh at Obsessions – you know, the lap dance place?”

  Suddenly, he started tapping on his keyboard. Glancing over her shoulder, Kershaw saw DI Bellwether standing behind them, deep in conversation with the Sarge.

  Bellwether, a tall, fit-looking guy in his early thirties, was all matey smiles, although it was clear from his body language who was boss. Streaky had put on his jacket and adopted the glassy smile he employed with authority. Kershaw could tell he resented the Guv – not because the guy had ever done anything to him, but probably because Bellwether had joined the Met as a graduate on the now-defunct accelerated promotion programme, which meant he’d gained DI rank in five years, around half the time it would have taken him to work his way up in the old days. The very mention of accelerated promotion or, as he preferred to call it, arse-elevated promotion, would turn Streaky fire-tender red.

  Kershaw thought his animosity toward Bellwether was all a bit daft, really, since Streaky was a self-declared career DS without the remotest interest in promotion. As he never tired of explaining, becoming an inspector meant kissing goodbye to paid overtime, spending more time on ‘management bollocks’ than proper police work, and having to count paperclips to keep the boss-wallahs upstairs happy. An absolute mug’s game, in other words.

  She could overhear the two of them discussing the latest initiative from the Justice Department.

  “We’ll make it top priority, Guv,” she heard Streaky say. He was always on his best behaviour with the bosses, and never uttered a word against any of them personally – a self-imposed discipline that no doubt dated from his brief stint as an NCO in the Army.

  As Bellwether breezed over, she and Browning got to their feet – Kershaw pleased that she’d chosen her good shoes and newest suit this morning.

  “Morning Natalie, Tom. Are you early-birds enjoying the dawn chorus this week?”

  Ha-ha, thought Kershaw, while Browning cracked up at the non-witticism.

  “What are you working on, Natalie?” Bellwether asked her, with what sounded like real interest, causing Browning’s doggy grin to sag.

  “I’m on a floater, Guv, Polish female washed up near the Barrier.”

  “Cause of death?”

  “OD. Some dodgy pseudo-ecstasy called PMA.”

  “PMA? That rings a bell…” mused Bellwether. “Let me surf my inbox and give you a heads-up later today.”

  Kershaw stifled a grin. Bellwether was alright, but he had caught a nasty little dose of jargonitis from attending too many management workshops.

  As soon as he left, Streaky called her over.

  “So let me guess,” he drawled, flipping through Waterhouse’s PM report. “The good doctor has got you all overexcited about a dodgy drugs racket. You do know he’s a tenner short of the full cash register?”

  “The tox report backs it up though, Sarge,” said Kershaw, keeping her voice nice and low. He had once announced to the whole office that women’s voices were on the same frequency as the sound of nails scraped down a blackboard. Scientific fact, he said.

  Streaky just grunted. “So you’ve got an OD with this stuff, wassitcalled…PMT…” – no fucking way was she taking that bait – “but even assuming you had a nice juicy lead to the lowlife who supplied the drugs, what’s your possible charge?”

  Keeping her voice nice and steady, Kershaw said: “Well, Sarge, it could be manslaughter…”

  Streaky whistled: “Manslaughter. We are thinking big, aren’t we?”

  “Supplying a class-A drug to someone which ends up killing them is surely a pretty clear-cut case, Sarge.” As soon as the words left her mouth she realised how up herself they made her sound.

  Streaky leaned back in his swivel chair and put his arms behind his head.

  “Ah yes,” he said, “I remember my early days as a dewy-eyed young Detective Constable…”

  Here we go, she thought.

  “It was all so simple. Wielding the warrant card of truth and the truncheon of justice, I would catch all the nasty villains fair and square, put them in the dock, and Rumpole of the Bailey would make sure they went away for a nice long stretch. End of.”

  She resisted the urge to remind him that actually, Rumpole had been on the dark side, aka defence counsel.

  “Then I woke up,” he yawned, “and found myself back in CID.” He leaned forward and waved the PM report under her nose. “Even if you did find the dealer – which you won’t – and you prove he supplied the gear – which you can’t – I can assure you that our esteemed colleagues at CPS will trot out 101 cast-iron reasons why it is nigh-on impossible to get a manslaughter conviction in cases of OD. The main one being it’s ‘too difficult to establish a chain of fucking causality’, if memory serves.”

  He scooted the report into his pending tray with a flourish.

  “I’ll tell those long-haired tossers in Drug Squad about it. They might be interested if there are some killer Smarties doing the rounds. You carry on trying to trace the floater, just don’t spend all your time on it.”

  “Yes, Sarge.” She hesitated, “But I still think that whoever gave the female the PMA – maybe her boyfriend, this guy Pawel – panicked and dumped her in the river after she OD-ed. I mean why else would she be starkers?”

  She tensed up, half-expecting him to go ballistic at that; instead, he sighed, and picking up the report again with exaggerated patience, flicked through to the page he was looking for.

  “The levels of PMA found in the blood may have caused hallucinations” – he shot her a meaningful look – “… the subject’s core temperature would have risen rapidly, causing extreme discomfort …PMA overdose victims often try to cool off by removing clothing…” another look, “wrapping themselves in wet towels and taking cold showers…” he slapped the report shut, looked up at her, “Or maybe, detective, seeing as they are off their tits, by jumping in the fucking river!”

  By now, Streaky’s chin had gone the colour of raw steak, a bad sign, so she decided not to push her luck. He picked another bit of paper out of his tray and shoved it at her.

  “Here you go, Ms Marple, the perfect case for a detective with a special interest in pharmaceuticals – a suspected cannabis factory in Leyton. Enjoy!”

  Three hours later, Kershaw was shivering in her car, outside the dope factory, with the engine running in a desperate bid to warm up, smoking a fag and trying to remember why she ever joined the cops.

  Thank God that ponytailed, earring-wearing careers teacher from Poplar High School couldn’t see her now. When she’d announced, aged sixteen, that she wanted to be a detective, he’d barely been able to hide his disapproval. He clearly had no time for the police, but could hardly say so. Instead, he adopted a caring face, and gave her a lecture on how ‘challenging’ she’d find police culture as a woman. She’d responded: “But Sir, isn’t the only way to change sexist institutions from the inside?”

  In truth, the police service hadn’t been her first career choice. As a kid, when her friends came to play, she’d inveigle them into staging imaginary court cases with the kitchen of the flat standing in for the Old Bailey. Turned on its side, the kitchen table made a convincing dock for the defendant, while the judge, wearing a red dressing gown and a tea towel for a wig, oversaw proceedings from the worktop. But the real star of the show was Natalie, who, striding about in her Nan’s best black velvet coat, conducted devastating cross-examinations and made impassioned speeches to the jury – aka Denzil, the family dog. As far as she could recall, she was always the prosecutor, never the defence. It wasn’t till she reached her teens that it dawned on her: the barristers in TV dramas always had names like Rupert or Jocasta, and talked like someone had wired their jaws together. The Met might be a man’s world, but at least coming from Canning Town didn’t stop you reaching the top.

  The dope factory was in an ordinary terraced house in Markham Road, a quiet street, despite its closenes
s to Leyton’s scruffy and menacing main thoroughfare. Driving through, she had counted three lowlifes flaunting their gangsta dogs, vicious bundles of muscle, probable illegal breeds, trained to intimidate and attack. Obviously, she’d stopped to pull the owners over for a chat. Yeah, right.

  The report said that the young Chinese men who had rented number 49 for four or five months hadn’t aroused any suspicions among the neighbours. Kershaw suspected that in a nicer area, their comings and goings at all hours, never mind the blackout blinds and rivers of condensation running down the inside of the windows, might have got curtains twitching a lot sooner, but then round here, maybe you were grateful if the place next door wasn’t actually a full-on gangsta crack house. In the end, number 49 had only got busted by accident, when a fire broke out on the ground floor.

  As she pulled up, the fire tender was just driving off, leaving the three-storey house still smoking, the glass in the ground-floor windows blackened, but otherwise intact. It looked like they’d caught the blaze early. Inside the stinking hallway, its elaborate cornice streaked with black, she picked her way around pools of sooty water, now regretting the decision to wear her favourite shoes. In the front room, once the cosy front parlour of some respectable Victorian family, she found a mini-rainforest of skunk plants, battered and sodden from the firemen’s hoses. Overhead, there hung festoons of wiring that had powered the industrial fluorescent strip lights; on the floor, a tangle of rubber tubing that presumably supplied the plants with water and the skunk-equivalent of Baby Bio.

  “Hello, beautiful, come to see what real cops do for a change?”

  Frowning, she turned round, to find a familiar face – Gary, an old buddy from her time at Romford Road nick a few years back.