by Anya Lipska
He had just stowed the ladder in the van and slammed the doors when Oskar came running up the garden path. His progress was slowed, partly by the toolbox, but also by the brand new Wii tucked under his other arm. Panting, he shouted: “Drive! Drive! He’s coming back!” A distant shout accompanied by deep barking rang out from the back garden.
Janusz kept up a breakneck speed all the way to the M11. “What the fuck did you think you were doing back there? Playing Supermarket Fucking Sweep?!”
Oskar cackled, still high on the excitement. “Relax, Janek,” he said, throwing half a dozen mints into his mouth. “The guy must have been 60 – he wasn’t about to break into a sprint, was he?”
“Yeah? And what about his dog, idiota? It was the size of a fucking donkey!”
Janusz recalled how, on exercises in the forest, often using live ammunition, the 18-year-old Oskar had been fearless to the point of recklessness. The instructors’ reports routinely described him as ‘not suitable for military service’, which Oskar had considered a badge of pride, naturalnie.
“And never mind the rabid fucking dog, what if the guy spotted the van, called the licence plate in to the cops? Imagine if you had to call up Gosia and tell her you were in a police cell?”
That wiped the grin off his chubby face, Janusz noted with satisfaction.
“Son of a whore!” said Janusz. “I just realised why that guy rumbled us!”
“Why?”
“Your story about sanding the woodwork...”
“What’s wrong with that?” Oskar protested. “I decorated plenty of houses when I first came over.”
“Yeah. And you were probably crap at it,” said Janusz. “But I bet even you never sanded down UPVC windows.”
For a beat, Oskar’s face furrowed, then he erupted into peals of laughter.
After Oskar dropped him off at Stratford bus station, Janusz boarded a No 25 bus for the West End where he’d catch another bus to Notting Hill.
It didn’t take a genius to work out that Porto Belo was Adamski’s illiterate stab at Portobello Rd. On the face of it, the scribbled address on the mile-long straggle of antique shops and market stalls in Notting Hill backed his antique dealing story, but Janusz didn’t buy that for a minute.
Forty minutes later, he was changing buses at Oxford Circus, which meant crossing Argyll Street, his usual route to Kasia’s club. In the middle of the pedestrianised road, his treacherous feet brought him scudding to a halt. As tourists streamed around him like water around a boulder, he struggled with a powerful desire to see Kasia, to drink coffee and eat pastries with her in the comforting old-world surroundings of Patisserie Valerie. Then, unbidden, came an image of Weronika at the mercy of a pursuing drug gang, getting knocked around – or worse – as a punishment for Adamski’s sins. Resuming normal service, his feet took him to the bus stop.
Walking north up Portobello from the Gate, Janusz found the street barely recognisable from his occasional forays out here in the Eighties on building jobs. Back then, it had been full of black men’s clubs and the acrid tang of marijuana, but now tourists outnumbered the locals ten to one, thronging the upmarket antique shops and American-style chains that charged two pounds for a cup of coffee. As a chattering herd of Japanese forced him off the pavement for the second time, pushing up his blood pressure, he spotted the name Bannister Antiques painted in gold on a shop window.
A man Janusz assumed to be Bannister emerged from the rear of the shop before the sound of the doorbell had faded, his face wearing the good-natured expression of a man anticipating enrichment. The smile faded as Janusz handed over his card and delivered his spiel: he was acting for a firm of solicitors trying to trace Pawel Adamski in connection with a legacy. The legacy story nearly always got results: however passing their acquaintance with the supposed beneficiary, people would help on the off-chance they might get a cut for their trouble.
Not this time. “Never heard of him, I’m afraid,” said Bannister, returning the card with a supercilious look. Janusz ignored it, leaving him to stand with his arm uncomfortably outstretched.
“I think perhaps your memory is at fault,” he suggested politely.
Bannister dropped the card on his leather-topped desk and pulled an insincere smile, revealing small, yellowish pointed teeth that gave him a predatory air.
“I don’t buy from dealers,” he said, brushing a piece of invisible fluff from the sleeve of his jacket. “All my stock comes from auction houses.”
Janusz didn’t recall saying anything about Adamski being a dealer. He held Bannister’s gaze until the foxy smile started to sag and started to stroll around the shop, hands deep in the pockets of his greatcoat, examining the stock – a mix of bad Victorian paintings, genuinely valuable objets, and heavy dark pieces of furniture. He stopped in front of an eight-foot tall piec kaflowy – a wood stove, decorated with beautiful blue and white tiles depicting a hunting scene. There had been a similar one in the parlour of his grandmother’s house – as a child he’d loved toasting chestnuts on its iron lid.
Janusz strolled back to Bannister, who’d come out from behind his desk.
“Nice stove,” he said, standing so close to the guy that he effectively had him pinned against the desk. “I suppose you’re going to tell me you bought that from an English auction house?”
Bannister craned away from this madman, back over the desk.
“I’m a very busy man,” said Janusz, his voice soft and reasonable. “It would be in your overwhelming interest not to play any more silly games with me.” He took a half step forward, so his toes actually touched Bannister’s. “What was your business with Adamski?”
Bannister made no reply, pursing his lips. Janusz tipped his head sideways to a corner of the shop where gilt gleamed dully from the shadows. “Unless I am mistaken, that ikona is Russian, tenth or eleventh century.” he said. “You know friend Putin and his FSB cronies take the illegal export of valuable artefacts from the Motherland very seriously.” He fixed Bannister with a meaningful look. “As it happens, I have some very well-connected Russian clients. One word to them and you could soon find yourself entertaining far less civilised visitors than me.”
Seeing Bannister’s expression grow thoughtful, Janusz rewarded him with an extra couple of centimetres breathing space. The story had been a gamble: the idea of a Pole having anything to do with Russians, given their tendency to invade his country at the drop of a czapka, would make a cat laugh. Luckily for him, the average Englishman’s grasp of European history got pretty hazy beyond Dover.
“I was simply observing professional confidentiality,” said Bannister with a failed bid at hauteur. He eyed Janusz warily, “but since you clearly have... pressing business with Mr Adamski, I am willing to make an exception.”
Janusz stepped back – allowing Bannister to slide free. He stretched up to reach a bunch of keys hanging from a hook behind the desk and then, indicating that Janusz should follow, opened a door at the back of the shop. Bannister led the way across the cobbled yard to the double doors of a lock-up garage.
“Mr Adamski claimed that he could source high quality pieces from Poland for me,” he said, assuming a confidential tone. “Some of the nineteenth century furniture is still remarkably good value compared to France.”
As he turned the key in a padlock hanging from the door, he bared pointy teeth at Janusz, “But to be frank, the arrangement hasn’t been an undiluted success.”
Inside, a fluorescent strip light fizzed into life, illuminating a room full of solid old Polish furniture. Janusz drew a sharp breath: the silent congregation of ornately carved wardrobes, massive dining tables and marble-topped washstands pitched him straight back to his childhood.
“We had talked solely in principle,” Bannister continued. “And then this lot arrived in a great big pantechnicon, completely out of the blue.” Bannister flung an arm out. “Not so much as a call from Adamski! And apart from the woodstove you saw, most of it wasn’t remotely commercial �
� poor quality, or just too large for all but the grandest houses.”
“What was he like to deal with?”
Bannister’s weaselly little eyes scurried over Janusz’s face. “Mr Adamski isn’t a friend of yours, I take it?”
Janusz smiled, shook his head.
“Well, speaking frankly, I found him rather volatile. When he did deign to turn up a couple of days after the delivery and I broke it to him – diplomatically – that there was hardly anything here of any value, he became quite enraged,” he glanced at Janusz’s big hands. “I managed to calm him down, but this was weeks ago, and I’ve seen neither hide nor hair of him since.”
“Did he take anything away with him, from the shipment?”
“A couple of things,” Bannister trailed a finger across the dusty top of a washstand. “A chest of drawers – wholly undistinguished, and a pretty little walnut bureau, in the French style – more’s the pity,” his voice took on a peevish edge, “It was one of the few really saleable pieces.”
“Locked, was it?” asked Janusz, remembering the bureau with the forced drawer at the cottage.
Bannister nodded. Then, realising that the admission showed him in a less than flattering light, added: “I was looking for anything that would help me contact him, so I could ask him to take all this,” he gave a dismissive wave, “off my hands. He didn’t leave a phone number, you see, always insisted on calling me, something about changing phones.”
Janusz opened one of the wardrobes and inhaled its nostalgic brew of old furs, camphor, dust and sandalwood. Closing it gently, he turned back to Bannister.
“What about the delivery docket?”
“He took that with him, too, I’m afraid.” Bannister started pulling one of the washstands out from the others. “But there is one thing…”
Pointing to the rear of the stand, he said: “Double-Dutch to me, but it might mean something to you.”
Plastered on the back edge of the marble top was a yellow sticky label with an address: Woytek Magazyn, Gorodnik, Pomorskie 2577. Adamski must have kept the furniture he bought in a storage facility until he had enough for a container-load. Janusz knew the vovoideship of Pomerania, alright: the army camp where he and Oskar had first met had been located in its Kashubian Lakeland, an area of gentle hills peppered with tiny villages and lakes gouged out by some colossal ancient glacier. Its beauty had been wasted on him and his fellow conscripts, whose sole obsessions had been women, wodka and edible food – in that order. If his memory was correct, Gorodnik was the region’s only major town.
Janusz tore off the sticker and pocketed it, then asked, “May I borrow your phone?”
Bannister handed it over and Janusz accessed the address book. Having confirmed that there was no entry under either Pawel or Adamski, he punched in his own name and number.
“If he gets in touch, make sure I’m the first to know,” he posted the phone back into Bannister’s jacket pocket and grinned unexpectedly, “I don’t want to have to keep popping back to remind you.”
As he walked back down Portobello to Notting Hill tube, frustration engulfed him. OK, maybe Adamski was using old furniture imported from Poland as a means of smuggling drugs. But so what? None of it got him any closer to finding Weronika. Adamski might never contact Bannister again and anyway, with a bunch of gangsters after him, he’d be keeping a very low profile. All of which meant the trail was as cold as a witch’s tit.
Forty minutes later, emerging from Angel tube into the chilly dusk air, he found his phone signalling a missed call from Father Pietruzki.
“I was wondering if I could give Pani Tosik any news regarding...our sgubiona owieczka?” asked the priest when he called him back. Janusz smiled at the phrase ‘stray lamb’ – obviously a reference to Weronika. The old guy had this habit of dropping into coded language when discussing anything delicate or confidential – a legacy, no doubt, of his youth. As a newly ordained curate in a mountain village, Father Pietruzki had secretly aided the partisans in their campaign against the Nazi occupiers, acting as a postman for local resistance groups.
Janusz gave him the bare bones – the girl had run off with a man a good deal older than her, and a bad sort, to boot. But he admitted he’d hit a complete dead end in the search for them.
“Is there nothing at all you can do?” asked the priest, his voice strained by anxiety.
“Not really,’ he said gently. “They could be anywhere by now.” After a moment’s hesitation, he went on to share his suspicions about Adamski’s drug dealing and the gangsterzy on his tail. The priest didn’t sound as shocked as Janusz anticipated – but then perhaps it hadn’t sunk in yet.
“If I’m right, they’re on the run,” Janusz went on, “And that makes them almost impossible to find – unless you want to contact the police, see if you can persuade them to launch a full-scale manhunt.”
“No, no. I am sure that Pani Tosik will not wish to involve the authorities,” said Father Pietruzki after a moment. “And from the sort of people you say we are talking about, it might do more harm than good.”
The old guy was probably right. Janusz had a sudden image of armed police surrounding the couple’s hideout and shivered – the cops had a nasty habit of shooting the wrong people.
“You really believe there is nothing more you can do?” asked the priest, his voice leaden with disappointment. Janusz felt a knifepoint of guilt, but what was the point of giving Pani Tosik, or the girl’s mother, false hope?
“No, Father,” he said as gently as he could manage. “All we can do is hope that our stray lamb realises the trouble she is in and comes home of her own accord.”
TEN
If you were looking for an image to put girls off drugs, the dead female ticked all the boxes.
That was Kershaw’s first thought as she stared at the naked body splayed so humiliatingly across the snowy expanse of the super kingsized bed. The girl’s long legs, knees bent so that the heels almost touched the buttocks, had fallen wide apart, in the position females adopted for a smear test, or to give birth.
The room was hot and thick with the animal smell of sweat and recent sex overlaid with stale cigarettes.
The Crime Scene Investigator, a geeky civilian officer, encased, like her, in a white hooded suit and wearing gloves, was kneeling the other side of the bed. She nodded to him. “Alright, Dave?” He grunted back, busy dusting an empty vodka bottle for prints.
Kershaw approached the body, treading carefully in her slippery plastic overshoes. The girl’s head was turned sideways, right cheek resting against the mattress, her face partially obscured by the hair fanned out across it. Her right hand lay beneath her jaw, one finger crooked across the lips – as though she were telling someone to keep a secret. The part-veiled face and the chance gesture gave the girl an enigmatic air.
Kershaw, who’d never seen anyone so recently dead, felt a sudden compulsion to touch the body. She looked around her: Dave had his back to her, and the uniform who’d been first on scene was busy taping up the doorway, so she bent and put the back of her gloved hand to the girl’s chest. The skin was still surprisingly warm, but it felt…inert – missing the sensation of physiological processes beneath, blood fizzing through the veins, cells renewing, electrical impulses firing.
Three tablets lay on the bedside table – thickish, chalky-pink imperfect discs – and, next to them, on the glossy cover of the hotel services guide, two neat tramlines of white powder.
The uniform, a middle-aged guy with body odour, came and stood slightly too close to Kershaw. He folded his arms, surveying the tableau. She could hear him breathing through his mouth.
“Good party,” he said, with a sideways glance – looking for a reaction.
“She’ll have a terrible hangover,” Kershaw shot back, deadpan, and pulled out her notebook.
“Anyone else been in the room, since the chambermaid found her?” she asked, starting to run through a checklist in her head.
The twenty-storey Wave
ney Thameside was a brand new five star hotel, a ‘destination hotel’ in the corporate-speak, popular with wealthy tourists and business types. Squeezed onto what was surely the last remaining patch of waste ground between Wapping High Street and the river, it had shot up astonishingly fast, Kershaw recalled. Mark had treated her to a champagne breakfast in the restaurant here once, overlooking the river, after she got the job at Newham CID.
The body had been discovered by a chambermaid who’d let herself in to clean room 1313, (unlucky for some, thought Kershaw), thinking the guest had gone out and forgotten to remove the ‘do not disturb sign’ from the doorknob. A police surgeon had attended and declared life extinct at 1255 hours.
When Kershaw turned up, the manager, Andrew Treneman, had hustled her straight into his office – evidently not keen to advertise the police presence to the guests. He was pretty helpful though, and had already dug out the register, which showed that room 1313 had been assigned to a man checking in alone, just after one am. His name was Stephen Lampart, according to the credit card imprint, and he’d requested a quiet room with no guests on either side.
CSI Dave knelt by the bedside table to scoop the line of coke into a plastic bag and started dusting the brochure with silver developing powder. After watching for a moment, she asked: “Are you getting anything?”
He frowned, “Yes, plenty. But how many people do you think have had their paws all over this in the last few weeks?” Fair point, thought Kershaw. “I hate hotel rooms,” he muttered.
She started to examine the body properly, dredging up stuff she’d learned from pathology lectures, and felt a bizarre satisfaction on finding a series of purplish patches along the underside of the girl’s upper arms and legs where the blood had pooled. From memory, the lividity was widespread enough to suggest that she had died at least six hours earlier, around seven or eight am, although it would take a calculation of the girl’s rectal temperature and the room temperature to get a reliable time of death.