by Anya Lipska
Janusz instantly recognised the priest Zamorski had been trying to protect. Marek Kuba.
Although Kuba had been just twenty-six at the height of the uprising, not much older than Janusz, he’d been a fearless critic of Communist repression from the pulpit of the Church of the Holy Ark in Gdansk, his courage making him a much-loved figure in the campaign for democracy. Until May 1986, that is, when those skurwysyny from the SB, the secret police, decided to make an example of this turbulent priest. They kidnapped the young Kuba, tortured him, murdered him, and dumped his broken body in one of the rivers that criss-crossed the Kashubian Lakeland. And yet, as Janusz recalled, instead of intimidating the people, Kuba’s murder caused a nationwide upsurge of defiance that was the beginning of the end for the regime.
The final image of Zamorski, the one Janusz had seen on presidential election posters, showed a portly man in his late fifties, wearing a sober suit, with kindly but serious light blue eyes – a million miles away from the soulful-looking young activist who’d apparently been such a ladies’ man. The older Zamorski looked like a bank manager whose darkest secret was a weakness for plums in chocolate.
Peering more closely at the screen, Janusz could just make out an indentation on his left cheekbone – memento of a severe beating by the SB after the milicja broke up a rally he had led in Warsaw. Janusz had only been about fourteen, but he could still remember his burning sense of outrage on seeing the grainy photo of Zamorski’s battered, barely-recognisable face in the samizdat that had travelled furtively from hand to hand beneath the school desks.
After logging off, Janusz dialled Oskar’s number on his mobile.
“Czesc, kolego,” he said. “How do you fancy a little trip home?”
FIFTEEN
A little after seven am on Friday, two days after Justyna’s body was discovered, Oskar’s battered Transit van barrelled off the Stratford roundabout and entered the stream of traffic heading north on the A12 without any recourse to the brakes.
“When you said you’d take me to Poland you didn’t mention anything about him,” grumbled Janusz, jerking his thumb to the van’s rear.
“What’s the big problem, Janek? What have you got against my friend Olek?” said Oskar pulling an innocent face. “Is it because he is such a chatterbox?”
Olek didn’t join in the exchange, which was hardly surprising, since he had been dead for six days.
When Oskar had picked Janusz up from his flat and he’d gone to throw his bag in the back of the van, he’d found half the floor space taken up by a white metal box, roughly strapped down with bungee cords. He soon learned that it was a double-skinned, lead-lined coffin holding the body of some guy Oskar was delivering home to Poland.
Janusz sighed. “What did the poor bastard die of, anyway?” he asked.
“An I-beam fell on him, over at one of those apartment block sites. They had to use a shovel to scrape him off the concrete.” Oskar shook his head mournfully. “The site was a fucking shambles, a real death-trap. I never met him, but apparently he’s got three kids. The day after it happened, we had a whip round for the widow.”
Both men crossed themselves and fell silent.
“I still don’t understand how come you’re an undertaker now,” said Janusz finally.
“Business, Janek! What else?” Oskar rubbed finger and thumb together. “The contractor Olek worked for heard I was taking a trip home, and offered me two thousand Euros to repatriate the body!” He drummed a jaunty tattoo on the steering wheel. “It’s the least they could do after they killed the guy.”
“That’s all fantastik, Oskar, but did you forget what I told you? The whole point of going by sea was to keep a low profile, in case that girl detektyw has put my name on some airport blacklist,” Janusz could feel his voice rising with exasperation. “So maybe you can explain to me how smuggling a stiff on board a car ferry counts as low fucking profile!”
“Relax, Janek, you’ll grow an ulcer!” said Oskar. “I told you, everything’s above board. The guy at the contractors arranged it all with the undertaker, gave me all the official paperwork.” He reached a hand across to the glove box in front of Janusz and fumbled through a small drift of sweet papers and parking tickets, swerving into another lane in the process and drawing a barrage of car horns.
Cursing, Janusz bent to pick up the sheaf of papers that fell out, and leafed through them. At least his mate seemed to have all the right documents – death certificate, forms from the coroner and so on. In any event, he could hardly complain. Oskar had agreed without hesitation to change his planned booze-buying trip to Calais in order to drive Janusz to Poland. It was an epic trip, too – 18 hours on a ferry to Denmark and then a straight twelve-hour drive hugging the Baltic coast across Germany. If Oskar were grabbing an opportunity to turn a profit from the trip – who could blame him?
“So I export Olek, and import booze – cooking two roasts on one fire,” Oskar was explaining. “I’ve got to deliver our friend to a funeral home in...” he squinted at an address written in felt tip on the palm of his hand, “...Elblag before they close tomorrow evening. But it’s only twenty kilometr outside Gdansk, so we can spend the day in town. You can take me on a trip around your boyhood haunts and we’ll have a few beers in the harbour.”
Janusz didn’t have the heart to pour cold water on Oskar’s plans, but Gdansk, with all its painful memories, was the last place on earth he wanted to play tour guide. He had only been back once since Iza died, to attend his mother’s funeral – what, sixteen, seventeen years ago – and even then, he’d managed to avoid the centre of Gdansk, taking cabs between the airport and Lostowicki cemetery, which, lucky for him, stood on the outskirts of town.
“So where did you say you were heading, after I leave you in Gdansk?” asked Oskar with a sidelong glance.
“I didn’t,” growled Janusz. Oskar’s grasp of abstract concepts like confidentiality was tenuous at best, so he had decided to reveal as little as possible about his trip.
The single, fragile lead he had on Adamski was the storage depot in Gorodnik. A bit of digging around might turn up someone who knew him, or some other lead.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to come with you?” asked Oskar, for about the third time. “I could go round the bars, make a few discreet enquiries, while you play Sherlock Holm-es,” he said, giving the English name an extra syllable. “You could have got in a lot of trouble at that cottage, you know, if I hadn’t been there to watch your back.”
Janusz turned to give him a look.
But Oskar just whistled admiringly. “Kurwa mac. That’s the worst bruise I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen some pretty bad shit on the site. So, you reckon it was this guy you’re after who whacked you?”
“Well it wasn’t the Man from Milk Tray,” said Janusz, already regretting telling Oskar about his night-time visitor.
“You were lucky, kolego,” said Oskar. “At least he didn’t kill you when you told him to fuck off.” Janusz frowned: he was still puzzling over that himself. “You know the best thing about this trip?” Oskar went on. “It’s only three hours from Elblag to home, so I get a whole eight hours with Gosia. She’s roasting goose with sour cherries, and” – he gave a big wink – “I’m getting something special for afters.” Janusz felt a rush of affection, mixed with a little envy, at the smile of lustful happiness on Oskar’s face.
Remembering what Ray had told him about Kasia’s plans, he lit a cigar, and asked: “What do women do in a nail bar?” using the English phrase.
Oskar hooted with delight. “Where were you living the last ten years – in a cave with the Talibowie? I never did understand how you pulled such a good-looking girlfriend when you know fuck-all about women.” Shaking his head, he folded two sticks of gum into his mouth.
“OK, lady boy,” said Janusz. “Since you’re so in touch with your feminine side, why don’t you enlighten me?”
“It’s...a place where women go to have things done to their nails, of co
urse,” said Oskar.
“What things?”
“You know... having them filed, painted different colours, stuff like that,” said Oskar, waving a hand.
“It’s possible to make a business out of that?” asked Janusz.
“Sure,” said Oskar. You know, Janek, there’s no limit to the shit women can waste a man’s money on,” he grinned up at the rear view mirror. “Isn’t that right Olek?”
Suddenly, a jarring noise filled the van – ding di ding ding – a high-pitched voice imitating a motorbike engine. Janusz massaged his sore head: Oskar had been among the first to put the Crazy Frog ring tone on his mobile and he’d probably only replace it if something even more irritating came along, which seemed pretty unlikely.
“Czesc...” said Oskar. “No. We’re not even at Dover yet.... Should be at Elblag by tomorrow evening, about six, like I already said. Yes, okay.” Hanging up, Oskar sighed: “The guy from Olek’s firm who gave me the job. He’s a right old woman.”
A little over an hour later, as Janusz and Oskar were pulling into the customs lane at the Harwich ferry terminal on the Essex Coast, Kershaw was easing her Ford Ka into a parking space in Lambeth, just south of the river. She locked the car and looked around: that minging pile of Seventies concrete must be it, she thought. Sure enough, as she got closer she could make out the name of the building’s sheer grey side spelled out in large steel letters: Cavendish College.
Kershaw thought the excursion was a load of old bollocks, frankly. It was hardly likely that her drug OD-ed floater had been a student at a Catholic theology college, for crying out loud – but Streaky had insisted she follow it up, gave her the old ‘leave no lead unturned’ lecture, so she’d sat in traffic all the way through the City and over to the wrong side of the river. Still, she’d cut easily half an hour off the journey by taking the little-known route over Southwark Bridge which her Dad had showed her when she first learned to drive – a secret passed on by successive generations of Kershaws he used to say to her, only half-joking.
She had arranged to meet Timothy Lethbridge in the student refectory and as the drinks machine dribbled straw-coloured tea into her plastic cup, she scanned the tables for the likeliest candidate. None of them looked like any studes she’d ever seen: instead of the usual arse-skimming skirts, tatts and piercings, there was a high incidence of cable knit pullovers, an epidemic of facial hair, and she even spotted one guy wearing Birkenstock sandals with socks. The atmosphere was relaxed though, everyone having nice smiley chats rather than the screeching interchanges she remembered from her Uni’s refectory.
As she looked around for the sugar, she spotted a blond-haired guy hovering nearby. He was in his twenties, wearing jeans and a pale blue Ben Sherman shirt, and carried a satchel-type bag. He met her gaze. “I’m guessing you’re probably DC Kershaw?” he asked – a faint accent, some kind of Northern. Introducing himself as Timothy Lethbridge, he offered his hand. For a beat she just stared at it, such old school niceties not being part of an East End cop’s daily routine. His handshake was as limp as a damp tea towel.
After finding an empty table, she pulled out her notebook and cut to the chase, keen to get this over with and back to the nick.
“So you contacted the Missing Persons Bureau yesterday?” He nodded.
“And this was how long after Ela...Wronska went missing?” She looked at him for confirmation of the name.
“It’s pronounced Vronska,” he said, smiling to lay off the correction. “She was known as Elzbieta, here, although I think it can be abbreviated to Ela.” He had a bashful smile, which together with his pale, heart-shaped face and longish fair hair, gave him an androgynous air.
Pulling an i-phone out of his pocket, he tapped the keypad. “The last time I saw Elzbieta was here in refectory, on March the 13th.” He showed her his calendar. “I know because I remember telling her about a brilliant lecture by a visiting professor I’d just been to.”
He turned the phone over and over in his hands, anxiety ridging the pale skin around his eyes. “After that I didn’t see her around for a while, and nobody seemed to know where she was, so that’s when I phoned the Missing Persons Bureau.”
Kershaw scribbled down the dates.
“Sorry, Timothy, my Sergeant took the message so I don’t know all the details, but what exactly was it Elzbieta was studying?”
“She was reading for a PhD on the relationship between Church and State in Medieval Europe.”
“The Catholic Church?”
“There wasn’t really any other kind, at the time,” he said gently.
She flushed at her slip – great, now he’d have her down as a dumb arse cop.
“How would you describe her social life?”
He pulled at his lip. “Well, she didn’t drink and she was quite shy. She’d occasionally came along to a meal at a restaurant – you know, end of term celebrations, that kind of thing, and after lectures she and I would sometimes have coffee together. But she spent most of the time in her room, reading, or writing her journal.”
“Did Elzbieta have any boyfriends, as far as you knew?”
He stared at the tabletop and shrugged. “I’ve been here a year and I never heard her mention anyone.”
Kershaw could tell the subject made him uncomfortable, but then, he was a theology stude.
“She didn’t ever mention the name Pawel, or someone called Janusz Kiszka?” tried Kershaw.
He shook his head.
She took a despairing swig of her cold tea, wishing it was gin. This was such a dead end. Elzbieta Wronska: teetotal wallflower studying medieval sodding theology was on a different planet from Ela the druggy floater with a lover’s name tattooed on her arse. She was starting to suspect that it was all an elaborate wind-up on Streaky’s part.
Stifling a sigh, she retrieved the photo shopped image of Ela from her bag and pushed it across the table to Timothy. He sat motionless for several seconds, studying it intently, and when he looked back up at her, she was startled to see that his lips were trembling.
“This is a picture of a... dead person, isn’t it?” he asked in a whisper.
Fuck. Of course, Missing Persons wouldn’t have told him they had an unidentified floater – they would have left that for the cops to handle face to face, with all due sensitivity.
“Um. Yes, Timothy, I’m afraid it is,” she said. “We found this lady washed up on the Thames foreshore a few days ago.”
To her horror, she saw tears gathering in his eyes. He reached out and touched the photo.
“This is Elzbieta.”
Double fuck. “Are you absolutely sure?” asked Kershaw, trying to keep the incredulity from her voice. Nodding, he wiped his eyes, and drew a shuddering breath.
“She looks different here...” he said, indicating the picture, “Older. More...serious than in real life. She was always smiling, you see...”
He broke off, shading his eyes with one hand.
Jesus Christ, thought Kershaw.
She reached out and rested an awkward hand on his arm. “There, there,” she said. There, there?
“Listen, Timothy, I’m so sorry. I’ve made a total arse of myself,” she said, dropping the police-speak. “I should have realised you weren’t expecting to see Ela – Elzbieta – this way – it must be a terrible shock.”
He nodded rapidly, trying to compose himself.
Kershaw stared at Ela’s picture, mortification at her screw-up giving way to a surge of excitement: she had identified DB16 – the girl with the Titian hair! She didn’t have the faintest idea how Elzbieta Wronska had ended up in the Thames with her veins full of counterfeit Ecstasy, but maybe the discovery that she wasn’t another dead sex worker would boot the case up the priority ladder. Officially, it made no difference, but in her view the shockingly low clear-up rate for murders of working girls spoke volumes.
She went to the machine to get Timothy another cuppa and by the time she returned he seemed calmer.
“L
isten, Timothy,” she said as she sat down again. “I hate to ask this, but do you know if Elzbieta ever took drugs – the softer stuff, like Ecstasy?”
“Why? Was it an overdose?” he asked, his eyes wide.
“Yes, I’m afraid so.”
He stared into his plastic cup. “Elzbieta is the last person I could imagine taking drugs,” he said. “She used to say that more than one glass of wine gave her hiccups.” The ghost of a smile played at the corners of his mouth.
Timothy said that Elzbieta had turned thirty a few months earlier – an occasion marked by a rare night out with a couple of other studes at a nearby curry house. She had lived in England since she was about eleven or twelve, brought up by an aunt who adopted her after both her parents died in a car accident.
“This aunt would be the next of kin, then?” asked Kershaw.
“No, I’m afraid she died a few months ago. Elzbieta went straight home, somewhere in Kent, and didn’t come back till after the funeral. She was devastated actually,” He shook his head, eyes lost in the memory.
“You seem a bit surprised by her reaction,” said Kershaw.
“I suppose I’d never seen her like that before. She was usually so happy, and so...” – he looked around, hunting for the word – “sorted. She told me once that after her parents died she had a terrible time, but, in the end, it made her a survivor.” He nursed his tea, gazing at the tabletop.
Kershaw nibbled discreetly at the remains of the nail on her little finger. From the way Timothy talked about Elzbieta, and his reaction to her picture, she sensed they’d been more than just friends.
She leaned toward him. “You were really fond of Elzbieta, weren’t you?” He nodded. “Did you two have... a romantic thing going on?” – she couldn’t bring herself to use more matter-of-fact terminology.
“No, we were just good friends.” But he cut his eyes away from her.
“Are you sure?” she pressed. “You never wanted more than friendship?”