by Anya Lipska
“Alright!” The word burst out, his face reddening. “I did ask her out, once or twice, but she...she turned me down.”
With his pink cheeks and shock of blond hair, he looked like an angry choirboy.
“She said she didn’t do the boyfriend thing,” he said, trying – without success – to iron the resentment out of his voice.
She sipped her tea, studying Timothy Lethbridge over the lip of the cup. He wasn’t unattractive, exactly, but there was a fatal girlie-ness about him that, to women, would always say ‘friend’ more than ‘lover’. Elzbieta had obviously been letting him down gently. All that ‘reading in her room’ could simply have been cover for her secret affair with the mysterious Pawel, his name etched on her buttock where no-one could see it.
Kershaw knocked back the dregs of her tea and stowed the notebook in her bag. “I’m going to have to talk to the principal, Timothy,” she said. “I assume he knows Elzbieta’s gone missing?”
He fell silent, fiddling with his watchstrap. “I haven’t mentioned it to any of the college staff yet,” he said finally.
“Can I ask why not?” she asked, keeping her eyes on his face.
He shrugged. “Well...she’s a PhD student – she can come and go as she pleases. I didn’t want to cause a fuss when she might simply have gone off to Poland on a research trip or something.”
Kershaw did a quick calculation. Your best friend goes AWOL for nearly two weeks and you don’t say a dickybird to any of the lecturers? That was weird. Maybe he was still embarrassed by his unrequited pash for Elzbieta and didn’t want to face awkward questions.
“Right. Well, I need to see this Monsignor Zielinski straight away,” she said, pushing back her chair. “Can you show me where his office is?”
The middle-aged female guarding the portal to the principal’s office was dismissive: the Monsignor was tied up in a staff meeting and would then be going straight onto an appointment with the Bishop. From the secretary’s lofty manner and disdainful gaze, Kershaw was left in no doubt that, in her world, a Monsignor far out-trumped a pushy police girl with a Cockney accent.
“Perhaps you’d like to leave a card, officer,” breezed the battle-axe, “And I will ask the Principal when he is able to grant you an appointment?” – like the matter was closed.
Bring it on, thought Kershaw. “It’s a real shame he can’t spare me the time now,” she said, moving to stand beside the secretary’s desk, invading her personal space and eyeballing her paperwork. “I was hoping to let him know, just as a matter of courtesy, really, that I’m about to cordon off the halls of residence and bring in a CSI team to start a search of the student accommodation.”
The secretary gave a gasp of outrage.
Just at that moment, six or seven men started spilling out of the principal’s office, some in the penguin outfits advertising their hotline to God, some in ordinary suits. Talking in loud, self-important tones, they passed the two women without a glance. The secretary grabbed her chance, leapt up and bolted through the open door, closing it behind her.
Thirty seconds later, Kershaw had penetrated the inner sanctum. But instead of the grizzled old cleric she’d expected to find there, the man who emerged from behind his desk to greet her was fresh-faced, in his late thirties. As they shook hands – blimey, twice in a day, thought Kershaw – she took in Monsignor Zielinski’s get-up: a dog collar under a closely-fitting long black gown with fuchsia buttons that showed off his tall, slim figure. As the door closed, he ushered Kershaw over to a seating area by the window that held a boxy orange sofa, a black leather chair and a coffee table shaped like a kidney bean – the kind of understated retro-chic that cost a small fortune.
“Mrs Beauregard said something about a death?” asked Monsignor Zielinski, his voice becoming serious. His English was perfect – second generation Polish, Kershaw decided.
Leaning forward, she placed the post-mortem image of Elzbieta on the coffee table between them. He put on some trendy wire-rimmed glasses and, drawing the picture closer, studied it, blinking once, twice.
“Do you recognise her, Sir?” she prompted. He knew the girl, she was sure of it, but he seemed reluctant to say so.
“Well I can’t be certain, officer, but yes, this lady does look like a little one of our students. I’m sorry, but I just can’t recall her name.” He made a self-deprecating face: “Old age, I’m afraid.” He removed his specs, sadness defocusing his eyes.
“One of your students, Timothy Lethbridge, has identified her as Elzbieta Wronska,” said Kershaw. “I’m afraid it appears that Ms Wronska died following a drug overdose: her body was recovered from the Thames five days ago.”
“That’s dreadful news,” he said, slumping back in his chair. “Yes, of course, Elzbieta was one of our PhD students. She was blessed with a rather brilliant mind.”
The Monsignor stared out of the window into the tree-lined courtyard one storey below. Students sat reading, or chatting with friends on the sunlit benches between silver birch trees, their branches dusted with the pale green of still-furled leaves. “The great adventure of life before her, snuffed out like that,” he said, as though to himself.
Kershaw’s gaze fell on a solitary red-haired girl sitting directly beneath the window, eating an apple. The sight pitched her back to the riverside at Wapping and Ela’s white hand lying upturned on the stainless steel.
“I’m going to need all the information you have about Elzbieta to help us pursue our enquiries.”
He got to his feet. “I can certainly help you there. We keep administrative files on all the students, although, of course, I’ve never had to consult them in such terrible circumstances.” On the other side of the room stood three filing cabinets: crossing to the furthest of them, he opened the bottom drawer and returned with a slim blue loose-leaf file.
Inside was a photograph of a girl paper clipped to a sheaf of papers. Kershaw scanned the image. There was no doubt that Elzbieta Wronska was the girl in Wapping mortuary. The snap showed her standing with one foot resting on a stile in a country lane – an unmistakably English scene – the tawny hedgerow echoing the backlit spun copper of her hair. Elzbieta hadn’t been conventionally beautiful, but she had a trusting smile and a country-girl freshness that suggested pails of creamy milk and sunny meadows.
“Isn’t her hair a pretty colour?” said Kershaw.
The Monsignor flushed at the observation. Oops, she thought, maybe that wasn’t the sort of thing you said to a Catholic priest, but he just said, “Yes, I suppose it is,” and smoothed the black robe over his knees. The shoes poking out beneath his robe were beautifully stitched and shiny as a conker, she noticed, and his socks were the same shade of dark pink as his buttons. A nice bit of schmutter, she heard her Dad saying with a wink. Kershaw suddenly wondered if the Monsignor might be gay.
Leafing through the file, she came across a foreign newspaper article carrying a black and white photograph of what she took to be the college orchestra. Elzbieta sat to the left of frame, upright and serious-looking, a violin tucked under her chin; her bow hand a blur of motion and her gaze bent on the conductor, whose back was to the camera. And there, almost opposite her, sat Timothy Lethbridge, a cello between his legs and bow hanging limply from his hand, awaiting his cue. At the moment the shutter had clicked he’d been looking straight at Ela and the snap had captured his expression: lovesick puppy. Looking on from beyond the orchestra’s back row, was the Monsignor himself.
The file held half a dozen other cuttings, too – Kershaw didn’t recognise the language but she could take a guess.
“So Elzbieta went to Poland with the College Orchestra?” she asked, showing him the article.
He peered at it: “Yes, Elzbieta was an accomplished violinist – could have gone professional had she chosen that path,” he said. “We toured central Europe last year, and the Polish concerts were a particular success: we made several thousand pounds for Church charities. As you probably know, the Poles are a very mu
sical people – as well as being very devout, of course.”
“I see Timothy Lethbridge was on the tour, too?” she enquired.
“Yes, yes indeed,” he said. “Not in the same league as Elzbieta, but a very decent cellist, nonetheless.”
Kershaw closed the file, and before she could ask, he said, “Please feel free to take that away with you.”
“Thanks. I understand Ms Wronska’s adoptive mother has passed away, so I’m hoping to find something in here to give us a next of kin.”
“You will keep us informed?” he asked, his eyes anxious. “We’d consider it an honour to hold the funeral service – if Elzbieta’s family agrees, of course.”
Kershaw nodded and stood up to go.
“I’d like to take a quick look at Elzbieta’s room, before I go. But I’ll be in touch later, once I know whether we want to send a CSI to check it out.” He looked mystified. “Forensics people,” she clarified.
The Monsignor sketched a map of the campus on a piece of paper to show the way to the halls of residence and wrote down the access code. As they walked to the door, he said: “I’ll telephone the janitor and ask him to meet you there so he can let you into the room.”
On the way to the halls, Kershaw went over her encounter with the Monsignor. Why had he been shifty, at first, about knowing Ela? Was it the prospect of bad publicity? A student dying of a drugs overdose OD was hardly an ideal calling card for a theology college.
She certainly needed the map – the route wound confusingly through a sprawling private housing estate, and soon she had completely lost her bearings. Ten or fifteen minutes later, she emerged from a walkway into a low-rise development made of the same rain-stained concrete as the main college building, and immediately spotted a sign for “Francis House”, Elzbieta’s block.
Room 209 was on the second floor, easily identified by the elderly caretaker who waited outside, jangling his keys. He opened up and acknowledged her thanks with a wordless nod, before making himself scarce. That was a relief. She was desperate to discover the real Elzbieta, the girl behind the theology PhD, and she couldn’t do that with some caretaker lurking in the background.
When her eyes had adjusted to the darkness, she made out floor length curtains covering the windows through the gloom. Then, pulling on the latex gloves she always carried in her bag, she groped for the light switch, feeling a frisson of anticipation. For a moment, nothing, but then the dim glow of a low energy bulb sprang to life.
The greenish light revealed the pale wood utility furniture she recalled from her own college halls – a desk by the window, though oddly, no computer; a chest of drawers; and a four-foot bed, large enough for a quickie, if not ideal for overnight stays. Well, you wouldn’t want to encourage any mortal sins, she thought.
The room was tidy, the bed linen freshly laundered, and the sweetish smell of furniture wax hung in the air. The only clue that anyone had ever lived here was a handful of personal knick-knacks lined up on the chest of drawers – a white plastic ‘Make Poverty History’ bracelet, a framed photo of a middle-aged woman with salt and pepper hair, presumably the dead aunt, and a gingerbread heart with Polish writing on it, no doubt bought on the orchestra tour. A scoot through the drawers revealed nothing interesting – hippyish clothes in muted colours, which gave off a faint smell of lily of the valley – a bit of an old lady fragrance, thought Kershaw, for a girl of thirty. A trawl of her bedside cabinet produced only a Bible, a rosary and a well-thumbed Mills and Boon novel.
Kershaw sat on the bed. The only sound was the intermittent buzz of a fly bashing against the window. Either she was being paranoid or the room was impersonal to the point of creepiness. No sign of the journal Timothy had mentioned, no contraceptives, none of the clutter of modern life – let alone any illegal drugs.
Who are you, Elzbieta?
Her gaze wandered to the wall facing the foot of the bed and she jumped, hand flying to her mouth. Lit by the sullen glow of the low energy bulb was a lurid medieval picture of Jesus, parting his robes with a coy gesture to reveal a heart, bleeding and entwined with thorns. She pushed away a sudden, vivid memory of Elzbieta’s post mortem, her chest cracked open like an animal carcass.
Until now, she’d always imagined her floater dying in a hotel, like Justyna. But now the total absence of any personal effects in her room was making the hair stand up on her arms. Someone had cleared this place to remove anything incriminating, she could feel it in her bones. And the river couldn’t be more than a five, ten minute drive away.
Three strides took her to the curtained window. A pull cord opened the heavy curtains with a deep swoosh and light surged into the room. For a split second the in-rush of daylight whited everything out. Kershaw blinked four or five times – and not just because of the glare. Elzbieta Wronska’s room wasn’t a short drive from the Thames: it was as close to the river as you could get without actually having to do backstroke.
Feeling a cold excitement, and with her heartbeat going boo-boof boo-boof in her ear, she opened the balcony door, taking care not to smudge any prints, and stepped out onto the tiny overhang. As a lone gull keened overhead, Kershaw hefted an imaginary body from her shoulder onto the rail, then pitched it into the dark water ten metres below.
SIXTEEN
The waters of the North Sea roiled and foamed along the ferry’s side, the light from a platinum moon tumbling on the choppy black swell. Janusz flicked his spent cigar into the waves and buttoned his trench coat against the wind. Where the fuck was Oskar? He’d gone to the bar over half an hour ago to buy a Coke, just so they’d have some plastic glasses for the beers awaiting them back in the van. He wondered if he’d got into any bother. Earlier, they’d noticed knots of hard-eyed Englishmen on board, presumably on their way to the Brondby vs Liverpool game in Copenhagen. They looked like they’d be in the market for a ruck at some point, but surely not before they’d put away another seven or eight pints.
Just then, the door from the bar to the deck area opened, releasing a blast of raucous noise from the bar, and Oskar’s barrel-shaped outline appeared in the lit doorway. He held the door open with one foot and then, moving carefully so as not to drop the armfuls of stuff he was carrying, he made his way, chinking, over to where Janusz stood at the rail. He had a Liverpool scarf wound round his throat and he was humming a song, though it wasn’t till he got closer, that Janusz recognised it as ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’.
“Oskar, what the hell have you been up to?” said Janusz as he rescued a bottle of premium vodka from under his mate’s right arm and a giant Toblerone wedged beneath his chin. “I thought you were just getting some glasses?”
Oskar raised an eyebrow and tried to look mysterious: “Maybe you aren’t the only smartass around here.” As Janusz gave a dismissive snort, he reached into the pocket of his jacket and drew out a wad of notes with a flourish.
“Five hundred quid jackpot!” he crowed, waving the notes under his mate’s nose and doing a little jig of triumph. “You should have seen it, Janek! I had three bars and then I got a lucky nudge. There were so many tokens the barman had to get the purser down to change it all into cash!”
Janusz picked up one end of the red and white scarf. “And this? I thought you supported West Ham.”
Oskar gave a sheepish shrug. “One of the Scousers gave it to me after I bought the lads a round.”
“Yeah? I bet that put a hole in your winnings,” growled Janusz.
“Ah what the fuck, it was free money!” Oskar hopped from foot to foot. “Anyway this wind is blowing my balls off. Let’s go and celebrate.”
An hour later, the two mates were sitting cross-legged in the back of the van on folded bubble wrap, drinking from plastic cups: Oskar on the premium vodka and Janusz the bottled Budwar. Opening a Tupperware box, Janusz started laying out the snacks that he’d prepared the night before on top of Olek’s coffin. He and Oskar had debated whether using it as their dinner table would be disrespectful, but they soon agreed tha
t Olek wouldn’t mind – it was all good Polish food after all.
“Anyway, the Egyptians used to put food and drink inside the tombs of their kings,” said Oskar, adopting a knowledgeable air. “To give them something to eat and drink when they got to heaven. I saw a programme about it on Discovery Channel.”
Janusz arranged slices of wiejska and gherkins on a slice of buttered light rye, then paused to watch Oskar take his first bite of the homemade minced veal kotlety stuffed with goats’ cheese and herbs. Janusz had found it hard to sleep at the flat after what had happened the previous night, so he’d stayed up cooking with all the lights blazing, before falling asleep on the sofa just before dawn.
“This is good shit,” mumbled Oskar, although Janusz noticed that before finishing his mouthful of kotlety, he absent-mindedly threw in a triangle of Toblerone. He cast his eyes skyward: Oskar was an appreciative audience for his food but he’d never make the judging panel of Masterchef.
After they’d finished the food and swept the debris off the top of Olek’s coffin, the serious drinking started.
“Do you ever wonder what the fuck we’re doing with our lives?” asked Oskar suddenly.
“What do you mean?”
“You know, working away from home, living among strangers, maybe even dying among strangers,” nodding to the coffin, he crossed himself, “All that shit.” He stretched out for the vodka bottle, bringing a chorus of pops from the bubble wrap beneath him. “When we were kids doing military service I thought if I could get a flat, get married, and find a job paying enough to live on, I’d be happy. At least under the Kommies everyone had jobs. What would we earn back home now? Peanuts.”
“Bullshit,” said Janusz. “I’m sick of all this ‘The Kommies looked after people, gave everyone a job’. You know most of the jobs back then didn’t pay shit – unless you were one of those Party bastards pulling in the backhanders.” He pulled on his cigar. “Anyway, you were always the one dreaming up crazy money-making ideas.”