by Anya Lipska
The two men embraced. When Oskar had gone twenty metres he turned, and cupping his hands into a megaphone shouted: “And stay away from the rent boys – I’m not bailing you out again!”
Ten minutes later, as Janusz emerged from a tobacconist, he suppressed a shiver – the temperature had dropped sharply. Overhead, a bank of leaden cloud pressed down on the slate rooves, and he could feel the damp chill in the air that signalled a sea mist rolling in off the Baltic. Buttoning up his coat, he checked his watch and set out for the bus station, but he’d barely gone a dozen steps, when he felt a prickle at the top of his spine.
A casual backward glance caught a rapid movement, a split-second impression of a dark figure outside the tobacconist he’d just left. Wheeling round, he scanned the pavement behind him. Clear. He strode back to the shop. Empty. The man – if the figure were more than just a phantom of his paranoid imaginings – must have ducked down neighbouring Mariacka, where he and Oskar had bought amber earlier.
Around the corner, he was startled to find lively Mariacka mysteriously restored to how it had looked in his youth – the tall medieval facades dark, shuttered and silent. The stallholders had closed up for the day, taking their parasols with them, he realised, leaving the narrow cobbled street empty but for a group of seagulls pecking at the ground half way down.
He scoped the only side turning at the top of the street, finding it empty. And only an Olympic sprinter could have covered the hundred metres or more to the Gothic archway at the far end that led to the waterfront. Which meant that if someone had been following him, he must still be on Mariacka. The flights of ancient stone steps that ran from every front door down to street level offered plenty of hiding places – as a child he remembered running ahead to duck behind them, then jumping out to surprise his mother.
Janusz advanced cautiously, eyes flicking left and right, every sense cocked, tensed for a crouching figure to spring out. Mist had started to creep up from the river, softening outlines and making him mistrust his eyes, and the age-pitted gargoyles perched at the top of each stairway – a crocodile, a lion, a monstrous fish – seemed to stare at him sardonically as he passed, his footsteps echoing. Then his eye fell on the stone head of a dragon, jaws ajar, three houses down to his right, and it came to him – he couldn’t say why – That’s where the son of a bitch is hiding. At that moment, the heel of one of his shoes skidded on the cobbles, made slippery by the mist. He cursed and a man bolted from behind the dragon’s head stairway, heading for the waterfront, scattering the scavenging gulls screeching into the air.
By the time Janusz regained his footing, the guy had almost reached the archway at the foot of the street, leather coat flying out behind him.
Janusz raced after him, his heart thudding.
Leather coat, hat... He wasn’t going crazy – it was the guy he’d spotted that morning on the quayside.
On the waterfront the wall-to-wall crowds had thinned, but Janusz couldn’t see any trace of him. Bands of sulphurous mist rising off the Motlawa pawed at the legs of the remaining sightseers. Right or left? He gambled on left, making for where the quayside was busiest and where the guy could more easily hide.
For the next couple of minutes, he ducked and jinked through the idling throng, getting his feet tangled in the wheels of a baby buggy, knocking a hausfrau’s handbag off her shoulder, scattering apologies like confetti – pszepraszam, pszepraszam. He didn’t spot anyone wearing a hat, except of the woollen variety. Until a middle-aged couple, walking hand in hand thirty metres ahead, drifted momentarily apart as the lady paused to study a restaurant menu. Through the gap, Janusz revealed a glimpse of broad leather back moving with stealthy speed. The man’s crew-cut head was hatless now. Of course.
Janusz slowed his pace, half-bending his knees to stay hidden by the crowd, snatching the occasional flash of his quarry. He realised his rib had stopped hurting and remembered reading something about the powerful analgesic effect of adrenaline.
With the river to the right and no further left turns back into the old town, the guy was stuck on the quayside, and would soon reach the last of the shops and cafes. The path continued alongside the river but since most of the sightseers turned back there, he’d find himself out in the open.
Recognising the sprawling Soviet-era housing estate looming up ahead Janusz discovered that he still possessed a detailed mental map of Gdansk. If the guy headed inland through the estate, he’d enter a labyrinth with a dozen choices of routes, and Janusz would almost certainly lose him. If, on the other hand, he continued along the river, he’d have missed his last chance of escape.
Janusz could picture the riverside route with pin-sharp recall. Unless something had radically altered, the towpath narrowed rapidly and on the landward side, the high perimeter fence of the old Gdansk shipyard reared up to close off all other routes. Five hundred metres on, the path simply dead-ended – and the guy would be caught like a rat in a trap.
Janusz saw the man reach the end of the busy section of quayside some thirty metres ahead, shooting a single look over his shoulder as he emerged into the open. It only gave Janusz a fleeting look at the guy but he was left with a vivid impression – a face like a clenched fist.
When Janusz reached the spot where the crowds thinned, he stood behind a notice board, and peeked around its edge. The man’s pace was swift but unhurried – perhaps he thought he’d shaken his pursuer by now – and his rolling gait, together with shoulders unnaturally broad for his height, reminded Janusz of a security guard he knew at home who was a body-building nut.
A couple of minutes later, the guy reached the riverside entrance to the housing estate, and Janusz held his breath. Would he escape into that warren of walkways? He didn’t even pause, continuing on the riverside path. Brawo! muttered Janusz under his breath.
Once he was sure the guy had reached the point of no return, Janusz counted to three. Then he exploded from his hiding place at a run. He pounded down the riverside footpath, ignoring the gasps of passers-by, his gaze fixed on that distant mist-veiled figure. He heard the rumble of diesel engines and the tinny strains of a sea shanty as a converted fishing boat, taking sightseers out to the seafront at Westerplatte passed him, its passengers gawping at the sight of a big middle-aged man racing flat out along the towpath.
Beyond the housing estate, the paved path gave way to dirt and gravel underfoot, and the high fence of the extinct shipyard rose to his left, just as he remembered. The fog rolled off the river like dry ice now and his breathing grew ragged as he sucked in great draughts of the damp chilly air. He tore past one of the old shipyard buildings, its walls scarred with graffiti – the Solidarnosc slogans of his youth long-replaced by gang tags – stumbling badly when one of his feet snagged on a rusted coil of steel cable hidden by the increasingly overgrown path.
Through a window in the mist, Janusz spotted the leather-coated figure, less than fifty metres ahead now, approaching a sharp leftward bend in the river. Just before the bend, the man glanced over his shoulder for the first time and seeing his pursuer, broke into a fast barrelling run.
Janusz grinned savagely as he disappeared from view, dying to see the look on the skurwysyn’s face when he hit the dead end, where the shipyard fence curved down to meet the riverfront. It must be seconds away now. Fingering the scabbed knife wound on his throat from two nights ago, Janusz slowed to search the bushes beside the path for something to even the odds. Finding a rusted but sturdy length of two by four, he hefted it in his hand, then loped cautiously around the bend, panting, the blood roaring in his ears.
It took a moment to compute the scene that confronted him there.
Seventy metres ahead, just as he remembered, the sheer wire cliff of the shipyard fence veered rightward to bar the path – but the towpath ahead was empty. Then he worked it out. The tourist boat that had passed him a few minutes ago was steaming at a sharp angle away from the riverbank. At the stern handrail, above the burbling foam and smoke thrown up by the die
sel engines, stood the guy in the leather coat. He was tucking something into the inside pocket of his coat. Behind him stood a crewman, coiling a shore rope.
Janusz clenched his jaw – the son of a whore had obviously waved a wad of zlotych to persuade the crew to pull over and pick him up. Now he pulled something out of the leather coat. He settled the hat back on his head and spread his arms wide on the stern rail, just another sightseer enjoying the view. The boat was too far away for Janusz to make out the guy’s expression, but his body language radiated arrogant triumph.
Half an hour later, Janusz trailed back along the fog-shrouded quayside in the failing light, totally drained from his exertions. His rib throbbed insistently as the adrenaline rush faded and his brain buzzed with questions. Was the guy in the leather coat Pawel Adamski? He certainly shared the powerful build of the masked intruder who’d held a knife to his throat, and Janusz couldn’t think of anyone else with a reason to pursue him. It appeared that Adamski’s promise to kill him if he continued looking for Weronika had been no empty threat.
Suddenly remembering his bus to Gorodnik, Janusz checked his watch – and groaned. It had left three minutes ago. Now he’d have to stay in town for the night. He tried to look on the bright side – at least leather coat’s unscheduled trip to Westerplatte got him off Janusz’s back.
He passed one of the waterfront cafes, its lights blazing against the intense blue of the Baltic dusk. He didn’t notice the brightly-lit windows, nor register the outline of a man silhouetted in one of them, coffee cup in hand – a heavy-set man wearing a fur-lined parka, who got to his feet the moment Janusz went out of view.
NINETEEN
Kershaw felt in a mood to celebrate. She’d identified her floater and persuaded Streaky to authorise forensics on Elzbieta’s college room, and in CID, celebration meant one thing – a proper drinking session. It was the evening of her ‘non-date’ with Ben, so she left her car at work and they took the tube to Tottenham Court Road together.
His mates turned out to be cool guys, graduate entry cops like her and Ben, and the four of them had a good old session putting the criminal justice system to rights over beers in a trendy bar on Dean Street.
The other two peeled off before closing time, pleading earlies, and Kershaw realised she was really enjoying Ben’s company, and not just in a matey way. She’d always had a laugh with him, but now she found herself thinking – How did I miss those sleepy brown eyes? – and she was pretty sure it wasn’t just beer goggles. As fellow cops they had a lot in common – how tough it was dating civilians, for starters. Ben told her that when he went to train at Hendon, he had a girlfriend he’d been going out with forever, like since he was fifteen or something.
“I was ready to get married, save up for a house, have babies, barbeques on the patio blah blah... the whole package,” said Ben, nice eyes crinkling, having a laugh at himself. “But then she got accepted to do Fine Art at St Martin’s.”
“That’s the big-deal art college, right?” asked Kershaw.
“Yeah, so I was over the moon for her,” said Ben. “But by the end of the first term she’d put green streaks in her hair and was dragging me along to every demo and action going,” he counted them off on his fingers, “Stop the War, Stop the City, Reclaim the Streets...we even went Guerrilla Gardening, planting pansies on a roundabout on the A12 at three in the morning.” Kershaw spluttered as a mouthful of pinot grigio went the wrong way.
“Yeah, I know,” he gave her a rueful look. “I was so paranoid I’d be caught on camera and get the sack that I wore wraparound shades 24/7.” He took a gulp of beer. “Waste of time, anyway – by the end of the second term she decided I was an unthinking cog in a fascist machine, said I had to choose: her or the job.” He shrugged, but there was a sadness in his eyes before he looked away.
“At least she took you seriously,” said Kershaw, “Most men get their image of a female cop from watching porn, so they just want you to put on your uniform and get out the handcuffs.”
“Do you have to read them their rights first?” asked Ben, raising an eyebrow. She gave him a pretend-stern look, then told him about the time during her detective training, when she’d gone on a date with a George Clooney lookalike – leaving out the Clooney ref, obviously.
“So he takes me to this really expensive sushi bar and while we’re talking about him and his Really Important Job in the City – which is most of the night,” they shared a grin, “it all goes pretty well. But then he asks me about the training,” she sipped her wine.
Ben raised an eyebrow, wondering what was coming. “We were actually in the middle of this fascinating pathology module at the time,” she said, meeting his gaze. He winced. “And I just kind of forget who I’m talking to, and start telling him about this broken baby case.”
“Good move.”
“I know, I know, what was I thinking?” she shook her head. “So there I was trapping off about how a baby’s brain tissue is so soft that the lab had to spend weeks hardening it in fixative before taking samples, when the guy suddenly jumps up, knocking his wine all over the table, and legs it for the loo.” She cupped both hands over her face, half-laughing, half-mortified at the memory. Ben shook his head, grinning at her screw-up. She sipped her wine, “He never did come back, but at least he paid the bill on his way out.”
After another couple of drinks, Ben asked if she fancied a Chinese. The look in his eyes before he cut them away was pretty easy to decipher – the invite had no strings attached, but when it came to dessert, the ball would be in her court. She escaped to the bogs, where she splashed her face in the sink and pulled in her cheeks, staring self-critically in the mirror. A bit red-eyed, but still passable, she thought, if you went for the dishevelled look. She did really like Ben. In fact, this was the first time she’d even noticed a guy since Mark left, she realised.
But. The big fat ‘but’ that came with the job, she thought, letting her shoulders slump. The Catch-22 of police life. Apart from villains, the only guys you ever met were your fellow cops, but sleeping with fellow cops was a total no-no, for a woman, at least.
Leaning across the sink, she gave her reflection a stern talking-to. “Remember what happened last time you slept with a cop? It went through the nick like a dose of ExLax. Fancy facing the schoolboy sniggers and snide comments again? No, I didn’t think so.”
The speech was the first thing that popped into her mind as she surfaced in the semi-gloom just after dawn, and she basked in the memory of her good sense, until she turned over and saw window blinds – her flat had curtains – and the profile of a man’s face outlined against them – Ben’s – and the rest of the night rushed across her retina like a movie on fast forward. Crispy duck with pancakes and more wine in Chinatown... throwing random shapes on the dance floor to Human League at some Eighties retro night... snogging in the taxi back to Ben’s gaff...fumbled sex on the sofa, then again – MUCH better this time – in his bed.
She cringed, remembering that they’d even come perilously close to getting jiggy in the lift on the way up to his high rise flat – thank Christ she’d spotted the security camera in time.
A sudden overwhelming desire to escape before Ben woke up seized her. She extracted herself, limb by cautious limb, from under the duvet and retrieved her clothes and handbag from the crime scene in the lounge. After a last check to ensure she hadn’t left anything incriminating, she got herself dressed – all bar her shoes, which she put on in the lift – and reached the safety of the pavement, all in six minutes flat.
Only then did she feel a sharp little stab of regret at the thought of Ben’s nice brown eyes opening to find an empty bed. Get a grip, she thought, the whole thing was a big mistake. Ben was lovely but the idea of having a relationship with someone in the same CID office was lunacy. It would leak out, and then the piss-taking and gossip would never end.
It took another ten minutes to discover she was in Wanstead, a leafy burb full of twee shops selling vintage crapol
a, but at last she found a caff which made her a passable triple shot latte for the tube journey home – four stops west on the Central line to Mile End. Before going underground she hesitated, then decided to text Ben. If he sent her some lovey dovey text first, she might weaken. Way 2 much 2 drink last night!!! she tapped out. Had a fab time but prolly not a great idea! Nx – which she hoped spelled out where she stood, but in a friendly way that should head off any risk of revenge gossip – not that Ben was the type. She hoped.
As Kershaw hung off the handrail in the packed tube carriage, she realised that last night had been her first evening out, not counting work piss-ups, for weeks. It might have left her with scratchy eyes and a dull thudding at the back of her head – never mind the cringe-making prospect of facing Ben in the office – but it had also left her feeling strangely energised. And her hangover had pulled another weird trick: it had made her realise that there was something about the Waveney Hotel, or at least its CCTV system, that didn’t add up.
As Kershaw battled the rush hour crush, Janusz was riding a two-thirds empty bus to Gorodnik through bright morning sunshine. As the suburbs of Gdansk thinned, giving way to fields of earth newly-greened by Spring crops and birch forest, he felt the gloom that had seized him since Justyna’s death begin to lighten.
The previous evening, he’d checked into a tiny hotel in a back street near the bus station and ordered pizza – the only takeaway option – he wasn’t taking any chances on running into leather coat man again. When he awoke at dawn, he felt guilt lying on him like a too-heavy duvet, and realised there was something he had to do before he could leave town.
At Lostowicki Cemetery, he made his way to the Kiszka family plot, where he laid flowers on Mama and Tata’s graves. After his escape to the UK, he’d seen them, what? Half a dozen times in twenty years? Father had died first, Mama following within months. No chance now to make it up to them. Standing there, picturing their old worn faces, in which he’d never seen a trace of accusation or censure, he felt a wave of regret so powerful it made him momentarily dizzy.