by Anya Lipska
At Pod Kotka, he burned his tongue forking down a bigos that the barman warmed up for him in the microwave, with half a dozen gherkins and the best part of a loaf of light rye on the side.
Once his plate was cleared away, the barman leaned across the counter. “You chose an exciting time to be in town,” he said, eyes bright with intrigue. “There’s been a shooting.”
Taking a cigar out of his tin, Janusz raised his eyebrows politely. “Really? Hunting accident?”
“No!” said the barman. “An old woman up at Kosyk was out collecting kindling on the roadside, when she hears a shotgun blast. Nothing unusual in that – but a minute later a man comes running out of the forest, shirt soaked in blood!”
Kurwa! So the shot had hit Adamski.
“You’re kidding! Where did he go?” he asked, feigning gossipy interest.
“She says he and another man jumped into a car and drove off! The police were in here at lunchtime, asking if any strangers had been in.”
Janusz didn’t like the sound of that.
“Did she recognize him? Or see who shot him?” he asked.
The barman shook his head. “No, her eyes aren’t too good. Everyone’s saying it must be gangsters from Gdansk, you know, a drug deal gone wrong.”
After another good half hour listening to the barman re-tell the tale from every possible angle, Janusz asked to borrow the local newspaper and took himself off into a corner. He was half-inclined to beat a retreat back to the hotel, but that could look suspicious, and anyway, he was hoping Tadeusz might turn up. He wanted to find out why Struk would spend good money advertising antique furniture when he didn’t appear to own any. Three hours and three small beers later, Janusz concluded that the old man was having a night off the sauce. Giving the barman a wave goodnight, he headed out into the darkened alleyway.
Janusz was no more than five metres from the archway leading to the street when two dark-clad figures wearing baseball caps suddenly filled the passageway. He froze. Then, as one of the men reached inside his jacket, he dropped into a fighter’s crouch, throwing a wild uppercut at the one nearest him. A split second later, he found himself lying face down on the ground, half-conscious, with his skull still singing from the impact of a blunt object, and the press of cold steel on his wrists.
Do gangsters use handcuffs? he remembered thinking, before the unmistakable crackle of a radio made him realise that he’d just punched a cop.
. . .
Kershaw had experienced her first ever taste of public praise from Streaky in the weekly meeting that afternoon. Okay, it was only seven words – “Good work on the Waveney Hotel case” – but the queasy look on Browning’s face was proof, like she needed it, of their rarity value. She’d drawn a big sigh of relief to see that Ben Crowther wasn’t in the meeting – the more time that passed before she had to face him, the easier it would be, although every time she checked her phone and saw there was no new message from him, she had to confess to feeling a bit, well, miffed. She had no desire to go out with Ben, she told herself – lovely as he was, it would be way too awkward working alongside him – but all the same, it would have been nice to be asked.
After the meeting, she went to the kitchen to make a brew and bumped into Browning, who was pouring boiling water onto a Chow Mein flavour Pot Noodle. No wonder he was such a pasty little fucker, all the garbage he ate. Remembering their last exchange, when she’d basically called him a brown-nose, Kershaw pulled an insincere smile – she really should learn to keep her gob shut – and took a mug off the shelf. Stirring the evil-smelling Pot Noodle with a knife, Browning asked: “Want some?”
“Er, no. Thanks, all the same,” she said, suppressing a look of disgust, as she refilled the kettle under the tap.
“Really?” he smirked, “The word is you can’t get enough...Chinese,” – she looked up sharply, but his expression was bland. He picked up the steaming carton. “You have to be careful with Chinese food, though,” he said. “We were down the pub a couple of nights back, and guess who came in, looking a right state?” He slid her a look. “Ben Crowther.”
What the f... “Oh yeah?” she said, pulling the tea bag tin off the shelf.
“Yeah,” said Browning. “Apparently he had a crispy duck with all the trimmings the night before...but he was really regretting it.”
He picked up his steaming Pot Noodle, looked pointedly at her chest, then straight in the face, eyes twinkling with malice: “Yeah. He said it was minging – if he hadn’t been completely wankered he would have sent it back.” With that he sauntered off, leaving her standing there like a dick, a teabag dangling from her fingers.
That dirty fucking... She pulled out her phone to check what Ben had said in his text back to her yesterday morning. ‘Yeah hd fab time 2, c u @ office, Bxx’ She couldn’t detect any hidden hostility, unless ‘see you at office’ could be interpreted as some sort of a veiled threat? She tore a strip of skin from the side of her thumbnail, making it bleed. What next? – ‘I screwed Natalie Kershaw’ scrawled on the bog wall?
She told herself to calm down: Browning’s jibe about Ben calling her a minger was obviously just spite, but that aside, she had to face facts – the only way the nasty little pervert could have any idea she’d shagged Ben Crowther was if lover boy let it slip in a moment of bar-room bragging.
Janusz fingered the spongy lump on the top of his skull and watched the police car’s headlights illuminate the road ahead through half-closed eyes. His head was pounding after the blow from the cop’s baton. The two policja had said barely a word to him since they bundled him into the back of the car, but then he could hardly expect friendly chit-chat after the smack in the jaw he’d given the shorter, pudgier one, who was now doing the driving.
Mother of a whore! What a fucking idiota – lashing out like that. If only he’d remembered that cops wore those stupid bloody baseball caps these days. His mind raced at the prospect of what faced him for assaulting a cop: a prison stretch was surely inevitable.
When they drove straight out of Gorodnik, he thought nothing of it – maybe the town didn’t have a proper police station – but what happened next made his stomach turn over. The taller, more senior cop, a bony-faced guy in his fifties, muttered something to the driver, and they turned off the road, taking a narrow dirt track into the birch forest. Janusz’s mind started doing somersaults: what the fuck was going on? Were they gonna work him over for the punch he threw – or worse?
After a few minutes, they drew up in a clearing, and the tall cop opened the back door, gestured for Janusz to get out. He obeyed, keeping his cuffed hands visible in front of his body, his eyes glued to the nine millimetre holstered at the cop’s hip. Once upright, he said: “Listen, there’s been a big misunderstanding,” spreading his hands as wide as the cuffs would allow. The wind in the trees roared like distant surf, and he wondered wildly if it would be the last sound he heard. The cop dropped his right hand to his side – and took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket.
“Smoke?” he asked. Blinking at the turn of events, Janusz took one, and a light from the cop’s brass Zippo. Then, after taking a leisurely drag on his fag, the cop produced a dog-eared Polish passport and started flicking through it. Janusz didn’t need to see the face on the final page to know it was his: they must have picked it up from the hotel before coming to find him at the bar.
“Listen,” said the cop conversationally, “We know you took a little tour of Witold Struk’s house, pretending to be a buyer.” The guy was surprisingly well spoken, thought Janusz.
He shrugged. “Well, it’s true I’m not looking to buy right now,” he admitted. “But I am thinking of buying a holiday home round here at some point, so I was just curious to see what I might get for my money.”
“Naprawde?” said the cop, head on one side. “I heard it was because Tadeusz Krajewski was bending your ear with some crazy theory about Witold Struk being murdered.”
Shit. That barman must have ears like a bat. Janusz
took a drag on his cigarette – no easy manoeuvre with both wrists cuffed – pressing his right forearm into his chest at the same time. He felt the reassuring crackle of the SB documents, still safe in the inside pocket of his coat.
“And the shooting near the Struk place, right after you met the agent there,” said the cop. “I suppose that was just an unfortunate coincidence?”
“Yeah, I heard about that,” said Janusz, shaking his head, “but I didn’t see anyone running round with a gun while I was at the house, I swear”.
The cop took a drag on his cigarette and blew the smoke out with a sigh. “How old are you?” he asked, finally.
“Forty-five?” said Janusz, puzzled.
“Old enough to remember the SB, the ZOMO – that whole bunch of bastards, then?”
“Yeah, I remember them.”
The cop tapped ash off his cigarette, “My father lost his job at Gdansk University for refusing to inform on his students,” he said. “When the time came for me to apply to university, I found my family was designated undesirable, so I was refused a place.”
Janusz gave a sympathetic nod: it wasn’t an uncommon story.
“So, it’s like this, kolego,” said the cop looking him straight in the eyes. “Struk was just an old man who fell down the stairs: it happens all the time. We conducted extensive enquiries but found no evidence of foul play.” He threw his spent cigarette down. “Of course, it’s possible somebody did give the old bastard a shove,” he ground the butt underfoot. “But you know what? Maybe the world’s a better place with one less esbek in it.”
Pulling open the lapel of Janusz’s trench coat, he tucked the passport into his shirt pocket. “Your little holiday in the lakes is over. We’re taking you to the airport – if you want any of your stuff from the hotel we’ll get it sent on to you.”
Suddenly remembering his plan to go and see Bobek tomorrow, Janusz felt a blast of disappointment, followed by a back draft of guilt. He’d have to call Marta from the airport and make a grovelling apology.
When they were back in the car, the boss cop craned around and locked his gaze on Janusz: “My colleague, Osip here, has agreed not to bring charges against you for assaulting a police officer,” he said. “But if he should change his mind, you’re looking at ten years in Mokotow Prison.”
Osip turned and gave Janusz a murderous look, revealing a jaw line that was swollen and already turning an impressive shade of purple.
“So when you do decide to look for that holiday home, it had better not be anywhere round here,” said the cop.
“I’d try Bulgaria,” he advised, turning to face forward as Osip started up the engine. “Everyone says it’s the next big thing.”
TWENTY-FIVE
The morning after Janusz slugged a Gorodnik cop, Kershaw was standing in her kitchen watching an overalled engineer fix the boiler, when her mobile rang.
It was her cousin Jason, calling to tell her that Janusz Kiszka’s name had popped up on a flight in-bound for Stansted, scheduled to arrive in twenty minutes. Getting Jason, who worked in Special Branch, to slip Kiszka’s name onto a watch list after his dawn flit to Poland had probably been the riskiest thing Kershaw had ever done, but she’d told herself that she didn’t have the time for the snowstorm of paperwork an official request would involve.
Now, tearing up the M11 in her five-year-old Ford Ka, her eyes kept flicking to the clock on the dashboard. She had no chance of reaching the airport before the plane was due to land, but she was hoping that the watch list mention would get Kiszka a thorough grilling, long enough for her to get there before he cleared customs and disappeared. Of course, he might simply be heading home to his gaff in Highbury, but after losing him once she wasn’t taking any chances.
By the time she reached the terminal, it was fifteen minutes past the flight’s scheduled arrival time, so she dumped the car right outside arrivals, hazard lights flashing, threw her Met logbook on the dashboard and raced inside.
Trying to get her breath back – how long had it been since she’d been for a proper run, four, five weeks? – she lurked at the end of the cordon of people waiting outside customs, restless friends and family interspersed with somnolent minicab drivers holding up name placards.
Twenty-five minutes later, she was starting to think she might have missed him, when his craggy mug appeared, towering above the crowd. He wore an old trench coat and his only baggage was a pair of carrier bags bulging with booze and cigarette cartons. Although the bruises to his face appeared to be fading, he seemed to have acquired a new lump the size of a creme egg on his right temple.
She scurried alongside him, uninvited, as he made for the exit.
“Welcome back, Mr Kiszka,” she said – a greeting he met with a grunt. “Listen,” she said to him, scampering to keep up as he lengthened his stride. “The way I see it you’ve got two options: you come down the station and get stuck in an interview room for hours on end, or, I drive you back to town and we clear up all my questions on the way.” He slowed a little. “It’s a good offer,” she said reasonably. “An off the record chat and a lift home has got to beat a day wasted down the nick.” He slowed, sending her a look of hostility tinged with resignation.
She opened the boot for his clinking bags of booze, “Been stocking up on the vodka, have you?” she asked, smiling, trying to break the ice. “I don’t drink wodka,” he said unsmilingly, “I don’t like the taste.”
She rolled her eyes at his cliff-like back and opened the doors. Fuck me, she thought, this is going to be hard work.
Kurwa! thought Janusz as he climbed into the tiny car, forty minutes with a stupid little dziwka who probably thinks Chopin was French.
Kershaw decided to keep her gob shut till they were off the airport perimeter and on the M11. She stayed on the inside lane – if she could just keep her speed down, she’d have more time to grill him.
“There’s been a breakthrough on the dead girl found in the Waveney Thameside,” she said. “Your friend, Yu-steena Kosh-lov-ski,” framing her lips carefully around the unfamiliar sounds to get the pronunciation right this time. She cut her eyes across to Kiszka to see if there was any reaction. Nada. “We’ve got footage of her in the hotel lift with a man that night.”
Janusz grunted derisively: “Finally got round to checking the CCTV, did you?” he said, looking out of the window.
Don’t rise to the bait, she thought. “It was harder to get than you might imagine,” she said, keeping her tone mild. “Anyway, the good news is that we have a clear image of the guy, and it isn’t you.”
“No shit,” he said, still looking at the view of Essex. “I told you that last week.”
He put a cigar to his lips, remembering just in time to ask “It’s OK if I..?” – English people were real health freaks about smoking.
“No problem,” she said, wondering with irritation how long it would be before the upholstery lost the smell of stale smoke.
Even if Kiszka had nothing to do with Justyna’s death, Kershaw still had a powerful feeling that he had something to hide – and she only had about half an hour to find out what.
“Do you know if Justyna did drugs?” she asked, fiddling with her rear view mirror. “You know, just the soft stuff, like Ecstasy, that kind of thing?” In its new position, the mirror let her keep an eye on Kiszka’s face.
“Soft stuff?” Janusz snorted, “Do you know what psychoactive drugs do to seratonin production in the long-term?” Pretending not to notice her mirror gambit, he resolved to stay on his guard and, above all, to keep his temper this time.
Kershaw gripped the steering wheel: “Well, as a police officer, I am fully aware of the dangers of synthetic drugs,” she said. “But you certainly seem to know a lot about Ecstasy”.
As she accelerated hard to pass a dawdling car, he shot out a hand to grab the strap above his door. Kurwa! The girl was worse than Oskar!
“I read physics and chemistry at university in Poland before I came over here,�
�� he replied, speaking to his window.
Kershaw recalled the pile of New Scientist mags in his kitchen. A chemistry degree would certainly come in handy for producing drugs, but then why volunteer the information?
“You see, Justyna died from an overdose of something called PMA,” she said, “a nasty little drug cooked up by backstreet amateurs.”
“I’ve never heard of it,” he said, shifting around, trying to make himself comfortable in the tiny seat.
“It’s made out of a compound called anethole – ring any bells?”
He shook his head.
“Did Justyna ever talk about taking drugs?” she persisted.
He turned to look at her. “I would bet my apartment that Justyna never in her life took anything stronger than aspirin,” he said.
My apartment, Kershaw noted – he owned that place on Highbury Fields? It had to be worth getting on for a million. All the same, going by his expression, he appeared untroubled by her questions. So what the hell was his connection to hatman – and Justyna’s death?
A white van veered in from the outside lane, cutting her up so badly she had to slam the anchors on, before it sped away.
“What about the people she hung out with?” she persisted.
Feeling the car accelerate as the girl pulled into the fast lane, Janusz tightened his grip on the door-strap. He didn’t answer for a moment, preoccupied with her mention of anethole. It made him think of children’s sweets, of all things. Sherbet? No. Liquorice, for some reason.