by Anya Lipska
Janusz took his plate of food to the sofa and turned on the TV. With the country voting for a new president the day after tomorrow, the Polish channel was broadcasting wall-to-wall coverage of Zamorski, the undisputed favourite. The cameras even followed the candidate and his wife into morning mass, an item that ended on a big close-up of his kindly face as he took the wafer from the priest’s fingers. After eating, Janusz set his plate aside and tried to concentrate on the report, but after a few seconds his chin settled majestically onto his chest.
He awoke with a jolt, his pulse thumping in his ear and the hairs on his arms prickling: something had triggered the alarm on his autonomic nervous system. Then, he practically jack-knifed out of his seat as Copernicus jumped into his lap, purring throatily. The last time that happened, Janusz remembered, he had ended up beaten to shit on the bathroom floor. He got to his feet, feeling a twinge from his healing rib.
Not this time, sisterfucker, he thought. Reaching for a weapon, he crept across the rug and positioned himself behind the half-open living room door, his breath coming ragged and shallow.
He heard a creak as the intruder crossed the threshold and saw a head emerge cautiously past the edge of the door. The empty beer bottle bounced off the crew cut skull with a sound like a cracked church bell and he went down in a heap. With his pulse drumming in his ears, Janusz danced on the balls of his feet, ready to thump him again if he tried to get up. “No mask tonight, skurwysynie?” he growled, dragging the guy onto his back by the yoke of his denim jacket.
He knocked the guy’s arms down from their defensive position in front of his face – and rocked back on his heels. In place of the bunched features and close-set eyes he expected from the CCTV image of Adamski, he found a long olive-skinned face, like a saint in a medieval icon. And this guy was skinny, with arms like breadsticks; his masked assailant – and the guy he’d chased through Gdansk – had a bodybuilder’s physique.
“Who the fuck are you?” asked Janusz, planting a foot on the guy’s chest. “Did Adamski send you?”
His mouth opened and, still winded from his fall, the guy croaked out:
“I am Adamski.”
The fist holding the beer bottle dropped to Janusz’s side, while his brain tried to process this news.
“Bullshit.” Janusz jabbed him in the ribs with his boot.
“I came because I heard you were looking for me,” said the guy. His lumpy country accent reminded Janusz of Tadeusz Krajewski, Adamski’s former employer back in Gorodnik.
Janusz frisked him roughly – he was clean – and retreated to the sofa, keeping his eyes locked on the long-limbed stranger. He indicated the armchair opposite with the empty bottle. The guy climbed to his feet, keeping a wary eye on the big man and fingering the top of his head where the bottle had struck, backed into the chair.
“Any chance of me getting one of those?” he asked, looking at the bottle with thirsty eyes.
“Kurwa mac!” burst out Janusz. “You break into my place and expect me to play fucking bartender?”
The guy shrugged. “I heard you were looking for me,” he said again. Christ! thought Janusz. The guy was a real burak – a beetroot, a dumb redneck.
“So, you don’t you know how to use a doorbell, idiota?”
“People are following me,” he said, glancing reflexively over his shoulder. “I have to be careful.”
Janusz scanned the guy’s face. “So you say you’re Adamski, do you? Where are you from then?”
“Gorodnik,” said the guy, touching his chest and grinning with apparent pride.
“And who did you work for, before you left?”
“Tadeusz Krajewski.”
“Where is Witold Struk’s house?’
The grin drooped and a shadow passed over the long face.
“Kosyk,” he muttered, fingers returning to the lump on his head.
Janusz frowned. If this guy had hung out with Adamski back in Gorodnik then he’d probably know this kind of stuff. Then he remembered Tadeusz and Adamski’s fishing trips.
He lit a cigar. “You caught a big fat carp with Tadeusz once,” he said. “And gave it a nickname.”
The guy furrowed his forehead.
“No, it wasn’t a carp,” he said, with an earnest shake of the head. “It was a pike.” He grinned, revealing a gold tooth where an incisor should be. “We called it Vladimir, for Putin.”
Mother of God! It looked like this guy was for real! Janusz tried to round up his thoughts, which were running around like a bunch of startled chickens. If this guy is Adamski, then who is the guy in the hat? And why, in the Name of all the Saints, is he following me?
“Congratulations,” snarled Janusz. “You’re the guy who abducted an innocent young girl so you could use her in a dirty piece of blackmail.” He took a drag of his cigar. “The only reason I don’t cave your burak head in is because we have things to sort out, you and I.”
His first priority was to find out where Weronika was. Maybe if he got the guy drunk he might let something slip.
Janusz got to his feet. “Stay there,” he said, pointing a threatening finger at Adamski. “I’ll get you a beer.”
He went to the kitchen, keeping a watchful eye through the doorway, and pulled a six-pack of Tyskie out of the fridge. Seeing the kitchen window wide open, he cursed under his breath – after the last uninvited visitor, he’d started shutting it before going to bed, but dropping off on the sofa like an old age pensioner had left him exposed. Now another bastard had waltzed up the fire escape and into his home. He slammed the fridge door. I might as well put a welcome mat under the window, he thought.
Adamski took a heroic draught of the beer Janusz handed him, then dug a crumpled pack of cigarettes out of his jeans and lit one.
“First question,” said Janusz, popping the ring pull of his can with a hiss. “What are you doing breaking in here?”
“A friend called me to say you were asking around about me – that you’re some kind of detektyw?” said Adamski. “So I came to tell you to stop and leave us alone – before you get us killed!”
“Us? You mean you and Weronika?” said Janusz, incredulous. “You’re the one who threatened to kill her!”
Adamski exploded out of his seat, rage darkening his face. “I would never hurt Nika,” he shouted. “I’d rather die myself than let anybody touch a hair on her head.”
Janusz blew out a lazy stream of smoke and waited for him to calm down. “Alright. Let’s overlook the fact that you threatened to murder her,” he said. “But maybe you can explain to a stupid bastard like me how using a young girl to blackmail her own father counts as protecting her?”
Adamski shook his head. “I can say nothing of that,” he said in a low voice.
“I know all about it,” growled Janusz. “You threatened to ruin him.”
“Maybe I did,” muttered Adamski his jaw jutting mulishly. “But everything is different now.”
Janusz narrowed his eyes. “Something changed, after you persuaded Weronika to leave Pani Tosik’s restaurant, didn’t it?”
He just shrugged and folded his arms.
“You fell for her, didn’t you?” said Janusz, realisation dawning in his voice. “That must have complicated things.”
Adamski tried – and failed – to keep from smiling at the life-changing miracle that had been granted him just a few weeks earlier.
Janusz stared at him. This was turning into a night of surprises. He’d barely had time to adjust to the idea that it wasn’t Adamski who’d been following him, and now the guy was grinning like a lovesick schoolboy over the girl he’d said he was ready to kill.
“Why did you threaten Justyna?” he asked, remembering the fear in her eyes that he’d failed to pick up on, the night he’d walked her home.
Adamski frowned at the name: “That one never liked me, she was always trying to cause trouble between me and Nika – you know the type.”
“Maybe because you hit on her while going out with he
r friend?”
Adamski looked uncomfortable. “That was before...” he trailed off.
“Before you fell in love with Weronika?”
A nod. “You don’t think it was me that killed Justyna?” he said suddenly, his eyes wide.
“How do you know she’s dead?” Janusz shot back.
“I read about it in the Metro.” His mouth twisted. “I haven’t told Nika, not yet – it would tear her apart.”
Janusz paused. He’d been convinced that it was Adamski who’d lured Justyna to her death in the Waveney Hotel, but the evidence of the CCTV footage couldn’t be denied. The guy in the hat had murdered poor Justyna, and whoever he was, his name wasn’t Pawel Adamski.
“Tell me this,” Janusz said. “If you love Weronika so much why are you still blackmailing her father?”
“I’m not,” burst out Adamski. “I want nothing more to do with him! Keeping Nika safe is more important than money.”
Janusz examined his face – and decided the turnip head didn’t have the brains to lie convincingly.
“So what makes you think you’re in danger?”
“After Nika left Polka, we rented a cottage, out in Essex.” His face softened. “And just like this,” he snapped his fingers, “I was happy for the first time in my life, all because of Nika.”
Janusz remembered the plasma screen, the fur coat he’d seen at the cottage. “Yeah, but you carried on screwing money out of her father.”
“So what?” Pawel pushed out his chin. “We had expenses, and I thought he owed his daughter something for leaving her to be raised by a drunken slut.” He drank off the last of the beer and set down the empty can.
“I swear on the Holy Mother, I’d already decided to stop contacting him – forget the whole thing, start over with Nika, wipe the board clean,” he dusted one hand off against the other, a decisive gesture. “Then these two Polaks turn up in the village driving a big car. They pull up next to Nika and start asking her a load of questions.” He tapped his temple, grinning proudly, “But Nika is smart – she can tell something is up, so she runs away from them.”
“One of these men wore a funny old-fashioned hat, right?” asked Janusz.
Adamski’s mouth dropped open – like a dog that’s been shown a card trick – as the expression went. “How do you know?” he exclaimed.
“I know more about this business than you think,” said Janusz, meeting Adamski’s eyes. The younger man dropped his gaze.
Janusz had wondered how the guy in the hat had managed to find the cottage, but now he’d met Adamski he realised his blackmail letters to Zamorski had probably arrived helpfully stamped with a Willowbridge postmark.
“Anyway, I knew they’d find the cottage before long, so the minute she told me, we didn’t even pack, we just jumped in the car and left.”
“What did Nika make of that?’” asked Janusz, leaning over to hand Adamski a fresh beer.
“I told her that Pani Tosik had people looking for us and they might force her to go home to her Mama, so we’d better lie low. And you know what? She never even asked a single question, she just said, whatever you think, Pawel” – he put a fist to his chest – “That’s how much she trusts me.” His accent was broadening as the beer went down.
Janusz processed the guy’s story – so far, it fitted what he knew of the facts. “So who was chasing you? Somebody you pissed off in the drugs trade?”
Holding up the beer can, Adamski laughed. “This is my only drug, kolego,”
Janusz lit another cigar – the guy was hardly likely to admit to dealing drugs. On the other hand, with every new revelation, Janusz sensed his theories about this affair starting to crumble beneath him. He took a deep draw on his cigar and faced the unwelcome truth. His whole investigation had been based on a series of flawed interpretations and imagined connections: the encounter with the drug dealer in the Flash Klub toilets, Justyna’s suspicions about Adamski’s dealing, her dying of a drug overdose. From these pathetically thin ‘clues’ he’d constructed an elaborate edifice which he now watched collapse in the face of the facts.
“These guys who came looking for you,” said Janusz, after a moment. “You think they were sent by Zamorski.”
Adamski shrugged. “Who else? He hired you to do the same, didn’t he?”
“That’s different. I’m a private detective, not some murdering thug.”
If what Adamski said was true, the big question was – why would Zamorski send out two search parties? He stood up and paced the room.
Then it hit him. Zamorski could never have run the risk of Janusz, or even Konstanty Nowak, seeing the SB documents that Adamski had got his hands on — because then they’d find out he’d been an informer. When his first search party failed to track down Adamski, he cooked up the birth certificate story and asked Nowak to find someone who knew his way round London’s Polonia. Although Janusz would do the legwork, Zamorski probably never intended to let him get anywhere near the SB documents. He’d been like one of those drones the Americans used, deployed simply to guide the real pursuers to their quarry. Zamorski’s man – the guy in the hat – must have been on his tail from the moment he took the case.
Janusz went over to open the bay window, and leaned out, like a man enjoying the night air. Lazily scanning the road along his side of Highbury Fields, the cars under the carbon lights appeared reassuringly empty; then, blowing out a plume of cigar smoke, he lifted his gaze to the road at the far side of the green. His gaze fell on a black boxy car – a 4X4. Inside, there was just enough light from the dashboard to illuminate the outline of a man in the driver’s seat. Janusz turned his head, but continued to watch the car out of the corner of his eye. After a beat, the man leaned forward, perhaps to change radio station, coming closer to the light source, and outlining for a split-second the brim of a hat.
Janusz felt his heart lurch in his chest. Did Zamorski know the sort of men he was employing? Could Poland’s next president know that murder had been committed in his name? Whether he knew it or not, with a psychol like that running around, his daughter’s life was in danger.
Then Janusz remembered the dead girl from the theology college.
“When did you last see Ela Wronska?” he asked.
“How do you know about me and Ela?” asked Adamski, his can frozen centimetres from his lips.
“I know you were in the same children’s home,” said Janusz, grinding his cigar out in the ashtray. “Did you read it in the paper, about her orchestra playing in Gorodnik?”
“No, I went to the concert,” Adamski’s long face broke into a wistful grin. “You should see have seen her – she plays like an angel.”
“And when you came to England, you went to her college, made contact with her, right?”
Adamski shook his head, a stubborn look on his face.
“Come on, I know you were sweethearts back in the home,” persisted Janusz. “You wanted to get back with her – before you started playing housey-housey with Weronika.”
“No! Ela is my friend!” said Adamski, face reddening.
Janusz took a swallow of beer. It occurred to him that the psychol in the hat could easily have discovered Ela’s connection to Pawel and paid her a little visit, tried to get her to reveal his whereabouts. He had a sudden disturbing vision of Justyna and Ela’s last few hours. The skurwysyn must have overpowered them, tied them up, fed them massive doses of the dodgy drugs to loosen their tongue, and after a few hours of fun, left them unconscious and dying, apparently of an accidental overdose.
Then something else struck Janusz: Adamski used the present tense when he talked about Ela. He cleared his throat. “The thing is, Pawel, I’m asking you all this because there’s something you probably don’t know.”
He looked up at the older man, puzzled at the use of his Christian name.
“I’ve got some bad news,” Janusz went on, avoiding his eyes. “About Ela.”
He took the news harder than Janusz could have foreseen: fo
lding himself up in the chair and crying like a little child. Having never seen a grown man weep in that way, Janusz wasn’t sure what to do. He dug out a bottle of wodka, put a glassful in the boy’s hand, and, patting him clumsily on the shoulder, muttered a few consoling words.
Five minutes or more later, Pawel used the front of his sweatshirt to wipe his eyes and nose as he listened to Janusz reveal what he knew of Ela’s death.
When he’d finished, Pawel said: “It’s my fault she’s dead”. Grief lent his long, sallow face a melancholic dignity.
Janusz felt a pang of pity. Less than an hour ago, he’d happily have given this guy the beating of his miserable life and turned him over to the girl detective. Now, he was convinced that apart from his bungled blackmail plot, he was more or less harmless – and he seemed genuinely to love Weronika.
“Your fault why? Because it was you they were looking for?”
He shook his head, his eyes cast down. “Ela would never have caused him any trouble – it was me who stirred things up, put her in danger.”
His words confused Janusz – how could Ela cause Zamorski trouble? It was like looking down a child’s kaleidoscope: the shards of colour appeared to settle into one pattern, only to re-form into a new picture a moment later.
“If I tell you all of it,” said Pawel finally, meeting Janusz’s gaze. “Will you promise to leave me and Nika alone?”
Janusz paused. “Tak. You have my word on it.”
Fixing his gaze on the wall above Janusz’s head, Pawel started talking, his voice so low Janusz had to lean forward to hear him.
“They put me in the home because people said my Mama and Tata were bad people,” he said. “Maybe it was true, but at least they loved me.
“I was miserable there, in the home – until Ela arrived.” A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “She used to make up these stories – how we would run away with the gypsies, that we were really the stolen children of a King and Queen, who’d come to collect us one day.”