by Anya Lipska
More to the point, after half an hour of questioning, the mugshot of Janusz Kiszka had drawn not a glimmer of recognition from any of the staff who’d been working there at the time of his claimed visit.
As she and Caroline descended the ornate staircase – a typical example of Arts and Crafts architecture, apparently – Kershaw wondered if she’d got it wrong. Whether, in fact, Kiszka was capable of premeditated murder, after all. Just because he’d turned out to be, more or less, one of the good guys the last time their paths had crossed, that didn’t mean he was innocent this time around. Good and evil, black and white, everything nice and neat – of course she was inclined to see things that way: she was a cop. But she remembered Streaky telling her once how that kind of thinking could be a detective’s worst enemy.
At the foot of the stairs, Kershaw thanked Caroline for her help. On the point of leaving, she decided she just had time to nip back to the gallery’s café for a sneaky cuppa: it would give her a chance to tidy her notes up.
She sat in the glass conservatory overlooking the Morris family’s huge landscaped garden, the bare branches of the trees stark against the pale winter sky, watching an old man in a waxed jacket raking dead leaves from the lawn. As she watched, he reached the footpath bordering the grass right beneath her, where he appeared to notice something on the ground. Bending down with some difficulty, he produced a plastic bag and started picking things up, the clockwork jerkiness of his movements betraying extreme irritation.
Kershaw bolted the rest of her tea, and dashing out through the garden door, flew down the steps.
‘Excuse me, sir.’ Up close, the gardener was an ancient guy with a brown, seamed face that suggested a lifetime working outdoors. ‘Can I ask if you were working here on Monday?’
‘Who’s asking?’ He stuck his chin out.
‘I’m DC Kershaw, Walthamstow Murder Squad.’ She wondered if she’d ever get over the thrill of saying that. ‘I’m trying to find out if anyone saw this man here on that day.’
The guy put both hands on his thighs to lever himself up and squinted at Kiszka’s mugshot. ‘I couldn’t tell you, I’m afraid my reading glasses are at home,’ he said.
Bollocks.
‘Because I saw you picking up cigarette butts, and this guy practically chain smokes cigars, so I thought …’ She tailed off, realising how daft it sounded.
‘You’d be surprised how many people there are who can’t go half an hour without sucking on a nicotine tit,’ said the old man. He was surprisingly well spoken, but she detected a bit of country burr running underneath. ‘They always stand here, by the staircase where they think they can’t be seen.’ He shot her a cunning look. ‘I catch quite a few of them though.’
‘Good for you,’ she said. ‘So, this man I’m talking about is a big guy, dark hair, and he wears a longish coat, kind of military looking.’
The old gardener stared up at the sky for several seconds.
‘Best pilots I ever saw!’ he said suddenly.
What the fuck? Was the guy having a mini-stroke or something?
He sketched an arabesque in the air with one wrinkled hand. ‘They’d already had practice fighting the Hun, you see.’
‘I don’t mean to be rude,’ said Kershaw. ‘But I haven’t got the foggiest what you’re talking about.’
‘Polish fighter pilots, in the Battle of Britain. Don’t they teach young people about the war these days?’
Her brain whirred and clicked. ‘You did see him! But … how did you know he was Polish?’
‘Because when I told him he couldn’t drop his cigar butt here, he said Koorr-vah Mahsch.’ He rolled the Polish round his mouth like a fine whiskey. ‘Mother of a whore,’ he added helpfully.
‘Yeah, that sounds like him,’ said Kershaw suppressing a grin.
‘So I swore back at him in Polish.’ He chuckled. ‘To be fair, he was very apologetic, said he hadn’t meant to curse, it had just slipped out.’
‘What time do you finish?’ asked Kershaw.
The old man looked at his watch. ‘In about a quarter of an hour,’ he said. ‘Today’s my half day – why do you ask?’
‘Because I’d like to give you a lift home so you can look at this photo with your reading glasses on.’
‘No need for a lift,’ he said, pointing across the gardens to a row of terraced houses. ‘I only live over there.’
Half an hour later, Edward Cotter had positively identified Janusz Kiszka and agreed to sign a statement confirming that their little encounter had taken place at 5.40 p.m., just before the end of his shift. Since that was minutes after James Fulford had been stabbed, a good mile from the museum, Kershaw reckoned that Kiszka had just got himself a concrete alibi.
Over a cup of tea, Edward told her that as a boy he had lived in a village in Sussex next to Chailey airfield, where a Polish fighter squadron had been based during the war. Gripped by the thrilling spectacle of their dogfights with Messerschmitts overhead, Edward and his chums would hang around outside the chain-link fence surrounding the airfield, grabbing every opportunity to chat to their heroes. His most treasured possession, framed and hung above his mantelpiece, was a twenty zloty note signed by half a dozen pilots from the squadron.
Seeing the Polish currency depressed Kershaw, reminding her of the unfinished business down at Canary Wharf. But right now, getting back to the nick and updating the Sarge on the latest development on Kiszka’s alibi took priority.
Streaky was just finishing up a late lunch when she arrived in the office – a sausage roll by the look of the crumbs clinging to his chin and sprinkled over his beer gut. Kershaw delivered the news in as neutral a tone as possible: it was always a bit of a double-edged sword, eliminating a suspect.
‘Of course, even if he wasn’t actually at the scene, it’s still possible he was behind the murder,’ said Kershaw.
Streaky brushed the debris from his shirtfront into a cupped hand. ‘Use your noddle, Detective,’ he said. ‘If Kiszka arranged a hit on his chum, he would have made damn sure he was miles away when it was going off, preferably having a nice cup of tea with that priest of his – what was his name? Pietruski.’ After throwing the crumbs into his mouth, he dusted off his palms.
Kershaw marvelled at his powers of recall: it was years since Kiszka had been under investigation, but then the Sarge was famous for his ability to summon up the tiniest details from long-dead cases.
‘Anyway,’ he went on. ‘I just put down the phone to his brief. He was calling to tell me that Kiszka’s signed a document making over ownership of the gym and its assets to Marika Fulford, which rather puts the mockers on his supposed motive for the murder.’
‘I’d love to have a crack at interviewing the wife, Sarge,’ said Kershaw. ‘Now the dust has settled, she might have remembered something that could give us a lead?’
Streaky folded his arms across his belly and gazed enquiringly at Kershaw. ‘I’m confused, Detective. Haven’t you got an anonymous suicide to identify at one of London’s most famous high-rise landmarks?’
‘I wanted to talk to you about that Sarge. I spent the whole day interviewing the security team down there and I’m drawing a total blank …’
Raising a finger to silence her, Streaky screwed up his eyes. ‘Listen. Can you hear that?’
‘Sarge?’
‘I thought I heard the distant strains of a violin. Spare me the sob story, Kershaw. The quicker you deliver a name for your roof diving chum, the sooner you can start doing the job I employed you for.’
‘Right, Sarge.’
As Kershaw walked away, Streaky started whistling a tune. It took a couple of minutes before she realised what it was: the old Weather Girls song ‘It’s Raining Men’.
When she got back to her desk, Sophie Edgerton passed over a post-it note. ‘The pathologist who did the PM on your Canary Wharf suicide called. He said to call him back on his mobile.’
Kershaw tapped out Nathan King’s number with a distinct lack of
enthusiasm. ‘Hi, Dr King? It’s DC Natalie Kershaw. Investigating officer on the Canary Wharf Tower fatality.’
As King gave Kershaw the lowdown, Sophie watched her colleague’s expression travel through a series of emotions: from neutral professionalism, through bewilderment, culminating in outright incredulity. Finally, she spoke.
‘You’re fucking kidding!’
Thirteen
Janusz stood in the living room of his mansion flat looking out over Highbury Fields – the grass still silvered here and there by last night’s frost – and savoured the smell of the bigos cooking in the kitchen. He didn’t usually eat much at lunchtime, but he had some good-looking zywiecka he was keen to try and the sausage, pork rib, and sauerkraut stew would be good insulation against the unseasonably cold weather. Perhaps he also felt the need of comfort food to fortify him for the afternoon’s sombre task: visiting a stonemason to help Marika pick out a headstone for Jim.
It looked as though England was in for a series of proper winters, not as bitter as the ones he remembered from Poland, but enough to knock over the puny transport systems on a regular basis. Back home, childhood winters had meant blissful weeks of igloo building and skating on frozen rivers – he recalled his mate Osip losing the top of his ear to frostbite one year. His thoughts drifted to Bobek: it would be good to have him over to stay again soon. In a couple of years he’d be more interested in girls and motorbikes than in his boring old man. Christmas, he decided. He’d ask Marta if the boy could spend a few days of his school holiday in London.
His entry phone buzzed. It was Oskar.
‘I’ve been trying to reach you on your phone and email all morning, Janek,’ he complained before he’d even got through the door.
‘That fancy phone you made me buy ran out of juice again. And I haven’t turned the laptop on yet.’
Oskar tutted. ‘You need to stay connected, kolego, especially in your line of work.’ He sniffed the air. ‘Bigos?’
‘Tak.’
‘Good. I haven’t had lunch yet.’
‘What was so urgent, anyway?’
‘The Romanian!’ said Oskar, beaming. ‘He took the bait we laid for him!’ He did a little jig of triumph, short legs pumping.
‘The story you spun Marek about having a rich mate with money to invest?’
‘Yeah! I told him you’re a businessman who just inherited a pile of cash, and also dropped your fancy apartment in Highbury Fields into the conversation.’ Going over to the bay window, Oskar looked out, shaking his head. ‘You know, Janek, if you sold this place and moved further east, you could probably pocket half a million.’
It was a well-worn argument: Janusz had been lucky enough to buy the apartment for a bargain price from his landlord back in the eighties, and according to Oskar, any sane person would have cashed it in for a fat profit long ago.
‘Put another record on, Oskar. What about the Romanian?’
‘So Marek phoned me this morning and said the guy would like to invite you to a party he’s throwing tonight for his investors.’
‘You played it cool, like I told you?’ asked Janusz.
‘Of course!’ said Oskar with a casual shrug. ‘I said that you didn’t really like parties – unless you counted the gay orgies.’ He punched Janusz’s shoulder. ‘Only kidding! I told him you might be interested.’
‘Where is this party, then?’
‘If I give Marek the thumbs-up, someone will text you the details. So it might help if you worked out how to charge your phone, sisterfucker.’ Oskar threw himself down on the sofa and beamed up at Janusz, transparently pleased with himself. ‘I told you we’d make a good team. When will the bigos be ready?’
The unscheduled invite left Janusz with two problems. First, there was his promise to go and look at headstones with Marika. Second, he didn’t have the first idea what a ‘wealthy investor’ might wear to a drinks party.
When he called Marika’s place, it was her sister Basia who picked up the phone.
‘Czesc, Basia. Listen, something’s come up which means I won’t be able to go to the masons with Marika this afternoon.’
‘Oh, that’s a shame,’ she said. ‘I know Marika was looking forward to seeing you.’
He felt a bolt of white-hot guilt in his guts.
‘Is she around?’ he asked. ‘Maybe we can rearrange it for tomorrow.’
‘She is sleeping now, I don’t like to wake her,’ said Basia. ‘Shall I give her a message later?’
Janusz hesitated: he didn’t want her to think he was cancelling for no good reason.
‘Yes. Tell her it means the world to me, helping her to choose Jim’s memorial stone …’ his throat closed up and he had to get a grip on himself before continuing. ‘But there’s something I need to do that can’t be put off. It might even help me find Jim’s killers.’
There was a shocked silence at the other end of the line. ‘Really? You have found some evidence?’
‘I really can’t say,’ he said. ‘Just tell her that, will you?’
He heard Basia take a shaky breath. ‘Tak.’ It was clear that she, too, was struggling with Jim’s death.
Deciding what he should wear to fit the part he had to play at tonight’s party was easier to fix: he phoned Kasia. She was glad of the chance to make up for standing him up the other night, and made him write down the outfit while he was still on the phone. Black jeans, a black crewneck cashmere sweater she’d bought for his birthday, and a black textured wool jacket she approved of that he’d had for years. After hanging up, he drew a sigh of relief: at least she didn’t say he had to wear a suit.
The drinks party was taking place a stone’s throw from Romescu’s apartment, in another of the Millharbour high-rises. At reception, a beautiful black girl checked his name against the invite list and gave him a security pass that operated a private lift going to the 48th floor. The lift ascended at what he sensed was an incredible speed, although it made only the faintest of hums, stopping when it reached the highest level.
When the lift doors opened, a smartly dressed young guy with an Eastern European accent – who presumably worked for the Romanian – greeted him by name, which for tonight was Lukas Rozak. Janusz was ushered into a swanky bar area, where a crowd of thirty or forty men, mostly middle-aged, chatted in small groups.
Passing one such cluster, he saw at its heart a gorgeous girl wearing a revealing deep-pink evening gown. Her smile seemed genuine enough but when her gaze flickered across him he recognised the glazed look of a working girl. In their drab-coloured suits, the men resembled a swarm of locusts mobbing a flowering cherry.
Glancing around, Janusz saw that every group had been assigned its own hot girl, every one of them beautifully dressed and most of them toting the kind of breasts that kept silicon manufacturers in business.
At the heart of the throng, a close-cropped bullet head above a wide muscular back came into view.
‘Mr Romescu?’ said the flunky. ‘May I introduce Mr Lukas Rozak?’
Romescu turned to shake Janusz’s hand. ‘A very great pleasure to meet you, Lukas – if I can call you that?’ Without pausing to hear Janusz’s reply, he went on: ‘And of course you must call me Barbu.’ He clapped Janusz on the shoulder – a gesture that, although appearing friendly enough, managed to telegraph who was in charge of this encounter. ‘So you are the famous friend of Marek, yes?’
‘A friend of a friend, actually.’ Janusz smiled back, resisting the impulse to shake off Romescu’s hand. ‘But I have heard Marek is very impressed with the returns you’re making for him.’
Romescu sketched a modest wave. ‘There are lots of excellent business opportunities in the East, if you know where to find them.’ He cocked his head on one side. ‘I am guessing, Lukas, that you were brought up in Poland?’
‘Yes, in Gdansk. I came here in the eighties.’
‘In Romania we envied you Poles and your freedom to travel. Our “Little Father” liked to keep his people close.’ A spasm o
f hatred twisted Romescu’s face as he named Romania’s Communist despot, Nikolai Ceausescu. ‘I managed to get out, but I wouldn’t have risked it if I’d had any family still alive.’
‘There would have been reprisals?’
The Romanian nodded. ‘My country is famous for two of its heads of state. But at least Vlad the Impaler didn’t delude himself that he had the people’s interests at heart.’
The exchange appeared to have exhausted Romescu’s supply of emotion, for the folds of his face settled back into what Janusz deduced to be its usual cold expression. Only his eyes, which were a fierce yet chilly blue, seemed alive: they seemed never to rest, darting over Janusz’s face, or over his shoulder – seeking out the next, potentially more profitable, encounter.
‘Let’s get you a drink,’ he said, waving over one of the waiters doing the rounds of the crowd. Janusz asked for tonic water – he’d have killed for a beer but he couldn’t risk it. If he should slip up and Romescu smelt a rat, he had a feeling it could seriously damage his health. He noticed that the Romanian ordered a soft drink, too, and remembered the unappetising contents of his fridge. The guy was a few years older than Janusz, late forties, maybe fifty, but the wide shoulders spoke of a regular workout regime and there was no hint of paunch under the soft material of his shirt.
‘It’s hard work staying in shape, when you get past forty,’ sighed Janusz patting his stomach. ‘I barely drink alcohol any more’ – a vision of his beer and bigos lunch flashed before him – ‘and I’ve given up red meat and processed carbs altogether. But it’s a price I’m happy to pay, if it keeps me alive till I’m a hundred.’