by Anya Lipska
‘So any news on where Kasia and Steve might have got to?’ she asked.
Janusz scratched his jaw, the stubble reminding him he hadn’t shaved that morning. There was plenty he wanted to ask the girl detektyw, but he’d have to tread carefully. By now the cops would surely be all over the murder of Bill and probably Jared’s death, too. Recalling his discovery of Bill’s body, he sent up a silent prayer that he hadn’t left any fingerprints at the flat.
‘Nothing as yet,’ he told her. ‘You?’
The fat in the frying pan sizzled a greeting to the beaten egg, the smell making Janusz realise how hungry he was.
‘Not really. Just a few bits and pieces,’ she said. ‘So, Ron was telling me, you weren’t here last night?’ From the state of him, it was obvious he’d been up to something.
He suppressed a scowl. He’d let Ron know he was away for the night just in case someone came calling with information about Kasia, but he hadn’t anticipated the girl detektyw turning up. ‘I was out of town.’
‘Really? You weren’t anywhere near Southend, I suppose?’
‘Southend-on-Sea? No – why?’
After sliding the two halves of the omelette onto plates, Kershaw put the larger portion in front of him. He sawed some hunks off a wheat and rye loaf and offered the board to her before taking a mouthful of omelette. ‘This isn’t half-bad – for an English person.’
His grin up at her was a bit more like the old Kiszka. ‘We think that Steve might have been there recently,’ she said, pouring coffee from the stovetop pot. No harm in mentioning it – she didn’t think for one minute he’d still be there now. She’d lay serious money that Steve had picked Kasia up from Epping tube station for the short drive to the Essex coast – and they weren’t going there to sample the whelks. Southend had a tiny airport that had recently added a bunch of European routes: the missing couple were probably already sunning themselves in Faro or Tenerife.
Janusz had picked up her lapse into ‘we’ – which confirmed what he’d half-expected. Natalia wasn’t simply helping him out in the search for Kasia any more: she was working the case for the cops. He’d better stay on his toes.
‘You do know Southend?’ she persisted.
‘The beach with the view of the power station, right?’ Janusz had been dragged out there once by a girlfriend who’d lived in Stepney. Brought up on summer holidays amid the white dunes and chilly jade waters of the Baltic, he’d been appalled by Southend’s muddy beach with its grim vista of a giant smoke-spewing chimney, its noisy ‘amusement’ arcades.
Kershaw felt miffed at his dismissive tone: East Londoners were proud of ‘Sarfend’ – their nearest seaside resort, which boasted the longest pier in the world. Day trips there had been a fixture of her childhood summers, and long after her mum died, she and her dad made a pilgrimage every August bank holiday, rain or shine, to fish off the pier.
Janusz set his knife and fork on his empty plate at ‘twenty to five’ as he’d been taught; even after getting on for three decades here, he still couldn’t bring himself to line them up soldier-style, like the English. ‘What makes you think Steve was in Southend, anyway?’
‘Prints on an abandoned car.’
‘Nicked?’
‘Yep.’
He grunted. As far as he was concerned, the strongest lead he had to Kasia’s whereabouts was still a certain Essex spa hotel. He topped up their cups with coffee before levelling his gaze on hers. ‘I’ll tell you where I’ve been and what I’ve found out if you’ll get me some information.’
Kershaw took her time finishing her final mouthful before replying. ‘Okay …’
‘Do you swear it?’
‘Yes, all right, I swear it.’ No detective would ever make such a promise – but then hadn’t Streaky made it crystal clear that she was ‘strictly a civilian’? Well, that cut both ways.
‘I’ve come across an Essex family who I think tie in with the Steve business somehow.’ He tossed a few of his suspicions about the Duffs into her lap, the fortune the mother made in scrap metal, his visit to the hotel in Epping, omitting a few minor details like his microwaving of the younger Duff that morning.
‘So why do you think they’re involved?’
‘I can’t say.’ He saw no point in sharing his hunch about Kasia being held prisoner in the changing block.
‘You’ll have to give me more than that or I can’t help you.’
‘Look. All I can tell you is that there’s a connection to Steve. And if this Duff family are just innocent hoteliers, I’m Pope Francis.’
‘Where does that leave your idea that Steve abducted Kasia? Are you saying the Duffs were doing him a favour when they took her?’
‘Maybe,’ he shrugged. ‘Perhaps it was a reward for some job he did for them? I don’t know yet. But trust me, I’ll make it my business to find out.’
Hearing his tone darken she looked up at him. ‘Okay. I can make some calls, check them out. Until I do, don’t go doing anything stupid.’
He pulled a wolfish grin. ‘You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.’
Kershaw gazed at him: with his fierce eyes and drawn face, unshaven jaws sprinkled with grey, he looked like a pirate returned from an all-night raid. An undeniably attractive pirate.
‘Who was it said that, anyway?’ she asked.
‘Joseph Stalin, supposedly.’
His face split in a giant yawn, which he covered with one hand. ‘I don’t wish to be discourteous,’ he said, ‘but I’m afraid I really need to get some sleep.’
After she’d gone, Janusz made another pot of coffee, double strength, in a bid to keep himself awake. Copetka jumped up onto his lap and he sat stroking his ginger fur, mulling over what Natalia had told him and trying to work out how it might fit into the tantalising jumble of facts he’d amassed in the last couple of days.
Kasia
A jolt to the spine catapulted Kasia out of her perpetual fog – and into the back of a vehicle. A ridged steel floor, the reek of diesel … a van. She registered the familiar bite of plastic into her wrists, her taped mouth, and a blindfold – tied so tight it squashed her eyeballs.
Then she remembered the baby. Obudz sie! she told herself – Wake up! – deliberately knocking her head against the floor.
So few of these lucid moments, no time to think. Had the drugs harmed her little one? How long now since she was taken? Five days? Six? It seemed as if she’d been sliding in and out of the muffled darkness for weeks. The man only roused her to eat, or to push her into the toilet. Never spoke a word. She’d seen him – once, early on, when the blindfold had slipped off – but he’d been wearing a balaclava. His eyes were as stony and pitiless as a cemetery angel. She knew then, that if and when he chose to, he would kill her without hesitation or remorse.
Where was Janusz? She’d been so sure he’d have come for her by now. Then she remembered her dream. She’d been underwater again, but this time she could see Janusz just a few metres away. He was waving to her, his lips moving, but she couldn’t hear him. The sight of him, so solid and dependable, filled her with a heady rush of hope and love, but when she’d swum towards him, her hand struck something. She realised that she was in some sort of tank and he was on the other side of the glass, unable to reach her.
She still had faith. He would still come for her. She started to pray.
Then she felt it. Nie! A dragging sensation in the pit of her belly. The baby! It expelled every other thought. She knew what would come next. Bleeding.
Hold on, maluszku, she murmured. Hold on, little one.
Twenty-Seven
After the girl detektyw left, Janusz drifted into a fitful sleep on the living room sofa. When he finally opened his eyes, it took him a few long seconds to register the profound navy blue of a spring dusk through his bay window. Rousing himself, he had the niggling feeling that while he’d been asleep, he’d learned something important. Something that, now that he was awake, dangled frustratingly just out of
reach.
He decided to make some pierogi: it might persuade his brain to offer up its subconscious machinations. Pouring boiling water onto some dried mushrooms he left them to soak, before finely chopping a red onion together with fresh parsley and thyme for the filling. Letting his mind drift, he found himself thinking about Southend, where Natalia had said the cops had found a car Steve had dumped. It struck him as an odd place to go into hiding, unless it was all just a decoy and he’d actually circled back to the Forest Sanctuary Hotel. He certainly couldn’t see Steve tempting Kasia out to Southend: hadn’t she once said something about how depressing she found the Essex coast?
Setting down the knife, Janusz went to his greatcoat and, delving into the pockets with parsley-specked hands, found what he was after. The faded photo he’d found in Steve and Kasia’s flat a few days earlier. It captured them in younger days, standing in a field, holding ice-cream cones, except now that he looked properly, wasn’t that thin, greenish line on the horizon that almost merged into the sky’s uniform grey, the sea? And on the extreme left of the picture, just visible, something he hadn’t noticed before. Something that looked like a van, but with its roof angled at the rear.
It all came rushing back. A couple of years back, he and Kasia had been lying in bed, daydreaming about going on holiday together one day. She’d said that her last proper holiday had been years ago when Steve had taken her to stay in a karawana belonging to his parents on the Essex coast. Thinking it over now, he was ninety-nine per cent certain she’d said it was in Southend.
It was too much of a coincidence. Was Steve using the caravan as a hideaway? Might he have had Kasia moved there, after the changing block became unsafe?
Janusz kissed the young Kasia’s freckled face. ‘Brawo, kochanie,’ he murmured, before picking up his coat and heading out of the door.
It was nearly 9 p.m. by the time Janusz got off the train at Southend along with a crowd of late-returning City workers. He drew his coat tighter – he’d forgotten how much colder it was out in the sticks compared to London.
Reaching the line of cabs waiting at the taxi rank he stuck his head in the window of the first. ‘I’m looking for a caravan park. But I’ve forgotten the name.’
The elderly Asian driver thought for a moment. ‘There’s two,’ he said. ‘The Ivydene or the Sea View?’
‘The Sea View,’ said Janusz, picturing the photo – with a private smile at the helpful literalness of the name.
Ten minutes later, he was climbing out of the cab onto a cinder drive. He squinted at the board advertising the comforts of the Sea View – judging by the faded yellow of a big smiling sun, the place hadn’t had a makeover since Kasia visited. A sudden gust from the sea whipped his coat open – it was even colder out here, and pitch black once you stepped away from the streetlights. He crunched off down the path, using the torch function on his phone to light the way.
A hundred metres on, past an empty car park, he came upon a wooden chalet, a light visible through the curtained window and the word ‘Office’ on its door. When he knocked, the curtain was whipped back to reveal the face of an elderly woman peering out at him. For a fanciful moment, he felt as if he had just found Baba Yaga, the child-eating witch with the iron teeth from the folktales, who had filled his childhood nightmares.
‘Good evening,’ he said when she opened the door a few centimetres. ‘I’m looking for the Fishers’ caravan?’
She squinted at him, her gaze openly curious. Janusz guessed she probably didn’t get many raffish-looking foreign blokes turning up at her caravan park on a cold March night. After a long pause, apparently expecting him to elaborate, which he declined to do, she eventually handed him a map showing the park layout.
‘Number 17,’ she said.
Janusz thanked her and, as he turned to go, asked, ‘Oh, is he in, do you know?’
She gave him an evil look. ‘No idea.’ And slammed the cabin door shut. Janusz could hear her sliding the bolts across, top and bottom, making a production of it for his benefit. He imagined her heading back to her cauldron to chuck in another lizard.
The rows of darkened caravans slumbered under the sickly light cast by the solar-powered lamps along the path; they stood on breeze blocks or steel struts, their touring days long past, each plot precisely marked out with its own picket fence. Stowed underneath them were the discarded flotsam and jetsam of last year’s summer holidays: a deflated lilo here, a windbreak there – its once-jaunty stripes looking tattered and mournful.
As he passed the end of the third block of caravans, Janusz spotted something down the path that branched off to his left. A window-shaped glow that punched a sepia-coloured hole in the darkness. He consulted the map: the light came from plot 17.
Janusz abandoned the noisy cinder path for its soft turf edge, and headed for the rectangle of light. Here, at the park’s seaward edge, a salty breeze lifted his hair and he could hear in the distance the faint yet insistent sound of the surf shushing the beach.
Finding a wooden lean-to at the edge of number 17’s plot, he ducked behind it and peered around the edge. What he saw made the breath congeal in his throat: somebody had pasted newspaper in the caravan’s windows. He cocked his head. Was that a voice he could hear inside, beneath the wind whickering in the trees? He strained his ears towards the murmur. Yes! A woman’s voice.
Then two things happened at once. The woman laughed, and he realised that the sound was coming from a radio, just as a shadow loomed onto the grass in front of him. Long and thin, it put him in mind of a praying mantis.
Instinct took over. He ducked right. Thwack! A blow struck him between neck and shoulder. He staggered into the wall of the lean-to so hard it drove splinters of wood into his palms. Hearing the breathing of a man behind him, he turned and dropped to a crouch in a single movement. Made a grab for the denim-clad legs coming towards him. The impact knocked the breath out of his lungs but he hung on and the pair of them wrestled to and fro, his attacker raining blows on him with what looked, and felt, like a length of two-by-four timber. But Janusz was holding him too close to allow a good swing, and the weapon just bounced off his back. Loosening his grip around the man’s legs for an instant, he felt his centre of gravity shift a fraction. Dropping his hands to the man’s ankles, he gave a mighty wrench. The guy crashed backwards with a grunt, before kicking out wildly. Just avoiding a boot in the face, Janusz scrambled to his feet. But the other guy was younger and nimbler, and by the time Janusz was upright, he was already disappearing into the darkness beyond the caravan, heading in the direction of the sea. From his size and shape – skinny, below average height – it was clear to Janusz that the guy who’d jumped him was Steve Fisher.
He took off after him at a sprint, casting a sideways glance at the paper-covered windows of the caravan. Told himself that even if Kasia were inside, he first had to neutralise the threat.
Once he got going, his long stride meant he covered ground fast, and soon had Steve’s outline in his sights, backlit by the rising moon. Janusz grinned to himself, having just made a happy discovery: Steve Fisher ran like a girl. On the downside, he clearly knew the lie of the land – wheeling right as he approached what looked like an impassable hedge, he disappeared through it without breaking step.
Janusz knew he could be waiting the other side to ambush him but couldn’t risk losing ground by slowing down. Following Steve’s route, he charged through the gap in the hedge head down, branches raking his scalp. Emerged into the colder air of the beach, the black North Sea so close now that the smell of salt and ozone made his nostrils prickle. Steve was still there ahead of him, closer now, but Janusz could feel his progress slowed by the soft-going sand. Within a few minutes, the punishing surface was making his thigh muscles scream, but he kept his gaze glued to Steve’s back. Getting closer with every stride, the dim roar of the sea growing ever nearer, he saw Steve cast a frantic look over his shoulder before throwing a desperate jink to the right – exactly like an impala J
anusz had once seen in a wildlife film, trying to evade a leopard. Then, as the sand gave way to a band of shingle, Steve stumbled. He scrambled back to his feet, but it was clear his heart wasn’t in it. Putting on a final spurt, Janusz jumped on his back with a roar and manhandled him down onto the beach.
Steve offered no resistance, and they lay there, in an awkward embrace, the surf growling over the shingle in their ears, until Janusz had recovered his breath. Pulling at Steve’s shoulder, he flipped him onto his back so he could see his face.
‘Is she … is she in the caravan?’ he got out finally.
‘Who?’ Steve’s eyes were wild with fear.
‘Kasia!’ Janusz snarled, giving him a shove.
‘No!’
‘So where the fuck is she?’
‘I …, I th …, I th …’ Steve was stuttering like a stuck record.
Janusz whacked the back of his head onto the shingle to jog the needle. It did the trick.
‘I thought she was with you!’
Twenty-Eight
Janusz frogmarched Steve up the steps to the caravan – pushing him ahead through the door in case he’d been lying about being alone. Inside, he made him shuffle along to the farthest point of the semicircular banquette around the dining table so he couldn’t easily do a runner. After that, it took him all of twenty seconds to scope the place – there was just one bedroom, the bed empty but for a coverless duvet the colour of weak tea, and a tiny shower and toilet cubicle next door – before returning to the kitchen-cum-living area.
Steve had recovered a good deal of the surly insouciance that Janusz remembered from their only encounter, when, assuming the guise of Kasia’s visiting cousin, he’d had to demonstrate the unpleasant consequences that would follow if he ever lifted a finger to her again. Three years on, Steve looked much the same, the only alteration to his rat-like features a modish, jaw-skimming beard that made Janusz’s fists itch.