by Anya Lipska
‘How long have you been here?’ Janusz asked, wrinkling his nose: the place reeked of Chinese takeaway and stale male sweat, a fan heater rattling at their feet contributing the smell of burned dust to the mix.
‘Why should I tell you anything?’ – his voice rose to an angry mosquito whine – ‘I know all about you and Kasia. I never did buy all that bullshit about you being her cousin.’
Janusz lifted a shoulder. ‘What do you expect, if you use your wife as a punchbag?’
‘It only happened once!’ burst out Steve. Janusz raised an eyebrow. ‘Maybe twice. Anyway, I don’t have to fucking explain myself to you.’
Janusz’s arm shot out to grab the neck of his T-shirt, and yanked him half-upright out of his seat. ‘Yes. You. Do.’ Each word underlined with a sharp tug. ‘Now, answer me, toerag. Where is Kasia?’
‘I told you! I thought she was with you.’
‘If you don’t tell me what the fuck’s been going on and why you’re holed up here …’ Janusz gave his collar a vicious twist, forcing a gargling noise from Steve’s throat. Seeing him nod in surrender, he released the T-shirt, before wiping his hand on his coat.
Steve massaged his throat, and when he spoke again his voice was hoarse. ‘Kasia told me she was leaving, but I got her to agree to stay for my birthday. I’d bought us surprise flights for … a mini-break.’ He gave a defiant shrug. ‘I thought if we went away, it’d give me one last shot at getting her to stay.’
Aside from the tickets being one-way, it was a version of events that Janusz judged to be more or less truthful. ‘Then what?’
‘My plans changed. I had a … falling-out with someone and decided to get out of town for a bit.’
A falling-out. A funny way to describe the murder of two close associates, thought Janusz. ‘Really. What was that all about then?’
‘Oh, just one of those things down the pub, after we’d had a skinful. You know, handbags’ – for all Steve’s attempts at a dismissive tone, the effort of inventing on the hoof was written all over his face.
‘Right. And when you left, you took Kasia with you?’
‘No! I haven’t seen her since Sunday morning. We had a bit of a dust-up, when I told her about the flights. Her last words to me were that she’d be moving out on Monday “come hell or high water”.’ His voice was shot through with self-pity.
Studying his face, Janusz decided he was telling the truth – about Kasia, at least. He felt a complicated sensation in his chest: relief that she hadn’t changed her mind at the last minute – something he realised he’d still half-feared – and deep anguish that somebody had prevented her from doing so. But if not Steve, then who? And with what possible motive?
Steve worried at a bit of peeling veneer on the table-edge with his thumbnail. ‘So when did you see her last?’ he asked.
Lighting a cigar, Janusz ignored the question. ‘Let’s go back to this “falling-out” you say you had. Was it the guys who did the robbery with you?’
Watching Steve’s face light up like a pinball machine, Janusz had to stifle a grin: he’d be the dream opponent in a high-stakes poker game.
‘What robbery?’
‘Don’t fuck me around, Fisher. I spoke to your mate Bill.’
It was almost comical the way his eyebrows shot up. ‘Bill Boyce?’
‘Yeah. He was worried about you. He wanted to get a message to you. Or a warning.’
‘A warning?’ Steve wasn’t sounding quite so dismissive now.
‘But you haven’t been answering your phone.’
A look of self-congratulation flitted across Steve’s face. ‘Before I left town, I stuck it in a post box, addressed to a friend of mine in Glasgow.’
‘Glasgow? Why?’
‘It’s an anti-surveillance tactic I read about. If someone tries to trace you via your mobile signal, it throws them right off track.’
Of course, thought Janusz: going ‘off-grid’, the caravan hideaway – it would all gel perfectly with Steve’s fantasy world.
‘There must have been a lot at stake for you to dump your phone.’
Silence.
‘Listen to me,’ Janusz went on. ‘I know that you and your mates pulled off some kind of criminal job.’
‘I haven’t got the foggiest what you’re on about.’
‘You stitched them up afterwards, didn’t you? Did them out of their share of the booty, whatever it was.’
‘No comment,’ said Steve, his face relaxing into a complacent sneer.
So maybe that wasn’t it, thought Janusz. He leaned across the tabletop. ‘You’re not talking to the fucking cops now, Fisher. All I care about is finding Kasia. But if you don’t tell me what the fuck’s been going on I’ll happily haul your skinny arse out of here and hand you in to the nearest nick.’
‘What have the filth got to do with it?’
Janusz stared at him. ‘Well for starters, they’re keen to find out who plugged Jared Bateman into the mains and strung Bill Boyce up from his own shower rail.’
Steve’s response took him aback. Paling to the colour of fresh putty, he stood and tried to scramble out of his seat. Janusz had to grab him by his skinny shoulders but despite the difference in bulk and strength, it took some effort to restrain him. He seemed in the grip of a visceral panic, like a nervous animal in a thunderstorm. It took thirty seconds for Janusz to wrestle him back down on the banquette.
Eyeing the slick of sweat on Steve’s upper lip, Janusz felt his own heart thumping. Unless he’d suddenly acquired virtuoso acting skills, this was clearly the first Steve Fisher had heard about the grisly demise of his two friends.
After giving him the basic facts about Bill and Jared’s deaths, Janusz sought Steve’s gaze. ‘Someone has taken Kasia,’ he told him. ‘And if I’m going to get her back safe then you have to tell me everything.’
Steve put his head in his hands. After a moment, he nodded at Janusz’s cigar tin. ‘Can I have one of those? I’m out of fags.’
The nicotine hit seemed to calm him down, and the story came spooling out.
‘There’s this guy, Simeon – he’s been coming down the pub on and off for years. I only ever knew him to nod to, but Christmas before last we started getting friendly.’ Janusz remembered Simeon: he was the chunky guy with the high-pitched voice Bill had introduced him to down the Pineapple that day, the one who’d eyed him so charily. ‘He starts giving me and Jared the odd bit of work. Nothing massive – sourcing a fast car to use on a job – that kind of thing. Fucking good money, though.’
‘So it was him who got you and Jared involved in that lorry hold-up? A load of iPads, wasn’t it?’
Steve squinted at him, plainly trying to work out how he seemed to know so much. ‘We wasn’t involved in the actual job – but yeah, he gave us some of the merchandise to shift, afterwards.’
‘And you got caught red-handed by the cops flogging them in a pub,’ said Janusz. ‘How did that go down with your new chum?’
‘We kept our mouths shut about where they came from, which is more than a lot of people would do,’ said Steve self-righteously.
Janusz felt a surge of bile towards the twisted morality of the criminal class, which considered covering up for a bunch of thugs who’d shot and paralysed an innocent man the honourable course of action.
‘So your … discretion earned you brownie points.’
‘Yeah, it did,’ said Steve, oblivious to Janusz’s distaste. ‘After that, he knew me and Jared were solid, you know?’
‘What about Bill? Was he one of your crew?’
‘Nah, Bill’s straight as a die. He’s just someone we hang out with down the pub.’
Picturing Bill’s mournful expression, Janusz sent him up a silent apology. Like Kasia, he’d simply been an innocent bystander who’d paid the price of being close to Steve. ‘So tell me about the job this Simeon gave you.’
‘He said he wanted a crew who could be trusted, to knock over a place in Stratford, above a launderette.’
‘A launderette? Why in the name of God would anyone want to rob a launderette?’
Steve took a pull on his cigar, clearly enjoying his role as gangster with the inside track – his former terror forgotten for the moment. ‘The launderette was neither here nor there. But there was some geezer living in the flat upstairs who Simeon said kept a load of cash on the premises.’
‘Why didn’t he use a bank?’
‘Search me,’ Steve pulled down the corners of his mouth. ‘Some people like to keep their money close.’
Which suggested two options, thought Janusz: an old timer who, perhaps with good sense, didn’t trust banks – or someone with something to hide. ‘So Simeon gifted this information to you and Jared? Presumably for a cut of the take?’
‘Nope. He didn’t want a penny!’ Steve grinned, revealing a missing tooth in his upper jaw. ‘He called it a “golden hello” – a way of testing us out for a proper job.’ He paused for effect. ‘And he gave us both a piece.’
Janusz stared at him, incredulous. The idea of a criminal gang handing out intelligence and guns without any expectation of a return just didn’t add up. If there really had been easy money on offer, then why would they tip the wink to a lowlife punk like Steve?
‘So, you and Jared broke in and stole this guy’s money?’
‘Yeah. It was a pushover. Some foreign girl let us in, and told us the cash was hidden in the freezer.’
‘Did you have to persuade her?’ growled Janusz.
‘No! As God is my witness.’ As Steve set a skinny hand over his heart, Janusz got an unpleasant jolt to see the letters K.A.S.I.A. tattooed in flowery script across his knuckles.
‘So you got the cash – but why the sudden exit from London? What happened?’
Steve squirmed in his seat, looking anxious. ‘Me and Jared dumped the guns in the canal, but after that we didn’t contact each other for a few days. We was meant to meet up on Sunday to split the cash. So I leave the flat and head back to where I parked the Merc …’
‘You’ve got a Merc?’
‘Nah. The one I nicked to pull the job?’ – his upward inflection indicated this was a statement of the obvious.
‘You kept the getaway car?’
‘It was a Kompressor convertible,’ protested Steve – as if this could justify his stupidity in keeping hold of a stolen car used in an armed robbery. ‘And I didn’t park it near the flat, did I? Anyway, just as I’m going down the road where I left it, I spot a bloke standing there, giving it the once over.’
‘What did he look like?’
‘Stocky geezer’ – Steve sank his head into his shoulders to demonstrate – ‘Around my height. Had a crew cut, red in the face. Ex-army type, you know?’
Janusz frowned: the description sounded a lot like the guy who’d chased him round N1 a few days ago. Who was he? One of Joey Duff’s henchmen?
Steve closed one eye. ‘I had his number, right off.’
‘Is that right.’
‘Yeah, plain clothes copper. Probably Flying Squad.’
‘Really. So that’s why you did a runner? Because you thought the cops were onto you?’
‘Yeah.’ Janusz watched as realisation crept across Steve’s face, like time lapse footage of the sun rising through thick fog. ‘He wasn’t Sweeney, was he?’ he said after a moment. ‘Do you think it was him who killed Jared and Bill – and took Kasia?’
From Steve’s tormented gaze, it was clear to Janusz that the torch he carried for his wife was a long way from extinguished. He felt no sympathy: if it weren’t for this worthless skurwiel, right now, Kasia would be lying next to him, safe at home in bed – instead of out there somewhere, in mortal danger.
He tapped cigar ash into an empty beer can. ‘Whoever he is, I don’t think he’s the one pulling the strings. And your friend Simeon doesn’t strike me as someone at the top of the food chain either. So who does he work for?’
‘No idea,’ said Steve, just a fraction too fast.
Janusz stared at him through the blue fug that had filled the caravan, letting the silence grow for ten or twenty seconds. Steve examined the end of his cigar intently, before reaching for the lighter lying on the table between them.
Janusz’s hand shot out to catch his wrist in an iron grip. ‘Listen to me, you worthless piece of shit. The guy who ordered the raid on that flat is going round torturing and killing your mates. He’s taken Kasia, and if I don’t find where she is, he’ll probably do the same to her.’
He watched Steve’s expression work for a moment or two, before folding in surrender. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you what I know – though I can’t see how it’s gonna help.’
He told Janusz about the day the previous April when Simeon had sought him out down the Pineapple. After the pair had gone outside for a fag, he’d asked if Steve would be interested in shifting a couple of hundred brand-new iPads.
‘I bit his hand off,’ said Steve. ‘Even if I cut Jared in on it, I stood to make an easy couple of grand.’ They agreed a time for Steve to collect the phones from a lock-up garage in Leyton, but in his anxiety not to be late for the appointment, he turned up half an hour early.
‘I was all set to wait in the car, but then I see the garage door’s open. So I go over, but when I get closer I hear two voices. Simeon’s, and someone else I didn’t recognise. He’s doing most of the talking and he sounds properly pissed off.’
‘Pissed off? Why?’
‘He’s telling Simeon that he hates “stupid fuckers like that who play the hero”.’ Steve cocked an eyebrow, seeing if Janusz had got it.
He’d got it all right: the lorry driver who’d refused to open up his wagon to the armed gang.
‘The last thing I hear before I got my arse out of there, is him saying he lost his rag and gave the guy both barrels. Then he laughs and says, “I wonder how long FreightFast keeps paying the stupid twat’s salary.”’
Janusz’s fists clenched reflexively beneath the table.
‘Mind you,’ said Steve, ‘I never breathed a word of this to the cops. I’m no grass.’
‘Yeah, you already said. So the way he was talking, the other guy – did he sound like he was the boss?’
Steve nodded.
‘So what did you do? You wouldn’t want them to know you’d overheard them.’
‘Too fucking right I didn’t. I legged it back to the car. I was about to take off, when a geezer comes out of the lock-up and gets into a four-wheel drive.’
‘Did he see you?’
‘Nah. Thank Christ. I’ve got tinted windows – best four hundred and fifty quid I ever spent.’ He chuckled.
‘Did you get a proper look at him?’
‘Yeah. Big long streak of piss in a leather coat. Never seen him before.’ He shrugged. ‘I told you it wouldn’t be any use.’
‘Let me guess,’ said Janusz. ‘He had a face like a fat lady sat on it, acne scars here’ – he used his fingers to draw stripes down each cheek – ‘and a nose that goes in about three different directions, right?’
The way Steve gazed at Janusz – slack-jawed with amazement – brought to mind an old Polish expression: ‘like a dog that’s been shown a card trick’.
‘Does the name Joey Duff mean anything to you?’ Janusz asked.
‘Well … not really,’ said Steve. ‘The Duff Family used to be a big East End firm, back in the day. Joey was Frankie Duff’s boy, from memory. But I haven’t heard anything about them for … ooh, I dunno – ten, fifteen years?’ He widened his eyes. ‘Are you saying that geezer was Joey Duff?’
Janusz didn’t answer. Steve had confirmed his hunch that Joey Duff was up to his neck in this business, and yet he felt no closer to understanding the chain of events that could have led to him having two men murdered and Kasia abducted. Why would Joey Duff order the raid on the flat over the launderette, only to then come after those he’d tasked with the job?
‘You’re absolutely sure that Simeon didn’t demand a cut
of the money you and Jared stole from the flat?’
‘As God is my witness, he said we could keep it all.’
‘Show me what you took.’
Going into the caravan’s living area, Steve dropped to a crouch and pulled up the edge of the carpet. Reaching into a cavity beneath the floor he retrieved a bulging plastic carrier bag.
Janusz emptied the bag’s contents onto the table. The sexy-dirty smell of used banknotes rose from the pile: some of it in neat single denomination wads secured with elastic bands, some in apparently random amounts in creased envelopes of varying sizes. There was a leather pouch, too, holding a dozen heavy gold coins which Janusz recognised as sovereigns.
He rifled through the envelopes, which had different names and postcodes printed on the outside.
‘Do you know any of these people? Marcus E11 … Amit E15 … Dragomir E15 …?’ There were various initials written alongside each name, too. ‘What about these letters? LB, M, ML, BH, CL …?’
A shake of the head. ‘It’s all Greek to me, mate.’
Janusz sat silent, frowning. The cash reeked of some kind of criminal enterprise – but what exactly? Did the initials stand for the names of working girls? If so, what about that single ‘M’? Or were they some kind of code for different drugs? Giving up on the puzzle, he embarked on a rough and ready tally of the cash. Finding it to be almost entirely made up of twenties and tens, he soon realised it wasn’t as much as he’d been expecting.
‘Where’s the rest of it?’ he growled.
Steve looked surprised. ‘That’s all there is.’
‘But there’s only …’
‘Just over fifteen grand,’ said Steve, with a modest grin.
‘Fifteen grand?’ Janusz stared at him. ‘You’re kidding, right? So once it was split, you and Jared were going to make seven and a half grand each from an armed robbery?’
His grin dissolving, Steve folded his arms. ‘That’s six months’ rent on a bar in Alicante.’
Just as Janusz had suspected, the real reason behind the one-way flights to Spain had been to start a new life abroad – him and Kasia. The guy really was a fantasist.