by Anya Lipska
Back at the parade of shops, as twilight fell, the launderette was empty but for a man watching his clothes tumble dry, so Janusz decided to try his luck at the Polish shop next door. Seeing that the lady behind the counter was a soberly dressed sort in her late fifties, he rapidly reconsidered the direct enquiry he’d been planning, which he knew someone of her generation might view with distrust.
‘Dzien dobry, pani.’ He gave her a respectful nod, before turning his attention to a glass-fronted cabinet filled with cakes. ‘Ah! It’s my lucky day,’ he said, as though to himself.
She sent him a look of polite enquiry.
‘I’m flat hunting in the area,’ he explained. ‘But I never expected to find my favourite cake on sale.’
‘Naprawde? Which one is that?’ A complacent smile hovered around her lips now.
‘The makowiec, of course.’ It was true – since he was a boy he’d always loved the yeasty yellow cake, rolled and stuffed with rich poppyseed paste – and this one really did look a cut above the usual mass-produced stuff. He sent her a playful look. ‘Is it homemade, though, pani?’
‘Naturalnie!’ she said, bridling. ‘Here, try a little.’
After handing him a small slice on a napkin, she pretended to busy herself tidying behind the counter, all the time keeping half an eye on his reaction.
‘Mmm. Smaczny,’ pronounced Janusz, shaking his head. ‘You know, that’s as good as my mama used to make.’ He ordered half a kilo and, as she was cutting it, added, ‘I’ll definitely have to move into the neighbourhood now.’
‘It’s not too bad – for a cheap area,’ she said, turning down the corners of her mouth. ‘Westfield is only a few minutes on the bus.’
‘I heard there’s a flat above the launderette that might be coming up for rent?’
Unspooling some cling film from a catering-sized roll with an expert flourish, she set the rectangle of makowiec on top using a cake slice. ‘That would be where the Russian couple used to live.’
‘Oh yes? Did you know them?’
‘The girl, a little – she had a sweet tooth, like you. A nice girl, Larissa, very quiet. As for the man, Vasily, I only ever saw him when he ran out of cigarettes’ – her lips turned down again, more decisively this time. ‘He was a rude man, and flashy with it, you know the type. Drives a Porsche but lives above a launderette!’
Janusz pulled a mystified face. ‘That is strange. Did the girl say what line of work he was in?’
‘“Accounting”, she said.’ A single lift of her eyebrow intimated that, as a description of his activities, it might prove less than comprehensive. ‘Dobrze,’ she said, moving to the till. ‘That’ll be £4.50, prosze pana.’
He proffered a note. ‘And you’re sure they’ve left now? It’s just that I was hoping to view it, but the agent hasn’t called me back.’
‘Oh yes. Larissa came to say goodbye – terribly upset to be leaving, the poor thing – she said there was a visa problem and they needed to go back home.’ Handing him his change, she went on in a confidential whisper, ‘I’ll tell you something strange, though. That was over a week ago, but yesterday, I happened to see his Porsche, still parked back there in the car park.’
A minute later, Janusz was standing in the block’s underground car park, admiring the hardearned proceeds of accountancy – a new model 911 Cabriolet in custard yellow. Pulling out his phone to snap its registration plate he was just tapping in his pass code when he paused, something suddenly occurring to him.
He dialled Stefan’s number.
‘Stefan? … Have you got anywhere with that password yet?’
Janusz headed back towards the street, still talking. Had he not been so focused on his conversation, he might have noticed that he wasn’t alone. Parked two rows away from the Porsche, partly hidden behind a concrete stanchion, stood a black estate car.
The red-faced man in the driving seat sat utterly still: the only thing that moved were his eyes as they followed the big man in the greatcoat out of the car park.
Thirty-One
‘Like I told your Sergeant, I wanted to bring you along because your chum Kiszka’s got his big mitts all over this business, okay?’
DS ‘Streaky’ Bacon was driving his former protégée Natalie Kershaw through Essex countryside, on their way to interview Katherine Duff, widow of East End gangster Frankie and mother to convicted armed robber Joseph.
‘Yes, Sarge,’ said Kershaw, leaning forward to adjust the control on the passenger air vent – for like, the twentieth time. It would be the first interview she’d attended since leaving murder squad over a year ago and while she wasn’t getting the raw rollercoaster buzz that accompanied an armed op, she was surprised by how excited, how energised, she was feeling.
‘It’s just an informal chat – we’re not interviewing her under caution or anything. So, you keep that gob of yours shut unless I give you the nod.’
‘Sarge.’ She reached out to twist the air control knob again.
‘And leave that chuffing thing alone, will you?’ Streaky sent her a look of amused exasperation. ‘You’re sending my blood pressure up.’
Council records had confirmed Kiszka’s hunch – the Widow Duff was still the official licensee of the Pineapple – thus establishing a link, however tenuous, between the Duffs and Steve Fisher and, more importantly, with his murdered associates. Unfortunately, interviews with the pub’s regulars hadn’t proved especially productive – or, as Streaky had put it to Kershaw, less diplomatically, ‘The fucking Cockneys are sticking together like shit to a blanket.’
Meanwhile, the pressure had just cranked up another notch. Nathan King’s full post-mortem on Jared Bateman had revealed subcutaneous bruising suggesting his wrists had been bound at the moment of his ‘accidental’ electrocution. Although his burns weren’t as extensive as those found on Bill Boyce – probably because he’d died of a heart attack before the torture properly got going – the two cases were now being treated as a double murder investigation. Except now, the prime suspect was no longer Steve Fisher, but Joseph Francis Duff. And without a single lead as to his likely whereabouts, Streaky had decided it was time to put the screws on his mother.
He turned the car onto a driveway, between two tall redbrick pillars surmounted by statues of lions – their grandeur somewhat undermined by being made of newly cast cement.
‘Do you think the Duff family firm really had shut up shop, till Joey came back from Australia?’ asked Kershaw.
‘I’m not so sure,’ said Streaky. ‘I’m starting to think that maybe Kath Duff kept things going on the QT all these years. She’s no shrinking violet, that’s for sure. One of the retired guys was telling me she got spotted once, luring a rival gangster into a car outside a pub in the Mile End – thirty years ago, this was. A few weeks later, his remains were found stuffed in a suitcase, floating in the River Lea.’ Streaky sprayed breath freshener into his mouth. ‘She was never charged, of course.’
‘How come?’
‘The witness had a nasty attack of sudden onset amnesia, no doubt connected with the injuries he sustained while falling down the stairs.’
‘He was nobbled.’
‘No shit, Ms Marple.’
Kershaw grinned: although he was being sarky, it felt good hearing him use her old nickname.
‘But you think it was Joey who took the firm back into the armed robbery game.’
‘The timing certainly fits with his return from Oz.’
She narrowed her eyes. ‘So we reckon Duff hires Steve and his mates to do some job, but when he comes to collect his share, he finds Steve’s done a runner.’
‘Leaving Steve’s mates up to their necks in the proverbial. What does the torture of Boyce and Bateman say to you?’
‘That Joey was desperate to find out where Steve was hiding with the loot.’
Streaky grunted his agreement. ‘It must run in the family. Frankie wasn’t averse to a bit of torture, back in the day. His favoured method was elec
tric shocks to the privates using an old army field telephone, if memory serves.’
Kershaw stared out at the greenery speeding past for a moment. ‘Sarge? You think Janusz Kiszka was right all along, don’t you – about Kasia being abducted?’
Streaky nodded. ‘Yes, but not by her husband – by Joey Duff.’
She pictured Kiszka’s face when she’d more or less told him that his girlfriend was a gangster’s moll who’d done a runner with her criminal boyfriend. As usual, his expression hadn’t given much away, but there had been the hint of something behind his hooded eyes that she couldn’t remember seeing there before: vulnerability. The memory made her wince. Nice one, Natalie.
Leaving the car in an otherwise empty parking area to one side of the house, they crunched across the gravel towards the front of the building, Streaky brushing debris off the shoulders of his brown pinstripe suit.
‘Do you think she’ll give us anything, Sarge?’ she murmured.
‘Probably not,’ he admitted, breezily. ‘But sometimes it’s worth turning the gas up under villains, just to see them dance.’
Kershaw would be the first to admit she knew sweet FA about architecture – but she knew crap taste when she saw it. She was taking in the Duff residence’s Disney-style turrets and Provençal window shutters, when she caught a movement at one of the windows, the fleeting impression of a man, fair-haired – Sebastian Duff. At the massive oak front door, Streaky rang the bell. Before the deep chimes had faded away, the door opened to reveal not some flunky, but the lady of the house herself.
Katherine Duff wore a canary yellow silk suit with serious shoulder pads over a black blouse, gold hoops in her ears to match her strappy gold sandals – and an expression that could curdle cream.
‘DS Bacon and PC Kershaw, ma’am,’ said Streaky. ‘I think you’re expecting us?’
‘Take your shoes off,’ she snapped, before turning to walk away. The hallway was carpeted two inches deep in cream wool, gilt mirrors either side throwing back a gallery of reflections, reproducing the three of them over and over till they became too tiny for Kershaw to make out.
‘What’s all this about then?’ demanded Katherine Duff, settling into a throne-like armchair covered in striped chintz. She ignored Kershaw, focusing solely on Streaky. ‘I thought your lot had finally given up harassing me after my Frankie died, God rest his Soul.’ She touched a fist bristling with gold beneath her nose as if to staunch tears.
‘Actually, it’s your son we’re interested in, Mrs Duff.’
Her face contracted with hostility. ‘My Sebastian? That boy’s as straight as a die – he’s got a City and Guilds in hospitality management.’ Her voice was low, roughened by decades of smoking – a nicotine habit she hadn’t quite kicked, judging by the long black and silver vape pen on the arm of her chair.
‘I meant your eldest son. Joey.’
‘Joseph is in Australia,’ she said, studying a coral-painted fingernail. ‘He went there three years ago. He works in the motor trade, in Queensland. I haven’t seen him since.’
Yeah, right, thought Kershaw: her reply was so off pat she might as well have been reading from an autocue. Letting her gaze drift around the room, she noticed a large oil painting in an elaborate gilt frame above the marble fireplace. A boy of about fourteen, dark-haired, gazed out of the picture, hands set on his hips. The painter had given him unnaturally blue eyes, and a hundred-yard stare that, together with the heroic pose, predicted a date with destiny. At his feet sat a much younger boy, white-blonde, perhaps four or five years old, who was depicted gazing up at his older brother adoringly. Joseph and Sebastian Duff.
Streaky was scratching his neck, acting dumb. ‘Three years, you say? Did you and him have a falling-out then?’
‘No.’
‘So you’d say you get on with him?’
‘We talk on Skype all the time. We’re a very close family.’ Her eyes looked like bits of tarmac, black and glittering.
‘I’m sure you are,’ said Streaky, all sincerity. ‘Which is why I’m finding it hard to understand why your first-born would come back to London and not look up his dear old mum.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
Way too fast, thought Kershaw. She knew all right.
Streaky opened his notebook. ‘According to passport control records, Joseph Duff re-entered the country via Heathrow Airport on the 16th of January last year.’
‘Rubbish. They’ve made a mistake.’ She was fiddling with the vape pen now, no doubt gagging for a puff.
‘No mistake, Mrs Duff.’ An edge had entered Streaky’s voice. ‘I’m afraid we need to speak to your son as a matter of the utmost urgency. It’s in relation to a double murder investigation.’
‘Murder? Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘I’m afraid so. You must have heard about Bill Boyce and Jared Bateman?’
‘Never heard of them.’ She directed a bored stare past Streaky.
‘Really? Two of your best regulars down the Pineapple?’
Her eyes flickered over his face. ‘I’m never down there any more – I’m enjoying my retirement,’ she pulled an icy little smile.
‘That’s funny,’ said Streaky, consulting his notebook again, ‘I’ve got an eyewitness who puts you behind the bar the day after Jared Bateman got himself electrocuted. A death which we now believe involved foul play.’
She opened her mouth – lipsticked coral to match the nail polish – about to say something, before stopping herself.
‘So I have to ask you again for any information you have regarding your son’s whereabouts.’
‘I told you, I haven’t seen him in years.’ Kershaw watched as Katherine Duff writhed self-righteously in her chair – working herself up into one, as her nan would have described it. ‘I’ve got nothing to hide – which is why I agreed to you coming here in good faith. But now I’m asking you to leave.’
Streaky gave a single, sorrowful shake of his head. ‘You’re aware, I’m sure, Mrs Duff, of the Proceeds of Crime Act?’
‘Oh, I’m aware of it, all right. It’s a legalised extortion racket where your lot takes money off hard-working people without an ounce of proof.’
‘Oh yes,’ smiled Streaky. ‘It slipped my mind. The courts awarded against you after Joey went down, didn’t they? Took just over four hundred grand off you, which the judge deemed to be the illegal proceeds of organised crime.’
‘A fucking disgrace is what I call it.’ Kershaw watched, fascinated, as Katherine Duff ranted on, flecks of spit collecting in the corners of her mouth. ‘We earned every penny of that money above board in our pubs and clubs but your lot never stop persecuting me and my family.’
Streaky gave her a beatific smile. ‘Sadly, the court didn’t share your view, Mrs Duff. In any event, since I am sure your current finances are all perfectly legitimate, I’m sure you wouldn’t object if the Fraud Squad decided to mount another inquiry into your financial affairs?’
She glared at him, speechless for once.
Acting on a sudden impulse, Kershaw leaned over to Streaky, and said under her breath, ‘Sorry Sarge, I forgot I’ve got to make an urgent call. I’ll just pop out to the car. Excuse me, ma’am.’
He opened a file on his lap. ‘Now, I’ve got a little list of your son’s former contacts and girlfriends, and old addresses …’
Streaky hadn’t missed a beat, but she could tell he was wondering what the hell she was up to – this wasn’t in the script. As for the Widow Duff, she had a death stare locked on Streaky and didn’t even glance up as Kershaw left the room.
Returning to the entrance hall, she opened the front door but, instead of stepping outside, she counted one, two, three to herself – before shutting it noisily.
Padding over the thick carpet to the bottom of the wide staircase, she put her foot on the first step – and froze. The last time she’d done something like this, she’d ended up with six inches of steel in her gut. This is totally different, she told herself:
how much harm could come to her with the Sarge right next door? Dry-mouthed, and missing the pressure of a Glock holstered on her hip, she forced herself to climb the stairs.
On the first floor landing, she started trying the door handles of rooms at the front of the house. She found bedrooms, expensively wallpapered, windows hung with elaborate swags of pastel satin – all of them empty and smelling of air freshener.
Until she opened the third door.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ A man’s voice, tetchy-sounding, came from behind the cream silk drapes of a large four-poster bed.
‘Christ, I’m really sorry. I was just looking for the loo.’
He pulled a drape aside to check out the intruder, revealing a raspberry-red face under pale blonde hair. ‘It’s at the end of the corridor. Anyway, there are two bathrooms downstairs.’
‘Of course, silly of me,’ she said. Then, with a sympathetic expression, ‘That looks painful. Dodgy sun bed …?’
‘You could say that,’ he said, falling back on the pillows.
The irony in his voice suggested some hidden meaning that Kershaw couldn’t interpret. ‘They’re rubbish, some of them, aren’t they? I had the same thing happen once.’
‘Really? How long did it last?’
‘The pain goes after a day or so, but you’ll be peeling for ages, I’m afraid.’ She drifted a bit closer to the bed, taking in the blisters on the guy’s shoulders. ‘And you’re really fair skinned, like me. I have to use factor 50 all over on holiday.’
‘Me too – and wear a hat.’ He pulled himself up to a sitting position with a wince. ‘Are you here to see my mother?’
Obviously bored shitless and glad of the company.
‘Yes. I’m a cop.’ She braced herself for a hostile response.
Instead, he rolled his eyes. ‘What a surprise.’
‘Why do you say that?’
He gave a little hoot of laughter. ‘When I was a kid, the police called more often than the Jehovah’s Witnesses. I lost count how many times I had my bedroom turned upside down. Till I got sent to boarding school, that is.’