by Anya Lipska
Janusz grunted – he was thinking precisely the same thing. ‘Listen, Stefan,’ he said. ‘If your heart’s set on dying peacefully in your sleep one day, I’d advise you to erase those documents from your computer and forget you ever saw them.’
Stefan unplugged the data stick, chuckling. ‘It’s a bit late for me to start fretting about my mortality. As my father used to say: “I’m old, my book is already closed.”’ Handing Janusz the oversized bullet, he caught his hand in both bony paws. His touch was warm and papery, oddly comforting. ‘You, on the other hand, would be wise to proceed with extreme caution. You’re a young man, with half your life still to live.’
Halfway across the garden he glanced back at Stefan, who was standing now, feeding the birds from a plastic bag. Raising his stick in a valedictory gesture, the old boy called out: ‘Don’t forget our agreement!’
Back outside, Janusz crossed the road to George Green and put some distance between him and the main road before calling his mate Tomek at Haven Insurance.
‘Czesc, Tomek … You know the final paperwork I was going to send in on Wojtek Raczynski? Well, I’ve just had some news from the rest home where he stays. I’m afraid the old boy has “kicked the calendar” …’ He gazed up into the budding branches of the ancient oaks. ‘Dobrze. Yes, it was quite sudden. Haven will be formally notified, of course, but I thought I’d let you know so you can terminate his annuity payments straight away … It’s a pleasure. And Tomek? I’m sorry, but I’m afraid my other commitments forbid me from taking on any more work in the foreseeable future … It’s a great shame, yes. It’s been good working with you, too.’
As he cast a final look across the road at the home’s Gothic facade, Janusz thought of the lives within, picturing the faces of the old people he’d come across during his visits to the place. Sometimes, he reflected, doing the not-quite-honourable thing was the only honourable thing to do.
Thirty-Six
That night, Kershaw was already in her pyjamas and standing over the kettle in her kitchen, when her mobile sounded.
‘What are you doing?’
Streaky. Calling from a car.
‘Uh, making a cup of cocoa, Sarge.’
‘What, at ten past ten?’ He sucked his teeth disapprovingly. ‘Young people today. Well, you’d better down it in one, Ms Marple, ’cos I’m on my way to pick you up. And Kershaw?’
‘Sarge?’
‘When you answer the door, make sure you’re decent. I’ve got a weak heart.’
Before she even had a chance to ask what it was all about, he’d rung off.
Kershaw had only just pulled on her boots when she heard the throaty growl of a car engine outside. Downstairs she discovered Streaky in the passenger seat of a BMW pursuit vehicle with a uniformed driver: wherever they were going, he wanted to get them there fast. But since he spent the next few minutes giving the driver directions, all she could do was speculate, fidgeting with frustration, in the back seat. The M11 was mentioned, which could mean they were heading back to Katherine Duff’s mansion in Ongar – or maybe to the Forest Sanctuary Hotel in Epping?
It was only once they were accelerating up the ramp to the motorway that Streaky finally deigned to fill her in.
‘So there I was, sitting in the Moon having a quiet pint, trying to decide whether to go for an Indian or a Turkish’ – this thrown over his shoulder from the front passenger seat – ‘when I get an email. It’s the mobile phone company sending me the call records for “Gerald Doherty” – or as we know and love him, Joseph Francis Duff.’
Streaky delved a hand into his coat pocket, but instead of the phone records Kershaw was expecting, he produced two packets of peanuts, before lobbing one backwards in her general direction.
‘You mean they’ve got a location for him?’
‘Looks like it.’ He broke off to remind the driver, Aaron, to take the first exit, for Loughton, before continuing. ‘It seems our pal Joey did spend time at his mum’s hotel last week, after all. And they speak on the phone every day. Must have slipped the old girl’s mind.’
‘Is that where we’re going?’
Streaky shook his head. ‘Two days ago, in the early hours, he was on the move again.’
‘Sounds like something spooked him,’ said Kershaw, recalling Kiszka’s admission that he’d checked out the Forest Sanctuary Hotel a couple of days back.
‘Apparently.’
‘So, where is he now?’ Kershaw raised her voice over the engine’s growl as they dropped into a lower gear, descending the exit ramp.
‘Well, the bad news is, shortly after leaving the hotel, he turned his phone off. Must be getting paranoid.’ Streaky threw a handful of peanuts into his mouth, taking his time to dispatch the mouthful.
‘And the good news?’ she prompted – struggling to keep the exasperation out of her voice.
‘This morning, just after 0900 hours he turns it on again, to call his dear old mum. Only for a couple of minutes, but long enough for his phone to start talking to nearby mobile masts. Lucky for us, there were enough masts within range to triangulate his calls. It’s not perfect, but it should get us to within a hundred metres of his location.’
‘Are you going to tell me where the fuck we’re going, or what?’ Kershaw caught Aaron’s shocked gaze in the rear view mirror.
Streaky, though, just gave her an innocent look ‘Oh, didn’t I say? He’s in Epping Forest.’
An unusually quiet night at Walthamstow nick had allowed the Sarge to borrow a fast car and trained driver, which meant they reached the forest’s eastern fringe, where Joey Duff had used his mobile that morning, in just thirteen minutes. The plan was to try to discover Duff’s hiding place and, if he was still there, to call in backup before going in. ‘Quicker than getting the Essex boys to check it out,’ he told her with a significant look. ‘Even if they made it a priority, which I doubt, the last thing I need is a bunch of uniforms trampling all over a potential scene.’
As they plunged into the forest, the probing beam of the car headlights seemed to carve a tunnel out of the bare branches overhead, the dense undergrowth either side. ‘We’re looking for an abandoned electricity substation,’ Streaky told Aaron, consulting his phone. ‘There should be an unpaved road on the right in about half a mile.’ He turned to Kershaw. ‘It’s the only possible hideaway around here so far as I can see – unless he’s sleeping in a tent.’
‘Do you think he’s still got Kasia – out here in the middle of nowhere?’
‘No idea,’ he sighed. ‘But it’s all we’ve got to go on.’
A minute or two later, they spotted the overgrown entrance to a dirt road leading into the forest; fifty metres further on, Aaron pulled onto the verge and killed the engine. There was a moment in which all Kershaw could hear was the tick of cooling metal, before Streaky opened his door. As she went to follow suit, he turned to her – clearly about to tell her to stay put – but on seeing the look in her eyes, he just gave a nod.
They walked back along the verge, the woods to their left an impenetrable black, the only illumination the moonlight reflecting off the asphalt surface of the road. The going was soft and uneven and Kershaw was glad she’d chosen to wear her sturdiest boots. When they reached the dirt road, Streaky signalled her to stop.
‘This is as far as you go.’ This time, his expression brooked no objection. ‘Got your Airwaves on?’ Double-checking her radio, she nodded. ‘Okay. I’ll go ahead, have a little butcher’s. If you hear anything untoward, no schoolgirl heroics, okay? You toddle on back to the car and tell Aaron to radio for backup.’
It only took a minute or two for the darkness to swallow up Streaky’s outline. Until that moment she’d felt only a surging, restless excitement, but now there came a backwash of anxiety. It wasn’t so much for the Sarge – she couldn’t really think of him as anything other than indestructible – but for Kasia, who might be just metres away, right now – her life hanging in the balance, in the hands of the ruthless crimina
l holding her.
Straining to hear any sound from the velvet-dark depths of the forest, all she could make out was a faint wind susurrating through the trees, punctuated by the occasional distant cry of some nocturnal animal. ‘Come on,’ she muttered to herself, desperate to follow Streaky, find out what was going on. What stopped her wasn’t the fear of what might await her in the darkness, but the knowledge that by staying put, she’d be in a better position to raise the alarm.
When her radio issued a burst of static, she jumped like she’d got an electric shock.
‘Kershaw. All clear here.’ She could tell from Streaky’s voice that he’d found something. Kasia?
She jogged down the dirt road, heart bumping, zigzagging around potholes. Reaching the end of the road, she saw the outline of the disused substation. It was a sinister sight: so heavily overgrown with ivy that it looked like it had been struck by some ancient vegetal tsunami. On the six-foot-high chain link fence surrounding it were hung faded signs with red lightning bolts, and fresher ones that warned ‘DO NOT ENTER! UNSTABLE AND HAZARDOUS STRUCTURE.’
Through the undergrowth, she glimpsed Streaky in the building’s doorway, waving her towards a point in the fence. Groping along it, a whole section gave under her hand: someone had cut out a makeshift door – and very recently, judging by the bright glint of the wire’s cut ends. Stepping through it, she followed a rough path trodden through the ramparts of buddleia and stinging nettles.
At the door, she found Streaky on his Airwaves talking to Essex Police control room.
‘Kasia?’ she mouthed.
He shook his head.
Shit. Kershaw exhaled, realising that she’d been holding her breath for the last minute or so.
‘What about Duff?’
‘Gone to a better place,’ said the Sarge out of the side of his mouth.
‘What the …?’ Kershaw was gobsmacked – Joey Duff was dead?
But the Sarge was talking again, asking for roadblocks on routes out of the forest. Too impatient to wait, she went past him into the substation interior.
Inside, a cluster of dim shapes leapt to life under the light from her phone screen – the station’s defunct electrical apparatus, furred with decades of dust, which took up most of the interior. The place smelled of … dead electricity – if there was such a thing. On the floor she made out footsteps in the dust, leading towards an inky black rectangle – a doorway.
At the threshold, she paused, feeling the hairs on her arms prickle upright – before forcing herself to go on. Her phone screen dimmed, choosing that moment to conserve power, and she blundered into something hard. Cursing, she tapped the phone back to life, illuminating a metal filing cabinet. She could hear a faint sound. Dap … dap … dap a couple of seconds apart. The sound of dripping.
She directed the faint blue light of her phone towards the source of the sound. Out of the blackness sprung the outline of a hanged man. Her hand shot to her mouth. Breathing fast, she stepped closer. Recognised the greasy-looking mullet and flattened features of Joey Duff, darkened with blood. He was hanging from a high barred window, wrists bound in front of him with plastic ties.
Dap … dap. Playing the light downward, she saw a single drip fall from the toe of his trainer onto the tiled floor below: remembered from her pathology module at uni that hanging victims often soiled themselves.
It was a relief to hear Streaky approaching, holding a pocket torch.
‘Let’s get him down,’ he said.
Streaky manhandled the filing cabinet over from the opposite wall, before fishing inside his coat and handing her a pair of latex gloves.
‘Showtime,’ he grinned, meshing his hands to give her a leg-up.
Using the penknife he handed up to her, Kershaw started to saw at the thick leather belt Duff was hanging from, trying to concentrate on getting the job done as fast as possible. It wasn’t easy, with the still-warm body pressed intimately against her, the ammonia waft of urine in her nostrils, trying to ignore the purple face bobbing just inches from hers. And the width and thickness of the belt made the job even more difficult. When she’d got halfway through the leather, she paused, her raised arms starting to ache. Streaky, who was holding the bottom half of the body steady, shifted his position, causing the ligature around Duff’s throat to slacken its grip a fraction. A sound like a sigh escaped Duff’s lips. Kershaw ignored it. Having heard cadavers moan before, she knew it was just the last bit of air leaving the lungs, passing over the vocal cords.
It took her another ten seconds of sawing to reach the last few fibres, the body shifting and twisting as the Sarge took more of the weight from below. Finally, as the last strand of leather gave way, the belt flew loose. Something made her glance sideways at Joey Duff’s face. His eyelids flickered, then snapped open – and he fixed her with a bloodshot stare.
Christ on a bike!
After that, everything went into fast-forward: Duff started to hyperventilate with a harsh rasping sound, Streaky shouting, ‘I’ve got him, I’ve got him!’ After a moment of horrified paralysis, Kershaw jumped down to help.
Once Duff was on the deck and in the recovery position he lapsed back into unconsciousness, but his breathing – although hoarse – remained regular.
‘Just as well,’ Streaky told Kershaw as they stared down at him. ‘If he carks it, it won’t be me giving him the chuffing kiss of life, I can tell you.’
Fifteen minutes later, an ambulance was ferrying Joey Duff away down the dirt road, its blue lights flickering against the trees.
‘He got the same treatment as Bill Boyce, didn’t he?’ asked Kershaw.
When the paramedics had torn open Duff’s shirt to affix sensors to his chest, they had exposed angry-looking welts extending from his abdomen down beyond the waistband of his jeans. ‘Yep,’ said the Sarge. ‘The torture, the mocked-up hanging – it looks like the same MO. Except this time, the killer screwed up.’
They’d pieced together the puzzle of Joey Duff’s lucky escape. After torturing Duff, presumably in a bid to extract information, the killer had tied his wrists and strung him up. But he must have been in a hurry, because when he’d left, Duff was still alive – just. A single nail they found protruding from the wall behind him may have provided a minute but critical heel hold which, together with the inefficient ligature made by the chunky leather belt, had bought Duff a few extra precious minutes of air.
‘Takes a lot to kill a man,’ mused Streaky. ‘Especially a scumbag like Duff.’
‘He couldn’t have been up there long though, could he, Sarge?’ She looked up at him. ‘Do you think we just missed the boat?’
Streaky’s grimace said it all. They both knew what that meant: if they’d arrived earlier, Kasia might be safe by now.
Beyond the substation’s perimeter fence they found a freshly crushed patch of undergrowth, suggesting a struggle – Kershaw hoped it was Kasia, putting up a fight against whoever took her – but beyond that, nothing. There were no obvious tyre tracks on the dirt road, and the only other way out would involve navigating a route through the forest’s tracks and paths, which would be quite a feat – even by daylight and without a hostage.
Kershaw was still getting her head round the abrupt change of direction the case had taken. If it hadn’t been Joey Duff who had murdered Steve’s mates, then who? And where the hell was Kasia?
‘D’you think Fisher could be behind it all, Sarge?’
‘No chuffing idea. Right now we can’t even prove positively that Kasia was here.’ Streaky handed her a pouch containing a protective suit. ‘Forensics won’t get here for hours. Why should they have all the fun, anyway?’
Kershaw grinned: for all his old lag banter, Streaky was a grafter and he wasn’t about to delay the hunt for Kasia Fisher just so they could get a few hours’ sleep. They started to search the substation interior using torches and the light from a high-wattage lamp that the Sarge had hung from the ceiling.
It took them over an hour to sweep t
he building, by which time their once-white suits were streaked and mottled with dust. Streaky straightened and, digging both hands into the small of his back, stretched out his spine.
Kershaw wiped sweat from her forehead with the back of her sleeve. ‘She’s got to have been here, Sarge.’
‘If I’m going to persuade the office wallahs to fund a national manhunt, I probably need something a bit more solid than woman’s intuition.’
‘We’ve got this,’ Kershaw picked up the evidence bag holding the empty water bottle she’d found. ‘Her DNA might be on it.’
‘Maybe,’ he sighed. ‘It all takes time though, and I’m not sure Kasia has a lot more of that commodity.’
Kershaw returned to the corner where the decades-deep dust showed signs of being slept on – the spot where they suspected Kasia had spent the last two days and nights – and tried to think herself into Kasia’s headspace. Seven days a prisoner, terrified, probably drugged – but surely not the whole time. She must have been conscious now and again in order to eat and drink – might even have witnessed Duff’s murder, just a few metres away. Treading carefully in her plastic shoe covers, Kershaw played the torchbeam over the wall, in the faint hope of finding something, perhaps a word or message scrawled there. Come on, Kasia, she urged, silently. You’re a smart girl. Surely you’d have left something for us?
Nothing.
She dropped to a crouch, focusing on the foot of the wall. The walls, painted an institutional green, ended in a narrow strip of skirting board. The filler between wall and wood had shrunk over the years, leaving a narrow, meandering crack. Kershaw trained the beam of her torch on this gap, moving along it centimetre by centimetre.
By the time she shuffled the length of the sleeping area, her thigh muscles were screaming. And then she saw it.
‘Sarge. I think I’ve got something.’
Thirty-Seven
If Kershaw had been expecting any gratitude from Kiszka for the progress they’d made in the search for his girlfriend, she was in for a disappointment.