by Anya Lipska
‘And you’re feeling comfortable with this decision?’
‘Yeah, I think so. I probably never should have gone into firearms in the first place.’ She took a breath, let it out. ‘You were right. I think, after I … got stabbed, I wanted a gun. I wanted to feel safe.’
‘And you don’t feel that way any more?’
‘No. That is, not so much that I’m gonna stay in a job that’s ninety per cent false alarms and ten per cent real action.’ She shrugged. ‘I’m a good shot and I think I could have made a competent firearms officer, but, truthfully? I think I’m a much better detective.’
Paula nodded. ‘So what are your plans?’
‘My old Sarge is pleased with the work I’ve done on a kidnapping case, and he’s got a vacancy coming up on his squad in a couple of months, so fingers crossed.’
‘Of course, even as a detective, you’ll be required to go into potentially dangerous situations from time to time. How will you feel, do you think, doing that without a weapon?’
‘Scared, probably.’ She gave a shrug. ‘But maybe that’s no bad thing. It might make me approach things a bit more cautiously? My Sarge would say about chuffing time.’
They smiled at each other.
‘You were sent to me as a result of the Kyle Furnell incident,’ said Paula. ‘What’s your thinking on that now?’
‘I’m not ashamed of it. I had to shoot him to save my life.’ She waited for Paula to say something – as usual, in vain. ‘But I do wish … I wish I could go back and do things differently.’ Again she saw the image from the TV report, of Kyle’s mum on the courtroom steps, defiant in her fake fur – a woman from a background not unlike hers. A woman whose life had been ripped apart, through no fault of her own.
It struck Kershaw that while she could walk away from that day, from SCO19, and make a fresh start – Kyle Furnell’s mum never could.
‘I’m going to go and see Tanya Furnell,’ she said suddenly.
‘Really? What on earth for?’
It amused Kershaw to see Paula jolted out of her Zen-like professional calm.
‘To try and explain what happened, why I had to shoot that day – or be killed. To … tell her I’m sorry that she lost her son.’
‘And if she doesn’t want to see you?’
A shrug. ‘She can tell me to piss off.’
There was a moment of silence before Paula spoke. ‘Such a visit would be … highly irregular. Especially since the coroner found no fault with the Met’s actions.’ The light reflecting off her specs made it difficult to read her expression, but to Kershaw it sounded like she was reading from the manual, trotting out what the brass would expect her to say. ‘And I’m sure you’re aware that it wouldn’t go down well with your superiors.’
Kershaw suddenly heard something that made her face split in a grin. Something she hadn’t heard in over a year. Her dad’s voice, piping up in her ear.
Sue me, it said.
Forty-Eight
‘What do you fancy for lunch, Janek?’ asked Oskar, peering into an empty fridge.
‘How should I know?’ said Janusz, testily. ‘It’s only eleven o’clock – I’m not hungry.’ Since Kasia had dumped him and disappeared to another country, eleven days earlier, Oskar had more or less moved in, kipping down on the sofa at night. He’d given some story about needing a place to stay, due to unspecified building work at his place in Walthamstow, but Janusz suspected that in truth, his mate wanted to keep an eye on him – something that managed to touch and enrage him at the same time.
He reached past Oskar’s barrel-like figure to retrieve a can of Tyskie from the fridge door. Popping the ring pull, he took a deep draught, welcoming the way the chill fizzy liquid stung his throat.
‘Kurwa, Oskar! Don’t look at me like that,’ he growled. ‘You’re not my mother.’ So what if it was his third or fourth beer of the morning? It was nowhere near enough to get him drunk, just the right amount to tip him into that slightly fuzzy zone which took the edge off his mood.
‘Why don’t I make us some bigos?’ said Oskar, his chubby face lighting up.
Janusz snorted. ‘If it’s anything like the barszcz you served up yesterday, I’ll pass.’ Oskar’s cack-handed attempt at making the classic beetroot soup had left the kitchen looking like the scene of a chainsaw accident.
Seeing his mate’s face fall, Janusz felt like a heel. He knew Oskar was only trying to look out for him, but all he really wanted was to be left alone.
When his phone buzzed, he was tempted to ignore it but seeing Stefan’s name come up on the screen, he changed his mind. Whatever the old rogue might want, any distraction from his mind’s endless circling around the subject of Kasia, the child, what might have been, should have been … was to be welcomed.
‘Easter Greetings!’ said Stefan. Janusz had almost forgotten it was Good Friday. Last year he’d gone to church for evening Mass and to pay his respects to the tableau of Christ’s tomb. No chance he’d been doing that this year – nor ever again, he swore silently.
‘Stefan. What can I do for you?’
‘It’s about the cat.’
‘The cat?’
‘I left a message offering you good money to find him, and you haven’t even had the decency to come and get the details!’
Two possibilities went through Janusz’s head: either Stefan was losing his marbles, or he couldn’t discuss whatever was on his mind over the phone.
‘I’m sorry about that – I’ve been a bit busy.’ He checked the time. ‘I can be there in an hour.’
Draining his can of beer, he went to collect his coat from the sofa. As he picked it up, his gaze snagged on a ladder of paint stripes on the wall behind – the legacy of Kasia’s deliberations over what colour to paint the living room.
‘I’m off out for a bit,’ he told Oskar, who was at the draining board drying up some plates. ‘Leave that,’ he told him, guilt and exasperation vying in his voice, ‘we’re only going to use them again later.’
‘Dobrze,’ said Oskar, his gaze flickering anxiously over Janusz’s face. ‘Will you be back by three?’
‘How should I know?’ he growled. ‘Anyway, what’s happening at three?’
‘Nothing.’
It was a relief to be striding across the Fields, beyond the reach of Oskar’s well-meaning ministrations, although even here there lurked memories ready to trip him up. There was the lime tree under which he and Kasia had sat one hot and humid day last summer, sharing a chilly rectangle of cheesecake from the local sklep. He could still smell the blossom-honeyed air and picture Kasia, long legs scissored neatly before her, cheeks flushed from the sticky embrace of a London heatwave.
Janusz had agreed to meet Stefan at a pub in Wanstead. The old boy had chosen it because it had a van selling seafood in the car park – once a common sight throughout the East End. After getting the drinks in, Janusz joined Stefan in the beer garden, where he sat under a gas-fired heater, a styrofoam tray piled with rollmops and shellfish in front of him.
The old man rubbed his hands together, producing a sound like balsa wood being sanded. ‘Fish on Friday. A happy conjunction of East End and Catholic traditions,’ he pronounced. Using a cocktail stick, he dragged a whelk from its shell, before chewing it with the air of a connoisseur sampling the finest beluga.
‘Are you sure you won’t help me out?’ he asked Janusz, waving at his fishy cornucopia. ‘No? When you reach my age, you’ll discover that food is one of life’s great consolations. My father – God rest his Soul – used to say there weren’t many things you could look forward to doing three times a day until you die.’
Having first asked permission, Janusz lit a cigar, holding it out to one side so his smoke wouldn’t disturb the old man’s meal. ‘So, what’s all this about a cat?’
‘You’ll forgive the fabrication, I hope,’ said Stefan. ‘Excessive caution on my part, no doubt, but the kind of people you’ve come close to have a discourteous habit of eavesdropping on
people’s phone calls.’
Janusz lowered his voice. ‘We’re talking about the Russians? The ones the data stick belonged to.’
‘Quite so.’
‘I thought we’d agreed that subject was closed,’ said Janusz, casting a casual look around: luckily, this early in the day theirs was the only occupied table. ‘They got back what they were looking for and, as far as I’m concerned, that’s the end of it.’
Over the lip of his glass of Guinness, Stefan’s blackcurrant eyes danced. ‘I’m guessing that the person behind the financial transactions detailed on that stick has no desire to see it entering the public domain.’
A mouthful of Janusz’s lager went down the wrong way, provoking a coughing fit. After many hours pondering the chain of events that had led to the murder of the hapless Vasily Vetrov, he could find only one possible explanation of why the gang’s own accountant would risk keeping a private record of such incriminating documents. His conclusion: that Vetrov had decided they might come in useful one day, either as some sort of leverage against his masters, or as an insurance policy in case the cops ever came knocking. In the event, it was Steve and Jared who’d turned up on his doorstep, and he’d had no alternative but to report the robbery to his Russian masters. The Spetsnaz enforcer had been dispatched to investigate, and after Vetrov’s tongue had been loosened, he’d confessed that the robbers had made off with more than just a carrier bag full of cash.
Janusz was sure of one thing: he had no desire to share Vetrov’s fate. Leaning forward, he spoke in a murmur. ‘Look, Stefan: I have no idea who these people are, but I do know they’re completely ruthless. They killed three men, one of them an innocent bystander, to keep that information under wraps.’
If Stefan was surprised, he showed no sign of it. ‘Which is precisely why I wondered whether you mightn’t share my desire to see justice done.’
‘Justice?’ Janusz stared at him. ‘We can hardly phone up the cops and say, by the way, here’s some info on a Russian criminal gang we found on a data stick.’
‘I agree it wouldn’t be safe to share it with the police.’ Stefan speared a couple of brown shrimp. ‘But there may be another way. I don’t know how much you gathered about the documents I decoded?’
Janusz blew cigar smoke out the side of his mouth. ‘This Brunswick Entertainment is obviously a shell company the gang uses to launder dirty money through a string of accounts. The cash mostly gets turned into assets, but one time, somebody needed some cash urgently. Hence the email asking for the transfer of the two hundred thousand euros from the Cyprus bank to a Moscow account.’
Stefan nodded. ‘Direct routes are usually avoided, in case the authorities should ever try to “follow the money”, but on that single occasion, they broke their own rules.’ He locked his penetrating gaze on Janusz. ‘Remember where the email came from? [email protected].’
Janusz nodded.
‘Well, I’ve done a little research,’ said Stefan. ‘MinskTel is a telecoms company based in Belarus, owned by one Nikolai Belyakov. The email address belongs to his younger brother, Sacha, one of the directors.’
‘So this Belyakov, he’s a gangster as well as a businessman?’
Stefan made an eloquent gesture suggesting the imprecision of such distinctions in the Russian context. ‘Organised criminals have been infiltrating the business sector for decades: companies are a useful cover for their extra-curricular activities. You know, in his youth, Nikolai Belyakov fought in Afghanistan’ – he paused to send Janusz a meaningful look – ‘as a member of Spetsnaz.’
The old boy evidently hadn’t forgotten Janusz quizzing him about Russia’s elite special forces. Janusz sensed another piece of the puzzle slipping into place: who else would this Belyakov character call on to sort out a difficult situation but a trusted former comrade in arms?
‘But Stefan, where’s the point in discussing all this?’ he waved his cigar. ‘Even if I wanted to go to the cops – which I don’t – people like Belyakov never get punished.’
‘Certainly, there’s little chance of putting him behind bars.’ Stefan paused, his brown eyes alight with mischief. ‘Except perhaps figuratively.’
Janusz winced – realising he’d let his cigar burn down to his fingers. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Belyakov has been spending a lot of time, not to mention money, in London lately. In the last year, he’s acquired a club in Mayfair and a whole street of Georgian terraces in Ladbroke Grove. His wife adores Harvey Nicks and I hear he’s put his six-year-old, Alexei, down for Harrow School.’
‘How the hell do you know all this?’
Stefan ignored the question. ‘For a man like Belyakov, I suspect being barred from coming here would constitute a cruel and unusual punishment. But he has managed to stay off the list of sanctioned individuals … so far.’
Janusz’s brain scrabbled to catch up. The list imposed on Russia by the international community to dissuade Putin from his covert military activity in Eastern Ukraine had blacklisted hundreds of people close to the regime, freezing their overseas assets and bank accounts, and denying them and their families entry to the USA and Europe.
‘Are you saying that proving he’s a money launderer would be enough to put him on the list?’
‘Yes. And freezing his interests in London would put him in a very tight spot. With the Russian economy in freefall, it might even be the finish of him.’
Janusz grinned. ‘It’s a nice idea, Stefan, but how the hell do you propose pulling it off?’
Stefan removed the paper napkin tucked into his collar and wiped his hands clean. ‘I have friends in high places. Or perhaps I should say, shady places.’
Janusz suddenly remembered where Stefan had worked for sixteen years after the war. ‘You mean … in the intelligence services?’
Stefan opened a gnarled hand in assent. ‘I have a contact, a senior operative in the Russian section, whom I see from time to time. He knows I keep my ear to the ground. And now that relations with the Kremlin are back in the deep freeze, he’s just asked me down to Vauxhall for lunch.’
After studying the old boy’s expression, Janusz decided he was telling the truth. ‘Why are you even telling me all this? Why not simply pass the information on to this contact of yours?’
‘I thought it prudent to speak to you first, to ensure there were no potential repercussions of which I might be unaware.’
Setting his elbows on the tabletop, Janusz massaged his temples, thinking it over. ‘I suppose this Belyakov would never suspect some small-time private eye of having him put on an international blacklist,’ he said, finally.
Stefan nodded. ‘My thoughts exactly. Your name wouldn’t even be mentioned, of course, and the real reasons behind the sanctions would remain entirely secret.’
Getting Belyakov onto the sanctions list would still be a long way short of proper retribution for the mayhem he’d unleashed on the streets of East London, thought Janusz – not to mention the devastation the episode had wrought on his private life. He felt the corners of his mouth start to curl upward. But it would be better than nothing.
‘Stefan?’ He pulled a sudden, savage grin. ‘Be my guest. Give your contact the information. Sanction the skurwysyn.’
Stefan nodded approvingly. ‘A toast then,’ he said, raising his Guinness. ‘Goodbye, Harvey Nicks.’
Raising his pint in response, Janusz pulled a grin. ‘Farewell, Harrow School.’
Forty-Nine
The surge of vengeful elation sparked by Stefan’s proposal had all but dissipated by the time Janusz got back to Highbury.
Opening the door to the apartment, he found the place empty but for Copetka. The cat lay fast asleep, curled into a ginger apostrophe against the dark leather of the IKEA sofa, the one he and Kasia had picked out together just a few weeks ago.
He stood in the silent living room, holding his breath, picturing again the life that they’d planned together; the feelings of loss as sharp today as they had be
en when he saw her walk up the stairs and onto that plane – and out of his life. He understood for the first time what amputees experienced, when they felt the pain of a lost limb.
Going to the fridge, only to find they were out of beer, he heard the downstairs doorbell. Two long rings and one short one. Oskar.
He cursed out loud: he had hoped to have a couple of hours to himself, getting gently soused as the living room darkened around him, enfolded in the cloak of his own misery.
Through the intercom, Oskar said: ‘Sorry, Janek. I forgot my key.’
A minute later, there came a tap at the apartment door. Janusz half opened it, but as he was turning away, he realised something wasn’t right. It wasn’t the stocky outline of Oskar he’d glimpsed silhouetted in the doorway, but that of a tall young man – a stranger.
Nie! Not a stranger. Bobek.
He came in cautiously, gaze lowered, as if unsure of his welcome. For a beat, they stood facing each other. Then Janusz enveloped his son in a bear hug, gripping him so tight he could feel the bony wings of his shoulder blades. For the first time in years, the boy submitted without complaint.
‘Kurwa, Bobek! What are you doing here? Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?’
The boy looked at the floor, wearing an embarrassed half-smile. ‘Mum’s been driving me nuts, so I used my Christmas money to buy a flight. I called Uncle Oskar this morning and he picked me up from Stansted.’
Janusz registered Oskar hovering in the background, a carrier bag of shopping hanging from each fist.
‘You said I could come and stay for Easter,’ the boy said. ‘Is it okay?’
‘Sure, of course. It’s … fine.’ Janusz couldn’t take his eyes off him. When did he get so tall? ‘We’d better phone home to let your mum know you’re safe.’