Where the Devil Can't Go (33 page)

“Forty-five?” said Janusz, puzzled.

“Old enough to remember the SB, the ZOMO – that whole bunch of bastards, then?”

“Yeah, I remember them.”

The cop tapped ash off his cigarette, “My father lost his job at Gdansk University for refusing to inform on his students,” he said. “When the time came for me to apply to university, I found my family was designated undesirable, so I was refused a place.”

Janusz gave a sympathetic nod: it wasn’t an uncommon story.

“So, it’s like this,
kolego
,” said the cop looking him straight in the eyes. “Struk was just an old man who fell down the stairs: it happens all the time. We conducted extensive enquiries but found no evidence of foul play.” He threw his spent cigarette down. “Of course, it’s possible somebody
did
give the old bastard a shove,” he ground the butt underfoot. “But you know what? Maybe the world’s a better place with one less
esbek
in it.”

Pulling open the lapel of Janusz’s trench coat, he tucked the passport into his shirt pocket. “Your little holiday in the lakes is over. We’re taking you to the airport – if you want any of your stuff from the hotel we’ll get it sent on to you.”

Suddenly remembering his plan to go and see Bobek tomorrow, Janusz felt a blast of disappointment, followed by a back draft of guilt. He’d have to call Marta from the airport and make a grovelling apology.

When they were back in the car, the boss cop craned around and locked his gaze on Janusz: “My colleague, Osip here, has agreed not to bring charges against you for assaulting a police officer,” he said. “But if he should change his mind, you’re looking at ten years in Mokotow Prison.”

Osip turned and gave Janusz a murderous look, revealing a jaw line that was swollen and already turning an impressive shade of purple.

“So when you do decide to look for that holiday home, it had better not be anywhere round here,” said the cop.

“I’d try Bulgaria,” he advised, turning to face forward as Osip started up the engine. “Everyone says it’s the next big thing.”

TWENTY-FIVE

The morning after Janusz slugged a Gorodnik cop, Kershaw was standing in her kitchen watching an overalled engineer fix the boiler, when her mobile rang.

It was her cousin Jason, calling to tell her that Janusz Kiszka’s name had popped up on a flight in-bound for Stansted, scheduled to arrive in twenty minutes. Getting Jason, who worked in Special Branch, to slip Kiszka’s name onto a watch list after his dawn flit to Poland had probably been the riskiest thing Kershaw had ever done, but she’d told herself that she didn’t have the time for the snowstorm of paperwork an official request would involve.

Now, tearing up the M11 in her five-year-old Ford Ka, her eyes kept flicking to the clock on the dashboard. She had no chance of reaching the airport before the plane was due to land, but she was hoping that the watch list mention would get Kiszka a thorough grilling, long enough for her to get there before he cleared customs and disappeared. Of course, he
might
simply be heading home to his gaff in Highbury, but after losing him once she wasn’t taking any chances.

By the time she reached the terminal, it was fifteen minutes past the flight’s scheduled arrival time, so she dumped the car right outside arrivals, hazard lights flashing, threw her Met logbook on the dashboard and raced inside.

Trying to get her breath back – how long had it been since she’d been for a proper run, four, five weeks? – she lurked at the end of the cordon of people waiting outside customs, restless friends and family interspersed with somnolent minicab drivers holding up name placards.

Twenty-five minutes later, she was starting to think she might have missed him, when his craggy mug appeared, towering above the crowd. He wore an old trench coat and his only baggage was a pair of carrier bags bulging with booze and cigarette cartons. Although the bruises to his face appeared to be fading, he seemed to have acquired a new lump the size of a creme egg on his right temple.

She scurried alongside him, uninvited, as he made for the exit.

“Welcome back, Mr Kiszka,” she said – a greeting he met with a grunt. “Listen,” she said to him, scampering to keep up as he lengthened his stride. “The way I see it you’ve got two options: you come down the station and get stuck in an interview room for hours on end, or, I drive you back to town and we clear up all my questions on the way.” He slowed a little. “It’s a good offer,” she said reasonably. “An off the record chat and a lift home has got to beat a day wasted down the nick.” He slowed, sending her a look of hostility tinged with resignation.

She opened the boot for his clinking bags of booze, “Been stocking up on the vodka, have you?” she asked, smiling, trying to break the ice. “I don’t drink
wodka
,” he said unsmilingly, “I don’t like the taste.”

She rolled her eyes at his cliff-like back and opened the doors.
Fuck me
, she thought,
this is going to be hard work
.

Kurwa!
thought Janusz as he climbed into the tiny car, forty minutes with a stupid little
dziwka
who probably thinks Chopin was French.

Kershaw decided to keep her gob shut till they were off the airport perimeter and on the M11. She stayed on the inside lane – if she could just keep her speed down, she’d have more time to grill him.

“There’s been a breakthrough on the dead girl found in the Waveney Thameside,” she said. “Your friend,
Yu-steena Kosh-lov-ski
,” framing her lips carefully around the unfamiliar sounds to get the pronunciation right this time. She cut her eyes across to Kiszka to see if there was any reaction.
Nada.
“We’ve got footage of her in the hotel lift with a man that night.”

Janusz grunted derisively: “Finally got round to checking the CCTV, did you?” he said, looking out of the window.

Don’t rise to the bait
, she thought. “It was harder to get than you might imagine,” she said, keeping her tone mild. “Anyway, the good news is that we have a clear image of the guy, and it isn’t you.”

“No shit,” he said, still looking at the view of Essex. “I told you that last week.”

He put a cigar to his lips, remembering just in time to ask “It’s OK if I..?” – English people were real health freaks about smoking.

“No problem,” she said, wondering with irritation how long it would be before the upholstery lost the smell of stale smoke.

Even if Kiszka had nothing to do with Justyna’s death, Kershaw still had a powerful feeling that he had
something
to hide – and she only had about half an hour to find out what.

“Do you know if Justyna did drugs?” she asked, fiddling with her rear view mirror. “You know, just the soft stuff, like
Ecstasy
, that kind of thing?” In its new position, the mirror let her keep an eye on Kiszka’s face.

“
Soft
stuff?” Janusz snorted, “Do you know what psychoactive drugs do to seratonin production in the long-term?” Pretending not to notice her mirror gambit, he resolved to stay on his guard and, above all, to keep his temper this time.

Kershaw gripped the steering wheel: “Well, as a
police officer,
I am fully aware of the dangers of synthetic drugs,” she said. “But you certainly seem to know a lot about Ecstasy”.

As she accelerated hard to pass a dawdling car, he shot out a hand to grab the strap above his door.
Kurwa!
The girl was worse than Oskar!

“I read physics and chemistry at university in Poland before I came over here,” he replied, speaking to his window.

Kershaw recalled the pile of New Scientist mags in his kitchen. A chemistry degree would certainly come in handy for producing drugs, but then why volunteer the information?

“You see, Justyna died from an overdose of something called PMA,” she said, “a nasty little drug cooked up by backstreet amateurs.”

“I’ve never heard of it,” he said, shifting around, trying to make himself comfortable in the tiny seat.

“It’s made out of a compound called anethole – ring any bells?”

He shook his head.

“Did Justyna ever talk about taking drugs?” she persisted.

He turned to look at her. “I would bet my apartment that Justyna never in her life took anything stronger than aspirin,” he said.

My apartment,
Kershaw noted – he
owned
that place on Highbury Fields? It had to be worth getting on for a million. All the same, going by his expression, he appeared untroubled by her questions. So what the hell
was
his connection to hatman – and Justyna’s death?

A white van veered in from the outside lane, cutting her up so badly she had to slam the anchors on, before it sped away.

“What about the people she hung out with?” she persisted.

Feeling the car accelerate as the girl pulled into the fast lane, Janusz tightened his grip on the door-strap. He didn’t answer for a moment, preoccupied with her mention of anethole. It made him think of children’s sweets, of all things.
Sherbet? No. Liquorice, for some reason.

“She didn’t strike me as the type to hang out with druggies,” he said finally, which was more or less true – her contact with Adamski had been solely a result of her friendship with Weronika, certainly not by choice.

Already formulating her next line of attack, Kershaw didn’t clock the hesitation. When she’d found Kiszka’s card in Justyna’s mouth, she thought the girl was pointing the finger at her killer. Now she believed that hatman had left it there – either to incriminate his enemy or to send him a twisted message. Either way, it suggested Justyna had been more than just a one-night stand to Kiszka.

“I have to ask you again if Justyna was your girlfriend, Mr Kiszka,” she said, her voice tense with determination. “It’s important to the investigation.”

“I told you before, I only went out with her once, and I never even kissed her.” He turned to face her. “She was young enough to be my daughter!”

Kershaw had a nasty feeling he was telling the truth.

A moment later, they drew alongside the van that had cut them up. The driver was a grinning young Neanderthal, holding what looked like a can of lager. When he saw that it was a girl overtaking him, he started to mime a blowjob, causing the van to weave out of lane. Then he accelerated and the van roared away again, trailing clouds of burnt oil.

Her face icy-calm, Kershaw dropped the car into fourth making the engine scream. The G-force pressed Janusz back in his seat.
Mother of God!
Had he escaped Adamski just to get killed by a psychotic girl cop?

As the speedo needle crept past ninety, they started to draw level with the van driver. Keeping an eye on the road ahead, Kershaw dipped into the side pocket next to her seat and extracted something. The driver came into view, face gurning with hatred as he mouthed a stream of abuse, before shooting out a hand to give Kershaw the finger. Keeping her expression deadpan, she extended her left hand and dangled her Met issue handcuffs at him. Janusz watched, fascinated, as the guy’s mouth fell slackly open, like a broken puppet, before he suddenly disappeared from view. Soon he was no more than a dot in the wing mirror, crawling along in the inside lane.

“Sorry about that,” said Kershaw with an apologetic smile. “I’ve got zero tolerance for bad manners.”

She put the car back into fifth and pulled over to get into lane for the A406 westbound. Even if Kiszka hadn’t been Justyna’s boyfriend, one thing came across loud and clear: he cared about her, and seemed to want to defend her good name.

“If you weren’t going out with Justyna, can you really be sure that she wasn’t a sex worker?” asked Kershaw, her tone reasonable. “I mean, she did check into a hotel at midnight with this guy.”

“She was a good girl, she had a degree – she wanted to be an osteopath, for Christ’s sake,” said Janusz his voice tense with restrained anger.

“Do you want to see a picture of the guy who checked in with her?” asked Kershaw, as if the idea had just occurred to her.

“Sure,” he said, mastering himself.

She leaned over, and opening the glove box, pulled out the photocopy of the image grab from the videotape.
What harm could it do ?
If Kiszka realised the guy had killed Justyna, he
might
just grass him up. She stared ahead into the traffic, keeping half an eye on the mirror.

Janusz instantly recognized the guy he’d chased along the towpath in Gdansk. So, this was Pawel Adamski: features crowded into the centre of his face, a pursed mouth, and beneath the hat brim, close-set eyes which radiated the arrogant contempt of a man convinced he’d always come out on top.

“Well?” asked Kershaw, unable to read his expression.

Shaking his head, Janusz opened his window a couple of inches and threw out his cigar stub. “No, I don’t know the guy.” If the cops started a hunt for Adamski, it would cause untold complications, and very likely risk Weronika’s life, too.

Something in his voice, a hint of strained indifference, told Kershaw he was lying. “Are you absolutely sure about that?” she asked.

He nodded, then pointed to the guy’s head, playing for time. “What do you call this kind of hat?”

“A ‘pork pie’ hat, I think” said Kershaw. “They’re supposed to be trendy.”

“
Pork pie
?” said Janusz staring at her in mystification. “Like those ...” he searched for a word adequate to describe the cardboard-like pastry horrors with their unnaturally pink contents “
...things
they sell in petrol stations?”

“Yeah, I think it’s cos of the shape,” she said, indicating left to turn into Lea Bridge Road.

“Someone who wears a hat like that, when he should be keeping a low profile,” said Janusz, tapping the photo. “This bastard thinks he’s untouchable.” Visualising his fist smashing into that face, he filed the image away in his head.

The venom in Kiszka’s voice made Kershaw glance up at the mirror, but his face was calm as he returned the picture to the glove box. He was stonewalling her, she could smell it.