Where the Devil Can't Go (37 page)

“Did Elzbieta ever mention a boyfriend, someone called Pawel?”

Zielinski looked surprised. “She certainly knew a Pawel,” he said, hesitantly. “When we were in Poland, the orchestra played in a place called Gorodnik. I was in Gdansk that evening, having dinner with the bishop...” he closed his eyes and his lips trembled. “Does what I’m telling you... need to become
public
?” he asked, grasping perhaps for the first time the likely consequences of his behaviour.

Kershaw felt a flicker of pity. Then she saw Ela’s coppery hair against the stainless steel of the gurney, remembered the romantic novel and the gingerbread heart in her room. Losing her parents so young, followed by the auntie who’d brought her up, was it any wonder Ela had fallen for her handsome tutor? Father figure and forbidden lover – it must have been a potent combination to a vulnerable young woman.

“If you continue to co-operate, we’ll do what we can to keep the information confidential,” she said, avoiding his eyes.

He took a deep breath. “When I went to her hotel room that night, I could see she was upset,” he said. “She wouldn’t say anything at first but then it all came out. Someone had approached her after the concert, as she was putting away her violin, a man she’d known years ago.”

“Pawel.”

“She didn’t volunteer a name,” Zielinski dropped his gaze.

Kershaw paused. “But you guessed it was Pawel – because you’d seen her tattoo?”

He nodded, cutting his eyes away from her. “She said that he was keen to restart their friendship, but she just wanted to forget ‘that part of her life’.”

“Was he an old boyfriend?” asked Kershaw. “Did she meet him in London? Or on a holiday back to Poland?”

Zielinski shook his head. “She wouldn’t say any more – and I never heard her mention him again.”

“Let’s get back to
your
relationship with Elzbieta,” said Kershaw, after a pause. “When did you last see her exactly?”

He looked down at his lap. “I have behaved appallingly.” His voice was so low she had to lean closer to hear him. Then he raised his eyes to hers and the expression in them was so desolate that Kershaw realised there was more to come – not a confession of murder, perhaps, but something almost as bad.

She had seconds to work out her next move: right now, Zielinski’s chief emotion was remorse, but his previous instinct for self-preservation could return in a heartbeat. She gazed at the golden cross atop the altar. “Losing Elzbieta, yet being unable to confide in anyone,” she said, softening her voice. “I should think it must have been crucifying you these past few weeks.”

“Yes, it has.” he said, following her gaze.

“Talking about it must feel like a huge burden being lifted.”

He turned to her, surprised at the empathy in her voice.

“You found Elzbieta’s body, didn’t you, father?”

Zielinski became quite still, and took a breath.

“She was lying on top of the bed, her eyes staring at the ceiling,” he said, his eyes still fixed on the cross. “She was naked. Her skin wasn’t quite cold, but when I checked her pulse and pupils...she was obviously dead.”

“How could you be so sure?” asked Kershaw – whether Ela really was dead when he found her would be a matter of some significance in court.

“I was a parish priest for ten years,” he said, “I’ve seen a lot of people who have passed.” His voice was steadier now. “If I had resisted temptation, then she would still be alive, she wouldn’t have been driven to do such a terrible thing.”

“What do you mean?” asked Kershaw.

“There were some drugs on the bedside table,” he said, “and a half empty bottle of vodka.”

Kershaw remembered the post mortem.
Of course.
“You thought she had killed herself because she was pregnant with your child.”

He gazed off into the darkened corners of the chapel. “She had told me a week earlier, and I...didn’t take it very well. I think she did this terrible thing, to spare me the responsibility, the shame...” He fell silent, unable or unwilling to continue.

Kershaw could barely keep still. She needed him to confess what they both knew he had done before he got cold feet.

“There’s something else you need to tell me, isn’t there?”

He knotted his hands together in his lap.

“It must have been an unbelievable shock, finding Elzbieta like that,” she continued. “And when people are in a state of shock, they often do things they wouldn’t dream of doing normally.” She sought his gaze.

The look in his eyes said he was ready, if she could just find an acceptable way to approach the terrible thing he had done.

“You couldn’t face anyone else finding her like that, could you?” asked Kershaw. “At the time, putting her body in the river probably seemed like the most respectful thing to do.”

TWENTY-EIGHT

Twenty-four hours after Janusz started his trawl of building trade contacts, he got a break. A contractor called Miroslaw who was fitting out new offices in the West End said he’d heard Adamski’s name mentioned as a possible site labourer in the last few days. He promised to talk to his contact and get back to Janusz.

For his evening meal, Janusz decided to make a warm potato salad to go with some
wiejska
sausage from the new
Polski sklep
on Highbury Corner.

Preparing food always helped him to think – and he had plenty to think about since seeing Ela Wronska’s college file.

He’d been sceptical about the girl being another of Adamski’s victims – unable to see how a lowlife like him might know such a respectable girl, let alone become her boyfriend. Then, in the pub today, reading the personal background page of her file, under the heading ‘
Education
’, he’d found the answer: ‘
1984-1990 – Dom Dziecka 376, Gorodnik
’.

So, that was it. After her parents died, Ela had ended up in Children’s Home No 376, in that dump Gorodnik, where she stayed till her adoption. That was where she and Pawel had met, and where they’d become sweethearts – him pricking out her homemade tattoo with a pin and a bottle of ink, no doubt, like so many kids did back then.

As he sliced the
wiejska
into fat coins, he wondered whether there could be a link between Adamski’s blackmailing of Zamorski and his childhood relationship with Ela. No, it was more likely that Adamski read about Ela’s concert in the
Gorodnik Kurier
, and on his arrival in London had looked her up at the college, perhaps in a bid to rekindle their childhood romance. Put like that it sounded almost romantic, except that when Ela turned him down, Adamski had forced her to take the shit that killed her.

Janusz took his plate of food to the sofa and turned on the TV. With the country voting for a new president the day after tomorrow, the Polish channel was broadcasting wall-to-wall coverage of Zamorski, the undisputed favourite. The cameras even followed the candidate and his wife into morning mass, an item that ended on a big close-up of his kindly face as he took the wafer from the priest’s fingers. After eating, Janusz set his plate aside and tried to concentrate on the report, but after a few seconds his chin settled majestically onto his chest.

He awoke with a jolt, his pulse thumping in his ear and the hairs on his arms prickling:
something
had triggered the alarm on his autonomic nervous system. Then, he practically jack-knifed out of his seat as Copernicus jumped into his lap, purring throatily. The last time that happened, Janusz remembered, he had ended up beaten to shit on the bathroom floor. He got to his feet, feeling a twinge from his healing rib.

Not this time, sisterfucker
, he thought. Reaching for a weapon, he crept across the rug and positioned himself behind the half-open living room door, his breath coming ragged and shallow.

He heard a creak as the intruder crossed the threshold and saw a head emerge cautiously past the edge of the door. The empty beer bottle bounced off the crew cut skull with a sound like a cracked church bell and he went down in a heap. With his pulse drumming in his ears, Janusz danced on the balls of his feet, ready to thump him again if he tried to get up. “No mask tonight,
skurwysynie
?” he growled, dragging the guy onto his back by the yoke of his denim jacket.

He knocked the guy’s arms down from their defensive position in front of his face – and rocked back on his heels. In place of the bunched features and close-set eyes he expected from the CCTV image of Adamski, he found a long olive-skinned face, like a saint in a medieval icon. And this guy was skinny, with arms like breadsticks; his masked assailant – and the guy he’d chased through Gdansk – had a bodybuilder’s physique.

“Who the fuck are
you
?” asked Janusz, planting a foot on the guy’s chest. “Did Adamski send you?”

His mouth opened and, still winded from his fall, the guy croaked out:

“I
am
Adamski.”

The fist holding the beer bottle dropped to Janusz’s side, while his brain tried to process this news.

“Bullshit.” Janusz jabbed him in the ribs with his boot.

“I came because I heard you were looking for me,” said the guy. His lumpy country accent reminded Janusz of Tadeusz Krajewski, Adamski’s former employer back in Gorodnik.

Janusz frisked him roughly – he was clean – and retreated to the sofa, keeping his eyes locked on the long-limbed stranger. He indicated the armchair opposite with the empty bottle. The guy climbed to his feet, keeping a wary eye on the big man and fingering the top of his head where the bottle had struck, backed into the chair.

“Any chance of me getting one of those?” he asked, looking at the bottle with thirsty eyes.

“
Kurwa mac
!” burst out Janusz. “You break into my place and expect me to play fucking bartender?”

The guy shrugged. “I heard you were looking for me,” he said again.
Christ!
thought Janusz. The guy was a real
burak
– a beetroot, a dumb redneck.

“So, you don’t you know how to use a doorbell,
idiota?
”

“People are following me,” he said, glancing reflexively over his shoulder. “I have to be careful.”

Janusz scanned the guy’s face. “So you say you’re Adamski, do you? Where are you from then?”

“Gorodnik,” said the guy, touching his chest and grinning with apparent pride.

“And who did you work for, before you left?”

“Tadeusz Krajewski.”

“Where is Witold Struk’s house?’

The grin drooped and a shadow passed over the long face.

“Kosyk,” he muttered, fingers returning to the lump on his head.

Janusz frowned. If this guy had hung out with Adamski back in Gorodnik then he’d probably know this kind of stuff. Then he remembered Tadeusz and Adamski’s fishing trips.

He lit a cigar. “You caught a big fat carp with Tadeusz once,” he said. “And gave it a nickname.”

The guy furrowed his forehead.

“No, it wasn’t a carp,” he said, with an earnest shake of the head. “It was a pike.” He grinned, revealing a gold tooth where an incisor should be. “We called it Vladimir, for Putin.”

Mother of God!
It looked like this guy was for real! Janusz tried to round up his thoughts, which were running around like a bunch of startled chickens.
If this guy is Adamski, then who is the guy in the hat? And why, in the Name of all the Saints, is he following me?

“Congratulations,” snarled Janusz. “You’re the guy who abducted an innocent young girl so you could use her in a dirty piece of blackmail.” He took a drag of his cigar. “The only reason I don’t cave your
burak
head in is because we have things to sort out, you and I.”

His first priority was to find out where Weronika was. Maybe if he got the guy drunk he might let something slip.

Janusz got to his feet. “Stay there,” he said, pointing a threatening finger at Adamski. “I’ll get you a beer.”

He went to the kitchen, keeping a watchful eye through the doorway, and pulled a six-pack of Tyskie out of the fridge. Seeing the kitchen window wide open, he cursed under his breath – after the last uninvited visitor, he’d started shutting it before going to bed, but dropping off on the sofa like an old age pensioner had left him exposed. Now another bastard had waltzed up the fire escape and into his home. He slammed the fridge door. I might as well put a welcome mat under the window, he thought.

Adamski took a heroic draught of the beer Janusz handed him, then dug a crumpled pack of cigarettes out of his jeans and lit one.

“First question,” said Janusz, popping the ring pull of his can with a hiss. “What are you doing breaking in here?”

“A friend called me to say you were asking around about me – that you’re some kind of
detektyw?
” said Adamski. “So I came to tell you to stop and leave us alone – before you get us killed!”

“
Us?
You mean you and
Weronika
?” said Janusz, incredulous. “You’re the one who threatened to kill her!”

Adamski exploded out of his seat, rage darkening his face. “I would never hurt Nika,” he shouted. “I’d rather die myself than let anybody touch a hair on her head.”

Janusz blew out a lazy stream of smoke and waited for him to calm down. “Alright. Let’s overlook the fact that you threatened to murder her,” he said. “But maybe you can explain to a stupid bastard like me how using a young girl to blackmail her own father counts as
protecting her
?”

Adamski shook his head. “I can say nothing of that,” he said in a low voice.

“I know all about it,” growled Janusz. “You threatened to ruin him.”

“Maybe I did,” muttered Adamski his jaw jutting mulishly. “But everything is different now.”

Janusz narrowed his eyes. “Something changed, after you persuaded Weronika to leave Pani Tosik’s restaurant, didn’t it?”

He just shrugged and folded his arms.

“You fell for her, didn’t you?” said Janusz, realisation dawning in his voice. “That must have complicated things.”

Adamski tried – and failed – to keep from smiling at the life-changing miracle that had been granted him just a few weeks earlier.