Where the Devil Can't Go (40 page)

He’d half-expected the scene that confronted him inside, but it sent a chill through him nonetheless. The place had been taken apart in the night with surgical thoroughness, every upholstery panel on the sofa and armchair slit open with a blade, and the edges of all the carpets pulled up; in the kitchen, they’d lined up the contents of the cupboards on the work surface, and emptied his coffee and flour tins into the sink. He’d clearly left just in time last night. Tough luck,
skurwysyny.
A wave of panic gripped him as he remembered Copernicus, but then he remembered putting him out on the kitchen window sill, splay-legged with indignation, before going next door.

Back in the next-door flat the hum of the power shower indicated his neighbour –
Sebastian
, that was his name – was up and about. Janusz had just finished folding up the duvet when his phone rang.
Oskar.

“
Czesc
, Janusz.” His voice sounded uncharacteristically subdued.

“What’s up,
kolego
?”

“Did you see ‘
Crimeswatch
’ last night?” asked Oskar.

“It’s ‘
Crimewatch
’, turnip head. No, I didn’t. Why?”

“They had that lady
detektyw
on, talking about Justyna. The girl who got killed in the hotel?” Oskar’s tone was starting to give Janusz the jitters.

“Spit it out, Oskar, I’ve got a lot to do today,” he growled.

There was another pause, then Oskar burst out: “The guy from the hotel – it was him! The one who got me to take poor old Olek home.”

It took Janusz a while to get any sense out of his mate, but finally he pieced it together. Apparently, Crimewatch had broadcast the shot of the guy in the hat and Oskar had instantly recognized him. It was the guy who had paid him two thousand Euros to repatriate Olek’s body to Poland.

“But you surely checked with the contractor at Olek’s site, to see if the guy was for real?” asked Janusz, fighting a rising sense of panic.

“There was no time,” protested Oskar. “I only got the call the day before we left.”

“What about all those official documents?” said Janusz, clutching at one last hope. “You got them when you picked Olek up from the undertakers, right?”

A silence.

“Oskar?”

“I didn’t pick him up from the undertakers,” admitted Oskar, finally. Janusz could picture his mate on the other end, shuffling his feet like a naughty child.

“Where the fuck did you get him then?!” Janusz’s voice had risen several decibels.

“That guy with the funny hat, he delivered him, in a van.”

“What – to your place?”

“Not exactly. We met up in East Ham, and transferred him over to my van.”

“Where in East Ham, for God’s sake?”

He hesitated. “In the car park behind Lidl.”

Janusz groaned. This just kept getting worse. “And this was the guy who kept phoning you when we were in Poland, right?” he asked. “Wanting to know exactly where you were?”

“
Tak,
he was like an old woman – never off my back!”

Mother of a Whore!
The fucker in the hat hadn’t needed CIA-style tracking skills to follow Janusz from Islington to Gdansk. After giving Oskar a dodgy stiff to export, he had used his mate like GPS, calling him up whenever he fancied to check their location.

Janusz shivered. He didn’t even want to think about the penalty for using fake documents to export a body. He told Oskar he’d call back later. But before he’d had time to process this new bombshell, his phone started trilling again. This time the display said ‘
number unknown
’.

“
Czesc
?” said Janusz.

“It’s me – Pawel.” It was Pawel alright, but he sounded in a bad way.

“They’ve got me and Nika.”

. . .

Before Janusz had even woken up that morning, Kershaw was on her way to his flat – and she was not a happy bunny.

After her productive day at the college, the official interview with Monsignor Zielinski had proved frustrating. As she’d half-expected, the minute they reached the nick, he’d clammed up and started demanding his brief. Still, Streaky was visibly impressed at the way she’d manoeuvred him into confessing his illicit affair with Ela – and his disposal of her body in the Thames. No doubt his brief would claim he’d acted while the balance of his mind was disturbed, but Streaky and Kershaw agreed it had been a cynical attempt by the shagging Monsignor to prevent the affair being discovered. Either way, Streaky said they already had enough to nail him for ‘disposing of a corpse with intent to prevent a coroner’s inquest’, which was apparently a pretty serious charge.

Streaky seemed to buy the scenario that poor pregnant Ela committed suicide by PMA, and Kershaw didn’t demur. But privately, the discovery that Ela’s old boyfriend Pawel had looked her up on the orchestra tour to Poland, had cemented her conviction that he was involved in her death.

When she’d finally got home at gone nine, she decided to take another look at Ela Wronska’s college file.

Perched at the breakfast bar eating toast and Nutella, she pulled out the clipping that Kiszka had paused over.
Kurier Gorodnik.
Zielinski’s mention of Gorodnik as the place where Pawel had approached Ela gave the place a new significance. She re-read the rest of the file. And as she scanned Ela’s educational background, a line jumped out at her, ‘
1984-1990 – Dom Dziecka 376, Gorodnik
’.

She fired up her laptop and typed ‘
Dom dziecka
’ into a translation site, seeing the word ‘orphanage’ appear in the results box on her screen. And suddenly, it all made sense. The Gorodnik link, Ela telling Zielinski that Pawel belonged to a part of her life she wanted to forget, the amateurish – no, make that
childish
tattoo on Ela’s buttock. Pawel and Ela had met, and become sweethearts, in a children’s home – a romance he clearly hadn’t given up on – and she’d lay serious money that Janusz fucking Kiszka had worked it out before she had.

The next morning, just before seven am, Kershaw turned the Ford Ka into Kiszka’s street and parked up in a spot with a good view of the entrance to his apartment block. She decided against buzzing his doorbell – if he saw her on the entry cam he might refuse to let her in. No, she’d just sit here till he came out, and catch the bastard on the hop.

. . .

“They say that if you bring the file right now, they won’t hurt Nika,” Pawel told Janusz. From the difficulty he had forming the words it was clear they’d already given him a good working-over.

The last thing he mumbled out was: “Sorry you got dragged into this.” Then one of the thugs, probably the
psychol
in the hat, took the phone.

“I tell you where to bring the document, you leave in five minutes, you don’t talk to anyone or play the hero,” his voice was flat, unmodulated. “If we get what we want inside one hour, then it’s all over and everyone can go home. If you’re late, there will be consequences.” Then he gave Janusz some directions, which he scribbled on a scrap of paper, and hung up.

As it all sank in, Janusz felt a chill envelop his body. He could tell the girl detective everything, and risk a police siege that would almost certainly get Pawel and Weronika killed, or he could play delivery boy to a bunch of murdering gangsters who, once they had the documents, might easily decide to eliminate all three of them anyway. The sick feeling in the pit of his stomach told him that either way, any hope of exposing Zamorski had disappeared. However hateful the prospect of him being elected President tomorrow, the idea of disappearing to Poland with the document, leaving Pawel and Weronika to be sacrificed on the altar of the greater good, was unthinkable.

. . .

“Mr Kiszka!”

Janusz whirled around at the sound of the flat Cockney vowels. The sight of the girl detective bearing down on him was about as welcome as a Russian son-in-law. He glanced up and down the street, praying to all the saints that Zamorski’s thugs had given up on watching his place after finding it empty last night, otherwise her appearance might have just signed Pawel and Weronika death warrant.

He tried to adopt a neutral expression. “Good morning, officer,” he said, but barely slowed his pace.

As she drew level with him, her antennae started to vibrate. Kiszka looked – and smelt – like he’d slept in his clothes, and he seemed shifty and anxious, his usual cool out of the window. “You’re up and about early, you off somewhere?” she asked.

“Yes, I’ve got an appointment.”

She had to take two paces for every one of his just to keep up. “You’re certainly in a hurry,” she said, pulling up the hood of her black mac as the first tentative drops of rain fell.

He caught the tone – that edge of sarcasm all cops seemed to acquire along with the badge. “Sorry, darling, but I’ve got to catch the tube. I’m running late.”

Kershaw’s eyes followed one of his shovel-like hands as it unconsciously touched his side –
checking for something.

“No problem,” she said. “I’ll give you a lift. Angel or Highbury?” Pressing her key fob, a nearby parked car bleeped a reply. She looked up at the leaden sky, “Looks like it’s going to tip down.”

Janusz checked his watch – a lift would save him precious minutes. “OK, then. Angel.” He had a hunch that if he missed the one-hour deadline, it would be Weronika who’d suffer the threatened ‘consequences’.

As he climbed into the passenger seat, Kershaw once again adjusted her rear view mirror to keep an eye on him.

“So, Ela Wronska met the mysterious ‘Pawel’ in a Children’s Home in Gorodnik,” she said, keeping her tone chatty, unconcerned. He just shrugged, but his eyes darted around like a pinball machine.

For a moment she thought someone had thrown gravel at the car till she realised it was hail raking the windscreen. “And I know for a fact that Pawel talked to Ela in Gorodnik,” she said, flipping her wipers on, “when the orchestra played there.”

All he said was: “You’ve been busy.”

Janusz surreptitiously checked his watch: they were half way down Upper Street now, about a minute from Angel.

“I think that Pawel came to London to try and persuade Ela to get back with him,” said Kershaw.

The girl and he had come to the exact same conclusion, thought Janusz – and they were both wide of the mark.

In the mirror she saw the ghost of a smirk cross his face. Why?
Because he didn’t buy that scenario
, she realised.

As Angel Tube appeared up ahead she pulled up in the bus lane. He was halfway out the door before she grabbed his arm. “Listen, I told you we got a hair from Justyna’s body?” she said urgently. “Well, we’ve got prints from Ela’s room now, so if I can just find him I’ve got a really solid case.”
OK, the prints might belong to the Monsignor, but why muddy the waters?

Janusz met her determined gaze. Why not tell her the truth right now, see if she could raise an armed unit? If anyone could pull it off this girl could.

Kershaw held her breath: he looked like he might be about to spill the beans.

Then Janusz pictured the face of the
psychol.
And knew that he would cut Weronika’s throat before the first uniform made it through the door.

The big lunk shook his head. “Sorry, darling,” he told her, and strode away, seemingly impervious to the sheeting icy rain whipping across the pavement.
Fuck.

As he headed for the tube entrance, Janusz patted his side, felt the reassuring outline of the document, then checked his watch. Three stops on the Northern Line to Bank, about half a dozen on the DLR, then ten minutes on foot the other end, the guy had said – he should make it with time to spare. But as he stepped inside the tube concourse the practised drone of the station announcer brought him up short.’...
Northern line suspended southbound due to a passenger under a train at Moorgate...’

In the name of the Virgin!
What was it with these platform divers? Why couldn’t they take a nice quiet overdose at home?

Re-emerging onto Upper Street, he spotted a number 43 bus, its doors just closing, and broke into a sprint.

. . .

Janusz took the stairs down from the DLR platform at Canning Town two at a time. Checking his watch, he calculated that if the walk took ten minutes then he’d get there with five still in hand.

He strode down Victoria Dock road, shoulders hunched against the eye-watering wind. On his left, as the instructions had said, he passed a jumble of corrugated iron warehouses and what looked, and smelt, like a chemical factory. To his right was a desolate piece of waste ground, newly levelled in readiness for some construction project, and beyond it, the sluggish channel of brown water called Leamouth, where the River Lea widened before emptying into the Thames.

Now that he was confident that he’d reach his destination on time Janusz started to consider what might happen there. Did Zamorski’s thugs have orders, once the document had been handed over, to kill them all? He found that as much as he feared death, what really gnawed at him was the idea that Zamorski could have them all murdered and
still
become President of Poland tomorrow, with nobody any the wiser about the kind of man he was.

Passing a yard filled with yellow freight containers piled high like lego, he took a right towards Leamouth as instructed, and found himself funnelled down an alley between the high brick walls of two old warehouses. A billboard on one wall advertised ‘A landmark residential and leisure development’.

His heart was marking double time now. This was where his directions ran out – once he reached the alley the guy had said they would come and find him. He slowed his pace. Four minutes to go. If he was going to die, he had to do
something
about Zamorski. If someone with sufficient clout could be persuaded to confront him with his crimes, perhaps he might crumble, withdrawing from tomorrow’s election of his own accord.
Father Pietruzki?
He was respected, but could Janusz really trust him to do the right thing, given his support for the Party?
Konstanty Nowak?
The guy’s charity work surely gave him some influence. But would he be clear-sighted enough to accept the truth about his friend?