by Anya Lipska
Something changed. The water around her was turning a paler blue. She realised that she was floating gently upward, and saw something glittering overhead that filled her with a sudden foreboding. A glass ceiling. The surface. Twisting her body, she flung out her arms and kicked with her legs, trying to swim back down, desperate to return to the peaceful turquoise depths, away from what awaited her above.
But she was still gliding up, up through the water – ever faster. Squeezing her eyes shut, she tried to block out the light above her, which was growing painfully bright. She could hear a sound like the roar of surf drumming in her ears, and a dull pain booming against her skull.
She crash-landed into the air, light spearing her eyes. She blinked rapidly. When things came into focus there was no aquamarine water, no surf – just a stained blue mattress beneath her cheek. Trying to gulp air, she found her mouth taped shut. From behind the barrier of her lips, she shouted for Janusz, over and over.
All that remained of her dream was the smell of chlorine.
Fifteen
‘Listen, I found some stuff out last night, can I come over?’
Since this wasn’t preceded by ‘good morning’, or any of the other standard courtesies, it took Janusz’s sleep-fuddled brain a moment or two to process who had just catapulted him out of a deep and dreamless sleep.
Natalia. The girl detektyw.
‘Sure,’ he grunted. ‘I’ll put the coffee on.’ It was only after she’d hung up that he squinted at his old wind-up alarm clock and discovered it wasn’t even 7 a.m. yet.
Half an hour later, he was pouring a treacle-black stream of coffee from a stovetop pot into porcelain cups so delicate that they glowed translucent in the morning sunlight.
After taking a cautious sip, Kershaw added a generous slug of milk to hers. ‘This is new,’ she said, running an appreciative hand along the blonde wood grain of the kitchen table – a major improvement on the battered, orange pine version she recalled from her last visit – and the walls had been recently painted, too, in a soft shade of sage. Kiszka didn’t exactly strike her as the Farrow & Ball type. ‘I like the new colour scheme. Is the makeover down to Kasia?’ At the mention of his girlfriend’s name, he dropped his gaze, but not before she’d caught the heaviness in his eyes. He looked as big and burly as ever – the china cup cradled in one of his mitts looking as if it came from a doll’s tea set – but for the first time she sensed a fragility about him.
‘You said you found something,’ grunted Janusz. If she were a man he would have said Get to the fucking point.
‘Okay,’ she got out her notebook. ‘I’m still waiting to hear back about Oyster card records but I did find out a bit more about Steven Fisher. Did you know he’s got a criminal record?’
Janusz lifted one shoulder: a gesture that said he hadn’t known but that it didn’t exactly come as a surprise.
‘We’re not talking Premier league villainy,’ she went on. ‘Handling stolen goods … a common assault in a kebab shop … two counts of twoccing.’ Seeing his frown, she explained: ‘Taking without the owner’s consent – car theft, in other words.’
‘Are you saying he’s been in prison?’
Kershaw made a dismissive noise. ‘You’ve got to do more than that to get banged up these days. No, he’s got off with probation and a couple of community service orders so far. Any of this ring any bells?’ He shook his head. ‘So Kasia never mentioned anything about Steve being in trouble with the law?’
Despite her studiedly neutral expression, Janusz picked up the sceptical undertone. ‘She would have been too ashamed to tell me about it,’ he growled. ‘Maybe an English person wouldn’t understand.’
Ignoring the implied insult, Kershaw flipped over a page in her notebook. ‘Then there’s Jared Bateman.’ Her gaze flicked up to his face but he showed no sign of recognition. ‘He was Steve’s co-defendant in a case last year. The pair of them were flogging stolen iPads down the pub …’
‘The Pineapple?’
‘No … The Bird in Hand, in Barking. Why d’you ask?’
As her eyes, the colour of steel seen through seawater, locked onto his Janusz berated himself for the slip-up. Evidently, the girl had yet to learn of Jared’s death – or indeed Bill’s – but when she did, the Pineapple would surely come up as the dead men’s local. He could only pray that the pub’s perma-tanned landlady had forgotten the big Pole who’d had a nice long chinwag with Bill Boyce, two days before his murder.
‘No reason,’ he said. ‘Kasia mentioned it as a boozer he sometimes drinks at, that’s all.’
‘Well, anyway,’ she went on, apparently accepting his explanation, ‘they were doing a roaring trade by all accounts – but unfortunately for them, one of their customers was an off-duty traffic cop.’
They shared a dry smile.
‘It turned out the iPads came from an armed robbery – a gang hijacked a freight lorry just off the boat at Felixstowe, got away with more than half a million quid’s worth.’
Janusz whistled. ‘Big job.’
‘And a nasty one. When the driver refused to open up, they shot him. The bullet severed his spinal cord – left him paralysed from the neck down.’
‘Bastards.’
‘Yeah. When it came to court, Steve and Jared gave some fairytale about buying the gear in a lay-by from a bunch of travellers, and got off with a charge of handling stolen goods.’
‘Were they thought to be involved, in the actual robbery, I mean?’
The perennial line between her eyebrows deepened. ‘Probably not. They only had a few dozen of the iPads and their alibis were solid.’
‘So they were just fencing the gear?’
She nodded slowly. ‘I can’t see anyone hiring them for something that big. Guys like Steve and Jared, they’re bottom feeders – they get to hoover up the crumbs drifting down from the big kills overhead.’
Janusz delved into his pocket for his tin of cigars. ‘Do you mind if I …?’ He lit up, a scenario that had been taking shape in his mind since he’d found Bill’s body beginning to gel. ‘So Steve and Jared are small fry, hanging on the coat tails of the serious criminals. Did you get any other names – of bad guys that they might hang around with?’
‘No one else who’s mentioned on his record. And I can’t access the police intelligence system without special permission.’
Janusz stood to retrieve an ashtray from one of the kitchen cupboards. ‘What do you think is going on?’
‘I think maybe the pair of them were starting to get more ambitious.’
‘They’re tired of playing second fiddle so they decide to pull a job of their own, you mean.’
‘Possibly.’
‘And that’s why Steve disappears – because he’s lying low somewhere.’ As hard as it was for Janusz to picture Steve as any kind of criminal mastermind, he’d reached more or less the same conclusion. ‘But he’s forty years old – it’s a bit late in life to join the big boys, isn’t it?’ He levelled a look at her. ‘And anyway, how would all this fit in with him kidnapping Kasia?’
There was a moment’s awkward silence. Kershaw repositioned her spoon in its saucer, hunting for a diplomatic way to voice her suspicions. ‘Maybe he hoped that if he finally made some money it might help to persuade Kasia not to leave him?’ Or maybe she didn’t take much persuading, she thought. Kiszka was clearly too nuts about his girlfriend to see it, but the likeliest scenario was that after Steve hit the criminal jackpot, Kasia – his wife of twenty years – had simply done a bunk with him.
Janusz knew what the girl detektyw was thinking: why would Steve even embark on such a dramatic course of action unless his wife was on board? She wasn’t to know that Steve was a dim-witted fantasist who’d watched too many Hollywood heist movies. He’d probably been directing the final scene in his head for months: the one where he flings open a suitcase full of fifties, Kasia falls into his arms, and they jet off to a glamorous new life together.
Kershaw watched
as he picked a flake of tobacco off his lip – a curiously fastidious gesture in such a big man – but couldn’t decipher his expression.
‘In this … scenario of yours, how do you explain the fact that they didn’t take the Alicante flight?’ he asked.
‘It might have been a diversion – to put their names onto one flight manifest while disappearing via some other route.’ Luton had always struck her as an odd departure airport for anyone travelling from East London – Stansted or City being the more logical choices.
Janusz fought down an impulse to protest that whatever criminal enterprise Steve might have got himself embroiled in, there was no way that Kasia would ever be involved – but he knew how it would sound.
Kershaw eyed him – the mulish set of that big jaw a familiar sign of displeasure. ‘It’s all just a theory, of course,’ she said.
Her mobile buzzed and she snatched it up.
‘My contact at the tube says Steve didn’t own a registered Oyster card,’ she said, scrolling through a message. But then her frown gave way to a look of quiet excitement. ‘But Kasia did. And the last time it was used was 0840 hours on Monday morning.’
‘Monday?’ The day she was meant to be moving in with him. ‘Where the fuck did she go?’
‘Epping. The last stop on the Central line.’
Sixteen
Janusz stood at the sink washing up the Opole porcelain coffee cups, reflecting on his latest encounter with Natalia Kershaw. It was clear that she suspected Kasia, at best, of making a mercenary calculation to stay with her husband; at worst, of being some kind of gangster’s moll, up to her neck in his criminal activities. But then she was a cop, which, in his experience, came with a certain tendency to see things in black and white.
They were in agreement about one thing: that Steve was lying low after committing some robbery, a theory that could only be bolstered by Janusz’s recent grim discoveries. Bill’s murder, together with Jared’s bizarre death-by-national-grid, looked like a storyline straight out of a heist movie. The gang of robbers who fall out after a big job; one of them deciding to bump off his partners in crime. Why? For the usual reason, Janusz supposed: to keep all the szmalec for himself. And since Steve was the one who’d pulled a vanishing act that made him the likeliest culprit.
Until now, he’d never have put Steve down as the murdering type, but the more he thought about it, the more sense it made. A lowlife and a wife beater who’d seen his every venture fail, and who now faced the worst failure of all: his wife leaving him for another man. Janusz was aware that, far from the powerful and super-intelligent figure of modern mythology, the typical killer was more often than not a self-pitying, lifetime loser.
None of it altered ani o jote his conviction that Steve had abducted Kasia and was holding her prisoner. At least he had a lead now: her mysterious tube journey out to Epping. Had Steve lured her out there on a pretext – perhaps claiming to be in some kind of trouble? That was plausible: even when it had become clear the marriage was over, Janusz sometimes still sensed an exasperated protectiveness in the way Kasia spoke of her husband. Screwing his eyes shut, he pictured her arriving in a quiet station car park, being bundled into a waiting van by Steve …
Janusz decided to head down to the nail bar to catch up with Barbara, see if she could shed any light on Kasia’s trip to Essex.
But just as he was leaving, Tomek Morski, his contact at Haven Insurance, called.
‘Look, Janek. I’m getting some stick from above about those annuitant security checks. Are you anywhere near finishing the paperwork yet?’
Kurwa! ‘A thousand apologies, Tomek. I’ve been tied up doing some … unexpected work on a case.’ What else could he say? That his girlfriend had been abducted by her psycho husband, and now he had dead Cockneys piling up all around him?
‘Understood. How quickly can you turn around the files?’
Janusz did a swift calculation. ‘I’ll send you the ones I’ve already checked out later today. Then I might just need another couple of days on the last file.’ The final Haven beneficiary he had yet to complete the paperwork for was Wojtek Raczynski.
‘That sounds good. Shall we say next Monday as a final deadline then?’ There was a delicate pause before he went on. ‘We’re going to be handing out a lot of work soon and I want to be able to tell the bosses that you deliver on time.’
Tomek’s tone was as friendly as ever, but Janusz knew that the latitude afforded by their shared heritage only went so far: the guy had a job to do. And once he’d found Kasia, and this interruption to their life together was over, the Haven contract would be a solid foundation for the future.
After hanging up, Janusz got out his laptop and pulled up Wojtek’s file.
He was tempted simply to sign off on his section of the form, but instead found himself staring at the photocopy of Wojtek’s passport photo. He recalled how nervous he had seemed when he last saw him, and found himself wondering again what could have happened to cause such a change from the jolly, garrulous old boy of his first visit.
Just at that moment, Copetka jumped up on the table.
‘Kurwa, Copetka! You nearly gave me a heart attack!’ Planting his backside in the middle of the keyboard, the cat gazed up at him, purring like a well-tuned Merc – which could only mean one thing.
‘Dobrze, dobrze. Did I forget your lunch, moj tygrysku?’
Bending to clatter dried food onto the little tiger’s plate, Janusz said ‘We’re out of tinned food, so you’ll have to make do with biszkopty.’ And felt the hairs of his forearms crackle upright. It took a second for his frontal cortex to catch up, to put into words what his subconscious thought processes were telling him.
‘Biscuits!’ he said out loud.
Returning to Wojtek’s file on the computer screen, he went straight to the section headed ‘Medical History’.
After reading it through twice, he leaned back in his chair, a speculative look spreading across his face.
Seventeen
Kershaw had decided on a radically different approach for her second visit to the police psychotherapist. She had a suspicion that she might have come across as passive aggressive, or even obstructive-slash-hostile, during that first session, and since the whole charade would drag on until the shrink decreed that she was once again safe to carry a gun, she was going to take her old boss Streaky’s advice. Which had been, more or less, ‘Drop the bolshy tone, suck it up, talk the talk, and you’ll be out of there in no time.’
Surprised to feel her heart hammering, she settled herself into the easy chair, set at 45 degrees to Paula’s own. A box of tissues placed within reach on a side table looked like a warning. Or a challenge.
‘How are you?’ asked Paula.
Kershaw eyed her. In any other setting, it would be the world’s most banal question. A non-question. Here, it came freighted with hidden meaning.
‘Fine. I mean, well, not fine, missing work, but yeah, you know, functioning.’ Well done, Natalie, she told herself darkly. Keep up these levels of personal insight and you’ll still be coming here at Christmas.
Paula offered only a blandly encouraging smile.
Bollocks.
‘So I’ve been thinking about the shooting … obviously. I think that although on the face of it, it wasn’t my fault, I mean the guy was swinging a massive sword around, but yeah, I think I have to stand up and take responsibility for it.’ She gave a decisive nod. ‘It’s a human life after all. It’s a big deal. Yeah.’
‘What does it mean, to you, “to take responsibility”?’
Jesus wept.
‘Um.’ Kershaw looked at the ceiling. ‘Well, to accept that I did it. It was my decision to pull the trigger, however spur of the moment. And I knew he was gonna end up dead.’
Paula tipped her head to one side, as if to say go on.
She quelled a sigh. ‘I think Joe Public has some cosy idea that we can stop someone non-lethally – you know, hit them in the arm or shoulder, like you s
ee on the telly.’
‘And that’s a misunderstanding?’
‘Yeah. If there’s an immediate threat to life you shoot to stop. Which means you aim for the biggest target, the central body mass’ – she hovered a spread hand across her chest and abdomen – ‘and you keep shooting till the threat is neutralised.’ Aware that this had all come out in a rush, she folded her arms. ‘What I’m saying is, I accept that I killed him, deliberately. I hate it when terrorists lay their crimes at other people’s doors. You know, strap a kilo of Semtex to a teenage suicide bomber and then blame the deaths of the innocent victims on some politician thousands of miles away?’
‘You think that’s disingenuous?’
‘Yes. People should take responsibility for their actions, and say, “I did that – right or wrong – no one else.” And it’s got nothing to do with having a difficult childhood either.’
Another achingly long pause, while Kershaw kicked herself for the childhood reference, which just made her sound snarky.
Finally, Paula broke the silence. ‘And who was responsible for the incident in which you were stabbed?’
I was, thought Kershaw. Stupidity, bad policing, reading the signs wrong, failing to take my Airwaves out on a call …
‘The person who stabbed me, obviously.’ She spoke a bit too fast, her words tumbling into each other.
‘Because sometimes it’s easier to blame ourselves for things, don’t you think?’ said Paula. ‘To tell ourselves we’re unlucky, or cursed in some way.’
Kershaw bit the inside of her lip so hard she could taste the rusty tang of blood.
‘You’ve not exactly had an easy time, the last few years,’ she went on. Kershaw met her gaze, and seeing kindness there, looked away. ‘Losing your dad – especially since he was the sole parent for much of your childhood – that must have been really tough.’
A sarcastic response leapt to her lips but an image of Streaky’s stern gaze cut it off. Suck it up, talk the talk …
