by Anya Lipska
Then, above the bass rumble of the dog’s hate-filled growl, Janusz heard an unexpected and piercing sound. An inanely chirpy, five-note whistle. A mobile ringtone.
What the fuck …?
The dog turned to look over its muscled shoulder towards the source of the noise. A second later, the piercing sound came again. Its flat, murderous eyes returned to Janusz, who stayed stock-still, remembering that a fighting dog’s attack impulse was triggered by movement. Again the whistled ditty sounded. The beast’s gaze flickered and then, with a jerk, it spun round and headed in the direction of this intriguing sound, its trot horribly purposeful. As he watched its rear quarters recede into the darkness, Janusz let out a breath.
Then, setting the wheelbarrow down as if it were a porcelain vase, he sprinted for the fence, setting a new personal best. Pulling open the loose section he clambered through, before risking a final look backward through the gap.
He could just make out the dog, silhouetted against the boundary fence on the opposite side. It was trotting along the fenceline, following the chirruping ringtone, like one of the children in the fairy story, mesmerised by the Pied Piper’s refrain.
Twenty-Five
The morning after his encounter with the psychol dog, Janusz was packed and dressed before Oskar had even emerged from the bathroom. ‘Get your stuff together,’ he told him. ‘I’m going to go track down this Sebastian Duff, see what he has to say about the mystery guest they’ve had staying in the changing block.’
‘Are you sure you don’t need me to come along?’ Oskar winked. ‘In case you come across any wild animals that need taming?’
‘Dobrze, dobrze, Oskar! We already heard plenty about your dog whispering exploits.’
‘I’m only saying, you wouldn’t be sitting here now if I hadn’t distracted that thing.’
Janusz sighed. Since last night, he’d heard the story retold from every possible angle half a dozen times. How Oskar had experienced a ‘funny feeling’ after Janusz left and decided to follow him, to ‘watch his back’. On hearing the frenzied barking and snarling he’d realised what was going on beyond the fence and, at a loss for what to do, had hit on the idea of trying to distract the dog by playing his phone’s bird-whistle ringtone.
‘And I must have told you twenty times how grateful I am, kolego,’ said Janusz. ‘So shut the fuck up now.’
Oskar shrugged modestly. ‘Are you going to call the girl detektyw? Get the cops to raid the place?’
Janusz ran a big hand roughly over his face. He’d barely slept last night, amid his mind’s ceaseless churning, going over and over what he’d discovered. The guard dog, the bedding, the padlocked door – everything about it screamed prison cell. And the thing his mind kept circling back to compulsively: what if he’d taken on the hard-faced skurwiel and broken in earlier? Would he have found Kasia in that sleeping bag? He gave his head a violent shake in a bid to dispel the thought. If experience had taught him anything, it was that to indulge in ‘what-ifs’ was to disappear down a never-ending rabbit hole of self-recrimination and pointless regret.
‘What’s the point?’ he said, in answer to Oskar’s question. ‘They’ll only find what I found. And these Duff fuckers are already on the alert. No point making it worse.’
‘Good thinking,’ said Oskar, before picking up the treatment brochure. ‘While you’re talking to the manager, I might get the reflexology foot massage. It says here that it’s particularly beneficial for people who’ve been through a stressful situation.’
‘There’s no time for that,’ growled Janusz. ‘You need to get the bags into the van and wait in the car park. We might need to make a swift exit.’
He made his way to the spa, where by a stroke of luck he found Magda, the therapist who’d given him his massage, on reception duty.
‘Dzien dobry, darling,’ he said, laying on the charm. ‘I have an appointment to see Sebastian Duff.’
She consulted her computer screen. ‘Umm. He went into one of the tanning booths but he should be coming out any second. You say he’s expecting you?’
‘Yes, he said to meet him there, actually. He’s going to give me the full tour.’
‘Naprawde?’ Magda widened her false-lash-fringed eyes. ‘Are you thinking of having your wedding reception here?’
‘Perhaps,’ said Janusz, adopting the bashful expression he considered appropriate to a would-be groom.
‘Fantastycznie!’ She clapped the tips of her fingers together. ‘It will be our first wedding! Dobrze. You just head down this corridor here and keep going. The booths are at the very end – he’s in number 1.’
After she’d buzzed him through a security door, Janusz strode down the corridor feeling a familiar thrill. A kinetic crackle coursing through his body that always marked the imminence of justified violence.
He slipped in through the door marked ‘1’ as quietly as possible. He needn’t have worried: inside the cubicle, music was playing at top volume, and through the clear blue glass of the upright tanning booth he could see a fair-haired guy in his thirties. Pale-skinned and naked but for protective goggles and an indecently attenuated pair of briefs, he was jiggling in time to the beat.
Janusz squinted at the control panel next to the booth, before turning off the speakers and the cooler fan. The man carried on shimmying for a second or two before peering out through the glass – his goggles steamed up from the heat.
Janusz put his head closer to the booth door. ‘Sebastian Duff?’
‘What’s it to you?’ The guy squinted up at him through the glass. ‘You’re not supposed to be in here.’ His voice rang with the timeless entitlement conferred by money, although wealth hadn’t been able entirely to erase his Cockney roots. ‘I’m calling security.’
He tried to open the door of the booth but Janusz had already set the sole of one boot firmly against its bottom edge, heel braced against the floor. ‘We need to chat,’ he said.
The guy shrank back, his hands shooting to cover his groin in an unconscious gesture of vulnerability. ‘I can’t talk to you if you won’t let me out,’ he blustered, but a worm of panic had entered his voice.
‘We can talk like this,’ said Janusz amicably.
‘I’ve got to come out now. I’ve already been in longer than I’m supposed to.’
Janusz made a show of examining him. ‘You still look pretty pasty to me,’ he offered. Then, keeping his boot wedged against the door, he turned back to the control panel. ‘Let’s give you another … what, ten minutes?’ He punched in some numbers, choosing the highest UV setting available. ‘And I’ve whacked it up to 250 watts.’
‘That’s the maximum!’ he gasped.
‘Sometimes we must suffer for our beauty.’
‘But I’ll get burned!’
‘Well, let’s do a deal. If you’re extra helpful, I’ll let you out while you’re still medium rare.’
‘How am I supposed to help when I don’t even know what it is you want?’
Janusz detected an undertone of pleading in his voice. Excellent.
‘Who was it you had locked up in the changing block of the outdoor pool?’
‘Locked up?’ The guy sounded scared. ‘I’ve no idea. I haven’t been over there in ages, not since the builders arrived.’
Janusz gave him a hard look, but it wasn’t easy to work out through the misted glass and the goggles whether he was telling the truth. ‘Try again.’
‘I’m telling you, I don’t know anything!’
When Janusz fell silent, the guy pressed his face to the door. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Lighting a cigar. I reckon we could be here a while.’
‘I’m roasting in here!’ – his voice rose to a desperate moan.
Janusz responded by blowing smoke at the glass.
‘Look! I don’t get involved in the … family activities. All I do is manage the place.’ He slapped the glass in frustration. ‘I’m just a fucking hotelier!’
Janusz shook his h
ead, his expression more disappointed than angry.
Sebastian flattened both palms on the glass, dropping his voice. ‘Okay, okay, all I know is that there’s something going on. But I don’t know nothing about the changing block – except it’s totally out of bounds all of a sudden.’
‘Says who?’
‘My older brother. Joey.’ He made no attempt to hide the dislike in his voice.
‘Tall skinny guy? Wears a leather coat?’ A nod. ‘What’s he doing here?’
‘No idea. I don’t have nothing to do with him – it’s the first time he’s even been here. My mum won’t let me get involved in anything except the hotel.’
The woman Oskar had mentioned – who’d supposedly made her pile in scrap metal.
‘What else is there to get involved in, other than the hotel?’
‘I haven’t a clue! She says she “didn’t spend all that cash giving me an education just to see me end up inside”.’
Janusz studied him for a long moment, decided he was telling the truth. ‘So where does your brother usually hang out then?’
‘I don’t know! I haven’t seen him since Christmas. Then a few days ago, he turns up out of the blue and throws out the builders working on the pool.’ Resentment bubbled to the surface of his voice. ‘Nobody tells me anything!’
Duff barged the door with his shoulder a couple of times, but the only impression he made was a smudge in the thickening condensation. ‘I’m burning up in here,’ he cried, his eyes desperate behind the goggles. ‘This is GBH!’
Ignoring him, Janusz pulled out the photo of Kasia and Steve – the one he’d found at the flat. He took his time flattening it against the glass. ‘Have you seen this woman? Kasia Fisher? Runs a nail bar in Stratford?’
The guy squinted through the glass before shaking his head. ‘No never.’
‘What about the guy, Steve Fisher?’
‘I’ve never seen either of them before! On my life!’ It came out as a wail.
Janusz gave the guy a considering look before pocketing the photo. Then he leaned close to the glass. ‘If I were you,’ he said confidingly, ‘I’d have a good long think about retiring from the family business. You could always go run a nice B&B on the coast somewhere.’
He lifted his boot off the door and Sebastian Duff collapsed across the threshold, the heat coming off him in waves, his sweat-sheened skin already flushing red from his UV overdose.
Janusz made a wincing noise. ‘You need to get some aloe vera on that,’ he said, before turning to leave.
Twenty-Six
Dozing in bed on Saturday morning, Kershaw received an unexpected alarm call.
‘So here’s a funny thing …’ said the caller, without preamble.
Streaky.
‘Sarge?’ Kershaw sat bolt upright. As a wake-up aid, a guilty conscience beat a triple espresso hands-down.
‘First off, I find you’ve been digging around on the PNC for info on Steve Fisher, a close associate of two local gents who recently shuffled off this mortal coil – and who has mysteriously gone AWOL.’
‘Well, like I said …’
‘Stow it. Now my team tells me that this Steve Fisher is married to a certain Polish lady who also seems to have gone walkabout. She’s called Kasia. Ring any bells?’
Fuck.
‘As you may recall, among my many talents I am blessed with what some have been kind enough to call a photographic memory.’
It was true, Kershaw reflected glumly. Streaky could always recall the most insignificant details of a case long after the rest of the team had forgotten even the name of the defendant.
‘It took me a while but I finally managed to retrieve it from the old memory banks.’ He paused. ‘Your Polish chum Janusz Kiszka had a girlfriend called Kasia who lived in Stratford, I recall. And this Kasia, unless I am mistaken, was married to a Cockney called … wait for it … Steve. Am I right or am I right?’
‘You’re right, Sarge, but I don’t see …’
‘Spare me, Kershaw.’ Streaky dropped the bantering tone. ‘I spoke to Toby Greenacre. I know he signed you off sick after you pulled some comedy arrest stunt while nine sheets to the wind. So even running a PNC search puts you in breach of about a dozen regulations.’
Bollocks.
‘I don’t know what the fuck you’re playing at,’ he went on, ‘but if you don’t fill me in I’ll have you up before Divisional Standards before you can say knife.’
Hearing him breathing heavily down the phone, Kershaw could visualise his face turning pillar-box red. Deciding there was no alternative, she told him everything, only missing out her cousin Jason’s search of the Alicante flight manifest and her unofficial visit to the mortuary: there was no way she was dropping anyone else in the shit.
‘And that’s all of it?’ asked Streaky, when she’d finished her upsum.
‘Yes, Sarge.’
‘So Kiszka hasn’t officially reported his girlfriend missing?’
‘No, Sarge. You know what he’s like about the cops.’
‘But you think she’s an accessory, passive or otherwise, to whatever criminal caper Fisher and his Cockney muckers have pulled off?’
‘Seems likely, don’t you think? She’s been with him for twenty-odd years – she can’t have just not noticed he’s a villain.’
Streaky made a non-committal noise. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to carry on helping Mr Kiszka as though nothing’s happened, see if he turns up anything useful about Fisher’s whereabouts.’
‘You want me to be a CI?’ Kershaw couldn’t keep the dismay out of her voice.
‘Well I wouldn’t call it a Criminal Informant exactly, since I don’t intend to pay for your services, but a grass of sorts, yes – and operating strictly in a civilian capacity. Why, did you have any objections?’
‘I guess not.’ What else could she say? ‘So what do you reckon to all this, Sarge?’
There was a pause before he replied. ‘I think your theory’s got legs. Steve and his pals do some job, then fall out while divvying up the proceeds. And since it’s Steve who’s done a bunk, I make him our prime suspect for the murder of Bill Boyce, and very possibly of his chum Jared Bateman who managed to connect himself to the ring main despite being a qualified electrician.’
She fell silent for a moment, digesting the information. ‘I was thinking, Sarge. I know Steve was only the fence for the gear from the Felixstowe lorry job – but is it possible that he might have got in deeper with the gang who did it?’
‘Funnily enough, I was speaking to my old mucker in SOCU about that only this morning,’ said Streaky, going on to relay what his contact in the Organised Crime Unit had told him: not only was the Felixstowe job still unsolved, nearly a year on, but there had been two further armed robberies targeting lorries with high-value cargoes. ‘The exact same MO as Felixstowe, apparently. Almost certainly the same villains.’
‘But no leads?’
‘Not a dicky bird – they’re tearing their hair out over there.’
‘So could Steve be working for the gang now?’ she persisted.
Streaky thought about it. ‘I can’t see it,’ he said finally. ‘This lot are professionals. They spend weeks recceing the job, they’re forensics-aware, they torch their getaway motors … It’s all a long way out of Fisher’s league. If they’re Chelsea, he’s Leyton Orient.’
‘So we’ve got nothing to go on?’
‘I wouldn’t say that.’ She heard him sucking his teeth. ‘I’m only telling you this in case it might help you winkle something out of Kiszka. A stolen car was reported abandoned last weekend.’
‘And?’
‘And it’s got Steve Fisher’s prints all over it.’
‘You’re kidding! Where was it found?’
‘The outskirts of dear old Sarfend.’
Within the hour, Kershaw was standing outside Kiszka’s swanky mansion house block in Highbury, leaning on his buzzer. When she got no r
eply, she tried the flat numbers above and below his, finally getting hold of one of his neighbours, a grumpy old git called Ron. Kiszka had knocked the previous morning, he told her, to say he was going away and asking him to feed the cat. He’d said he hoped to be back the next day.
Returning to her car, she settled in for a wait. It wasn’t too long before a battered Transit van pulled up outside, discharging Kiszka onto the pavement before tearing off in a plume of oil smoke. She reached him before he even got his key out.
‘Hi there!’
Kiszka whipped round, looking paranoid.
‘You don’t look very pleased to see me,’ she said. All she got in reply was one of his caveman grunts, but he did at least invite her up.
As he opened the door to the flat, his ginger tomcat greeted them with an aria of hungry miaows.
‘Shhh, Copetka.’ Kiszka bent to stroke him before straightening to follow his urgent trot into the kitchen.
Kershaw clocked the difficulty he had getting himself upright again – and noted the hint of a limp in his gait. What had he been up to?
After feeding the cat, he folded his big frame into a chair opposite her at the kitchen table. She was shocked by how he looked, close-up. The skin under his eyes was purple-dark, the symmetry suggesting lack of sleep rather than a beating, and his face was markedly thinner, making his features even craggier than usual.
‘I’m forgetting my manners,’ he said, setting his hands on the table to lever himself up again. ‘Coffee?’
‘Hey, you look done in. I’ll make it.’ Seeing her determination, he raised a hand in surrender, before slumping against his seat back.
‘I don’t suppose you’ve got any food?’ she went on. ‘I haven’t had breakfast.’ In truth, she wasn’t especially hungry but Kiszka looked like he was in serious need of a feed.
He told her there were eggs and cheese in the fridge and she started to whip up an omelette big enough for two. She was suddenly reminded of cooking her dad breakfast when she’d been nine or ten – it had been their Saturday morning ritual.
