A Devil Under the Skin (Kiszka & Kershaw, Book 3)

by Anya Lipska

  The Russian smirked at him. ‘Do you want me to paint you a picture?’

  He stood up, stowing the baseball bat inside his jacket. ‘The Americans have a name for this kind of arrangement, don’t they …’ he mused. ‘Da, I remember. It’s called an “incentive program”.’

  Thirty-Three

  Predictably enough, Katherine Duff had failed to produce any useful information as to where her elder son might be hiding out, and since Streaky’s threat of a Fraud Squad investigation was no more than a bluff, that left Joey Duff’s mobile phone number as the only live lead.

  The Sarge had agreed to drop Kershaw home on the way back to Walthamstow nick, where he’d start the process of requesting access to the phone company’s call data. His expression was wistful as he drew up outside her flat. ‘I was hoping for fish and chips at the Moon,’ he said, ‘not a pasty at my desk and a bloody great form to fill in.’

  Kershaw opened the passenger door, wishing that she was the one pulling a late one, instead of going home to a cold and empty flat. ‘You’ll let me know, won’t you Sarge, as soon as we have anything?’

  ‘Yeah, I’ll call you,’ he said. ‘And get in touch with Kiszka – see what he has to say about the latest from your new boyfriend.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Nathan King.’ He lifted his eyebrows meaningfully. ‘The Doctor Kildare of Walthamstow Mortuary.’

  ‘Who’s Doctor Kildare?’ Kershaw shot back, sidestepping the wind-up. Streaky’s jibe was probably just a lucky guess: the pub where she and Nathan had had drinks wasn’t one of the boozers on the Walthamstow nick drinking circuit.

  Once she was inside, she put in a call to Kiszka. He answered on the second ring, sounding grumpier than ever.

  ‘Any news?’ she asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘What about you?’

  ‘Same here. Everything okay? Your voice sounds a bit weird.’ He was speaking in a mumble, like he’d just had a tooth filled.

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘This is probably unrelated, but we just got the results of a PM …’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘Sorry, a post-mortem – on a body, found in Victoria Park. It had similar injuries to those found on Steve’s associates.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’

  ‘The guy had no ID on him, so they sent casts of his teeth off to some specialist.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘She said that the work was probably Russian. Apparently, the way dentists do things there hasn’t changed much since Communism.’

  He made a non-committal sound.

  ‘So, did you ever hear of Steve hanging out with any Russians?’

  ‘Russians?’ he laughed. ‘No, Steve never struck me as the cosmopolitan type.’

  Kershaw felt her interest waver: she found it hard to see where a murdered Russian might fit into any scenario involving Duff and Fisher. Russian organised crime had certainly been on the rise in the capital for several years, but the Duff Family didn’t strike her as the type to hire foreigners.

  ‘Okay. It was just a thought. And you’re sure nothing else has happened that I should know about?’

  ‘No. It’s all quiet here.’

  Kershaw chewed at a nail. She knew what she ought to do – had to do if she was going to keep him on board – but she’d always found saying sorry, the kind of apology that meant something anyway, agonisingly hard.

  ‘Listen, Janusz. I wanted to say I’m sorry for any impression I gave that I … had doubts about Kasia being taken against her will.’

  His silence said: not good enough.

  ‘I mean it. I was wrong and you were right – we’re all working on the assumption now that she was abducted.’ His only response was a grunt – but having got used to his Neanderthal communication methods, she took it as an acknowledgement of the apology. ‘I know you didn’t want a full-on police search for her, but, obviously, the case is much bigger than one missing person now.’ She paused. ‘Any chance you could email me a recent photo?’

  ‘… Okay.’

  ‘And promise me something? That you’ll let me know if you get any clue about where she is? … Janusz?’

  ‘I’m afraid I have to go, there’s somebody at the door.’

  There was definitely something funny about the way he was talking, she was sure of it, but before she could quiz him further, the line went dead.

  Later that evening, Janusz Kiszka would pop back into Kershaw’s thoughts – and not in a helpful way.

  She and Nathan King had been out to dinner in town – a trendy American-style place where the waiters dressed like Midwestern farm workers at a hoedown and the starters and mains came in a haphazard order, which was apparently the new normal. The pair of them had enjoyed taking the mick out of the restaurant’s Little House on the Prairie pretensions and she’d discovered more of Nathan’s droll sense of humour beneath the geeky intelligence. All in all, it had been a good night – a solid 8 out of 10.

  Afterwards, Nathan wanted to find a bar, but she had baled – if there were any developments on the Joey Duff case, she didn’t want to be hungover – so the night had ended with one of those awkward partings at the bottom of an escalator under the tube lights’ knowing glare. After a moment’s hesitation, Nathan went in for the kiss on the lips – and it was a good one – not too keen, while leaving no doubts about the nature of his interest.

  But anyone who’d noticed the compact blonde girl riding the escalator down to the Central line platform a moment later might have described her expression as troubled. Kershaw had spent the day fretting about the moment when Nathan King might kiss her – worried that it might trigger unwelcome images of his day job. In fact, the thought that had flashed into her mind as they’d kissed had been something different – and totally unexpected.

  What would it be like to kiss Janusz Kiszka?

  Thirty-Four

  The lady behind the counter at the Polish café was too polite to comment on Janusz’s swollen and scabbed lip as she took his order – a scruple not shared by Oskar when he arrived a few minutes later.

  ‘What happened to your face, sisterfucker?’

  Janusz shushed him with a gesture – the waitress was just setting down his bowl of zurek.

  ‘Mniam, mniam!’ Oskar wafted the steam towards him. ‘Could I have the soup, too, prosze pani? It smells delicious.’ After she’d gone, he examined Janusz’s face. ‘So was the guy who hit you a midget?’

  ‘Yeah. He was about your height.’

  ‘He had a good punch on him,’ said Oskar, his tone admiring, before loading a hunk of bread with pork dripping and crispy fried onions from the pot on the table.

  Back in their national service days, when he’d weighed in at a good twenty kilos lighter, Oskar had been a pretty useful flyweight boxer, winning a bunch of medals in military competitions. His boxing career had come to an abrupt halt, however, after he’d accepted a challenge to fight Sergeant Golombek.

  Since Golombek was a swivel-eyed kommie with a reputation for bullying the weaker lads, Janusz had advised his mate to throw the match. Instead, Oskar took the guy apart. The fight made Oskar the hero of the compound, but it also earned him months of latrine-cleaning duty and – even after Golombek’s transfer – he was never entered for any more competition matches. When Janusz saw him after the fight, and asked why he’d done it, Oskar had shrugged and said, ‘He took the piss out of Andrej’s stammer.’

  Oskar washed down his mouthful of bread and szmalec with a draught of beer. ‘So who thumped you?’

  ‘Somebody who wants to find Steve.’

  ‘Well, if you can’t find him, then what chance has Shortarse got?’ said Oskar with an air of complacent confidence.

  ‘I wouldn’t be so sure about that, kolego. He has some persuasive methods.’

  Janusz hadn’t breathed a word to Oskar – or anyone else – about Steve’s caravan hideout. It was a piece of information evidently worth a great deal to his pursuers, alth
ough Janusz still had no idea why Joey Duff – and now some Russian psychol – were so desperate to find him. The only thing he was sure of: that the stolen data stick held the key to the mystery.

  ‘You’ve got some Russian mates, haven’t you?’ he asked Oskar.

  Oskar nodded, tucking into his soup.

  ‘Have you ever heard of a tattoo that spells out “IV”?’

  ‘What, in Cyrillic?’

  Learning Russian had been compulsory under Communism and, by the end of their schooldays, Oskar and Janusz had been force-fed the basics of the language. Only now did it strike Janusz that the letters ‘I’ and ‘V’ didn’t exist in the Cyrillic alphabet.

  ‘No. In Latin script. Here.’ He tapped the inside of his wrist.

  Oskar shook his head. ‘I’ll ask Arkady.’ Pausing in his demolition of the soup, he dug out his mobile and punched out a text. ‘Done.’

  ‘Dzieki, kolego.’

  Oskar studied his friend, his expression grown doleful. ‘How are you bearing up, Janek? You know, with … the Kasia thing.’

  Janusz stared at the table. ‘It’s funny,’ he shrugged, ‘I don’t have a clue where she is and yet, I’m starting to feel like I’m getting close to finding her.’

  ‘And you still think she’s …’ Oskar didn’t finish the thought.

  ‘Alive? Yes, I’m sure of it.’

  ‘I can’t imagine how I would cope, if Gosia went missing, or – God forbid! – one of the girls.’

  Both men crossed themselves.

  ‘Listen, Oskar. I don’t want you coming round my place for a while.’

  ‘Don’t tell me – you’ve shacked up with a couple of rent boys.’

  ‘Very funny. I’m serious – it’s too dangerous, now this Russian skurwiel knows where I live.’

  ‘Sounds to me like you could do with some backup. You never were much of a boxer.’ Oskar put up his chubby fists, feinted a few jabs.

  ‘I’m not screwing around, Oskar.’ Janusz paused, weighing up the risk of revealing his suspicions. ‘If I tell you something, you’ve got to swear you’ll keep it to yourself, dobrze?’

  Oskar nodded, adopting his serious face.

  ‘This Russian, I’m pretty sure he murdered two of Steve’s mates,’ he said, in a murmur. ‘But not before using a blowtorch on them.’ He recalled how the guy had nodded, when Janusz had said nobody knew where Steve was holed up.

  The Russian had nodded because in his experience, when people knew something, he always got it out of them.

  Before Oskar could respond, his phone chirruped its irritating ditty. ‘It’s Arkady,’ he said.

  Janusz watched as he scrolled through a text message. ‘Well?’

  Oskar’s eyebrows shot up. ‘It’s not “IV”,’ he said, staring at Janusz. ‘It’s the number four.’

  ‘Naprawde? Why would he have the number four tattooed on his wrist?’

  ‘It’s his blood group: the Russians use numbers instead of letters.’

  ‘I don’t get it?’ Janusz frowned at his mate, uncomprehending. ‘Does it mean he has some kind of medical condition?’

  Oskar met Janusz’s gaze, his expression troubled. ‘Nie, kolego. It means he is Spetsnaz.’

  Thirty-Five

  ‘Voyska spetsialnogo naznacheniya …’ Stefan pronounced the phrase like a roll of thunder. ‘Russian elite special forces.’ He cocked his head at Janusz, eyes bright with intrigue. ‘Why the interest in those bastards, all of a sudden?’

  Three miles east of the Polish café, at the St Francis of Assisi Residential Home, the late afternoon sun was shining through the bare branches of the apple trees. Janusz and Stefan had taken their mugs of tea outside into the orchard so that Janusz could smoke.

  ‘It’s just some article I read recently,’ he said, lighting his cigar. ‘Are they part of the FSB?’

  ‘No. Spetsnaz always came under GRU – military intelligence. They’re a driving force behind Putin’s nasty little games in Ukraine.’

  ‘They’ve got a pretty tough reputation, right?’

  ‘Oh, yes – they make a positive fetish of their barbarism. The training includes bare knuckle fighting, getting dragged behind trucks, breaking roof tiles over each other’s heads …’ Stefan rolled his eyes. ‘Adolescent nonsense.’

  Janusz was reminded of an anecdote he’d once heard about Spetsnaz training. A unit had been ordered to swim across a freezing cold river at dawn carrying full kit, prompting an observer to ask their commander: ‘What if they drown?’ His reply: ‘If they drown, they’re no good for Spetsnaz.’

  ‘For all the talk of honour, they’re just a bunch of murderous criminals,’ Stefan went on. ‘They tortured and killed thousands of civilians in Chechnya, women and schoolchildren included.’

  Janusz wasn’t surprised to learn that his assailant boasted such a CV. ‘What about the data stick?’ he asked. ‘You said you’d managed to break into the files?’

  ‘I have.’ Stefan sounded pleased with himself, but made no move to open the black laptop lying on the seat between them.

  ‘So are you going to tell me what’s in them?’

  Stefan’s expression was as genial as ever but the look he sent Janusz was as piercing as a raptor’s. ‘We do still have the awkward matter of Wojtek’s annuity to resolve,’ he said. ‘It seems to me that these are circumstances in which both of us could benefit from a little quid pro quo.’

  ‘In other words, you’re not going to tell me what’s on there unless I agree to hush up Wojtek’s fraudulent medical records.’

  Stefan inclined his head a fraction.

  Janusz drew on his cigar. He’d expected the demand, of course, but that didn’t make the dilemma it presented any more attractive. If he reported Stefan’s fraud to Haven Insurance it would almost certainly trigger an investigation of all annuitants at St Francis, and the resulting court cases and scandal could close the place. The thought of any of the residents having to move – many of them to places where the management would have less regard for the dignity and self-determination of their residents – was more than he could bear.

  And yet … He had always lived by the principle that his word was his bond. Tomek was a friend who had given him a break by hiring him to do a job in good faith – and the idea of abusing that trust … Well, it made him feel profoundly uneasy.

  ‘What’s to stop me getting someone else to unlock the files?’ he asked.

  ‘Be my guest,’ said Stefan with a magnanimous gesture. ‘Although, personally speaking, I would think twice before sharing such … sensitive information with any Tom, Dick, or Harry.’

  They surveyed each other for a long moment. Janusz was the first to break the look. ‘Okay,’ he sighed at last. ‘Here’s what I’m prepared to do.’

  Five minutes later, after a free and candid exchange, Stefan fired up his laptop, positioning it at an angle that allowed Janusz to view the screen.

  There were five files on the stick: the first three were bank statements, two of the accounts with UK high street banks, and one with a private bank based in Mayfair that Janusz had never heard of. Even a cursory glance revealed that a tidal wave of money passed through these accounts every month.

  They were all in the name of a company calling itself Brunswick Entertainment Group, and when Janusz read the address at the top of the statements, supposedly the head office of this apparently highly profitable outfit, he felt a jolt of recognition. It was the address of the flat above the launderette in Stratford.

  ‘See how the cash gets paid into the private bank account first,’ said Stefan, pointing out some of the transactions. ‘And always in amounts of just under ten thousand pounds, the maximum single deposit that can be made without the bank needing to report it to the authorities. Once in the system, it’s “clean money” that can legitimately be transferred to the bigger banks.’ He maximised another file. ‘Finally, it all ends up here.’ The balance shown on the final statement was a seven-figure sum, its masthead naming a bank b
ased in Nicosia, Cyprus.

  ‘But the EU, the banks … everyone’s supposed to be all over money laundering these days.’

  ‘Quite so.’ Stefan sent him a look over his reading glasses. ‘But where there’s a will, and a friendly bank manager, there’s always a way.’

  ‘So who does the money belong to?’

  ‘It’s hard to say. There are substantial transfers to solicitors, some of them London-based, which would appear to be property transactions. But money is never paid to any individual’s bank account.’ He shot him a look. ‘Or should I say, almost never.’ Janusz felt his heart rate step up. Stefan scrolled through one of the statements. ‘Here we are.’

  Janusz craned to read the tiny print. ‘Two hundred grand in euros, paid into what looks like a Russian bank account.’ He shrugged. ‘But no account name – just a string of numbers.’

  Stefan raised a finger in the manner of a conjuror about to produce a turtledove from an unexpected orifice. ‘Ah, but here’s the interesting bit.’ He clicked on the icon for the final file, which turned out to be an email. Addressed to one Vasily Vetrov, it consisted of a single line.

  ‘My Russian’s pretty rusty,’ Janusz confessed, squinting at the unfamiliar script.

  Stefan lifted his chin in order to read it through the bottom of his lenses. ‘It says: “Transfer €200k to the Moscow account. Urgently.” Signed “SB”.’ He looked at Janusz to make sure he’d got it. ‘That sum arrived in the Moscow account …’ after scrolling through another statement, he pointed out a deposit, ‘the very same day.’

  Janusz checked out the address the email had been sent from. ‘SBelyakov@MinskTel.com,’ he read out.

  ‘Anyone you know?’ asked Stefan.

  ‘No,’ said Janusz, shrugging.

  ‘This email is the single slip-up, the one thing that links this highly interesting flow of cash from the UK with the person I assume to be the final beneficiary in Russia.’ Stefan took off his reading glasses to polish the lenses. ‘If I were you, I’d be asking why anyone would risk keeping such dangerous information on a data stick.’