Where the Devil Can't Go Read online

  He was cute, she thought. Why don’t guys like that ever ask me out?

  She pulled the tarpaulin flap open and ducked inside. Just at that moment two river cops were unloading the contents of a black body bag into a shallow stainless steel bath, about twice the size of the one in her flat. The darkly slicked head of a girl, followed by her naked body, slithered out of the bag in an obscene parody of birth.

  “Fuck,” muttered Kershaw, caught unawares. It wasn’t her first stiff – as a probationer she’d been sent on a call to a tower block in Poplar after some neighbours reported a foul liquid seeping through their ceiling. In the upstairs flat she found the remains of an old guy, who’d been dead in his armchair for two weeks in front of a two-bar fire. He’d looked like a giant half-melted candle.

  But she had to admit this one was a shocker. The girl’s skin was purplish and mottled, the breasts and stomach bore gaping slashes, and here and there were raw patches the size of a man’s hand, as though someone had taken a blowtorch to the body. The face was fairly intact, except for the eyes, which were now just two blackened empty pits.

  One of the PCs left, and the other gave her the rundown.

  A middle-aged, lifelong-plod type: a bit world-weary, but straight as a die, which was a relief, because she hadn’t anticipated the sheer embarrassment factor of looking over a naked female with a guy old enough to be her Dad.

  “A runner spotted her on the foreshore at low tide, just this side of the Thames Barrier,” he said. “We get quite a few floaters washed up on the sandbank there.”

  Kershaw pulled out a notepad and pencil. “She didn’t necessarily go in the water there, though?”

  He shook his head. “Could have drifted anything from fifty yards to ten miles downstream – all we can say is she went in somewhere on the tidal section. They can travel a mile a day, or more,” giving her more than he needed to, info she could file away for future use.

  “What about the eyes,” she said, nodding toward the empty pits. “I’m guessing ...rats? Birds?”

  “Eels, probably”, he said. “Greedy buggers. The type people eat jellied. Personally, I prefer a prawn cocktail...”

  They shared a grin over the eyeless head.

  “And the injuries?” asked Kershaw. “Any chance they could be pre-mortem?”

  He bent to examine the deepest wound, through which the pale glimmer of the girl’s ribcage could be seen, and twisted his mouth sceptically: “Hard to say. Boats and barges can do a lot of damage, and she’s probably been in over a week. When it’s cold they stay under longer – the stomach gases take more time to build up.”

  Moving up to the head, Kershaw bent to study the girl’s face, trying to ignore the yellowish foam bubbling out of her nostrils. The skin was puffy from prolonged immersion, which made it hard to tell what she might have looked like in life, but from her slim figure Kershaw guessed she was in her mid to late twenties – making them round about the same age. She was seized by a sudden need to know the girl’s identity.

  “Will we get prints off her?” she asked the PC.

  With a latex-gloved hand, he turned the girl’s left wrist palm-upwards to reveal the underside of her fingers, which were bloated and wrinkled, the skin starting to peel.

  “‘Washerwoman’s hands’,” he said, with a shake of the head. “You’ll get bugger all off them. We’ll take DNA samples, though – maybe you can get your budget manager to approve a test. The reference is DB16.”

  Kershaw scribbled on her pad. “The sixteenth dead body you’ve found this year?” she asked.

  “Yeah. And we’re not even four months in yet.”

  The smell emanating from the body filled the tent now. A not-unpleasant riverine tang, but with a darker undernote that reminded Kershaw of mushrooms left in the fridge too long. She felt deflated, disappointed not to find something more...concrete. But then she thought: don’t be daft, Nat, did you really think you’d pitch up and spot something to solve the case, Prime Suspect style?

  “There’s no way she’d be naked, is there, if it was just suicide?” she asked, suddenly anxious that the girl might turn out to be just another random jumper. “I mean her clothes, they couldn’t have come off by themselves, in the water?”

  He turned his mouth down at the corners. “I’ve never heard of a current removing a bra and pants.” They avoided each other’s eyes. “No, I’d say she was definitely naked when she went in,” he went on. “And this time of year, I shouldn’t think she was skinny dipping.”

  He bent to reach into a bag at his feet. “I’d better get on with the samples while she’s fresh,” he said, and started to line up plastic vials on a nearby trestle table.

  Left alone with the body, Kershaw noticed that the girl’s shoulder length hair was drying at the ends, turning it a bright coppery gold. It was a shade her Dad used to call Titian, she remembered, out of nowhere.

  Her gaze fell on the girl’s left hand. It lay as the cop had left it, palm-up on the stainless steel, fingers slightly crooked, suggesting helplessness – or entreaty. A gust of wind whipped the tarpaulin flap open with a crack, making her jump.

  “I almost forgot,” said the cop, returning to Kershaw’s side. “There is one bit of good news,” and cupping his gloved hand under the girl’s hip, he tilted her body.

  Near the base of the spine, just above the swell of the girl’s buttock, Kershaw could see what looked like a stain beneath the waterlogged whiteness of the skin. Bending closer, she realised it was a tattoo – an indigo heart, amateurish-looking, enclosing two names, obviously foreign: Pawel and Ela.

  “Gives you a head start on ID-ing her,” the cop said, setting the body back down with surprising gentleness.

  THREE

  The rectangle of plastic snapped open as the last coin clinked through the slot, and Janusz stooped to his peephole. Beyond it, in the centre of a dimly lit windowless room, a slender naked girl writhed around a floor-to-ceiling pole under a shower of multi-coloured lights.

  Every trace of her body hair had been shaved or plucked away, making her nakedness absolute, apart from a single stud in her navel. The girl’s movements, timed to the grinding rock music, had a natural grace, but her made-up face was expressionless and her gaze focused on some distant point. Her long fingernails struck the only incongruous note – painted not the usual scarlet, but jet-black.

  Janusz watched just long enough to make sure it was Kasia, then straightened and checked his watch, frowning, and tried to block out the alkaline reek of old semen in his cubicle. The music came to an end, only to be followed by another, smoochier number. Cursing softly, he glanced up at the ceiling and reached into his pocket.

  He could still hear the smoke alarm wailing as he leant against the club’s rear wall enjoying his smoke – his fourth, or maybe fifth, cigar of the day – he couldn’t remember. The last punter, a paunchy guy in his forties wearing a chalk-stripe suit, stumbled out of the fire exit, head bent as he finished fastening his fly. Noticing the big man in the old-fashioned trench coat, he straightened, and pulling out a pack of cigarettes, asked for a light.

  Janusz sparked his lighter, although the guy had to bend forward to reach the flame. Then, blowing out a stream of smoke, the punter planted his feet apart and jabbed his chin over his shoulder, “Did you see the bird in there?” he asked, with a man-to-man chuckle. “I’ll bet that’s a road well-travelled.”

  Janusz’s face remained impassive, so the guy didn’t notice his right hand clench reflexively into a fist, nor realise how close he was skating to a broken jaw.

  Janusz took an unhurried draw on his cigar. “I wouldn’t know,” he said. “I just work here sometimes.” The guy gave him an assessing look, trying to work out the accent – posh-sounding, but some foreign in there, too.

  “Yeah? You a bouncer then?” Janusz shook his head. “Work behind the bar?” Another shake. Then Janusz looked the guy in the face properly for the first time.

  “Look, it’s supposed to be hu
sh hush,” he said, “but what the hell, today’s my last day in the job.” He ground his cigar stub on the wall and discarded it, then leaned closer. “I rig the hidden cameras in the peepshow booths,” he said in a conspiratorial murmur.

  The guy stared at him: “Cameras? I’ve never seen a camera in there.”

  Janusz shrugged. “That’s because I’m pretty good at my job.”

  The guy’s face was going red now: “So you’re telling me...they film the customers while they’re watching the shows?” Janusz dipped his head sideways in regretful assent. “Why the fu...?” the guy’s voice held a mixture of anger and foreboding.

  “It’s a live feed to the internet,” said Janusz. “Apparently, a lot of people will pay good money to watch guys...you know...” and with an economical gesture he demonstrated the activity he was too polite to put into words.

  Now, the guy’s mouth was opening and shutting like a Christmas carp, and Janusz wondered if he was going to have a stroke or something. “It’s a...It’s a...disgrace,” he croaked. He waved a finger up at Janusz, “I’m going to...” and then brandished it at the back door of the club, “I’ll report them to...” Then he wheeled around and went off down the Soho alleyway, still ranting and waving his arms.

  Just then, the girl emerged from the club, wrapped in a black towelling dressing gown. She peered at the retreating figure, who was shouting something about the Human Rights Act, and then up at Janusz.

  “What’s with that guy?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said, with a shrug. “London is full of crazy people.”

  She shot him a suspicious look: “You haven’t been telling the customers stories again?” He shook his head, avoiding her eyes, but had to suck in his cheeks to keep from grinning.

  Kasia pulled the robe tighter around her – it was cold – and reached into the pocket for cigarettes. “You think you’re so funny, Janusz,” she said. “But if the boss finds out he’ll kick your dupa.” She raised her chin in the direction of the smoke alarm, which had now settled to a strident beeping: “And I suppose that’s nothing to do with you either?”

  The unchivalrous daylight added ten years or more to her face, he thought, but she could still pass for thirty-five, maybe even thirty, no problem.

  “I got bored,” he said.

  She widened her eyes in mock reproach. “Oh, a nice compliment. You don’t like my show?”

  “Nice body. Piekne,” he said. “But then I knew that already,” levelling his amused gaze at her. She held the look, trying to look stern, but one side of her mouth lifted, despite herself: the crooked smile that filled his daydreams.

  She bent her dark blonde head to his lighter, steadying his hand a beat longer than she needed to, making his stomach trip. It was funny, but he could never quite connect the woman in front of him with the one he’d seen pole-dancing minutes earlier. That girl was hot stuff, no question, but she didn’t make his insides polka like Kasia did. His jaw tensed as he noticed the yellow tidemark of an old bruise along her cheekbone that her make-up couldn’t quite conceal.

  “Listen, Kasia. I paid that chuj Steve a visit this morning.”

  Kasia’s hand jumped to her face.

  “Kurwa!” the curse slipped out before her lips could catch it. “...and?”

  He looked amused: she hardly ever swore, and was probably making a mental note to take her misdemeanour to confession.

  “I made the case to him that a man does not strike a woman, not even his own wife,” the words were old-fashioned and his deep voice was reasonable – but his eyes had suddenly gone cold.

  She pulled the lapels of her gown closer. “What did he say?”

  “My impression was I left him a reformed character,” he said. “But he knows that I am happy to continue our...discussions if necessary.”

  She said nothing, but reached out and briefly touched her cold hands to the sides of his face.

  He pulled back a fraction: he didn’t know why, but the gesture made him angrier than her pig of a husband and his wife-beating habits. Why did a woman like her stay with such a man? Kasia came from a good family and was as smart as a fox – she had a degree from the Film School where Polanski and Kieslowski had studied, for Christ’s sake! But he’d already heard her answer to that: ‘love can die but marriage lives forever’. And this sleazy job of hers was the couple’s only income. Half a million Poles managed to carve a living here, but born and bred Londoner Steve could never find work. It was too easy to get by on benefit in this country, he reflected, not for the first time.

  No point telling her to leave him, anyway. Like all Polish women she was obstinate as hell, and would tell him to go fuck himself. To cover his expression he ground his cigar stub underfoot.

  As Kasia turned away to blow a stream of smoke down the street, he let his eyes rest for a moment on her half-averted profile, her long, beautiful nose. It was what he’d first noticed about her that day, when he’d been lugging boxes of booze from the van to this same door.

  “I could come to your place tomorrow?” she said, still turned away, a trace of uncertainty in the upward inflection.

  His anger slid away at that, replaced by more complicated emotions. Maybe that night they’d spent together two weeks earlier hadn’t just been a one-off. He pushed his hands in his pockets and gazed up at the roofline.

  “Sure, why not. And tell Ray I’ve got a delivery of Wyborowa coming in next week if he’s interested.”

  What the hell. Like his mother used to say, he always ran to meet trouble halfway.

  An hour later, Janusz made his way north-eastwards along Essex Road, head down against a biting wind. He was heading for Pani Tosik’s restaurant to follow up the runaway waitress story Father Piotr had told him about. As one of the best-connected people in London’s Polonia, Janusz had picked up more than a few missing persons jobs over the years. His near-perfect English helped, even if his language primers – British war movies he’d watched as a kid, and later, Eighties US cop shows – had spiced his vocabulary with some colourful and outlandish phrases.

  This job sounded like all the rest: parents back home fretting because their daughter hadn’t phoned home for a few weeks. It was always a young girl, invariably ‘God-fearing and steady’ – he’d never once heard a runaway described as kaprysna – and the outcome was always the same, too. He’d find her living in sin with a boyfriend in some godforsaken bedsit. She’d cry a little, grieving her lost virginity, and after a few stern words, would promise to phone home to Mama.

  It occurred to him that this was pretty much how Kasia’s life in London had unfolded when she’d come over after her film degree. She told him she’d been a Goth back then – one of those kids who dressed like zombies and put metal bars through their tongues – but a respectable, educated girl all the same, with a job in a Polish patisserie in Kensington. She’d been learning English at evening classes with the aim of getting a job as a runner in the film business – she hoped to become a director one day. But then she’d met that big mouth Cockney idiota Steve. Reading between the lines, he’d persuaded her to chuck it all in and go to live with him – they would start their own business, he’d buy her a Super 8 camera so she could make her own films, blah blah. Worse still – because her family back home disapproved of the match, she had lost touch with them.

  Naturalnie, Steve’s big plans came to nothing, and Kasia progressed from working in a pub, to serving drinks in Soho clubs, and then to her current job as – laughable euphemism – an exotic dancer. Even a decade ago it would have been unthinkable to find a decent Polish girl doing such a job, Janusz reflected, but she said it paid her three times as much as bar work and it was true that her sketchy grasp of English limited her options.

  Restaurant Polka stood on the corner of an elegant Georgian terrace a few streets north of St Stan’s, its wide front window and green and white tiled façade revealing its original incarnation as the neighbourhood greengrocers. Now the windows were hung, somew
hat incongruously, with ruched, plum-coloured silk curtains.

  The doorbell sounded a grating three-chime peal. The elderly lady who answered – about seventy, he estimated, maybe seventy-five – wore a ruffled cerise silk blouse, a similar shade to the curtains, and tinkled with gold. He would bet that the artful crown of permed blond hair was the work of Hair Fantastic, the local salon that doubled as operational HQ for North London’s fearsome Polish matriarchy.

  “Dzien dobry, Pani Tosik,” said Janusz making an old-fashioned bow. He’d made a mental note to watch his manners, uncomfortably aware that the courtesy drummed into him by his parents had become coarsened over the years, first by life on a building site, and more recently by the uncouth behaviour his current line of business sometimes demanded.

  “Come in, darling, come in!” piped Pani Tosik. “How lovely to have a man visit! I knew your father in Gdansk, after the war – God rest his Soul.”

  She reached up to put her hands on his shoulders and examined him, then gave a single decisive nod.

  “Tak. You have his good looks - and his character, I think.”

  She waved him inside: “You will have coffee? And tort. Of course! Who doesn’t like cake?”

  Janusz followed Pani Tosik, her heels ticking on the lino, to the dim, cinammon-smelling interior.

  The old lady settled Janusz at a velvet-covered banquette in the plushly decorated restaurant, its walls hung with oil paintings of Polish rural scenes, and while she made coffee, Janusz retrieved a copy of Gazeta Warszawa from a nearby table. The front-page headline read: “‘Forget the past and move on’, Zamorski tells voters”. Beneath it was a photo of a middle-aged man with a thoughtful yet purposeful expression: Edward Zamorski, presidential-hopeful and head of the Renasans Party.