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

  Along the way, they encountered several residents making their dogged way to and fro, Stefan handing out greetings and advice like some cheerful early pontiff dispensing indulgences. ‘Bohuslaw!’ he cried, spying a shuffling bald man with a pronounced pot belly. ‘I’m going to the bookmakers later, if you’d like me to place a wager for you?’ Bohuslaw raised a shaky thumbs-up. ‘Used to shag anything that moved,’ Stefan confided, in his penetrating sotto voce, once he’d passed. ‘But now he’s down to one testicle, he sticks to the four-legged fillies.’

  ‘Is everyone here Polish?’ Janusz asked.

  ‘No, no,’ Stefan shook his head, ‘there’s a good few Irish and English here, too. Some Catholic do-gooder started the place back in the eighties, so there tend to be a lot of left-footers, but I’m reliably informed that a belief in the Virgin Birth isn’t compulsory.’

  At a set of French doors, he paused to kiss the hand of an etiolated woman, who must have been a great beauty in her youth. Now, her well-cut frock seemed to mock her flat chest and wasted flanks. She smiled vaguely, in another world, until Stefan stooped to whisper something in her ear, making her laugh and returning the ghost of a blush to her once-pretty cheeks.

  ‘You should see pictures of her as a girl,’ sighed Stefan. ‘She’d have given Maureen O’Hara a run for her money.’

  ‘I can imagine,’ said Janusz. ‘You seem to know everyone. Have you been here long?’

  ‘Oh for ever,’ said Stefan with a dismissive wave. ‘As billets go, it’s not bad – but there’s no time off for good behaviour and when you do leave, it’s a one-way voyage to the boneyard.’ He pronounced ‘voyage’ in the French way.

  In the conservatory, Stefan steered him to a rattan sofa overlooking the garden where a chubby man in his eighties sat eating biscuits, a mug of tea in his hand. ‘Ah, here he is,’ said Stefan. ‘Wojtek! You have a visitor, you lucky dog.’

  After Stefan’s acerbic intelligence, Janusz found the interview uphill work. Wojtek Raczynski was a jolly soul, a little like a clean-shaven Father Christmas, but all too easily sidetracked onto the subject of his great-grandchildren, who he believed were learning okropne habits – swearing and cheeking their elders – from their comprehensive school in Leyton.

  According to Tomek Morski, Janusz’s contact at Haven Insurance, the firm paid Wojtek a £25,000 annual pension, funded by an annuity he’d bought some twelve years earlier, and since they’d be shelling out till he dropped off the twig, they wanted to make sure he hadn’t done so already. Apparently, it wasn’t uncommon for family members to ‘forget’ to tell the insurance company to halt payments after their loved one had departed this life.

  Janusz had been hired to run spot checks on a random selection of their Polish-speaking annuitants: with getting on for a million Poles in the UK, there was a growing demand for investigators who spoke the language and had a nose for anything fishy. As much as it grieved him to admit it, the scale of the recent influx of his compatriots had inevitably brought with it a number of scam artists and criminals. According to Tomek, if Janusz did a good job on this first round of work for them, he’d be up for a slice of the insurance fraud pie – fake whiplash claims, staged car accidents, and the like – cases whose complexity could make them highly lucrative.

  Wojtek’s case promised to be child’s play by comparison. He was demonstrably alive and – judging by the number of biscuits he demolished during their half-hour interview – in robust health for a man of eighty-eight. The only hitch was that Janusz needed to see photographic ID to confirm beyond doubt that Wojtek was who he said he was – but he didn’t have anything to hand. Janusz arranged to return to check the old boy’s passport, which his daughter looked after for him, in a few days’ time.

  Half an hour later, Janusz emerged between the Corinthian columns that framed the front porch into a surprisingly spring-like March day, with a powerfully positive impression of life at St Francis. He’d always thought he’d rather die than go into an old people’s home, but he had to admit that seeing out your final days at a place like this one mightn’t be the ordeal he’d feared, after all.

  He’d just reached the street and was about to light a cigar when he heard a voice behind him calling his name. It was Stefan, one skinny arm raised as though hailing a taxi, the other leaning on a walking stick.

  ‘What a splendid day!’ he said, on reaching Janusz. ‘Walk with me to the High Street,’ he added, brandishing his stick like a battle standard. Suppressing a smile at the old boy’s imperious manner, Janusz fell into step alongside him.

  At the corner of the High Street, he turned to bid Stefan farewell, but the old guy said, ‘Let me buy you a cup of tea. It isn’t often I get the opportunity to converse with someone still in possession of a full set of marbles.’

  Janusz barely paused before bowing his head in acceptance: he wasn’t in a rush, and anyway, he enjoyed the company of old people. It wasn’t far to what was clearly Stefan’s regular café, judging by the effusive welcome he received from the Turkish guys behind the counter.

  ‘When I first came to London, in ’45, all the greasy spoons were run by Eyeties,’ said Stefan, in a whisper loud enough to turn heads as they made for a window table. ‘Now, it’s Turks. Next year, who knows!’ His chuckle sounded like a rusted iron door being wrenched open.

  Sitting opposite each other, Janusz got his first proper look at his companion. Age had sculpted what remained of the flesh on Stefan’s face into dramatic folds and fissures, but he still had a luxuriant head of white hair, swept back from a pronounced widow’s peak in a style that had last enjoyed popularity in the fifties or early sixties. And yet there was something about his darting gaze and ever-changing expression that gave him an air of irrepressible youth, making it hard for Janusz to guess his age. Late seventies, perhaps?

  The bird-like eyes caught Janusz’s gaze. ‘You’re wondering how old I am’ – an age-spotted hand waved away his polite murmur of protest – ‘Don’t worry. I’m used to it. Paradoxically, I find it’s always the young who are the most obsessed with age.’

  He poured a stream of sugar into his black tea – Janusz noting, approvingly, that his commitment to integration stopped short of polluting the brew with milk – and stirred it briskly. ‘I was born in Lwow, which I believe the Ukrainians now call Lviv – in 1923.’

  Kurwa! Janusz did the sums: the old boy must be ninety. He appeared in astonishingly good shape for his age – as well as being sharp as a tack. ‘You don’t look it,’ he said; the automatic response to learning the age of anyone over thirty, although this time, sincerely meant.

  Stefan straightened his back. ‘My father lived to 101, God Rest his Soul. Never missed a day in his vegetable garden, and dropped dead hoeing the asparagus bed.’

  ‘So … were you in Lwow when the Russians invaded?’

  ‘Indeed I was. The tanks arrived the day after my seventeenth birthday. As a boy scout, I naturally took part in the defence of the city – until the generals kapitulowali.’ It was the first time he’d slipped into Polish, as if such a shameful event could only properly be named in their mother tongue.

  The waiter delivered Stefan’s bacon sandwich but instead of starting to eat, he lifted off the top layer of bread and set it aside.

  ‘I ended up in Kolyma, in the camps, mining gold for Stalin.’ As Stefan talked, he retrieved a plastic bag from his breast pocket, and produced a pair of nail scissors, before starting to snip the fatty rind from a rasher, apparently oblivious to Janusz’s mystified look. ‘Mining!’ he chuckled. ‘That’s a fancy word for hacking lumps out of permafrost with a fucking pickaxe.’

  After dropping the spiral of bacon rind into his plastic bag, he was just starting surgery on a second rasher when he noticed Janusz’s expression. ‘I have to watch my figure, you know,’ he said, patting his trim midriff. ‘The birdies are the beneficiaries. Waste not, want not – Kolyma taught me that.’

  Once the bacon had been denuded of all its fat, Stefa
n cleaned his scissors on a paper napkin, continuing in a matter of fact tone, ‘It was minus 50 the first winter. Men died like snowflakes on a hot stove. I was young. I survived.’ Bracing his shoulders, he took a surprisingly large bite of his sandwich.

  ‘How long were you there?’

  Stefan took his time finishing his mouthful, before dabbing his lips with a napkin. ‘They let me out in ’42 to join Anders’ Army – the Allies were desperate for young men by that time. So I exchanged Siberia for la bella Italia.’

  ‘You fought in Italy?’ Janusz was impressed: General Anders’ Second Polish Corps had played a decisive role in the Allied push through Italy, earning renown for their bravery at the Battle of Monte Cassino. ‘Yes. That was where I mislaid my kneecap, just outside Ancona.’

  Janusz struggled to think of something to say that wouldn’t be a platitude: he always felt overawed to hear of the bravery and sacrifice made by the wartime generation of his fellow Poles. Stefan would have grown up under the Second Republic, when Poland had been one of the great European powers – until its invasion by the Nazis from one side, and the Red Army from the other. Then, to have survived Kolyma – the most brutal place in the entire gulag, graveyard to hundreds of thousands of Poles and countless other ‘enemies of socialism’ – to fight as an Allied soldier … and for what? To see America and Britain deliver his country into the arms of Stalin and decades of Soviet rule.

  Stefan was frowning down at his stick-like wrists as if they belonged to someone else. ‘I was built like a bull, then, though you wouldn’t believe it now.’ Suddenly he flapped his free hand. ‘Anyway, that’s all ancient history, old men’s war stories. What about you? I take it you’re some kind of insurance investigator?’

  Janusz paused. Put like that, he wasn’t at all sure he liked the sound of his new role. Private investigator was one thing, ‘insurance investigator’ summoned up something more corporate and somehow less … honorowy – especially when measured alongside Stefan’s life. He realised he felt something close to envy for the old man’s generation. He would never experience an existential fight, never be part of a band of brothers. He remembered something someone had once said on the subject that had always stuck in his mind: ‘War exists so that men can experience unconditional love.’

  He laid out the bare bones of what he was doing for Haven – avoiding any confidential details – while making it plain that most of his work as a private investigator was carried out not for corporations but on behalf of fellow Poles.

  The opening bars of a Chopin polka sounded from Stefan’s pocket. Setting down his sandwich, he pulled out an iPhone – Janusz was amused to see it was the latest model – and using a stylus device, tapped in his passcode.

  ‘Forgive me,’ he said, squinting at the screen, ‘I’m playing chess with someone in Kiev and the bastard has just threatened my queen.’

  While Stefan decided his next move, Janusz took the opportunity to check his own phone. He wanted to find out what time Kasia would be arriving at the flat with her stuff that evening, but the two texts he’d sent since they parted on Saturday had so far gone unanswered.

  Still nothing. There was, however, a missed call from Barbara, her partner in the nail bar.

  ‘Janek,’ she said, her voice strung as tight as piano wire. ‘Please call me the minute you get this. It’s urgent.’

  Five

  Kershaw swiped her card at the entrance of the SCO19 office, trying to ignore the sour churning in her gut – which wasn’t entirely down to the bottle of Shiraz followed by Metaxa chasers she’d put away the previous night while watching some forgettable DVD box-set.

  Throughout the long months of the internal inquiry, then the inquest, she’d convinced herself that once she’d been exonerated – and she’d never seriously considered the alternative – she’d be out on shouts within a few weeks. Yesterday’s session with the shrink had upended a bucket of cold water over that idea. She cursed her own naivety: she should have known they’d make her jump through hoops before she got back her firearms authorisation – if only for the benefit of the media.

  ‘Here she is,’ said a friendly voice. It was Matt, her fellow crewmate in the ARV on the day that Kyle Furnell had got shot. He set a mug of tea down on her desk. ‘Saw you parking up, so I made you a brew.’

  ‘That’s very thoughtful of you, Matt,’ she said, raising a quizzical eyebrow. ‘You’re not working up to a proposal of marriage, are you?’

  He pretended to consider the idea, before shaking his head. ‘Nah. No offence, Nat, but I’ve set my heart on having kids who’ll grow up bigger than hobbits.’

  With the routine hostilities out of the way, Matt sat down at his desk, opposite hers. ‘You all right?’ he asked – concern softening his features. She pulled a half shrug, half nod. ‘You did get my message, after the inquest?’

  ‘Yeah, thanks for that, Matt. Sorry I didn’t reply. I decided to have a quiet weekend, you know, after all the hoo-hah last week.’ She’d almost taken Matt up on his suggestion of a few jars down the local to celebrate the result, but after seeing the news report with Kyle Furnell’s mum, she just hadn’t felt like it.

  He nodded. ‘I can imagine. I just wanted you to know that everyone here was made up for you, after the coroner gave you the all-clear?’

  ‘Ah, bless them,’ she said. A year ago, after the shooting, when she’d got back to the unit, all the guys had made a point of coming over to tell her they’d have done exactly the same thing in her situation. Well, nearly all the guys. ‘What about Lee Carver?’ she asked, eyebrows raised. They both knew there would be a few in SCO19 who’d be revelling in her recent troubles, older guys who still had a visceral reaction to the idea of a woman carrying – aka armed. Lee Carver, a firearms training instructor in his fifties, was one of them.

  ‘Well, maybe not him.’ Matt sank his head into his shoulders and deepened his voice to an inarticulate growl. ‘The only thing I want to see a female carrying is my dinner – on a fucking tray.’

  They both laughed – but Kershaw’s heart wasn’t really in it.

  During her first week of firearms training, Carver had more or less blanked her – pointedly avoiding eye contact and only addressing her when it was absolutely necessary. Then, out on the range one day, just as she was lining up on a target, he’d dropped to a crouch alongside her. ‘Help me out would you, Kershaw?’ he murmured close by her ear, all friendly curiosity.

  ‘Yes, Skipper?’ Men like Carver loved being called Skipper.

  ‘You are a woman, right?’ He let his eyes flick down to her breasts, once – as if they puzzled him.

  ‘Yes, Skipper.’

  ‘That’s what I thought.’ She could still see his hot blue eyes, inches from her face, and smell the gusts of his notoriously rank breath. ‘So what exactly are you doing here – on my fucking range?’

  Pretty much everyone on the course – all of them guys her age or a few years older – thought Carver was a knuckle-dragging gobshite. And if Kershaw had reported his outburst, he’d have been chin-deep in shit. But that wasn’t her way: never had been, in all the four and a half years she’d been in the Job. No. Her response was to memorise the instruction manual and use every second of the target practice on offer, as well as doubling the hours she spent in the gym. Marksmanship was only half the story: you had to be superfit, too, especially when it came to the fiendish ‘run and shoot’ exercise. Sprint for 100 metres, adopt shoot position shouted by instructor, one shot at target. Miss and you fail. Exceed 45 seconds and you fail.

  After five or six weeks, Kershaw was hitting body mass on the bad-guy-shaped target, 46, sometimes 48, times out of a possible 50.

  By the last day, of the sixteen who’d started, only Kershaw and seven others had gone the distance and qualified – and she’d risen to become the second best shooter of her intake. Later, when everyone was down the local celebrating, she’d picked her moment to collar Lee Carver at the bar. ‘If it hadn’t been for you, Skipp
er,’ she said, smiling up at him, ‘I probably would have packed it in after the first week.’ He stared down at her, confusion and three pints of Stella narrowing his eyes. ‘So … I got you a thank-you pressie,’ she said, handing him a Boots bag. Left him staring at a bottle of Listerine.

  The thought of Lee Carver and his kind getting off on her current predicament did have one positive, though: it iron-plated her resolve to get her firearms authorisation back and prove them all wrong.

  Taking a gulp of tea, Kershaw started to go through her email inbox, but found her thoughts drifting back to the day she’d qualified, almost a year ago. At the moment the chief instructor had handed her the little red book that was her authorisation to carry, she’d fizzed like a freshly popped bottle of champagne. But on the heels of the elation came a deep sadness. She’d convinced herself, wrongly as it turned out, that such a big life landmark would bring the return of something she had lost.

  Because the worst legacy of getting stabbed hadn’t been the loss of her spleen, but the disappearance of something she valued far more: her dad’s voice. After he’d died of cancer nearly five years ago, she would still hear him popping into her head with one of his sayings or daft gags – his East End drawl, always on the brink of a chuckle, sounding as clear and real as if he was standing next to her. He usually appeared just when she most needed a word of consolation or encouragement – or even, now and again, a telling-off.

  But ever since the stabbing – even at the moment she’d won her spurs as a firearms officer – silence. Just when she’d needed him most, his voice had disappeared. Like Scotch mist.

  ‘Nat? Are you all right?’

  Looking up to find Matt’s worried eyes on her, she realised she must have said the phrase – one of her dad’s – out loud.