Death Can’t Take a Joke Page 3

  As she dusted the pavement grit from her palms his eyes lingered on her fine, long-boned fingers. Then he remembered why he had followed her in the first place: to find out her connection to Jim and why she would leave a bunch of expensive flowers in his memory. He was tempted for a moment to broach it with her there and then, but some instinct told him that a blunt enquiry would scare her off.

  ‘Allow me to give you my card, all the same,’ he said, proffering it with a little old-fashioned bow. It gave nothing away beyond his name and number and offered his only hope of future contact with the girl. ‘In case you change your mind – or should ever find yourself in need of assistance.’

  She took the card, the wariness in her eyes giving way to a cautious warmth.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘A girl never knows when she might need a little assistance.’ And pocketing it, she turned, as graceful as a ballet dancer, and started to walk away.

  ‘May I know your name?’ Janusz asked to her departing back.

  For a moment he thought she wasn’t going to answer, but then, without breaking step, she threw a single word over her shoulder.

  ‘Varenka!’

  Five

  Natalie Kershaw woke with a jolt, her heart pounding, convinced she was falling from the top of the Canary Wharf tower. Then the dream was gone, as evanescent as the vapour made by breath in frosty air. Turning over, she threaded an arm across Ben’s warm stomach and dozed, unconsciously synchronising her breathing with his. Ten minutes later, they both surfaced, woken by the muffled roar of a descending plane.

  ‘Shouldn’t you be getting up, Nat?’ murmured Ben. ‘First day of school and all that?’

  Kershaw dug him in the ribs. ‘Don’t start pulling rank on me, just cos we’re in the same nick now.’

  ‘Am I sensing insubordination, Detective Constable?’ said Ben, putting a hand on her hip and pulling her towards him. ‘I hope this doesn’t mean a return of your well-known issues with the chain of command.’

  After a quick mental calculation of how long it would take her to get from Ben’s place to Walthamstow, she added ten minutes to allow for traffic, then reached up to return his lazy kiss.

  She and Ben had been together for almost two years now. They’d met while working at Canning Town CID but shortly afterwards their then-sergeant DS ‘Streaky’ Bacon had moved to Walthamstow, and encouraged Ben to apply for a sergeant post there in Divisional CID. Now that Kershaw was joining Streaky’s team on Walthamstow Murder Squad, she and Ben would be working in the same nick again for the first time in ages, although not – luckily – in the same office.

  The relationship had had its ups and downs, for sure, but despite her instinctive caution, Kershaw was pretty sure that Ben was a keeper. As a fellow detective, he knew the score, which meant that unlike her previous boyfriend, an estate agent, he never lost the plot if she had to stand him up for dinner or rolled in a bit pissed after drinking with the team. More to the point, he seemed to understand that for her, the Job wasn’t, well, just a job. Okay, so she had, privately, felt somewhat irked when Ben had reached sergeant rank before her, but then he hadn’t been hauled up in front of Professional Standards for ‘flagrant disregard of the rulebook’ like she had.

  Ancient history, she told herself. Today’s a fresh start.

  She arrived at the nick a comfortable twelve minutes before the start of her shift. It had been three months since she’d heard she’d got the job, but when she told the receptionist that she was there to start work on Murder Squad, she felt her stomach perform a loop-the-loop.

  Climbing the stairs, it hit her that she’d be thirty next year, and only now was her life panning out the way she’d imagined when she left uni. Better late than never, girl, she heard her dad saying. Better late than never. He’d been dead for three years, but so long as she could hear his voice in her head from time to time, it felt like he was still alongside her, somehow. Her mum was a much hazier memory but then Kershaw had been barely nine when she’d died, leaving Dad to bring her up single-handed.

  She’d just reached the door marked Murder Squad when her mobile went off: Ben.

  ‘I was about to tell you, before you went and distracted me this morning, that I got a call from the agents,’ he said. ‘We can move into the new flat end of next week.’

  Christ, she thought. That was quick. Over the last few months, Ben had waged a quiet yet dogged campaign for them to move in together, and she’d finally caved in. A couple of weekends ago they’d found the perfect place, a cosy flat in Leytonstone with its own pocket-sized garden.

  ‘Nat?’

  ‘Yeah, that’s fine,’ she replied. ‘Should give me plenty of time to box stuff up.’ She hoped her voice didn’t betray the sudden tightening she felt in her chest. Wasn’t this what she wanted? Kershaw told herself. To settle down, share her life with Ben?

  ‘You sure you’re cool with this?’ he asked. ‘Moving in together, I mean. If it’s too soon for you …’

  The note of uncertainty in his voice prompted a rush of guilt. She tried to nail what it was, exactly, that was giving her the heebie jeebies. The prospect of giving up her independence after living on her own for the last two years? Partly, yes, but that wasn’t the whole story. Was it because Ben was sometimes a bit, well, too nice? The thought had barely entered her head before she dismissed it, angry with herself.

  ‘Of course I’m sure,’ she reassured him. ‘I was just … surprised that we were getting in so quickly.’

  After hanging up, she gave herself a stern chat. Too nice?! If you don’t want to end up lying dead and undiscovered in some grimy flat being eaten by your own cats, Natalie Kershaw, you’d better waken your ideas up.

  She was pushing open the office door when there came a familiar voice in the corridor behind her.

  ‘Ah! DC Kershaw!’ It was her old boss Detective Sergeant Bacon. ‘I see you’ve acquired a new hairstyle.’

  ‘Yes …’ Suddenly self-conscious, her hand flew to her blonde hair, newly styled in an asymmetric cut, one side three inches shorter than the other.

  Hitching up the trousers of his ancient suit, he squinted down at her hair.

  ‘If I was you, I’d go back and ask for a refund,’ he confided. ‘Whoever cut it must’ve been three sheets to the wind.’

  ‘Yeah, I’ll do that, Sarge,’ she grinned. He’d gained even more weight, and lost a bit more gingery hair from the top of his head, but he was still the same old Streaky.

  ‘Anyway. Your arrival couldn’t be more timely – we’ve got an old chum of yours in interview room 2.’ Opening a door labelled Remote Monitoring Room, he winked at her. ‘You can watch it all on the telly.’

  After Streaky shut the door behind her, and Kershaw took in the hulking figure slouched in a chair on the video feed, she was properly gobsmacked.

  What the fuck? The last time she’d laid eyes on Janusz Kiszka had been in Bart’s hospital, after he’d got himself on the wrong end of a vendetta with a Polish drug gang. Since Kershaw’s conduct in that case had earned her a disciplinary hearing, the sight of the big Pole’s craggy mug, today of all days, was about as welcome as a cockroach in the cornflakes.

  Hearing Streaky finish reading him the official caution, she forced herself to concentrate.

  ‘According to the statement you gave my colleague yesterday,’ said Streaky. ‘You’re aware that your friend James Fulford was stabbed to death on his doorstep at around 5.30 p.m. on Monday?’

  Fuck! Kiszka was being questioned about a murder?

  ‘Could you just refresh my memory as to your whereabouts at that time, Mr Kissa-ka?’

  Kershaw grinned. Streaky knew perfectly well how to pronounce Kiszka’s surname: he was mangling it deliberately to wind him up.

  ‘The William Morris Gallery,’ said Kiszka.

  ‘Go to a lot of galleries, do you?’

  He shrugged. ‘I showed the other cop the text Jim sent me. He said he was going to be late for our meeting, so I had time
to kill.’

  Streaky paused, letting the word dangle in the air.

  ‘The trouble is, Mr Kiss-aka, I had one of my most experienced officers take your photo down to this … furniture museum – and there wasn’t a single member of staff who remembers you.’

  ‘It’s the only photo I had to hand,’ he hefted one shoulder. ‘It isn’t a very good likeness.’

  Streaky opened the file in front of him and leafed through some papers.

  ‘Of course, this isn’t the first time you’ve been in a police interview room,’ he went on, fixing his suspect with a deadpan stare. ‘You were questioned in the course of another murder investigation a couple years back: one that involved drugs, shooting, and three dead bodies if memory serves.’

  ‘I’m a private investigator – it’s an occupation that sometimes requires me to deal with unsavoury characters,’ said Kiszka, staring right back.

  ‘I’ll bet it does,’ said Streaky, his voice heavy with irony. ‘But you never really explained how someone who claims to make his living chasing bad debts and missing persons ends up in a Polish gangster’s drug factory.’

  ‘Does your file mention that if I hadn’t been there the body count would have been even higher?’ he growled.

  Streaky dropped his gaze. Advantage Kiszka, thought Kershaw.

  ‘Remind me how it was that you and James Fulford became friendly?’

  ‘Like I told the other cop, we met on a building site back in the eighties.’

  ‘And in all that time since then, you say you’ve just been drinking buddies, good mates, right?’

  ‘Yeah, that’s right,’ he said, pulling a tin out from his pocket.

  Kershaw wrinkled her nose, remembering the little stinky cigars he smoked.

  ‘No smoking in here I’m afraid, Mr Kiss-aka,’ said Streaky, pointing at a sign. ‘So, you’ve never had any involvement in this gym he runs in Walthamstow?’

  Kiszka shook his head.

  ‘No business dealings of any kind with each other? No property deals, for instance?’

  ‘No, nothing like that.’

  Kershaw noticed he’d started tap-tapping his index finger on the cigar tin. A sign of impatience? Or a guilty conscience?

  Streaky inserted the tip of his little finger into his ear. After rooting around for a few seconds, he examined the results of his excavation with a thoughtful expression.

  ‘How old are you, Mr Kiss-aka? Fifty-something?’

  ‘I’m forty-five,’ he growled.

  ‘Oh, sorry,’ said Streaky, feigning surprise. ‘Still, lots of people find the old memory banks start to let them down in their forties, don’t they?’

  ‘My memory is perfectly serviceable,’ he drawled – but Kershaw could tell from the set of his jaw that he was struggling to control his temper. For all his apparent cool and his old-school way of talking, Kiszka could still make the air around him buzz with the possibility of violence.

  Streaky took a document from the file in front of him and pushed it across the table.

  ‘For the benefit of the tape, I have passed the interviewee a copy of the deeds held by the UK Land Registry for Jim’s Gym, Walthamstow, dated the 11th of November 1992.’

  Kiszka picked up the document.

  ‘Would you care to confirm that that is your name on the first page, Mr Kiss-aka?’

  As he examined it, the furrows on Kiszka’s face deepened.

  ‘We all have forgetful moments,’ said Streaky. ‘But I’m finding it hard to believe it slipped your mind that you’re the owner of Jim’s Gym.’

  Kershaw gasped. Game to Streaky!

  She held her breath as Kiszka opened his mouth to speak, then shut it again. He pushed the document back across the table.

  ‘I want to call my solicitor.’

  Six

  ‘Just give me fifteen minutes with him, Sarge,’ said Kershaw. ‘We spent a lot of time together on that job so I know all his little tics and tells. I might get something useful out of him, even if it’s not admissible.’

  Kershaw was perched on the edge of Streaky’s desk as she made her pitch for a chat with Kiszka, now installed in one of the holding cells downstairs. As the new girl on the squad, she was well aware she should be keeping her head down, restricting herself to ‘getting to know you’ chitchat with the other DCs, gathering crucial first day intelligence like where the biros and the digestives were kept – but that might mean her missing the chance to get herself drafted onto the Fulford case.

  As Streaky stared into the distance, apparently lost in a daydream, Kershaw waited, knowing that if she pushed him, he’d more than likely blow his top.

  ‘Copernicus!’ he said finally, slapping the surface of his desk.

  ‘Sarge?’

  ‘I’ve been trying to remember the name of Kiszka’s cat,’ he said. ‘You mentioned it once – when you were investigating the murder of that Polish girl he was mixed up in. Stuck in my mind. Not many people name their moggies after Renaissance astronomers.’

  ‘Er?’

  ‘Nicolaus Copernicus.’ Streaky enunciated each syllable as though talking to a twelve-year-old. ‘Polish. Established the principle of heliocentrism.’ Peeling the foil back from a half-eaten pack of Rolos, he offered her one. ‘Didn’t they teach you anything at that comprehensive school of yours? Plaistow, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Poplar actually, Sarge,’ she said, taking one. ‘And I have heard of Copernicus. I’m just not quite sure what it has to do with Kiszka being a suspect.’

  ‘It tells me, detective, that he’s not your average villain,’ said Streaky, through a mouthful of chocolate. ‘Our Mr Kiszka fancies himself as a bit of an intellectual.’

  Kershaw couldn’t disagree with that. Kiszka had always struck her as a man bristling with contradictions. He might have a science degree and the tendency to talk like someone out of a Jane Austen novel, but she knew from experience he wouldn’t hesitate to throw a punch – or break the law – in pursuit of an investigation.

  ‘So if it was him who shivved his so-called mate – and he’s top of my list at the moment,’ Streaky went on, ‘he might be tempted to play games with us.’

  ‘And let something slip.’

  ‘Exactamundo.’

  She jumped to her feet. ‘So I can have a chat with him?’

  He turned his pale blue gaze on her. ‘I hope you’re not planning any of your old antics,’ he said. ‘Like restaging your famous impression of a one-woman crime-solving machine.’

  ‘No, Sarge!’ She felt her cheeks redden, aware of her new colleagues earwigging on the conversation. ‘Nothing like that.’

  He pointed the half-empty pack of Rolos at her. ‘Don’t make me regret bringing you here.’

  ‘No, Sarge.’

  ‘Alright, then,’ he said. ‘Take him a cuppa. And since you’re putting the kettle on, mine’s a builder’s. Three sugars.’

  Kershaw found Kiszka pacing up and down his cell wearing a thunderous expression. He looked huge in the tiny space, like Daddy Bear in Goldilocks’ kitchen.

  ‘I brought you a cup of tea,’ she said brightly.

  He glanced at the offering: ‘I don’t drink tea with milk in it,’ he said, and threw himself down on the narrow bunk. He’d shown not a flicker of recognition or surprise on seeing her again.

  ‘I’ll have it then,’ she said, settling herself at the foot of the bed and taking a sip. Close up he appeared pretty much unchanged – the same caveman good looks, maybe a bit thinner about the face. ‘It must be getting on for two years since I saw you last.’

  ‘Yeah, and it looks like the cops haven’t got any more intelligent in that time,’ he growled.

  She had a sudden vision of their first meeting, a no-holds-barred stand-off which had ended with her – erroneously, as it later turned out – accusing him of murdering a girl, a Polish waitress found dead in a hotel room.

  ‘Well, you’ve not been exactly helpful so far, have you?’

  ‘I’ve told t
hem everything I know, twice over! I showed them Jim’s text, his wife has vouched for me – what the fuck else can I do?’ He ran a hand through his dark brown hair, threaded with silver here and there, she noticed. ‘I apologise for the bad language,’ he added after a moment.

  Kershaw didn’t say so, but from the point of view of the investigation, the text simply put Kiszka in the right place at the right time for the murder.

  ‘So why did you clam up when the Sarge showed you that mortgage deed?’

  ‘No comment.’

  She paused. ‘Look, Janusz,’ she said. ‘I’m prepared to believe that you didn’t kill your friend. And from what I know about you, you must be dying to see the scum who did kill him locked up.’

  He shot her a look that said locking up wasn’t what he had in mind.

  ‘And the more time we spend fu… messing around following false trails, the less chance we have of finding the killers.’ Actually, Kiszka was probably more than capable of killing someone in a murderous rage, Kershaw reflected, but the important thing right now was to gain his trust.

  Janusz stared at her for a long moment, taking in the little heart-shaped face under the strangely lopsided hair, the steely set of her lips. His determination to find the chuje who had murdered Jim was as strong as ever but he had to admit it couldn’t hurt to have the cops looking for them, too.

  ‘Anything I say to you is off the record, agreed?’

  ‘Absolutely.’ This was true: although technically he was still under caution, the CPS took a seriously dim view of unrecorded unofficial chats, so nothing Kiszka told her could be used in court.

  ‘Because I’m not making any further statements until I talk to my solicitor.’

  ‘Understood.’

  He exhaled. ‘When I first met Jim, he wasn’t in great shape. He’d had a … breakdown, I suppose you’d call it – after fighting for his country.’

  ‘Yeah, the Sarge mentioned he was a Falklands veteran.’