Death Can’t Take a Joke (20 page)

She stared at him. ‘You’re fucking kidding.’

‘Nope. Soon as I got a good look at him, I realised who it was.’

Kershaw saw again the face of the hanged man, dark with congested blood.
So that was why he had seemed familiar
. During his trial for the rape and attempted murder of Hannah Ryan, Anthony Stride’s photograph had been regularly splattered across the
Walthamstow Guardian
and the national red tops.

‘Christ! Any idea why he topped himself?’

‘There was a neatly typed note, tucked in his jeans pocket, saying he could no longer live with “
the terrible things he’d done, all the pain he’d caused people”
.’

Kershaw frowned. ‘A career paedophile discovering a conscience? That’s a new one on me.’

Ben shrugged. ‘Who gives a fuck. There’s one less evil bastard on the planet tonight.’

She couldn’t disagree with the sentiment, but felt a flicker of disquiet at the hardness in his voice.

‘You must be relieved,’ she said carefully.

He nodded. ‘Yeah, it’s a big weight off.’ Sounding suddenly normal again.

After they sat down to eat, she asked: ‘So how did the Ryans take the news?’

‘I don’t know. I’ve been trying to back off a bit.’

‘Yeah, but you’ve known Hannah’s dad a long time. Surely you’re gonna give him a call?’

‘I expect I’ll see him at the press conference tomorrow. It’s at 10 a.m. – which is why I can’t get to the flat for the electrician. I don’t suppose there’s any chance you could make it over there instead?’

‘Not tomorrow, sorry. I’m still on earlies. We’ll have to move it.’

She only managed a few mouthfuls, before pushing her plate away.

‘It’s not that bad,’ grinned Ben, nodding at her half-eaten pizza.

‘I’m not especially hungry,’ she said, topping up her wine glass.

‘You’re probably just excited about Saturday.’

‘Saturday?’

He made a reproachful face. ‘Moving into the flat?’

‘Oh, sorry! Yeah, ‘course I am.’

Get a grip, girlfriend,
she told herself.
Everything is going to be just fine.

Following a service at St Mary’s Church in Walthamstow Village, James Fulford was buried in a plot at the City of London Cemetery, not far from the graves of his mother and father.

By Janusz’s reckoning, there were sixty or more people crammed into the little terraced house in Barclay Road for the
stypa –
the
post-funeral feast. Marika had been working flat out in preparation for the last two days and – with her sister Basia putting in late nights recently at her job in the City – Janusz was pleased that he’d been able to persuade her to let him help with the cooking. Now he and Marika stood side by side in the through living room surveying the spread with satisfaction. As well as the huge tureen of purple-red
barszcz
with
pierogi
that he’d made, there was an assortment of
kielbasa,
a huge
salatka,
potatoes with dill, the traditional
stypa
dish of buckwheat with honey and poppy seed dressing, and hot dumplings with mushroom sauce.

‘Do you think I should have made English food as well?’ asked Marika, fiddling with a stray lock of hair that had escaped her chignon. ‘With so many of his English friends here?’

‘
Nie, nie,’
he said, patting her arm. He nodded towards a wiry man in an ill-fitting suit piling his plate with steaming dumplings, who had an anchor and the legend ‘HMS
Coventry
’ tattooed on the back of his weathered hand. ‘Comfort food is the same in any language.’

‘What if we run out?’

As Marika looked up at him anxiously, her reddened eyes standing out against the paper-white of her face, he felt a spasm of grief.

‘I think I’ll go and cut some more bread,’ she said decisively. Laika the dog, a black ribbon of mourning tied to her collar, followed close at her heels. Janusz was on the point of going after her, when he felt a hand on his arm.

‘Let her go,’ said
Oskar. ‘She needs to keep busy.’

Janusz eyed his friend’s face. His woebegone expression sat oddly with those chubby cheeks, the naturally mischievous eyes. ‘You’re probably right,’ he said.

‘All this. It makes you wonder, doesn’t it?’ Oskar gestured around him. ‘How we might not have as much time as you think? I just called Gosia and fixed to go home in a couple of weeks, to see her and the girls. I should really put another few grand in the bank first but,’ he said shrugging, ‘it’s only money, isn’t it?’

‘
Tak.’
Janusz looked around him – since they’d moved the furniture upstairs to make space for the guests, the living room looked strangely unfamiliar. ‘Remember the last time we were here, only a few weeks ago? To watch the Poland-England game?’ His face split in a smile. ‘And Jim coming downstairs?’

‘
Tak
!’ Oskar shook his head admiringly. ‘Wearing that footie strip Marika made for him!’

‘England colours from the front, Polish colours from the back … because when he married Marika “
he didn’t just marry a woman, he married a whole bastard country”
.’

Grinning, the two men shook their heads, smiles slow to fade.

Before allowing himself a proper drink, Janusz did the rounds of Jim’s closer friends, the ones who’d been in touch with him recently, exchanging reminiscences and sharing condolences. He was also probing discreetly, trying to find out whether they’d noticed any change in Jim’s behaviour of late, and whether the names Romescu, Varenka, or Triangle rang any bells. He drew a total blank. When he touched on the motive behind the murder, they seemed depressingly willing to view it as a commonplace act of random violence – probably drug-related.

‘It’s why we left and went to Enfield,’ one old Cockney guy told him. ‘You’re not safe here anymore, not even on your own doorstep.’ The locals he spoke to had all, without exception, been on the sharp end of crime over the years – a mugging here, a couple of handbag thefts there, plus a clutch of burglaries and car break-ins. One lady had been car-jacked parking her car one night, someone else had a murder happen in the flat upstairs.

Stepping outside for a smoke, he bumped into Wayne, the regular from the gym. They stood in silence for a moment, looking down at the tea lights still burning atop the garden wall.

‘You’re a PI, right?’ murmured Wayne. ‘So I’m guessing you’ll be looking for the lowlifes who killed Jim?’ Janusz nodded – Wayne was completely trustworthy. ‘Did you get anything out of that little punk Andre Terrell?’ he went on.

‘Why? Do you think he’s involved somehow?’ asked Janusz. From what he’d seen of Jim’s deputy manager, he’d have said the kid was all front – strictly an armchair gangster.

‘Nothing concrete.’ He screwed his mouth to one side. ‘But I think Jim regretted hiring him, you know?’ Wayne dropped his h’s like a Cockney but there was still a Caribbean sashay to his cadences.

‘Did he say why?’

‘Not in so many words – you know how the man was, he wouldn’t badmouth anyone. But it was obvious they didn’t get on. I seen that Terrell slam out of the office screaming and shouting more than one time.’

‘I suppose the cops have been by to interview him?’

‘Oh yeah.’ They exchanged a dry look.

Later, clearing away some dirty plates, Janusz found Basia, washing up alone in the kitchen. Grabbing a tea towel he started to dry up the mountain of crockery on the draining board. She barely acknowledged him, just crashed another plate onto the pile, spraying him with soapy water. She seemed …
angry
, almost. He recalled that she and Jim had been lovers, albeit some ten years ago, and although he was no expert in the female psyche, he could imagine that today couldn’t be easy for her, either. He was wondering what on earth he could say that might make her feel better, when Marika came in.

‘Janek, I think we should do the toasts now everyone has eaten?’

The noise levels rose as numerous toasts to Jim were proposed in the Polish way, accompanied by industrial quantities of
krupnik,
after which Jim’s old Navy chums sang a few sea shanties, assisted by Oskar’s strident baritone. An hour later, it was all over, and Janusz was standing on the threshold, Marika by his side, the house empty and silent behind them.

He enveloped her in a bear hug. ‘I haven’t given up on finding who did this,’ he said, his voice a hoarse whisper.

‘I know, I know.’ She patted his shoulder absently. ‘There was something I had to tell you …
Tak.
The police called to say they found Jim’s laptop.’

‘Really? Do you know where?’

‘I’m sorry, Janek, I don’t remember.’ She waved a helpless hand, lapsing back into the dazed, barely-seeing state of the recently bereaved.

He walked down the front path, eyes front, refusing to look down at those treacherous tiles that had been the last thing Jim had seen.

Oskar’s van pulled up at the kerb and he wound down the window. ‘Get in, Janek.’

‘Are you in a fit state to drive?’

Oskar looked outraged. ‘
Nosz, kurwa
!
I hardly drank anything! Anyway, I’ve had three really strong coffees.’

Janusz didn’t have the strength to argue. ‘Drop me off by Walthamstow tube then,
kolego
.’

‘Uh-uh,’ said Oskar, shaking his head. He waggled a bottle of Wyborowa. ‘We’ve got an appointment.’

Which was how Janusz came to end the day scaling the two-metre-high railings of the City of London cemetery in the dark. As the taller of the two, he went first, covering the spikes with an old duvet Oskar used to protect garden ornaments, before using the van’s roof rack to boost himself up and over.

The vast expanse of the cemetery, criss-crossed by pathways, receded into the silent darkness: Janusz hadn’t noticed during the burial ceremony how huge the place was.

‘How the fuck are we going to find him?’ he hissed.

‘What are you whispering for?’ chuckled Oskar. ‘You’re not going to wake anyone up!’ He pulled a scrap of paper from his pocket with a nonchalant flourish. ‘I made a
mapa
after we buried him.’

As they started off down the nearest path, a marble angel kneeling atop of a catafalque sent Janusz a reproachful look. It pitched him back thirty years, to those late-night visits to his grandfather’s grave on All Saints’ Eve. He remembered how tightly he had clung to Mama’s hand, eyes locked on the flame of his candle, knowing that if he should let his gaze flicker towards a candlelit grave, its inhabitant might suddenly sit up – grinning face crawling with worms, flesh hanging from the outstretched arms like seaweed. At least back then there had been the twinkling of a thousand candles and murmuring groups of people: here there was nothing but a silent dormitory of the dead.

He shivered. ‘Are you sure about this? It’s not as if Jim was Polish.’

‘Tradition is tradition,’ said Oskar staunchly. ‘Anyway, he said it himself – being married to Marika made him an honorary Pole.’

When they reached Jim’s grave, its freshly turned earth a darkened rectangle against the moonlit turf, they fell silent and crossed themselves. Janusz took the shot glass and held it out for Oskar to fill from the
wodka
bottle. He dropped to a crouch and carefully poured the contents onto the grave.

‘
Na zdrowie
,
kolego
,’ he murmured, hearing his voice break on the last word.

They each took a swig from the bottle, Janusz suppressing a grimace: having spent half his youth blind drunk on the stuff, he could no longer stand the taste.

A few minutes later they were clambering back over the railings, using the low branch of a tree for a leg-up. From behind him, Janusz heard Oskar say: ‘You dropped something!’

It wasn’t till they were in the van, safely back on the main road, that Oskar handed Janusz what had fallen out of his coat pocket. A USB stick.

He turned it over in his hands, frowning, unable to recall ever seeing it before, although the image it bore of an eagle with outstretched wings looked familiar. Then he remembered why.

It was the Orzelair logo.

When Kershaw returned his call the following morning Janusz cut straight to the point. ‘I hear you found Jim Fulford’s laptop.’

‘You know I can’t confirm something like that to someone outside the family.’

‘It was Marika Fulford who told me,’ he growled. ‘I could get her to call you, but I’d really rather not disturb her the day after she buried her husband.’

Kershaw sighed: she didn’t have much appetite for pointless protocol either. ‘Okay. Strictly off the record, we have recovered his laptop.’

‘Where did you find it?’

‘Dawn raid on some toe-rag in Tottenham who trades stolen goods. I’m told his front room looked like the warehouse of PC World.’

And I bet I know who sold it to him,
thought Janusz suddenly, seeing the flash of a fake diamond embedded in a tooth.

‘The Computer Crime Unit have had it for three days but they only just told us it was Jim’s,’ she went on. ‘All the files had been deleted, of course.’

‘But they were still there on the hard drive?’

‘Yep. They got them all back.’

‘If you’d let me have a look, I might be able to spot something.’ He kept his voice casual, as if he’d be doing her a favour.

Kershaw hesitated. When she’d returned from Poland, Streaky had magnanimously allowed her back on the Fulford case, and had just assigned her and Sophie the task of wading through the recovered files. But without any suspect currently in the frame, or any idea what they were looking for, it looked like it would take until Christmas. As Jim’s best mate, Kiszka would undeniably have a better nose for anything out of the ordinary; on the other hand, after that stunt he’d pulled in Poland, going AWOL on her, she still felt disinclined to trust him.

‘I don’t think so,’ she said.

The rasp of a lighter came down the phone followed by an exhaled breath.

‘What if I told you I could identify your stowaway?’

Kershaw felt her pulse rate jump. ‘Really,’ she drawled, deadpan.