Death Can’t Take a Joke (30 page)

The phone on his desk bleeped.

‘DS Bacon. Yes, I’ll hold.’ Streaky cupped a hand over the mouthpiece and rolled his eyes. ‘It’s Barrington,’ he told her, naming the Assistant Chief Constable.

Kershaw raised her eyebrows: the Stride story must be making waves if it warranted a call from The Dream Factory – as the Sarge invariably called Scotland Yard.

‘Listen,’ he said, under his breath. ‘If you can get Varenka on her own, see what she’s got, we’ll talk again about approaching the Home Office.’

Kershaw grinned her thanks and was turning to go when he pointed a stern finger at her. ‘And if you’re planning on going to that Romanian gangster’s gaff to doorstep her?
Take a fucking uniform
. None of your girl scout heroics.’

On her way to get her coat, she spotted Adam Ackroyd at the water cooler.

‘Hey, Adam. Nightmare day, huh?’

‘Yup. Getting our arses kicked from all sides.’

He smiled but didn’t sustain eye contact, she noticed. Were her workmates blaming her for the failed search of Hollow Ponds and the media fallout they’d been left to wrestle with? She was still the office newbie and the last thing she needed was to be the focus of any team resentment. An image of Ben slipped into her mind, and she asked herself again,
How could he have done it?
Then she pushed all thought of him away. With their relationship still in this horrible limbo, work was the best therapy.

‘Listen, Adam, I just wanted to let you know. The night before we found Stride? One of my contacts says a car was seen driving out of the bushes up at Hollow Ponds.’

‘I didn’t know you had a CHIS, Natalie,’ said Ackroyd, his grin allaying her paranoia somewhat. ‘I hope you had it properly authorised.’ These days, you had to get a stack of permissions before signing up a Covert Human Intelligence Source, aka an informer.

‘He’s not really a CHIS,’ she said. ‘It’s Jim Fulford’s best mate, Janusz Kiszka.’

‘The Polish PI who we had in the frame early on?’

‘Yeah. Anyway, according to him, one of the Forest Rangers was driving past late that night and saw a black Land Rover Discovery creeping out of the woodland. You might want to send someone down there to talk to the guy who runs the café? Apparently, he knows the name of the Ranger.’

The moment Janusz got out of the Pasha Café he called Marta – but her mobile kept going through to voicemail. So he phoned Bobek’s school, and got hold of the headmistress, who he’d met once at a parents’ evening. She told him the best news ever – the school was closed and Bobek was away on holiday. He remembered then – Marta had mentioned that she and the new boyfriend were taking the boy on a skiing trip.

As he hung up, he reflected that Romescu had probably just been winding him up – if he was really going to do something, why would he give advance warning? But one thing continued to gnaw at Janusz’s gut: Romescu had found out somehow that Marta and Bobek lived in Lublin. When Marta called back he’d have to tell her to move out, find somewhere safe to stay, at least for a while.

When Janusz finally arrived at the hospital he found Oskar’s bed stripped and his bedside table cleared, a sight that triggered a fresh flare of panic. The only nurse in sight was at the far end of the ward helping an elderly man back into bed.

Then he nearly jumped out of his skin as a hand fell on his shoulder.

‘
Kurwa mac
!’
he burst out.

‘You’d better not let Jadwiga hear you,’ said Oskar, shaking his head. ‘She says that every time somebody curses, the baby Jesus sheds a tear.’

Janusz grunted. ‘What are you doing up and dressed, anyway?’

‘I’m getting out of here.’

‘Are the medics okay with that?’

‘Fuck the medics! If I don’t go and price that patio job in Redbridge some guy called Paddy is gonna come along and steal it from under my nose.’

Twenty minutes later, after Oskar had signed a form saying he was discharging himself against medical advice, he was climbing into the Transit van, which one of his labourers had delivered to the hospital car park earlier that day.

Janusz lagged behind, glancing around the car park, on the lookout for anyone who seemed out of place. After slamming the passenger door, he turned to his mate. ‘Listen Oskar, I’ll go with you to price this job because I want to watch your back, but after that, I’m deadly serious – I want you to come and stay with me for a few days. Romescu’s quite capable of going after anyone close to me.’

Oskar didn’t appear to be paying any attention – he was concentrating on trying to tune the radio with his left, unplastered, hand. ‘
Dupa blada
, Janek, stop fussing and make yourself useful. Find LBC for me – I haven’t heard the news in days.’

Janusz dashed an exasperated hand over his scalp. ‘For fuck’s sake, Oskar! Romescu knows where you live – he could be sending his goons after you right now! Do you
want
to get all fucked up again?’

He regretted the words the moment they were out of his mouth. Oskar frowned at the radio, fallen uncharacteristically silent.

As Janusz tried to imagine the ordeal those bastards had put his mate through, he remembered with a jolt an experience back home, at the peak of the Solidarity uprising. He’d just turned seventeen when the
milicja
caught him daubing anti-Communist graffiti on a railway bridge. After dragging him off to the cells they’d spent the whole night working him over. The bruises had faded within a few weeks but the memory of his own powerlessness, the deep sense of shame and humiliation, had left scars as indelible as the rings within the trunk of a tree.

‘I’m sorry, Oskar. I just feel so bad about … what happened to you because of me. I’m probably being paranoid but I’d still feel a whole lot better if you moved into my apartment for now.’

Oskar drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. ‘So I’d be coming to stay with you to make you feel less jumpy?’

‘Yes.’

He heaved a theatrical sigh. ‘Alright then. On one condition.’

‘Name it.’

Oskar started the van up. ‘You promise to wear your pinny when you give me a blowjob.’

As they left the car park, Janusz checked his messages to see if the girl detective had returned his call. Nothing. He’d been trying to reach her, gripped by a steadily growing conviction, triggered by the sight of Varenka’s terrified face, that her life was in danger.

Oskar took a corner at speed, hurling Janusz against his door, the impact bringing a stab of pain from his bruised ribs so fierce it made his eyes water. ‘Are you sure you’re safe to drive?’ he asked, eyeing the cast on Oskar’s right arm.

‘Don’t be such an old woman, Janek! I’ve got another arm, haven’t I?’ Oskar nodded towards the dashboard onto which someone appeared to have upended a wastepaper basket. ‘And look that address up in the A-Z will you? Piotr forgot to bring the satnav.’

After a few moments mining the strata of envelopes, drinks cans and sweet wrappers, Janusz retrieved the piece of paper his mate was after. On it, in Oskar’s barely legible scrawl was written:
Mrs Martin, 11 Park Rd.

Janusz flicked through the index of the A-Z, squinting to read the tiny type. ‘There are two Park Roads in Redbridge – one in E11 and one in E12. What’s the postcode, donkey-brain?’

Oskar hesitated for a split second before replying ‘E11.’

His tone sounded unambiguous enough, but after knowing him for nearly thirty years, Janusz could tell his mate didn’t have a clue.

On the garden wall outside the Fulford house, tea lights still flickered in their red perspex holders, but most of the floral tributes, long wilted, had been cleared away.

Marika ushered Kershaw into the tiny front room. Bending swiftly to pick up a pillow on the floor beside the settee, she caught Kershaw’s inquiring look. ‘I’ve been sleeping down here since …’ She looked around the room with a slight frown, as though she’d mislaid something. ‘I’m thinking of putting the house on the market,’ she said, waving her hand in a vague gesture. ‘Basia – my sister – thinks it would be good for me to move. We might buy a little house together, on the coast somewhere.’

As they sat drinking tea, Kershaw ran through her list of questions. Was there anyone who might have wished Jim harm? Had he ever taken drugs? Fallen out with anyone at the gym? Had an affair? Marika gave each question careful thought – but answered them all in the negative. Between note taking, Kershaw studied the older woman discreetly. Her face was chalk white, the features blurred, like an image printed on a tea towel faded by countless washes.

‘I’m sorry, Marika. I know you’ve been asked these questions several times already.’

‘I am happy to answer them,’ she said in her not-quite-perfect English, ‘if it means that you are still trying to find out who took my Jim away from me. When the police stop coming, when the journalists stop telephoning, this will be much harder. It will mean people have started to forget him.’

Kershaw was reminded of the first few weeks after her dad died. The cascade of cards and phone calls from his old friends, the funeral, had all given that early period of grieving an almost festive
feel – and a sense of unreality. The worst part had come in the weeks and months afterwards: waking every day to face a gaping void – the inescapable and unbearable finality of his irrevocable absence.

She tipped her head towards the front garden. ‘Your friend Mr Kiszka thinks it was strange that this Ukrainian girl, Varenka Kalina, should leave flowers when she didn’t know Jim.’

‘Yes, he told me he was following it up. She is connected to a Romanian gangster, I think?’

‘Barbu Romescu. Can you think of any connection at all Jim might have had to either of them? Had he ever been to Romania, or Ukraine, or made investments in those countries?’ Both enquiries were met with a shake of the head.

Kershaw hesitated for a moment. ‘Look, I don’t know if Mr Kiszka told you, but the girl may have been, at least until recently …’

‘… a prostitute. Yes, Janek told me. I think he wanted to ask me if Jim had ever paid for sex but couldn’t bring himself to.’ The eyes of the two women met in a moment of humorous understanding. ‘I have thought about it a lot since he mentioned this girl. I looked through all Jim’s bank and credit card statements again to see if there was anything strange about his spending.’

‘And?’ Asked Kershaw.

‘
Zero.
Sorry – nothing.’ She shrugged. ‘It was funny. I didn’t know whether I wanted to find something – because it might help explain why he was killed – or whether I wouldn’t be able to bear it.’

Kershaw’s gaze fell on a framed photograph of Jim on the mantelpiece. He was sitting at an outdoor café, somewhere hot judging by the sunlit vines tumbling down the whitewashed wall behind him, peering through his specs at what appeared to be a Spanish language newspaper on the table in front of him. She nodded towards the photo. ‘Did Jim speak Spanish?’

‘Not really,’ said Marika with a rueful smile. ‘He picked up a little bit in the Falklands when he had to guard some Argentine prisoners, and every time we took a holiday in Spain he tried to speak it, but he never really got beyond ordering a beer and “
hasta la vista”
.’

Kershaw looked again at the photograph. Something about it had set up a distant hum at the back of her mind, but she couldn’t for the life of her work out why.

As they said goodbye at the door, Marika suddenly said: ‘I nearly forgot, would you please pass my sincere thanks on to Sergeant Bacon? I haven’t had a chance to write to everyone yet, but please tell him I was very touched by the beautiful wreath he sent to Jim’s funeral.’

Kershaw smiled and said she would, like it was the most normal thing on earth for an Investigating Officer to send flowers to a murder victim’s spouse. But inside she was thinking:
Streaky a closet sentimentalist! Who knew?

While Janusz and Oskar were on the way to the second Park Road, in E12 – the first address having turned out to be the home of an elderly Asian lady who clearly thought they’d come to rob her – a news report came on the radio that made Janusz’s brain race. Apparently, the cops were now treating the death of Anthony Stride, the dirty
chuj
who’d abused the little Downs Syndrome girl, as murder.

The girl detective finally returned his call just as they were arriving back in Walthamstow. ‘Where are you?’ he asked, bellowing to be heard over the van’s diesel growl.

‘I’ve just left Marika Fulford’s,’ said Kershaw. ‘Why?’

‘Good. Do you know the Rochester – the gastropub at the end of Jim’s road? I’ll meet you there in ten minutes.’

Before she had time to protest, he’d gone.

The pub was half empty at the fag-end of the lunchtime rush.

‘Where’s the fire then?’ she asked, taking a sip of her coffee – much as she’d have liked a drink, she was still on duty.

Janusz chose to ignore her sarcastic tone. ‘I heard the news on the radio – that your lot have decided that the paedophile found hanged in the woods was murdered?’

‘Well, we’re still investigating the circum—’

‘Spare me the official version.’ His voice was curt. ‘Was he or wasn’t he?’

‘We won’t know till the second post-mortem, but between you and me, I’d say everything points that way.’

It only served to make the puzzle even more bafflingly impenetrable, thought Janusz, staring into his pint. Romescu’s 4X4 had been parked in the undergrowth at Hollow Ponds the night Stride was killed, the same woods where, just three days earlier, his thugs had taken Oskar to be beaten and tortured. If, as looked likely, the Romanian was behind Stride’s execution, what – if anything – could that have to do with Jim’s murder? What could connect a lowlife like Stride to a man like Jim Fulford? A tiny bell-like voice in his head supplied one perfectly feasible link. He mentally batted it away, furious at himself for even thinking it.

The girl detective was eyeing him uncertainly.
Of course!
The same thought must have occurred to her.

He set his pint glass on the table with exaggerated care. ‘There’s no way that Jim would ever harm a child.’ His tone declared that line of enquiry closed. Forever.