Under Your Skin (29 page)

What’s wrong with him? He’s not listening to me. “I’m not sure . . .”

“What’s the matter?”

“I’m scared of what it might lead to.”

He laughs. Clearly, nothing I say will make any difference. “Spencer Park. The house with the Dumpster. I’ll meet you in fifteen minutes.”

•   •   •

He is sitting on the front wall of a Victorian mansion, a polystyrene cup precariously balanced next to him, nibbling something out of a paper bag. “Hm. You should taste this,” he says. “Raspberry financier from Gail’s on Northcote Road. A tiny, almondy morsel of deliciousness.”

I raise my eyebrows. “Do you never stop eating?”

“I ran here,” he says. “Built up an appetite.” He points with a comic expression to the trainers on his feet. (Asics. As I told Perivale,
everybody
wears Asics.)

“Go on—try.” He brandishes a few crumbs in my direction, and I have the hysterical thought that I only have to open my mouth like a bird and he will feed me; his fingers would touch my lips. Instead, I hold out my hand. The crumbs disintegrate further—ground almonds, a red smear of raspberry across my palm.

“Utterly delicious,” I say, licking it away quickly. He is wearing baggy khaki shorts. I can see the muscles on the back of calves, a madeleine of brown skin. “Where’s this Tolek then?”

He gestures farther down the street to a white stucco mansion, crenellated in the style of a castle. It has a sweep of in/out drive, which is crammed with pipes and beams of wood, like the building blocks for a Tudor hanging. Two men are crawling on the roof. Music is blasting—Tinie Tempah; Millie likes that one, but I bet it annoys the neighbors.

A battered Audi, with chalky scratches along one side, parks up across the street from us, and Christa gets out. I cross the road, and we kiss on both cheeks. She holds me at arm’s length. “Your hair!” she says, “Hm!” She is wearing the same floral dress as yesterday, with a cardie and flatter shoes. New polish sparkles on her fingernails, a shell pink.

“Thank you for this,” I say. “It’s so kind. I can’t imagine Tolek really wants to see us. We won’t take up much of his time.”

“For you, I feel sorry,” she says. “You are kind, and I can tell you are innocent. I want to help you. You find information and you give to the police and they let you alone.”

I nod. “And Ania,” I say. “We’re doing it for Ania.”

“Okay. But I hurry. I have not long. I have an appointment in Chelsea. On Battersea Bridge sometimes, the traffic can be very heavy.”

“An appointment?”

“My own mobile beauty business.” She hands me her card. South London Beauty Services. “Manicure, pedicure, Brazilian,
massage. I come to the house.” She pats my hand. “I do you a cheap deal. Now I go to find Tolek.”

“Mobile beauty business,” Jack says when she has disappeared behind a Dumpster. “Wasn’t expecting that.”

“And she talks about Battersea Bridge as if she crosses it all the time,” I say. “I deduce from that a regular Chelsea clientele.”

“You and me,” he says. “Proper detectives, we are.”

We smile at each other and then, as if by mutual agreement, look away.

•   •   •

“This is Tolek,” Christa says. “He has five minutes.”

A slight, lithe man with a wispy blond beard and short-cropped hair nods at us. He looks vaguely familiar. Tanned shoulders extend from a sleeveless vest; a complicated eagle is inked on his bulging bicep. He’s clutching his lunch to his chest—a Greggs sausage roll, an apple, and some crisps. He has been at work, Christa explains, since 6:00
AM
.

We cross to the common and sit down awkwardly under a tree in a damp circle. Above us, a wood pigeon alights, with a panicked flapping and disarrangement of branches. The grass looks greener than it has for months, as if it’s been painted grass color overnight. I try to think of a word for the color it was before—khaki or jaundice.

Tolek squeezes a can of Red Bull out of the pocket of his tracksuit bottoms and opens it with a cheerless fizz. He downs it in one. The sinews in his hands flex; the backs are coated in a spray of white paint. He eats his sausage roll, chewing almost too regularly, his jaw working hard. I wonder why he has agreed to come, and how well he knows Christa. She is talking to him rapidly in a stream of Polish.

He wipes his mouth with the tips of his fingers and says something in response. His voice is unexpectedly high, a silver stud in the center of his tongue.

“Okay,” she says to us. “Tolek is worried because of the police, because of the money in cash that he earns. He has spoken to them enough. For you, he will talk, but no quoting in the newspaper. Start your questions.”

“Background really,” Jack says. “How long had they been together? Where did they meet? That sort of thing.”

Christa and Tolek confer in Polish, and then Christa tells us that Ania and Tolek met at school, that their parents live in the same village.

“How long had they both been in London?” Jack asks. “Did they come here together?”

Christa looks at him. She doesn’t bother to translate. “Ania came two years ago,” she says. “Tolek, he arrive last spring.”

“That was always the plan was it?” Jack asks. “I mean, Ania had
wanted
him to come?”

Again Christa studies him hard, as if she is considering whether to translate this or not. When she speaks to Tolek, he answers at length and then looks away.

“Yes,” Christa says. “It was the plan. Tolek, he needed to earn the money to come. And Ania was waiting for him. They were getting married. They loved each other.”

Tolek takes a large bite out of his apple. It’s an unnaturally glossy Granny Smith.

“I’m sorry to ask about money,” Jack says. “But Ania’s employers said he had sent her lavish flowers and that over the last six months she had started dressing more expensively. Can you ask him if he can explain that?”

Christa and Tolek speak in Polish for a bit.

“This job,” she says, jutting her chin toward the white stucco mansion, “it is big money for Tolek. He work very long hours.”

Tolek throws his apple core toward some pigeons, who scatter and regroup. He looks away again, his eyes following the cars
streaming along Trinity Road. For some reason I am reminded of the man in the vest who looked at me from a balcony on Christa’s building. It crosses my mind that this might be the same person. Am I paranoid?

“Tell him how sorry we are,” I say quickly, “that we are so sorry for his loss.”

She translates, and Tolek looks at me, impassively, for the first time. His pale blue eyes are red rimmed, as if he is very tired or has been crying. Deep grooves are carved into the sides of his mouth. I look at his hands and his arms, snaked with violet veins. I try to imagine them round Ania Dudek’s pale neck.

He says something in Polish.

“Thank you,” Christa translates.

“Did he know anybody who wanted to harm Ania?” I say. “Had she had an argument with anyone, a friend or . . . an ex-boyfriend—?”

“Or could she have been seeing another man,” Jack interrupts, “when he was away in Poland, or even after . . .”

Christa purses her mouth. A muscle twitches in her jaw. She says something in Polish, and Tolek makes a movement with his arm—like someone beginning to answer a question in class and then abruptly changing their mind. He gets to his feet, balling up the Greggs paper bag. For a minute, I think he is going to kick the Red Bull can into one of our faces. A stream of words—invective?—pours from his mouth.

Jack stands up, too. The two men face each other. Tolek is slighter, but there is a set to his jaw; you wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of him. He raises his hand again, slicing upward this time like a blade. Jack steps back an inch, and Tolek scowls and tramps off back toward the stuccoed house. Jack runs after him. I make a face at Christa after they have gone, pulling out the corners of my mouth.

“Tolek is a good man, but a sad man,” she says. “He needs to go back to Poland to be with his family, and Ania’s. It would be better for him.” She gets to her feet. “And now I must go. I will be late for work.”

I pick up the Red Bull can, and scramble up, too. “Thank you for meeting us,” I say quickly. “I really appreciate it. I don’t want you to think . . . Christa?” She looks at me. “I’m doing this for Ania, You know that, don’t you? No other reason.”

She nods. She stares at me and I think she might be about to say something. But then Jack, who is on the other side of the road, shouts “Tolek!”

Christa begins to walk toward her car.

I run after her. “Do you know something, Christa?” I ask when I have caught up. “Is there anything you’re not telling us about Ania?”

She has reached her car. She has her key in her hand and she is fiddling with it in the door. Her hand is shaking slightly. “No.”

“Please. Christa. I am begging you. Think about Ania. Think about the baby.”

She turns, her eyes dark. “I am thinking about Ania. And the poor baby. It’s because of Ania and the baby that . . .”

“Was she in love with someone else? That’s what it’s beginning to look like. And I think the baby wasn’t Tolek’s. Am I right, Christa? Are you protecting someone?”

She leans against the car for support.

“The police will find out the truth,” I say.

“I don’t want to speak to the police,” she says.

“I can shield you from them. If you tell me.”

She stares at me considering. “I promised Ania,” she says, taking a deep breath.

“What did you promise?”

“I owe that to her and to her parents. They are grieving. They love Tolek . . .”

“So she
was
seeing someone else?”

A long silence.

“Please, Christa,” I say.

And then she nods. It is slight, but it is still a nod.

“Who is he, the other man? Who are you protecting?”

“I’m not protecting anyone. I . . .” She gives her head an irritated shake, as if she has had enough. “I never see him. He was British, a kind man, Ania said. But he didn’t kill her, I know that, or I would have told the police. He adored her. He treated her like a princess.” She looks across the road. Jack is running back toward us. “Don’t tell him!” she says, pointing with her chin. “So charming, men like him. I don’t trust him. Promise me.
Gaby
.”

“I . . . promise.”

Jack, breathing heavily, reaches the car. “What did Tolek say before he ran off?”

Christa has got into her car.

“Christa?” he says, holding her door so she can’t close it.

Her eyes flash in my direction. “No,” she says. “He knew of no one who would hurt his Ania.”

•   •   •

I can’t wait to get away so I can think clearly, but Jack doesn’t seem to want to move. He crosses the road again and watches as Tolek hauls the components of a discarded bathroom into the Dumpster, hurling slices of plasterboard and pieces of jagged porcelain as thick as human limbs as easily as if they were autumn leaves.

“Someone is lying,” Jack says. “One of them is hiding something.”

“I wish we spoke Polish.”

“It would be a help,” he replies seriously.

“I think I’ve seen him before,” I say. “Do you?”

He shakes his head. “Nope.”

I don’t know what to do. The natural thing is to tell him what Christa told me, of course it is. But her car is still in the road—she is doing a three-point turn—I couldn’t tell him immediately. I would have at least to wait a little while. She made me promise not to; and I can’t help but wonder why.

“Come on, let’s go. Get a coffee.” I pull on his arm. He yields, and we walk round the bend until the house is out of sight.

“That temper,” Jack says. “He just saw red. He exploded. If she was seeing someone else, got pregnant by him, I could imagine Tolek losing it in a jealous rage. If Perivale hasn’t bothered to follow up on Marta, maybe he hasn’t even checked to see if Tolek really was in Poland?”

“It’s a possibility,”

“The money,” Jack adds, “the new underwear . . . Does Tolek look like the Agent Provocateur type?”

“I don’t know, Jack. Who is the Agent Provocateur type?”

He starts thrashing through ideas. “Maybe she was making financial demands, pushing him into working harder and harder to satisfy her expensive tastes. And then he found out she’d had a one-night stand and it wasn’t even his baby.”

“Possible.”

“They do soup at Gail’s,” he says thoughtfully. “Chickpea and spinach, I think I noticed. As long as it’s quite chunky. I like a chunky soup.”

It occurs to me that perhaps Jack isn’t always as absorbed by the next meal as he pretends to be, that maybe he talks about food when he is actually thinking quite hard about something else.

“If she was seeing another man,” I add tentatively, “perhaps that man killed her.”

He looks at me, then. There’s a question in his eye, a flickering of doubt.

I am about to tell him. We are in the shade of spreading sycamores
in fresh full leaf, bark peeling. A whiff of carbon dioxide. The repetitive howl of a train passing on the tracks beyond the road. But then I begin to imagine what he might do next—tear back to confront Tolek, chase after Christa, entangle us both more? Now she has told me, now I
know,
I want to let go. It’s an instinct, a sense of self-preservation or something. Or perhaps I will tell him, but later, when I have thought through what to do next—take it to the police even—and when he has had a chance to calm down.

“Jack,” I say. “It isn’t feeling right, us talking about it, wondering about it. We should drop it, leave it to people who know what they are doing.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It’s what I was trying to say last night and earlier . . . on the phone.”

He throws out his arms. “What the fuck?”

“I mean it.”

“You started it, Gaby!” His face contorts. “You drew me into this.”

We have reached the main road. Opposite us squats the black granite memorial to the victims of the Clapham Junction rail crash. Behind it is the railway, the same line that leads to the part of the common where I found Ania Dudek’s body.

“I think I made a mistake.”

He stares as if I have slapped him. “Who would have thought?” he says. “Is TV’s Gaby Mortimer by any chance behaving erratically?”