Where the Devil Can't Go (23 page)

He nodded rapidly, trying to compose himself.

Kershaw stared at Ela’s picture, mortification at her screw-up giving way to a surge of excitement: she had identified DB16 – the girl with the Titian hair! She didn’t have the faintest idea how Elzbieta Wronska had ended up in the Thames with her veins full of counterfeit Ecstasy, but maybe the discovery that she wasn’t another dead sex worker would boot the case up the priority ladder. Officially, it made no difference, but in her view the shockingly low clear-up rate for murders of working girls spoke volumes.

She went to the machine to get Timothy another cuppa and by the time she returned he seemed calmer.

“Listen, Timothy,” she said as she sat down again. “I hate to ask this, but do you know if Elzbieta ever took drugs – the softer stuff, like Ecstasy?”

“Why? Was it an overdose?” he asked, his eyes wide.

“Yes, I’m afraid so.”

He stared into his plastic cup. “Elzbieta is the
last
person I could imagine taking drugs,” he said. “She used to say that more than one glass of wine gave her hiccups.” The ghost of a smile played at the corners of his mouth.

Timothy said that Elzbieta had turned thirty a few months earlier – an occasion marked by a rare night out with a couple of other studes at a nearby curry house. She had lived in England since she was about eleven or twelve, brought up by an aunt who adopted her after both her parents died in a car accident.

“This aunt would be the next of kin, then?” asked Kershaw.

“No, I’m afraid she died a few months ago. Elzbieta went straight home, somewhere in Kent, and didn’t come back till after the funeral. She was devastated actually,” He shook his head, eyes lost in the memory.

“You seem a bit surprised by her reaction,” said Kershaw.

“I suppose I’d never seen her like that before. She was usually so happy, and so...” – he looked around, hunting for the word – “sorted. She told me once that after her parents died she had a terrible time, but, in the end, it made her a survivor.” He nursed his tea, gazing at the tabletop.

Kershaw nibbled discreetly at the remains of the nail on her little finger. From the way Timothy talked about Elzbieta, and his reaction to her picture, she sensed they’d been more than just friends.

She leaned toward him. “You were really fond of Elzbieta, weren’t you?” He nodded. “Did you two have... a romantic thing going on?” – she couldn’t bring herself to use more matter-of-fact terminology.

“No, we were just good friends.” But he cut his eyes away from her.

“Are you sure?” she pressed. “You never wanted more than friendship?”

“Alright!” The word burst out, his face reddening. “I did ask her out, once or twice, but she...she turned me down.”

With his pink cheeks and shock of blond hair, he looked like an angry choirboy.

“She said she didn’t do the boyfriend thing,” he said, trying – without success – to iron the resentment out of his voice.

She sipped her tea, studying Timothy Lethbridge over the lip of the cup. He wasn’t unattractive, exactly, but there was a fatal girlie-ness about him that, to women, would always say ‘friend’ more than ‘lover’. Elzbieta had obviously been letting him down gently. All that ‘reading in her room’ could simply have been cover for her secret affair with the mysterious Pawel, his name etched on her buttock where no-one could see it.

Kershaw knocked back the dregs of her tea and stowed the notebook in her bag. “I’m going to have to talk to the principal, Timothy,” she said. “I assume he knows Elzbieta’s gone missing?”

He fell silent, fiddling with his watchstrap. “I haven’t mentioned it to any of the college staff yet,” he said finally.

“Can I ask why not?” she asked, keeping her eyes on his face.

He shrugged. “Well...she’s a PhD student – she can come and go as she pleases. I didn’t want to cause a fuss when she might simply have gone off to Poland on a research trip or something.”

Kershaw did a quick calculation. Your best friend goes AWOL for nearly two weeks and you don’t say a dickybird to any of the lecturers? That was weird. Maybe he was still embarrassed by his unrequited pash for Elzbieta and didn’t want to face awkward questions.

“Right. Well, I need to see this Monsignor Zielinski straight away,” she said, pushing back her chair. “Can you show me where his office is?”

The middle-aged female guarding the portal to the principal’s office was dismissive: the Monsignor was tied up in a staff meeting and would then be going straight onto an appointment with the Bishop. From the secretary’s lofty manner and disdainful gaze, Kershaw was left in no doubt that, in her world, a Monsignor far out-trumped a pushy police girl with a Cockney accent.

“Perhaps you’d like to leave a card, officer,” breezed the battle-axe, “And I will ask the Principal when he is able to grant you an appointment?” – like the matter was closed.

Bring it on
, thought Kershaw. “It’s a real shame he can’t spare me the time now,” she said, moving to stand beside the secretary’s desk, invading her personal space and eyeballing her paperwork. “I was hoping to let him know, just as a matter of courtesy, really, that I’m about to cordon off the halls of residence and bring in a CSI team to start a search of the student accommodation.”

The secretary gave a gasp of outrage.

Just at that moment, six or seven men started spilling out of the principal’s office, some in the penguin outfits advertising their hotline to God, some in ordinary suits. Talking in loud, self-important tones, they passed the two women without a glance. The secretary grabbed her chance, leapt up and bolted through the open door, closing it behind her.

Thirty seconds later, Kershaw had penetrated the inner sanctum. But instead of the grizzled old cleric she’d expected to find there, the man who emerged from behind his desk to greet her was fresh-faced, in his late thirties. As they shook hands –
blimey, twice in a day
, thought Kershaw – she took in Monsignor Zielinski’s get-up: a dog collar under a closely-fitting long black gown with fuchsia buttons that showed off his tall, slim figure. As the door closed, he ushered Kershaw over to a seating area by the window that held a boxy orange sofa, a black leather chair and a coffee table shaped like a kidney bean – the kind of understated retro-chic that cost a small fortune.

“Mrs Beauregard said something about a death?” asked Monsignor Zielinski, his voice becoming serious. His English was perfect – second generation Polish, Kershaw decided.

Leaning forward, she placed the post-mortem image of Elzbieta on the coffee table between them. He put on some trendy wire-rimmed glasses and, drawing the picture closer, studied it, blinking once, twice.

“Do you recognise her, Sir?” she prompted. He knew the girl, she was sure of it, but he seemed reluctant to say so.

“Well I can’t be certain, officer, but yes, this lady does look like a little one of our students. I’m sorry, but I just can’t recall her name.” He made a self-deprecating face: “Old age, I’m afraid.” He removed his specs, sadness defocusing his eyes.

“One of your students, Timothy Lethbridge, has identified her as Elzbieta Wronska,” said Kershaw. “I’m afraid it appears that Ms Wronska died following a drug overdose: her body was recovered from the Thames five days ago.”

“That’s dreadful news,” he said, slumping back in his chair. “Yes, of course, Elzbieta was one of our PhD students. She was blessed with a rather brilliant mind.”

The Monsignor stared out of the window into the tree-lined courtyard one storey below. Students sat reading, or chatting with friends on the sunlit benches between silver birch trees, their branches dusted with the pale green of still-furled leaves. “The great adventure of life before her, snuffed out like that,” he said, as though to himself.

Kershaw’s gaze fell on a solitary red-haired girl sitting directly beneath the window, eating an apple. The sight pitched her back to the riverside at Wapping and Ela’s white hand lying upturned on the stainless steel.

“I’m going to need all the information you have about Elzbieta to help us pursue our enquiries.”

He got to his feet. “I can certainly help you there. We keep administrative files on all the students, although, of course, I’ve never had to consult them in such terrible circumstances.” On the other side of the room stood three filing cabinets: crossing to the furthest of them, he opened the bottom drawer and returned with a slim blue loose-leaf file.

Inside was a photograph of a girl paper clipped to a sheaf of papers. Kershaw scanned the image. There was no doubt that Elzbieta Wronska was the girl in Wapping mortuary. The snap showed her standing with one foot resting on a stile in a country lane – an unmistakably English scene – the tawny hedgerow echoing the backlit spun copper of her hair. Elzbieta hadn’t been conventionally beautiful, but she had a trusting smile and a country-girl freshness that suggested pails of creamy milk and sunny meadows.

“Isn’t her hair a pretty colour?” said Kershaw.

The Monsignor flushed at the observation.
Oops
, she thought, maybe that wasn’t the sort of thing you said to a Catholic priest, but he just said, “Yes, I suppose it is,” and smoothed the black robe over his knees. The shoes poking out beneath his robe were beautifully stitched and shiny as a conker, she noticed, and his socks were the same shade of dark pink as his buttons.
A nice bit of schmutter
, she heard her Dad saying with a wink. Kershaw suddenly wondered if the Monsignor might be gay.

Leafing through the file, she came across a foreign newspaper article carrying a black and white photograph of what she took to be the college orchestra. Elzbieta sat to the left of frame, upright and serious-looking, a violin tucked under her chin; her bow hand a blur of motion and her gaze bent on the conductor, whose back was to the camera. And there, almost opposite her, sat Timothy Lethbridge, a cello between his legs and bow hanging limply from his hand, awaiting his cue. At the moment the shutter had clicked he’d been looking straight at Ela and the snap had captured his expression:
lovesick puppy
. Looking on from beyond the orchestra’s back row, was the Monsignor himself.

The file held half a dozen other cuttings, too – Kershaw didn’t recognise the language but she could take a guess.

“So Elzbieta went to Poland with the College Orchestra?” she asked, showing him the article.

He peered at it: “Yes, Elzbieta was an accomplished violinist – could have gone professional had she chosen that path,” he said. “We toured central Europe last year, and the Polish concerts were a particular success: we made several thousand pounds for Church charities. As you probably know, the Poles are a very musical people – as well as being very devout, of course.”

“I see Timothy Lethbridge was on the tour, too?” she enquired.

“Yes, yes indeed,” he said. “Not in the same league as Elzbieta, but a very decent cellist, nonetheless.”

Kershaw closed the file, and before she could ask, he said, “Please feel free to take that away with you.”

“Thanks. I understand Ms Wronska’s adoptive mother has passed away, so I’m hoping to find something in here to give us a next of kin.”

“You will keep us informed?” he asked, his eyes anxious. “We’d consider it an honour to hold the funeral service – if Elzbieta’s family agrees, of course.”

Kershaw nodded and stood up to go.

“I’d like to take a quick look at Elzbieta’s room, before I go. But I’ll be in touch later, once I know whether we want to send a CSI to check it out.” He looked mystified. “Forensics people,” she clarified.

The Monsignor sketched a map of the campus on a piece of paper to show the way to the halls of residence and wrote down the access code. As they walked to the door, he said: “I’ll telephone the janitor and ask him to meet you there so he can let you into the room.”

On the way to the halls, Kershaw went over her encounter with the Monsignor. Why had he been shifty, at first, about knowing Ela? Was it the prospect of bad publicity? A student dying of a drugs overdose OD was hardly an ideal calling card for a theology college.

She certainly needed the map – the route wound confusingly through a sprawling private housing estate, and soon she had completely lost her bearings. Ten or fifteen minutes later, she emerged from a walkway into a low-rise development made of the same rain-stained concrete as the main college building, and immediately spotted a sign for “Francis House”, Elzbieta’s block.

Room 209 was on the second floor, easily identified by the elderly caretaker who waited outside, jangling his keys. He opened up and acknowledged her thanks with a wordless nod, before making himself scarce. That was a relief. She was desperate to discover the real Elzbieta, the girl behind the theology PhD, and she couldn’t do that with some caretaker lurking in the background.

When her eyes had adjusted to the darkness, she made out floor length curtains covering the windows through the gloom. Then, pulling on the latex gloves she always carried in her bag, she groped for the light switch, feeling a frisson of anticipation. For a moment, nothing, but then the dim glow of a low energy bulb sprang to life.

The greenish light revealed the pale wood utility furniture she recalled from her own college halls – a desk by the window, though oddly, no computer; a chest of drawers; and a four-foot bed, large enough for a quickie, if not ideal for overnight stays.
Well, you wouldn’t want to encourage any mortal sins
, she thought.

The room was tidy, the bed linen freshly laundered, and the sweetish smell of furniture wax hung in the air. The only clue that anyone had ever lived here was a handful of personal knick-knacks lined up on the chest of drawers – a white plastic ‘Make Poverty History’ bracelet, a framed photo of a middle-aged woman with salt and pepper hair, presumably the dead aunt, and a gingerbread heart with Polish writing on it, no doubt bought on the orchestra tour. A scoot through the drawers revealed nothing interesting – hippyish clothes in muted colours, which gave off a faint smell of lily of the valley – a bit of an old lady fragrance, thought Kershaw, for a girl of thirty. A trawl of her bedside cabinet produced only a Bible, a rosary and a well-thumbed Mills and Boon novel.