Where the Devil Can't Go (28 page)

“Right. So if the office is never left unlocked – how does Milo get the key to you at the end of his shift, when he never sees you?”

Derek admitted that, at the end of the night shift, Milo would lock up and put the key into a jiffy bag. On his way out, he’d slip it into the pigeonhole behind front desk where post for security was left, so that Derek could pick up when he got in later. Kershaw did a quick mental calculation. The arrangement left the key unattended for at least fifteen minutes – plenty of time for the thief to get into security, nick the tapes and alter the logbook, before returning it to the pigeonhole in time for Derek’s arrival.

“And no-one else knew anything about this key handover business?”

He shook his head. “Just me and Milo.”

Kershaw paced around, chewing at her thumbnail, Derek’s anxious eyes following her. Then she took another Garibaldi, and offering the open packet to Derek, said “When you picked up the key from the pigeonhole that morning, was Alex Hurley still on front desk?”

TWENTY

Gorodnik nightlife was enough to make a man pine for the bright lights of Stratford, thought Janusz as he paced the town’s deserted streets with a growing sense of desperation.

It was only seven pm, and he had already eaten a solid and almost completely tasteless dinner alone in the
Pomorski’s
dimly lit dining room, under the suspicious eye of the landlady. She’d served him a bowl of watery
zurek
, unmistakably out of a packet and minus the essential boiled egg, followed by a
pierogi
that seemed to be filled with nothing more than sauerkraut and too much black pepper. He said it was delicious, of course, but declared himself too full for dessert.

The market square stood deserted, except for a gaggle of kids who were taking turns to rattle across the cobbles on a skateboard. Two cafes that had been busy earlier in the day were now tightly shuttered. Pulling his greatcoat tight against the chill wind coming off the lake, which according to his tourist map lay a kilometre to the east, he set out in search of a drink, cursing Adamski for bringing him to this provincial shit-hole.

A half-hour later, he was taking a deep draft of
Tyskie
and thanking all the saints: if he hadn’t spotted the wink of light at the end of the narrow alley, he’d have walked straight past, and
Pod Kotka
turned out to be the only bar open in the evening. The place wasn’t half-bad, either – the worn tables and chairs and faded prints of Lakeland scenes on the walls suggested the place hadn’t been decorated since the fall of Communism, but the cigarettes of the dozen or so middle-aged punters created a comforting fug, and a tape of lively Gypsy music played in the background.

The barman seemed the chatty type, so after standing him a drink, Janusz unfolded the storage depot invoice and spinning it round on the bar, tapped Adamski’s name. “I’m trying to get back in touch with this guy,” he said, lighting a cigar. “He’s someone I sometimes do a little business with in the UK.” The barman scanned the invoice, then let his eyes flicker over Janusz’s battered face with frank curiosity. Nothing interesting ever happened in here, unless you counted that time the buck rabbit Kaminski brought in on market day escaped from its sack and bit the lunch waitress. He handed the invoice back to him without a word.

“I don’t suppose you recognise the name?” asked Janusz. “Or maybe you might have heard of somebody looking to buy antiques round here?”

Wringing out a cloth, the barman started to wipe down the crazed formica surface of the bar. “Did this guy do a flit and leave you to pay the bills?” he asked.

Janusz gave an embarrassed shrug, “Something like that, yeah.”

He shot Janusz a look. “Sounds like Adamski, alright,” he said.

Janusz involuntarily inhaled a mouthful of cigar smoke, sending him into a fit of violent coughing. As he wiped his eyes, the barman, lips pressed together to keep from laughing, poured him a glass of water. “Everybody knows Pawel Adamski. Until a few months ago he was always in here – when he wasn’t barred, that is,” he added, raising a meaningful eyebrow. “But that guy over there,” he gestured to a man with a greying thatch of moustache who sat upright and alone in a banquette, “Tadeusz Krajewski. He’s the one you should talk to.” As Janusz thanked him and stood up, the barman tapped him on the forearm. “He drinks
Zubrowka
.”

Janusz took a drink over to Tadeusz, and introduced himself, somewhat warily, as a friend and sometime business associate of Adamski. He needn’t have worried – the older man’s face visibly brightened on hearing the name and he waved Janusz into the banquette opposite.

“So you’re another one of those who’s gone off to London are you?” he asked in his soft country burr. Janusz spread his palms in apologetic assent. “You must have been over there a while – your Polish is shocking,” said Tadeusz with a smile. His eyes played over Janusz’s bruised face, but he made no comment, perhaps accepting violence as a routine feature of London life. “In my day, if you were born in Gorodnik, you died in Gorodnik,” he mused. “And we were all a lot happier for it, I can tell you.” Janusz nodded, hoping his expression didn’t betray what he thought of such a prospect.

It turned out that Adamski had worked for Tadeusz as a mechanic in the little backstreet garage that he used to run, before the recession bit and the bank called in the loan.

“It was a good little business, too,” he told Janusz, with sudden vehemence. “But do you know what the bank told me?” Janusz shook his head. “They had to be stricter with loan conditions in the light of
the economic climate
,” he enunciated the phrase with disbelieving contempt. “I told them, don’t talk to me about economic climate – you’re the ones who made it snow!”

There was hurt in his eyes behind the anger – he had clearly taken the loss of the business hard. Janusz tried to work out his age and came up with early sixties – not
that
old, but too old to start again, especially in times like these. He studied Tadeusz discreetly. His jaws were clean-shaven and his shirt, although fraying at the cuffs, was freshly-pressed. A man keeping up appearances, in spite of everything.

“So how long did Adam... Pawel work for you?” asked Janusz, lighting a cigar.

“A year or more - right up to the end,” said Tadeusz, taking a decorous sip of the
Zubrowka
Janusz had bought him. “He wasn’t bad around engines, once I showed him the ropes.” He smiled to himself.

“Was his timekeeping any better when he worked for you?” asked Janusz with a grin, taking an educated guess at Adamski’s work ethic.

Tadeusz lifted a shoulder. “I won’t pretend there weren’t problems. Turning up late, sometimes still drunk from the night before.” He waved a hand. “And now and again he would lose his temper with customers.”

Janusz nodded. It certainly fit with the picture Justyna had painted of Adamski – and yet the old guy spoke protectively, even affectionately, of his former employee. “Everyone told me to sack him,” he said, sticking his chin out. “But I said, after the start the boy had in life, he deserved a second chance.”

Tadeusz told him the Adamski clan was notorious in Gorodnik – the father a falling-down drunk who supplemented his meagre income from agricultural work with petty thieving, the mother forever pregnant, and not always by her husband. “With such parents, is it any wonder that Pawel grew up wild?” Tadeusz asked. “Anyway, when he was just a little kid, he set fire to an outhouse at Jabonski’s place – they said it was a miracle the farmhouse didn’t catch – and that was that,” he dusted his hands. “They took him away and put him in a children’s home.”

“Terrible,” said Janusz, shaking his head. It sounded like Adamski’s career as a
psychol
had started early. He took a slug of beer and decided to risk a bit more digging. He sensed that Tadeusz was keen to discuss Adamski with someone less censorious than the locals.

“When he was working for you, do you think Pawel ever messed around with
narkotyki
?” he asked.

“Drugs?” exclaimed Tadeusz, setting his glass down. “No, no, not to my knowledge, only the drinking.” He scanned Janusz’s face with eyes the colour of stonewashed denim. “What makes you ask such a thing?”

“Just something I heard somebody say about him,” said Janusz.
The girl he killed, actually
.

Dropping his gaze, Tadeusz traced an ancient glass ring on the tabletop with a finger, his expression troubled. Janusz went to order more drinks.

“Getting anywhere?” asked the nosy barman as he pulled a small beer for Janusz.

Janusz tilted his head, non-committal.

“Tadeusz is a good sort,” said the barman, his voice low. “But when it comes to Adamski, he puts on rose-tinted spectacles.” Janusz raised his eyebrows enquiringly. The barman set the beer in front of Janusz, and leaned toward him, one elbow on the bar. “He lost his son a couple of years ago – some kind of cancer,” he said, with a sympathetic grimace. “Everyone knows Adamski is a bad lot, but maybe for Tadeusz, he filled the hole, if you know what I mean.” Janusz nodded – it explained a lot.

He returned to the table carrying his beer and a bottle of Tadeusz’s tipple.

“You know,” said Tadeusz, taking slightly bigger sips of the
wodka
, Janusz noticed, now its supply was assured. “If the business hadn’t folded, I think Pawel would have been alright.” His fingers tapped and stroked the table. “I could have got him on the straight and narrow, I know I could.”

Janusz nodded his encouragement.

“You know, I took him pike fishing on the river a few times – he was a different lad, out there in the fresh air,” Tadeusz smiled, revealing a flash of unnaturally white dentures. “Once, he caught a big one, two kilos easily.” His grin broadened. “It had such an ugly mug, we called it Vladimir, after Putin.”

Both men chuckled.

“Listen,” said Janusz, becoming serious. “We both know Pawel is... a good guy at heart,” he examined the end of his cigar, avoiding Tadeusz’s hopeful gaze, “but do you think it’s possible he fell in with some bad characters – around here, or maybe in Gdansk?”

The old man looked at Janusz for a long moment. “After the garage went bust, he told me about this idea he had. He was going to buy up old furniture and ship it to England, to sell to rich folk,” he hesitated. “I think that was what got him into trouble.”

Janusz adopted a sympathetic expression, feeling like a heel. Tadeusz clearly trusted him, perhaps even thought this stranger might be able to help his wayward young friend.

“The last time I saw Pawel,” Tadeusz pointed at Janusz, “he was sitting right there, in that very chair. It was about six weeks ago, the middle of February. I remember because it was the last time we had proper snow, yet the crazy boy came in wearing nothing but a T-shirt,” he plucked at his shirt, his expression a mixture of exasperation and affection.

Janusz stayed silent, let Tadeusz do the talking.

“He was all nerves, jumpy as a young deer. He drank four, five shots,” Tadeusz tipped his hand, mimicking how fast they’d gone down. “At first, he wouldn’t say a word. Finally, he grabbed hold of me,” he gripped Janusz by the forearm. “And he said, ‘
Tadeusz – all my life, people have been fucking me around. Now it’s my turn
.’”

“What did he mean by that?” asked Janusz.

“No idea,” said Tadeusz. “He wouldn’t say any more. Next thing I hear, someone’s spotted him on the bus to Gdansk. He tells them he’s off to live in London – and if he ever comes back it will be driving a BMW.”

Janusz relit his cigar, hoping that Tadeusz would never find out that Adamski’s scheme to get rich ran to blackmail and drug dealing.

“A week later, there’s a story in the Baltic Daily,” said Tadeusz, his voice so low Janusz had to lean close to hear him. “An old man called Witold Struk who lived outside town, has been found lying at the bottom of his own cellar steps – dead.” He spoke haltingly. “The front door was open, but there’s nothing missing, so the
policja
decide it was an accident.”

Janusz struggled to take in what Tadeusz was telling him. Mystification must have written all over his face, because the older man tapped a finger on the table between them and said slowly, as though to a child: “The week before Struk died, everyone saw the advertisement he put in the local paper. He was looking for a buyer for some antique furniture.” He watched the light dawn on Janusz’s face. He leaned forward and continued in a whisper. “Struk died the
very same night
that Pawel came in here talking like a crazy person.”

Janusz froze. Did Adamski
murder
the old guy? He remembered what Nowak had told him – that Adamski roughed up someone who’d refused to sell his antique furniture. He glanced over his shoulder, to check no-one was listening but found the place nearly empty now, and the barman leaning on the counter reading a paper, yawning.

“You think Pawel killed him,” he said in a murmur.

“Not deliberately, no,” said Tadeusz shaking his head. “Pawel wouldn’t do such a thing.” He sighed. “But maybe he lost his temper and somehow it... led to Struk’s accident.”

Or maybe, thought Janusz, he hit the old man over the head with a baseball bat and shoved him down the stairs.

“Did you tell the police?”

“I couldn’t do that to Pawel,” said Tadeusz, in a whisper. “In any case, it’s not as if I had any proof”.

The two men fell silent for a moment. Then Tadeusz leaned forward, “The thing is,” he said in a meaningful whisper, “The police weren’t really interested – everyone round here was glad to see the back of Struk.”

“Why, what did he do that made him so unpopular?”

“Witold Struk was an
esbek
.”

Janusz eyebrows shot up. So Struk had worked for
Sluzba Bezpieczenstwa
, Communist Poland’s hated secret police, the equivalent of the East German Stasi. If you were considered an enemy of the regime, it was the SB who tapped your phone and read your mail, who bribed or bullied friends, neighbours, landladies, to turn informer against you. And the knock at the door in the middle of the night that every Pole dreaded back then invariably came on the orders of the local
Sluzba Bezpieczenstwa
office.