Where the Devil Can't Go (41 page)

He made a decision. With his pulse pattering in his throat, he scrolled through his numbers and hit dial. One ring, three rings, six rings... and finally, Nowak’s voice. Then he realised he was through to his voicemail. Before he had a chance to redial, he saw something that made his stomach lurch. Two or three metres ahead of him on the left a rusted blue metal door was set into the brick wall. As he watched, the handle turned and the door swung open with a metallic squeal. His last thought – the realisation that he might never see Bobek again.

. . .

Kershaw saw Kiszka do it a second time, right after he got out of the car – pat his side like he was carrying the crown jewels. She sat there for a good minute after he disappeared into Angel tube, an old phrase of her Dad’s ringing in her ears:
The game is afoot.

She should have just dumped the car and followed him – it was too late now, he’d already be swallowed up by the rush hour throng. She was still sitting there furiously biting her thumbnail when she saw him re-emerge and break into a run. She realised he was running for a bus.

Her radio crackled into life and a woman’s voice said:
“Charlie 1 to DC Kershaw. A message from DS Bacon: please attend at J D Sports in Leyton Shopping Centre, where staff are holding an IC1 female, suspected credit card fraud. What’s your ETA?”

. . .

The guy who opened the blue door was roughly the shape and size of an American fridge and about as communicative. He summoned Janusz inside with a jerk of his head, and padlocked the door behind him, the graunching sound of the ill-fitting metal door and the rattle of the chain grating on Janusz’s taut nerves.

He led the way through the damp-infused ground floor of the derelict warehouse, strewn with broken pallets and empty cable reels. Eyes fixed on that massive back, clad in an expensive parka jacket, Janusz suddenly pictured a bulky figure lit by orange pools of carbon light on Highbury Fields. This guy had been shadowing him, the night he went to meet Justyna!

They stopped at an old steel goods lift, its door open. “In here,” said the man in Polish, nodding Janusz in first. Ukrainian, thought Janusz, judging by the accent. He followed him in, pulled across the huge concertina metal door as though it was a net curtain and with a clanking whine the lift began to ascend.

On the fourth floor the Ukrainian shoved him out and into a part of the warehouse that had been subdivided, probably in the Sixties or Seventies, into smaller premises. He buzzed a camera entry phone beside a massive door – recently installed and solid steel, maybe eight millimeter. Once inside he pulled some businesslike shoot-bolts across the side and top of the doorframe.

Prodding Janusz in the back, he lifted his chin across the open plan expanse to the side of the warehouse that overlooked Leamouth. Ranks of Sixties vintage sewing machines crusted with decades-old dust and cobwebs revealed the joint’s former life as a rag trade factory. Janusz became aware of a strange smell hanging in the room – astringent, yet not unpleasant.

Beside the window stood a wide workbench – probably a fabric-cutting table – its surface recently cleaned, but still showing a few paler swirls of dust. On one corner lay a narrow-brimmed hat in a shiny grey fabric, the kind the girl detective had described as ‘pork-pie’. A few metres away, a stack of well-worn aluminium flight cases. The
psychol
was on his way somewhere, thought Janusz.

The guy nodded Janusz into an office-type swivel chair on castors. The hundred-year-old glass and timber doors beside him afforded a desolate view over the fat brown serpentine coil of Leamouth, lashed by the gusting wind and spitting rain. If he craned his head he could just glimpse where it met the Thames a hundred metres away. Outside, a rusted winch stood on the ironwork balcony, relic of an age when raw materials had arrived, and finished goods had left, on ships moored far below.

The door to what had probably been the factory manager’s office opened and a figure sauntered out. At last, Janusz was face to face with the man who he had chased in Gdansk, the man in the hat caught on CCTV in the hotel lift. Rolling on the balls of his feet, he walked slowly over to Janusz. He swung him round in the chair to face the yellowish light from the window and looked him up and down, his crowded features twisted into an expression torn between curiosity and contempt.

He was in his late twenties, Janusz guessed, and solidly built – the trapezius muscles between his neck and clavicle humped up in the classic sign of a workout addict. But for all the physique, he had the face of a child who liked to torture small animals. The outer edge of his left ear was ragged, a big piece of cartilage gone, and judging by the redness and scabbing, the wound was recent. Janusz remembered the shotgun-toting Bielska firing at his pursuer in the woods at Kosyk, and felt a surge of ridiculous joy.
You did wing the bastard, Panie!

“Why the fuck isn’t he cuffed,
kretyn
?” the guy suddenly shouted at the Ukrainian, who shrugged and mumbled something. Then he turned back to Janusz, and nonchalantly pushed the side of his head with his fingertips, a gesture that was somehow more demeaning than being struck. Janusz noticed his cheeks were dappled with acne scars – probably a side effect of steroid abuse.

“Cuff him,” he said with a grin, “but not before the old cunt hands over what we want.” Catching a whiff of something off the guy, Janusz realised it was the same smell he’d picked up before, a scent that was niggling at him, but which his brain, in its agitated state, couldn’t quite pinpoint.

“I want to see Adamski and the girl first,” growled Janusz, which sent the
psychol
lunging toward him.

“You don’t give the fucking orders!” he shouted, spit flying. Pulling a gun out of his coat pocket, he flicked off the safety and shoved it against Janusz’s cheekbone, just below the eye. From the markings on the barrel Janusz could see it was a CZ-75, the cult Czechoslovakian nine millimetre. He could even smell the oil used to clean the mechanism. A high-pitched hum filled his skull. He was in the zone now, a trancelike state where he didn’t really give a shit what happened.

“Probably best not to shoot me till you know for sure I’ve brought the document,” he said. The guy’s cat’s-arse of a mouth worked angrily but he let the gun drop to his side.

Janusz hadn’t given up on his plan to alert Nowak, and now an idea came to him – if he could provoke the
psychol
into attacking him, then he might be able to take advantage of the melee to press dial on his phone, which was sitting in his breast pocket, cued up on Nowak’s number. If he answered –
when he answered, please God
– Janusz would start shouting his head off about Zamorski – not with any hope of rescue, but to alert Nowak to what was happening.

Seeking the
psychol’s
gaze, he nodded at his damaged ear with an expression of concern. “That looks nasty,” he said sympathetically, “Twelve-bore?”

He ducked his head to deflect the blow, and the next thing he knew he was face down on the deck eyeballing dirty brown lino – the guy had thrown him out of the chair. Now he started kicking the shit out of him, just like he had that night in the flat, and under the guise of curling up to protect himself, Janusz was able to press his phone keypad firmly against his chest.

Please answer. Please answer.
A second or two later, through the thuds of the kicks, he made out the sound of a mobile phone ringing nearby. It seemed a simple-enough coincidence, until Janusz heard a door open, and the ringing rise in volume.

A sense of foolishness, swiftly followed by a wave of utter desolation engulfed him. The kicking stopped, and he heard footsteps crossing the floor. Still he didn’t want to open his eyes, didn’t want to confront the sight he knew he would find. He was aware of being roughly picked up and set back in the chair, and finally, reluctantly, he raised his eyes to meet the clear hazel gaze of Konstanty Nowak.

“You called?” asked Nowak, looking at the display of his phone with a grin. “Sorry, not a joking matter, I know.” He politely extended a hand palm-up, and Janusz surrendered his mobile.

The
psychol
now stood several paces behind Nowak, looking docile now his boss was in the room – like a dog that knows it’s place in the pack hierarchy, thought Janusz. All in a rush, he identified the scent he’d smelled on him, and in the room.
Aniseed.
And remembered that it was also the smell of
anethole
, the compound used to make PMA. An image clicked into the viewfinder of his memory – walking through the embassy with Father Pietruzki, on the way to see Nowak, a man bowing, a gesture that had momentarily obscured his face. The
psychol.
Janusz remembered thinking the whiff of fennel was his aftershave. The warehouse must have been his drug factory – the dust on the table traces of the powdered chalk that formed the tablets, the equipment and product packed into the flight cases ready to be transported to its next destination.

Looking serious now, Nowak deftly turned the windcheater he was carrying inside out so it wouldn’t get dusty, and laid it neatly on the cutting table. “Perhaps you won’t believe me, Janusz – if I may still be permitted to call you by your Christian name,” he said. “But it was never my intention for you to be harmed – or to get so... enmeshed in this business.”

He perched himself on the table’s edge.

“Your job was purely to find out where the boy was hiding so that we could get the document back.” He shook his head. “It was your misfortune that he came to your place and left the document with you.
‘A poisoned chalice’,
I think the English call it.” He smiled with a dry cheerfulness and Janusz felt the last trace of hope that he might get out of this alive ebbing away. Nowak was clearly in this shit up to his neck, which meant there was no way he could risk letting him survive.

“I was just about to cuff him,” said the
psychol
, but Nowak waved a dismissive hand. “That won’t be necessary.”

“Where’s the girl – and Pawel?” asked Janusz gruffly.

“The girl is fine, Pawel less so,” said Nowak, his voice tinged with regret. “I’m sure in your heart of hearts, you didn’t really expect him to walk away from this, after all the trouble he’s caused.” Janusz stared at the floor.

“But listen,” said Nowak, as if a happy thought had just occurred to him. “I’m prepared to keep my side of the bargain and let the girl go. She has no idea who I am, and after questioning her, Radomil assures me she hasn’t a clue what all this is about.” The
psychol
grinned at Janusz and raised his eyebrows to convey how much he’d enjoyed interrogating Weronika. “She can go back to her waitressing job under the firm impression that her boyfriend got entangled with drug dealers and paid the ultimate price.” He chuckled. “She’s nineteen – in six months she’ll have a new boyfriend.”

Janusz felt a wave of hatred. But he had no reason to doubt Nowak’s promise to let the girl go. Why should he lie when he held all the cards?

“Now, may I have the document, please?”

Janusz opened the top buttons of his shirt, reached in for the file, and thrust it at Nowak.

“Just tell me one thing,” he said, as Nowak’s gaze devoured the contents. “Why in the name of all the saints do you want a bastard like Zamorski running the country? Do you get a big fat payoff or something?”

Radomil stepped forward at that, ready to bite if his master issued the command, but Nowak just smiled a tolerant smile. “You young people think everything is about money,” he said equably. “No, I’m backing Edward because I believe he is what the country needs.”

“A fucking paedophile who sold his country to the
Kommies
?” Janusz spat out. “I wasn’t aware they were qualifications for becoming president.”

“All ancient history,” said Nowak. “You’re an intelligent man – surely you must see that what the country needs is
stability
, a leader who can unite our ragbag of factions – Church, unions... intellectuals,” as he mentioned the last group he rolled his eyes conspiratorially at Janusz.

“In our fractious country, a president backed by a solid alliance is the only way to get things done. Edward is no genius, but he’s prepared to listen.”

“To you?”

Nowak tipped his head in assent. “Yes, to me, and a couple of other people who understand what the country needs.”

“Really, and what’s that?” Janusz had decided to play along. The guy clearly loved the sound of his own voice, and the longer he went on, the more time Janusz had to come up with a survival plan.

Nowak looked at his watch. “I’ve got half an hour before I leave for the airport, so, why not? Let’s you and me have a good old
debata, Polak
to
Polak
.”

He pulled up a swivel chair next to Janusz and said over his shoulder “Radomil, bring some
wodka
.” Turning his chair to face the view, he indicated Janusz should do the same, and pointed out the cluster of cranes and high-rise blocks on the skyline to the north that marked out the Olympics site.

“Look at that,” he said with admiration. “The East End was a complete shithole, excuse my language, but they’re transforming it – by an act of will.” He nudged Janusz. “All the hoopla over the sport? A sideshow. It’s the roads, the rail, housing, retail – that will make the real difference.’

Nowak took the glasses from Radomil, who poured shots for both of them, throwing Janusz a malevolent look. Janusz didn’t touch his, but Nowak didn’t notice. He was on a roll, jabbing a finger at the skyline. “
That’s
what Poland needs – a whole new infrastructure, right across the country. Jobs for all our poor exiles stuck abroad cleaning English people’s toilets.” His mouth curled in distaste, then he pointed at Janusz, “A man like you should be doing a proper job back home, not playing
Jack the Lad
in London.”

Janusz raised an eyebrow: “Maybe a lot of people you call exiles think of London as home now.” He realised, with a frisson of surprise, that he was one of them. “Anyway, how do you plan to conjure up a million jobs?”