Death Can’t Take a Joke

‘I’m forty-five,’ he growled.

‘Oh, sorry,’ said Streaky, feigning surprise. ‘Still, lots of people find the old memory banks start to let them down in their forties, don’t they?’

‘My memory is perfectly serviceable,’ he drawled – but Kershaw could tell from the set of his jaw that he was struggling to control his temper. For all his apparent cool and his old-school way of talking, Kiszka could still make the air around him buzz with the possibility of violence.

Streaky took a document from the file in front of him and pushed it across the table.

‘For the benefit of the tape, I have passed the interviewee a copy of the deeds held by the UK Land Registry for Jim’s Gym, Walthamstow, dated the 11th of November 1992.’

Kiszka picked up the document.

‘Would you care to confirm that that is your name on the first page, Mr Kiss-aka?’

As he examined it, the furrows on Kiszka’s face deepened.

‘We all have forgetful moments,’ said Streaky. ‘But I’m finding it hard to believe it slipped your mind that you’re the owner of Jim’s Gym.’

Kershaw gasped. Game to Streaky!

She held her breath as Kiszka opened his mouth to speak, then shut it again. He pushed the document back across the table.

‘I want to call my solicitor.’

Six

‘Just give me fifteen minutes with him, Sarge,’ said Kershaw. ‘We spent a lot of time together on that job so I know all his little tics and tells. I might get something useful out of him, even if it’s not admissible.’

Kershaw was perched on the edge of Streaky’s desk as she made her pitch for a chat with Kiszka, now installed in one of the holding cells downstairs. As the new girl on the squad, she was well aware she should be keeping her head down, restricting herself to ‘getting to know you’ chitchat with the other DCs, gathering crucial first day intelligence like where the biros and the digestives were kept – but that might mean her missing the chance to get herself drafted onto the Fulford case.

As Streaky stared into the distance, apparently lost in a daydream, Kershaw waited, knowing that if she pushed him, he’d more than likely blow his top.

‘Copernicus!’ he said finally, slapping the surface of his desk.

‘Sarge?’

‘I’ve been trying to remember the name of Kiszka’s cat,’ he said. ‘You mentioned it once – when you were investigating the murder of that Polish girl he was mixed up in. Stuck in my mind. Not many people name their moggies after Renaissance astronomers.’

‘Er?’

‘Nicolaus Copernicus.’ Streaky enunciated each syllable as though talking to a twelve-year-old. ‘Polish. Established the principle of heliocentrism.’ Peeling the foil back from a half-eaten pack of Rolos, he offered her one. ‘Didn’t they teach you anything at that comprehensive school of yours? Plaistow, wasn’t it?’

‘Poplar actually, Sarge,’ she said, taking one. ‘And I have heard of Copernicus. I’m just not quite sure what it has to do with Kiszka being a suspect.’

‘It tells me, detective, that he’s not your average villain,’ said Streaky, through a mouthful of chocolate. ‘Our Mr Kiszka fancies himself as a bit of an intellectual.’

Kershaw couldn’t disagree with that. Kiszka had always struck her as a man bristling with contradictions. He might have a science degree and the tendency to talk like someone out of a Jane Austen novel, but she knew from experience he wouldn’t hesitate to throw a punch – or break the law – in pursuit of an investigation.

‘So if it was him who shivved his so-called mate – and he’s top of my list at the moment,’ Streaky went on, ‘he might be tempted to play games with us.’

‘And let something slip.’

‘Exactamundo.’

She jumped to her feet. ‘So I can have a chat with him?’

He turned his pale blue gaze on her. ‘I hope you’re not planning any of your old antics,’ he said. ‘Like restaging your famous impression of a one-woman crime-solving machine.’

‘No, Sarge!’ She felt her cheeks redden, aware of her new colleagues earwigging on the conversation. ‘Nothing like that.’

He pointed the half-empty pack of Rolos at her. ‘Don’t make me regret bringing you here.’

‘No, Sarge.’

‘Alright, then,’ he said. ‘Take him a cuppa. And since you’re putting the kettle on, mine’s a builder’s. Three sugars.’

Kershaw found Kiszka pacing up and down his cell wearing a thunderous expression. He looked huge in the tiny space, like Daddy Bear in Goldilocks’ kitchen.

‘I brought you a cup of tea,’ she said brightly.

He glanced at the offering: ‘I don’t drink tea with milk in it,’ he said, and threw himself down on the narrow bunk. He’d shown not a flicker of recognition or surprise on seeing her again.

‘I’ll have it then,’ she said, settling herself at the foot of the bed and taking a sip. Close up he appeared pretty much unchanged – the same caveman good looks, maybe a bit thinner about the face. ‘It must be getting on for two years since I saw you last.’

‘Yeah, and it looks like the cops haven’t got any more intelligent in that time,’ he growled.

She had a sudden vision of their first meeting, a no-holds-barred stand-off which had ended with her – erroneously, as it later turned out – accusing him of murdering a girl, a Polish waitress found dead in a hotel room.

‘Well, you’ve not been exactly helpful so far, have you?’

‘I’ve told them everything I know, twice over! I showed them Jim’s text, his wife has vouched for me – what the fuck else can I do?’ He ran a hand through his dark brown hair, threaded with silver here and there, she noticed. ‘I apologise for the bad language,’ he added after a moment.

Kershaw didn’t say so, but from the point of view of the investigation, the text simply put Kiszka in the right place at the right time for the murder.

‘So why did you clam up when the Sarge showed you that mortgage deed?’

‘No comment.’

She paused. ‘Look, Janusz,’ she said. ‘I’m prepared to believe that you didn’t kill your friend. And from what I know about you, you must be dying to see the scum who did kill him locked up.’

He shot her a look that said locking up wasn’t what he had in mind.

‘And the more time we spend fu… messing around following false trails, the less chance we have of finding the killers.’ Actually, Kiszka was probably more than capable of killing someone in a murderous rage, Kershaw reflected, but the important thing right now was to gain his trust.

Janusz stared at her for a long moment, taking in the little heart-shaped face under the strangely lopsided hair, the steely set of her lips. His determination to find the chuje who had murdered Jim was as strong as ever but he had to admit it couldn’t hurt to have the cops looking for them, too.

‘Anything I say to you is off the record, agreed?’

‘Absolutely.’ This was true: although technically he was still under caution, the CPS took a seriously dim view of unrecorded unofficial chats, so nothing Kiszka told her could be used in court.

‘Because I’m not making any further statements until I talk to my solicitor.’

‘Understood.’

He exhaled. ‘When I first met Jim, he wasn’t in great shape. He’d had a … breakdown, I suppose you’d call it – after fighting for his country.’

‘Yeah, the Sarge mentioned he was a Falklands veteran.’

‘A Royal Marine. He was no coward – they gave him a medal for bravery under fire.’ He frowned at her, making sure she took the point. ‘Anyway, by ‘92, he was just starting to get himself straightened out and he came up with the idea of starting a gymnasium – there wasn’t anything like that in Walthamstow back then. He found a spot he reckoned was perfect for it. A derelict space, under the railway …?’ He sketched a curved structure in mid-air.

‘A railway arch?’

‘Yes, a railway arch.’

‘And you bought it for him?’

He snorted. ‘No! He’d saved up for a deposit while working on the building sites – but he needed a loan to make up the rest and pay for the renovations, the machinery and so on.’

Kershaw paused, remembering that according to the system, Fulford had previous. ‘But no one would lend him the money … because of his criminal record? Assault, wasn’t it?’

‘The guy deserved it,’ said Janusz. ‘It was just after Jim had got out of military hospital – he’d had to have months of skin grafts – when some imbecyl buttonholed him at the bar. Told him that the men who’d fought the Falklands War were “Thatcher’s stooges”.’

Kershaw winced.

‘The guy was lucky to get away with a broken jaw,’ said Janusz. ‘But the law didn’t see it that way.’

Back then, he recalled, no one had heard of PTSD: in fact, the judge who sent Jim down for six months said he was making an example of him because his behaviour had been ‘unfitting for a veteran of Her Majesty’s forces’.

‘So we had to make out the loan was for me. I signed all the paperwork, and the deeds were put in my name.’

‘So why didn’t you tell DS Bacon all this when he asked?’

‘I’d completely forgotten! I haven’t thought about it in twenty years.’

‘Did anyone else know about the arrangement? His wife, for instance?’

‘I don’t know,’ he shrugged. ‘He might have told Marika when they got married, I suppose. He didn’t keep any secrets from her, if that’s what you mean.’

Kershaw’s antennae twitched. At the mention of Jim’s other half, Kiszka seemed suddenly defensive, like he was nursing a guilty conscience. Had he been having an affair with his best mate’s wife?

In truth, the cause of Janusz’s discomfiture lay somewhere else entirely. Remembering the sorrowful look on the face of the girl, Varenka, as she left flowers outside Jim’s house he’d been struck by a sudden thought. Had his mate and the mystery girl been lovers? No way, he told himself, Jim wasn’t the type.

He stood up to indicate their meeting was over, dwarfing Kershaw. ‘It’s been a pleasure to remake your acquaintance,’ he said, bestowing his most charming mittel European smile on her. ‘But now, perhaps you would be good enough to find out whether my solicitor has arrived.’

Back in the office, Kershaw had barely had ten minutes to commit the names of her fellow DCs to memory before Streaky called everyone together for a briefing.

‘As you all know, we’ve pulled in James Fulford’s Polish chum Janusz Kiszka for questioning,’ Streaky told his audience: Kershaw, Ackroyd, three other DCs – two male, one female – and the Crime Scene Examiner. He brandished Kiszka’s arrest mugshot. ‘It turns out that Kiszka was the real owner of the gym Fulford ran. A fact uncovered due to the hard graft of DC Ackroyd who has spent two days wrestling with the jobsworths over at the Land Registry.’

All eyes turned to Adam Ackroyd – sitting next to Kershaw – who blinked rapidly and smiled. She had warmed to him when they were introduced – they were about the same age and had both done criminology at uni. But now she felt a little surge of competitiveness: at Canning Town CID she’d been the one getting the gold stars from Streaky.

‘Mr Kiszka is currently enjoying our hospitality in the guest accommodation downstairs,’ Streaky went on. ‘But we’re a long old way from nailing him for the murder, so let’s go back to basics – what we know and what we can rule out. Adam?’

Ackroyd swivelled in his chair so everyone could hear him. ‘The neighbour at number 159 saw two males in hoodies running from the scene at around 5.45 p.m. One was around six foot, slim build, and the other was an inch or two shorter and with a more muscular build. They were both wearing gloves and balaclavas, so no clue as to ethnicity.’

‘Did the neighbour mention if either of them wore anything green?’ the female DC asked.

‘No, nothing like that,’ said Ackroyd. ‘Mind you, even the B-Street boys wouldn’t be thick enough to wear the bandana while committing a murder.’

As a low chuckle ran round the team, Kershaw felt suddenly in the dark, hit by the realisation that she knew sod-all about her new patch.

Streaky must’ve caught her look. ‘The B-Street gang are the local pond life,’ he said. ‘They were the soldiers for our local drug baron, Turkish bloke by the name of Arslan who recently got sent down for twenty years. The drugs boys raided one of his lock-ups and found 100 kilos of Afghan heroin cunningly disguised as china tea sets.’

‘They still account for most of the area’s drug dealing, street robbery, stabbings and so on,’ the girl added. Sophie. Sophie Edgerton: that was her name, Kershaw suddenly remembered. ‘And they wear green bandanas – it’s, like, their gang colours.’

‘Anyway, we’ve more or less ruled out a random doorstep mugging,’ said Ackroyd. ‘On the other side of Hoe Street, maybe. But it just doesn’t happen in the Village.’

‘And it feels too specific, anyway,’ said Kershaw. Strictly speaking, as a newbie she should really shut up and listen, but she couldn’t help herself.

‘Explain yourself, Natalie,’ said Streaky, although she knew he’d guessed where she was coming from.

‘Well … I don’t know the area,’ she said, ‘but looking at the map, it seems to me if you’re gonna do a quick and dirty mugging, you’d choose a house at the end of a road – so you’re in and out fast? Instead they’ve risked going all the way up this great long road, Barclay Road.’ She shrugged. ‘If you ask me, this was a targeted killing. The perpetrators knew exactly who they were after.’

Streaky grunted his assent. ‘Sophie, what about our mistaken identity theory?’ he asked. ‘Any drug dealers or other known villains living nearby?’

She shook her head: ‘No, Sarge. It’s a nice road, pretty much all owner-occupiers. The worst I could find on the database was a man with a ten-year-old conviction for insurance fraud.’

‘Okay. Let’s go back to Kiszka, who has freely admitted he was on his way to meet Fulford at the time of the murder,’ said Streaky. ‘My working hypothesis is this. There’s a recession on, his private eye business is feeling the squeeze, but the gym – which he officially owns – is going great guns. He decides he wants a piece of it but his pal Fulford doesn’t play ball.’

‘But couldn’t this Kiszka have sold the property out from under Fulford’s feet, if he’d wanted to?’ asked the other DC, the spoddy one whose name Kershaw had already forgotten.

‘Fulford’s an ex-Marine, did time for assault back in the eighties,’ said Streaky. ‘Maybe Kiszka decided that it would be less risky to off him in what looked like a random mugging, so he could take the place over, no questions asked.’

‘Do we know what kind of weapon was used?’ Kershaw asked the Crime Scene Examiner, an older guy called Tony.

‘We’re still waiting for the post-mortem report,’ he said. ‘But Dr King, the pathologist, reckons it was a long blade of some kind. He said the wounds were inflicted with great force – maximum prejudice – was the phrase he used, actually.’

Streaky gave a snort. ‘Nathan King watches too many American crime shows. But it’s true a nasty assault like that will often turn out to be a personal vendetta.’

The Sarge started divvying up who was in charge of what – co-ordinating evidence from CCTV cameras in the area, house-to-house enquiries, and an appeal for witnesses – but Kershaw was only half listening. As she picked at a ragged fingernail – she was on her umpteenth attempt to stop biting her nails – she tried to imagine Kiszka committing such a savage attack. Lashing out at someone in a rage, yes, killing them even, before the red mist cleared, very possibly. But planning and carrying out a cold-blooded execution? She couldn’t quite see it.

She realised that Streaky was winding up the briefing – without giving her any action points.

‘Sorry, Sarge, I know I’m playing catch up here,’ she said. ‘But Kiszka claims he was at some art gallery at the time of the murder? I assume none of the staff saw him there?’

‘Over to DC Cargill,’ said Streaky, indicating a guy in his late fifties, sitting off to the edge of the group. Red-faced and overweight, Cargill wore a brown pinstriped suit so out of date it could be one of Streaky’s cast-offs. Kershaw wondered if he was even aware of the fashion crime he’d committed when he’d twinned it with grey shoes.

As Cargill leafed laboriously through his notebook, Ackroyd bent his head towards Kershaw’s. ‘We call Derek The Olympic Torch,’ he murmured. Seeing Kershaw’s incomprehension he added: ‘He never goes out.’

Kershaw got it. Cargill was the old sweat of the squad, counting the days to retirement and keeping his workload to the absolute minimum.

‘At approximately 1500 hours on Tuesday the 6th of November, I attended the William Morris Gallery in Lloyd Park,’ Cargill intoned, ‘and introduced myself to the female on the front desk. I duly established that she was the manager, name of Mrs Caroline Smalls.’

Kershaw saw a red flush starting to creep up Streaky’s face from his chin, usually a reliable sign that he was about to spit the dummy.

‘I showed her a picture of … Jay-nus … Jah-nuzz …’ After a couple of goes at pronouncing Kiszka’s name, Cargill gave up. ‘… the suspect. I then proceeded to the first floor …’

‘For Christ’s sake, Derek,’ said Streaky, his entire face now a ketchup red. ‘Get to the chuffing point!’

Cargill closed his notebook with some dignity. ‘None of the staff saw him, Skipper.’

Kershaw jumped in. ‘Kiszka did say that the photo he provided was way out of date, Sarge. I just wonder if it’s worth going down there again with his arrest mugshot?’

Streaky didn’t respond. He was still looking daggers at Cargill, who, apparently unconcerned, was now doodling on his copy of the Express.

‘Because if we do charge Kiszka, it could come back to bite our arse in court,’ Kershaw went on. ‘We don’t want his defence saying we didn’t make best efforts to check out his alibi.’

Streaky tore his gaze from Cargill. ‘Good thinking, DC Kershaw. Consider it your first action point.’ He grinned, showing teeth as yellow as old piano keys. ‘Welcome to Murder Squad.’

Seven

‘So you’re saying the cops charged you with Jim’s murder?’ Oskar said slowly, evidently struggling with the effort of processing this cataclysmic news.

‘No, Oskar! I told you, they don’t have any evidence,’ said Janusz.

Janusz and his oldest mate were heading out to Essex in his battered white Transit van, where Oskar was landscaping the garden of some scrap metal millionaire.

‘My solicitor said that the business with the mortgage deeds is a sideshow,’ Janusz waved a hand. ‘He says unless the cops find something really solid, like … a bloodstained knife in my apartment, they’ve got nothing to justify charging me.’

‘And you haven’t?’ asked Oskar, a worried expression creasing his chubby face.

‘Haven’t what?’

‘Got a bloodstained knife in your apartment?’

‘Of course I fucking haven’t, turniphead!’

‘Calm down, Janek! I’m just trying to … establish the facts.’

‘That doesn’t mean they won’t try to frame me for it, of course,’ he growled. ‘You know what the cops are like.’ Growing up in Soviet-era Poland had instilled in him a visceral distrust of the machinery of state that he’d never quite thrown off.

Seeing a traffic light some fifty metres ahead turn from green to amber, Oskar floored the accelerator. The engine responded with an ear-splitting whinny. A second or two later, realising they wouldn’t make it across the junction in time, Oskar applied the brakes with equal ferocity, hurling both of them against their seat belts.

Janusz lit a cigar to steady his nerves. ‘You need to get that fan belt fixed, kolego.’

‘It just needs some WD40.’ Oskar drummed his fingers on the wheel. ‘You know, I still can’t believe Jim’s dead – God rest his soul.’ The two men crossed themselves. ‘Poor Marika! When is the funeral?’

‘God only knows. She can’t even plan it until they’ve done the post-mortem,’ said Janusz.

Oskar mimed an elaborate shiver. ‘I tell you something, Janek,’ he said. ‘If I die, don’t you let those kanibale loose on me with their scalpels.’ As the light changed to green, he pulled away. ‘And don’t forget what I told you – about putting a charged mobile in my coffin? They’re always burying people who aren’t actually dead.’

Janusz refrained from pointing out that a post-mortem might be the only sure-fire way of avoiding such a fate. He and Oskar had been best mates since they’d met on their first day of national service back in eighties Poland, but he’d learned one thing long ago: trying to have a logical discussion with him was like trying to herd chickens.

‘Remember that time, years back, when Jim took us to see the doggies racing each other at Walthamstow? Oskar chuckled. ‘Kurwa! That was a good night.’

‘I remember,’ Janusz grinned. ‘You got so legless that you kept trying to place a bet on the electric rabbit.’

‘Bullshit! I don’t remember that.’

‘I swear. If Jim hadn’t been watching your back, one of those bookies would have swung for you.’

They fell silent, smiling at their own memories.

‘So, Janek. How are you going to track down the skurwysyny who murdered him?’

‘That’s why I wanted to see you,’ said Janusz, tapping some cigar ash out of his window. ‘Walthamstow is more your patch than mine so I thought you could do some sniffing around for me – find out if anyone knows this girl, Varenka, or the chuj who likes to use her as a punchbag.’ He pointed his cigar at his mate ‘But keep it discreet, okay, and don’t mention Jim, obviously.’

‘No problem!’ said Oskar, his expression eager. ‘I’ll start asking around right away. We’ll be like Cagney and Lacey!’

‘Except they were girls, idiota,’ said Janusz. ‘Which reminds me, ladyboy – how is the “landscape gardening” going?’

‘I’m making a mint, Janek,’ Oskar declared, rubbing his fingers together. ‘You should’ve come in with me when I gave you the chance.’

‘So you’re saying these people out in Essex pay you thousands of pounds to muck around with their gardens?’ Janusz made no attempt to keep the incredulity from his voice.

‘Why wouldn’t they? I was in charge of building half the Olympic Park!’ he said, striking his chest.

‘Yeah, but construction isn’t the same thing as landscaping,’ said Janusz. ‘You wouldn’t know a begonia from a bramble patch!’

Oskar waved a dismissive hand. ‘I get all the green stuff down B&Q,’ he said. ‘Anyway, I see my role as creating the architectural framework.’

Janusz grinned. ‘Let me guess. They think they’re getting Monty Don and they end up with paving as far as the eye can see?’

Oskar shrugged. ‘Some people have no vision, Janek. I tell them, once the bushes and shit have grown up a bit, it’ll look fine.’

The unmistakable tones of Homer Simpson singing ‘Spider Pig’ filled the van – Oskar’s latest irritating ringtone.

‘Hello, lady,’ said Oskar into the phone. ‘Yes, I’m on my way to your place right now.’ He used his free hand to change gear, steering the van meanwhile with his knees. ‘I didn’t forget. A classical statue for the water feature.’ Turning to Janusz, Oskar winked. ‘You’re going to love the one I picked out for you. See you soon.’

Throwing the mobile back into the tide of debris washed up on the dashboard, Oskar said: ‘Once I drop this stuff off at Buckhurst Hill, we can head straight back to Walthamstow and start our investigation!’

Things didn’t work out quite so simply. After they parked up on the broad gravel forecourt of a hacienda-style detached house, Janusz stayed in the van while Oskar unloaded and took the stuff round to the back garden. Even from this distance, he was able to ascertain from the pitch of the conversation that the lady of the house wasn’t entirely happy.

After a good ten minutes, he heard Oskar crunching back across the gravel. A moment later he opened the driver’s side door and started to push a large sculpture of some kind up onto the seat, with much huffing and puffing.