WHERE THE
DEVIL CAN’T GO
ANYA LIPSKA

Copyright

The Friday Project

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by The Friday Project in 2013

Copyright © Anya Lipska 2013

Anya Lipska asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007504589

Ebook Edition © February 2013 ISBN: 9780007504596

Version: 2015-02-18

For Tomasz

Our homeland is on the verge of collapse … The atmosphere of conflicts, misunderstanding, hatred causes moral degradation, surpasses the limits of toleration. Strikes , the readiness to strike, actions of protest have become a norm of life.

Citizens! … I declare, that today the Military Council of National Salvation has been formed. In accordance with the Constitution, the State Council has imposed martial law all over the country.

General Jaruzelski, Communist Leader of Poland, speaking on December 13, 1981

The winter is yours, but the summer will be ours.

Solidarnosc graffiti during martial law,

Poland, 1981–83

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Praise

About the Publisher

Prologue

If I can just crawl to the bottom step, I might be able to reach the stair rail, pull myself up with my good arm. My legs are useless – the fall must have broken something in my back.

I knew the risk. I knew when I told the boy who I was that he might kill me, but I had to do it – how else could I bring up the matter of our mutual friend? At first, he didn’t believe me, didn’t remember my face. I had to raise my voice then, remind him what had happened to him – incredible that he should need reminding!

That did the trick. Something in his eyes changed.

I told him I regretted his sacrifice, tried to explain what a dangerous time it had been for the country – if we had lost our nerve, well, there would have been tanks on the streets again – and not our own ones this time.

He didn’t see it that way. So I ended up in a puddle of my own piss on the cellar floor.

It was worth it. The boy read the document. He wants revenge – I saw it in his eyes – and that means I’ll get mine.

If I can just make it to the bottom step.

One

Janusz slammed the younger man so hard against the flat’s freshly painted plasterboard that he heard the fixings pop, and twisted the neck of the guy’s sweatshirt around his throat.

‘Honest to God, Janusz!’ Another shove. ‘Sorry. Panie Kiszka. The contractor didn’t pay me yet, but in two days I’m getting a thousand, I swear on the wounds of Christ.’

As Janusz paused for breath, his free hand propped against the wall, he caught his reflection in the triple-glazed window next to Slawek’s shoulder. It showed a big man in early middle age, wide-shouldered and lean, and with a strong jaw, yes – but with the unmistakable beginnings of a stoop, and a scatter of grey in the thick dark hair. Naprawde, he was getting too old for this kind of thing.

Straightening his spine with caution, but keeping a grip on Slawek’s collar, he scanned the room, a newly fitted ‘luxury’ studio apartment in a tower block overlooking the moonscape of the Olympic construction site. Floor to ceiling windows framed the black skeleton of the half-built main stadium, which sat like a giant teacup, ringed by attending cranes, seventeen floors below. When the block was finished, the view would put an extra forty, maybe fifty thousand, on the fat price tag.

Unbelievable. From what he’d seen of Stratford – and he saw far too much of it for his liking, now so many Poles were working around the Olympic site – the place was a dump. After the Luftwaffe had flattened it, along with most of the East End, the town planners had decided to recreate the town centre as a poured concrete shopping mall on a giant three-lane roundabout. It reminded him of the stuff the Communists had crapped out all over Poland in the fifties and sixties.

Slawek was two weeks late with payment and as full of bullshit as ever. The power hammer Janusz had supplied over a month ago, still labelled ‘Property of the Department of Transport’ stood propped against the cream-coloured bulk of an American-style Smeg. Janusz knew that the fancy fridge – along with the rest of the gleaming kitchen appliances – was missing the manufacturer’s serial number, because he had removed it himself with an angle grinder before delivery.

‘The quicker I finish this job, the quicker I get paid – and you get paid,’ said the young man, taking advantage of the pause in hostilities.

Janusz had spent enough of his youth on building sites to see past the superficial gloss to the flat’s shoddy finish. He’d have got a bollocking for the slapdash plastering, and for using non-galvanised screws in the cooker hood, which would rust solid at the first blast of kitchen steam. All the same, it did look almost finished. He sighed. As much as he needed the cash, he had to admit Slawek had a point.

He thumped him once more, half-heartedly, against the wall. ‘Slawek, you are a pointless fucking hand-job.’ But Slawek caught the change of tone, and sure enough, the big man suddenly dropped him with a gesture of disgust.

‘One more week – and you screw me around next time, they’ll have to pull that jackhammer out of your arse.’

‘Tak, tak. I really appreciate it, panie Kiszka.’ Slawek practically skipped as he followed Janusz to the door. ‘Maybe I can do some small job for you, to say thanks?’

That brought an explosion of laughter from Janusz. ‘I wouldn’t let you build me a cat flap!’ he said over his shoulder. Slawek’s renovation of a three-storey Georgian townhouse in Notting Hill was infamous in the Polish community: he’d knocked down a supporting wall and created W11’s first Georgian bungalow. The local council – not to mention the client, an unhappy Russian billionaire – was still looking for him. Slawek’s face crumpled in protest.

‘One mistake doesn’t make me a bad builder,’ he shouted down the corridor after Janusz as the lift doors closed behind him.

Three floors down, a laughing group of young men piled in, carrying tools and paint kettles. Janusz saw that they all wore number one crew cuts – the ultra-short cut that had once been the badge of a recently completed stint in the military. Many young Poles apparently still favoured it, even though compulsory national service had been abandoned a year or more back.

On seeing the older man, they quieted and bobbed their heads: ‘Dzien dobry, panu,’ using the respectful form of address. Good lads, thought Janusz. But within seconds, their chatter, the closeness of their bodies, and the press of the lift wall at his back started to stir the old feeling of dread in the pit of his stomach. His breathing grew shallow and the vaporous tang of solvent seemed to suck the air from his lungs.

As the lift plunged, the tallest one met his eye, grinned, and with an unpleasant jolt, Janusz saw his younger self reflected back at him, the unfinished features and gangly limbs, the absurd optimism. Then, without warning, another image, pin-sharp and even less welcome: Iza’s face, freckled, laughing as she clattered down the stairs of the university. He squeezed his eyes shut, willing away the other memories.

The helmeted ranks of ZOMO advancing through blizzarding snow, the obscene thump thump of lead-filled truncheons striking human flesh.

His breathing ragged now, Janusz hit the button for the next floor and pushed past the startled boys to the door, muttering some excuse. He took the remaining five flights down to the lobby at a run. Out in the street, he sucked in life-saving lungfuls of the chilly spring air.

Kurwa mac! Was he constantly to be reminded of the past by this deluge of young Poles?

‘Bloody foreigners,’ he said out loud, startling an old lady waiting at the bus stop. Suppressing a grin, he murmured an apology and headed to the café across the street.

Janusz inhaled the savoury aromas emanating from the café’s kitchen as he studied the menu, chalked up on a blackboard.

‘Dla pana?’ asked the fair-haired, plump-cheeked girl behind the counter, pen and pad poised.

‘Your bigos. Is it homemade or out of a tin?’ he asked. She made as if to cuff the side of his head. He ducked, grinning, and took his glass of lemon tea – the real thing, not some powdered rubbish – to the only empty table, beside a window made opaque by the café’s steamy fug.

The Polska Kuchnia, or Polish Kitchen, was a good half mile from the commotion of the Olympic site, but the place was packed with groups of construction workers in cement-stained work clothes filling up on the solid, comforting food of home: pierogi, golabki, flaki. These were the men turning the architects’ blueprints into reality: the stadium, the velodrome, the athletes’ village, as well as the high-rise apartment blocks shooting up around the edge of the five-hundred-acre site.

The young couple who ran the place had tried to make it more homely than the standard East End greasy spoon: there were checked tablecloths, brightly coloured bread baskets, even a crocus in a jam jar at every table. If it weren’t for the growl of passing lorries, thought Janusz, you could almost pretend you were in a little restaurant somewhere in the Tatra Mountains.

Just as the girl set down his hunter’s stew – and it looked like a good one, with slivers of duck, as well as the usual pork and kielbasa, poking through the sauerkraut – the street door crashed open and Oskar arrived.

Short, balding and barrel-chested, Oskar scoured the café with a belligerent stare, and found his target – a group of young guys in a corner laughing and joking over the remains of their meal. Planting his legs apart, he let fly with a volley of Polish.

‘What in the name of the Virgin are you still doing here, you sisterfuckers?’ he boomed. ‘What did I tell you yesterday? If you are late back again I’ll have the contractor on the blower cutting my balls off.’

The lads scrambled to their feet, a couple of them falling over their chair legs in their haste to get to the door, amid a barrage of laughter from the café’s other occupants, who’d stopped eating to enjoy the show. But Oskar was merciless.

‘Don’t try to hide your ugly mush from me, Karol, you cocksucker. Maybe your mummy did name you after the fucking Pope, God rest his soul,’ he made the sign of the cross without pausing for breath, ‘but I still haven’t forgotten that granite worktop you wrote off and I’m gonna fuck you up the dupa on payday.’

As the last of them scurried out, heads down, Oskar subsided, satisfied. Then, seeing Janusz, his face split in a grin. ‘Czesc, Janek!’

Janusz stood to greet his friend and, without thinking, put out his hand. Oskar roared with laughter and, ignoring it, embraced his mate in a full bear hug, kissing him on alternate cheeks three times. Janusz cleared his throat: between Poles the effusive greeting was no big deal, but after two decades in England, it made him squirm.

Oskar put a hand on one hip and mimicked an effete handshake as he sat down. ‘You’ve been in England too long, mate. Soon you’ll be wanting to fuck with men!’ He chuckled delightedly at his joke.

Janusz smiled wearily. He loved Oskar like a wayward kid brother – a friendship that dated back to their first day of military service in 1980 – but he could be a pain in the ass. He could picture it still. A rainy day behind the barbed wire of Camp 117 in the Kashubian Lakeland, and the line of new conscripts, heads newly shorn and uniforms at least two sizes too big, looking more like bedraggled baby birds than soldiers. Even now the memory prompted a flare of anger. At seventeen, he and Oskar – all those young men – should have been full of hope. Instead, all they’d had to look forward to was endless months training for the threat of invasion by Western imperialist forces – and then what? Martial law, curfews and rationing … the dreary realpolitik of the socialist dream.

Oskar waved a pudgy hand at the table where his dawdling workers had sat. ‘Seriously though,’ he said, ‘these kids don’t know how easy their life is these days. Do they have any idea what site work was like here in the eighties? Twelve-hour shifts, no “health and safety”. Never mind an hour off for lunch, we didn’t even get a fucking tea break.’

Janusz grunted his agreement. ‘And if you wanted goggles or ear defenders, you had to buy them yourself,’ he said, tearing apart a piece of bread.

Oskar used his sleeve to wipe a porthole in the condensation of the window and peered out at the traffic. ‘Remember that chuj,’ he mused, ‘The Paddy foreman on the M25 job – the guy who treated us like dogs?’

‘The one whose thermos you pissed in?’ asked Janusz, raising an eyebrow.

‘Yeah, that’s the one,’ said Oskar, a beatific grin spreading across his chubby face.

‘Fuck your mother,’ he said, peering at Janusz’s plate. ‘What is that shit you’re eating?’ – then, to the girl who had just arrived to take his order – ‘The bigos for me, too, darling. It looks delicious.’

After she had left, Janusz finished his last mouthful and pushed the plate away. ‘Too much paprika, perhaps, and the duck was a little overcooked, but not bad,’ he said with a judicious nod. He pulled out his box of cigars, then, remembering the crazy no smoking laws, reached for a toothpick instead.

‘Listen Oskar, I still want the booze, but I’ve got a problem. Any chance of you waiting a couple of weeks for the cash?’

Oskar, mouth full of good rye bread, mumbled: ‘Don’t tell me – that donkey Slawek made a kutas of you?’

He helped himself to a slurp of Janusz’s lemon tea, shaking his head. ‘I can stand you half a dozen cases, mate, but not much more than that. I’ve got no slack right now.’ A secret smile crept along his lips. ‘I just sent five hundred home so Madam can buy a new living room carpet.’

‘I thought you were saving up so you could go home for good?’ said Janusz. ‘You’ll be here for ever if you let Gosia spend all your smalec on carpets.’

Oskar belched philosophically. ‘Like my father used to say: “The woman cries before the wedding; the man after.”’

The girl put a plate of bigos in front of Oskar, whose eyes rounded with childlike greed. ‘Duck!’ he exclaimed indistinctly through his first mouthful.

Ever since Janusz had known him, Oskar had worked like a navvie to support Gosia and the kids. They had slogged together through the night building motorway bridges in the eighties – back-breaking twelve-hour shifts – but come next day’s rush hour, when Janusz was still in bed, Oskar would be standing in a lay-by on the A4, flogging hothouse roses to motorists heading home. Even now, alongside his job as foreman for one of the biggest Olympic site contractors, he still found time for what he called his ‘beverage import business’.

It amounted to half a dozen clapped-out Transit vans that plied the cross-channel ferry routes, bringing in cases of cheap booze and cartons of cigarettes to sell on to traders like Janusz. The bottles of spirits ended up on optics in private clubs where no one questioned the ‘NOT FOR RESALE’ label, especially since the bottles carried another reassuring promise: ‘EXPORT STRENGTH’.

‘Listen,’ said Oskar, with a mischievous look, ‘if you’re short of cash, I could always get you a shift on the site.’ Dropping his fork he grabbed Janusz’s hand, and turning it over to check the palm, chuckled. ‘Kurwa! All this wheeling and dealing’ – he used the English phrase – ‘gave you hands like a schoolgirl’s! You wouldn’t last five minutes on a real job.’ He scooped up another tottering forkful of bigos. ‘You want to come over later, watch some football?’

‘I can’t tonight,’ said Janusz. ‘I’ve got a ticket for a lecture at the Royal Institute – one of the physicists from the CERN project.’

Oskar frowned. ‘That big metal doughnut in Switzerland – the one that keeps blowing a fuse?’ he asked. ‘Something to do with the First Bang?’

Janusz nodded – it was easier.

‘They say the universe will collapse one day, you know,’ said Oskar, adopting a scholarly air. He clapped his hands to demonstrate: ‘Pfouff! Down to the size of a beach ball.’ Before he could offer any further cosmological insights, the café door rattled open to admit three lanky buzz-cut youngsters, dwarfed by their rucksacks. Their loud voices exuded confidence, but the way the trio hung close together, shoulders almost touching, told the real story. First-timers, thought Janusz, straight off the 0830 Ryanair flight from Warsaw. When the tallest one spotted Oskar his relief was palpable.

Joining the men at their table, the boys greeted them politely. Oskar balled his checked napkin and after wiping the grease from his lips, punched out a number on his mobile.

‘Czesc, Wassily, you old hedgehog-fucker,’ he bellowed. ‘You still looking for ground-breakers? I’ve got three beauties for you – real musclemen.’ He winked at Janusz. The youngsters exchanged apprehensive glances, shrugged. ‘I’ll bring them over now.’

Oskar levered himself up from the table on powerful arms with a sigh. ‘Some of us have man’s work to do,’ he told Janusz. ‘I’ll put your name on a dozen cases, kolego, but if you can get cash for more by tomorrow, let me know.’

Oskar departed, trailed by his clutch of new recruits, but at the café’s threshold he turned.

‘Remember what we used to say when we were skinny-arsed conscripts shivering in the barracks?’ he shouted to Janusz. ‘Life is like toilet paper …’

Janusz finished the saying for him: ‘… very long and full of crap.’

The rectangle of oak slid open and Janusz bent his head to the aperture.

‘I present myself before the Holy Confession, for I have offended God.’

He shifted in his creaking seat and coughed, a bassy smoker’s rumble. Through the wire mesh, he could make out Father Piotr Pietruski’s reassuring profile, topped by his unruly shock of white hair.

‘It has been, uh, three months since my last confession,’ he said.

‘Six, faktycznie,’ corrected the priest. ‘I did hope that we would see you at Midnight Mass, at least.’

‘I’m sorry, father. I’ve had a lot of … business to attend to.’

Unconsciously, he clenched his right hand, stretching the grazed knuckles white.

The priest tugged at his earlobe – it was a familiar gesture, but whether it signalled resignation, or exasperation, Janusz never could tell. He felt a surge of affection for the old guy: Father Pietruski had always looked out for him, from that first morning more than two decades ago when he’d showed up here after a 48-hour bender, rain-soaked, wild-eyed and stinking of wodka.

Back then, before every inner-city high street had its own Polski Sklep, homesick Poles had beat a path to St Stanislaus, hidden away down an Islington back street. English Catholic churches, all modern steel and concrete, were unappealing, but St Stan’s was solid, nineteenth century, its stone structure curvaceous as a mother’s cheek, and since the mass was conducted in Polish it had felt almost like being at home. And the shop in its crypt where you could buy real kielbasa, cheesecake and plums in chocolate, didn’t hurt either.

These days he wasn’t even sure he still believed in all the mumbo jumbo, so why did he still come? Partly, he supposed, because the church felt like the last remaining pillar of the old Poland, a place where respect and honour were valued above all else. Or maybe because he’d never forget how Father Pietruski had found the drunken boy a bed, fed him lemon tea, and later on, put him in touch with a foreman looking for site labourers.

Even if it meant the old bastard never got off his case.

‘Have there been any recent incidents of violence?’ asked the priest.

‘One scumbag who was beating his wife. She came to me for help.’

‘And?’

‘I like to help women. I helped her. He decided to get another hobby,’ Janusz shrugged, pressing a smile from his lips. Better not to mention the woman in question was his girlfriend.

The older man sighed. It was never straightforward with this one: his methods might be unsanctionable, but his instincts were often sound.

‘Anything else to trouble your immortal soul?’ Janusz detected a trace of sarcasm.

‘Sins of the flesh, father.’ A sudden image: a rumpled bed, the rosy S of a woman’s naked back, Kasia’s, framed by an oblong of light. ‘The normal things.’

‘These “things” are not normalne. You are a married man: that sacrament is indissoluble!’ The priest actually rapped out each syllable with his knuckles on the mesh.

The old fellow had – unusually for him – raised his voice, stirring up a little rush of whispers from outside the box, where, Janusz knew, a bevy of old dears would be waiting to confess their imagined sins. Maybe the priest was right, but what was he supposed to do? He and Marta had read the last rites over their marriage long ago, and he wasn’t cut out to be a monk.

‘Yes, father,’ Janusz bowed his head a fraction. The exchange didn’t alter much with the years. It was a pain, yes, to be lectured, but like the church’s smell – incense, spent candlewicks and ancient dust – it was strangely comforting, too.

‘I know you and Marta have been estranged for many years,’ Father Pietruski continued, his voice lower, but still firm. ‘Nonetheless, you must try again – for the sake of the boy, at least. Build some bridges with her, hmm?’

Janusz moved his head in a gesture that he hoped might pass for assent. The priest waited for something less ambiguous – in vain.

‘Say three Hail Mary’s and the act of contrition,’ he said, blessing Janusz with his right hand, ‘And I’ll meet you at The Eagle in half an hour.’

Janusz stood and stooped to leave the box, the step loosing off a gunshot crack. The ladies outside rustled with excitement, like birds disturbed at their roost.

‘Dzien dobry, paniom,’ he bowed, recognising many of the faces. They chirped greetings back, but one, sitting in the middle of the pew, grasped his arm as he tried to pass.

There was no escape. Pani Rulewska’s upright posture and the deference of the other women marked her out as their leader, even though she was in her late fifties, a good couple of decades their junior. He paused, bowing his head a fraction.

She wore a dark red skirt suit of some rich, soft material, which even he could see was beautifully tailored. He recalled that she owned a designer clothes factory in the East End, and never let anyone forget that a gown created by her Polish seamstresses had once graced the shoulders of Princess Diana.

‘Now, panie Kiszka, I hope that we can count on your support in the forthcoming patriotic event?’ she demanded in her rather grating voice.

Patriotic event? He felt a flutter of panic, as though he was eight years old again, and unable to remember the next line of his catechism.

‘The election?’ she prompted. ‘The older people, of course, can be relied on, but the youngsters, the ones here, they are another matter. They are away from home and family, they are led astray by straszne English habits. Drinking, sex, drugs …’ Pani Rulewska shook her head. ‘This is no longer the England we once loved.’

The other women bobbed their heads, murmuring assent. He nodded, too, and not entirely out of politeness: the England he’d found a quarter of a century ago might have been duller and greyer, but hadn’t it also been gentler, and more civilised? Or am I just getting old and cantankerous? he wondered.

‘You are known, and respected – mostly …’ she qualified. ‘You can reach the young ones, tell them how the new president will rebuild the country and give them all jobs back home where they belong.’

Despite Janusz’s instinctive distrust of politicians, the Renaissance Party candidate did seem to offer Poland a way out of the predicament it found itself in after twenty years of democracy. Sure, the economy had bounced back after decades of Communist mismanagement, but there still weren’t enough well-paid jobs to prevent the exodus of a million or more young people overseas, most of them to the UK. The country’s graceful Hapsburgian squares were fast disappearing beneath a deluge of fast- food chains and gangs of stag-partying Brits, and unless Poland’s exiled generation could be lured back home soon, he feared for his country’s identity.

Janusz liked the Partia Renasans’ big idea, a massive regeneration programme to create jobs and attract the exiles home – and the way it reunited the alliance of the church, unions and intelligentsia, which in the eighties had defeated the Communist regime under the Solidarity banner. The Party had already won the Sejm and the Senate, and now its leader, Edward Zamorski – a respected veteran of Solidarnosc, a man who’d endured repeated incarceration and beatings during the fight for democracy – looked set to become president.

Which was all well and good, but knocking on people’s doors wearing a party T-shirt wasn’t really up Janusz’s street. So after murmuring a few vague words of support, hedged with protestations of masculine busyness, he gave the old dears his most gallant bow, and made a quick exit, feeling their eyes on his back all the way up the side aisle.

At the last alcove, he paused under the gentle gaze of a blue-gowned plaster Mary, lit by a shimmering forest of red perspex tea lights, and, asking forgiveness for his white lie, crossed himself.

With an hour or more to go before the evening rush, the only sound in The Eagle and Child opposite Islington Green was the clink of glasses being washed and stacked.

Janusz ordered a bottle of Tyskie for himself and a bisongrass wodka for the priest. When he’d first arrived in London these drinks were exotic, practically unheard of outside the Polish community, but the mass influx of young Poles that followed EU membership changed all that. It still made him chuckle to hear English voices struggling to order Wyborowa, Okocim, Zubrowka.

He took the drinks out to the ‘beer garden’, a stretch of grey decking pocked with cigarette burns, ringed by a few wind-battered clumps of pampas grass. He chose a table under a gas heater: it was a bitter day, but a drink without a smoke, well, wasn’t a drink.

‘More sins of the flesh?’ asked Father Pietruski, clapping Janusz on the shoulder just as he was lighting his cigar. The old man’s manner was friendly, mischievous even, now he was off duty.

‘To your health,’ said the priest, taking a warming sip of wodka. ‘So how is … “business”?’ – the sardonic quotation marks were audible.

‘Not so good. A few cash-flow problems – till I collect from a couple of bastards who owe me.’

The priest locked eyes with Janusz over the lip of his glass.

‘Using no more than my persuasive skills, father.’ A conciliatory grin creased his slab-like face.

‘To think you were once the top student in your year. And not just at any university: at Jagiellonski!’ mused the priest, for perhaps the hundredth time.

Janusz permitted himself a brief glance skywards.

‘Such a fine brain, you had – Professor Zygurski told me,’ said the priest, shaking his head. ‘Of course, theology would have been more fitting than science, but, still, what a waste of God-given talent.’

‘It wasn’t a time for writing essays,’ shot back Janusz. ‘How could I sit on my backside in a cosy lecture theatre talking about Schrodinger’s cat while people were getting beaten to pulp in the streets?’ Pushing his free hand through his hair he added in a brooding undertone, ‘Although maybe I should just have carried on fucking about with Bunsen burners.’

The priest pulled at his earlobe, decided to let the profanity go. The early eighties had been a disruptive and dangerous era for everyone, he reflected – especially the young. The protests organised by Solidarity adhered largely to the principle of peaceful protest but were met, inevitably, by the batons and bullets of the Communist regime. In more normal times, Janusz might have gone on to match, or even outshine, the achievements of his father, a highly regarded professor of physics at Gdansk University, but soon after General Jaruzelski declared martial law, the boy had abandoned his studies to join the thrilling battle for democracy on the streets. Then, just as suddenly, he had left for England – abandoning the young wife he’d married just weeks before. When Janusz had turned up at St Stanislaus, he was clearly a soul in torment, and although Father Pietruski had never discovered the root of the trouble, one thing was certain – whatever happened back then cast a shadow over him still.

He studied the big man with the troubled eyes opposite him. This child of God would never be a particularly observant Catholic, perhaps, but the priest was sure of one thing: he was possessed of a Christian soul, and when the new government was elected – by God’s grace – it was to be hoped that men such as he would return home to rebuild the country.

He leaned across and tapped Janusz on the back of the hand.

‘I may have a small job for you,’ he said. ‘Something honorowego – to keep you out of trouble – and use that brain of yours. A matter that pani Tosik brought to me in confession.’

Janusz raised an eyebrow.

‘And expressly permitted me to take beyond the sacred confines of the confessional. One of the girls, a waitress in the restaurant, has gone missing.’

‘With the takings?’

‘No, no, a God-fearing girl,’ said the priest. ‘She always attended mass. She’d only been here a few weeks, waiting tables, plus a little modelling work.’ Janusz raised an eyebrow and grinned through his cloud of smoke.

‘Yes, a very beautiful young woman, but a good girl and a hard worker. She disappeared two weeks ago without a word, and pani Tosik is worried out of her skin. She doesn’t want to call the police, naturalnie.’

Janusz inclined his head in understanding. Maybe Poles were insubordinate by nature, or maybe it was a reaction to forty years of brutal foreign rule – either way, they didn’t roll out the welcome mat for the cops.

‘So? She’s found a boyfriend who’s getting rich doing loft conversions,’ he said, flicking a fat inch of ash off his cigar.

‘Maybe so, but the girl’s mother back home hasn’t heard from her and pani Tosik feels terribly guilty. She wants her tracked down,’ he met Janusz’s eyes, ‘And she’ll pay good money.’ Janusz couldn’t help smiling at the old man’s transparent look of guile as he delivered his trump card.

Finding a missing person was hard work and involved lots of schlepping round on the tube, which he loathed – but it was common knowledge that pani Tosik was loaded, and he could certainly do with the cash.

Father Pietruski drained the last of his drink and stood to go to the bar.

‘Anyway, I suggested you – God forgive me.’

Two

The sky over the Thames was a milky, benevolent blue, but a freezing wind raked Detective Constable Natalie Kershaw’s face as the fast-response Targa tore over the steely water. As the speedboat swept under Tower Bridge, engine noise booming off the iron stanchions, the uniformed helmsman sneaked a sideways look at her profile, the blonde hair scraped back in a businesslike ponytail. He wondered if he dared ask her out. Probably not. She might only come up to his armpit, but she looked like a ball breaker – typical CID female.

Kershaw was miles away, thinking about her dad, scanning the southern bank for the Bermondsey wharf where he had hauled coke as a warehouseman in the sixties – his first job. He’d pointed it out to her from a tour boat – an outing they’d taken a couple of years ago, just before he’d died. She finally clocked his warehouse – harder to recognise now its hundred-year-old patina of coal smoke had been sandblasted off. Fancy new balconies, too, at the upper windows: all the signs of the warehouse’s new life as swanky apartments for City bankers – Yeah, a right bunch of bankers, she heard him say. He’d be pleased as punch to see her now, a detective out on her first suspicious death.

When her DS had dropped it on her that morning she’d been a bit hacked off – she already had to go up west for a court case, and this job meant her racing straight back to Wapping. Anyway, surely a floater pulled out of the Thames was a job for a uniform? But telling the Sarge that, however diplomatically, had been a bad move, she realised, almost as soon as the words were out of her mouth. Worse, she was on early turn this week, so this had all gone off at 0730 hours, and DS Bacon, known to his constables, inevitably, as Streaky, was not a morning person. He had torn a big fat strip off her in front of two of the guys.

‘Let’s get one thing straight, Kershaw – you’ll do whatever fucking job I throw at you and say thank you, Sarge, can I get you a cup of tea, Sarge. If I hear any more of your cheeky backchat I’ll have you back on Romford Rd wearing a lid faster than you can say diversity awareness.’

Streaky was in his fifties, old-school CID to his fag-stained fingertips, and Kershaw suspected that in his book, female detectives were good for one thing: interviewing witnesses in rape, domestic violence and brokenbaby cases.

Of course she could complain to the Guv, DI Bellwether. Streaky’s Neanderthal management style – the swearing, the borderline sexism, his old-school insistence on addressing DCs by their surnames – it was all a total no-no these days, but she’d rather keep her mouth shut and get on with it. You needed a thick skin to be in the job. If she got stick now and again for being a young, blonde female – and therefore brainless – she could give as good as she got. Anyway, everyone copped it for something. Being fat, thin, Northern, ginger, having a funny name, having a boring name, talking posh, talking Cockney, anything. At her first nick, one poor bastard had made the mistake of letting on that he did karate, and the next day his desk disappeared under a deluge of Chinese takeaway menus and house bricks. She couldn’t even remember his real name, because after that everybody – even the girls on switchboard – called him Chop Suey.

Giving – and taking – good banter was about bonding, fitting in, being part of a unit. If you couldn’t take friendly abuse from fellow cops you were finished, game over. One thing she was sure of: Natalie Kershaw wasn’t going to end up one of those sad cases moaning about sexism at an employment tribunal. If she hadn’t made Sergeant by the time she turned thirty, in three years’ time, she’d pack it in and do something else.

Anyway, once she’d had a proper look at the job Streaky had thrown her, she thought maybe it wasn’t so lame after all. The floater had come up naked, and you didn’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to know that suicides don’t generally get their kit off before chucking themselves in the river. So maybe it was a good call to send a detective to have a look before the pathologist started slicing and dicing – Streaky might be a dinosaur in a bad suit, but occasionally he showed signs of being a good cop.

The Targa overtook a tourist boat – the occupants craning to check out the cop at the helm and his attractive plain-clothes passenger – and within seconds, they were pulling up at a long blue jetty on the north shore in front of Wapping Police Station. Kershaw gave the uniform a smile, but ignored his outstretched hand to step down from the bobbing boat unaided. She headed for the nick, a Victorian building with more curlicues and columns than a footballer’s wedding cake, but after a few steps his shout made her turn. Grinning, he pointed across the jetty to an oblong tent of blue tarpaulin, then, revving the Targa’s engine unnecessarily, he sped off.

He was cute, she thought. Why don’t guys like that ever ask me out?

She pulled the tarpaulin flap open and ducked inside. Just at that moment two river cops were unloading the contents of a black body bag into a shallow stainless steel bath, about twice the size of the one in her flat. The darkly slicked head of a girl, followed by her naked body, slithered out of the bag in an obscene parody of birth.

‘Fuck,’ muttered Kershaw, caught unawares. It wasn’t her first stiff – as a probationer she’d been sent on a call to a tower block in Poplar after some neighbours reported a foul liquid seeping through their ceiling. In the upstairs flat she’d found the remains of an old guy who’d been dead in his armchair for two weeks in front of a two-bar fire. He looked like a giant half-melted candle.

But she had to admit this one was a shocker. The girl’s skin was purplish and mottled, the breasts and stomach bore gaping slashes, and here and there were raw patches the size of a man’s hand, as though someone had taken a blowtorch to the body. The face was fairly intact, except for the eyes, which were now just two blackened empty pits.

One of the PCs left, and the other gave her the rundown.

He was a middle-aged, lifelong-plod type: a bit world-weary, but straight as a die, which was a relief, because she hadn’t anticipated the sheer embarrassment factor of looking over a naked female with a guy old enough to be her dad.

‘A runner spotted her on the foreshore at low tide,’ he told her. ‘Just this side of the Thames Barrier. We get quite a few floaters washed up on the sandbank there.’

Kershaw pulled out a notepad and pencil. ‘She didn’t necessarily go in the water round there, though?’

He shook his head. ‘Could have drifted anything from fifty yards to ten miles downstream – all we can say is she went in somewhere on the tidal section. They can travel a mile a day, or more,’ giving her more than he needed to, info she could file away for future use.

‘What about the eyes,’ she said, nodding toward the empty pits. ‘I’m guessing … rats? Birds?’

‘Eels, probably,’ he said. ‘Greedy buggers. The type people eat jellied. Personally, I prefer a prawn cocktail …’

They shared a grin over the eyeless head.

‘And the injuries?’ asked Kershaw. ‘Any chance they could be pre-mortem?’

He bent to examine the deepest wound, through which the pale glimmer of the girl’s ribcage could be seen, and twisted his mouth sceptically: ‘Hard to say. Boats and barges can do a lot of damage, and she’s probably been in over a week. When it’s cold they stay under longer – the stomach gases take more time to build up.’

Moving up to the head, Kershaw bent to study the girl’s face, trying to ignore the yellowish foam bubbling out of her nostrils. The skin was puffy from prolonged immersion, which made it hard to tell what she might have looked like in life, but from her slim figure Kershaw guessed she was in her mid to late twenties – making them round about the same age. She was seized by a sudden need to know the girl’s identity.

‘Will we get prints off her?’ she asked the PC.

With a latex-gloved hand, he turned the girl’s left wrist palm-upwards to reveal the underside of her fingers, which were bloated and wrinkled, the skin starting to peel.

‘Washerwoman’s hands,’ he said, with a shake of the head. ‘You’ll get bugger all off them. We’ll take DNA samples, though – maybe you can get your budget manager to approve a test. The reference is DB16.’

Kershaw scribbled on her pad. ‘The sixteenth dead body you’ve found this year?’ she asked.

‘Yeah. And we’re not even four months in yet.’

The smell emanating from the body filled the tent now. A not-unpleasant riverine tang, but with a darker undernote that reminded Kershaw of mushrooms left in the fridge too long. She felt deflated, disappointed not to find something more … concrete. But then she thought: don’t be daft, Nat, did you really think you’d pitch up and spot something to solve the case, Prime Suspect style?

‘There’s no way she’d be naked, is there, if it was just suicide?’ she asked, suddenly anxious that the girl might turn out to be just another random jumper. ‘I mean her clothes, they couldn’t have come off by themselves, in the water?’

He turned his mouth down at the corners. ‘I’ve never heard of a current removing a bra and pants.’ They avoided each other’s eyes. ‘No, I’d say she was definitely naked when she went in,’ he went on. ‘And this time of year, I shouldn’t think she was skinny dipping.’

He bent to reach into a bag at his feet. ‘I’d better get on with the samples while she’s fresh,’ he said, and started to line up plastic vials on a nearby trestle table.

Left alone with the body, Kershaw noticed that the girl’s shoulder-length hair was drying at the ends, turning it a bright coppery gold. It was a shade her dad used to call Titian, she remembered, out of nowhere.

Her gaze fell on the girl’s left hand. It lay as the cop had left it, palm-up on the stainless steel, fingers slightly crooked, suggesting helplessness – or entreaty. A gust of wind whipped the tarpaulin flap open with a crack, making her jump.

‘I almost forgot,’ said the cop, returning to Kershaw’s side. ‘There is one bit of good news.’ Cupping his gloved hand under the girl’s hip, he tilted her body.

Near the base of the spine, just above the swell of the girl’s buttock, Kershaw could see what looked like a stain beneath the waterlogged whiteness of the skin. Bending closer, she realised it was a tattoo – an indigo heart, amateurish-looking, enclosing two names, obviously foreign: Pawel and Ela.

‘Gives you a head start on ID-ing her,’ the cop said, setting the body back down with surprising gentleness.

Three

The rectangle of plastic snapped open as the last coin clinked through the slot, and Janusz stooped to his peephole. Beyond it, in the centre of a dimly lit windowless room, a slender naked girl writhed around a floor-to-ceiling pole under a shower of multicoloured lights.

Every trace of her body hair had been shaved or plucked away, making her nakedness absolute, apart from a single stud in her navel. The girl’s movements, timed to the grinding rock music, had a natural grace, but her made-up face was expressionless and her gaze focused on some distant point. Her long fingernails struck the only incongruous note – painted not the usual scarlet, but jet-black.

Janusz watched just long enough to make sure it was Kasia, then straightened and checked his watch, frowning, and tried to block out the alkaline reek of old semen in his cubicle. The music came to an end, only to be followed by another, smoochier number. Cursing softly, he glanced up at the ceiling and reached into his pocket.

He could still hear the smoke alarm wailing as he leant against the club’s rear wall enjoying his smoke – his fourth, or maybe fifth, cigar of the day. The last punter, a paunchy guy in his forties wearing a chalk-stripe suit, stumbled out of the fire exit, head bent as he finished fastening his fly. Noticing the big man in the old-fashioned trench coat, he straightened, and pulling out a pack of cigarettes, asked for a light.

Janusz sparked his lighter, although the guy had to bend forward to reach the flame. Then, blowing out a stream of smoke, the punter planted his feet apart and jabbed his chin over his shoulder. ‘Did you see the bird in there?’ he asked, with a man-to-man chuckle. ‘I’ll bet that’s a road well travelled.’

Janusz’s face remained impassive, so the guy didn’t notice his right hand clench reflexively into a fist, nor realise how close he was skating to a broken jaw.

‘I wouldn’t know,’ said Janusz, taking an unhurried draw on his cigar. ‘I just work here sometimes.’

The guy gave him an assessing look, trying to work out the accent – posh-sounding, but some foreign in there, too. ‘Yeah? You a bouncer then?’

Janusz shook his head.

‘Work behind the bar?’

Another shake. Then Janusz looked the guy in the face properly for the first time.

‘Look, it’s supposed to be hush-hush,’ he said, ‘but what the hell, today’s my last day in the job.’ He ground his cigar stub out on the wall and discarded it, then leaned closer. ‘I rig the hidden cameras in the peepshow booths,’ he said in a conspiratorial murmur.

The guy stared at him: ‘Cameras? I’ve never seen a camera in there.’

Janusz shrugged. ‘That’s because I’m pretty good at my job.’

The guy’s face was going red now. ‘So you’re telling me … they film the blokes watching the shows?’

Janusz dipped his head sideways in regretful assent.

‘Why the fu …?’ the guy’s voice held a mixture of anger and foreboding.

‘It’s a live feed to the internet,’ said Janusz. ‘Apparently, a lot of people will pay good money to watch guys … you know …’, and with an economical gesture he demonstrated the activity he was too polite to put into words.

Now, the guy’s mouth was opening and shutting like a Christmas carp, and Janusz wondered if he was going to have a stroke or something.

‘It’s a … It’s a … disgrace,’ he croaked. He waved a finger up at Janusz, ‘I’m going to …’ and then brandished it at the back door of the club, ‘I’ll report them to …’ Then he wheeled around and went off down the Soho alleyway, still ranting and waving his arms.

Just then, the girl emerged from the club, wrapped in a black towelling dressing gown. She peered at the retreating figure, who was shouting something about the Human Rights Act, and then up at Janusz.

‘What’s with that guy?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know,’ he said, with a shrug. ‘London is full of crazy people.’

She shot him a suspicious look. ‘You haven’t been telling the customers stories again?’ He shook his head, avoiding her eyes, but had to suck in his cheeks to keep from grinning.

Kasia pulled the robe tighter around her – it was cold – and reached into the pocket for cigarettes. ‘You think you’re so funny, Janusz,’ she said. ‘But if the boss finds out he’ll kick your dupe.’ She raised her chin in the direction of the smoke alarm, which had now settled to a strident beeping: ‘And I suppose that’s nothing to do with you either?’

The unchivalrous daylight added ten years or more to her face, he thought, but she could still pass for thirty-five, thirty even, no problem.

‘I got bored,’ he said.

She widened her eyes in mock reproach. ‘Oh, a nice compliment. You don’t like my show?’

‘Nice body. Piekne,’ he said. ‘But then I knew that already,’ levelling his amused gaze at her. She held the look, trying to look stern, but one side of her mouth lifted, despite herself: the crooked smile that filled his daydreams.

She bent her dark blonde head to his lighter, steadying his hand a beat longer than she needed to, making his stomach trip. It was funny, but he could never quite connect the woman in front of him with the one he’d seen pole-dancing minutes earlier. That girl was hot stuff, no question, but she didn’t make his insides polka like Kasia did. His jaw tensed as he noticed the yellow tidemark of an old bruise that her make-up couldn’t quite conceal along her cheekbone.

‘Listen, Kasia. I paid that chuj Steve a visit this morning.’

Kasia’s hand jumped to her face.

‘Kurwa!’ the curse slipped out before her lips could catch it, ‘… and?’

He looked amused: she hardly ever swore, and was probably making a mental note to take her misdemeanor to confession.

‘I made the case to him that a man does not strike a woman, not even his own wife.’ The words were old-fashioned and his deep voice was reasonable – but his eyes had suddenly gone cold.

She pulled the lapels of her gown closer. ‘What did he say?’

‘My impression was I left him a reformed character,’ he said. ‘But he knows that I am happy to continue our … discussions if necessary.’

She said nothing, but reached out and briefly touched her cold hands to the sides of his face.

He pulled back a fraction: he didn’t know why, but the gesture made him angrier than her pig of a husband and his wife-beating habits. Why did a woman like her stay with such a man? Kasia came from a good family and was as smart as a fox – she had a degree from the film school where Polanski and Kieslowski had studied, for Christ’s sake! But he’d already heard her answer to that: ‘love can die but marriage lives for ever.’ And this sleazy job of hers was the couple’s only income. Half a million Poles managed to carve out a living here, but born and bred Londoner Steve could never find work. It was too easy to get by on benefit in this country, he reflected, not for the first time.

No point telling her to leave him, anyway. Like all Polish women she was obstinate as hell, and would tell him to go fuck himself. To cover his expression he dropped his cigar stub and ground it underfoot.

As Kasia turned away to blow a stream of smoke down the street, he let his eyes rest for a moment on her half-averted profile, her long, beautiful nose. It was what he’d first noticed about her that day, when he’d been lugging boxes of booze from the van to this same door.

‘I could come to your place tomorrow?’ she said, still turned away, a trace of uncertainty in the upward inflection.

His anger slid away at that, replaced by more complicated emotions. Maybe that night they’d spent together two weeks earlier hadn’t just been a one-off. He pushed his hands in his pockets and gazed up at the roofline.

‘Sure, why not. And tell Ray I’ve got a delivery of Wyborowa coming in next week if he’s interested.’

What the hell. Like his mother used to say, he always ran to meet trouble halfway.

An hour later, Janusz made his way north eastwards along Essex Road, head down against a biting wind. He was heading for pani Tosik’s restaurant to follow up the runaway waitress story Father Pietruski had told him about. As one of the best-connected people in London’s Polonia, Janusz had picked up more than a few missing persons jobs over the years. His near-perfect English helped, even if his language primers – British war movies he’d watched as a kid, and later, eighties US cop shows – had spiced his vocabulary with some colourful and outmoded phrases.

This job sounded like all the rest: parents back home fretting because their daughter hadn’t phoned home for a few weeks. It was always a young girl, invariably ‘God-fearing and steady’ – he’d never once heard a runaway described as kaprysna – and the outcome was always the same, too. He’d find her living in sin with a boyfriend in some godforsaken bedsit. She’d cry a little, grieving her lost virginity, and after a few stern words, would promise to phone home to Mama.

It occurred to him that this was pretty much how Kasia’s life in London had unfolded when she’d come over after her film degree. She told him she’d been a Goth back then – one of those kids who dressed like zombies and put metal bars through their tongues – but a respectable, educated girl all the same, with a job in a Polish patisserie in Kensington. She’d been learning English at evening classes with the aim of getting a job as a runner in the film business – her goal was to become a director one day. But then she’d met that big mouth Cockney idiota Steve. Reading between the lines, he’d persuaded her to chuck it all in and go live with him – they would start their own business, he’d buy her a Super 8 camera so she could make her own films, blah blah. Worse still – because her family back home disapproved of the match, she had lost touch with them.

Naturalnie, Steve’s big plans came to nothing, and Kasia progressed from working in a pub, to serving drinks in Soho clubs, and then to her current job as – laughable euphemism – an exotic dancer. Even a decade ago it would have been unthinkable to find a decent Polish girl doing such a job, Janusz reflected, but she said it paid her three times as much as bar work, and it was undeniable that her sketchy grasp of English limited her options.

Restaurant Polka stood on the corner of an elegant Georgian terrace a few streets north of St Stan’s, its wide front window and green and white tiled facade revealing its original incarnation as the neighbourhood greengrocers. Now the windows were hung, somewhat incongruously, with ruched, plum-coloured silk curtains.

The doorbell sounded a grating three-chime peal. The elderly lady who answered – aged about seventy, he estimated, maybe seventy-five – wore a ruffled cerise silk blouse, a similar shade to the curtains, and tinkled with gold. He would bet that the artful crown of permed blonde hair was the work of Hair Fantastic, the local salon that doubled as operational HQ for North London’s fearsome Polish matriarchy.

‘Dzien dobry, pani Tosik,’ said Janusz making an old-fashioned bow. He’d made a mental note to watch his manners, uncomfortably aware that the courtesy drummed into him by his parents had become coarsened over the years, first by life on a building site, and more recently by the uncouth behaviour his current line of business sometimes demanded.

‘Come in, darling, come in!’ piped pani Tosik. ‘How lovely to have a man visit! I knew your father in Gdansk, after the war – God rest his soul.’

She reached up to put her hands on his shoulders and examine him, then gave a single decisive nod.

‘Tak. You have his good looks – and his character, too, I think.’

She waved him inside: ‘You will have coffee? And tort. Of course! Who doesn’t like cake?’

Janusz followed pani Tosik, her heels ticking on the lino, to the dimly lit, cinnamon-smelling interior.

The old lady settled Janusz on a velvet-covered banquette in the plushly decorated restaurant, its walls hung with oil paintings of Polish rural scenes. While she made coffee, Janusz retrieved a copy of Gazeta Warszawa from a nearby table. The front-page headline read: ‘“Forget the past and move on”’, Zamorski tells voters’. Beneath it was a photo of a middle-aged man with a thoughtful yet purposeful expression: Edward Zamorski, presidential-hopeful and head of the Renaissance Party.

As pani Tosik returned, Janusz stood to take the tray of coffee and pastries from her. She nodded to the picture: ‘What do you think of our next president?’ she asked, pouring coffee into a hand-painted Opole porcelain cup and saucer.

‘I saw him speak once, at a rally in Gdansk – it was before martial law, so I must have been about seventeen,’ said Janusz, raising the coffee cup to his lips. His fingers felt gigantic, cumbersome, around its fragile handle. ‘I remember at one point he spoke over our heads, directly to the ZOMO. He said, ‘“When you raise a baton to a fellow Pole, the blow lands on your own soul.”’

He remembered something else, too. Zamorski had told the crowd that once they won their freedom, reconciliation and forgiveness – even of the hated riot police – would be more important than revenge if the country were to move forward. As a fiery teenager, Janusz had found himself bewildered, angered even, by these words, but after what happened a couple of years later he found himself revisiting them again and again.

Pani Tosik sighed, waving a hand in a gesture that combined regret and resignation. ‘You young people got rid of the Komunistow,’ she said, ‘And got a country ruled by American multinationals instead. My friend’s daughter is a teacher in Warsaw and what do you think she earns in a year?’

Janusz shook his head.

‘9000 euros!’ hissed pani Tosik. ‘This is why young people have to come to London, although it is not a good place for a young girl.’

This was her cue to embark on the story of the missing waitress, interrupted only by the whines of the tiny Yorkshire terrier sitting beside her on the banquette begging for food.

‘Weronika came to me six months ago, in November. No! Not November, darling, October’ – as though he’d been the one to get it wrong – ‘Such a pretty girl. Beautiful, even,’ she widened her tiny blue eyes for emphasis. ‘Like … Grace Kelly, but with modern outfits, you know. Yes, Tinka, you may have a little bit of Napoleonka because your mama loves you.’

She broke off a piece of the pink-iced millefeuille pastry and gave it to the dog, who wolfed it down, licking every scrap from her fingers. Then, using her still-moist hand, she picked up another slice and put it on Janusz’s plate, appearing not to notice as the big man flinched.

‘Proper Polish pastry,’ she said, ‘Not those things the English call cakes – “Mr Kipper” etcetera.’ Reaching for a pink Sobranie cigarette she leaned forward to Janusz’s lighter flame.

‘Anyway, she was a good Catholic girl, very hard-working, very respectable – not like some of the English girls. With them, always a problem! One is a drunk, always arrives late, another gets a baby.’

Janusz sipped his coffee and nodded.

‘So, now – only Polish girls. And with this girl, I know her mama, and I say to her, your Weronika is safe with me. And then one day: pfouff! She is gone.’

The old lady’s eyes filled with tears. ‘I feel terrible, panie Kiszka. I cannot sleep at night, I can barely eat …’ A sharp glance down. ‘You do not like your Napoleonka?’

Janusz broke off a piece with his fork, but only took another sip of coffee.

‘Did she have a boyfriend?’

Pani Tosik’s gripped Janusz’s forearm with surprisingly strong fingers. ‘No! I promised her Mama, no boyfriends. She is too young – only nineteen. She always sleeps here, upstairs, where I can keep her under my eyes. And I make sure she goes to confession every single week.

‘Let me find a photograph for you.’ As pani Tosik jingled off to the rear of the salon, Janusz took the chance to offload his toxic cake on Tinka. The dog took the Napoleonka in one messy gulp, then bit the hand that fed her. He stifled a cry – pani Tosik was returning.

‘Here she is, my beautiful Weronika. She was making a portfolio – her dream was to be a model.’

Janusz examined the professional-looking black and white photograph, which pictured a striking girl with ice-blonde hair wearing a long fur coat, against a white backdrop. She struck a self-consciously model-like pose: legs planted apart, hands on hips, shoulder-length hair blown backwards by a wind machine. Her face was all sharply angled planes – cheekbones that could cut coal – but there was uncertainty in the eyes, and her lips were rounded, almost childlike … like Iza’s – the thought surfaced before he could stop it.

‘Nice coat,’ he said, to cover his expression, waving at the pricey-looking fur. Pani Tosik laughed. ‘Oh, darling! It’s not real! The girls buy these “fun furs” from TK Maxx for pocket money!’

‘Speaking of money, pani …’

‘I cannot afford much,’ she said, pressing a hand to her chest. ‘I am not a wealthy woman. Maybe you want to help this poor girl as a Christian duty?’ She gave him a hopeful smile.

He had to admire the old girl: everyone knew her restaurant was coining it in. London’s Poles were desperate for a taste of home and these days Eastern European food was even getting a following among the English.

‘We all have cash flow problems,’ he said, opening his hands in apology.

The old lady’s smile waned as her sharp little eyes sized him up.

‘Okay. I give you £500 now, you report back in one week. If you have some information, maybe I pay more.’

‘£1000 now.’

She puckered her mouth. ‘£800. This is a good price.’

He cocked his head in agreement, dropping his gaze to hide his surprise at how quickly she had caved in.

A key turned in the front door, admitting a girl with long dark hair, twenty-five or twenty-six, at a guess. Not as hot as Weronika, maybe, but still pretty, in an olive-skinned way. His mother – God rest her soul – would have said she had a touch of the Tartar. She wore a tan leather jacket and the ultra-tight jeans Polish girls liked, and carried bulging Lidl bags. On her way past their table, she greeted pani Tosik, nodded to Janusz, and took in the photograph of Weronika lying on the table, all in a couple of seconds.

Clever eyes, he thought. He would bet a truckful of Wyborowa that she knew the real story with Weronika – who she’d been sleeping with, whether she’d got herself knocked up, maybe even where she’d disappeared to.

When he asked to see Weronika’s room, pani Tosik agreed readily enough and led the way up the narrow staircase. The small room with its single bed struck him as almost spookily spotless. The dressing table was empty, the bed made up and topped with a pink satin pierzyna: a traditional eiderdown he hadn’t seen since his childhood. Standing on the bedside cabinet was the sole trace of its previous occupant: an empty photo frame.

When he asked about it, pani Tosik shrugged. ‘I don’t remember, maybe a family photo?’

He could tell from the way the old dear hovered at his shoulder that there was no way she’d let him check inside the chest of drawers: a man rooting around in a girl’s underwear was probably an occasion of sin.

Before leaving, he asked to use the toilet, and on his way back to the restaurant, took the opportunity to slip into the kitchen. He could always say he took a wrong turn.

He found the dark-haired girl standing just inside the doorway of a walk-in fridge, nodding her head to some discordant Polish rap on the radio. She was reaching up to stack vegetables onto a shelf, her shirt riding up to reveal the curve of her waist. Sensing someone behind her, she whipped around, hand flying to her throat. He grinned an apology and held out his card. She took it without speaking, a guarded look in her brown eyes.

‘Call me,’ he said over his shoulder, leaving her gazing after him, fingering the gold cross she wore around her neck.

Four

Kershaw was super-respectful to DS Bacon on her return to Tower Hamlets nick. Fair play to Streaky, he seemed to have forgotten the ruck they’d had that morning; in fact, he was surprisingly cheery as she drew a chair up to his desk, probably because she’d had the foresight to bring him a mug of tea and a chocolate Hobnob first.

‘The PM is this afternoon, Sarge, down at Wapping mortuary. I’ve not got anything else on and I’d like to go, if it’s okay with you.’ She knew that it usually fell to Crime Scene Investigators to attend post mortems these days – but she couldn’t bear to wait for the pathologist’s report to find out if there were any signs of injury on DB16, the girl with the Titian hair.

Raising his eyebrows, Streaky leant back in his tatty swivel chair like it was a throne. ‘Well, well. Keen to see a slab butcher at work, are you? My old Sarge used to call it a poor form of entertainment.’ He paused, looking thoughtful. ‘All right, I’ll let you go this once, purely for educational purposes,’ he said, pointing his biscuit at her. ‘But try not to let the side down by chucking up on the Doc’s shoes, there’s a good girl.’

She gave him a big grin. ‘Thanks, Sarge, I’ll do my best. Can I tell you what else I’ve got on the floater?’

He checked his watch. ‘Make it quick, I’ve got a pressing appointment at the Drunken Monkey at two o’clock. Crucial meeting with a CHIS.’

CHIS? It took her a moment to translate. Covert Human Intelligence Source – aka, criminal informer. Yeah, right, she thought, more like three pints and a dodgy pie with your dinosaur mates. All the same, she was beginning to realise she could learn a lot from an old-school throwback like Streaky. The other Detective Sergeants at Newham nick were younger, and mostly of the new breed. Smartly dressed and professional, they wouldn’t dream of drinking while on duty, but they seemed to her more like bank managers than real cops. So what if Streaky liked a few jars at lunchtime? Everyone knew he had a better clear-up rate than any of them. Which was probably why he hadn’t been shuffled off with a full pension years ago.

‘Get on with it then,’ he said, blowing steam off his tea.

Kershaw checked her notes.

‘IC1 Female, I’m guessing in her twenties. Could have gone in the river anywhere up to Teddington Lock. No clothing or jewellery, but she’s got a tattoo with her name, Ela, and a boyfriend’s, Pa-wel,’ she said, struggling with the unfamiliar name. ‘Polish, according to the internet.’

‘It’s Pavel, like gravel,’ said Streaky. ‘Pawel Janas, played for Poland in the seventies – tidy left foot as I recall. I was only a tiny child at the time, of course. Any injuries?’

‘Need the PM results for that, Sarge, body’s all messed up.’

Streaky chewed his lower lip. ‘So you’re thinking lover’s tiff, the boyfriend strangles her, stabs her – whatever ethnic tradition demands – strips her to get rid of any clues, dumps her in the river in the wee small hours, goes off to drown his sorrows in vodka?’ That brought an appreciative ripple of laughter from the guys – her fellow DCs, Browning, Bonnick, Ben Crowther, all in their late twenties, plus Toby Brisley, a civilian officer, were all at their desks today.

‘Something like that, Sarge.’

‘Hmm. Well, I wouldn’t usually be too optimistic about finding a perp in the circs, but having your prime suspect’s name tattooed on the victim’s arse does give you a major leg-up.’ More chuckles from the audience. She could only see the back of Bonnick’s PC screen but from his glazed look and half-open mouth she would bet he was watching Arsenal’s top goals on YouTube.

‘I’ll be the first to congratulate you if the Doc says it’s a murder,’ said Streaky. ‘And why is that, DC Kershaw?’

That threw her. ‘Ah, because it’s the most serious crime, Sarge?’

Browning made a two-tone comedy horn noise at the back of his throat, ie ‘you lose’, to more laughter, though there was sympathy in the look Ben Crowther threw her. Ben – the only other DC in the office who’d been to university – was the only one she’d really clicked with so far.

‘Why do we like a murder, DC Browning?’ asked Streaky.

‘Two reasons, Sarge,’ he said in that chirpy blokey tone that got on her nerves. ‘One, the job goes to Murder Squad but the body stays with us so we get the numbers if it’s cleared up. Two, murder means overtime.’

‘And what is overtime, Browning?’

‘The only perk a hard-working detective gets these days, Sarge.’

‘Co-rrect,’ said Streaky.

She managed a grin, taking the stick. Did Streaky prefer Browning to her because he was a guy, or because he was a ranker, like Streaky, instead of a graduate entry cop like her?

‘Any chance of a DNA test on the floater, Sarge?’ she asked. ‘She might be on the database.’

Streaky gazed at his half-eaten Hobnob.

‘See what you get from the PM first – it’s already costing us three grand. Got to watch the budget, the accountant-wallahs tell me. And get onto MPB – they’ll want photos, dental work, you know the drill.’

As Kershaw searched her archived mails for the address of the Missing Persons Bureau, she considered her own reasons for wanting DB16’s death to be chalked up as a murder. One, it would look good on her CV; two, she might get assigned to Murder Squad for the duration of the job and get a nice long break from these wankers.

Five

Pani Tosik had been insistent about one thing: once Janusz had discovered Weronika’s whereabouts, he was not to contact her himself but simply to report back with the address. The old lady had decided that the best strategy was to forward the girl the ‘heartbreaking’ letter her mama had sent, begging her to return to the restaurant. But all he had to go on was a single crappy lead: a sticker on the back of the photo of Weronika, printed with the name of a photographer’s in Leytonstone, a couple of miles east of Stratford.

Janusz took the Northern Line south from Angel to Bank, where he’d change for the eastbound Central Line. He hated the tube, refused to use it in rush hour, and if there was a crush on the platform he’d usually head straight back up the escalator. But today he was too pushed for time to do the three-bus Islington to Leytonstone safari.

Sitting in the half-full carriage, he caught the eye of a little girl, aged about eight or nine, sitting across from him with her mother. He pulled the cross-eyed gargoyle face that used to crack his boy, Bobek, up at that age. She grinned. Then he noticed the words picked out in sequins across her flat, pink-T-shirted chest – FUTURE PORN STAR – and the smile dropped from his face like a theatre curtain.

As the pair got up at the next stop, the girl sketching a shy wave goodbye, the mother shot him a searching look. The cheek of it! – he thought. You dress your little girl like a trainee whore, then treat me like a paedophile.

He emerged from the shelter of Leytonstone tube still wearing a thunderous frown, and headed for the high street, a raw wind wrapping the trench coat about his legs. Leytonstone reminded him of how Highbury had looked when he first arrived in London. The greengrocers’ displays bloomed with strange foreign vegetables – the kind he’d only ever seen in a curry – and dark-skinned men wrapped in coats argued over glasses of coffee at pavement tables. He stepped into the road to let a young couple with a baby buggy pass, and they thanked him in broken English, their singsong lilt marking them out as fellow Poles. He found himself scanning the crowded pavements for Weronika’s high cheekbones.

The photographs on display in the window of Parry’s featured the usual suspects – wedding couples, aspiring models, obese children – but on closer examination, Janusz could see that the shots had a certain flair. Inside, a young man with a ginger goatee sat behind the counter reading Photographer’s Weekly.

Janusz had decided his best strategy would be to act the dumb Polak, just off the plane from Lodz. He did a lot of smiling and nodding for openers, then showed the guy the photo. ‘You make this picture …?’

As the guy studied the photo, a look of professional pride came over his face.

‘Yeah, I remember – she was very beautiful, this girl.’

Janusz tapped himself on the chest. ‘My sister,’ he said with a modest smile.

‘Right,’ said the guy, dropping his gaze. He handed the photo back, as though suddenly keen to get shot of it.

Janusz pretended not to notice. ‘She came here with her boyfriend,’ he said – a guess rewarded with a wary nod. ‘This man is my good friend,’ he explained, his jaw starting to ache from all the grinning. ‘Today, he has to work, but he asks me to come because he likes to get more photos, to make her folio?’

‘Her modelling portfolio,’ the guy said, looking relieved. ‘Yeah, I did the shots two or three weeks ago.’ He started leafing through a tray of folders behind the counter.

Don’t ask me for a name, prayed Janusz.

‘What’s his name again …?’

Kurwa.

‘Ah, here it is. Pawel Adamski,’ his pronunciation suggesting he was used to Polish customers. He spread a series of black and white photos across the counter like a pack of cards, and examined them, frowning, before selecting one and turning it round to face Janusz.

‘I think this is the best one,’ he said.

It was a startling image. Shot from above, Weronika lay on her back, eyes half-closed and lips parted, naked beneath a white sheet that reached from her feet to her chest. The lighting had been arranged to capture the subtly different shades of white in the scene – the chalky pallor of her face, the marble-like arms, the ivory sheen of the silk shading into grey where it fell into folds. Her hands lay loosely cupped, one within the other, on her stomach, lacking only a bouquet to complete the portrait of a virgin bride. Or a dead one, thought Janusz.

He shuffled through the rest of the shots, but couldn’t find anything that might explain the photographer’s earlier discomfiture.

‘They’re good,’ he said, then, taking a guess, leaned toward the guy. ‘But I think he meant the other ones,’ he hissed. ‘How you call it? The “Page 3” stuff?’

The guy hesitated for a moment, then turned to open a filing cabinet.

‘Your friend directed these ones,’ he said, his tone guarded, pushing a folder across the counter with the tips of his fingers. ‘All I did was set up the lights for him.’

Inside was a contact sheet of a couple of dozen shots, colour this time.

Wearing only a black G-string, Weronika struck a variety of unimaginative soft porn poses – sticking her butt out … pushing her smallish breasts together … reclining with legs spread. Not much chiaroscuro in this lot, thought Janusz. No wonder the photographer had panicked when Janusz announced himself as Weronika’s brother – he’d probably thought he was in for a kicking.

The images offended and depressed him. The amateurish raunchiness of the girl’s pose jarred with the innocence of those rounded lips, and her eyes looked glazed, as though she were drunk – or on drugs. In that moment, he decided he couldn’t keep his promise simply to pass on the couple’s address to pani Tosik. No. When he found them he’d do his best to persuade the girl to dump her lowlife boyfriend and come home, and then he’d give Pawel Adamski a short sharp lesson in gentlemanly conduct.

Janusz tapped the contact sheet. ‘You can send him a copy in the post?’ he asked the guy.

The guy checked the cover of the folder. ‘Sure, but I’ll need an address – he didn’t leave one, or even a phone number.’

That was a blow. After promising to telephone with his friend’s address, Janusz left.

Still, at least he had a name.

Six

Wapping Mortuary was housed in a low, grey brick building encircled by a high wall, which made it look more like an industrial unit than anything remotely medical, thought Kershaw, as she buzzed the battered entry phone beside the big steel double gates.

A few minutes later, a mortuary technician with spiky dyed black hair and a bolt through her eyebrow was helping her into a blue cotton gown, the type surgeons wore for operations.

‘First time?’ she asked, her tone neutral.

Kershaw nodded. ‘I’m not squeamish, though,’ she added, before realising she’d spoken with unnecessary forcefulness.

Goth girl ignored the comment. ‘If you do start feeling a bit funny, just let us know before you keel over, okay?’ She waited while Kershaw pulled on blue plastic overshoes, then led the way through a tiled corridor and into the post mortem room.

Kershaw had seen the scene reconstructed a dozen times in TV cop dramas – the low-ceilinged tiled room, the naked bodies laid out on steel gurneys, some still whole, others already dissected. But it was all a bit different when you knew you weren’t looking at an artful arrangement of wax models and fake blood. And television couldn’t prepare you for the smell – a terrible cocktail of chopped liver, body fluids, and bleach.

The Goth girl paused at the first gurney. ‘DB16,’ she said. Spread-eagled on the shallow stainless steel tray, under the unsparing fluorescent lights, lay the girl with the Titian hair – or what was left of her.

‘I’ll tell Doctor Waterhouse you’re here,’ she said, leaving Kershaw alone with the body.

The girl was opened like a book from collarbone to pubis, revealing a dark red cavern where her insides had been. A purplish pile of guts lay between her thighs, as though she’d just given birth to them. The skin and its accompanying layer of yellow fat had been flayed from her limbs and torso, and now lay beneath her like a discarded jacket, and her ribcage was cracked open, each rib separated and bent back. Water tinkled musically, incongruously, through a drain hole under the gurney.

The good news, reflected Kershaw, was that she looked more like the remains of some predator’s meal on the Serengeti than a human being.

‘DC Kershaw, I presume?’

Tearing her gaze away from the carcass, she saw a tall, silver-haired man in his sixties rinsing his gloved hands at a nearby sink. Shaking off the drops, he approached her, beaming.

‘Welcome, welcome,’ he said.

‘Thanks for having me, Doctor,’ she said.

‘Not at all,’ said Doctor Waterhouse. ‘I’m always delighted to see a new detective braving the rigours of a PM.’

He handed Kershaw some latex gloves with a little flourish, like he was giving her a bunch of violets, then spread his arms to encompass the cadaver lying between them.

‘Our lady,’ he began, in a plummy voice, ‘is an IC1 female who apparently enjoyed good health throughout her life, with no evidence of any chronic condition.’ He spoke as though addressing a roomful of medical students.

‘How old would you say she was?’ asked Kershaw, wriggling her fingers into the second glove.

‘Your guess is as good as mine,’ he said with a tilt of his head. Then, seeing her enquiring look, ‘I’m afraid it’s no easier to estimate someone’s age from the inside than it is from the outside.’

Over Doc Waterhouse’s shoulder, Kershaw noticed the Goth girl at the next gurney along. Wielding a huge curved needle, she was sewing up the chest cavity of a big man with tattooed biceps. His face had such a healthy colour, that for a split second Kershaw expected him to sit up and rip the needle from the girl’s hand.

Waterhouse was saying: ‘She was certainly of childbearing age.’ He paused. ‘I found a foetus in utero that, by my calculations, would put this lady in the late stages of the first trimester of pregnancy at the time of death.’

Kershaw’s eyebrows shot up. If the girl’s boyfriend didn’t fancy being a daddy, the pregnancy might have sparked an argument that ended in the girl’s death. She pulled pad and pencil from the pocket of her gown. ‘How many weeks is that, Doctor?’

‘Between nine and twelve, judging by the foetus,’ Waterhouse mused. ‘Perhaps you’d like to see it?’

‘No, I’m fine, thanks,’ said Kershaw, with a nervous smile. ‘Have you found anything suspicious? Any signs of violence?’

Looking at her over the tops of his half-moon glasses, the smiling Waterhouse raised a latexed finger. Patience.

‘Since the body was recovered from the river, let us first examine the evidence for drowning as the possible cause of death,’ he said, with the air of someone proposing a picnic on a lake, and started to stroll up and down the gurney, hands clasped behind his back.

Kershaw groaned inwardly – she was clearly in for the full lecture theatre treatment. At that moment, she happened to catch the eye of the Goth technician. The girl responded with a fractionally raised eyebrow that said – yes, he was always like this.

‘What evidence might we expect to find, post-mortem, in the case of a drowning, Detective?’ Waterhouse went on.

‘Water in the lungs?’ said Kershaw, suppressing a note of bored sarcasm. She’d be here all day at this rate.

‘But how do we know whether the water entered the lungs post- or ante-mortem?’

He stopped pacing and looked at Kershaw. She shrugged.

‘You may be surprised to learn that we currently have no means of establishing the sequence of events,’ said Waterhouse, as thought he’d only just discovered this extraordinary state of affairs himself. ‘If we allow that our lady was in the water six, perhaps seven days, by my calculations, then it is entirely possible that the copious quantities of river water, weed and sand present in her lungs and stomach found its way there after her death.’

‘So how do we find out if she drowned or not?’

‘Well, we could run a raft of analyses, to find out whether any diatoms – a kind of river algae – have found their way into her organs.’ He pulled a doubtful grimace. ‘But since none of it is the least bit conclusive I consider it an egregious waste of public money.’

No way of telling if someone had drowned? So those TV shows where a brilliant pathologist solved tricky cases single-handed after the cops had failed were clearly a load of old bollocks, thought Kershaw. She realised that Waterhouse was looking at her like it was her turn to speak.

‘So … if there’s no such thing as conclusive proof of drowning,’ she said. ‘I guess all you can do is rule everything else out – a process of elimination?’

‘Well done, Detective,’ said Waterhouse with an approving nod.

‘However, I must tell you I can find no evidence of foul play. The various injuries to the body are all post-mortem.’

Kershaw felt as though she’d been slapped. She wasn’t ready to see the girl demoted from murder victim to just another bridge jumper.

‘Are you sure?’ she asked.

‘Subcutaneous dissection reveals no deep bruising or other injury.’ Waterhouse waved a hand over the flayed body. ‘Nor could I find any sign of the pinpoint haemorrhages in the conjunctivae or mucus membranes that would suggest asphyxiation.’

He beckoned her over to a deep stainless steel sink where he plunged a gloved hand into a pile of what looked like offal, spread out on a large plastic chopping board.

‘Here we are,’ he announced. ‘The hyoid bone – from the lady’s neck.’ He brandished a pair of tiny bony horns with bits of tissue still attached – which, to Kershaw, looked a lot like a truncated chicken wishbone. ‘When someone is strangled, more often than not, the hyoid gets broken. But this little fellow is intact.’ With the air of a conjuror, he pressed his thumbs into the centre of the horns until they snapped. ‘Voilà!’

Kershaw stifled a grimace. ‘So, in your view,’ she said, pencil hovering over her notebook. ‘She wasn’t beaten, stabbed, strangled or suffocated.’

‘Correct.’

‘How did she die then?’

‘Well, the chalky residue I found in the stomach does suggest she had ingested drugs a few hours before death,’ said Waterhouse.

‘Suicide?’ Kershaw didn’t try to disguise the disappointment in her voice.

‘I’m afraid I must leave intent to you, Detective,’ he said. He drummed gloved fingers on the board. ‘But if I were to stick my neck out, I’d say it wasn’t the common or garden bottle of paracetamol.’

Rummaging through the pile of entrails with the air of a man trying to find matching socks, he retrieved a glistening brown lobe the size of a fist and set it in front of her.

‘Kidney?’ she said. Disgusting stuff – wouldn’t eat it as a kid, or now, come to that.

‘Well done!’ said Waterhouse, smoothing the organ out on the board. ‘Have a little poke around, tell me what you see.’

She took the proffered scalpel and used it to open up a series of incisions in the tissue. What was she supposed to be looking for? Then, bending closer, she saw something – a scatter of bright magenta dots across the pinky-brown surface.

‘These spots,’ she asked. ‘Are they normal?’

‘No, Detective, they are not.’

Waterhouse picked up the kidney and turned it to and fro in the light. ‘These petechiae – haemorrhages – are suggestive of acute renal failure.’

Kershaw frowned at the constellation of dots. ‘What could have caused it?’ she asked.

‘Half a dozen things.’ He pursed his lips. ‘But off the record, I’d put my money on rhabdomyolysis.’ He smiled at the look on her face. ‘Damage to muscle fibres releases a protein called myoglobin into the bloodstream, which can ultimately cause the kidneys to fail.’

‘Muscle damage?’

‘Yes, rhabdomyolysis is often seen in serious crush injuries, for example.’ He paused, tilting his head. ‘But I think the likeliest cause in this case is chemical. Drug-induced hyperthermia could have raised her body temperature so high that it started literally to cook her tissues.’

Kershaw remembered a news article someone had posted on the noticeboard at uni, about a student who took too many tabs of Ecstasy and nearly died from overheating. The ‘alternative’ types, the ones with facefuls of metalwork, had been routinely off their tits on the stuff, and even some of her fellow criminology students had dabbled, but she’d never been tempted. A few drinks was one thing, but the idea of losing control over her brain chemistry totally freaked her out.

‘You think she OD-ed on Ecstasy?’ she asked.

‘I wouldn’t dream of pre-judging the toxicology report, of course,’ said Waterhouse. ‘But it’s possible that she died of renal failure brought about by an overdose of MDMA, yes.’

Kershaw tried to picture the scenario, how the girl might have ended up naked in the Thames. Maybe, after a night out clubbing with her boyfriend, they’d gone to bed, and he’d woken up next to a dead body. If he’d given her the drugs, or sold them to her, he could easily have panicked and dumped her in the river.

‘What’s she likely to have experienced, when she OD-ed?’ she asked.

‘A massive surge of serotonin in the brain would have caused a breakdown of the body’s temperature control mechanisms, like a fire raging out of control through a house.’ Waterhouse started scooping the girl’s organs from the chopping board into a blue plastic bag in the sink. ‘When her core temperature exceeded 39 degrees, there would be neuron damage; at 40 degrees, she was probably suffering seizures, followed by coma. When it reached 41, the organs would begin to shut down.’

He handed the bag to the Goth technician who took it without a word.

‘Nasty way to die,’ said Kershaw. ‘Presumably she wouldn’t be in a fit state to get down to the Thames and throw herself in?’

Waterhouse tipped his head. ‘That depends at what stage of the overdose she did so – if indeed that’s what happened.’

He started rinsing his hands under the tap. Over his shoulder, Kershaw could see the Goth girl inserting the bulging bag back into the dead girl’s body cavity, pushing it this way and that, like someone trying to squeeze a last-minute item into an overstuffed suitcase.

Waterhouse snapped off his gloves and checked his watch. ‘I’m afraid I must leave you, I have a court case at the Old Bailey.’

Kershaw said she’d walk with him to the tube. Five minutes later he emerged from the changing room, wearing a tweed jacket and carrying a briefcase.

He held the door open for her with a flourish. Out in the chilly air, she asked, ‘So you reckon this is just a case of one too many tabs of E, do you?’

‘Not necessarily,’ he said. ‘I attended a conference in Berlin last month where I met a very interesting toxicologist. He said they’re seeing a rash of these deaths across Europe at the moment.’

They were out on the pavement now. Seeing Kershaw struggling to keep up with his long stride, Waterhouse slowed his pace.

‘The toxicology shows the victims all ingested a counterfeit version of Ecstasy, called para-methoxyamphetamine.’ He shot her a mischievous look. ‘You’ll be pleased to hear it’s more commonly known as PMA.’

Kershaw wished she could take notes, she’d never remember all this. ‘Does it have the same effect as Ecstasy?’

‘It’s similar, but much more dangerous. This chap told me that recently, three young women died in a single night.’

Kershaw raised her eyebrows. If the girl turned out to be a victim of a dodgy drugs ring, it could still be a big case.

Waterhouse strode off the pavement and practically into the path of an oncoming truck – meeting the blare of the driver’s horn with an urbane wave. Kershaw scurried after him.

‘So why do people take this PMA, if it’s so risky?’ she asked.

‘They often don’t know that they are,’ said Waterhouse. ‘Apparently the dealers pass it off as Ecstasy. And although it’s much more toxic, its effects take considerably longer to manifest themselves.’ He shook his head. ‘Consequently, the hapless user often takes further pills, believing that they have bought a weaker product.’

She could see the tube entrance only metres away, and she still had so much to ask him.

‘But if these PMA deaths all happened in Europe,’ she said. ‘What’s it got to do with DB16?’

‘You said in your email that our lady might be Polish,’ said Waterhouse, as if that made everything crystal.

Kershaw screwed her face up. ‘I don’t see the relevance.’

‘Didn’t I say?’ he asked, turning to look at her. ‘The three girls who died in one night – it happened in Poland. Gdansk, I think he said.’

Seven

Janusz raised his chin, and ran the razor from throat to jaw line, enjoying the rasping sound of the blade. As he rinsed it under the running tap he felt the prickle on the back of his neck that told him he was being watched.

He turned around to find Copernicus, the big grey tabby tomcat who had adopted him almost a decade ago, standing in the bathroom doorway. Although the cat’s gaze was impassive, his message was crystal clear.

‘Alright, Copetka. I know dinner is running a bit late at Hotel Kiszka,’ said Janusz, towelling off the last suds. With fluid grace, the cat turned and led him to the kitchen cupboard.

After feeding him, Janusz opened the kitchen window to let the cat onto the fire escape and watched as he trotted down the half-dozen flights of stairs. Through the gathering dusk, he could make out the first daffodils under the plane trees that edged Highbury Fields.

These days, it was one of North London’s most select areas. But back in the early eighties, when the latest wave of the Polish diaspora had washed him up on the shores of Islington, the locals – better-off English working-class types – couldn’t get out fast enough. Taking their place were Paddies, Poles and blacks, and a few bohemian types who weren’t fazed by the area’s reputation as crime central. The flat had been a cheap place to flop once he’d split the rent with workmates from building sites. And he’d always liked the view.

By the time his Jewish landlord had decided to up sticks and start a new life in Israel, Janusz had earned enough for a deposit and got a mortgage to buy the place. Now, his only problem was the odd funny look from his newer neighbours, the City types and advertising executives who were taken aback to find a Polish immigrant living next door in a Highbury mansion block. Well, tough luck, he thought, he was here first.

Janusz went to the fridge to check he had everything he needed for supper – Kasia would be arriving in less than an hour. He was happy with the look of the beef, a good dark-coloured fat-marbled slab of braising steak he’d paid a crazy price for at the Islington farmer’s market. It was always worth spending an extra pound or two when it came to meat.

He levered open the big bay window in the living room to get rid of the smell of stale cigars, and picked up a dirty glass and a pile of junk mail off the mantelpiece of the marble fireplace. Then he put them back, smiling to himself: Kasia would enjoy cleaning the place up later.

The evening started out well enough.

Sure, he and Kasia had been reserved with each other at first, an edge of awkwardness to their embrace at the door, but since this was their first date since they’d first slept together, it was to be expected. That night, a fortnight ago now, had been the culmination of weeks of assignations over coffee and cake snatched during her work breaks – encounters that couldn’t have been more tantalisingly proper had they been chaperoned by a brace of babcia. It was just his luck, reflected Janusz, to be dating the world’s most straitlaced stripper.

While Kasia tidied the living room, exclaiming at the mess, he cut the beef into three-centimetre chunks, and started to chop the onion and garlic.

After a few minutes she came and leant against the worktop, lighting a cigarette while he browned the beef. ‘I never saw a Polish man cook before – not even a boiled egg!’ she said, watching him slice a red pepper. He shrugged. ‘I think it’s good,’ she added. ‘I’m a katastrofa in the kitchen, and anyway, how would I cook with these?’ She brandished her sinister talons at him.

‘I always meant to ask: why do you paint your nails black?’ he asked, quartering the chestnut mushrooms.

‘I started doing it when I was a Goth,’ she said surveying her outstretched hands. ‘After that I never changed them.’ She took a thoughtful drag on her cigarette. ‘Maybe it’s nice to be a bit different.

‘So, how did you learn to cook? Do you watch the TV programmes from home?’

He shook his head. ‘My mama taught me, right from when I was a little boy.’ Using a wooden spoon, he scraped the onion and garlic into the hot oil of the pan, releasing an aromatic sizzle. ‘When there was nothing in the shops we’d take a basket into the countryside to find treats for Tata’s supper. In the summer, wild asparagus, lingonberries to make jam …’

Kasia smiled at the nostalgia in his voice. Janusz’s childhood, with its visits to his grandmother’s place, a crumbling farmhouse on the outskirts of Gdansk, was a million miles from her monochrome memories of a monolithic Soviet-built estate in industrial Rzewow. She loved to hear his boyhood tales of collecting warm eggs from the chicken house, or climbing up into the high branches of apple trees in the orchard. The funny thing was, even though his memories were so different from hers, they still made her feel homesick.

She tapped cigarette ash out of the kitchen window. ‘How did your mama know what was safe to eat?’

‘She came from a family of farmers, so she was a real country girl. She even knew how to make birch wine. In the spring, you cut through the bark’, he used his wooden spoon to demonstrate the lateral cut, ‘and drain off a few litres of sap. But you must be careful: if you make the wound too big the tree will die.’

Pouring a jugful of water over the meat and vegetables, he said over his shoulder, ‘October, November, I take the tube to Epping and go into the forest to look for mushrooms. If you get lucky, you can find boletas. I could take you, if you like – show you which ones are good to eat.’

There was a moment of silence as they shared the unspoken thought … if they were still seeing each other in six months’ time.

He threw a couple of roughly chopped red chilies in the pot. The dish’s final ingredients, a little sour plum jam and a cup of buttermilk, wouldn’t be added till the end.

He’d been sliding glances at her face while he cooked and was relieved to see that the old bruise on her cheekbone had faded completely, with no evidence of fresh ones. The warning he’d delivered to Steve had done the trick, at least for now. And according to Kasia, Steve had bought the story that Janusz was Kasia’s cousin over from Poland, which was a relief – he didn’t want to give that chuj another excuse to knock her about.

He opened the fridge and pulled out a jar filled with cream-coloured fat.

‘What’s that?’ asked Kasia.

‘Goose smalec for roasting the potatoes,’ he said, doling some into a roasting tray.

‘Ah, goose fat is good for you!’ exclaimed Kasia, examining the jar, ‘It helps you to lose weight.’ Then, on seeing his sceptical look: ‘It’s true – I read it in a magazine.’

Kasia might be blade-sharp, reflected Janusz, but like all Polish women, she had a vast collection of cherished – and often crazy – dietary folklore: a rich brew of Catholic injunctions, old wives’ tales from medieval Poland, and the crap peddled by glossy magazines.

Janusz brandished the jar in front of him and adopted a serious air: ‘Top government scientists are warning: too much goose fat can cause dangerous weight loss – please use it sparingly.’ Pretending to be insulted, she made to grab the jar back from him.

He caught her arm deftly, his big hand circling her slim wrist with ease. ‘Can you stay tonight?’ he asked. Best to get the question – and the phantom of Steve – out of the way early so that it didn’t overshadow their evening. She looked along her eyes at him, then nodded. ‘I’m staying at my sister’s.’ Breaking into a grin, he grabbed her by the waist and, ignoring her laughing protestations, danced her around the tiny kitchen.

Half an hour later, with a couple of glasses of a decent Czechoslovak pinot noir inside him, he settled into the big leather sofa and, wreathed in the aromas of the roasting potatoes and the peppery stew, let his gaze linger on Kasia, who stood examining the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves either side of the fireplace. He felt as relaxed and happy – the realisation rushed on him unawares – as he had with Iza, more than twenty-five years ago.

An image of her, sitting outside a harbourside cafe in Gdansk, flickered across his memory like an old home movie. One of her hands, wearing a red woollen glove, was curled around a steaming drink. She’d taken off her other glove and he was chafing the bare hand to warm it, laughing at how icy her fingers were.

He lit a cigar. To hell with the past, he thought.

‘There’s a Polanski movie on cable later, if you fancy it?’

His tone was careful – it wasn’t the first time he’d tried to rekindle her passion for movies. Despite her first-class degree from the world-famous Lodz film school, the last time Kasia had visited the cinema was to see GoodFellas.

‘Maybe,’ she said lifting one shoulder, before bending to pick up a discarded envelope from under an armchair.

‘It’s Knife in the Water. The one with the couple on a boating trip on the Lakes?’

‘The one with the psychol?’ She made a comic grimace that turned her beautiful long mouth down at the corners. ‘Too depressing!’

Oskar had once put forward a theory – which doubtless originated with his wife Gosia – regarding Kasia’s lack of enthusiasm for films. Apparently, she regretted abandoning her directing ambitions to marry Steve, and couldn’t bear any reminder of her mistake. In this analysis, Kasia didn’t stick with her marriage because of her Catholic faith, but because the alternative meant admitting she’d given up her youthful dreams for nothing.

Janusz was sceptical. To him, psychology was a slippery pseudoscience, without any empirical foundation. But now and again he found himself wondering if Oskar’s theory mightn’t contain a grain of truth.

‘You like my new outfit?’ she asked suddenly, doing a little catwalk sashay.

That put him on the spot: when she had arrived he’d noticed she was wearing a dress rather than her usual tight black jeans and T-shirt. But the longish black shift was the sort of thing a woman with a lousy figure might go for. Why would a looker like Kasia hide her body under a sack?

She sensed the hesitation. ‘You don’t like it?’

‘It’s … stylish, darling,’ he managed, ‘but I think you’d look good in something a bit more … figure-hugging.’

She cut her eyes away from him. ‘You mean an exotic dancer should dress like a whore?’

Kurwa! This was dangerous ground – it wasn’t the first time Kasia had gone all touchy over her job. It mystified him – if she didn’t like stripping why did she do it? And if she did like it, why be so uptight?

‘Of course not, darling. Anyway, you would look ladylike whatever you wore.’

She smiled at that, mollified, then came closer, wrinkling her nose at the cigar smoke – ‘Smells like a bonfire,’ she complained – before putting a Marlboro Light between her lips and leaning down for a light.

He took the opportunity, instead, to pull her face down to his and kiss her, properly this time. When she offered no resistance, he tumbled her onto the sofa and continued the clinch, pushing the dress, rustling, up her stockinged legs, desire humming between them. They had loads of time to make love before the oven timer started pinging, he calculated, and her tightly closed eyes signalled a green light.

Then the phone rang.

He cursed inwardly and for a moment was tempted to let it go to voicemail, but Kasia extricated herself and he caught her watchful look. He didn’t want her to think he had anything to hide.

His abrupt ‘Czesc?!’ was met with silence. Then a female voice, uncertain, said ‘Pan Kiszka?’

It was the dark-haired girl from pani Tosik’s restaurant, the one he’d given his card to. She told him her name was Justyna, but didn’t volunteer a surname. He apologised for his boorish manners, keeping half an eye on Kasia, who had returned to the kitchen. He could see her stirring the beef stew, ignoring the conversation, but something about the angle of her head suggested she was getting every word.

The trouble was, the girl was adamant that she had to meet him tonight, and when he suggested postponing, sounded like she might hang up. He was half-inclined to tell her no, but an undercurrent of urgency in her voice stopped him. Anyway, if he was to replenish his depleted cash reserves he needed to find the missing girl fast.

Thirty seconds later, he was jotting down the name of a Polish club in Stratford where the girl wanted to meet.

Janusz retrieved his cigar from the ashtray and joined Kasia in the kitchen. With a stab at a nonchalant air, he said, ‘Listen, darling. Something’s come up – a job I’m doing for someone.’

‘A woman?’ she asked.

‘Well, yes, the client is a woman, but an old lady – a babcia.’

‘And the woman on the phone – she is an old lady, too?’ Her green eyes had narrowed, and she would no longer meet his gaze.

‘Well, yes, she is young, but she’s just a contact. The thing is she insists on seeing me tonight, for some reason.’

Without a word, Kasia started to collect her things, her movements uncharacteristically jerky.

All his hopes for the evening teetered on a cliff edge. ‘Listen, Kasia,’ he said, aware of a cajoling note in his voice he didn’t like, ‘I can get there and still be back by ten, maybe half past, we can have a late supper.’

‘So I sit here and watch Sky while you go out drinking with a woman?’ She pulled a mirthless smile. ‘All the lies I have to tell Steve, making excuses so I can stay all night, and now this.’

Janusz felt the anger bolt out of him like an unleashed dog.

‘I have a job to do, money to earn! You are not my wife to tell me whom I can and cannot see!’ His voice boomed around the flat.

‘You are right – it’s none of my business,’ she said, her voice tight. ‘How can I complain if you have other girlfriends? I am just some dziwka you are sleeping with who other men pay to see naked.’

He clutched his head, mute before this irrational torrent.

‘And no, I’m not your wife,’ she went on. ‘I’m someone else’s – and I shouldn’t be here.’

Softening his voice with an effort of will, he said, ‘Listen, Kasia. You are still young, you could leave Steve, start life over again,’ but he knew it was hopeless – this was old ground, the argument well worn.

She pulled on her coat. ‘You know I can’t, Janek,’ sounding weary now.

He caught her arm as she opened the flat door.

‘Don’t go off this way, kotku,’ he said.

She smiled a sad smile at this big man calling her a little cat, touched her fingers to his lips, and left.

Thirty seconds later, the main door to the street boomed like a distant firing squad.

Janusz paced the flat, cursing; running the last hour’s dramat through his head on a continuous loop. Half an hour later he still couldn’t make any sense of it: what right did she have to be jealous when she was the one sleeping with another man? The fact that man was her husband didn’t make it any easier. No! Being able to picture that rat-faced Cockney screwing her made it a thousand times worse.

With an effort of will, he pushed Kasia to the back of his mind, threw himself onto the sofa and drank a glass of red wine in a single draught. He took the snap of Weronika, the one of her in the fur coat, out of his wallet. Something about this girl, her innocent beauty, and yes, okay, the way she reminded him of Iza, had got under his skin, made him preoccupied with finding her. Naprawde, it was even worse than that, he realised with an embarrassed grimace: he wanted to rescue her.

He went to turn off the oven, and after a moment’s hesitation, scraped the roast potatoes into the bin: once cooled you could never recapture their crust.

Leaving the block’s front door between the stone columns that flanked the entrance, Janusz noticed that a new ‘For Sale’ sign had sprouted overhead. Oskar said that if he sold up and bought a place further out he could pocket a couple of hundred grand, easy. But why would he want to live in some benighted suburb like Enfield?

When he left Highbury Mansions, it would be wearing an oak overcoat, as his father used to say – God rest his soul.

As usual, he took the shortest route to the tube, straight across the southern section of the darkened Fields, feeling the dew from the grass creeping into his shoes. Halfway across, without breaking his stride, he glanced backwards – there had been a spate of muggings here recently. All clear. But as his gaze swung forward again, he discovered that a big, heavyset man, almost as tall as him, had materialised on the pavement at the edge of the Fields, twenty-five, thirty metres ahead. He must have just stepped out of a parked car, but if so, why hadn’t Janusz heard the distinctive clunk of a car door? He kept his gaze locked on the bulky figure, clad in an expensive-looking parka jacket, strolling through the pools of orange thrown by the street lights, until finally, the guy disappeared out of sight behind the Leisure Centre.

Janusz couldn’t fathom what it was about the man that had caught his attention – he certainly didn’t look like a mugger. All he could say was there was something about him that looked indefinably out of place.

FlashKlub, the place that Justyna had named for their rendezvous, was located in a basement under a semi-derelict fifties factory building in an area called Maryland on Stratford’s eastern fringe. The name might suggest rural romance, but the area was depressed and scruffy – no Olympic effect visible here. Lining up with a queue of youngsters chattering away in Polish he felt middle-aged, out of place, but the young bouncer showed no surprise, greeting him with a polite ‘Dobry wieczor, panu.’ He did make an apologetic gesture at his cigar, though. Janusz ground it out on the pavement before heading down the rickety stairs toward the klub with all the enthusiasm of a man going to get his teeth drilled.

Justyna was sitting on a stool at the bar, fiddling with the straw in her drink. She was even more attractive than he remembered: glossy dark hair grazing her shoulders, eyes the colour of conac. She seemed relieved to see him – no doubt she’d been pestered non-stop by guys trying their luck. He ordered a Tyskie and another apple juice for her – she shook her head when he suggested a shot of bisongrass wodka to liven it up. Maybe she didn’t want to let her tongue run away with her, he thought.

A huge screen on one wall playing pop promos dominated the basement. The current one had been shot in some semi-derelict Soviet housing estate and starred two skinny crew-cut boys. Dressed like gangsters from an American ghetto, they bobbed and grimaced through a Polski hip hop number, their faces deadpan. Maybe he was just a narrow-minded old fart, but it set Janusz’s teeth on edge. The mindless beat and nihilistic lyrics struck him as an affront to the musical beauty of the language.

‘You don’t like it?’ she asked with a half-smile at his tortured expression.

‘No. Do you?’ he said, raising an eyebrow.

She shrugged. ‘Sure. I like all kinds of music.’

‘When I was your age, studying physics in Krakow,’ he said, ‘there was a craze in the cellar bars, for traditional music, folk, I suppose you’d call it.’

Her expression was attentive, but detached. She had one of those faces that you felt compelled to keep scanning because her emotions were so hard to read.

He paused, remembering those nights, the frenetic violins, the thrilling sounds infused with the wildness of Gypsy music, often a haunting woman’s voice in the mix, and felt the tug of nostalgia in his chest. He took a swallow of beer to cover his expression. ‘The thing was, the dumbass … excuse me … stupid Kommies thought traditional music was wholesome, harmless stuff – but of course, all those old partisan songs about carrying your heart around in a knapsack were dynamite.

‘The music had us stomping and cheering, climbing onto tables to sing along. After closing, all hyped up and full of wodka, me and my mates would dodge the police patrols and paint Solidarnosc graffiti all over town.’

‘Did you ever get caught?’ she asked. From the mild curiosity in her tone, she might have been asking about something that happened in the nineteenth century rather than two-and-a-half decades ago.

He hesitated. ‘Just once. There were three of us – my mates had hung me by my legs over the side of a railway bridge so I could paint some slogan or other. “THE TV LIES”, I think it was. When the milicja arrived, the lads just about managed to drag me back up, but by the time I was on solid ground they’d legged it and I got nicked.’

‘What happened to you?’

He looked away. ‘Nothing much, spent a night in the cell, got a few slaps, got sent home in the morning.’

Bullshit. The milicja had thrown him in the back of a van and taken him to Montepulich, Krakow’s notorious jail, where the Soviets had tortured and murdered hundreds of Polish nationalists after the war. It must have been a quiet night for them to commit so much time and effort to interrogating a seventeen-year-old boy over such a stupid thing – or maybe they just enjoyed their work. He’d been left with bruises and cuts that had taken weeks to fade, but they were nothing compared to the real legacy of that night, the thing that he carried inside him, like the shadow on an X-ray. He stamped the memories back down. Forget the past.

The girl and he gazed at the flickering video screen. The two boys were now in a car, lurching back and forward, zombie-like, to the beat. The camera cut to a shot of one of them, on his own, walking, before the camera pulled out to a wide aerial shot, revealing him as a tiny, lonely figure alone in a vast desolate wasteland.

She gestured with her chin. ‘He is like you, when you were young.’

‘Like me?’

‘You and your friends, back then, under the Komunistow – life was bad, society didn’t work for you. This music – for young people it says the same as your folk songs, it says fuck your society, we do our own thing.’

He knew that it was common for young women to swear these days, especially the ones who’d been in England a while, but it still shocked him in an almost physical way to hear it. When he had been her age it would have been unthinkable to use such language in front of one’s elders.

‘Is that what you feel about Poland today?’ he asked.

She sipped her apple juice, eyes cast down. ‘I want to go back one day, I guess,’ she said, choosing her words. ‘But not yet. What is there for me, in Katowice? I would earn maybe half of what I get here – I’d have to save for years just to buy a five-year-old Polski Fiat.’

There was no anger, only a resigned pragmatism in her voice.

‘Here, once I learn English, I can get a job in Marks and Spencer and earn good money, go to college part-time.’

‘What will you study?’

Her eyes lit up, animating her whole face for the first time. ‘Physiotherapy, or maybe chiropractic, I haven’t decided yet.’

Janusz knew Katowice: a powerhouse of heavy industry under the Soviets, many of its residential districts were now half-empty, depressing places, peopled by the old, the sick, and by those who lacked either the resources or the courage to leave. The thought of living there made him shudder. Maybe his generation had been lucky, after all – at least fighting the Kommies gave them a sense of common purpose.

‘Zamorski is a good guy,’ he assured her. ‘If anyone can put the country back on its feet, he will.’

His words hung there, shiny and shallow sounding, as she gazed at him with dark brown eyes.

‘Politicians are all the same.’ Her tone was polite but decisive. ‘You and your friends thought that Walesa was superman, right?’

Janusz had to admit she was right about that. He had idolised Lech Walesa once, only to watch in horrified disbelief, after the Solidarnosc leader became Poland’s first elected president, as he fell out with some of the revolution’s brightest thinkers and surrounded himself with yes-men.

Zamorski shared Walesa’s Solidarnosc credentials, but displayed none of his demagogic tendencies and had already pulled off an impressive political balancing act, drawing on Poles’ instinctive conservatism while resisting the temptations of full-blooded nationalism. But spending the night arguing politics with the self-possessed Justyna wasn’t going to help him find the lost girl, thought Janusz. He sensed he’d have to go gently – if he came out and asked where Weronika was, she might just clam up.

‘Did you ever come here with Weronika?’ he asked, taking a slug of beer.

‘Yes, sometimes.’

‘Was it here she met Pawel?’ he asked.

The faintest frown creased her forehead, but she didn’t ask how he knew about Weronika’s secret boyfriend.

‘No, he came into the restaurant one day and chatted her up as she served him pierogi.’

‘Do you remember when he first came in?’

‘Yes! It was February thirteenth – I remember because my Mama’s called Katarzyna and it’s her saint’s day,’ she said, with a shy smile. ‘After that, he came back every single day, flattering her, slipping her little presents – czekolatki, perfume – till she finally agreed to go out with him.’ Her voice became scornful as she talked about Adamski.

‘You didn’t like him.’

‘He was bad news,’ said Justyna, nodding her head for emphasis. ‘Nika was only nineteen’ – she used the affectionate diminutive of Weronika – ‘and he was thirty – much too old for her.’

Janusz left a silence, letting her talk. ‘He was always getting drunk,’ she went on, after a pause, ‘and then he’d get crazy. One time the three of us, we were in a pub and he threw a glass at the TV screen – just because they were talking about the election!’ She widened her eyes at the memory. ‘We used to come here, mostly – until he got barred.’

‘What happened?’ asked Janusz.

‘He said it was for arguing with a bouncer,’ she shrugged, sceptical. ‘But he was such a liar, who knows.’

Since the girl’s animosity toward Adamski appeared to outweigh her caginess, Janusz decided to play devil’s advocate.

‘Lots of Polish men like to drink,’ he said with a grin. ‘Maybe you were a bit jealous of your friend? Perhaps you would have liked Pawel for yourself?’

‘No way!’ she shot back, her face flushed, warming her olive complexion and making her even prettier, he noticed. ‘I didn’t say one word against him at the start – I’m not her mother. But then, one night, while Nika was in the toaleta, he put his hand up my skirt! Can you believe the guy?’

‘Did you tell her?’

‘I tried to, but she just shrugged it off, said he must have been joking. She was crazy about him, and anyway, you have to understand something about Nika: she’s bogu ducha winna.’ He smiled at the expression – innocent as a lamb – it was one his mother had often used.

‘Where did he work?’ If Justyna didn’t know – or wouldn’t tell him – where the pair were living, it would be his best hope of tracing the pair.

She fiddled with the straw in her drink, shrugged. ‘It’s a big mystery. At the beginning, Nika told me he’s a builder, one of those who stands on the side of the road and waits for an Irish boss to hire him?’ Janusz nodded – in the old days he’d sometimes had to tout himself out in that humiliating way. ‘But then he started throwing big money around – taking her out for fancy meals, buying expensive hi-fi, flashy clothes, acting like a gangster.’

‘Maybe he won some money – internet poker, betting on the football.’

‘Enough to buy a new BMW?’ she asked, her eyes wide. ‘He said he was dealing in antique furniture.’ Her words dripped with derision.

‘So how do you think he made the smalec?’

At that, a cloak of inscrutability dropped over her face again, and she looked off into the bar area, which was filling up as the night progressed.

‘I don’t know,’ she said after a pause. ‘I just hope Nika isn’t getting herself mixed up in any trouble.’

As Janusz waited at the bar to buy more drinks he let his eye roam over the club’s clientele. In their teens and twenties, mostly Polish, but with a sprinkling of English faces, they appeared – for the most part – smartly turned-out and well behaved. His gaze fell on a group of youngsters sitting at the table nearest the bar. Two boys and two girls, deep in animated conversation, talking and laughing just a bit too loudly. And they were constantly touching each other, he noticed – a squeeze of the arm, a stroke of the cheek. Maybe it was just the buzz and bonhomie you’d expect between good friends enjoying the first rush of alkohol. Maybe not. The eldest, a boy, was 18, tops, and, under their make-up the two giggling girls looked barely old enough to drink legally.

He ordered the drinks and, leaving a twenty on the bar to pay for them, strolled to the toilets. After using the urinal, he lingered at the washbasin, combing his hair in the mirror and praying nobody took him for a pedzio. Just as he expected, a minute or two later, a shaven-headed, rail-thin guy in a hooded jacket slid up to the sink next to him, turned on the taps, and made a pretence of washing his hands.

‘Wanna buy Mitsubishi?’ he asked in Polish, without turning his head.

Janusz had a pretty good idea he wasn’t being offered a used car. Pocketing the comb, he raised a non-committal eyebrow.

‘It’s good stuff,’ the guy urged, ‘double-stacked …’ Suddenly, he found his sales pitch interrupted as his face was brought into violent and painful contact with the mirror.

‘What the fu …?!’ He gazed open-mouthed at his contorted reflection and scrabbled at the back of his neck where Janusz’s rocklike fist gripped his balled-up hood.

Janusz shook his head, gave him another little push for the profanity.

‘A word of advice, my friend. The undercover policja are all over this place. Apparently, some scumbag is selling drugs to youngsters.’

The guy tried to wipe snot and blood from his nose.

‘Your best move would be to take your … business up to the West End, and rethink your policy on selling to anyone under twenty-one.’ Janusz bent his head down to the guy’s level, locked eyes with him in the mirror. ‘In fact, if I was you,’ he said softly, ‘I’d insist on seeing a driving licence.’

Straightening up, he released the guy, who bolted, and turning on the taps, gave his hands a thorough soaping. He frowned at his reflection. Had Adamski been dealing Ekstasa here? It could explain a lot: his bizarre and unpredictable behaviour, the glazed look Weronika wore in the dirty photos, his sudden acquisition of enough cash to buy a BMW. It might explain that fracas with the klub bouncer, too.

Rejoining Justyna, he told her he’d been offered drugs in the toilets. He hoped she might take the bait, confirm that Adamski was a dealer, but she just lifted a shoulder, non-committal.

‘When I was a student,’ he said, ‘the only way to get high, apart from booze, was the occasional bit of grass. A guy I knew started growing it on his bedroom windowsill – in the summer the plants would get really huge. Anyway, one day, his Babcia was cooking the family dinner when she ran out of herbs,’ he looked up, found her smiling in anticipation.

‘The old lady decided that Tomek’s plant was some kind of parsley, and chopped a whole bunch of the stuff into a bowl of potatoes. Luckily, it wasn’t all that strong. All the same, he said that after dinner, when the state news came on – you know, the old Kommie stuff about tractor production targets being broken yet again – the whole family started cracking up, laughing their heads off, and found they just couldn’t stop.’

Justyna met his gaze, a grin dimpling her cheeks.

‘Anyway, Tomek said that the night went down in family history,’ Janusz went on. ‘And whenever his parents told the story, they always said the same thing: “That batch of elderberry wine was the best that Babcia ever made!”’

They laughed together, any remaining ice between them fully broken. He seized the moment to ask, ‘But in London, you can get anything, of course. Kokaina, Ekstasa, so on …’

‘Sure,’ she agreed. ‘If you are a fucking idiota.’ She sucked some juice up through her straw. ‘One of my friends died, back home, from sniffing glue. He was fifteen.’ She shook her head. ‘If I’d taken drugs I’d probably be dead like him, or even worse – still stuck in Katowice.’ They shared a wry grin: the joke crossed the generational divide.

Seizing the moment, he asked, ‘You think Pawel messes about with drugs, don’t you?’

She hesitated, then met his eyes. ‘I think so, yes. How else does someone like him make such money?’

Janusz made his move.

‘You know that pani Tosik has hired me to find Weronika,’ he said. Justyna gave a barely perceptible nod. ‘I can see it’s difficult for you – you are loyal to your friend. But I think you are right to be worried that this boyfriend of hers might put her in danger.’

She played with the straw in her glass, a frown creasing her forehead.

‘I’m not asking you to betray her trust – just to give me a few pointers,’ he went on. ‘It would help if I knew how Adamski talked her into going off like that.’

The girl took a big breath, let it out slowly. Then, speaking in a low voice, she told him that two weeks earlier, while pani Tosik was out getting her hair done, Weronika had locked herself away in her bedroom above the restaurant. Suspecting that something was going on, Justyna kept knocking and calling her name through the door.

‘In the end, she let me in,’ she said. ‘She was bouncing off the walls with excitement. Then I saw the half-packed suitcase on the bed. At first, she wouldn’t tell me what was going on, said Pawel had sworn her to secrecy.’ A line appeared between Justyna’s dark eyebrows. ‘But Nika couldn’t keep a secret to save her own life. In the end she showed me the ring she was wearing on a chain round her neck.’

‘They were engaged?’ asked Janusz, incredulous. An image of Weronika in a G-string posing for the camera, her eyes unfocused, swam before him and he tensed his jaw. Some fiancé, he thought.

Justyna nodded. ‘She was as excited as a little child on Christmas Eve,’ she said, unable to suppress a smile at the memory.

‘Did she say where she was going, where they would be living?’

She shook her head – but judging by the way her gaze slid away from his, he suspected she was lying.

‘She said they’d be leaving London soon. Pawel had some business to finish up, and then they were going back home to get married.’ She popped her eyes. ‘All this, after she’d known him just a few weeks!’

Janusz was touched by Justyna’s concern. She couldn’t be more than five or six years older than Weronika, but it was clear the younger girl brought out the mother hen in her.

‘I tried to talk her out of it,’ she went on. ‘I said, imagine how upset your mama will be when she hears her little girl has run off with some man she barely knows.’

‘But it did no good?’

‘She went a bit quiet,’ recalled Justyna. ‘But then she said Mama would be fine so long as no one cut off her supply of cytrynowka,’ she shot him a look. The sickly lemon wodka was a notorious tipple of street drunks – and alcoholic housewives. ‘Nika told me she would often come home from school and find her lying unconscious on the kitchen floor.’

Apparently, Mama had been little more than a child herself when she’d fallen pregnant with Weronika. The little girl had grown up without a father and the only family apart from her chaotic drunk of a mother had been a distant uncle who visited once in a blue moon.

Poor kid, thought Janusz. It was hardly surprising that after leaving home, she should fall head over heels in love with the first person who showed her any affection – like a baby bird imprinting on whoever feeds it, however ill-advised the love object.

By now, there was standing room only in the bar area, and the crowd was encroaching on the small table where Janusz and Justyna sat. The thump thump of the music, the shouted conversations and the bodies pressing in all around set up a fluttering in Janusz’s stomach. So when the girl said she ought to go, she had an early start at the restaurant the next day, he felt a surge of relief.

He insisted on walking Justyna to her flat, which was a mile away to the west, the other side of Stratford, beyond the River Lea. The route took them through the centre of town, where the music and strident chatter spilling from the lit doorways of pubs and clubs and the clusters of smokers outside suggested the place was just waking up, although it was gone eleven and only a Tuesday. As they passed the entrance to an alleyway beside one pub Janusz heard urgent voices and, through the gloom, saw two men pushing a smaller guy up against the wall. He froze, muscles bunching, but a second later the scene came into focus. The little guy was catatonic with drunkenness, head drooping and limbs floppy, and the other two, weaving erratically themselves, were simply trying to keep their mate upright.

Janusz and Justyna shared a look and walked on. No one would describe Poles as abstemious, but any serious drinking was done at home and public drunkenness was frowned upon. Janusz’s mother, who’d visited London as a child before the war, had always spoken approvingly of the English as a decorous and reserved people, so it was fair to say that his first Friday night out with the guys from the building site had been something of an eye-opener. Still, the greatest compliment you could pay a man back then was to say he could carry his drink, and those who ended the night by falling over or picking a fight were viewed with pitying scorn.

Justyna shared a flat in a tidy-looking low-rise estate run by a housing association. Pausing on the pavement outside, she turned to him, drawing smoke from her cigarette deep into her lungs against the cold. ‘Thanks for the drinks,’ she said.

‘You’re welcome.’ He took a draw on his cigar, then exhaled, blowing his smoke downwind of her. She seemed in no hurry to go in.

‘Look, I really shouldn’t do this,’ she said at last. ‘I promised Nika …’

She pulled a folded slip of paper out of her pocket, and handed it to him.

‘Pawel made her swear not to give their address to anyone. But she wanted me to look out for letters from her mama, forward them on. She knew she could trust me,’ she stared off down the darkened street, ‘… thought she could trust me.’

He glanced at the paper, registering an address in Essex before pocketing it. ‘Listen, Justyna. You are the best friend Weronika has.’ He sought her gaze. ‘She’s probably found out by now that Pawel is no knight in shining armour – maybe she’s wondering how to leave him without too much fuss,’ he said, flexing his knuckles. ‘If that’s how it is, I’ll make sure her wishes are respected.’

She took a step toward him. ‘Be careful,’ she said, in a low voice. ‘I don’t think Pawel is right in the head. Nika must have let slip that I warned her off him, because one day he followed me home, all the way from work,’ her eyes widened. ‘He grabbed me by the arm and went crazy.’ Her lips trembled as she relived the shock of it. ‘He told me if I didn’t keep my fucking nose out, he’d kill me.’

The guy was clearly a psychol, thought Janusz. ‘Don’t worry,’ he told the girl. ‘Guys like him are usually all talk.’

She nodded, not entirely convinced. ‘And Nika said she’d phone me, but I’ve heard nothing, not even a text.’

A child cried sharply somewhere in her block and she shivered, then said in a rush: ‘It’s freezing – can I make you a coffee? Or maybe you’d like a wodka?’

That was unexpected. He sensed a fear of rejection in her averted face. Was she propositioning him? Compassion, good sense – and yes, temptation, too – wrestled briefly in his heart, and then a vision loomed up before him – the stern face of that old killjoy Father Pietruski.

He shook his head. ‘Another time, darling, I’ve got a lot on tomorrow.’

‘You’ll let me know when you find out where Nika is?’ said the girl, anxiety ridging her forehead.

‘You’ll be the first to hear,’ he said.

He watched her walk into the block, and two or three minutes later a first-floor light came on in what he guessed was her flat. He lingered, thinking that she might appear in the window, but was then distracted by the screech of a big dark-coloured car pulling out from the estate. Gunning its engine, it tore off down the street. When he looked back up at the block, the curtains had been closed on the oblong of light. Feeling a pang of loneliness, he threw down his cigar stub and left.

Eight

For DC Kershaw, the following day would turn out to be what her Dad might have called a game of two halves.

As she stretched herself awake in the pre-dawn gloom, her triceps and calf muscles delivered a sharp reminder of how she’d spent the previous evening – scaling the toughest route on the indoor wall on Mile End Road, handhold by punishing handhold. It was worth it, though. Climbing demanded a level of concentration so focused and crystalline that it left no headspace for stressing about the job. And she was getting pretty good, too – last summer she’d ticked off her first grade 7a climb, up in the Peaks. She hadn’t been tempted to mention her feat at work, obviously, because that would mean the entire nick calling her Spiderwoman … like for ever.

Still half-asleep, she stepped under the power shower, and found herself assaulted by jets of icy water. Gasping, she flattened her back against the cold glass and spun the knob right round to red, but it didn’t make a blind bit of difference. A quick tour of the flat revealed all the radiators to be stone cold, too – the boiler must be up the spout. Cursing, she pulled on her clothes, then her winter coat, and hurrying into the minuscule galley kitchen, turned on all four gas rings.

While she was scaling K2 last night, the rest of the guys had gone out on a piss-up to celebrate Browning’s birthday. She’d almost joined them, but luckily Ben Crowther tipped her off – with a look that said it definitely wasn’t his thing – that the birthday boy wanted to hit a lap-dancing club in Shoreditch later. No thanks. Being ‘one of the guys’ in the office was one thing, but she could live without the sight of Browning getting his crotch polished by some single mum with 36DD implants and a Hollywood wax.

The milk she added to her brewed tea floated straight to the surface in yellowy curds. Bugger. After making a fresh cup, black this time, she took it into the living room. As she sat on the sofa in her coat drinking the tea – too astringent-tasting without the milk – she fretted about how she would find time today to hassle the letting agents, let alone wangle a half-day off for the boiler repairman. Life had been a lot less stressful when Mark had lived here. Not that he was some spanner-wielding DIY god – Mark drove a desk in a Docklands estate agents and the only gadgets he’d mastered were the remote controls for the telly and the Skyplusbox – but it was so much easier when there were two of you to sort out the tedious household stuff.

As she attacked her last surviving nail, unshakeable habit and source of much mickey-taking at the station, her gaze fell on the dusty surface of the TV cabinet and the darker rectangle where the plasma screen used to sit. She’d let Mark take it when they split up last month.

How did I get to be sitting alone in a rented flat that I can’t afford, drinking black tea in my coat? she thought suddenly, and felt her eyes prickle.

She reminded herself how unbearable the atmosphere between her and Mark had become in those last few weeks, when their dead relationship lay in the flat like a decomposing body which they stepped over and around without ever acknowledging. By comparison, the previous phase had been preferable. The rows had started a couple of months ago, after she got the job at Newham CID and started coming home late and lagered-up two or three times a week. If she was in luck, he’d be asleep when she crawled into bed beside him, but if not, there’d be trouble. He’d complain she reeked of booze and fags, but they both knew that wasn’t the real issue. Mark never really accepted her argument that she went drinking with the guys not because she fancied any of them, but because bonding was fundamental to the job. The argument would get more and more heated, and then he’d start in on her language. Since you joined the cops, Nat, you talk more like a bloke than a bird.

The last accusation hit home; but you couldn’t spend all day holding your own with a bunch of macho guys, then come home and morph into Cheryl Cole. Sometimes she felt like she’d actually grown a Y-chromosome over the last few years.

Kershaw had always felt comfortable around men – probably because she’d been brought up by her father. The photos of her as a kid said it all – playing five-a-side with him and his mates in the park … holding up her first fish – a carp – caught at Walthamstow Reservoir … draped in a Hammers scarf on the way to the footie. Dad told her, more than once, that he never missed having a son, because with her he got the best of both worlds – a beautiful, clever little girl who could clear a pool table in under ten minutes.

Two years ago, when they told him the cancer was terminal, he confided, in a hoarse whisper that tore her heart out, that looking back, he had one regret: I should have remarried after your Mum died, he said, so you had someone to teach you how to be a lady.

Checking her watch, Kershaw gave a very unladylike sniff, wiped her face, and told herself to stop being such a wuss. Then, gulping the rest of the lukewarm tea down with a grimace, she picked up her bag.

As she closed the front door behind her, she heard her dad’s voice.

Up and at ’em, girl, it said, up and at ’em.

Parking in the minuscule car park attached to Newham nick was the usual struggle, and it didn’t improve Kershaw’s mood to see Browning’s car was already there. The little creep always got in early for his shift.

There was an email from Waterhouse in her inbox. The PM report had come back, and even better, the lab must have had a quiet week because they’d already done the tox report on DB16. It confirmed the cause of death as overdose by PMA – the dodgy drug Waterhouse had mentioned. Yes! She printed out the report, and surfing a wave of adrenaline, made a beeline for Streaky’s desk.

Later on, she would reflect it might have been better to wait till Streaky had downed his first pint of brick-red tea before she started waving the report around.

He didn’t lift his gaze from the racing pages. ‘Sarge …’ she tried, hovering over him, ‘Sorry to …’

‘Fuck off, I’m busy,’ he replied, without looking up.

‘The PM report on the floater …’

He lowered the paper, and fixed her with a bloodshot stare.

‘Which part of the well-known Anglo-Saxon phrase, “fuck off” don’t you understand? Go and wax your bikini line or something.’

With that he swivelled his chair to turn his back on her and circled a horse in the 2.30 p.m. at Newmarket. Face radiating heat, she slipped the report into his in-tray, and returned to her desk by the window. Browning, whose desk faced hers, caught her eye, his face a study in faux-sympathy.

‘Hangover,’ he hissed, leaning across the desk. ‘It turned into a bit of bender last night.’

‘Oh yes?’ said Kershaw, opening her mailbox.

‘You should have come,’ he said. ‘We had a good laugh at Obsessions – you know, the lap dance place?’

Suddenly, he started tapping on his keyboard. Glancing over her shoulder, Kershaw saw DI Bellwether standing behind them, deep in conversation with the Sarge.

Bellwether, a tall, fit-looking guy in his early thirties, was all matey smiles, although it was clear from his body language who was boss. Streaky had put on his jacket and adopted the glassy smile he employed with authority. Kershaw could tell he resented the Guv – not because the guy had ever done anything to him, but probably because Bellwether had joined the Met as a graduate on the now-defunct accelerated promotion programme, which meant he’d gained DI rank in five years, around half the time it would have taken him to work his way up in the old days. The very mention of accelerated promotion or, as he preferred to call it, arse-elevated promotion, would turn Streaky fire-tender red.

Kershaw thought his animosity toward Bellwether was all a bit daft, really, since Streaky was a self-declared career DS without the remotest interest in promotion. As he never tired of explaining, becoming an inspector meant kissing goodbye to paid overtime, spending more time on ‘management bollocks’ than proper police work, and having to count paperclips to keep the boss-wallahs upstairs happy. An absolute mug’s game, in other words.

She could overhear the two of them discussing the latest initiative from the Justice Department.

‘We’ll make it top priority, Guv,’ she heard Streaky say. He was always on his best behaviour with the bosses, and never uttered a word against any of them personally – a self-imposed discipline that no doubt dated from his stint as an NCO in the army.

As Bellwether breezed over, she and Browning got to their feet – Kershaw pleased that she’d chosen her good shoes and newest suit this morning.

‘Morning Natalie, Tom. Are you early birds enjoying the dawn chorus this week?’

Ha-ha, thought Kershaw, while Browning cracked up at the non-witticism.

‘What are you working on, Natalie?’ Bellwether asked her, with what sounded like real interest, causing Browning’s doggy grin to sag.

‘I’m on a floater, Guv, Polish female taken out of the river near the Barrier.’

‘Cause of death?’

‘OD. Some dodgy pseudo-ecstasy called PMA – might be coming over from Europe.’

‘PMA? That rings a bell …’ mused Bellwether. ‘Let me surf my inbox and give you a heads-up later today.’

Kershaw stifled a grin. Bellwether was alright, but attending too many management workshops had given him a nasty dose of jargonitis.

After he left, Streaky called her over.

‘So let me guess,’ he drawled, flipping through Waterhouse’s PM report. ‘The good doctor has got you all overexcited about a dodgy drugs racket. You do know he’s a tenner short of the full cash register?’

‘The tox report backs it up, though, Sarge,’ said Kershaw, keeping her voice nice and low. He had once informed the whole office that women’s voices were on the same frequency as the sound of nails scraped down a blackboard. Scientific fact, he said.

Streaky just grunted. ‘So you’ve got an OD with this stuff, wassitcalled … PMT …’ – no fucking way was she taking that bait – ‘but even assuming you had a nice juicy lead to the lowlife who supplied the drugs, what’s your possible charge?’

Keeping her voice nice and steady, Kershaw said, ‘Well, Sarge, it could be manslaughter …’

Streaky whistled. ‘Manslaughter. We are thinking big, aren’t we?’

‘Supplying a class-A drug to someone which ends up killing them is surely a pretty clear-cut case, Sarge.’ As soon as the words left her mouth she realised how up herself they made her sound.

Streaky leaned back in his swivel chair and put his arms behind his head.

‘Ah yes,’ he said, ‘I remember my early days as a dewy-eyed young Detective Constable …’

Here we go, she thought.

‘It was all so simple. Wielding the warrant card of truth and the truncheon of justice, I would catch all the nasty villains fair and square, put them in the dock, and Rumpole of the Bailey would send them away for a nice long stretch. End of.’

She resisted the urge to remind him that actually, Rumpole had been on the dark side, aka defence counsel.

‘Then I woke up,’ he yawned, ‘and found myself back in CID.’ He leaned forward and waved the PM report under her nose. ‘Even if you did find the dealer – which you won’t – and prove he supplied the gear – which you can’t – I can assure you that our esteemed colleagues at CPS will trot out 101 cast-iron reasons why it is nigh-on impossible to get a manslaughter conviction in cases of OD. The main one being it’s “too difficult to establish a chain of fucking causality”, if memory serves.’

He scooted the report into his pending tray with a flourish.

‘I’ll tell those long-haired tossers in Drug Squad about it. They might be interested if there are some killer Smarties doing the rounds. You carry on trying to trace the floater, just don’t spend all your time on it.’

‘Yes, Sarge.’ She hesitated, ‘But I still think that whoever gave the female the PMA – maybe her boyfriend, this guy Pawel – panicked and dumped her in the river after she OD-ed. I mean why else would she be starkers?’

She tensed up, half-expecting him to go ballistic at that; instead, he sighed, and picking up the report again with exaggerated patience, flicked through to the page he was looking for and started reading out loud.

‘The levels of PMA found in the blood may have caused hallucinations’ – he shot her a meaningful look – ‘… the subject’s core temperature would have risen rapidly, causing extreme discomfort …’ – his voice was getting louder and angrier by the second – ‘PMA overdose victims often try to cool off by removing clothing, wrapping themselves in wet towels and taking cold showers …’ He slapped the report shut. ‘Or maybe, Detective, seeing as they are off their tits, by jumping in the fucking river!’

Kershaw noticed that Streaky’s chin had gone the colour of raw steak, which was a bad sign. Now he picked a document out of his in-tray and shoved it at her.

‘Here you go, Miss Marple, the perfect case for a detective with a special interest in pharmaceuticals – a suspected cannabis factory in Leyton. Enjoy!’

Three hours later, Kershaw was shivering in her car, outside the dope factory, with the engine running in a desperate bid to warm up, smoking a fag and trying to remember why she ever joined the cops.

Thank God that ponytailed, earring-wearing careers teacher from Poplar High School couldn’t see her now. When she’d announced, aged sixteen, that she wanted to be a detective, he’d barely been able to hide his disapproval. He clearly had no time for the police, but could hardly say so. Instead, he adopted a caring face, and gave her a lecture on how ‘challenging’ she’d find police culture as a woman. She’d responded: ‘But sir, isn’t the only way to change sexist institutions from the inside?’

In truth, the police service hadn’t been her first career choice. As a kid, when her friends came to play, she’d inveigle them into staging imaginary court cases, with the kitchen of the flat standing in for the Old Bailey. Turned on its side, the kitchen table made a convincing dock for the defendant, while the judge, wearing a red dressing gown and a tea towel for a wig, oversaw proceedings perched up on the worktop. But the real star of the show was Natalie, who, striding about in her Nan’s best black velvet coat, conducted devastating cross-examinations and made impassioned speeches to the jury – aka Denzil, the family dog. As far as she could recall, she was always the prosecutor, never the defence. It wasn’t till she reached her teens that it dawned on her: the barristers in TV dramas always had names like Rupert or Jocasta, and talked like someone had wired their jaws together. The Met might be a man’s world, but at least coming from Canning Town didn’t stop you reaching the top.

The dope factory was in an ordinary terraced house in Markham Road, a quiet street, despite its closeness to Leyton’s scruffy and menacing main thoroughfare. Driving through, she had counted three lowlifes flaunting their gangsta dogs, vicious bundles of muscle, probable illegal breeds, trained to intimidate and attack. Obviously, she’d stopped to pull the owners over for a chat. Yeah, right.

The report said that the young Chinese men who had rented number 49 for four or five months hadn’t aroused any suspicions among the neighbours. Kershaw suspected that in a nicer area, their comings and goings at all hours, never mind the blackout blinds and rivers of condensation running down the inside of the windows, might have got curtains twitching a lot sooner, but then round here, maybe you were grateful if the place next door wasn’t actually a full-on crack house. In the end, number 49 had only got busted by accident, when a fire broke out on the ground floor.

As she pulled up, the fire tender was just driving off, leaving the three-storey house still smoking, the glass in the ground-floor windows blackened and cracked but otherwise intact. It looked like they’d caught the blaze early. Inside the stinking hallway, its elaborate cornice streaked with black, she picked her way around pools of sooty water, now regretting the decision to wear her favourite shoes. In the front room, once the cosy front parlour of some respectable Victorian family, she found a mini-rainforest of skunk plants, battered and sodden from the firemen’s hoses. Overhead, there hung festoons of wiring that had powered the industrial fluorescent strip lights; on the floor, a tangle of rubber tubing that presumably supplied the plants with water and the skunk-equivalent of Baby Bio.

‘Hello, beautiful, come to see what real cops do for a change?’

Frowning, she turned round, to find a familiar face – Gary, an old buddy from her time at Romford Road nick a few years back.

‘Gaz! How’s life on the frontline?’

Gary was a few years older than her – well into his thirties by now – and still a PC. He had been her minder when she had first gone on the beat as a probie, but they became proper mates after a memorable evening when they got called to a pub fight between football hoolies. West Ham had just thrashed old enemies Millwall at Upton Park, so it was the kind of ruck that could easily have become a riot. She and Gary could hardly nick them all: instead, they ID-ed the ringleaders and pulled them out, putting the lid on it without even getting their sticks out. Back at the station, Gary had told anyone who’d listen that Kershaw had thrown herself into the fray ‘just like a geezer’.

‘All the other rooms like this?’ she asked, after they’d done a bit of catching up.

‘Yep. Third one this month,’ said Gary, shaking his head. ‘You missed the best bit, though.’

Apparently, when he’d arrived on scene, he’d found a bunch of locals having an impromptu party outside the burning house.

‘It was quite a sight – there was a boom box blaring, they were drinking beer, dancing around in the smoke, everyone getting off their face on the free ganja,’ said Gary, shaking his head, grinning. ‘It was like Notting Hill Carnival.’

Kershaw smiled but her eyes were uneasy. Gary was probably the least racist cop she’d ever met, but she hoped he watched himself in front of the Guvnors. That sort of chat could get you into big trouble these days.

‘Down to us to do the clear-up, I suppose?’ she asked.

‘Got it in one, Detective,’ he grinned.

Kershaw spent the next few hours cursing the Sarge for dumping this nightmare job in her lap. The cheeky slags who ran the factory had powered it for free, running a cable from the lamppost next to their garden wall, which meant she had to call out the Electricity Board. She took half a dozen statements from the neighbours – total waste of time, of course, but she’d still have to type them up – and the worst job was still to come. Kershaw, Gary, and a single probie would have to bag and label every single one of the 1000-plus plants and load them onto a lorry to go to the evidence store.

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