Death Can’t Take a Joke (33 page)

Clutched in Romescu’s outstretched right hand was a white shirt, pristine and still on its hanger. ‘He was packing, she comes up behind him …’ Streaky raised a clenched fist high, brought it down with great force. ‘Goodnight, Vienna.’

‘Varenka.’ It was more statement than question.

Streaky nodded. ‘It certainly looks that way. There’s a bloodstained dress in the linen bin in the en-suite and blood all over the shower. I reckon Kershaw arrived not long after it happened.’

Janusz dragged a hand through his hair. ‘Then what?’

‘After attacking Kershaw, she legged it. The receptionist saw her saunter out of the lift, cool as you like, pulling a suitcase. The car valet says there was a black 4X4 waiting for her, engine running.’

‘Let me guess: the driver wore a plaster cast and had a snake’s head tattooed on the back of his hand,’ said Janusz, with a grim smile.

‘That’s right. You know him?’

‘Only by sight.’

Janusz was picturing the way that snake tattoo had coaxed Varenka into the Discovery on Hoe Street that first day, after she’d left the flowers at Jim’s house. How could he have missed the signals? In hindsight, the way the guy had bent his head to hers, her responding body language, had about it the unmistakable air of two people stepping the quadrille of early courtship.

‘The safe was completely cleared out, of course.’ Streaky shot him a dry look. ‘The pair of them must have decided they were owed some severance pay.’

‘They probably had it planned for a while,’ said Janusz. ‘And thanks to me, Natalia turned up just as they were about to do a runner.’

Streaky scanned Janusz’s face for a moment. ‘Well, now’s your chance to make up for it,’ he said. ‘Go wait in the lobby. I’ll be down in ten minutes – and you can tell me what the fuck’s been going on.’

Half an hour later, the two men were sitting in a bar overlooking the dock where the beer cost a shade under £6 a pint.

Streaky squinted at Janusz over his glass. ‘I get how you and Natalie arrived at the mistaken identity theory – your pal getting killed because his address sounded the same as Stride’s – but what made you suddenly decide Varenka Kalina was behind the murders?’

‘It was a photograph I found – in the hiding place I showed you in the closet.’

Streaky raised a meaningful eyebrow. ‘Ah yes, while pursuing your other career as a bogus aircon engineer and burglar.’

Janusz ignored the wind-up. ‘I was trying to find out how Jim was linked to Romescu, something –
anythin
g – to explain why he’d been killed.’

‘Why did you think there was a connection in the first place?’

‘I saw Varenka leave a bunch of flowers at his house the day after he died, and came to the conclusion that she was atoning for her boyfriend’s sins.’

As Streaky emitted a snort, Janusz made a gesture that acknowledged he’d been an idiot. It seemed so obvious now that Varenka’s impulse had been born of guilt, not for anything Romescu had done, but for her own terrible mistake in having Jim killed instead of Stride. He’d jumped too easily to the conclusion that Romescu was behind the killing, a conviction that had only got stronger with the discovery of his arms smuggling operation and the ruthless way he’d had Orzelair’s head of security eliminated.

‘So, this photo?’ asked Streaky, breaking into his reflections.

Janusz nodded. ‘It was an old holiday snap of two children – a toddler, who I assumed
to be Varenka, and an older boy. But the little girl had quite distinctive eyes, almond-shaped, nothing like Varenka’s. So I realised that Varenka must have been the one taking the picture – and the girl in the shot was her little sister.’

‘Go on.’ Streaky’s ruddy face was creased with perplexity.

‘Then I thought about the little girl’s eyes again, and it hit me. Varenka’s sister had Downs Syndrome.’

Streaky’s face cleared, his eyes widening. ‘Like Hannah Ryan, the girl Stride raped.’

Janusz nodded.

‘So Varenka reads about Stride escaping punishment after abusing a little Downs girl, and has him killed because Hannah Ryan reminds her of her sister?’ Streaky prepared to take a slug of beer. ‘It’s all a bit
extreme,
isn’t it?’

Janusz recalled the sordid details that Varenka had let slip regarding her childhood and teenage years. ‘Varenka’s mother was a truck stop prostitute with a
wodka
habit. She and the children lived in a shack, if you can call it living, in a place called Kharkov.’

‘Shithole?’ asked Streaky.

‘After the end of Soviet rule, the Ukrainian economy imploded. People’s jobs, pensions, it all disappeared overnight. Kharkov was notorious – the kind of place where people would literally trade their children, mothers – Christ, even their
grandmothers
– for alcohol.’

‘Fuck me,’ said Streaky. ‘Sounds worse than Third World.’

Janusz took a slug of his pint. ‘Imagine trying to look after a little disabled girl in a place like that, when the mother is out selling herself, and probably Varenka, too.’

Streaky tapped the side of his pint glass, thinking it over. ‘So some dirty nonce abuses her little sister. And years later, she takes revenge on Stride.’

Janusz tipped his head sideways. ‘It’s just a theory.’

Streaky leaned both elbows on the table. ‘You think she got her new boyfriend, tattoo boy, to carry out the hit on Jim Fulford with a mate, right?’

‘Yes.’

Streaky shook his head slowly. ‘I’m not so sure. In my experience, revenge killings are nearly always carried out in person.’

‘You think she was there?’ Janusz frowned. Marika’s neighbour had described of one of the balaclava-clad attackers as tall and slim. Had her height, athletic build and small breasts enabled Varenka to pass for a young man?

‘Yeah, and I don’t mean as a hanger-on – I think there’s a good chance she wielded the knife.’

Janusz sat back in his chair.
Yes.
There had always been a certain steeliness about her, and now that he was viewing her through a different prism – the right one this time – it was all too easy to imagine her committing an act of ruthless brutality.

‘When they got the target right, the second time around, she must have helped tattoo boy string up Stride.’ A wistful note entered Streaky’s voice. ‘They did a pretty good job making it look like suicide, too. For a while, at least.’

Recalling the sight of Varenka’s bruised and scared face through the back window of the Discovery, Janusz realised something. ‘That’s why Romescu gave her such a beating yesterday! Because he heard on the news that Stride’s death was being treated as murder.’

‘He guessed she was behind it, you mean?’

Janusz nodded slowly, remembering how he’d met her, sprawled across the pavement after Romescu threw her out of his car – the day after Jim was stabbed. ‘Maybe he suspected that she was involved in Jim’s death, too.’

‘So when he was trying to buy you off, he was trying to protect her as much as himself.’

Streaky’s phone, lying next to his pint, vibrated. He snatched it up. ‘Yes, this is DS Bacon … Yes, I am DC Kershaw’s superior officer.’ His eyes flicked across to Janusz. ‘Uh huh … I understand.’

Mother of God!
What was going on?
Janusz felt like grabbing the phone out of his hand.

Finally, he hung up.

‘Well?!’

‘She was in surgery for two hours. Internal repairs. They say she’s still a very sick woman, and a lot depends on how she does overnight.’

The next morning, Janusz made his way up the ramp from Walthamstow tube station, barely aware of the stream of people rushing either side of him on their way to work. Red-eyed and dishevelled after a sleepless night worrying about Natalia, he was desperate for news, but Streaky still hadn’t called to say how she was doing or if she was even alive.

As he emerged onto the street, it struck him that he’d always associated this journey with the happy prospect of a beer with Jim – a fortnightly fixture in his life for the last twenty-odd years that would now never be repeated. Today he faced a different encounter – and one he was dreading. Although the cops weren’t ready to go public with who killed Jim and why, he’d told Sergeant Bacon in no uncertain terms that Marika had a right to know straight away. To the man’s credit, he hadn’t come over all official or attempted to talk Janusz out of it.

As he reached the church at the heart of the old village, Janusz saw her again in his mind’s eye, stepping through the confetti of falling leaves – the striking mystery woman who’d just left flowers outside Jim’s house. Searching for a way to describe her demeanour, the word he settled on was
carefree
. Having assuaged her graphene-thin conscience with a floral tribute and a Hail Mary, Varenka had apparently felt cleansed of guilt.

He reckoned he’d got it pretty much worked out now. Varenka’s determination to visit retribution on Anthony Stride was an understandable impulse, but not an easy one to enact – unless your boyfriend happened to be a murderous gangster. So it must have come as a disappointment when Romescu had turned down her demand to have Stride eliminated. Having just launched a dummy investment company to raise funds for arms buying, he was hardly likely to risk it all for some personal vendetta of his girlfriend’s.

A darkly comic notion struck Janusz: maybe even gangsters got nagged by their girlfriends, not for the usual domestic misdemeanours like leaving their dirty socks on the floor, but for refusing to kill people to order.

In any event, Varenka hadn’t let Romescu’s rebuff derail her plan: she had simply recruited his driver instead.

Janusz chose his words carefully as he laid out for Marika the sordid tale of how her husband had come to die – but her reaction wasn’t what he’d expected.

‘Thank God!’ said Marika, hands flying to her face. Laika, who was lying across her mistress’s feet, gazed up at her enquiringly.

Seeing the look of confusion on Janusz’s face, Marika hastened to explain. ‘The not knowing, that was the truly unbearable part. I was beginning to fear that perhaps I would never know – and then what? The idea of living in this limbo forever …’

‘Well, now we know who killed him, even if she picked completely the wrong person,’ growled Janusz.

Marika gazed out of the bay window at the row of tea lights in red perspex holders sitting on the garden wall. ‘I know this will sound strange, Janek, but somehow it makes me feel a little better, to find out that all that …
hatred
wasn’t meant for my Jim.’ Her voice broke as she said his name, and Janusz reached over to pat her, his big hand feeling rough and clumsy against her slender forearm. ‘It’s as though he was just … an innocent bystander.’

‘I’m glad you feel that way.’ He frowned into his coffee cup. ‘But I should have worked it out a hell of a lot sooner. If I had, there might have been a chance of making her pay for what she’s done.’ He didn’t think there was a hope in hell now of seeing Varenka caught and charged with murder.

What a fool she had made of him. He’d assumed he was the one in control of their relationship, and yet all along she’d been playing him, like an angler plays an especially dimwitted and myopic carp. Her masterstroke had been to warn him, after he left the Triangle party, that he was being followed: a simple yet brilliant move that had swept away any lingering distrust of her he might have had. After that, it had never crossed his mind that his tattooed pursuer had been sent, not by Romescu, but by her.

Marika dried her eyes on a handkerchief and took a sip of coffee. ‘I’m just relieved that she didn’t kill you, too – once she realised you were getting close to the truth.’

‘I got lucky,’ he said. ‘When I saw the guy with the snake tattoo outside the Opera House, I thought Romescu was keeping her under surveillance. But of course, Varenka set the whole thing up.’

‘She invited you there so that her new boyfriend could follow you home and …?’

‘And get rid of me. Yes,’ said Janusz.

‘Holy Mary, Mother of God,’ said Marika, crossing herself.

Janusz snorted. ‘To think, I left that night in order to protect
her
!’

‘Because you knew that the Romanian gangster beat her?’

‘Yeah. I’m like a knight on a white charger. Except the fair maiden in the tower was actually a murdering—’

‘Now you listen to me, Janusz Piotr Kiszka!’ Shocked at her tone, his head snapped up to meet her determined gaze. ‘I won’t have you talk in this way. You seem to think that there is something
wrong
with wanting to help a woman in trouble.’

‘Well, there is, if it stops me seeing things clearly.’

‘So because one woman in trouble turns out to be a monster, better to be cynical about all of them?’ She shook her head, but her tone became gentler. ‘We need more men to look out for women like you do, Janek, not fewer.’

He inclined his head a fraction. ‘I still should have worked it out more quickly.’

Marika breathed an impatient sigh. ‘You must see that if you hadn’t spotted her leaving those flowers and sensed something odd about it, I should
never
have found out who killed my Jim. You can’t give my husband back to me, Janek, but you have given me back my life.’

When they’d finished their coffee they went into the front garden. Standing side by side on the patch of lawn no bigger than a hearthrug that Jim had always kept so neatly mown and edged, they looked down at the fragile flames of the tea lights guttering in their holders.

Half-kneeling, Marika picked up the nearest one and, raising it to her lips, blew out the flame. Then she picked up the next one. When they had all been extinguished, Janusz helped her to her feet. They stood there looking at the wall, hands loosely linked.

‘He will always be here with us,’ said Marika, her tone that of someone making a simple statement of fact.

Janusz only nodded, unable to trust his voice.

‘
It can’t take a joke, find a star, make a bridge …
’
Although Marika had spoken in a murmur, he recognised the words instantly. They came from a famous poem about Death and how, ultimately, it was impotent – incapable of erasing the magnificence of a human life.