Death Can’t Take a Joke. Anya Lipska

disgust. Having worked alongside Romanians on building sites he knew they could put away pork, dumplings and a good feed of beer with as much gusto as any God-fearing Pole, yet all Romescu had in his fridge was vegan yoghurt, a tray of alfalfa sprouts, a carton of egg white and some goji juice.

      Padding around the living area, Janusz had to admit that it wasn’t half bad for a dodgy Romanian ‘businessman’. The furniture looked expensive yet elegant, and the artworks on the walls were the kind you might find in an upmarket yoga studio. The largest, at around three metres across, was a rather good hyperrealist painting of a butterfly in flight, sunlight making its pale blue wings translucent.