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.
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.’