tell me! After she moves in, you think it’s going to be pussy on demand?!’ He slapped the steering wheel. ‘You wait, sisterfucker. After a few weeks, she’ll be spending all her time and energy scrubbing the kitchen floor – when she’s not kicking your dupe because the place is a pigsty.’
The wind-up was to be expected, but this all-too-plausible picture triggered a flicker of disquiet in Janusz nonetheless. He hadn’t lived with a woman since his brief and disastrous marriage to Marta back in Communist Poland, a lifetime ago. Was he kidding himself that he could adjust so late in life to the inevitable compromises it would require of him?
‘We’d better grab a few beers before your prison door slams shut,’ said Oskar, draining the contents of his can. ‘I expect you lovebirds will be having a big romantic dinner tonight.’
Janusz wound the window down a few centimetres, tapped out some cigar ash. ‘She’s not moving in till Monday night.’
‘Why not?’ Oskar sounded mystified.
Janusz shifted in his seat. ‘It’s Steve’s fortieth birthday tomorrow. He begged her to stay till then.’
Oskar tapped his fingers on the wheel, fallen uncharacteristically silent.
Janusz studied his mate out of the tail of his eye. They’d first met on national service, a pair of green and gawky nineteen-year-olds, but even now – more than a quarter-century later – Oskar hadn’t got any better at hiding his feelings. He remembered the awkwardness he’d picked up in his body language towards Kasia, back at the apartment.
‘Spit it out, Oskar,’ he sighed.
‘I just don’t want to see you disappointed, Janek,’ he said – a wary expression on his chubby features. ‘After all, she’s talked about leaving him before, hasn’t she? Before some priest or other talked her out of it.’
Janusz fought down a spurt of fury, telling himself that Oskar only had his interests at heart. ‘It’s different this time,’ he said, hearing the pathetic cry of the eternally hopeful lover. Might Oskar be right – was he being a fool to believe her?
It was true that, up until the last few months – despite her clear disillusionment with her husband – Kasia had been adamant on one score: as a devout Catholic the idea of abandoning her marriage was niemozliwe. Impossible.
Steve Fisher was a loudmouthed Cockney who, in two decades of marriage, had never held down a proper job for any length of time. From what Janusz could gather, he was the type who was permanently on the brink of some get-rich-quick scheme or other, none of which ever came to fruition. Then, as Kasia was approaching forty, she suddenly announced she was starting her own business, opening a nail bar with a friend. Perhaps the venture’s subsequent success had given her confidence, or perhaps the milestone of her birthday had forced her to stare down the barrel of another four decades yoked to her useless kutas of a husband. Whatever the reason, a couple of weeks ago she’d indicated to Janusz that if he’d still have her, she was prepared to risk her mortal soul for the chance of earthly happiness.
Janusz threw his spent cigar stub out of the window. ‘She says the pair of them grew up together, reckons she owes him something.’ When Oskar didn’t respond he went on, ‘Listen, kolego, I know Kasia. Once she’s made her mind up about something it would take a thermonuclear device to change it. I can wait a couple more days.’
Oskar heaved a theatrical sigh. ‘It’s your life, Janek. I just never thought you’d go to such extreme lengths to protect your cover story.’
Janusz frowned in incomprehension.
‘Moving in with a woman, just to pretend you’re heterosexual.’
Janusz was spared a further onslaught by a piercing whistled ditty – the unbearably chirpy ringtone of Oskar’s new mobile. While he took the call, Janusz retrieved a crumpled newspaper from the footwell.
It was yesterday’s copy of the Evening Standard, with a front-page headline that screamed: ‘GIRL COP WHO SHOT SWORD MAN CLEARED’. Inside, Janusz found the full story, which covered an inquest into the death of some nutjob who’d gone berserk with a samurai sword in Leytonstone McDonald’s the previous year – an incident which, not surprisingly, had left swordboy with three police bullets in the chest. Janusz dimly recalled there had been a great fuss in the media about it all when the story first broke.
To protect her identity, the female firearms cop who’d shot the guy was referred to solely by her codename, and yet as Janusz read on, it dawned on him that he knew exactly who officer V71 was. Natalie Kershaw. The girl detektyw who’d crossed his path more than once, most recently when she’d investigated the murder of one of his dearest friends – an investigation that had led to her being brutally stabbed. According to the report, V71 was the only female member of the armed response unit based at Walthamstow. Hadn’t she told him, the last time they’d met, eighteen months back, that she was about to become Walthamstow’s first female firearms officer?
The inquest verdict was ‘lawful killing’, but a senior officer at the Met was quoted as saying that V71 would have to undergo ‘extensive psychological assessment’ to decide whether she was fit to return to operational duties.
Janusz closed the paper, a frown corrugating his brow. ‘You remember that girl cop, Natalia?’ he said, after Oskar had hung up.
‘Blondie, you mean? The one who tried to get you arrested once?’
‘Yeah, that’s her. I think she’s the one who shot that guy in Leytonstone, outside McDonald’s, last year.’
‘Naprawde?’ said Oskar. ‘Still, what do they expect, handing guns out to girls? She probably had a row with her boyfriend at breakfast, then some poor kutas looks at her the wrong way.’ Holding the steering wheel steady with his knees, he used both hands to aim an imaginary gun at Janusz. ‘Boum!’
‘Oskar!’ Janusz pressed himself back into his seat as the van veered to the left. ‘Anyway, this guy had it coming – he went for her with a samurai sword.’
‘Kurwa mac!’ Oskar gave an appreciative whistle. ‘The girl’s got bigger jaja than you, kolego!’
‘Yeah, and in any sane country they’d give the girl a medal, but here she’ll probably get a big black mark on her record.’
‘It’s “health and safety gone mad”,’ said Oskar. It was one of his favourite English phrases and one he used often, even when it signally failed to fit the circumstances.
Janusz stared at the front-page headline. The girl might have threatened him with arrest in the past, it was true, but she’d also saved his life once, and he’d grown to respect her uncompromising stance, her determination to nail the bad guys. He wondered if he should call her. And say what, exactly? That shooting the fruitcake had clearly been the right thing to do? As though his opinion on the subject would mean anything to her.
The last time he’d seen her, in a Walthamstow pub, she’d been recovering from the knifing, an attack that he still felt responsible for. He remembered sensing a change in her then, a feeling that beneath her usual tough girl bravado she was as raw as a freshly skinned blister.
‘Perhaps I can turn the question around. Why do you think you’re here?’ The sunlight streaming through the window bounced off the letterbox specs of the lady shrink, making it impossible for PC Natalie Kershaw to make out the expression in her eyes.
Kershaw picked at a loose thread that had escaped the inside seam of her jacket sleeve. ‘Because I shot a paranoid schizophrenic who was about to disembowel me on Leytonstone High Street.’
The shrink didn’t respond, but as Kershaw was already learning, Pamela – or was it Paula? – had the disconcerting