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.’
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