Anya Lipska - Death Can’t Take a Joke

Streaky grunted his assent. ‘Sophie, what about our mistaken identity theory?’ he asked. ‘Any drug dealers or other known villains living nearby?’

She shook her head: ‘No, Sarge. It’s a nice road, pretty much all owner-occupiers. The worst I could find on the database was a man with a ten-year-old conviction for insurance fraud.’

‘Okay. Let’s go back to Kiszka, who has freely admitted he was on his way to meet Fulford at the time of the murder,’ said Streaky. ‘My working hypothesis is this. There’s a recession on, his private eye business is feeling the squeeze, but the gym – which he officially owns – is going great guns. He decides he wants a piece of it but his pal Fulford doesn’t play ball.’

‘But couldn’t this Kiszka have sold the property out from under Fulford’s feet, if he’d wanted to?’ asked the other DC, the spoddy one whose name Kershaw had already forgotten.

‘Fulford’s an ex-Marine, did time for assault back in the eighties,’ said Streaky. ‘Maybe Kiszka decided that it would be less risky to off him in what looked like a random mugging, so he could take the place over, no questions asked.’

‘Do we know what kind of weapon was used?’ Kershaw asked the Crime Scene Examiner, an older guy called Tony.

‘We’re still waiting for the post-mortem report,’ he said. ‘But Dr King, the pathologist, reckons it was a long blade of some kind. He said the wounds were inflicted with great force – maximum prejudice – was the phrase he used, actually.’

Streaky gave a snort. ‘Nathan King watches too many American crime shows. But it’s true a nasty assault like that will often turn out to be a personal vendetta.’

The Sarge started divvying up who was in charge of what – co-ordinating evidence from CCTV cameras in the area, house-to-house enquiries, and an appeal for witnesses – but Kershaw was only half listening. As she picked at a ragged fingernail – she was on her umpteenth attempt to stop biting her nails – she tried to imagine Kiszka committing such a savage attack. Lashing out at someone in a rage, yes, killing them even, before the red mist cleared, very possibly. But planning and carrying out a cold-blooded execution? She couldn’t quite see it.

She realised that Streaky was winding up the briefing – without giving her any action points.

‘Sorry, Sarge, I know I’m playing catch up here,’ she said. ‘But Kiszka claims he was at some art gallery at the time of the murder? I assume none of the staff saw him there?’

‘Over to DC Cargill,’ said Streaky, indicating a guy in his late fifties, sitting off to the edge of the group. Red-faced and overweight, Cargill wore a brown pinstriped suit so out of date it could be one of Streaky’s cast-offs. Kershaw wondered if he was even aware of the fashion crime he’d committed when he’d twinned it with grey shoes.

As Cargill leafed laboriously through his notebook, Ackroyd bent his head towards Kershaw’s. ‘We call Derek The Olympic Torch,’ he murmured. Seeing Kershaw’s incomprehension he added: ‘He never goes out.’

Kershaw got it. Cargill was the old sweat of the squad, counting the days to retirement and keeping his workload to the absolute minimum.

‘At approximately 1500 hours on Tuesday the 6th of November, I attended the William Morris Gallery in Lloyd Park,’ Cargill intoned, ‘and introduced myself to the female on the front desk. I duly established that she was the manager, name of Mrs Caroline Smalls.’

Kershaw saw a red flush starting to creep up Streaky’s face from his chin, usually a reliable sign that he was about to spit the dummy.

‘I showed her a picture of … Jay-nus … Jah-nuzz … ’ After a couple of goes at pronouncing Kiszka’s name, Cargill gave up. ‘… the suspect. I then proceeded to the first floor …’

‘For Christ’s sake, Derek,’ said Streaky, his entire face now a ketchup red. ‘Get to the chuffing point!’

Cargill closed his notebook with some dignity. ‘None of the staff saw him, Skipper.’

Kershaw jumped in. ‘Kiszka did say that the photo he provided was way out of date, Sarge. I just wonder if it’s worth going down there again with his arrest mugshot?’

Streaky didn’t respond. He was still looking daggers at Cargill, who, apparently unconcerned, was now doodling on his copy of the Express .

‘Because if we do charge Kiszka, it could come back to bite our arse in court,’ Kershaw went on. ‘We don’t want his defence saying we didn’t make best efforts to check out his alibi.’

Streaky tore his gaze from Cargill. ‘Good thinking, DC Kershaw. Consider it your first action point.’ He grinned, showing teeth as yellow as old piano keys. ‘Welcome to Murder Squad.’

‘So you’re saying the cops charged you with Jim’s murder?’ Oskar said slowly, evidently struggling with the effort of processing this cataclysmic news.

‘No, Oskar! I told you, they don’t have any evidence,’ said Janusz.

Janusz and his oldest mate were heading out to Essex in his battered white Transit van, where Oskar was landscaping the garden of some scrap metal millionaire.

‘My solicitor said that the business with the mortgage deeds is a sideshow,’ Janusz waved a hand. ‘He says unless the cops find something really solid, like … a bloodstained knife in my apartment, they’ve got nothing to justify charging me.’

‘And you haven’t?’ asked Oskar, a worried expression creasing his chubby face.

‘Haven’t what?’

‘Got a bloodstained knife in your apartment?’

‘Of course I fucking haven’t, turniphead!’

‘Calm down, Janek! I’m just trying to … establish the facts.’

‘That doesn’t mean they won’t try to frame me for it, of course,’ he growled. ‘You know what the cops are like.’ Growing up in Soviet-era Poland had instilled in him a visceral distrust of the machinery of state that he’d never quite thrown off.

Seeing a traffic light some fifty metres ahead turn from green to amber, Oskar floored the accelerator. The engine responded with an ear-splitting whinny. A second or two later, realising they wouldn’t make it across the junction in time, Oskar applied the brakes with equal ferocity, hurling both of them against their seat belts.

Janusz lit a cigar to steady his nerves. ‘You need to get that fan belt fixed, kolego .’

‘It just needs some WD40.’ Oskar drummed his fingers on the wheel. ‘You know, I still can’t believe Jim’s dead – God rest his soul.’ The two men crossed themselves. ‘Poor Marika! When is the funeral?’