Anya Lipska - A Devil Under the Skin

‘My girlfriend … Kasia. She was meant to be moving in with me this week – but she’s gone missing.’ He stared at the table. ‘I think her husband may have abducted her.’

‘Because she told him she was leaving?’ asked Kershaw. He opened those big shovel-like hands in assent. ‘Have you considered that she might just have had second thoughts? People do – especially at the last minute.’

He met her gaze. ‘Not without a word to me. And she hasn’t turned up at work either.’

‘Maybe she’s pulled a sickie.’

Janusz bridled. ‘She runs her own business,’ he said. ‘Anyway, I checked their flat – there’s no sign of either of them.’

‘Right.’ Kershaw hesitated, trying to find a diplomatic way of telling him that ninety-nine per cent of missing persons cases turned out to be people disappearing of their own free will. Then there was the other one per cent . ‘Tell me a bit more about her – and this husband of hers.’

Janusz related how back home in Poland, Kasia had worked two jobs to help fund her studies at Lodz Film School, arriving in nineties London with a hundred pounds and a single goal: to get into the film industry. Instead, while working in a Polish bakery in Ealing, she’d met Steve – someone in whom she thought she saw an enterprising spirit to match her own. Three months later they were married.

‘And her directing ambitions?’

‘Soon went out of the window.’ He shrugged. ‘She discovered that Steve’s talk was just that. Talk. His business schemes were fantasy. He did the odd cash-in-hand job on building sites but she ended up being the main breadwinner, working in bars, mostly.’ Out of respect for Kasia, he didn’t mention her brief stint as a pole dancer in a Soho club – telling himself it could hardly have any relevance to her disappearance.

‘Marry in haste, repent at leisure, as my nan used to say,’ said Kershaw. ‘So why did she stick with him all this time?’

‘The Church,’ he said, with a wry grimace.

Kershaw rotated her glass on the table, thinking. ‘So she’s a devout Catholic, who puts up with him for what, twenty years, because she doesn’t believe in divorce.’ She frowned up at him. ‘Why the sudden change of heart?’

As the girl’s unblinking gaze skewered Janusz he was reminded of the time she’d interrogated him about a murder, the first time they’d met. He shifted about in the narrow chair. Why had Kasia changed her mind about leaving Steve? The milestone of her recent fortieth birthday suddenly struck him as an inadequate motive for such a momentous volte-face.

To change the subject, he told her about the one-way tickets to Alicante Steve had booked, and his conviction that the couple were still in the UK.

Kershaw chewed at a nail. ‘So you think he strung her a line about a birthday dinner or something to get her somewhere quiet, then sprung the idea of this trip on her?’

‘Yeah. He’s a fantasist. He probably thought he could change her mind with some story about starting a new life in Spain.’

She nodded, that made sense. ‘What kind of guy is he? If your theory’s right, do you think she could be in danger?’

He paused, wondering how much to tell her. ‘He has hit her, a couple of times. I had to have a word with him once.’

She raised an eyebrow, imagining the one-sided nature of that discussion.

Janusz narrowed his eyes, recalling the impression of Steve he’d got from that single face-to-face encounter. Skinny and unprepossessing to look at, yet full of himself, Steve had alternated between braggadocio and aggrieved self-pity. ‘I think he’s a lazy lowlife with a big mouth, but I never thought he’d have it in him … to really hurt her. Not till now, anyway.’

‘Once a wife beater, always a wife beater, in my experience,’ she said, regretting her glib words when she saw his jaw clench in a spasm of distress.

She felt torn. The likeliest explanation was probably the most obvious one – that Kasia had got cold feet about going to live with Kiszka. His caveman looks, the edge of danger about him would no doubt be attractive to some girls, but as life partner material? On the other hand, she couldn’t help feeling intrigued by the story – especially since she knew what a big deal it must have been for Kiszka to ask for help from a cop.

‘Why are you asking me to get involved? Why not just report her missing?’

He lifted one shoulder. ‘Because the police would just assume I was a jilted boyfriend. Even if they did believe me, they’re hardly going to invest serious resources in finding yet another missing person, are they?’

‘Fair point.’

‘So … will you help?’ He drained the rest of his pint, avoiding her eyes.

Kershaw suddenly realised that her pulse was beating a little faster than when she’d first walked in the pub. It seemed that the mystery of Kiszka’s missing girlfriend had got under her skin. She’d need to tread carefully, of course: the last thing she needed was to get herself in any more trouble at work.

‘I’ll do what I can,’ she told him.

Janusz bared his teeth in a grin. ‘Another one of those?’ he asked, pointing at her empty wine glass.

After he’d gone to the bar, having waved away her attempt to buy a round, Kershaw realised that there was another reason she’d agreed to help, the return of a feeling she’d almost forgotten. There was something about being around Janusz Kiszka that somehow made her feel more alive.

At Walthamstow Central tube station, heading home to Highbury, Janusz found himself in the midst of a deepening crush on the southbound Victoria line platform, the muffled drone of the announcer overhead saying something about signal problems. Luckily, Walthamstow was the line’s northernmost terminus, so when a train finally did arrive it emptied completely, allowing him to bag a seat. The journey was slow, punctuated by long stops in tunnels, and the fresh influx of rush-hour humanity that squeezed itself onto the packed train at Tottenham Hale triggered a very English symphony of muted tuts .

Right under Janusz’s nose, a guy in his twenties wearing a too-tight suit all but body-blocked an older woman carrying shopping bags to capture a just-vacated seat opposite. Seeking eye contact to establish whether the lady might take offence – an advisable step in London, he had long ago discovered – Janusz wordlessly offered her his seat, and when she smiled her thanks, stood to make way for her. Taking hold of the overhead passenger rail with both hands, he proceeded to direct an unblinking stare down on the discourteous kutas in the suit, who grew increasingly fidgety during the long wait in the next tunnel, before unaccountably deciding to get off at the next stop. Claustrophobic, probably , thought Janusz with an inward grin.

Minutes later, as the train lurched to a halt yet again, Janusz idly scanned the faces of the passengers either side of him, each immured within their own private citadel. A head-scarfed Asian girl, eyes elongated with kohl, playing a game on her phone, a man intently reading an article on London house prices in the Standard , and a white girl with dreadlocks, tinny music spilling out of her headphones. He let his eyes drift back to the man reading the paper. He remembered noticing the same guy amid the crush on the packed platform at Walthamstow. And he’d been reading the same page of the paper then.

No one was that slow a reader. Janusz squinted at the tube map just above his eye level, relying on his peripheral vision to build a picture of the guy. Reddened, pockmarked skin, like someone who’d spent too many years in the sun – or in extreme cold. Forty-five, or thereabouts, around Janusz’s age. Close-cropped hair, balding at the temples. Expensive-looking bomber jacket.