Where the Devil Can't Go (19 page)

Janusz gave a low whistle: now that
was
dynamite. If news got out that the solid, honourable Zamorski,
Solidarnosc
hero and would-be saviour of Poland, had shagged a schoolgirl, even as an honest mistake, it would have the Party’s elderly female vote foaming at the mouth – probably in sufficient numbers to lose him the election.

“But the girl obviously kept quiet about it all these years, so how did a
chuj
like Adamski manage to unearth the story?” Janusz stopped, struck by a sudden thought: what if Zamorski
still
had a penchant for young blonde girls? “Did Adamski find out that Zamorski had an affair with Weronika?” he asked, his face creased with distaste.

Nowak shook his head. “Worse than that, I’m afraid.” He paused and picked a shred of tobacco off his tongue. “He discovered that Weronika is Edward Zamorski’s
daughter
.”

That jack-knifed Janusz out of his seat. Turning his back on Nowak he stared out of the open window, which gave onto a brick wall a metre away, and dug blindly in his pocket for his cigars. Zamorski, Weronika’s
father
?! Damn Father Piotr for keeping him in the dark!

Mastering his confusion, he turned back to Nowak.

“So, the hot fifteen-year-old blonde was Weronika’s Mama,” he said. “Did the girl tell Adamski the big family secret, then, when they started going out together?”

“No, no,” said Nowak. “Edward says Weronika doesn’t know the truth: she grew up thinking her
Tata
had died. He always looked after the two of them, sent money and visited regularly, became very fond of the child it seems. As for Mama, she kept her side of the bargain and to the little girl he was always just Uncle Edek.

“Then, as Nika got older, he started popping up on television, and she started boasting to her friends about her famous Uncle. With the election coming up, he decided it would be safer if she came to London – at least for a while – in case the press should get wind of the story and put two and two together. Pani Tosik is an old friend and was happy to give the girl a job and a place to stay.”

Janusz was finding it hard to process all this new information, partly because his head had started pulsing again. Pressing both hands to his temples he asked: “Does Father Pietruzki know all this, about Zamorski having an illegitimate daughter?”

Nowak nodded. “You know, I think the Church is more forgiving than we give it credit for. Edward made his peace with his own confessor about his...love child, I think they call it these days, many years ago.

“Excuse me a moment, would you?” he said, raising his stocky frame up on muscular forearms – steel worker’s arms. He left his cigarette burning in the ashtray.

Janusz recalled the empty photo frame in Weronika’s bedroom – maybe it had held a snap of Uncle Edek that she’d been loath to leave behind – and felt a stab of pity. Poor naïve little Nika, who believed she had found the love of her life, had actually fallen victim to a vicious scam. He didn’t allow himself to doubt that he would find her, rescue her from Adamski, but what then? Would she ever get over such a callous betrayal?

He was still lost in thought when Nowak returned and set a tumbler of water and a couple of pills down in front of him. “Aspirin,” he said, letting himself down into the chair again with the wary movements of someone no longer young.

“
Dziekuje bardzo
” said Janusz, sluicing the pills down his throat. “One thing I don’t understand,” he asked, as he set down the empty glass. “If Weronika didn’t know she was Zamorski’s daughter, how did Adamski work it out?”

“Edward has no idea,” shrugged Nowak. “But somehow Adamski got hold of a birth certificate naming him as the father – and sent him a photocopy, along with a blackmail demand. At first, he paid up, sent him a few thousand, hoping he would just go away.”

Janusz and he exchanged a dry look. “Of course, the demands just got bigger. And then, the bombshell: a dirty photograph of Weronika,” His lips thinned to a line, the first sign he’d shown of anger.

Janusz eyes narrowed – remembering the pornographic photos, he’d half-guessed that was coming.

“Edward read the letter out to me on the phone,” Nowak went on. “It said that Adamski was ‘enjoying fucking his little girl’ – excuse me – and if he didn’t send half a million Euros, he would kill her.”

“And by this time, Adamski had run off with Weronika?”

Nodding, Nowak waved a hand. “Gone without a trace.”

A thought struck Janusz. “Does Zamorski have anyone else out looking for them?”

Nowak shook his head. “Good God, no – as far as Edward’s concerned, the fewer people who know about the whole ugly business, the better.”

Janusz decided not to share his hunch about the gangsters on Adamski’s tail; he wanted time to digest all this, decide if any of it changed the plans he’d already made.

“So what are you asking me to do?” he asked. “Get the girl away from Adamski, obviously.” Nowak nodded. “And destroy the birth certificate, I assume. But what’s to stop him getting another one issued?”

“Edward tells me that the original no longer exists,” Nowak raised a sardonic eyebrow. “You know politicians – they always have a friend in the right department.” A grimace of distaste crossed his face. “It’s all a shabby business. But whatever mistakes Edward has made, he doesn’t deserve to have his future destroyed by someone like Adamski.”

“So Adamski gets to walk away? After what he did to Justyna?” said Janusz, anger roughening his voice.

Nowak struck the table with the flat of his hand: “Absolutely not,” his voice hard. “That must not happen. Apparently, there’s a warrant out for Adamski’s arrest back home – he tried to force an old man to sell him some antique furniture, and when he said no, he knocked him about quite badly.”

He raised a finger: “When you find him, Edward will make sure the scumbag gets extradited – and he’ll get a prison sentence. Even if the English police can prove Adamski was with Justyna when she died, they would probably only charge him with supplying drugs.” He shrugged. “What do you get for that, here? Probation and a few weeks picking up dogshit in the park.”

He was right, thought Janusz. Adamski would be handed down a much tougher sentence in Poland and his prison wouldn’t resemble a university campus. He shivered at a sudden memory: Montepulich’s interrogation room. He could barely remember what it looked like, but the smell of the place, a ferrous reek of blood and sweat overlaid with cleaning fluids, would stay with him forever.

Nowak sought his gaze. “You’re an honourable man, and I know that your decision won’t be based on financial considerations...” He hesitated. “But Edward is anxious that you have sufficient funds to continue your investigation.” Reaching into the pocket of his windcheater jacket, he pulled out a manila envelope, and held it out to Janusz, looking embarrassed. “He has doubled the instalment Pani Tosik paid you, and he will pay the same amount again when everything is settled. You don’t need to make your mind up right away – if you should decide against continuing, just return the money to Father Pietruzki.”

Janusz paused a moment, then took the envelope with a nod.

Nowak walked with him to the door. “I doubt either of us are particularly fond of politicians,” he said, looking searchingly into Janusz’s eyes, “And Edward is my friend, so perhaps I am biased, but I am sure of one thing. He has always chosen the hard road when he could have taken the easy road, and I think you are the same kind of man.”

Downstairs, Janusz craned his head around the main salon’s doorway, looking for Father Pietruzki. The guests had become rowdier, their chatter and laughter louder and higher pitched. He saw the Countess Jagielska leaning on the arm of a smirking businessman, regaling him, no doubt, with some three-centuries-old family anecdote.

The priest stood in a corner, talking to a tall guy in a long black robe with a pink sash who looked surprisingly young to be a Monsignor. Noticing Janusz, the Monsignor put a hand on Father Pietruzki’s shoulder, and bent to whisper into his ear. Following his pointing finger, the priest saw Janusz and, dipping his head in a respectful farewell, made his way over.

They stepped out into the street and he looked up into Janusz’s eyes, his gaze full of almost comic penitence. Janusz looked down at his friend and confessor, the strands of white hair falling across his forehead. He was a long way from forgiving the lying old bastard, he realised. Pulling out the brown envelope, he leafed through the notes and extracted about a third – the amount he’d need for the next few days. He handed the rest to the priest who looked up at him in surprise.

“I’ll do it,” he growled. “Send this to Justyna’s people.” And he left, without a word of farewell.

He walked on autopilot for a good ten, fifteen minutes, as though in a bubble. Across bus-choked Oxford Circus, all the way down Carnaby Street, through drifting shoals of tourists and laser-guided office workers on their lunch break, till he hit Beak Street – at which point he realised he was heading straight for Kasia’s club.

He slowed his pace, and took a detour through Berwick Street. The sun was out, the fruit and veg market was in full swing, and the cacophony of the market traders’ calls, like a flock of raucous magpies, pushed the clamour of thoughts from his head.
Fuck it
. He decided to take a peace offering to Kasia. He wouldn’t be seeing her for a few days and he had to know if there was anything to be salvaged between them.

He browsed the best of the produce stalls, at the market’s southernmost end, near the junction with Peter Street. These guys supplied the finest produce to £100-a-head restaurants where the chefs, according to Oskar, for some unfathomable reason, turned good honest food into
foam
. He spotted the perfect thing: a basket of fresh, wavy-edge chanterelles which, fried in butter and garlic and finished with a spoonful of crème fraiche and some chopped dill, would make a delicious breakfast.

Holding the brown paper bag of fragile mushrooms carefully in his big fist, Janusz left the market’s semi-rural scene and ducked into the darkened piss-smelling alley that served as the gateway to Soho’s warren of sex aid shops, strip joints, and lap dancing clubs. Here, pretty girls with tired faces leaned from doorways, touting for business from punters, but on seeing him, their sales pitch gave way to a smile of recognition, and, from the occasional Polish or Ukrainian girl, a
Dzien dobry, Panu
.

He was pleased to find Kasia fully dressed behind the bar of the club today. “Pale chickens!” she exclaimed when she saw his face – a saying he hadn’t heard since he was a child. “Just a little bump in a car,” he said. She lifted a sceptical eyebrow.

“I’m brewing a cold,” she said, when he asked why she wasn’t dancing today. “So Ray promoted me to club manager while he goes to Costco.” She seemed pleased to be given the responsibility, however temporary.

The bag of chanterelles earned him a sexy lopsided smile, which made him absurdly happy, and after making them both a lemon tea, Kasia sat on a bar stool beside him to drink it. Fifteen metres away, through an archway, a girl in a G-string and feather boa gyrated to a thumping pop track, watched with dog-like concentration by a handful of motionless punters. It was hardly a romantic backdrop but after a few moments Janusz had completely blanked it out.

There was warmth in Kasia’s half-smile, but also a wariness around those long, lovely eyes that didn’t bode well for their future. He tried to formulate the words that might repair this breach between them, but the prospect of another depressing trudge around the topic of her jealousy, and the everlasting nature of her marriage to Steve depressed him. And there was something else nagging at him, something they probably both knew: the uncomfortable question that even if she were to leave Steve, did he really have the stomach to set up home with a woman again?

They sipped their tea and said nothing for perhaps a minute. Shifting on his bar stool, he felt a blade-thrust of pain from his damaged rib so fierce that it made sweat prickle coldly on his upper lip.

“I’ve never told you about Iza, my first real girlfriend, the one before Marta,” he said, his hand cradling the hot glass. Kasia became stock-still: she’d often wondered how Janusz had ended up married to Marta, but he had never volunteered any details about his love life before meeting her. “She died...or rather, she was killed,” he went on, almost as though to himself, “when I took her to a demonstration in Gdansk. In ‘82.”

He shivered suddenly, violently, at the force of the memories.
A bitterly cold dusk, snow blizzarding down
.

As Janusz told Kasia the story, the words seemed to fall from his mouth without him being aware of his lips forming them.

He had taken Iza to his home city at Christmas, to meet his mother, but once he’d heard whispers of an illegal march to commemorate four people who’d been killed in a protest over food shortages, he was determined to go. His Mama had tried to talk him out of it, and even Iza wasn’t that keen, but he wouldn’t be dissuaded. It was a matter of national duty, he said, with the certainty of youth. His real reason for going was more shameful – and more compelling – but he could say nothing of that – either then, or now, to Kasia.

It had begun as a peaceful march to a Catholic shrine to lay flowers for the dead. But as the sun set, and the snow started to fall, the helmeted ranks of ZOMO riot police started pressing in, shoving the demonstrators with their shields. The familiar chant of “Ge-sta-po! Ge-sta-po!” rose from the crowd, and the snatch squads went in, pulling out young men at random, beating them unconscious and throwing them into the back of the pale blue
milicja
vans like sacks of turnips. Then the unmistakable crack of an AK47 sent the crowd into a panic. Helicopters wheeled overhead, their loudhailers ordering the crowd to disperse, but there was nowhere to go: the ZOMO had everyone hemmed into one corner of the square, trampling their red and white banners into the slush underfoot. The crowd, old and young, workers and students, were cornered and panic-stricken, all the earlier wild elation of resistance gone.