Death Can’t Take a Joke. Anya Lipska

nick now.’

      ‘Am I sensing insubordination, Detective Constable?’ said Ben, putting a hand on her hip and pulling her towards him. ‘I hope this doesn’t mean a return of your well-known issues with the chain of command.’

      After a quick mental calculation of how long it would take her to get from Ben’s place to Walthamstow, she added ten minutes to allow for traffic, then reached up to return his lazy kiss.

      She and Ben had been together for almost two years now. They’d met while working at Canning Town CID but shortly afterwards their then-sergeant DS ‘Streaky’ Bacon had moved to Walthamstow, and encouraged Ben to apply for a sergeant post there in Divisional CID. Now that Kershaw was joining Streaky’s team on Walthamstow Murder Squad, she and Ben would be working in the same nick again for the first time in ages, although not – luckily – in the same office.

      The relationship had had its ups and downs, for sure, but despite her instinctive caution, Kershaw was pretty sure that Ben was a keeper. As a fellow detective, he knew the score, which meant that unlike her previous boyfriend, an estate agent, he never lost the plot if she had to stand him up for dinner or rolled in a bit pissed after drinking with the team. More to the point, he seemed to understand that for her, the Job wasn’t, well, just a job. Okay, so she had, privately, felt somewhat irked when Ben had reached sergeant rank before her, but then he hadn’t been hauled up in front of Professional Standards for ‘flagrant disregard of the rulebook’ like she had.

      Ancient history, she told herself. Today’s a fresh start.

      She arrived at the nick a comfortable twelve minutes before the start of her shift. It had been three months since she’d heard she’d got the job, but when she told the receptionist that she was there to start work on Murder Squad, she felt her stomach perform a loop-the-loop.

      Climbing the stairs, it hit her that she’d be thirty next year, and only now was her life panning out the way she’d imagined when she left uni. Better late than never, girl, she heard her dad saying. Better late than never. He’d been dead for three years, but so long as she could hear his voice in her head from time to time, it felt like he was still alongside her, somehow. Her mum was a much hazier memory but then Kershaw had been barely nine when she’d died, leaving Dad to bring her up single-handed.

      She’d just reached the door marked Murder Squad when her mobile went off: Ben.

      ‘I was about to tell you, before you went and distracted me this morning, that I got a call from the agents,’ he said. ‘We can move into the new flat end of next week.’

      Christ, she thought. That was quick. Over the last few months, Ben had waged a quiet yet dogged campaign for them to move in together, and she’d finally caved in. A couple of weekends ago they’d found the perfect place, a cosy flat in Leytonstone with its own pocket-sized garden.

      ‘Nat?’

      ‘Yeah, that’s fine,’ she replied. ‘Should give me plenty of time to box stuff up.’ She hoped her voice didn’t betray the sudden tightening she felt in her chest. Wasn’t this what she wanted? Kershaw told herself. To settle down, share her life with Ben?

      ‘You sure you’re cool with this?’ he asked. ‘Moving in together, I mean. If it’s too soon for you …’

      The note of uncertainty in his voice prompted a rush of guilt. She tried to nail what it was, exactly, that was giving her the heebie jeebies. The prospect of giving up her independence after living on her own for the last two years? Partly, yes, but that wasn’t the whole story. Was it because Ben was sometimes a bit, well, too nice? The thought had barely entered her head before she dismissed it, angry with herself.

      ‘Of course I’m sure,’ she reassured him. ‘I was just … surprised that we were getting in so quickly.’

      After hanging up, she gave herself a stern chat. Too nice?! If you don’t want to end up lying dead and undiscovered in some grimy flat being eaten by your own cats, Natalie Kershaw, you’d better waken your ideas up.

      She was pushing open the office door when there came a familiar voice in the corridor behind her.

      ‘Ah! DC Kershaw!’ It was her old boss Detective Sergeant Bacon. ‘I see you’ve acquired a new hairstyle.’

      ‘Yes …’ Suddenly self-conscious, her hand flew to her blonde hair, newly styled in an asymmetric cut, one side three inches shorter than the other.

      Hitching up the trousers of his ancient suit, he squinted down at her hair.

      ‘If I was you, I’d go back and ask for a refund,’ he confided. ‘Whoever cut it must’ve been three sheets to the wind.’

      ‘Yeah, I’ll do that, Sarge,’ she grinned. He’d gained even more weight, and lost a bit more gingery hair from the top of his head, but he was still the same old Streaky.

      ‘Anyway. Your arrival couldn’t be more timely – we’ve got an old chum of yours in interview room 2.’ Opening a door labelled Remote Monitoring Room, he winked at her. ‘You can watch it all on the telly.’

      After Streaky shut the door behind her, and Kershaw took in the hulking figure slouched in a chair on the video feed, she was properly gobsmacked.

      What the fuck? The last time she’d laid eyes on Janusz Kiszka had been in Bart’s hospital, after he’d got himself on the wrong end of a vendetta with a Polish drug gang. Since Kershaw’s conduct in that case had earned her a disciplinary hearing, the sight of the big Pole’s craggy mug, today of all days, was about as welcome as a cockroach in the cornflakes.

      Hearing Streaky finish reading him the official caution, she forced herself to concentrate.

      ‘According to the statement you gave my colleague yesterday,’ said Streaky. ‘You’re aware that your friend James Fulford was stabbed to death on his doorstep at around 5.30 p.m. on Monday?’

      Fuck! Kiszka was being questioned about a murder?

      ‘Could you just refresh my memory as to your whereabouts at that time, Mr Kissa-ka?’

      Kershaw grinned. Streaky knew perfectly well how to pronounce Kiszka’s surname: he was mangling it deliberately to wind him up.

      ‘The William Morris Gallery,’ said Kiszka.

      ‘Go to a lot of galleries, do you?’

      He shrugged. ‘I showed the other cop the text Jim sent me. He said he was going to be late for our meeting, so I had time to kill.’

      Streaky paused, letting the word dangle in the air.

      ‘The trouble is, Mr Kiss-aka, I had one of my most experienced officers take your photo down to this … furniture museum – and there wasn’t a single member of staff who remembers you.’

      ‘It’s the only photo I had to hand,’ he hefted one shoulder. ‘It isn’t a very good likeness.’

      Streaky opened the file in front of him and leafed through some papers.

      ‘Of course, this isn’t the first time you’ve been in a police interview room,’ he went on, fixing his suspect with a deadpan stare. ‘You were questioned in the course of another murder investigation a couple years back: one that involved drugs, shooting, and three dead bodies if memory serves.’

      ‘I’m a private investigator – it’s an occupation that sometimes requires me to deal with unsavoury characters,’ said Kiszka, staring right back.

      ‘I’ll bet it does,’ said Streaky, his voice heavy with irony. ‘But you never really explained how someone who claims to make his living chasing bad debts and missing persons ends up in a Polish gangster’s drug factory.’

      ‘Does your file mention that if I hadn’t been there the body count would have been even higher?’ he growled.

      Streaky