Death Can’t Take a Joke. Anya Lipska

      ‘And in all that time since then, you say you’ve just been drinking buddies, good mates, right?’

      ‘Yeah, that’s right,’ he said, pulling a tin out from his pocket.

      Kershaw wrinkled her nose, remembering the little stinky cigars he smoked.

      ‘No smoking in here I’m afraid, Mr Kiss-aka,’ said Streaky, pointing at a sign. ‘So, you’ve never had any involvement in this gym he runs in Walthamstow?’

      Kiszka shook his head.

      ‘No business dealings of any kind with each other? No property deals, for instance?’

      ‘No, nothing like that.’

      Kershaw noticed he’d started tap-tapping his index finger on the cigar tin. A sign of impatience? Or a guilty conscience?

      Streaky inserted the tip of his little finger into his ear. After rooting around for a few seconds, he examined the results of his excavation with a thoughtful expression.

      ‘How old are you, Mr Kiss-aka? Fifty-something?’

      ‘I’m forty-five,’ he growled.

      ‘Oh, sorry,’ said Streaky, feigning surprise. ‘Still, lots of people find the old memory banks start to let them down in their forties, don’t they?’

      ‘My memory is perfectly serviceable,’ he drawled – but Kershaw could tell from the set of his jaw that he was struggling to control his temper. For all his apparent cool and his old-school way of talking, Kiszka could still make the air around him buzz with the possibility of violence.

      Streaky took a document from the file in front of him and pushed it across the table.

      ‘For the benefit of the tape, I have passed the interviewee a copy of the deeds held by the UK Land Registry for Jim’s Gym, Walthamstow, dated the 11th of November 1992.’

      Kiszka picked up the document.

      ‘Would you care to confirm that that is your name on the first page, Mr Kiss-aka?’

      As he examined it, the furrows on Kiszka’s face deepened.

      ‘We all have forgetful moments,’ said Streaky. ‘But I’m finding it hard to believe it slipped your mind that you’re the owner of Jim’s Gym.’

      Kershaw gasped. Game to Streaky!

      She held her breath as Kiszka opened his mouth to speak, then shut it again. He pushed the document back across the table.

      ‘I want to call my solicitor.’

       Six

      ‘Just give me fifteen minutes with him, Sarge,’ said Kershaw. ‘We spent a lot of time together on that job so I know all his little tics and tells. I might get something useful out of him, even if it’s not admissible.’

      Kershaw was perched on the edge of Streaky’s desk as she made her pitch for a chat with Kiszka, now installed in one of the holding cells downstairs. As the new girl on the squad, she was well aware she should be keeping her head down, restricting herself to ‘getting to know you’ chitchat with the other DCs, gathering crucial first day intelligence like where the biros and the digestives were kept – but that might mean her missing the chance to get herself drafted onto the Fulford case.

      As Streaky stared into the distance, apparently lost in a daydream, Kershaw waited, knowing that if she pushed him, he’d more than likely blow his top.

      ‘Copernicus!’ he said finally, slapping the surface of his desk.

      ‘Sarge?’

      ‘I’ve been trying to remember the name of Kiszka’s cat,’ he said. ‘You mentioned it once – when you were investigating the murder of that Polish girl he was mixed up in. Stuck in my mind. Not many people name their moggies after Renaissance astronomers.’

      ‘Er?’

      ‘Nicolaus Copernicus.’ Streaky enunciated each syllable as though talking to a twelve-year-old. ‘Polish. Established the principle of heliocentrism.’ Peeling the foil back from a half-eaten pack of Rolos, he offered her one. ‘Didn’t they teach you anything at that comprehensive school of yours? Plaistow, wasn’t it?’

      ‘Poplar actually, Sarge,’ she said, taking one. ‘And I have heard of Copernicus. I’m just not quite sure what it has to do with Kiszka being a suspect.’

      ‘It tells me, detective, that he’s not your average villain,’ said Streaky, through a mouthful of chocolate. ‘Our Mr Kiszka fancies himself as a bit of an intellectual.’

      Kershaw couldn’t disagree with that. Kiszka had always struck her as a man bristling with contradictions. He might have a science degree and the tendency to talk like someone out of a Jane Austen novel, but she knew from experience he wouldn’t hesitate to throw a punch – or break the law – in pursuit of an investigation.

      ‘So if it was him who shivved his so-called mate – and he’s top of my list at the moment,’ Streaky went on, ‘he might be tempted to play games with us.’

      ‘And let something slip.’

      ‘Exactamundo.’

      She jumped to her feet. ‘So I can have a chat with him?’

      He turned his pale blue gaze on her. ‘I hope you’re not planning any of your old antics,’ he said. ‘Like restaging your famous impression of a one-woman crime-solving machine.’

      ‘No, Sarge!’ She felt her cheeks redden, aware of her new colleagues earwigging on the conversation. ‘Nothing like that.’

      He pointed the half-empty pack of Rolos at her. ‘Don’t make me regret bringing you here.’

      ‘No, Sarge.’

      ‘Alright, then,’ he said. ‘Take him a cuppa. And since you’re putting the kettle on, mine’s a builder’s. Three sugars.’

      Kershaw found Kiszka pacing up and down his cell wearing a thunderous expression. He looked huge in the tiny space, like Daddy Bear in Goldilocks’ kitchen.

      ‘I brought you a cup of tea,’ she said brightly.

      He glanced at the offering: ‘I don’t drink tea with milk in it,’ he said, and threw himself down on the narrow bunk. He’d shown not a flicker of recognition or surprise on seeing her again.

      ‘I’ll have it then,’ she said, settling herself at the foot of the bed and taking a sip. Close up he appeared pretty much unchanged – the same caveman good looks, maybe a bit thinner about the face. ‘It must be getting on for two years since I saw you last.’

      ‘Yeah, and it looks like the cops haven’t got any more intelligent in that time,’ he growled.

      She had a sudden vision of their first meeting, a no-holds-barred stand-off which had ended with her – erroneously, as it later turned out – accusing him of murdering a girl, a Polish waitress found dead in a hotel room.

      ‘Well, you’ve not been exactly helpful so far, have you?’

      ‘I’ve told them everything I know, twice over! I showed them Jim’s text, his wife has vouched for me – what the fuck else can I do?’ He ran a hand through his dark brown hair, threaded with silver here and there, she noticed. ‘I apologise for the bad language,’ he added after a moment.

      Kershaw didn’t say so, but from the point of view of the investigation, the text simply put Kiszka in the right place at the right time for the murder.

      ‘So why did you clam up when the Sarge showed you that mortgage deed?’

      ‘No comment.’

      She paused. ‘Look, Janusz,’