Death Can’t Take a Joke. Anya Lipska

the more time we spend fu… messing around following false trails, the less chance we have of finding the killers.’ Actually, Kiszka was probably more than capable of killing someone in a murderous rage, Kershaw reflected, but the important thing right now was to gain his trust.

      Janusz stared at her for a long moment, taking in the little heart-shaped face under the strangely lopsided hair, the steely set of her lips. His determination to find the chuje who had murdered Jim was as strong as ever but he had to admit it couldn’t hurt to have the cops looking for them, too.

      ‘Anything I say to you is off the record, agreed?’

      ‘Absolutely.’ This was true: although technically he was still under caution, the CPS took a seriously dim view of unrecorded unofficial chats, so nothing Kiszka told her could be used in court.

      ‘Because I’m not making any further statements until I talk to my solicitor.’

      ‘Understood.’

      He exhaled. ‘When I first met Jim, he wasn’t in great shape. He’d had a … breakdown, I suppose you’d call it – after fighting for his country.’

      ‘Yeah, the Sarge mentioned he was a Falklands veteran.’

      ‘A Royal Marine. He was no coward – they gave him a medal for bravery under fire.’ He frowned at her, making sure she took the point. ‘Anyway, by ‘92, he was just starting to get himself straightened out and he came up with the idea of starting a gymnasium – there wasn’t anything like that in Walthamstow back then. He found a spot he reckoned was perfect for it. A derelict space, under the railway …?’ He sketched a curved structure in mid-air.

      ‘A railway arch?’

      ‘Yes, a railway arch.’

      ‘And you bought it for him?’

      He snorted. ‘No! He’d saved up for a deposit while working on the building sites – but he needed a loan to make up the rest and pay for the renovations, the machinery and so on.’

      Kershaw paused, remembering that according to the system, Fulford had previous. ‘But no one would lend him the money … because of his criminal record? Assault, wasn’t it?’

      ‘The guy deserved it,’ said Janusz. ‘It was just after Jim had got out of military hospital – he’d had to have months of skin grafts – when some imbecyl buttonholed him at the bar. Told him that the men who’d fought the Falklands War were “Thatcher’s stooges”.’

      Kershaw winced.

      ‘The guy was lucky to get away with a broken jaw,’ said Janusz. ‘But the law didn’t see it that way.’

      Back then, he recalled, no one had heard of PTSD: in fact, the judge who sent Jim down for six months said he was making an example of him because his behaviour had been ‘unfitting for a veteran of Her Majesty’s forces’.

      ‘So we had to make out the loan was for me. I signed all the paperwork, and the deeds were put in my name.’

      ‘So why didn’t you tell DS Bacon all this when he asked?’

      ‘I’d completely forgotten! I haven’t thought about it in twenty years.’

      ‘Did anyone else know about the arrangement? His wife, for instance?’

      ‘I don’t know,’ he shrugged. ‘He might have told Marika when they got married, I suppose. He didn’t keep any secrets from her, if that’s what you mean.’

      Kershaw’s antennae twitched. At the mention of Jim’s other half, Kiszka seemed suddenly defensive, like he was nursing a guilty conscience. Had he been having an affair with his best mate’s wife?

      In truth, the cause of Janusz’s discomfiture lay somewhere else entirely. Remembering the sorrowful look on the face of the girl, Varenka, as she left flowers outside Jim’s house he’d been struck by a sudden thought. Had his mate and the mystery girl been lovers? No way, he told himself, Jim wasn’t the type.

      He stood up to indicate their meeting was over, dwarfing Kershaw. ‘It’s been a pleasure to remake your acquaintance,’ he said, bestowing his most charming mittel European smile on her. ‘But now, perhaps you would be good enough to find out whether my solicitor has arrived.’

      Back in the office, Kershaw had barely had ten minutes to commit the names of her fellow DCs to memory before Streaky called everyone together for a briefing.

      ‘As you all know, we’ve pulled in James Fulford’s Polish chum Janusz Kiszka for questioning,’ Streaky told his audience: Kershaw, Ackroyd, three other DCs – two male, one female – and the Crime Scene Examiner. He brandished Kiszka’s arrest mugshot. ‘It turns out that Kiszka was the real owner of the gym Fulford ran. A fact uncovered due to the hard graft of DC Ackroyd who has spent two days wrestling with the jobsworths over at the Land Registry.’

      All eyes turned to Adam Ackroyd – sitting next to Kershaw – who blinked rapidly and smiled. She had warmed to him when they were introduced – they were about the same age and had both done criminology at uni. But now she felt a little surge of competitiveness: at Canning Town CID she’d been the one getting the gold stars from Streaky.

      ‘Mr Kiszka is currently enjoying our hospitality in the guest accommodation downstairs,’ Streaky went on. ‘But we’re a long old way from nailing him for the murder, so let’s go back to basics – what we know and what we can rule out. Adam?’

      Ackroyd swivelled in his chair so everyone could hear him. ‘The neighbour at number 159 saw two males in hoodies running from the scene at around 5.45 p.m. One was around six foot, slim build, and the other was an inch or two shorter and with a more muscular build. They were both wearing gloves and balaclavas, so no clue as to ethnicity.’

      ‘Did the neighbour mention if either of them wore anything green?’ the female DC asked.

      ‘No, nothing like that,’ said Ackroyd. ‘Mind you, even the B-Street boys wouldn’t be thick enough to wear the bandana while committing a murder.’

      As a low chuckle ran round the team, Kershaw felt suddenly in the dark, hit by the realisation that she knew sod-all about her new patch.

      Streaky must’ve caught her look. ‘The B-Street gang are the local pond life,’ he said. ‘They were the soldiers for our local drug baron, Turkish bloke by the name of Arslan who recently got sent down for twenty years. The drugs boys raided one of his lock-ups and found 100 kilos of Afghan heroin cunningly disguised as china tea sets.’

      ‘They still account for most of the area’s drug dealing, street robbery, stabbings and so on,’ the girl added. Sophie. Sophie Edgerton: that was her name, Kershaw suddenly remembered. ‘And they wear green bandanas – it’s, like, their gang colours.’

      ‘Anyway, we’ve more or less ruled out a random doorstep mugging,’ said Ackroyd. ‘On the other side of Hoe Street, maybe. But it just doesn’t happen in the Village.’

      ‘And it feels too specific, anyway,’ said Kershaw. Strictly speaking, as a newbie she should really shut up and listen, but she couldn’t help herself.

      ‘Explain yourself, Natalie,’ said Streaky, although she knew he’d guessed where she was coming from.

      ‘Well … I don’t know the area,’ she said, ‘but looking at the map, it seems to me if you’re gonna do a quick and dirty mugging, you’d choose a house at the end of a road – so you’re in and out fast? Instead they’ve risked going all the way up this great long road, Barclay Road.’ She shrugged. ‘If you ask me, this was a targeted killing. The perpetrators knew exactly who they were after.’

      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