Death Can’t Take a Joke. Anya Lipska
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miming rough sex, before creasing up at his own joke.
Janusz bent to grind his cigar out on the waste bin, so that Andre couldn’t see the look in his eyes. By the time he’d straightened up, he was smiling. ‘Do me a favour and have a discreet ask around, would you? You know, I’m going to need someone to manage this place once we’ve got the funeral out of the way.’
‘Absolutely. I’ll get straight on it.’ Andre jumped to his feet, doing a passable impression of the young dynamic manager. ‘And don’t worry about things here – I’m all over it.’
Janusz’s gaze swept the office. ‘Where’s Jim’s laptop, by the way?’
Andre’s gaze wavered. ‘No idea, boss. All the gym records get kept on that old piece of junk,’ he used his chin to indicate a scuffed PC in the corner. ‘Like I told the feds, he took his laptop home most nights.’
Janusz knew that Marika had already checked at home and found no sign of it. Had this little punk grabbed the chance to get a free laptop? Or might there be something on the laptop to help solve the puzzle of Jim’s murder, information someone wanted to conceal and had, perhaps, paid good money to get their hands on? Again, Janusz saw Varenka, long legs scissored across the pavement, after she’d been struck by the bullet-headed man. What did she – or her assailant – have to do with Jim?
Janusz opened his wallet and handed Andre his card, followed by two twenties. ‘Send Marika a really nice bunch of flowers,’ he said. ‘With a message, offering sincere condolences from everyone at the gym.’
Kershaw began her second day on Murder Squad with a firm resolution: to make a real effort to get to know her fellow DCs. She was aware that elbowing her way onto the Fulford case probably hadn’t been the most diplomatic way for a newbie to introduce herself. The police force was a bit like the Army: okay, bonding with your fellow detectives might not make the difference between life and death, but she’d learned the hard way that being Billy-no-mates could make a tough job a hundred times harder.
So she was making tea for everyone in the galley kitchen off the main corridor, when she felt a hand slip round her waist. She stomped backwards with her heel, a purely reflex action that brought a yelp of protest. Whipping round, she found Ben’s chocolate-brown eyes screwed up in pain.
‘Fuck! Sorry, Ben – but you really shouldn’t have done that!’
He pulled a rueful grimace. ‘I almost forgot I’m dating the woman who came top of her unarmed combat class.’
‘Remember what we said? About trying to keep out of each other’s way at work?’ she said, turning back to the kettle.
‘Yeah, ‘course. I did make sure there was no one around before coming in,’ he said, rubbing his foot.
Why was he always so goddamn reasonable?
‘Well, it’s not a very good start.’ She was surprised at the vehemence in her own voice.
They’d agreed to keep their relationship quiet at work – neither of them fancied being the butt of banter or fresh meat for canteen gossip, but for Kershaw it went deeper than that. Ever since starting basic training, her strategy for survival in what was still largely a man’s world had been to cultivate a ‘one of the boys’ persona, which, having spent her formative years hanging out with her dad and his mates, came easily to her. But the strategy had a downside: it meant never getting involved with a work colleague.
She had hoped that, with Ben working in a different part of the building, they’d barely see each other. But now, she felt as though the barriers she’d erected between her public and private lives were crumbling – and she didn’t like the feeling one bit.
‘What are you even doing on this floor, anyway?’ she asked, glancing out through the half-open door.
‘I had to see Streaky about something. Oh, and I wanted to ask if I could kip at yours tonight? I’m seeing Jamie Ryan for a drink later and I’ve got an early start at Woolwich Coroners Court – your place is closer than mine.’
That got her attention. ‘Hannah Ryan’s Dad? Has there been a development?’
It was over a year now since a paedophile picked up eleven-year-old Hannah Ryan, who’d been born with Down’s Syndrome, during a trip to her local corner shop. He’d promised her a ride in a rowing boat at a nearby lakeside beauty spot called Hollow Ponds; instead, after sexually assaulting her, he tied a plastic bag round her neck and dumped her body in the lake. But Hannah survived. Ben, who’d been the investigating officer on the case, had shown Kershaw the casefile photo of Hannah before the attack – she could still see her trusting smile under a mop of curly red hair.
‘Nada.’ Ben shook his head. ‘You’d think somewhere between the corner shop and Hollow Ponds somebody would have seen them.’ He frowned at the floor. ‘Officially, the case is still open, but after this long? You and I know it’s dead as a doornail.’
Forensics had been unable to recover any DNA evidence, but one name kept coming up – Anthony Stride, a serial child sex offender who lived three streets away from the Ryans. When Hannah picked Stride out of a book of mugshots, a search warrant was granted and the police found evidence on his computer that he’d boasted about the attack under a pseudonym on a chat room used by abusers.
Kershaw remembered Ben’s jubilation when he’d told her the news. But when the case came to court – disaster. The defence barrister put the DC who’d searched Stride’s flat through the wringer, finally getting him to admit that he’d pulled up the search history on Stride’s PC and clicked through to the chat room. The computer should have been bagged and sent straight to the Computer Crime Unit where specially trained officers would have preserved and cloned the data before investigating it further. The cock-up allowed Stride’s barrister to plant the idea in the minds of jurors that the cops might have interfered with the crucial evidence. Next, cross-questioning Hannah via video link, he’d suggested that since Mr Stride and she were both regulars at the corner shop, she might have seen him there on a previous visit, thus sowing another seed of doubt. In his summing up, he had made much of the idea that, in the light of Hannah’s learning difficulties, it would be ‘all too understandable’ for her to confuse Stride with her real attacker. The jury deliberations took seven hours, but they’d eventually returned a ‘not guilty’ verdict. When the judge revealed that Stride had already served time for offences against young girls, there had been gasps on the jury benches and two female jurors had openly wept.
Kershaw had never seen Ben so rocked. Although he hadn’t been the Ryans’ official FLO – family liaison officer – he’d spent a lot of time with them and grown particularly close to Hannah’s Dad Jamie, a second-generation Irishman who ran the family haulage firm. Ben’s distress at what he saw as his failure to nail Stride so alarmed her that she had even tried – unsuccessfully – to persuade him to put in for counselling. Recently, he’d seemed to be getting back to the old Ben, so finding out that he was still seeing Jamie Ryan socially made her uneasy: getting personally involved in a case was never a good idea. She decided to broach the subject with him when they were properly alone.
For now, she just touched his arm lightly, by way of apology for her bad temper. ‘Of course you can stay. I’m on early turn tomorrow, so let yourself in. I’ll see you in the morning.’
Ten minutes later, she was in mid-chat with fellow DC Sophie, who sat at the desk opposite hers, when Streaky swaggered over.
‘Sorry to break up a good gossip, girls,’ he said.
Sophie bridled. ‘Actually, Sarge, I was just briefing Natalie on our most recent cases.’
‘Swapping knitting patterns more like,’ Streaky chuckled, pushing Kershaw’s paperwork aside to clear space on the desk for his substantial backside.
As Sophie’s