Three

      The rectangle of plastic snapped open as the last coin clinked through the slot, and Janusz stooped to his peephole. Beyond it, in the centre of a dimly lit windowless room, a slender naked girl writhed around a floor-to-ceiling pole under a shower of multicoloured lights.

      Every trace of her body hair had been shaved or plucked away, making her nakedness absolute, apart from a single stud in her navel. The girl’s movements, timed to the grinding rock music, had a natural grace, but her made-up face was expressionless and her gaze focused on some distant point. Her long fingernails struck the only incongruous note – painted not the usual scarlet, but jet-black.

      Janusz watched just long enough to make sure it was Kasia, then straightened and checked his watch, frowning, and tried to block out the alkaline reek of old semen in his cubicle. The music came to an end, only to be followed by another, smoochier number. Cursing softly, he glanced up at the ceiling and reached into his pocket.

      He could still hear the smoke alarm wailing as he leant against the club’s rear wall enjoying his smoke – his fourth, or maybe fifth, cigar of the day. The last punter, a paunchy guy in his forties wearing a chalk-stripe suit, stumbled out of the fire exit, head bent as he finished fastening his fly. Noticing the big man in the old-fashioned trench coat, he straightened, and pulling out a pack of cigarettes, asked for a light.

      Janusz sparked his lighter, although the guy had to bend forward to reach the flame. Then, blowing out a stream of smoke, the punter planted his feet apart and jabbed his chin over his shoulder. ‘Did you see the bird in there?’ he asked, with a man-to-man chuckle. ‘I’ll bet that’s a road well travelled.’

      Janusz’s face remained impassive, so the guy didn’t notice his right hand clench reflexively into a fist, nor realise how close he was skating to a broken jaw.

      ‘I wouldn’t know,’ said Janusz, taking an unhurried draw on his cigar. ‘I just work here sometimes.’

      The guy gave him an assessing look, trying to work out the accent – posh-sounding, but some foreign in there, too. ‘Yeah? You a bouncer then?’

      Janusz shook his head.

      ‘Work behind the bar?’

      Another shake. Then Janusz looked the guy in the face properly for the first time.

      ‘Look, it’s supposed to be hush-hush,’ he said, ‘but what the hell, today’s my last day in the job.’ He ground his cigar stub out on the wall and discarded it, then leaned closer. ‘I rig the hidden cameras in the peepshow booths,’ he said in a conspiratorial murmur.

      The guy stared at him: ‘Cameras? I’ve never seen a camera in there.’

      Janusz shrugged. ‘That’s because I’m pretty good at my job.’

      The guy’s face was going red now. ‘So you’re telling me … they film the blokes watching the shows?’

      Janusz dipped his head sideways in regretful assent.

      ‘Why the fu …?’ the guy’s voice held a mixture of anger and foreboding.

      ‘It’s a live feed to the internet,’ said Janusz. ‘Apparently, a lot of people will pay good money to watch guys … you know …’, and with an economical gesture he demonstrated the activity he was too polite to put into words.

      Now, the guy’s mouth was opening and shutting like a Christmas carp, and Janusz wondered if he was going to have a stroke or something.

      ‘It’s a … It’s a … disgrace,’ he croaked. He waved a finger up at Janusz, ‘I’m going to …’ and then brandished it at the back door of the club, ‘I’ll report them to …’ Then he wheeled around and went off down the Soho alleyway, still ranting and waving his arms.

      Just then, the girl emerged from the club, wrapped in a black towelling dressing gown. She peered at the retreating figure, who was shouting something about the Human Rights Act, and then up at Janusz.

      ‘What’s with that guy?’ she asked.

      ‘I don’t know,’ he said, with a shrug. ‘London is full of crazy people.’

      She shot him a suspicious look. ‘You haven’t been telling the customers stories again?’ He shook his head, avoiding her eyes, but had to suck in his cheeks to keep from grinning.

      Kasia pulled the robe tighter around her – it was cold – and reached into the pocket for cigarettes. ‘You think you’re so funny, Janusz,’ she said. ‘But if the boss finds out he’ll kick your dupe.’ She raised her chin in the direction of the smoke alarm, which had now settled to a strident beeping: ‘And I suppose that’s nothing to do with you either?’

      The unchivalrous daylight added ten years or more to her face, he thought, but she could still pass for thirty-five, thirty even, no problem.

      ‘I got bored,’ he said.

      She widened her eyes in mock reproach. ‘Oh, a nice compliment. You don’t like my show?’

      ‘Nice body. Piekne,’ he said. ‘But then I knew that already,’ levelling his amused gaze at her. She held the look, trying to look stern, but one side of her mouth lifted, despite herself: the crooked smile that filled his daydreams.

      She bent her dark blonde head to his lighter, steadying his hand a beat longer than she needed to, making his stomach trip. It was funny, but he could never quite connect the woman in front of him with the one he’d seen pole-dancing minutes earlier. That girl was hot stuff, no question, but she didn’t make his insides polka like Kasia did. His jaw tensed as he noticed the yellow tidemark of an old bruise that her make-up couldn’t quite conceal along her cheekbone.

      ‘Listen, Kasia. I paid that chuj Steve a visit this morning.’

      Kasia’s hand jumped to her face.

      ‘Kurwa!’ the curse slipped out before her lips could catch it, ‘… and?’

      He looked amused: she hardly ever swore, and was probably making a mental note to take her misdemeanor to confession.

      ‘I made the case to him that a man does not strike a woman, not even his own wife.’ The words were old-fashioned and his deep voice was reasonable – but his eyes had suddenly gone cold.

      She pulled the lapels of her gown closer. ‘What did he say?’

      ‘My impression was I left him a reformed character,’ he said. ‘But he knows that I am happy to continue our … discussions if necessary.’

      She said nothing, but reached out and briefly touched her cold hands to the sides of his face.

      He pulled back a fraction: he didn’t know why, but the gesture made him angrier than her pig of a husband and his wife-beating habits. Why did a woman like her stay with such a man? Kasia came from a good family and was as smart as a fox – she had a degree from the film school where Polanski and Kieslowski had studied, for Christ’s sake! But he’d already heard her answer to that: ‘love can die but marriage lives for ever.’ And this sleazy job of hers was the couple’s only income. Half a million Poles managed to carve out a living here, but born and bred Londoner Steve could never find work. It was too easy to get by on benefit in this country, he reflected, not for the first time.

      No point telling her to leave him, anyway. Like all Polish women she was obstinate as hell, and would tell him to go fuck himself. To cover his expression he dropped his cigar stub and ground it underfoot.

      As Kasia turned away to blow a stream of smoke down the street, he let his eyes rest for a moment on her half-averted profile, her long, beautiful nose. It was what he’d first noticed about her that day, when he’d