it came to the fiendish ‘run and shoot’ exercise. Sprint for 100 metres, adopt shoot position shouted by instructor, one shot at target. Miss and you fail. Exceed 45 seconds and you fail.
After five or six weeks, Kershaw was hitting body mass on the bad-guy-shaped target, 46, sometimes 48, times out of a possible 50.
By the last day, of the sixteen who’d started, only Kershaw and seven others had gone the distance and qualified – and she’d risen to become the second best shooter of her intake. Later, when everyone was down the local celebrating, she’d picked her moment to collar Lee Carver at the bar. ‘If it hadn’t been for you, Skipper,’ she said, smiling up at him, ‘I probably would have packed it in after the first week.’ He stared down at her, confusion and three pints of Stella narrowing his eyes. ‘So … I got you a thank-you pressie,’ she said, handing him a Boots bag. Left him staring at a bottle of Listerine.
The thought of Lee Carver and his kind getting off on her current predicament did have one positive, though: it iron-plated her resolve to get her firearms authorisation back and prove them all wrong.
Taking a gulp of tea, Kershaw started to go through her email inbox, but found her thoughts drifting back to the day she’d qualified, almost a year ago. At the moment the chief instructor had handed her the little red book that was her authorisation to carry, she’d fizzed like a freshly popped bottle of champagne. But on the heels of the elation came a deep sadness. She’d convinced herself, wrongly as it turned out, that such a big life landmark would bring the return of something she had lost.
Because the worst legacy of getting stabbed hadn’t been the loss of her spleen, but the disappearance of something she valued far more: her dad’s voice. After he’d died of cancer nearly five years ago, she would still hear him popping into her head with one of his sayings or daft gags – his East End drawl, always on the brink of a chuckle, sounding as clear and real as if he was standing next to her. He usually appeared just when she most needed a word of consolation or encouragement – or even, now and again, a telling-off.
But ever since the stabbing – even at the moment she’d won her spurs as a firearms officer – silence. Just when she’d needed him most, his voice had disappeared. Like Scotch mist.
‘Nat? Are you all right?’
Looking up to find Matt’s worried eyes on her, she realised she must have said the phrase – one of her dad’s – out loud.
‘Sorry. Must be going bonkers.’
‘Good job you’re seeing a shrink, then.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘How’s that working out for you by the way?’
‘Like having a root canal and a bikini wax at the same time.’
The phone on her desk trilled. After a brief exchange she hung up, blowing out an exasperated breath.
‘What’s up?’ asked Matt.
‘Guess what I’m gonna be doing the rest of the day?’
Matt shrugged.
‘Cleaning weapons in the armoury. Five years as a cop, two as a detective, all that grief getting my ticket to carry? And now I’ve literally been demoted to oily rag.’
The nail bar business that Kasia co-owned with Barbara stood in one of the farthest reaches of Stratford’s old shopping centre. Built in the early seventies, when poured concrete was the building material of choice for the trend-conscious architect, the mall squatted sulkily in the midst of Stratford’s one-way system, ugly sister to the glittering new towers of Westfield Stratford City across the way.
In fact, Janusz had always preferred the older, shabbier development over the flashy new pretender. For starters, it still housed an old-fashioned market on weekdays that – alongside the familiar ranks of anaemic Dutch tomatoes and golden delicious – now also boasted a Lithuanian stall selling passable kielbasa and decent pickles.
As he pushed open the door of Elegant Nailz, he was hit by a vaporous wave of solvent that made his eyes water. The place was more of a glorified kiosk than a proper shop, the original premises having been split down the middle to create two shop fronts, the other housing a shoe repairers run by a family from Hong Kong. There was barely enough room for three nail tables, but Kasia and Barbara did a brisk enough trade in acrylic and gel extensions to keep them busy past 7 p.m. most evenings.
Barbara was working on the nails of a pretty black girl with long straightened hair. Turning on the tabletop fan, she left her client drying her talons under the air stream and came over to the minuscule reception desk, to embrace him.
‘I kept getting your voicemail,’ he said. ‘So I came straight over. What’s up?’
‘Have you heard anything from Kasia?’ Her anxious eyes scanned his face.
‘Nie. Not for a couple of days.’ Seeing Barbara’s pretty features crumple at his response, Janusz felt a physical sense of dread – as if someone just blasted his gut full of quick-setting cement.
‘I haven’t seen her since Saturday,’ Barbara went on. ‘When she didn’t turn up this morning I wasn’t too worried – Monday mornings are always quiet so she often works from home on the website, or following up email queries. You know me, I am a katastrofa with computers. But she missed three appointments this afternoon and her phone is going straight to voicemail – Kasia’s never done that before.’
After disgorging this rush of information, Barbara glanced over her shoulder and managed a smile at the black girl, still playing an invisible piano beneath the fan dryer. The girl returned the smile – she could see there was some drama unfolding between nail-lady and the big guy in the old-school army-style coat but since they were speaking Polish there was very little point in trying to earwig on their conversation.
Seeing how jittery Barbara was, Janusz took her hands in his and spoke quietly, reassuringly. ‘Dobrze. So she came in on Saturday afternoon, right?’ – as he said it, he saw again Kasia trotting across Highbury Fields, her hair glinting in the sunshine.
‘Tak. Around 4 p.m., in time for the late appointments. She left at seven.’
‘And you’ve had no contact since then?’ He kept his voice low and his eyes locked on hers.
‘Zero.’
‘And … Steve?’
‘I can’t raise him either.’ Barbara’s voice fell to a whisper. ‘It’s as if they both dropped off the face of the earth.’
‘I am sure there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation.’ Janusz dredged up a comforting grin. ‘Maybe she’s sick and Steve was meant to call you to let you know. You know what he’s like.’
She looked doubtful.
‘Look, I’m going to head over to the flat,’ he said. ‘Just to make sure everything’s okay.’
‘Dobrze,’ she sighed, twisting a bangle on her wrist. ‘I hope it’s the right thing to do.’ She met his gaze, before looking away, embarrassed. ‘You might run into Steve.’ As Kasia’s closest friend, Barbara
