the time he walked into Romescu’s apartment block, twin needles of blue glass overlooking the old Millwall dock, not far from Canary Wharf, he’d completely immersed himself in his cover story.
Reaching inside his overalls, he pulled out a piece of paper and handed it to the skinny guy on reception, who, in a couple of years’ time, might be old enough to start shaving.
‘Tower Management. Leaking air-conditioning unit in apartment 117,’ he said. How had he ever managed to do his job in the days before the internet, he wondered. Back then, even discovering the name of the management company would have taken hours of phone bashing, and as for photoshopping its logo into a fictional work docket? The idea would have been the stuff of science fiction.
‘I’m really sorry.’ The guy handed the document back to him with an uncertain shrug.
Don’t tell me they’ve changed companies or something, thought Janusz.
‘The concierge is off sick,’ he went on. ‘I’m just a temp from the agency, filling in.’
Alleluja!
Scowling, Janusz looked at his watch. ‘Well, I’ve got four more jobs after this one so I haven’t got time to muck around.’
‘I’ll see if the residents are at home.’ The kid punched out a number on the phone.
With every passing second that the phone went unanswered, Janusz allowed himself to relax a little. He made a production of shifting his half-empty toolbox from one hand to the other, as though it weighed a ton.
Finally, the kid hung up. ‘They’re not in,’ he admitted, gazing up at Janusz like a baby rabbit encountering a bear.
‘Look, here’s the drill,’ sighed Janusz. ‘You take me up to 117 and let me in, I do the job, you sign the docket afterwards to say it’s done.’
The kid was already shaking his head. ‘I can’t. The agency told me I mustn’t leave reception under any circumstances.’
Janusz checked his watch again and raised an eyebrow. ‘Well, I’ll leave you to explain that to the people in 117.’ He started to walk away. ‘Tell them to phone the office to rebook an engineer.’
He hadn’t even reached the door when the kid called him back. ‘What about if I give you the master key and you go up on your own?’
Janusz felt a pang of guilt at the kid’s anxious expression. ‘I don’t know … I’d like to help you out, but strictly speaking, it’s against company regulations.’
‘Who would know, if neither of us says anything?’
Janusz took a moment to examine the toe of his workboot. ‘Go on then,’ he said, finally. ‘But keep it to yourself, or we can both kiss goodbye to our jobs.’
Barbu Romescu’s apartment was located on the 11th floor and his front door, like all the rest, was fitted with a state-of-the-art electronic lock. Janusz slipped the master card into the slot. A green light winked at him. As he pushed the door open, he grinned to himself. The first rule of security: humans were always the weakest link.
When he saw the apartment’s open plan living area, Janusz gave a low whistle. Whatever the nature of Romescu’s mysterious ‘business interests’, they apparently paid very handsome returns. Light coming through the floor-to-ceiling plate glass windows flooded the enormous room, bouncing off the highly polished wooden floor, some sort of golden-coloured hardwood. To his right stood a gleaming, minimalist kitchen. He looked it over with an ex-builder’s eye, noting the way in which the designer, not satisfied with hiding every appliance from view, had even eliminated door handles from the black acrylic units.
Testing how they worked – the merest touch on the surface caused it to swing open silently – Janusz chanced upon the fridge. He surveyed its contents with an expression of mystified disgust. Having worked alongside Romanians on building sites he knew they could put away pork, dumplings and a good feed of beer with as much gusto as any God-fearing Pole, yet all Romescu had in his fridge was vegan yoghurt, a tray of alfalfa sprouts, a carton of egg white and some goji juice.
Padding around the living area, Janusz had to admit that it wasn’t half bad for a dodgy Romanian ‘businessman’. The furniture looked expensive yet elegant, and the artworks on the walls were the kind you might find in an upmarket yoga studio. The largest, at around three metres across, was a rather good hyperrealist painting of a butterfly in flight, sunlight making its pale blue wings translucent.
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