Happy Days (32 page)

He tipped his glass to his throat and swallowed the contents in one. Then he was gone.

Marie told Ezzie to turn the telly off. No one wanted to break the silence. Finally it was Stu who asked about Cesar.

‘Just who is this guy?’

‘I haven’t a clue, my love.’ Marie glanced at her watch. ‘I was hoping we might find out.’

Paul Winter finally made contact with Marie past midnight. He was in a hotel near Heathrow. He was sorry he hadn’t returned her calls.

‘What’s going on?’

Marie explained what she’d learned from the accountant. None of this was news to Winter.

‘We’re fucked, my love,’ he said. ‘Excuse my French.’

‘As bad as that?’

‘Probably worse. I’ve been trying to explain the facts of life for the best part of a year. In the end you just give up. It’s like talking to a child.’

Marie mentioned the bridging loan Bazza appeared to have negotiated. She didn’t know the details, but her husband seemed to have pledged the last few bricks of the house not already held by the bank.

Winter wanted to know more about the loan. Where was it coming from? Who had Bazza tapped up?

‘His name’s Cesar. He’s a Polish guy. As far as I know, he’s local.’

‘Cesar Dobroslaw?’

‘Why are you laughing?’

‘He’s a gangster, my love. Worse than that, he’s a Scummer, lives in a huge pad over in Rownhams. Baz must be desperate.’ Scummer was Pompey-speak for anyone who lived in Southampton. Not a compliment.

‘Does he have the money, this Cesar?’ Marie asked.

Winter said yes. Dobroslaw was a wealthy man. The last time Winter had tried to take a proper look, one of his goons had kicked the shit out of him in a Portakabin beside Southampton Docks.

‘Kicked the shit out of you?’

‘Me. Dobroslaw’s no gentleman. He settles arguments the way Baz does. Birds of a feather, my love.’

Winter asked about the terms of the loan, knowing Dobroslaw would love to warm his hands at a bonfire of Mackenzie’s assets. Marie said again that she had no details.

‘He’ll screw us –’ Winter yawned ‘– and he’ll enjoy every last second.’

Marie fell silent. It had been a very long day, deeply depressing, and every conversation she had seemed to make things worse. At length she roused herself and asked Winter what he was doing in London.

‘You don’t want to know, my love.’ He was laughing again. ‘Tell Baz I’m on the case.’

WARSAW: THURSDAY, 8 APRIL 2010

Winter was at the big central railway station in Warsaw by mid-morning. The place was awash with scarlet-faced drunks and there wasn’t a single signboard that made the slightest sense. Finally he located the ticket office and bought himself a single to Lublin.

The train left within twenty minutes, clattering out through the suburbs of Warsaw on a day of filmy sunshine sharpened by a biting easterly wind. To his relief, he had a compartment to himself. He’d been up since four in the morning and by the time they hit the open country he was asleep.

The ticket collector woke him up a couple of hours later. It turned out he’d spent some time in the UK visiting relatives in Norfolk and spoke decent English. He also lived in Lublin, and when Winter showed him the address Irenka had emailed him for Pavel Beginski, he drew a pencilled map. The bar, he confirmed, was called Krzywa Wieza. He’d never been there himself, but a friend of his knew it well. Apparently it had changed hands recently and gone downhill, since when his friend, along with the other regulars, had taken their money elsewhere.

Winter thanked him and pocketed the map. He took a cab from Lublin station and sat back as the driver eased his way through heavy traffic, heading for the city’s industrial quarter. The road was flanked by high-rise flats. Smokestacks loomed
beyond. On the plane coming over, flicking through the Polish airline magazine, he’d read about the unforgettable hive of cobbled streets that made up the Old Town. Lublin, it seemed, was bidding to become the next must-visit Euro-destination. Fat chance.

The cab dropped Winter in a side street off a major road that funnelled traffic out of the city. It was raining by now, and Winter ducked into the shelter of a shop across the road. The Krzywa Wieza, as far as he could see, was off the plot. The windows had been boarded up and a new-looking chain and padlock secured the front door. It was a two-storey building, flaking grey render, and the curtains in the two upstairs windows were pulled tight. If this was the key to Operation
Gehenna
, thought Winter, the prospects were deeply unpromising.

He lingered for a moment, wondering what to do. The shop had the look of a neighbourhood convenience store. If he was after local knowledge, this might be the place to start.

The woman behind the counter spoke no English. Winter had bought a copy of this morning’s
Telegraph
at Heathrow as a prop for the video session with Beginski. He got it out of his holdall and carefully wrote Pavel Beginski’s name across the top of the paper, big capital letters, and pointed at the property across the road. The woman fetched her glasses and squinted at the name. Then she nodded.

‘
Tak
.’

‘He lives there?’ Winter had no idea how to mime a question like this. ‘Is he there? Now?’

The woman didn’t understand. She came round from behind the counter and took Winter out to the street. Then she pointed at one of the upstairs windows.

‘He does live there?’

The woman looked confused again, then closed her eyes and laid her head against her flattened hands.

‘He’s asleep?’

‘
Tak
.’ She looked pleased. ‘Sleep.’

She stepped back inside the shop, leaving Winter on the street. He put the paper back in the holdall and crossed the road. Whorls of fading graffiti decorated the render at street level. There was no bell beside the door. He rapped hard on the wooden panel and stepped back, looking up at the curtained windows. Nothing. He did it again, louder. Still no response. He was about to head down the road and try and find some way of circling the property when he became aware of two men crossing the street. They wore plain clothes and were young, crop-haired, tidy. Cops, Winter thought.

One of them spoke a little English. His leather jacket was zipped up against the chill of the wind. He asked what Winter was doing.

‘I’ve got a friend.’ Winter nodded at the bar. ‘I’m paying a visit.’

The rain was harder now. The guy with the leather jacket indicated a black Skoda parked across the street. ‘Come,’ he said.

When Winter resisted the pressure on his arm he found himself looking at a laminated ID card. He was right.
Policja
.

The car smelled of cheap tobacco. Winter sat in the back.

‘You’re English?’

‘Yes.’

‘Passport?’

Winter handed it over, then stared out at the rain while the guy in the leather jacket checked the airline tickets Winter had slipped inside and then flicked to the back page of the passport and carefully wrote down the details. When he’d finished, he bent to the radio. The conversation went on for longer than Winter might have expected. He didn’t understand a word but assumed they were checking him out against various databases. Thank God for Karl Sparrow, he thought.

The woman who’d helped him had appeared in the doorway of the shop. She was looking at the car and seemed to know
what was going on. When she realised Winter was watching her she disappeared again.

The cop in the leather jacket had finished with the radio. He returned Winter’s passport and then pointed at his bag. Winter handed it over. The cop unzipped it, peered inside. The sight of the camera didn’t seem to trouble him. He zipped up the bag again and passed it back. Then Winter heard a metallic click as he released the locking mechanism on the rear door.

‘Goodbye,’ the cop said. ‘Have a nice day.’

Out in the street again, Winter was aware of the cops watching him as he walked away. He turned up the collar of his suede car coat, spotting a café at the next corner. He ducked inside, glad of the warmth, and pointed at the coffee machine.

‘Big.’ He made an expansive gesture with his hands. ‘With sugar.’

Marie authorised transmission of the house deeds to Dobroslaw’s solicitor shortly after lunch. In a brief early-morning encounter with her husband she’d flatly refused to do anything until he told her a great deal more about this sudden addition to their social circle.

‘He’s not a mate, Ma. It’s not like that.’

‘That’s what Paul said.’

‘You’ve talked to him?’

‘Of course I have. At least he gives me answers.’

‘And what did he say?’

‘He said the guy was a gangster. And he said he’d once had Paul beaten up.’

‘Gangster’s harsh, Ma. The guy runs a decent business.’

‘And the beating-up thing?’

‘That was unfortunate.’

‘But true?’

‘Yeah.’ Mackenzie laughed. ‘Paulie’s fault. He should have seen it coming.’

With this Mackenzie had brought the conversation to an
end. He’d phone her later to tell her more, and when he did so – from the lobby of the Buckland Community Centre – he tried to convince her that there was another side to Cesar Dobroslaw.

‘This guy’s a Pole, Ma. That’s where he begins and ends. Southampton’s full of Poles, has been for ever – hundreds of them, thousands of them – and he’s bang at the top of the pile. Does loads of community stuff, knows them all, digs them out of the shit when times get hard, sprays money around when he has to. Pillar of the fucking community, our Cesar.’

Marie wasn’t sure whether her husband was making this stuff up but gave him the benefit of the doubt. A sleepless night had also convinced her that the last thing they needed was an ongoing ruck. The coming weeks and months, she suspected, were going to be tough. Better to hang in there together.

‘I’m amazed he’s not standing for Parliament,’ she said drily.

‘Very funny, Ma. You talk to the bank yet?’

‘No. But I will.’

Winter, after a second coffee, was still reviewing his options. The brief encounter with the police had shaken him. Thank Christ he’d invested
£
3,000 in a new passport. Otherwise he might be looking at the inside of a Polish prison cell while his new friends dialled a number in Malaga.

That was bad enough, but there was something else bothering him. As a working detective Winter had never had much time for coincidence. In his experience it was rare that policemen, who were an expensive resource, just happened to be at the right place at the right time. So how come the two guys had been parked up across the street from Beginski’s bar? Had they been expecting a visitor? And if so, who?

Winter knew he couldn’t expect an answer to these questions. Not, at any rate, until things were a good deal clearer. In the meantime he knew he had to find some way of getting
into the derelict bar down the road. Going back empty-handed was unthinkable.

He paid for the coffees and returned to the street. The cops had gone, no sign of the Skoda. A final try at the bar’s locked front door raised no response, so he set off down the street again, counting the properties one by one until he found an alley on the left. There were puddles in the alley, and he had to manoeuvre himself around a couple of dumped supermarket trolleys before he got to the end. From here a second alley, wider, led past the rear of the houses in the street. He walked back, retracing his steps, tallying the addresses until he was back outside what he judged to be Beginski’s bar. The rear of the property was bare brick. Over a high wall topped with broken glass Winter could see a rusting fire escape that led to a door on the upper floor. The adjacent windows, once again, were curtained.

A wooden door in the wall barred entrance to whatever lay inside. Winter gave it a push. It was locked, but the wood was beginning to rot and the door was loose on its hinges. Winter checked left and right and dumped the holdall. He kicked the door twice, aiming for the lock. On his third attempt he felt something give and a final kick did the trick. The door swung in, shedding bits of rotting timber, and Winter bent to retrieve his holdall before limping quickly inside.

A small courtyard was piled high with junk and rubbish from what must have been a kitchen. The carcase of an oven lay abandoned beside a fridge. Rotting food spilled from sodden cardboard boxes. A mountain of yellow crates was partly shrouded by a dripping tarpaulin. Winter picked his way between the debris. The flagstones were greasy underfoot. A door beside the foot of the fire escape was locked. He thought about kicking it in but abandoned the idea. Doing the back gate had knackered his ankle.

He struggled up the fire escape. To his relief, the door at the top was unlocked. He pushed it open. First he could smell
weed, then came a heavy sour gust of old chip fat. He closed the door behind him and paused to get his breath back. The place was in semi-darkness. When his eyes accustomed to the gloom, he could make out a primitive kitchen: a two-ring electric burner, a tiny fridge, dripping taps in a cracked sink. A table was littered with food. A slice of bread felt soft to the touch. Winter smiled. The woman across the street had been right: someone was living here.

He stepped into a tiny upstairs landing, trying to map the flat in his head. There were three doors. The first was probably a bathroom, the other two maybe bedrooms. Winter chose the middle door, pushing it open, telling himself that this was probably where you’d sleep, away from the noise of the street. He was wrong. The room was bare except for an abandoned pair of muddy boots.

He returned to the landing. A slow
drip-drip
from somewhere ahead told him that the roof was dodgy. He paused in front of the remaining door, then knocked. When nothing happened, he knocked again. Then came a voice, a grunt, something in Polish he didn’t understand. He opened the door and went in. The curtains had seen better days and a thin grey light washed into the room. A big double bed was set against the back wall. Something was stirring under the duvet and Winter waited until a face appeared. Male. White. Unshaven. And very confused.