Where the Devil Can’t Go. Anya Lipska

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       Five

      Pani Tosik had been insistent about one thing: once Janusz had discovered Weronika’s whereabouts, he was not to contact her himself but simply to report back with the address. The old lady had decided that the best strategy was to forward the girl the ‘heartbreaking’ letter her mama had sent, begging her to return to the restaurant. But all he had to go on was a single crappy lead: a sticker on the back of the photo of Weronika, printed with the name of a photographer’s in Leytonstone, a couple of miles east of Stratford.

      Janusz took the Northern Line south from Angel to Bank, where he’d change for the eastbound Central Line. He hated the tube, refused to use it in rush hour, and if there was a crush on the platform he’d usually head straight back up the escalator. But today he was too pushed for time to do the three-bus Islington to Leytonstone safari.

      Sitting in the half-full carriage, he caught the eye of a little girl, aged about eight or nine, sitting across from him with her mother. He pulled the cross-eyed gargoyle face that used to crack his boy, Bobek, up at that age. She grinned. Then he noticed the words picked out in sequins across her flat, pink-T-shirted chest – FUTURE PORN STAR – and the smile dropped from his face like a theatre curtain.

      As the pair got up at the next stop, the girl sketching a shy wave goodbye, the mother shot him a searching look. The cheek of it! – he thought. You dress your little girl like a trainee whore, then treat me like a paedophile.

      He emerged from the shelter of Leytonstone tube still wearing a thunderous frown, and headed for the high street, a raw wind wrapping the trench coat about his legs. Leytonstone reminded him of how Highbury had looked when he first arrived in London. The greengrocers’ displays bloomed with strange foreign vegetables – the kind he’d only ever seen in a curry – and dark-skinned men wrapped in coats argued over glasses of coffee at pavement tables. He stepped into the road to let a young couple with a baby buggy pass, and they thanked him in broken English, their singsong lilt marking them out as fellow Poles. He found himself scanning the crowded pavements for Weronika’s high cheekbones.

      The photographs on display in the window of Parry’s featured the usual suspects – wedding couples, aspiring models, obese children – but on closer examination, Janusz could see that the shots had a certain flair. Inside, a young man with a ginger goatee sat behind the counter reading Photographer’s Weekly.

      Janusz had decided his best strategy would be to act the dumb Polak, just off the plane from Lodz. He did a lot of smiling and nodding for openers, then showed the guy the photo. ‘You make this picture …?’

      As the guy studied the photo, a look of professional pride came over his face.

      ‘Yeah, I remember – she was very beautiful, this girl.’

      Janusz tapped himself on the chest. ‘My sister,’ he said with a modest smile.

      ‘Right,’ said the guy, dropping his gaze. He handed the photo back, as though suddenly keen to get shot of it.

      Janusz pretended not to notice. ‘She came here with her boyfriend,’ he said – a guess rewarded with a wary nod. ‘This man is my good friend,’ he explained, his jaw starting to ache from all the grinning. ‘Today, he has to work, but he asks me to come because he likes to get more photos, to make her folio?’

      ‘Her modelling portfolio,’ the guy said, looking relieved. ‘Yeah, I did the shots two or three weeks ago.’ He started leafing through a tray of folders behind the counter.

      Don’t ask me for a name, prayed Janusz.

      ‘What’s his name again …?’

       Kurwa.

      ‘Ah, here it is. Pawel Adamski,’ his pronunciation suggesting he was used to Polish customers. He spread a series of black and white photos across the counter like a pack of cards, and examined them, frowning, before selecting one and turning it round to face Janusz.

      ‘I think this is the best one,’ he said.

      It was a startling image. Shot from above, Weronika lay on her back, eyes half-closed and lips parted, naked beneath a white sheet that reached from her feet to her chest. The lighting had been arranged to capture the subtly different shades of white in the scene – the chalky pallor of her face, the marble-like arms, the ivory sheen of the silk shading into grey where it fell into folds. Her hands lay loosely cupped, one within the other, on her stomach, lacking only a bouquet to complete the portrait of a virgin bride. Or a dead one, thought Janusz.

      He shuffled through the rest of the shots, but couldn’t find anything that might explain the photographer’s earlier discomfiture.

      ‘They’re good,’ he said, then, taking a guess, leaned toward the guy. ‘But I think he meant the other ones,’ he hissed. ‘How you call it? The “Page 3” stuff?’

      The guy hesitated for a moment, then turned to open a filing cabinet.

      ‘Your friend directed these ones,’ he said, his tone guarded, pushing a folder across the counter with the tips of his fingers. ‘All I did was set up the lights for him.’

      Inside was a contact sheet of a couple of dozen shots, colour this time.

      Wearing only a black G-string, Weronika struck a variety of unimaginative soft porn poses – sticking her butt out … pushing her smallish breasts together … reclining with legs spread. Not much chiaroscuro in this lot, thought Janusz. No wonder the photographer had panicked when Janusz announced himself as Weronika’s brother – he’d probably thought he was in for a kicking.

      The images offended and depressed him. The amateurish raunchiness of the girl’s pose jarred with the innocence of those rounded lips, and her eyes looked glazed, as though she were drunk – or on drugs. In that moment, he decided he couldn’t keep his promise simply to pass on the couple’s address to pani Tosik. No. When he found them he’d do his best to persuade the girl to dump her lowlife boyfriend and come home, and then he’d give Pawel Adamski a short sharp lesson in gentlemanly conduct.

      Janusz tapped the contact sheet. ‘You can send him a copy in the post?’ he asked the guy.

      The guy checked the cover of the folder. ‘Sure, but I’ll need an address – he didn’t leave one, or even a phone number.’