Afternoon:
9°c
The first he knew was a phone call, summoning him to a police station in the City. “By the tone of the voice I knew it was something bad. They said it was something in the City. I called Kasha's number again and again. No answer. I knew that at lunchtime most days she was at the gym.”
As Sarajevo-born Nebojsa Dorontic, 39, drove from his home in Hornsey, emergency services were arriving at his wife's gym near Liverpool Street.
Katarzyna Woja — known as Kasha — was a high-flying Polish financier working for fund manager Invesco. The 32-year-old had been involved in a fatal, freak lift accident at the Holmes Place Health Club in Broadgate. The seven-year anniversary of her death is on Friday.
Mr Dorontic is “angry and frustrated” that the case has taken seven years to get anywhere. A civil case is still ongoing. “They didn't have the decency to say seven years ago, We are guilty',” he says, “Now it's way too late.”
He added: “What happened was like something you see in a horror movie. The case has gone on for too long and we will never find out exactly why she died. To me, it's not justice. It is as upsetting for Kasha's family [in Warsaw] as it is for me.”
Mr Dorontic has lived in London for almost 20 years and runs his own recruitment business. He and Ms Woja met here in 1992 and they married in 1998. They had just booked a trip to northern Thailand and Ms Woja had been to the embassy on the morning of her death to sort out her visa. “We thought, We'll go on holiday for the last time and then we'll have time to have kids'.” He pauses. “What can I say?”
Ms Woja was a financier in the pharmaceuticals sector. She grew up in poverty during the communist era in Warsaw. She first came to London as a student. She met Mr Dorontic while working in a shop in Queensway in 1992and moved to London permanently a year later.
She moved her way up through different banks before settling with Invesco, whose offices were near the gym. “She was charming and intelligent, a gentle, emotional lady,” says Mr Dorontic.
Mr Dorontic recalls: “There was me, coming from a war-torn country and her from a communist one. But in London we felt free. I remember in the early days sitting with her in a pizzeria in Whiteley's with both of us saying, I want to make something of myself.'
“Just before she died she had been on CNN talking about the stock market and pharmaceuticals. And she had been quoted in the Wall Street Journal.”
Since her death, Mr Dorontic has moved away from north London, remarried and has two small children, trying to put the past behind him.
“There is an emptiness and you never forget it,” he said. “We were like family to each other because we were both here in London on our own. I don't think it's the sort of thing you ever get over.”
