Tell No Tales (18 page)

‘I know that, Mel.’

He counted the uniforms they had. Eleven bodies, not enough to secure the scene and hold off twenty or thirty drunks.

‘Never mind how we’re going to get around them detaining our suspect at knifepoint.’

Zigic shoved his fingers through his hair. ‘Let’s deal with this cock-up first, shall we? Any suggestions?’

‘You could try reasoning with them.’

‘This is exactly the time to be funny.’

‘If it kicks off it would look better for us if we can say we at least tried to calm things down. I’m not expecting them to listen.’

She had a point. He hated thinking like it but in the cold light of day, in Riggott’s office, he was going to have to explain this mess.

He went to fetch a loudhailer from the van, smelled spilled coffee and diesel and testosterone-spiked sweat inside, strong enough to provoke a wave of adrenalin which sent his blood pumping. All those Friday and Saturday nights in uniform, piling out not knowing if you were going to get stabbed or bottled trying to keep the closing-time crowd from killing each other.

And now here he was again.

Clutching the loudhailer he moved through the cordon of widely spaced uniforms, Ferreira at his heels, following him into the stretch of nowhere land behind Shahzad’s men. They stiffened as the crowd they were holding back began surge and jostle, voices rising.

‘E – E – ENL.’

He saw faces twisted with anger and drink, raised fists gripping bottles. A gang of twenty men now, spilling off the pavement into the road, forcing the cars to go around them.

‘E – E – ENL.’

He saw the lengths of wood and the iron bars in the hands of Shahzad’s men as they held firm, shoulder to shoulder, with puffed-out chests thrown at them.

‘Ladies and gentleman,’ Zigic’s voice cut across the chanting, ‘please clear the area. This is a crime scene and your continued presence will result in arrest.’

A bottle smashed a few inches to his left, provoking laughter and jeers. He fought the urge to move away.

‘We need you to clear the area right now.’

Something struck his head and he stumbled, blinking as his vision swam, the crowd smearing into one pulsing mass as they surged through the cordon. He dropped the loudhailer.

Ferreira was shouting as she pulled him away and he heard heavy boots running, men yelling and swearing. His feet didn’t want to cooperate and he half fell a few steps, only Ferreira’s hand under his arm keeping him upright until she dumped him against the wall of a house, blood in his eyes. He grabbed for her but she was already gone.

A high, animal scream cut through the air then the chanting started again, amplified through the loudhailer.

‘E – E – ENL.’

Then there were other hands on him, dragging him across the pavement as bottles rained down around them, one landing close enough to send splinters flying into his ankle. He kept blinking, wiping at his face, but his vision wouldn’t clear.

He heard the distorted whoop of approaching sirens and someone talking to him.

He dropped back against nothing and sprawled flat on the ground, looking up past popping spots at the night sky. Closed his eyes and when he opened them again Ferreira was standing over him, a telescopic baton in her hand, wild-faced and shouting.

‘Move that van – over there.’

He turned his head and saw the Westgate end of the road blocked off with two patrol cars parked bumper to bumper. A man in a plaid shirt tried to scramble over but was forced back by the uniforms positioned behind them, receiving a swift crack on the wrist from a baton which made him howl.

When Zigic turned the other way he saw the white-sheeted corpse a few feet away from him, the fingertips of one hand poking out as if the man was about to throw the sheet aside and get up. Shahzad stood nearby, looking across the scene with a stony expression, talking on his mobile in an urgent voice.

Finally the chanting stopped and the scuffle sounds began to die down.

Zigic struggled up, head spinning, and Ferreira pushed him back against the wall.

‘Take a minute,’ she said. ‘I’ve got it under control.’

As she spoke another man climbed onto the bonnet of a patrol car, stood for a second with his hand raised in a Nazi salute before the uniforms dragged him down, slamming him hard into the pavement.

‘It looks under control,’ Zigic said.

‘We’ve got most of them. Just a couple of heroes left.’

The crowd on the car park were still filming but they’d fallen silent, no more than onlookers now, and as he scanned the area beyond the patrol cars he saw a dozen men sitting on the pavement with their hands cuffed behind their backs, blood on their faces, clothes torn. One by one they were loaded into the back of a waiting van, the drunken bravado bled out of them.

‘You OK now?’ Ferreira asked. ‘How many fingers am I holding up?’

He glanced at her hand. ‘Enough to call it insubordination.’

‘Yeah, you’re fine.’ She took out her tobacco and started to roll a cigarette. ‘Don’t know about you but that all felt pretty organised to me.’

‘It’s Friday night,’ Zigic said, dabbing at the cut on his forehead. ‘One of them was probably passing, called the others.’

‘Not in those numbers.’ She stuck the cigarette in her mouth and began to fight her lighter for a flame which didn’t want to come. ‘We’re hardly in the heart of clubland here. What have you got? Maloney’s over the road, not exactly hospitable to ENL types, and a couple of restaurants I’m guessing they wouldn’t have been in since they don’t serve pie and chips.’

‘We’ve got him, Mel. It doesn’t matter why they were here.’

The lighter finally caught and she took a deep hit. ‘It does if he’s one of them.’

23

ZIGIC WASHED HIS
face in the Gents, nothing but cold water coming out of the taps but it shocked some of the tiredness out of him. He snatched a handful of paper towels from the dispenser and scrubbed at the dried blood which had run down his cheek and neck, soaking into the collar of his jumper. It would stain but the jumper was black so he guessed it didn’t matter.

Gingerly he lifted his hair away from the cut on his scalp, saw that it had clotted finally. The doctor suggested stitches but it would have meant shaving a patch away to do the necessary and he didn’t fancy walking around with an odd bald spot at the front of his head for the next few weeks.

He dumped the towels in the bin and returned to the office.

Wahlia was back at his desk before they left the crime scene, chasing up forensics and contacting the main operator for CCTV footage of the area, now he was collating the first round of witness statements which had come in, everyone happy to cooperate for once.

Grieves and Parr arrived half an hour later, pulled away from their Friday nights, neither too sharp-looking initially but they got their game faces on quickly. Parr was finishing up with the witnesses, two men left but neither spoke English and they’d had to call in a DC from London Road Station to translate. At her desk, fortified with strong black tea and biscuits, Grieves was scanning the lists of previously questioned suspects and their known associates, trying to put a name to the man who was currently sitting stoic in an interview room, waiting for whichever duty solicitor was unfortunate enough to be on call on a Friday night.

He had no identification on him, nothing in his pockets, not even a phone. He had allowed himself to be swabbed and fingerprinted, but so far he hadn’t spoken a word and mutely refused to sign the forms put in front of him.

If he thought that kind of passive protest would save him he was mistaken.

The number of witnesses they had, the forensic evidence, it would be enough for the CPS even if he never said a word between now and his trial.

Zigic walked over to Ali Manouf’s board, pausing to look at the image of his murderer that they had lifted from the CCTV camera, that balaclavaed face no longer a mystery. A third whiteboard stood next to it now, the victim and the killer unnamed still but the suspects column was headed with a photograph sent up from the custody suite.

He was around forty, Zigic thought, square-faced and hard-boned, with a pronounced brow which shadowed his small blue eyes, and dark blond hair thinning at the temples and streaked with grey. An Aryan
Übermensch
long past his prime.

Some people couldn’t meet the camera when they were photographed, shame or fear or guilt would drop their eyes, or they picked a spot away to one side, trying to hide what was going on in their heads, but this man stared straight down the lens, showing the same defiance he’d shown as he sat on the floor with his hands bound and blood on his boots, not a speck of weakness on display.

It was a zealot’s stare and Zigic hoped he considered himself a crusader, a one-man ethnic-cleansing exercise, because if he did at some point he would talk. He’d have to – what was the point of going on a politically motivated killing spree unless you broadcast your twisted ideology to the world?

Ferreira came into the office popping a can of Coke and dropped heavily into her chair.

‘You get something from our rioters?’ Zigic asked.

‘A lot of fascist grandstanding, some questions about whether I’m legal to work here, and three of them want to press charges for police brutality,’ she said. ‘I’ve left uniform to deal with them – public order, isn’t it, really?’

Zigic perched on the corner of her desk. ‘Any of them pressing charges against you?’

‘I know my job better than that. I went in from behind, can’t be ID’d that way.’ She smiled, on and off in a heartbeat. ‘Your head OK now?’

‘It was just a scratch.’

‘I picked up a Zippo,’ she said. ‘Sent it for fingerprinting, I’m pretty sure that’s what hit you if you want to make something out of it.’

‘It’s not worth the hassle.’

‘But it’s nice to know who did it, right. Add them to your shitlist.’

It sounded like a joke but he’d bet she had one, dozens of names, hundreds probably, tucked away somewhere on her phone.

‘Do we know if it was an organised protest?’ he asked.

‘They’re saying not. But a dozen ENL blokes in the area by chance?’ She sneered. ‘Their membership doesn’t hit three figures in Peterborough and a quarter of them just happen to be out and about tonight.’

‘No match on his prints,’ Wahlia said. ‘So if he is ENL he’s kept his head down.’

‘Yeah, no messing about for him, goes straight to multiple murder.’ Ferreira swallowed another mouthful of Coke. ‘He’s old to be clean, don’t you think? Man with that kind of temper.’

‘People can snap for all kinds of reasons,’ Zigic said, thinking of all the murderers who went to the dock with spotless lives behind them, the ones who their friends and family and co-workers couldn’t believe were guilty, because everyone thought they could spot a ‘wrong ’un’ and how could they possibly have missed it?

The phone on Wahlia’s desk rang and he snatched it up quickly, listened to the voice on the other end for a few seconds, thanked them and hung up.

‘Solicitor’s here.’

‘Have we got photos yet?’ Zigic asked.

‘In the printer.’

He collected a dozen sheets of still warm, glossy paper from the tray, lurid, hi-res images of the dead man. It had been a sickening sight at the badly lit crime scene but the stark illumination from the arc lights brought out every detail, the close-ups revealing the true ferocity of the attack, tread marks on the man’s tan skin, a ripped eyelid, a burst of grey matter, the nauseating jut of his broken spinal column pressing against the side of his neck.

Ferreira handed him a cardboard file.

‘You won’t guilt him into confession with them.’

‘I don’t want one,’ Zigic told her, going into his office to collect a few more photos from the pile on his desk.

They headed down to the interview room, the corridor chilled, ghosted by the smell of sweat and vanilla perfume. A burly uniform was stationed outside the door to Interview Room 2, and inside a second, larger man stood guard with his hands tucked into the small of his back, posture ramrod-straight.

The duty solicitor was in the corner, fiddling with her mobile, keeping one eye on her client, who sat at the table in a white plastic coverall, his clothes taken by forensics for testing along with the heavy black boots which had done so much damage.

He didn’t look at them as they entered the room, only stared straight ahead, blinking occasionally, his face blank, hands placed flat on the scarred tabletop.

‘Are you ready?’ Zigic asked. ‘Or do you need some more time with your client?’

The solicitor slipped her mobile away, smoothed her skirt over her hips, nervous-looking as she approached him. ‘No, I don’t think that will help.’

They took their seats around the table and Ferreira started the recording equipment, running down the time and who was present, reminded him of his rights. The man sat in the chair opposite Zigic, looked through him like he didn’t exist, and when Ferreira prompted him to state his name he remained silent.

‘Refusing to tell us who you are won’t make this go away,’ Zigic said.

No reaction. Not even a flicker of eye movement or a slight twitch of his fingers, which were splayed on the table, short, thick fingers with broad nails, neatly cut. They weren’t a worker’s hands, Zigic thought, no nicks or scars, his skin soft.

‘Has he told you who he is?’

The solicitor shook her head. ‘He hasn’t spoken to me. I think you should consider the possibility that he requires medical attention. He may be in shock.’

‘The doctor’s seen him. He’s not in shock,’ Zigic said. ‘Are you?’

His plastic bodysuit crinkled softly as he breathed, but he didn’t reply, only maintained the thousand-yard stare, utterly impervious.

‘Let me explain something to you – silence is not a defence. We have witnesses who saw you murder this man, we have blood on your clothes which will shortly be confirmed as his. These things are not open to interpretation. They are facts. And your silence doesn’t change anything. Maybe you think that we can’t charge someone without knowing their name.’ Zigic spread his hands wide, waiting for a reaction which didn’t come. ‘But you’re wrong. We can and will charge you and without any explanation or cooperation on your part you will serve the longest sentence possible. You are making the situation worse for yourself. That’s all.’