Tell No Tales (32 page)

He’d underestimated her though.

Even at her most vulnerable Sofia was stronger than him.

On the other side of the door she could hear the policeman who was guarding her talking to a nurse. The one she hated more than the others, a skinny, mean-faced bitch who spoke out of one side of her mouth and acted like she was above her job. The man laughed and Sofia was sure he was laughing at her.

She looked at her wrist, wrapped in a padded restraint, shackled to the bed frame.

Gilbert would be held down by the same kind of restraint, locked away in a room like this on another ward, gathering his strength, waiting to speak to the police.

There was one route out of this for him and she knew he would take it.

The door opened and the nurse came in, the policeman with her. Not the one who’d pulled Sofia away from Gilbert’s bed just as his eyes finally opened, but not so different to him either. This one would have done the same, dragged her to the ground and punched her in the ribs to stop her struggling, knowing that his uniform gave him the right to act however he saw fit.

A few more seconds and she would have known. That was all she’d needed. A single question and a single answer and it wouldn’t have mattered if Gilbert lied because she could see through him. Had done right from the start.

‘Time to clean you up,’ the nurse said, an acid smile on her pinched face.

The policeman unfastened the restraint and locked it around his own wrist. As if she would make a break for it, barefoot in her pyjamas, unsteady on her legs from so long lying down.

They led her into a beige-tiled room with bars on the walls and a pulley on tracks which could be moved between the toilet and the bath. It smelled of cleaning fluid and shit, the stench of sick bodies. The bath had been run already and the extractor fan was humming, sucking the steam out of the air.

Once again the cuffs came off and the policeman retreated to the door. Was he going to stay there? Watch her strip down and wash herself?

‘You’ve got ten minutes,’ the nurse said. ‘Towels are there, soap’s in the pump.’

The policeman pointed at her. ‘And we’ll be right outside the door so don’t get any funny ideas.’

They went out again but didn’t fully close the door. Sofia shoved it so hard her ribs screamed and she swallowed the cry which threatened to break out of her mouth, bracing herself against the door frame until the pain subsided.

She didn’t want to wash but she knew she needed to, could smell how sour her body was, the sharpness of sweat tinged with fear and hurt, different to the sweat of exertion. Soon she would be at the police station again and she would not have them see her so filthy.

That was why she was being told to wash, she thought, because Zigic was going to question her again.

Which meant Gilbert had talked already.

In the mirror she saw a face she barely recognised, grey and tired, but it wore an expression more fierce than she felt. She had to keep her fear in check, not show weakness, not let them bully her into admitting anything about Tomas.

Slowly she eased her arms out of her pyjama top, goosebumps rising across her bare skin, and examined the bruises on her ribs, faded to yellow and brown. Except for the fist-shaped mark which the policeman had left behind.

Sofia slipped off her pyjama bottoms and stood looking into the bathwater, wondering if they’d put other people in it before her. The thought wrinkled her nose but as she peered closer she saw that it was clean and she climbed in carefully, settling on her knees because she knew from experience that she wouldn’t be able to lower herself in fully with her ribs broken.

She cupped the warm water in her palms and washed her face, thinking of Tomas standing in the kitchen, blood on his clothes and his boots, smiling but only with his eyes, as he explained it away.

Gilbert would tell the police about Tomas.

It was all he had left to bargain with.

40

ZIGIC HAD A
patrol car collect Sofia from City Hospital and bring her into the station for questioning. He wanted to make it absolutely clear that her entire future was hanging in the balance, give her a preview of what prison would be like.

She needed to understand that the only way out was helping them find Tomas, and Zigic was certain he couldn’t get her talking with kindness, which only left one option, as much as he hated it.

He had her taken down to the cells for an hour, told the custody sergeant to place her in the one where Lukas had committed suicide. It had been cleaned up and put back into use but no amount of bleach could wash away the invisible traces of a death which thickened the air and dulled the brightest of lights, something intangible but insistent.

Zigic didn’t believe in ghosts and he’d bet Sofia didn’t either, but there was no denying the shift in energy which dampened a room for a few days after a violent death.

Inspector Strug called while he was sitting in his office, scanning through a printout of Jelena and Gilbert’s private Facebook chat, wanting to read it himself, see if there was some nuance or allusion which Wahlia had missed.

‘Inspector Zigic, I have found your man.’

Zigic felt a jolt go through his body. ‘Where? Have you got him?’

‘Sorry, my English is bad,’ Strug said. ‘I have found him in our records.’

Zigic sagged in his seat. Of course it wouldn’t be that easy.

Strug went on, ‘Tomas Kaminski, born January fourth 1983, in Poznań. He is well known to us, many minor charges. He has quite a temper when he has been drinking.’

‘Anything more serious than bar fights?’

‘In March 2002 he was involved in a very bad incident in Drweskich Park. He and his brother attacked two Turkish gentlemen with iron bars.’

‘Was he arrested?’

Strug snorted. ‘More than arrested, Inspector. The Turkish gentlemen were both armed – they are a knife culture, you understand. Tomas’s brother was killed. His throat was cut. Tomas suffered serious injuries but the doctors saved his life.’ Strug muttered to himself in Polish, ‘Some lives are not worth the trouble.’

Was that it then? An act of revenge for his brother’s death? Three entirely innocent men murdered because one night the Kaminski boys decided to throw their weight in the wrong direction?

‘Did you catch the men?’ Zigic asked.

‘Of course we caught them,’ Strug said, sounding wounded. ‘They are both in prison still. They have one or two more years to serve and then they will be deported.’ He laughed. ‘You will probably have them in England then.’

Zigic ignored the jibe. ‘What happened to Tomas? Was he charged with anything?’

‘Yes. Assault. He was given two years – not enough time in my opinion but the judge thought the injuries he received would make him think before acting that way again.’

‘Did it?’

‘He did not serve two years,’ Strug said, then broke away to shout at someone at his end, the words fast and clipped. ‘Sorry, Inspector. Tomas Kaminski killed an inmate – another Turk – and was given four more years.’

Zigic worked the numbers out quickly, finding that almost as soon as Tomas got out of prison he came to England, to Peterborough, and began a relationship with Sofia. He wondered if she knew about any of this.

‘Four years isn’t very long for a murder,’ Zigic said.

Strug sighed. ‘It is not. But Tomas pleaded self-defence and several witnesses came forward to swear that the Turk had a razor.’

Zigic detected a new strain of disgust in Strug’s tone.

‘When you say witnesses . . .’

‘They were not reliable men,’ Strug said darkly. ‘I do not know how it is in England but here we have a very bad situation with gangs in our prisons.’

‘We have that too,’ Zigic told him.

‘Then you will understand this. Because of Kaminski’s crime and the murder of his brother he was sought out by a powerful neo-Nazi group who offered him protection. He was only nineteen years old, scared I would think, and he shared their beliefs before he went in. He became something of a mascot for them. Maybe the man did have a razor,’ Strug said. ‘But maybe one of Kaminski’s White Brethren put it in his hand after he was dead.’

‘This White Brethren, what can you tell me about them?’

‘Very little. They are a prison gang, I have no dealings with them, but they have chapters on the outside too. I will send you Kaminski’s file, maybe your people can use it.’

Zigic thanked Strug, gave him his email address, and thanked him again, feeling the pieces beginning to lock into place. The dead brother, the teenage bravado, his neo-Nazi family drawing around him in his moment of need.

He went out into the main office and debriefed the rest of them on what Strug had told him, standing in front of the murder boards, thinking how good it was to be adding information for a change, rather than asking questions nobody had answers for.

‘Mel, check up on this White Brethren.’

She was looking at her computer screen. ‘Yeah, I googled it as soon as you said it. There’s a few hundred hits, mostly in Polish. You might have to take this job yourself.’

He glanced at the clock; forty-five minutes since Sofia was celled.

‘OK, later. Let’s see what Ms Krasic has to say for herself first.’

Zigic went down to the custody suite. A lone man was waiting on the chairs, handcuffed and silent, his skin ashen, dressed in his best suit ready for court, and a pair of white trainers. At the desk a PC was talking to the custody sergeant, their conversation nothing to do with work, and Rita flushed when she saw him.

‘Sofia Krasic?’

Zigic nodded.

He followed her through the heavy metal door, waiting while she shoved her key card in the lock, swore when it didn’t connect then pulled it out and turned it over. She was flustered. He knew the investigation into Lukas’s suicide had been turned over to the IPCC already, everything being done fast to try and prove there was no wrongdoing on their part. It didn’t pay to hold things up when you were guilty.

Most of the cells were occupied, only a couple of the whiteboards wiped clean, waiting for new names to go up on them. He wanted to see Tomas Kaminski printed there in blocky red letters. Sooner rather than later.

Rita opened the door to Sofia’s cell and stood aside.

Sofia was sitting on the bunk, staring at the spot on the floor where Lukas’s body had been laid out less than twenty-four hours ago, her expression pensive. She wore jeans and a hoodie, red tennis shoes with the laces removed. Out of the hospital bed she looked stronger, but he noticed her wince as she stood, her hand automatically going to her side.

‘You have no right to do this,’ she said.

‘You’re still under arrest, Sofia – being in hospital changed nothing.’

She threw her chin up. ‘I am innocent.’

Zigic leaned against the door frame. ‘Do you know who the previous occupant of this cell was?’

‘How would I know?’

‘Lukas,’ Zigic said. ‘Yesterday afternoon he tore his shirt into strips and he choked himself to death on that bracket. He died right where you’re standing now.’

Sofia loosened a contemptuous smile on him. ‘What do I care about this?’

‘The fear got hold of him, Sofia. He sat in this cell and realised that the rest of his life would be spent locked away in a small room, surrounded by people much harder than him, with no freedom, no privacy, no pleasure of any kind, ever again.’

The smile had faded to a thin, hard line.

‘And Lukas was tough. Tougher than you are.’

‘You do not know what I am,’ she said, switching to Serbo-Croat. ‘I have seen my friends dead in the street being eaten by dogs. Lukas was a thug and all thugs are only cowards at heart. You cannot scare me with prison.’

‘And deportation?’

She lowered her eyes, shook her head. ‘I thought you were a decent man, Dushan Zigic. You must have some Turk in your blood to behave like this.’

Her words stayed with Zigic as they went up to the interview rooms, wondering if it was just a throwaway comment or something more significant. ‘Turk’ was a basic racial slur among Serbs and Croats, applied to Muslims from anywhere in the former Yugoslavia. If he hadn’t spoken to Strug he would have shrugged it off, but now it made him uncomfortable, like she was taunting him with something she didn’t think he knew. Amusing herself.

Ferreira was waiting for them in Interview Room 3, the most comfortable of the rooms, the one reserved for witnesses and grieving parties, and he guessed she wouldn’t have chosen it unless the others were in use already. She’d brought a bottle of water in for Sofia though, so maybe she still thought they could finesse the information they wanted.

They hadn’t discussed how to play this, too used to falling into rhythm naturally, and he regretted that now. Ferreira thought it was fear keeping Sofia silent but Zigic wasn’t so sure any more.

‘Do I need a solicitor?’ Sofia asked, her attention on Ferreira.

‘No,’ she said. ‘This is just a chat. But if you feel you’d like one at any point just say and we’ll break to organise it.’

Zigic slid into the chair next to her, Sofia diagonally opposite him, not looking in his direction. He could see the scar on her neck more clearly in here, and thought it looked a few years old. After she came to England perhaps. As if sensing his gaze she dragged her ponytail around her neck, hiding the mark.

Ferreira leaned forward. ‘I have to tell you that we’ve received the DNA results back from the hit-and-run this morning and, consequently, we no longer consider Anthony Gilbert to be a suspect.’

Sofia blew out a long, controlled breath and it looked like relief, but Zigic couldn’t imagine why the news would be welcome to her. She hated Gilbert and despite distancing herself from her initial certainty over his involvement, Zigic was sure she had believed him responsible.

‘So, now we have a problem,’ Ferreira said. ‘If it wasn’t him, who was it?’

‘Where’s Tomas?’ Zigic asked.

‘It was not him,’ Sofia said.

‘The driver was aiming for you. You were the target.’

She held his gaze, something stirring in her eyes which looked like fear.