Tell No Tales (39 page)

Adrian Mazur was among them, writ bold at the top of the suspects column, three more Polish names below his, one struck out already – a man who’d spent last Wednesday night in a cell downstairs, sleeping off the previous evening’s antics. There was a single English name at the bottom of the list and as Zigic stood looking over the board he realised it was familiar.

‘Christian Palmer,’ he said. ‘What about him?’

Grieves twisted in her seat. ‘He’s not Polish.’

‘But he’s got a nasty temper, hasn’t he?’ Ferreira said.

Grieves turned back to her work quickly, a flush rising at her throat. She mumbled a reply Zigic didn’t catch, but he saw the look of disgust on Ferreira’s face, a flicker of contemptuous humour around her mouth.

‘It’s the same bloke, isn’t it, Bobby? Ex-PC Chris Palmer?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Our man might not be Polish,’ Ferreira said, eyes boring into the back of Grieves’s head. ‘These neo-Nazi groups are pretty inclusive as long as you’re not brown.’ She rapped her fingertips on the desk. ‘What do you think, Deb? You know him better than the rest of us. You think he got a taste for it?’

Zigic started for his office. ‘A word, Mel.’

She followed him in and closed the door. ‘I guess this is a private conversation.’

He paced around behind his desk, only the lamp there burning, throwing a cone of light across the scattered paperwork, leaving the corners of the room in darkness.

‘What the hell was that about?’

Ferreira folded her arms. ‘Maybe you should ask Grieves.’

‘I’m asking you.’

She let out an extravagant sigh, taking a couple of steps closer to the desk. ‘Do you know why Palmer’s not a copper any more?’

‘I barely know who he is,’ Zigic said.

‘Palmer and Grieves were partners, back in uniform. The same time I was down there. And there was a death in the cells – this kid – he was pulled in for a bit of green, scared to death, and he started mouthing off about needing to leave. Palmer went in there and threw his weight at him. All sixteen stone of it.’ She tossed her hair out of her eyes. ‘The kid had an epileptic fit. He was dead in a minute.’

Zigic recalled some vague stirring of gossip, not the details, and now she’d filled them in he still couldn’t remember Palmer. There were so many of them in uniform, big men, all attitude and mouth. The bottom of the food chain so they exercised their scant power wherever they could and frequently overdid it. But the people they targeted were in no position to complain.

‘What’s this got to do with Grieves?’

‘She helped cover it up,’ Ferreira said. ‘And, funnily enough, I don’t fucking like it.’

Zigic sat down, rocked back in his chair. ‘Were you going to mention this any time soon?’

‘What’s the difference now?’

Through the closed door he could hear Wahlia’s voice going, talking on the phone, saw Grieves walk out past his desk, head down.

‘Does Riggott know?’

‘Probably not.’ Ferreira perched on the edge of the chair opposite him. ‘I can’t prove any of this. I only know because she asked me what to do about it. Then ignored my advice.’ She shook her head. ‘It was years ago now. There’s nothing to say.’

‘But you don’t think she’s reliable?’

‘No, she’s totally reliable. She’ll do whatever you tell her.’

‘That’s not what I meant and you know it.’

Ferreira placed her hands on the edge of the desk, leaned into the lamplight. Her face was serious now, all trace of emotion gone. ‘Look, we’re getting close. But we need her here to sift through all that shit coming in.’

Telling him exactly what he was thinking, acting like the rational one. She was regretting speaking up already, he realised. That barb she’d been dying to fire at Grieves for a week had found its mark and done its work and she felt how hollow the victory was.

‘Let’s keep this between us for now,’ he said, reaching for the phone, ringing on his desk. ‘What have you got for me?’

‘We’re into the laptop, sir. I think you’ll want to see this.’

They went upstairs to the technical department, a series of small offices crammed with equipment and storage rooms where countless laptops and desktops and mobile devices containing every imaginable horror were waiting to be cracked. They had a massive backlog and a chronic staffing problem due to the fact that the police paid a pittance for the skill set required in comparison to other industries.

Ethan was standing in the corridor waiting for them, one hand hooked around the back of his neck, a strained expression on his face. He’d been at the station less than a year, came straight from university, but the job was telling on him already. Every murder and assault he’d witnessed wiping a little of the youthful innocence away, the effect compounded by hours spent in windowless rooms, using caffeine and sugar to maintain the necessary state of perpetual attention.

‘That was quick,’ Ferreira said.

‘There wasn’t much in the way of security,’ he said. ‘The laptop was, like, five years old or something, totally archaic.’

They followed him into his office, a cramped space which smelled of plastic and singed wires, despite the immaculately kept workstation. Lukas Wrabowski’s laptop sat open in front of an ancient leather swivel chair, ripped and patched with electrical tape. Ethan shoved the chair away with his leg and tilted the lid back so they could see it properly.

The screen was filled by a video player. A man dressed all in black, his face obscured by a balaclava with a mesh section over his eyes. He stood in front of a blank off-white wall, with a swastika flag hung high up, the shot framed carefully to show its whole, cutting the man off at the waist.

Ethan hit a button to start the video and the man’s voice started up, speaking Polish in a deep and booming tone, pitched to sell his message.

‘What’s he saying?’ Ferreira asked.

Zigic gestured for her to wait, trying to pick out familiar words, but the man’s vocabulary was odd, complex-sounding, and after the initial introduction it became difficult to follow. As it played on, the man becoming more impassioned, his voice rising, Zigic heard a theme developing within the words he did understand – blood, fire, nation, pride.

‘Start it again please.’

Ethan hit a button and once again the man settled his bulk, tucked his gloved hands behind his back, and began to speak.

‘Brothers, the time for talk is over,’ Zigic said, translating a few beats behind. ‘There is a disease in our land and it lives in the blood of our neighbours and our co-workers, they will tell you they do not have this disease but we see this lie in their actions, in the . . .’

Zigic tailed off and the man’s voice took over, angry and incomprehensible, his body seeming to grow as he neared the end of his speech, a long, rattling section where he barely took a breath and then, with a sudden snap, he raised his right arm in a Nazi salute.

‘Is it Wrabowski?’ Ferreira asked. ‘It looks too tall.’

‘I don’t think it’s him,’ Zigic said. ‘This man wants a platform, he wants to convert and indoctrinate. Wrabowski would have talked to us if this was how his mind worked.’ He turned to Ethan. ‘Where did this footage come from?’

‘I found it in his Internet history. He’s a member of a closed group –
Bialy Braterstwo
.’

‘White Brethren,’ Zigic said. The group Tomas Kaminski got involved with while he was in prison. ‘When was this posted?’

‘Three days ago.’

‘Just before Asif Khalid was murdered,’ Ferreira said.

‘Where’s this online group based?’

‘It’s in Polish, but that doesn’t mean anything.’ Ethan pushed his hand back through his hair. ‘I can dig about but I’m going to need help and it’s going to take a while.’

‘Get whoever you need,’ Zigic said. ‘And do it fast.’

‘OK.’ Ethan nodded. ‘It’s not the only one of this guy. At least, I think it’s the same man, the flag’s there, he looks the same build.’

‘Show us another one.’

He leaned over and tapped the keyboard, opening another page which showed the off-white room, the swastika hanging lower and tighter stretched in this shot, the man visible to the thigh. When Ethan played it the dialogue was different but spouting the same message.

After a few seconds Zigic told him to stop it.

‘Run copies of these and send them down to us – I want a translator to look at them.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘We need to know when they were posted, when they were recorded if possible. All of them.’

‘Of course.’

Ferreira had her phone out. ‘What’s the web address?’

‘Hold on.’ Ethan took a notepad out of a drawer and printed a long address, some numbers underneath. ‘This one’s his user details, you’ll need them to get into the group.’

Zigic thanked him and turned to leave.

‘Don’t you want to see the rest of it?’ Ethan asked.

‘The rest of what?’

‘The murders.’

50

ZIGIC DROVE WITHOUT
thinking, everything on automatic, accelerating along the unlit parkway. Its uneven surface vibrated up through the chassis, up into the steering wheel he was gripping tight, his arms stiff with tension, his shoulders squared with it.

He could feel the muscles under his skull clenched, told himself to breathe. It was nothing he hadn’t already watched half a dozen times, an unfortunate young man kicked to death in a quiet street while people slept in the houses around him. Or pretended to sleep, too scared or ambivalent to go out and see what the screaming was about.

It was different this time though.

The CCTV footage of Didi’s murder was low-quality, the camera ten yards away, set high and angled down. Only now did he realise how those factors had combined to soften the attack, created a merciful sense of distance. Impossible as it would have seemed twenty minutes ago he now knew that was the 15 certificate.

The version on Lukas Wrabowski’s laptop had been filmed on a camera phone – a good-quality one Ethan had told them as he’d turned away from the screen, eight megapixels, capable of night shooting.

And the hand that held it steady had been only a few steps away, close enough to capture the effect of every single boot strike and the terrible change in expression on Didi’s face before it was stamped into a gut-wrenching oblivion.

There were others too. Not just Ali Manouf and Asif Khalid.

The site contained a dozen more videos, more dead men, killed with knives and iron bars, their bodies lying in unidentified cobbled streets, unmistakably European but not here. As he’d watched them, with Ethan looking away from the screen and Ferreira asking questions he couldn’t answer, Zigic had realised those murders had probably gone unpunished.

This was not just their problem any more.

He turned off the parkway and slowed as he approached a roundabout, heading into Old Fletton, thinking how peaceful the houses looked. How was it possible that a city like this had been harbouring a violent, racist gang with roots which went back to a prison cell in Poland?

Did it originate with Tomas Kaminski?

They couldn’t ask him now. Couldn’t question any of them. Unless they found the fourth man in the gang this might never stop, because why would it? That hate didn’t go away, it grew and festered and the filmed evidence of it was broadcast to the select few with access to the White Brethren site to be laughed at and admired and inspire more senseless murder.

They needed Adrian Mazur to be their man. Safely celled right now, trying to come up with his alibis. Because if it wasn’t him they had nothing and the person responsible could be anywhere, fleeing across Europe if he was cautious or if he was arrogant, and Zigic prayed he was that arrogant, patrolling the silent corridors of some office building in his Grey Shield Security uniform.

At the mouth of Church Street he slowed, caught behind a Tesco van, as the driver searched for an address, which he finally found, pulling onto the kerb and allowing Zigic to pass.

The Polish Ex-Servicemen’s Club was at the bottom of the road, a fine old Victorian building which had sprouted several less attractive extensions. Over the years its original members were joined by political refugees who came over during the fifties, then the more recent arrivals during the late nineties who flocked to it as a reminder of home and a way to contact people who would help them get established.

It was waning now though. The older generation were dying off and the younger ones found there were enough Poles in the city to render it pointless. New England had plenty of bars and cafes they could use and when Zigic went inside he realised there was little here to tempt them.

It looked like any small-town bar back in Poland. Grubby white walls and wood panelling stained with decades of cigarette smoke, flags and football club banners hanging here and there, wonky tables and vinyl chairs, heavy velvet curtains drawn against the night and the draughts which leaked in around the sash windows, a concession to the few customers already in. Old men, bowed by a lifetime of heavy lifting in the now defunct brickyards.

There was no flat-screen television, no music playing, and what conversation there was carried on at a low pitch, despite the evident heat in it, gestures stabbed across the tables. They’d been having the same arguments for years, Zigic imagined, and still hadn’t righted the world.

The woman behind the bar put down her magazine as he approached.

‘What can I get you, love?’

‘Just a Coke, thanks.’ He scanned the faces looking back at him as she opened a bottle, didn’t see the man he wanted. ‘Is Jurek in yet?’

She nodded towards a table in the corner, a newspaper and a half-drunk pint there. ‘He’s in the Gents.’

‘I better have a whiskey as well then.’

Zigic paid her and carried the drinks over to the table, sat down with eyes still on him. Unfamiliar faces were rare in here and someone looking for Jurek was bound to arouse interest. He was well known in the community, the owner/editor of the local Polish-language newspaper, a man who knew everyone worth knowing and the secrets they wouldn’t like exposing. Back in Warsaw he’d been an investigative reporter, but that was twenty years ago and he’d learned the cost of journalistic integrity the hard way.