Tell No Tales (41 page)

‘What happened to Adrian Mazur’s rucksack?’ he asked.

‘I’ll go and check.’

He sipped his coffee and thought of the look on Mazur’s face as he saw them outside his house, the intensity of his panic, then the relief as he stood being handcuffed, certain that whatever incriminating material the bag contained was beyond their reach.

The search of the house had yielded nothing but today they would go back and try to match the room in the videos to one there, a long shot but worth it, Zigic thought.

He eyed Christian Palmer’s name at the bottom of the list of ‘persons of interest’. Not a viable suspect but he knew these men, had shared long shifts with them, and in situations like that people tended to talk. He might be an ex-policeman but his instinct should still be working and it was possible he’d gleaned something which could point them in the right direction.

‘Got it.’ Ferreira held up a grubby red rucksack by one of its straps.

She emptied the bag across an unused desk, pulled out a half-full bottle of mineral water and a creased T-shirt that smelled of washing powder, then at the very bottom, tucked into a corner they found what they were looking for.

‘No wonder he ran,’ Ferreira said, weighing the bag of pills in the palm of her hand, small bright pink things each stamped with a star. ‘There must be, what, two hundred in here?’

‘Enough to put him inside, anyway.’

They had Adrian Mazur brought back up from his cell. He looked like he hadn’t slept, heavy-eyed and stubbled, his lips cracked.

‘Where is my lawyer?’ he asked, standing in the middle of the interview room.

‘We can call him if you want,’ Ferreira said. ‘But you’ll have to go back down until he arrives and that will probably be another three or four hours.’

He rubbed his arm, glanced at the door, blocked off by a guard. ‘I should not talk to you without him.’

‘We know why you ran, Adrian.’ She showed him the bag of pills. ‘And frankly I don’t blame you. These are going to get you into a lot of trouble.’

‘They are not mine.’

‘They were in your bag.’

‘I did not have a bag.’

‘There are cameras on top of those traffic lights,’ Zigic said. ‘We can prove you threw your rucksack and these pills away when we were after you.’

Ferreira moved closer to Mazur; soft steps, gentle voice. ‘You need us to help you. And we will, but only if you help us.’

He looked between the two of them, wanting some sign from Zigic, verification. He nodded and gestured towards the table.

Mazur’s shoulders slumped but he trudged over and sat down.

Ferreira set the tapes up, leaving the bag of pills on the table in front of her, a reminder to Mazur of what was at stake, and his eyes kept drifting towards them, mouth a straight line, chastising himself or cursing them. Maybe realising now that if he hadn’t run, if he’d just spoken to them there on the street, answered their questions like a concerned citizen, none of this would be happening.

‘OK, Adrian –’

‘I did not kill anyone,’ he said quickly. ‘I swear to God I didn’t.’

‘We know that.’

Relief washed over Mazur’s face and he huffed out a wobbly breath.

‘What we need from you now is information,’ Zigic said. ‘We have three murdered men – innocent men, Adrian – and two of their killers lived at the same house as you. The man who came looking for Pyotr Dymek on Thursday morning is involved in this. Do you understand?’

Mazur nodded.

‘He was friends with Pyotr and Lukas. So it stands to reason he might have come to the house before. Socially.’ Zigic watched him give another hesitant nod. ‘You know who I’m talking about, don’t you?’

‘I only saw him once,’ Mazur said. ‘He came home with Lukas and they went up to his room. They were up there for an hour. I heard them talking. They were laughing a lot. I think they were drunk. Lukas was drunk very often.’

‘When was this?’

‘A few weeks ago.’

‘Did you get a good look at his face?’ Ferreira asked.

‘I opened the door for them. Lukas did not have his key.’

‘Can you describe him?’

Mazur’s face contorted as he trawled his memory. At least Zigic hoped that was what he was doing, rather than trying to decide on a description which would satisfy them.

‘He was the same height as me. He had blond hair. Short blond hair. Like this.’ He mimicked spikes, flicking his fingers over his skull. ‘He did not look strange.’

‘Does he work at Grey Shield?’

‘Yes, sir. They came home from work together. He was wearing our uniform.’

‘So you do know him,’ Ferreira said.

‘No, I have not seen him at work.’

Ferreira shifted forward in her seat. ‘We need a name.’

‘I would tell you if I knew it. But I have only worked there for a month. I do not know the man’s name.’

Zigic rapped his knuckle against the table. ‘Alright, that’s a good start. What we’re going to do now, Adrian, is get you to look at some photographs and see if we can find this man.’

‘I will try,’ Mazur said gravely. ‘I want to help you.’

52

FERREIRA PACED AROUND
the close confines of the interview room while Mazur studied the photographs she’d brought him, the official identifications of every Polish employee on Grey Shield Security’s books. Forty-two of them, more than anyone was expecting, but she guessed they were built for the job as a race, big men, no-nonsense.

Looking at Mazur now, long-limbed and lean-muscled, she couldn’t imagine many people wanting to square up to him.

He put another sheet of paper aside, moved onto the next, discarded that one quickly. Over his shoulder she saw a beetle-browed man with thick black hair peppered grey, nothing like the description he’d given, but the man’s name was in the suspects column upstairs, targeted for arrest today, and she wondered once again if Mazur was selling them a line.

The clock on the opposite wall ticked past the half-hour and she stretched where she stood, feeling a pent-up energy rolling through her body. She wanted to be haring across town now, running down the suspects they’d identified, those two men who’d shared shifts with the murderers, whose time sheets showed they were free Thursday morning to drive through the Krasic sisters like they didn’t even exist, aiming for Pyotr Dymek.

But Zigic had sent Grieves and Parr out to grab them. Orders from above that when Alex arrived within the next couple of hours there was to be a full ‘council of war’, which meant she and Zigic were to stay put, prepare to make a report which would be taken back to the Domestic Terrorism Unit.

She wondered what Alex’s aim was.

If they were monitoring the White Brethren’s website then the group was obviously a known quantity, which raised the awkward question of why they hadn’t done anything about it. Hate speeches, footage of multiple murders, three of them right here, open cases; how much more did the service need before they’d step in and act?

Was it another watch brief? Like the one Alex had for Richard Shotton? Sitting back and letting things develop seemed immoral to her, smacked of power playing rather than policing.

Alex wasn’t police though, she reminded herself.

His whole purpose in contacting her at the weekend had been containment. They’d had a few drinks, fucked for old times’ sake, but he’d made his message clear – don’t step on toes, don’t expose his inside man.

Did he even care whether they caught this murderer?

At the table Mazur paused for a moment to take a drink from the can of Coke she’d brought him, the bubbles fizzing in it were absurdly loud in the small grey room.

She glanced at the clock again, two interminable minutes gone.

The translator had arrived at nine, a young woman with a Polish name and a cut-glass English accent which Ferreira couldn’t tie to a particular city. Wahlia showed her up to the technical department, came back down smiling like he stood a chance.

‘No,’ Mazur said finally. ‘He is not here.’

Ferreira moved round the table. ‘Look again.’

‘I have looked twice. He is none of these men.’

‘These are all the Poles working at Grey Shield.’ She jabbed her finger at the pile of photographs in front of him. ‘He’s in here somewhere.’

Mazur just shook his head. ‘Maybe he is not Polish.’

Ferreira rolled her eyes. ‘You said he was.’

‘No. He spoke Polish but many people do. I speak some Russian but I am not Russian. They teach us it in school.’

She grabbed the sheets of paper. ‘Right. Let’s try something else.’

Upstairs Wahlia was alone in Hate Crimes, standing in front of the board like it had mesmerised him, a cup of coffee steaming gently in his hand.

‘Great, you’re not doing anything,’ Ferreira said. ‘I need photographs of every Eastern European man Grey Shield have on staff.’

‘No joy?’

‘No. Mazur’s decided the bloke might not be Polish now.’

Wahlia dragged himself away from the board and returned to his desk, cleared a spot for his cup among the time sheets and the mobile phone records, the space more cluttered than it had been half an hour ago. Files being pulled in readiness for the arrival of their suspects.

‘Any word from the field?’

‘They’re on the way back in,’ Wahlia said. ‘One down, one to go.’

Ferreira took out her tobacco as he started gathering the information she needed, snapped the last black paper out of its packet.

‘They’re wasting their time,’ she said. ‘If it’s the bloke we want Mazur would have picked him out. He was right there in the pile with the rest of them.’

‘Assuming he actually wants to pick him out.’

‘Yeah, I’ve been thinking that too.’ She sealed the rollie then realised she didn’t want it. ‘For all we know, Mazur’s another recruit.’

‘He was living with them . . .’

‘Tough to ignore what’s going on when your housemates are coming home covered in blood and bits of brain.’

‘People see what they want to,’ Wahlia said.

He was right. Not just civilians and witnesses. They’d done the same thing. Seen a spurned lover with a record of harassment and decided he was the most likely perpetrator of the hit-and-run. Seen three Muslim men kicked to death and decided the ENL had started delivering on their bile-flecked rhetoric. And in both cases they’d been wrong.

The phone on Zigic’s desk started to ring and Ferreira went through to answer it, finding his desk covered in Polish police reports, the computer screen showing a page about the White Brethren. Cramming for their meeting later.

‘DI Zigic’s phone.’

‘Hello, who is this?’ the translator asked, voice clipped and icy.

‘DS Ferreira. What’s the problem?’

‘Oh. There’s something rather strange about these videos. I think it would be best if you were both to see them.’

Ferreira called Zigic’s mobile as she went out through the office, got him as he was coming up from CID, and they met in the stairwell, both still holding their phones to their ears.

‘Riggott?’ she asked.

‘They’ve caught the boys who firebombed the Polish Club.’

‘That was easy.’

‘The family frogmarched the kid who was driving down here first thing. They’re saying he was led astray by his mate.’ Zigic held the door open for her. ‘He’s named his friend and Riggott’s having him brought in now. They’re only seventeen, the pair of them.’

‘Old enough to know what they were doing,’ Ferreira said.

‘They’ll end up in a young offenders’ institute for a couple of years, then back out to live the rest of their miserable lives.’ He frowned. ‘God knows what kind of shit they’ll get into when they’re grown men.’

It wasn’t like Zigic to be so venomous, but he’d been there when it happened, only luck preventing him from winding up in the intensive care unit, and she knew it would take a while for him to shake that off.

They went to the office at the end of the hall where the translator was working. Her suit jacket hung over the back of her chair, a cup of tea and a packet of vending-machine biscuits untouched on the desk. She’d brought a slim, silver laptop with her and was transcribing the speeches onto it as they played on a separate flat-screen monitor.

A video was paused as they entered and she was standing waiting for them, her hand in a tight fist in front of her mouth.

‘Joanna, what have you got for us?’

‘I haven’t finished the translations yet,’ she said, gesturing towards her laptop, a few paragraphs of type abandoned mid-sentence. ‘I thought this was too important to wait.’

‘What is it?’ Zigic asked.

‘This man, I don’t think he’s Polish.’

She looked at them as if she expected to be shot down.

‘That chimes with what Mazur just told me,’ Ferreira said. ‘The man he saw at the house wasn’t among the Polish employees, and now he’s saying he thinks the guy might be bilingual.’

Zigic appeared unconvinced and Ferreira knew how unlikely it sounded.

‘So what is he, if he’s not Polish?’

‘At first I thought he’d just been over here for a few years and had picked up a slight Fen accent.’ Joanna reached for the mouse which controlled the main screen. ‘It’s quite common. But then I noticed he was using some odd dialect words. From the Zakopane region. And the accent there is . . . peculiar, I suppose you’d say. The equivalent here would be a Liverpool accent, something strong and idiosyncratic. Not easy to train yourself out of.’

‘We know the region he’s from then,’ Ferreira said, wondering why the woman thought it was such a big deal.

‘No, that’s the thing. He doesn’t have a trace of that accent.’

Joanna started the footage running and Ferreira heard a Polish voice like any other, strained to pick out a Fen inflection, but couldn’t. Next to her Zigic leaned on the back of the chair, face drawn in concentration until he finally shook his head.

‘What are you telling us?’

She stopped the video. ‘In my opinion Polish isn’t this man’s first language. He’s learned it from somebody who originated in the Zakopane region, hence the presence of dialect in his vocabulary, and given these factors and his unmistakable Fen accent, I think he’s English.’