Tell No Tales (43 page)

‘You come up or we come down,’ Zigic said. ‘Either way we’re taking you in.’

‘I’m armed.’

‘He’s lying,’ Ferreira whispered. ‘We can take him.’

Zigic shook his head. ‘Call armed response and get the others. Send them round the back in case he tries to go through the service hatch.’

Reluctantly she retreated, shouting to the uniforms who were still uselessly searching the upper floors. There was no point being quiet about it now. Palmer needed to appreciate the gravity of the situation, realise he was caught and accept it.

‘Why here, Christian?’

‘You should ask the scumbags who did it.’

‘We’ve got them,’ Zigic said. ‘They won’t get away with it.’

‘Yeah? And what’s going to happen to them? They’ll serve a couple of years inside, no big deal, is it? What about Marek? That man worked like a dog for forty years, finally gets to retire and some Paki bastard near kills him.’

The club’s back door opened and closed again, the uniforms moving into position. He needed to stall Palmer, keep him talking.

‘How do you know Marek?’

‘From here.’

‘Did your mum bring you?’ Zigic asked. ‘She was Polish, right?’

Palmer laughed, a humourless snort. ‘That’s a worthless tactic, trying to establish a connection with me, earn my trust. You can’t negotiate with me. Soldiers don’t answer to the authority of the police. We’re outside it. Above it.’

There was the voice from the hate speeches, the same rhythm and fervour.

‘You’re not a soldier,’ Zigic said. ‘There’s no war.’

‘Yes, there is, you just choose not to see it. You’re blind to what’s happening in this country, but it’s coming. They want to take over. And if it’s left to people like you they’ll win. We’ll be reduced to a medieval existence under sharia law.’

‘Is that what all this shit’s about?’

‘Somebody needs to make a stand,’ Palmer said, his voice rising up from the cellar, booming. ‘You should know that better than anyone. Look what they did to your people.’

‘I’m English.’

‘You might have been born here but you’re not English. You’re a Serb, so don’t pretend you don’t understand what I’m saying. They did it in your country and they’ll do it here if we let them. Women and children burned alive in churches, old men murdered in the street.’

Zigic leaned against the door frame, fighting the urge to go down there and drag Palmer back up with him.

‘And who won? Not your people. The Islamists started it and your people were bombed.’

‘That was a war,’ Zigic said. ‘You’re a murderer. Nothing more.’

‘We are on the same side.’

Palmer’s footsteps echoed across the tiled floor but still he didn’t move into the light, and Zigic imagined him wild-eyed and puffed up, swelling into his role.

‘We’re on the same side but you can’t accept it,’ Palmer said, exasperated. ‘You’ve been brainwashed, along with the rest of them, by the lies of politicians and the media, who want us to believe everyone is the same and culture means nothing any more. They want to take away our national pride but they can’t. It’s in our blood. We’re different. We’re better.’

‘So that gives you the right to murder anyone who disagrees? They were innocent,’ Zigic said, his own voice rising. ‘You weren’t taking out extremists, you killed ordinary, innocent people. You’re not a soldier, you’re a terrorist.’

‘One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.’

Ferreira came back through the warren of narrow corridors, moving at speed, baton gone.

‘Armed response is on the way,’ she said, speaking close to his ear, too low for Palmer to hear. ‘ETA five minutes.’

He needed to keep Palmer talking, keep him down there, contained in the cellar, but he was sick of the sound of his voice and with every passing second he felt a tug towards the stairs, a growing desire to rush down and haul him out of his rathole.

Palmer could be armed, but he doubted it. The attacks he’d perpetrated were carried out with feet and fists and there was nothing to suggest he had a gun except his own blurted claim which was designed to keep them in place and buy him time.

‘I’m sorry for the girl at the bus stop,’ Palmer said, sounding deflated. ‘I wish it didn’t have to be that way but all wars entail collateral damage.’

‘You chose to do that,’ Ferreira snapped. ‘You could have got Dymek alone if you’d wanted to.’

‘He was running. He would have exposed us.’

She started to reply and Zigic stopped her, sensing the change in Palmer’s mood, the reflective tone. If they stopped talking now he would stew down there for a few minutes, replaying his failure, allowing the armed response team to draw closer.

Ferreira checked her watch, mouthed ‘three’ at him.

‘Dymek wasn’t a soldier,’ Palmer said finally. ‘He was a thug. He didn’t appreciate what we were trying to achieve.’

‘Not like Lukas?’

‘No,’ Palmer said. ‘No, Lukas was a true warrior. He wouldn’t talk, would he? No matter how hard you pushed him.’

‘How do you know that?’ Ferreira asked, straightening from the wall.

‘I’ve still got friends at the station.’

‘Grieves?’

‘Lots of friends at the station,’ Palmer said, voice trailing away, feet pacing, slow, deliberate steps and something crunching under them. He stopped. ‘I’m glad you’re here, Mel.’

‘So am I,’ she said. ‘I’m just sorry you weren’t arrested and locked up years ago when you killed that boy in the cells.’

‘That was a happy accident. One more drug dealer off the streets.’

Ferreira glared into the dimness of the cellar. ‘How do you think you’ll get on in prison, Christian? All those Muslims, all those black guys. You think they’ll be gentle with you?’

‘I’m not going to prison.’

Sirens hollered in the distance, getting closer and louder.

‘If you think you’re going to take the easy way out like Lukas did you better think again.’ Ferreira took another step towards the cellar door. ‘You’ll be on suicide watch, checked every fifteen minutes. You’ll be stripped naked so you can’t hang yourself. Nothing is going to keep you from serving your time.’

Palmer laughed, a ragged, maniacal edge to it. ‘You won’t even get me in a holding cell.’

‘Armed response are coming. They might shoot you in the leg,’ she said. ‘But they’ll take you alive. You’re going to suffer, Christian. For years. You’ll spend the rest of your life being some Muslim gangster’s bitch.’

He wouldn’t, Zigic thought. He’d be placed in protective custody, too much of a target for anything else. The prison authorities would protect him, lock him up with the sex offenders and all the other coppers who’d moved across to the wrong side of the law. He wouldn’t suffer like he deserved to.

The sirens stopped and voices shouted outside.

‘You won’t get me out of this cellar,’ Palmer said, coming to the bottom of the stairs, into the torch’s piercing beam. There was something in his hand, not the gun they were expecting. A small black cylinder with wires running out of it. Palmer smiled, ‘Not in one piece anyway.’

Zigic dropped the torch as Ferreira slammed into him and he felt the heat before he heard the detonation, then the whole building quaked and he was deaf, hitting the floor hard, Ferreira landing heavily on top of him, her forearm striking his face, the pain coming from all directions at once; dull through his body and sharp at his leg, his eardrums shot, vision swimming, his whole head scrambled.

He saw Ferreira screaming but couldn’t hear her.

She crawled away from him, away from the cellar, through the thin sheet of water on the floor, blood trailing behind her, turning it pink.

Zigic struggled to his feet, felt his left leg give way and dropped to his knee, another bolt of pain shooting up through the bone. Forced himself up again, taking his weight on the other leg, bracing himself against the wall where small, hard pieces of stainless steel were embedded in the plasterwork.

‘Mel.’ He formed the word but all he could hear was a high, stinging buzz in his ears.

She’d stopped moving, lay face down in the water.

He inched towards her, saw the blood darkening her jeans, dozens of holes ripped through the thin denim, the fabric shredded across the back of her calves, her flesh punctured by panel pins and stubby tacks blackened in the blast.

A chemical smell rose from her body as he crouched over her and the action sent him sprawling again. He looked down at his own leg, a single nail driven deep into his thigh.

He reached out and turned her face from the water. Her eyes were closed and for a long and terrible moment he thought she was dead, but then he felt her breath across the back of his hand and he slumped where he sat, awkwardly pinned against the wall, shouting for help.

55

AT THE STATION
a doctor pulled the nail out of Zigic’s leg, swabbed it with antiseptic and bandaged the wound, saying something which was probably meant to be reassuring but the ringing in his ears was still too loud for him to properly make it out. Dr Harrow smiled sadly and stuck his finger up in front of Zigic’s face, wanting him to follow it. Checked his ears and wrote down ‘perforated eardrums’ on a notepad, as if he hadn’t already realised, then gave him a packet of painkillers and told him to go home, exaggerating the shape of the words for him.

There was nothing for him to do now, so he took Harrow’s advice and went home, driving slowly, concentrating on keeping the car exactly in the centre of the lane as his ears buzzed and his sense of equilibrium came and went.

The house was empty and he was grateful for the quiet, couldn’t have faced Anna’s concern right then, the questions he wouldn’t be able to hear her ask. Last night was bad enough, returning late with the smell of petrol and smoke on his clothes, having to lie to her about how close he’d come to being burned alive. He’d told her he arrived after the fact but he could see she didn’t believe him, only pretended to because it was easier.

If she knew about this – no,
when
she knew about this, because there was no hiding the bandaging around his thigh and no escaping the news this evening, the photograph of Ferreira they would run with because the press liked to focus on officers injured in the line of duty, especially female ones. Once Anna knew, he would have no peace.

She’d said it before, last year when he was shot. ‘Detective inspectors aren’t supposed to be on the front line.’ Throwing it at him like an accusation, as if he’d wilfully put himself in danger, like an adrenalin junkie or a man with nothing to live for.

Zigic stripped in the kitchen and shoved his clothes into a bin bag, knotted it and left it by the back door, then went upstairs to run a bath, dimly perceiving the rush of the water. He couldn’t wash his hair because of the damage to his ears, so he stood at the bathroom sink and carefully combed out every nauseating scrap of skin and flesh, rinsing the comb’s plastic teeth under the tap, watching the last traces of Christian Palmer run away down the plughole.

As he lay in the bath he thought of the forensics team now poring over the crime scene. He hadn’t looked in the cellar before he left, more concerned about seeing Ferreira into the ambulance, but he knew the photographs would be waiting in his office when he returned to the station. Flat, precise images which couldn’t capture the heat and the smell and the sudden, plummeting sensation as he realised what Palmer was about to do.

Riggott had arrived at the Polish Club a few minutes after the ambulance left, took charge with swift efficiency, dismissing the armed response team who’d arrived too late, calling for the bomb disposal unit who would have to secure the scene, check for booby traps and any lingering chemical hazards before the police work could begin.

Not that there was much to take charge of. Reports would be written and forms filled, then stowed away in records, the crimes Palmer and his gang carried out reduced to an official statement of sympathy and the hollow finality of ‘the investigation is now closed and no further suspects are being sought’.

It was no kind of justice for the victims or their families.

He closed his eyes and replayed the case from the beginning, testing his management of it, the course they’d taken and the mistakes they’d made, trying to identify the ways this could have been prevented.

When he opened his eyes again the water was cold and the sun had moved around the side of the house, plunging the bathroom into a chill gloom. His watch, propped up between the taps, showed him that it was almost four o’clock.

He dressed, sitting on the bed to pull on his jeans, still unsteady on his feet, and went downstairs to check his phone for messages. Three calls from Riggott followed by a text message sent a few minutes earlier, calling him back to the station; a car was on the way.

Zigic waited on the pavement, pulled up the hood of his parka to block out the fine breeze which knifed his perforated eardrum. The buzzing was less intense now and he found he could hear the engine noise on the Castor Road nearby, the plaintive whine of next door’s dog wanting to be let back in.

The patrol car arrived within a minute and he climbed into the back, no small talk with the PC behind the wheel and he wondered if it was out of consideration for his condition or because of Palmer’s death. He still had friends at the station after all.

There was a reception committee outside Thorpe Wood, camera crews humping their gear in for the imminent press conference and reporters hanging around smoking and speculating. A few of them turned as he passed, fired questions at him he didn’t answer. He hoped this wasn’t what he’d been brought back for.

Grieves was coming out as he went in and they both stopped dead, toe to toe. She couldn’t meet his eye, moved to step around him without looking up.

‘Sorry, sir.’

Zigic blocked her off. ‘You were feeding information to Palmer.’

‘I didn’t know he was behind all of this.’

‘What did you think he was interested for?’

‘We were friends, he asked what was going on. He was always asking about work. He missed it.’ Zigic moved closer, straining to hear her and she retreated again, caught between him and the reception desk. She stammered, ‘I would never have told him if I knew what he was doing.’