Tell No Tales (22 page)

1
muzzi down,
1
,
999
,
999,999
to go.

Twenty messages of support for that. Seventy-eight ‘likes’, almost everyone in the group showing their approval.

More of them. She kept scrolling, stopping at an image of Asif Khalid dead on the pavement before he’d been covered with a sheet. Three Asian men were standing nearby, the front door of the house they’d come from open to the street, lights on inside.

It had been filmed from the car park. Posted by Ken Poulter at ten forty-two.

Ferreira felt her pulse quickening. Poulter was there before the police, before Shahzad arrived and organised his men.

‘Coffee and chocolate.’ Wahlia put them down next to her keyboard. ‘What’s that? Is that Khalid?’

‘Yeah.’

‘How did you get into a closed group?’

‘Ingenuity,’ she said. ‘Look, Ken Poulter was at the scene within minutes of Khalid being killed.’

‘You need to get a screenshot before they take it down.’ Wahlia reached over her to make the grab himself. ‘I can’t believe he’d post that if he was involved.’

‘He didn’t think anyone but the faithful would see it.’

‘He can’t be that stupid.’

‘So it’s just a coincidence?’ she asked. ‘Out of all the places he could be, he just happens to be standing within spitting distance of a dead man, minutes after he’s been murdered?’

Wahlia retreated to his own side of the desk. ‘He’s dressed right, I’ll give you that.’

‘This has reeked of the ENL right from the beginning.’ Ferreira found her mobile, dialled Zigic’s number, eyes on the photograph, which received another ‘like’ as the phone rang in her ear.

‘What’ve you got, Mel?’

‘Ken Poulter,’ she said. ‘He was there when the attack took place.’

‘Hold on, I’m just pulling into the station.’

The phone went dead and she pushed away from her desk, paced to the window and back again, went to the murder board and stared at the mugshot of their mute suspect, praying this would be enough of a threat to get him talking. It was the best chance they had, play him and Poulter off against one another. No honour among thieves was a cliché for a reason and she hoped it would hold good for racist murderers too. Poulter was more likely to break, if he was only an observer; if he could convince them of that, he might turn Queen’s evidence.

It wasn’t what she wanted but it might close the case and that was all that mattered.

Zigic came into the office, looking hollowed out by the grim task of passing on bad news, an uncharacteristic trudge in his step.

‘OK, let’s see it.’

‘It’s on-screen,’ she said.

He dropped into her chair and she watched the realisation play across his face, eyebrows lifting, then he frowned.

‘Alright, bring him in.’

28

FERREIRA TRACKED KEN
Poulter down to the taxi rank outside Peterborough train station. Saturday lunchtime and the place was crowded with football fans heading to Posh’s away game at Wolves, people laden down with shopping bags arriving back from London and Cambridge, moving quickly, eyes averted, skirting the throngs of men with beer bottles and cans chanting as they made their way through the main building and out onto the platform.

Poulter was leaning against the bonnet of his cab, flicking through a copy of the
Daily Express
, waiting for a customer. He’d got a tan since the last time Ferreira picked him up, four weeks ago, just after the first murder, and his skin looked like leather, hanging slack on his gaunt face. He was built for brawling, with a compact, wiry frame and a low centre of gravity, well-seasoned fists tattooed across the knuckles, wearing gold sovereigns which she guessed had split countless lips.

Pushing fifty now. A veteran. Just like the man they had already arrested.

Ferreira crossed the road in front of the Great Northern Hotel, two uniforms behind her, peeling off left and right, forming a pincer movement in case Poulter decided to make a run for it.

‘Been somewhere nice?’ Ferreira asked.

He glanced up from his paper. ‘Turkey.’

‘Lot of Muslims in Turkey.’

‘I’ve got no problem with them in their own country.’ He closed his paper, rolled it up tight. ‘What do you want?’

‘A word.’

‘I’m listening.’

‘At the station,’ Ferreira said.

He tapped the newspaper against his thigh. ‘This about last night?’

‘Unless you’ve done something else you shouldn’t have.’

The two uniforms had moved in close, leaving him nowhere to go. Poulter eyed the pair of them up, big men but most of it was fat, and Ferreira could see him make the calculations, knowing he could probably take them, but then what?

‘Alright,’ he said. ‘I’ll follow you.’

‘This isn’t a request, Poulter.’ Ferreira gestured to the uniforms and they were on him fast; turned him round and cuffed him, held him sprawled over the bonnet of his cab while she cautioned him. ‘You understand that?’

‘Yes.’ Through gritted teeth. ‘What about my cab? I can’t leave it here. I’ll get fined.’

‘Funny, you’ve never worried about breaking the law before.’

He kept protesting as the uniforms walked him across the road and shoved him into the back of the patrol car, watched all the way by the other drivers on the rank.

Ferreira climbed into the taxi, a cream Skoda five years old. No chance of a hackney licence with his criminal record. He’d left the keys in the ignition and the radio was playing, voices arguing hotly on TalkSport, picking apart the legality of a tackle. She switched it off, pocketed the mobile phone he’d left on the dashboard, and deciding to do the decent thing, locked the cab up before she left.

At the station Poulter demanded a solicitor, started running his mouth about the rough treatment and the loss of earnings he was going to incur, saying he’d sue for the fine the council would levy on him over blocking the taxi rank.

Ferreira had him celled and went back up to Hate Crimes, took the stairs at full pelt, almost floating. This could be the end of the ENL. Three murders, a chorus of approval from within their ranks. It would be enough to have them officially deemed a terrorist organisation, and sure, the remaining members would form new groups, but there would be no more hiding behind the rhetoric of patriotism. All pretence of politics wiped away by the innocent blood those men had spilled.

The office was a wall of backs when she arrived, everyone crowded around Grieves’s desk, listening as she talked in a high, animated tone.

‘. . . come out through the bus station and get onto Cromwell Road that way.’

‘The techies should be able to do something with it,’ Zigic said, leaning over her shoulder to peer at the screen, like that would make the image clearer. ‘Good work, Deb. Send it up and tell them to get a hurry on.’

‘Progress?’ Ferreira asked.

‘We’ve got two men approaching the crime scene,’ he said, heading for the coffee machine. ‘Still no sign of our second man leaving it though.’

He shook the pot at her.

‘No thanks, I’m all coffeed out. Does it look like him?’

‘It doesn’t look like anyone much right now,’ Zigic said, shrugging slightly. ‘But it’s a start. Did you get him?’

‘He wants a solicitor before he’ll talk.’

Ferreira sat down and prepared for the wait.

‘Call came for you while you were out,’ Wahlia said, eyeing her over the top of his computer. ‘A bloke.’

‘Does this bloke have a name?’

Wahlia shoved his hand across the desk, a pink Post-it note stuck to his fingertips. ‘Embarrassing when one of them tracks you down at work, isn’t it?’

She took the Post-it and the jokey reply died on her tongue.

‘He sounded married,’ Wahlia said.

He probably was by now, she thought. It was what he wanted. Even when they were at university he didn’t act like everyone else, was steady and reliable, no bed-hopping for Alex, no heavy drinking, the kind of boy who wouldn’t even pretend to inhale. His life was plotted ahead of him in a predictable line; PhD, lecturing, wife, kids, dogs, a nice little house in a nice little village somewhere within a ten-mile radius of Cambridge, close enough to cycle in every day.

‘What did he want?’ she asked.

‘He wouldn’t say. Just told me to get you to ring him.’ Wahlia rocked back in his chair, work forgotten, his full attention on her now. ‘So, who is he?’

‘An old mate.’

‘A “mate”?’

She heard the quote marks he threw around the word and either interpretation fitted. Alex was the first friend she made when she arrived at university, painfully aware of how out of her element she was. She didn’t talk like the other girls, didn’t dress like them, not enough money from Mummy and Daddy to pull off that expensively anti-fashion look they had, all designer denim and moth-eaten cashmere. She could barely afford the textbooks, ended up buying half of them from a bloke in a pub on the market square who shoplifted them to order from Waterstones. Not a good start for someone who knew she would be heading to Hendon when her three years were up.

Alex was going out with the girl she shared a room with, four years older than both of them, well into his doctorate by that point and tutoring on the side for some extra cash. It was such a cliché that Ferreira blushed when she remembered it, the long, earnest conversations, the rigorously platonic tone, months of pretending the chemistry didn’t exist before she realised he would never make the first move and pretty much pounced on him.

‘You want me to find you some whimsical memory-lane music?’ Wahlia asked.

Ferreira looked up from the desktop, smiled back at him. ‘No, you’re alright, I’m done now.’

She tapped Alex’s number into her phone and went out into the corridor, not wanting an audience for this. She paced a few steps waiting for him to pick up, looking at the posters for knife crime and identity theft, wondering why they were even up where no civilian ever ventured.

‘Alex Cator.’

She stopped pacing. ‘Alex, hi, it’s Mel. You called me –’

‘Yes, God, it’s been forever, hasn’t it?’

‘I guess it has, yeah.’ She watched her feet start moving again across the carpet. ‘How are you?’

‘I’m good, thanks. Yeah, I’m great.’ Did his voice sound slightly strained, the lightness forced? ‘So you’re a sergeant now? How’s that working out?’

‘It’s what I wanted.’ She winced at the hard tone, knowing those conversations were long done with, that his disapproval shouldn’t matter to her any more. ‘Look, Alex, things are a bit hectic here –’

‘I’ve just seen the news,’ he said. ‘That’s why I’m calling. I think we should talk.’

For a moment she didn’t answer, processing the unexpected sense of disappointment then the randomness of his suggestion. In the background she heard music playing softly, a woman’s voice singing, the chink of a cup hitting a saucer, and imagined him sitting in the cafe on King Street where they used to go for breakfast. She pushed away the memory of his sleepy smile and their fingers intertwined on the melamine tabletop.

‘Have you got some information?’

‘You could say that.’

Ferreira glanced back into the office, saw Wahlia looking at her and turned away.

‘About the murders?’

‘Possibly,’ he said, drawing the word out. ‘It’s complicated, Mel.’

‘So explain.’

‘This isn’t really an over-the-phone kind of thing.’ A bell sounded at his end and then she knew he was in the cafe, recognised the distinctive chime. ‘Can we meet up for a drink?’

‘Alex, if you know something useful we can’t fuck about, I need the information now. This situation is already getting out of control. Where are you?’

‘No, I’ll come to you.’

Wahlia was right, he did sound married.

‘Or maybe we could meet in the middle,’ Alex said quickly. ‘There’s a place on the side of the A1, near Huntingdon.’

‘I know it.’

‘Seven? Is that OK for you?’

‘I’ll see you later.’

Ferreira ended the call without saying goodbye, annoyed with him in some vague way she didn’t want to examine, but as she slipped back into her chair and started to roll a cigarette the irritation festered.

Was it his insistence about meeting on neutral ground and the obvious implications behind it? Or how careful he was not to call the place what it really was, a hotel? Allowing them both to pretend that the potential didn’t exist. She should have pushed him harder for an explanation, she thought, as she went to the window and lit her cigarette, and she realised she wasn’t annoyed with him but with herself, because she wanted to see him again, and she had played along with his stupid teasing game to make that happen.

What could he possibly know that would have any relevance?

He was a psychology lecturer for Christ’s sake. The best he could offer was an offender profile for a racially motivated murderer, nothing she didn’t already know and couldn’t have worked up herself.

He couldn’t have anything useful. He’d seen her on the news and got a nostalgic itch which needed scratching so he called the station. It was that simple.

‘Mel.’ Zigic was standing in front of her, arms folded. ‘Is there something I should know?’

‘It’s probably not relevant.’

‘Meaning maybe it is.’

She pitched her spent butt out of the window. ‘That was an old friend from uni, he said he’s got information which might be useful. I’m meeting him later to discuss it.’

‘He’s not a hack, is he?’

‘Alex is a lecturer.’

‘Well, watch what you say, alright? These kinds of high-profile cases bring out all sorts of cranks.’

‘I’ll be careful.’

The telephone on her desk rang and she went to answer, glad of the excuse to end the conversation before it went any further.

‘Poulter’s solicitor’s here.’

29

KEN POULTER SAT
back from the table with his arms crossed over his chest, dark smudges of old tattoos faintly visible through the thick hair on his forearms. They were not as crisp as the recently inked ones on his fingers, very black against the straps of white skin where his rings had stopped him tanning.