Tell No Tales (37 page)

‘He’s in police custody,’ Zigic said. ‘But he isn’t talking.’

‘The dead don’t very often.’ Broad smiled, eyes sharp above his rimless reading glasses. ‘I still have friends at Thorpe Wood, Ziggy. And they’re just as loose-lipped as they’ve always been.’

‘Then you’ll know we’re under pressure.’

‘Bob said as much.’

Funny, Zigic didn’t remember Broad and Riggott being such good mates when they were in CID together. What he remembered was two DIs both trying to climb the same ladder at the same time and being less than sportsmanlike about it. With Riggott the barbs were strictly professional. Broad took a more personal pleasure in knifing his perceived competition.

‘You’ll appreciate why we need to find out some background on him then.’

‘Always best to clean your mess up quick.’ Broad’s fingers skipped across the keyboard. ‘Here we go . . . Lukas Wrabowski. Another doorman. I’ll print this lot off for you too, shall I?’

‘Thanks. And whatever you have on Pyotr Dymek.’

Broad nodded, transferred his attention to the computer again for a few seconds, a hint of annoyance creeping in around his eyes, corners of his mouth turning down.

‘This hasn’t got anything to do with that hit-and-run, has it?’

‘You know I can’t discuss an ongoing case.’

‘Look, Ziggy, I might be a civilian now but I spent twenty years sitting where you’re sitting and I’m not about to start running my mouth off.’ He settled back in his chair, elbow on the arm, his hand curled into a fist which gave away the anger he was trying to keep out of his voice. ‘It’s those murders, isn’t it? Three now, right? You think one of my employees is responsible?’

‘It’s a possibility. We’re still trying to work out exactly who did what.’

Broad snorted, fist clenching and opening again. ‘Ten years I’ve spent building this company. We’ve got a spotless record – we’ve worked damn hard to earn our good standing – and it’ll completely go to shit the second this gets out.’

Never mind the three men who’d been murdered.

Innocent men, stamped to death, left in the street while their killers disappeared into the night, went home to shower the blood off and climb into their beds, get up the next morning and pull on the Grey Shield uniforms they had no place wearing. If Broad did his job properly, if he brought his well-honed detective’s mind into play and took the time to notice the kind of men he was employing, his reputation wouldn’t be under threat now.

Ten years was long enough off the force to blur your morals apparently, and even though Broad still carried the air of a copper his brain ticked just the same as any other businessman’s. Self-preservation first, second and third.

That was what Zigic needed to appeal to.

‘I’ll do my very best to keep your company out of this,’ he said. ‘There’s no reason at all why you have to be mentioned, but three of our suspects have worked for you and there’s a high probability the fourth one does too.’

‘Christ, another one?’ Broad looked queasy, eyes rolling towards the ceiling, as if he expected it to physically fall in on him. ‘What the hell kind of fuck-up have you made, Ziggy?’

There was the Broad he knew and hated.

‘My fuck-up? What about yours? Did you take the time to check Tomas Kaminski’s criminal record before you employed him? Six years in prison for murder. Links to a neo-Nazi gang. We’re not talking about a few youthful indiscretions here, Alan. Kaminski was a hardened criminal.’

The colour was rising through Broad’s winter tan, the crêpey skin around his mean blue eyes crimping.

‘Or maybe I’m being unfair to you. As I recall you were a very conscientious detective.’ Zigic nodded to himself. ‘I imagine you’re just as careful now. More careful even, considering that reputation is everything in this business. So I wouldn’t be at all surprised if you did check Kaminski out and you just didn’t care what he’d done.’

‘Look –’

‘He was a tough guy, right? Perfect for security work. And who cares if he cut up a couple of Turks back in the old country? No one’s going to find out.’ Zigic leaned across Broad’s desk, his elbow knocking over a photograph in a chrome frame. ‘Except I’ve got a press conference due in a little over an hour and, fuck-up that I am, I don’t have much progress to report. Now, what can I possibly say that will distract the press from my inability to make an arrest?’

Broad’s fingers closed around the arm of his chair.

‘Maybe they’d like to come down here and watch us execute a search warrant for your files. What do you think?’

‘You’re an ungrateful cunt,’ Broad snarled. ‘That’s what I fucking think.’

Zigic spread his hands wide, smiled. ‘I learned from the master.’

47

‘
WE WERE SO
close,’ Ferreira said, as she pulled up in front of the house on Oxford Road.

They’d already been to the address Broad had for Lukas Wrabowski, walked down the side of the red-brick semi and into the overgrown back garden, heading for the converted outbuilding where Pyotr Dymek lived. Three days ago, mere hours before Asif Khalid was murdered, his killer within touching distance, and they didn’t even know he existed.

Zigic looked up at the first-floor windows, curtains drawn, no signs of life.

‘He was probably in there watching us.’

‘It didn’t scare him though, did it?’ Ferreira said. ‘His mate’s dead and we’re at his door and he still goes out that night and kicks someone to death. What does that tell you?’

‘That whoever was pulling the strings is arrogant.’

They got out of the car, two uniforms joining them. At this time of the afternoon the house would probably be empty, its other occupants still at work, but they didn’t want to take any chances. Dymek and Wrabowski were linked and the possibility that the fourth man they were looking for lived in the house too couldn’t be discounted.

Zigic had the keys they’d recovered from Wrabowski’s belongings when he was arrested, the only thing on him.

He waited until the uniforms were in the back garden before he knocked, gave it half a minute, gripping the keys tight, metal teeth biting his fingers. Behind him Ferreira shifted her feet on the gravel.

‘They’re out,’ she said. ‘Let’s just do this.’

He unlocked the front door and they stepped into a gloomy hallway, faintly damp-smelling and tinged with stale cigarette smoke. Nothing was lying around but it was a shared house and you guarded your possessions in places like this, especially when you didn’t know or trust your housemates.

At the far end of the hall a door stood open onto the kitchen, another door to the right led into a communal sitting room done out with an old-fashioned Dralon suite and a teak coffee table littered with beer cans and takeaway cartons. Among them sat a copy of the local Polish-language newspaper, the latest edition judging by the photograph of Asif Khalid dominating the front page.

The third door was locked; a bedroom, but Wrabowski’s key didn’t fit.

Ferreira lingered for a moment, ear pressed to the cheap plywood, satisfying herself that the room really was unoccupied.

Upstairs they tried the doors until finally the key turned on a bedroom at the back of the house.

‘I was expecting paraphernalia,’ Ferreira said and Zigic wasn’t sure if she was joking or not, but he shared the sentiment.

The room was no different to any other of the kind he’d seen. A pine single bed and a flimsy wardrobe, an armchair too bulky for the room and a portable television on a desk. The only thing which struck him as unusual was how tight the sheets had been stretched across the mattress, reminding him of an army barracks.

Ferreira pulled on a pair of latex gloves before she opened the wardrobe – nothing but carefully folded clothes inside, and Wrabowski’s Grey Shield uniform hanging up above a pair of black boots polished to a high shine. The same type he wore when he killed Asif Khalid.

‘He thought he was a soldier,’ she said.

‘Tomas told Sofia he was an army medic.’

‘My money’s on that being pure fantasy.’

Zigic checked the desk drawers, lifted the cushions on the burgundy floral armchair, found nothing but dust and a few biscuit crumbs, which told him Wrabowski wasn’t all that precise in his cleaning habits.

‘He must have a mobile.’

‘Mattress,’ Ferreira said.

They took one end each and flipped it up against the wall, exposing the narrow slats and the matt-black body of a laptop lying across them.

‘Even better.’

Zigic went to the window while she bagged up, seeing the uniforms milling about on the grey-slabbed patio, attention directed across the back fence towards the neighbouring garden, where Dymek’s lady friend from Łódź was taking her washing in, wearing hot pants and a vest despite the single-digit temperature.

‘We should talk to her,’ he said.

Ferreira came over to the window. ‘Men confide in whores, right?’

‘It’s what I hear.’

She smiled. ‘Anyone else, I wouldn’t have let that go so easily.’

They left the uniforms stationed across the road, with a good eyeline to the front door but not close enough to spook Wrabowski’s housemates when they arrived home from work. They would be brought in to give statements, alibis requested and checked before they were released.

Zigic thought of the man he’d spoken to the first time they were there. Tall and rangy, a physique made for scrapping, but light enough to bolt from the scene of a crime without too much trouble.

The problem was they still had no idea if that was the kind of man they were looking for. Until CCTV yielded some clues or a witness came forward they were guessing.

Ferreira took the lead with the neighbour – Marinka.

She kept them in the hallway, stood near the staircase with one foot on top of the other, nervously twisting her hand on the newel post, short red fingernails and a ring around her thumb. The house smelled of air-freshener and used sheets, a faint odour of heavily spiced aftershave from her last client.

‘This is about Pyotr?’ she asked, her accent thick, voice deeper than her slight frame suggested.

‘When did you last see him?’ Ferreira asked.

‘The day before he was killed. He came here and said he was going home for a few days.’

‘Do your clients usually tell you when they’ll be away?’

Marinka took no offence at the question. ‘Pyotr was my friend also.’

‘How did he seem to you?’

She considered it for a moment, looking at her hand as she gripped the wooden acorn which topped the post, raking her thumbnail down its ridges. ‘He was not like himself. He was usually a happy man. Always joking.’

‘Maybe he didn’t want to go home,’ Ferreira said gently.

‘No. He was scared.’ She closed her eyes, frowned. ‘He said that if a man came here looking for him I should say I did not know where he was.’

‘What man?’ Zigic asked.

‘I did not ask. I thought he had some debt he was running away from.’

‘And did he come?’

She nodded. ‘The day Pyotr died. It was very early. I heard banging and I got up to see what it was. There was a man at my front door. I thought he would break in.’

‘Did you answer it?’ Zigic asked, praying that she had.

‘No. It was still dark outside. I would not open the door to him but I came down and he must have seen me. He shouted at me through the letter box.’ She nodded towards it, the slot caged, some junk mail sitting there. ‘He said he needed to speak to Pyotr, it was an emergency. Pyotr’s wife was dying.’

‘But you didn’t believe that?’

‘I know when I am being lied to,’ she said. ‘I told him I did not know where Pyotr was and if he did not leave I would call the police.’

‘How did he know to come to you?’ Ferreira asked.

Marinka shrugged. ‘Men like to talk about the women they fuck.’

‘Can you tell us anything about this man?’ Zigic asked, hearing the desperation creeping into his voice. ‘Please, Marinka, this is very important.’

She shrank back slightly, pressed her body against the staircase, and when she spoke she looked down at her feet. ‘I did not see his face.’

‘Was he Polish?’

‘Yes.’

Zigic took out a photograph of Lukas Wrabowski. ‘Could this be the man?’

‘He is my neighbour,’ she said, sounding perplexed. ‘Why do you have his photograph?’

‘Is it possible this was the man who came here?’ Zigic asked.

‘No. I know Lukas’s voice. It was not him.’

They spent another few minutes trying to draw something further out of her but she had shut down, scared by the possibility that whoever killed Dymek was still out there, perhaps. Wary of exposing herself to his wrath. Zigic gave her a card and she tucked it into the back pocket of her denim shorts, saw them out with a hollow promise to call if she remembered anything else.

A few fine spots of rain hit Zigic’s face as the door closed at their backs. He saw Moore and Hale parked across the road, the engine of their car running, heating the interior, the wipers swiping lazily over the lightly spotted windscreen.

‘What do you make of that?’ Ferreira asked.

‘He’s cleaning up a loose end,’ Zigic said, pausing in the gateway, thinking of the shovel in the Volvo’s boot, the only new thing in there. Bought for a specific and immediate purpose. ‘Dymek spat on Manouf’s body, he left evidence behind that could get them all arrested.’

‘So he had to die?’

‘It would explain why he was running home.’

‘The Volvo was bought the morning after Manouf was murdered,’ Ferreira said. ‘He could have gone after Dymek straight away.’

‘Maybe he couldn’t find him. He came looking here . . .’

‘No sign of Dymek. So he drives off down Lincoln Road and sees him standing at the bus stop talking to Sofia. Loses it, accelerates, and runs him over.’ She glanced up at the neighbouring house. ‘Lukas would have known whether he was home or not. Why not just ask him?’

‘Would you want the rest of the gang to know how expendable they were off the back of one mistake?’ Zigic said. ‘Not exactly good for morale, is it?’

‘It’s a messy way to get rid of Dymek.’

‘You’re assuming he was thinking rationally at the time.’