Tell No Tales (38 page)

As they headed for the car Zigic looked along the street and stopped when he saw one of Lukas’s housemates coming the other way, the man he’d spoken to a few days earlier, Adrian Mazur. He stopped as well, froze for a second, staring straight at Zigic.

Then dropped the carrier bag he was holding and ran.

Zigic started after him, hearing Ferreira shouting at Moore and Hale, the patrol car’s engine roaring to life.

Mazur was moving fast. His feet slapped the pavement, a red rucksack banging against his back. A car door opened into his path. He tried to swerve but it clipped him, forcing him to slow for a few seconds, allowing Zigic to draw closer. No more than ten yards between them. Zigic could see that he was hurt. His gait was uneven, his face flushed as he turned back to look across his shoulder.

Always a mistake.

Zigic sped up. Eight yards between them.

Six.

Mazur rounded the corner onto Lincoln Road, scattering a group of women coming the other way. Zigic sprinted past them, in the man’s slipstream now, closing in along the empty space he was cutting up the middle of the pavement.

There was a pedestrian crossing ahead. Vehicles idling at the red light. Engine noise drowned out by the sound of a siren as the patrol car came out of a side street. It was driving the wrong way up the empty road, aiming for Mazur as he stuck a hand out, grabbed the post and swung round onto the crossing.

Zigic overshot by a few feet and by the time he righted himself the lights were on amber, horns sounding as Mazur stepped out in front of a car, slipping the rucksack off his back.

In the other lane a pickup truck shifted gears noisily and pulled away and Zigic swore as Mazur pitched his rucksack onto its flatbed, the driver ignorant of what had happened, accelerating off to his next job.

Mazur turned round, facing Zigic now, breathing heavily as he put his hands out to his sides, his face a picture of relief.

PC Hale bundled into him from the side, wrenched his hands behind his back and cuffed him, getting no resistance. Whatever he was worried about them finding in that backpack was gone and he let himself be placed in the patrol car without a fight.

48

ALL THEY GOT
from Adrian Mazur was his wallet, which contained nothing but the usual; thirty pounds in cash, a debit card close to expiration, and his photo ID for Grey Shield Security.

Everything came back to that place.

The files ex-DCI Broad had been so reluctant to part with were now being sifted through by Wahlia and Grieves, time sheets and shift rotations examined, staff records searched for Polish employees who had worked with the other members of the gang.

So far they’d established that Tomas Kaminski and Pyotr Dymek had started at the company within a week of each other. Maybe not a significant point, but Zigic knew that it was common for people to suggest friends, vouch for them. Lukas Wrabowski was a more recent employee, six months in the job and they could find no trace of him in England before that. He’d called Inspector Strug in Poznań and drawn a blank, got the distinct impression that his Polish counterpart was becoming impatient with the interruptions to his day.

Not that it mattered any more. By committing suicide Lukas Wrabowski had put himself beyond questioning and justice, but his laptop was with the techies now and that might yet yield the secrets he’d asphyxiated himself to avoid giving up.

‘OK,’ Wahlia said, pushing back from his screen. ‘We’ve got Mazur on doorman duty with Tomas six weeks ago, only a couple of nights, but his main job’s as a security guard at the shopping centre.’

‘Day or night?’ Zigic asked.

‘Day,’ Wahlia said. ‘So he’s free to go out murdering of an evening.’

‘Why wasn’t he at work today then?’

‘Grey Shield’s only an employment agency like all the others. They call them when they want them. Don’t let them get too comfortable in one place by the look of this either.’ Wahlia took off his heavy-framed glasses and rubbed his eyes. ‘That’s common with retail security though, stops them getting too friendly with the careerist shoplifters.’

‘And it’s playing havoc with fathoming out who wasn’t working when the murders took place?’ Zigic guessed.

Wahlia nodded. ‘It’s slow going. We could do with an extra pair of eyes on this.’

‘Parr should be back in an hour or so,’ Zigic said, checking his watch.

He’d sent him to oversee the search of the house on Oxford Road, sure they’d found everything it was going to yield already but there was always a slim chance that Mazur had left something incriminating behind.

‘What we do know,’ Wahlia said, slipping his glasses back on, ‘is that Mr Mazur’s doorman shifts stopped materialising because he has some impulse control issues. He broke a bloke’s jaw throwing him out of a club.’

‘Was any action taken?’

‘He was put on a written warning according to his file, but it didn’t go any further.’

Another dent in the highly polished facade of Grey Shield Security, Zigic thought. He swivelled in Ferreira’s chair to look at the whiteboards lined up along the wall, the three murders and the hit-and-run, Tomas’s still maybe accidental death, no board for Lukas’s suicide. Seven deaths, a terrible knot of misery they’d been trying to unpick for weeks, no idea that the crimes might be linked, and now he could see the slim filament tying them all together.

One man, faceless, wearing a Grey Shield uniform.

Ferreira came into the office and shooed him out of her chair, plugged a USB drive into the tower under her desk before she sat down.

‘Contents of Dymek’s mobile,’ she said. ‘Nothing spectacular, a lot of messages going back and forth between him and Tomas, a few to Lukas. We’ve got another number, which could be our mystery man.’

‘Shout it out,’ Wahlia said and she gave him it.

‘The messages are in Polish, so . . .’

Zigic looked at the text file on her screen, the grey bar on the left showing just how much there was to go through.

‘It can wait,’ he said. ‘Let’s talk to Mr Mazur.’

Adrian Mazur had requested a solicitor the second he stepped into the station’s reception area, the action of an old hand, at odds with his lack of a criminal record. At the time it sparked a small moment of hope in Zigic’s chest; you only wanted a solicitor because you were going to talk. And if he was prepared to do that, the right combination of threats and coaxing might get them to the truth.

That wasn’t how it was going though.

Mazur was evasive, withdrawn, sitting at the table in Interview Room 2 with his eyes lowered, hands tucked into the pockets of his hoodie, the shiny fabric drawn tight across the points of his knuckles. Five minutes in and he’d spoken less than a dozen words – ‘yes’ and ‘no’ answers – ignored some questions altogether.

Zigic asked his last one a second time.

‘Why did you run, Mr Mazur?’

The young man cleared his throat, glanced at his solicitor, who wasn’t paying any attention to him.

‘I don’t know.’

‘You didn’t run away last time we spoke,’ Zigic said. ‘In fact you were very helpful. So why run today?’

He remained silent.

‘Something to do with the contents of your backpack maybe?’

Mazur shifted in his seat and Zigic could see the tremors shaking up through his body as his legs twitched under the table. The instinct to bolt still strong in him.

‘What was in there that you didn’t want us to see?’

‘Nothing.’

Zigic sighed and opened the file he’d brought in with him, started laying out the photographs he’d laid out so many times during the last few days; Didi and Ali Manouf and Asif Khalid. Photos of them alive sitting above the ones of them dead, lurid, glossy shots, saturated with colour; dark skin, white bone and so much blood.

Mazur refused to look at them, kept his eyes locked firmly on Zigic.

‘Why are you showing me this?’

‘Your friend Pyotr killed this man.’ Zigic pointed at Ali Manouf’s photograph but Mazur didn’t follow the gesture. ‘And your friend Lukas killed this one – look at him.’

Mazur’s eyes cut quickly to the photo and away again.

‘They are not my friends,’ he said quietly. ‘We are neighbours. That is all.’

‘You share a house.’

‘Because we work for the same people. They find us room when we sign on with them.’ He stared at Zigic, said again, ‘They are not my friends.’

‘Can you tell me where you were on Thursday morning between five thirty and six?’ Ferreira asked.

‘At home. I am always at home then.’

‘What about on Saturday February first, between eleven thirty and midnight?’

Mazur shook his head. ‘I don’t know, how would I remember that?’

‘Twelve thirty and one a.m. on Monday March twenty-fourth?’

‘I can’t remember.’ No force to his words.

‘Friday night. Between ten thirty and eleven?’

‘No.’ Mazur shouted, slamming both palms down on the table. ‘Why are you asking me this?’

‘Because three men have been murdered,’ Zigic said. ‘And your friends were responsible. But they weren’t acting alone.’

‘I told you, they are not my friends.’

‘No, they were your foot soldiers.’

Mazur’s face froze, eyes wide, mouth open.

‘But they weren’t good soldiers,’ Zigic went on, his voice low. ‘At least, Pyotr Dymek wasn’t. He screwed up and you had to get rid of him before he incriminated you. So you killed him.’

‘No.’

‘Three murderers working with you. Two of them living with you.’

Mazur shook his head. ‘No, this is crazy. You are mad.’

‘Innocent people don’t run.’

Mazur was breathing heavily now, colour rising in his gaunt face, and under the table his leg was jiggling, nervousness threatening to spread through his entire body and turn into a fit. Zigic could see the fear behind his eyes and it surprised him, after the cool and stoic way Lukas Wrabowski dealt with this selfsame situation. He’d acted like a leader, defiant till the end.

Mazur didn’t seem like a man who could command respect.

Fifteen minutes of questioning and he was close to the edge.

Zigic brought one last photograph out of the folder and laid it on top of the others – Jelena Krasic, young and pretty and smiling like she thought she would live forever.

‘You’re a real hard man, Adrian, driving that massive car through her. You must have seen her face as you did it. She was looking right at you.’

Mazur’s hands shot out and he swept the photographs off the table. They settled slowly, face up, one of them floating all the way to the door.

‘She was twenty-four,’ Zigic said. ‘She was about to get engaged. A nice girl. And you ploughed through her in that big white tank of a car without a second thought. You just wanted to take Pyotr out and you didn’t care who else died.’

‘I cannot drive,’ Mazur said wearily. ‘You look. See if I have a driver’s licence.’

They already knew he didn’t.

‘That means nothing.’

Mazur turned to Ferreira, making the same mistake that so many suspects did, thinking a female officer would be more sympathetic.

‘Please, I did not kill anyone.’

‘Then help us,’ she said. ‘You lived among these murderers – who’s the fourth member of the gang if it isn’t you?’

‘I don’t know.’

His shoulders sagged and his chin dropped onto his chest, the strip light bouncing off his shaved head. For a minute he closed his eyes and Zigic imagined him furiously digging around for a name to throw at them, someone else from work, another Pole with a bad attitude who would look a more promising suspect.

‘Last week,’ Mazur said slowly, ‘a man came looking for Pyotr. It was dark still and he woke me up banging on Pyotr’s door. I thought it was somebody trying to break in.’

‘What day was this?’ Ferreira said.

‘The day Pyotr died.’

‘Why didn’t you tell us this when we spoke to you at the house?’

‘I thought it was an accident. Why would you care if some man was looking for him?’ Mazur glanced between them, checking their reactions, and obviously he didn’t think they were buying it because he kept talking, speeding up, becoming more animated. ‘I went downstairs into the kitchen. I could see him from the window. He was very angry, banging on the door. Pyotr was not there though. He was next door with his
kurwa
.’

‘Did you recognise him?’ Ferreira asked.

‘No. It was dark. I could not see his face,’ Mazur said. ‘But when I went back to bed I saw a large white car parked outside the house. He was the man who killed those poor people.’

49

‘
HE REALLY EXPECTS
us to buy that bullshit,’ Ferreira said.

She opened a can of Pepsi and swore as it fizzed over her hand.

‘It chimes with what the neighbour told us,’ Zigic pointed out.

‘Of course it does, because he knows he went for her first.’

Zigic thought of Mazur’s expression as he laid the photographs of the dead men out in front of him, no pleasure in his eyes, just revulsion and shock. Tough emotions to fake. He ran though, senselessly, and they wouldn’t have an explanation for it until his rucksack was recovered.

‘Where are we with the bag?’ he asked.

‘I spoke to the office,’ Grieves said. ‘They’ve got it off the truck and I’ve sent a car to collect it but it’ll take them a couple of hours to get there and back. The company’s based in Grantham and it’s rush hour now – you know what the A1’s like this time of night.’

Not night, Zigic thought, looking away through the east-facing windows, but very nearly. The sky was almost fully dark, a pink glow smeared above the dual carriageway, people heading home already. But not from this office.

There was reams of paperwork to go through and more coming in all the time, as Wahlia identified potential suspects from Grey Shield Security’s records, men who’d worked directly with the murderers, ones with criminal records, a handful with clean histories who he’d highlighted purely because of their shift patterns, available on the nights of all three murders and the morning of the hit-and-run.

The last group was their focus, opportunity more important than any other factor right now.