Tell No Tales (40 page)

‘I was wondering when I would see you,’ Jurek said, clapping Zigic on the shoulder. He lowered himself carefully into the chair, winced as he did it. Old wounds, badly healed, but Zigic knew he wouldn’t thank him for asking about them. ‘So, which is it, the car accident or the murders?’

‘Straight to business?’

‘We want to see our dead avenged, Inspector.’ Zigic hesitated a moment too long for Jurek’s liking and his face darkened. ‘You can rely on my discretion if that is what you are wondering.’

‘It’s not you I’m worried about.’

Jurek grunted agreement and nodded towards the back door. ‘I need a cigarette.’

Zigic followed him out past the toilets and the closed door of a disused function room, noticing just how badly the old man moved now, how much effort it took him to force down the bar on the fire door which took them into the car park that wrapped around the side of the building.

There was a hint of frost in the air, wind rising and sending a spray of rubbish swirling across the cracked and patched tarmac. The flyover droned nearby but still the neighbouring churchyard seemed to exude its own deep and permanent silence.

Jurek lit a cigarette, his back turned against the wind. ‘I heard on the radio you arrested a Polish man for that boy’s murder. He killed himself in your cells they said, this Wrabowski.’

Zigic didn’t even realise they’d announced it. Everything was running out of his control.

‘He hanged himself, yes.’

‘And what if it wasn’t him?’

‘It was, we had ample forensic evidence.’ Zigic punched his hands into his pockets. ‘He was a member of a neo-Nazi group, the White Brethren – do you know anything about them?’

Jurek exhaled, blowing the smoke away from Zigic.

‘They were very active in the bigger cities in Poland during the eighties and nineties. Anti-Semitic attacks mainly, desecrating graves and memorials. There wasn’t much more than that left for them to destroy.’ He frowned, flicked the ash off his cigarette. ‘By the late nineties they began to fracture, many left the country – to look for work I imagine – and the ones who stayed behind took exception to the influx of migrants from Africa and the Middle East. There were some murders but the police were not interested.’

‘I thought they were a prison gang,’ Zigic said.

‘Later, yes. But it was drug dealing that led them there, not murder.’ Jurek took another deep draw on his cigarette. ‘They stepped into territory which was protected so the police rounded them up and they were put in prison. I am out of touch now, of course, but the last I heard they were finished.’

Zigic thought of the videos he’d seen; blood on cobblestones, lit by ornate street lights.

‘They’re not finished, Jurek, believe me.’

A motorbike’s engine sawed through the quiet, moving slowly along the narrow residential road, then retreated, heading into the housing estate that ran down to the River Nene.

‘They’re operating over here now,’ Zigic said. ‘Wrabowski and two of his friends. They’re all dead, but the ringleader’s still out there and we need to find him. Have you heard anything about this? Gossip, whispers, anything.’

Jurek flicked his spent butt away. ‘There are tensions, for sure.’

‘With who?’

‘My countrymen are fiercely patriotic, you must understand that.’

‘But they’re in England now.’

‘Yes, and they have their streets here and they regard them as home.’ Jurek’s face twisted, like he was struggling to find the right words, an odd predicament for a man of his profession, Zigic thought. ‘Damn you for making me say this . . .’

Zigic waited and when Jurek spoke the words tumbled out.

‘The Poles hate the Asians and the Asians hate the Poles. It is a culture clash. Islam and Catholicism. If you are a believer there can be no peace. Not when you live so close together. The Asians disapprove of our bars moving into their streets, they rent us overpriced, badly maintained housing and then hate that we are their neighbours. The young boys especially. There are fights so often and nobody calls the police.’

‘Wrabowski wasn’t a boy,’ Zigic said, anger creeping into his voice. ‘Do you want to see this turn into an all-out race war?’

‘Our community cannot be held responsible for the actions of these extremists.’

‘If you shield them you will be.’

‘Who is shielding them?’ Jurek asked incredulously. ‘You should know better than that, Inspector. Groups like this do not operate in the open. These men do not flaunt the scalps they have taken. They are a terrorist cell.’

He was right, Zigic realised. The closed website and the hate speech – they were mimicking the behaviour of jihadists.

In the distance the motorbike’s engine rumbled, growing louder as it returned from the warren of quiet closes and cul-de-sacs.

‘I am sorry I cannot help you more,’ Jurek said, reaching out to shake Zigic’s hand, discussion over. ‘I hope you find him.’

The motorbike rounded the corner at the bottom of the hill, slowing until it stopped outside the Polish Club. The man riding pillion jumped off and darted across the road, something in his hand which flared into life a split second before he threw it. Street light glinted on the bottle as it sailed through the air, the flame just a blur.

Glass smashed and Zigic was running, fast but not fast enough to catch the man, who climbed back onto the bike, chased by a fireball which blew out the Polish Club’s front window. The driver gunned the engine and they were gone.

‘Call the fire brigade,’ Zigic shouted, pulling the hood of his parka up as he rushed through the front door.

The hallway was already filling with smoke and he collided with the barmaid as she burst through a door marked ‘Staff Only’, leading an old man by the hand, his face covered in blood, a shard of glass sticking out of his cheek.

She shoved Zigic in the chest. ‘For fuck’s sake get out of here.’

‘How many of them are still in there?’

‘None. I told them to go through the back.’ There was blood on her hands and soaking the front of her jumper. ‘The whole room went up.’

There was a crack and the building shuddered around them, followed by a sound like it was breaking open. She grabbed him by the arm, forced him towards the door with a strength she didn’t look capable of, trailing the old man who dropped to his knees the second they were into the open air.

Outside Jurek stood slack-jawed, looking at the smoke pouring out of the ruptured window, the flames lighting the one above it where the fire had punched through the ceiling.

Zigic rushed round the back, found the rest of the men in the car park, one of them screaming on the ground as two of his friends used their jackets to try and beat out the flames covering his back. He writhed and bucked and tried to crawl away from them, scraping his scorched skin against the tarmac and crying out curses and prayers.

Another man stood nearby, still holding his empty glass, wiry grey hair singed on one side, his face livid. He looked frozen with shock but when Zigic touched his arm he flinched, dropping the glass.

‘Is there anyone left in there?’

‘What?’

‘Is there anyone inside?’

‘No.’ The man looked at his friend, now still on the ground. ‘Is he dead?’

Across the road residents were coming out of their houses, phones in their hands, filming the rising smoke and the desiccated bushes in front of the broken window as they caught light. Nobody came forward to help, nobody drew close enough to be in danger, they simply stood, silently, and watched the building burn through the screens of their smartphones.

DAY SIX

51

THE NEXT MORNING
Zigic saw the amateur footage on the BBC News Channel, stood in the kitchen watching it as he waited for the toaster to pop, thinking how minor it looked, so little to see, just a tattered curtain touched by flames snapping through the broken window and an almost cosy-looking light in the window above it. Not serious enough for anyone to have died.

The man he’d seen cursing and screaming in the car park had been loaded into the back of an ambulance, alive but only just, while his friends looked on, clutching the jackets they had used to beat down the flames, the smell of smoke and burnt flesh on the fabric.

Zigic didn’t want to think about how close he’d come to being in there too.

The newsreader’s voice cut across the muffled din of sirens as the first patrol cars could be seen arriving.

‘
Police and community leaders in Peterborough have again appealed for calm after the Polish Ex-Servicemen’s Club was firebombed in the city yesterday evening. The attack is believed to have been carried out as retaliation for the murder of local man Asif Khalid. Mr Khalid’s killer, Lukas Wrabowski, a member of the city’s Polish community, took his own life in police custody on Sunday.
’

There was no containing this now.

Ironically Riggott had taken control of the investigation. It was exactly the kind of incident Hate Crimes had been established to deal with but with so much for them still to do he’d decided it was best handled in CID.

That was what he said anyway.

Zigic knew it was nothing to do with easing the pressure on them. It was pressure from above which was worrying Riggott. The Chief Constable and the mayor and all their shadowy cronies, they needed to be seen to be doing their utmost to quell the rising tensions in the city, which meant applying rank and diverting manpower. Uniforms on the street and increased patrols, high-profile policing.

Stefan and Milan ran into the kitchen and Zigic changed the channel quickly, finding cartoons but they were too busy squabbling to notice. He poured their juice and got their cereals, answering the tirade of questions they threw at him, mostly dog-related since the people next door had just brought home a rescue, some sad-looking mongrel with visible ribs and half its fur missing. The boys saw none of that, only the big brown eyes and the neediness which drew the dog through a gap in the fence when they were out playing in the garden at the weekend.

He was going to cave in to them. They all knew that. It was just a matter of time.

‘Ask your mother,’ he said when Anna came down, then escaped upstairs to change.

They were still pestering her when he returned ten minutes later, showered and dressed for work. She scowled at him as he grabbed his jacket and his keys, told him he’d be cleaning up after it when he kissed her.

The radio came on as he started the car but he turned it off again, in no mood to listen to whatever the local news was reporting. Whatever they were saying it made no difference, the job in front of him hadn’t changed overnight, despite the firebombing.

Today’s task remained the same: find their missing ringleader.

Ferreira pulled into the station behind him, tucked her car into the next space. They’d finished late yesterday evening, pushing ten when he ordered her and Wahlia out of the office, convinced that a good night’s sleep was more likely to yield progress than another worn-out hour in front of their computers.

‘So, last night was pretty rough down Lincoln Road,’ she said, going up the steps ahead of him and opening the door. ‘Three Polish places had their windows put in.’

‘We never should have released Wrabowski’s name. Not until we had another arrest.’

‘It would have only delayed the inevitable.’

‘This isn’t an inevitable reaction,’ he said.

‘No, just the expected one.’

They went through reception, up the glass-walled stairwell, past CID which was already fully manned and buzzing with activity. A double murder and now this new spate of damage overnight, the situation was escalating and they needed a swift, hard response. Even that might not be enough, he thought.

Ferreira dumped her bag and booted up her computer, then went to start a pot of coffee, while Zigic checked his messages – one from Ethan timed at 4.36 a.m., a rundown of his initial findings.

The White Brethren site was well shielded, as they feared, its true location obscured by a proxy server. Getting hold of the owner wasn’t impossible, but it would take time and resources and ultimately wouldn’t bring them any closer to the man they wanted. Ethan had pulled some information from the video footage of the murders though, much of it already known to them, the time and date of filming adding nothing new, the make of the phone a useless footnote.

The hate-speech videos were filmed on a camera, eight of them in the last four months, the most recent batch uploaded a day before each of the murders, but with no way to trace their origin that information was also useless. If the man speaking was responsible it might mean something. If not, they were simply incitement.

There was another message, flagged as urgent by Kate Jenkins, Adrian Mazur’s name on the subject line. Zigic took a deep breath before he opened it, then clicked the mouse.

He swore at the screen.

‘What?’ Ferreira called.

‘Mazur’s blood type doesn’t match the deposits on the airbag.’

She swore back at him.

Another suspect ruled out. Another dead end.

He went out into the main office, telling himself they would break this today because he knew they had to.

Ferreira was looking at something on her mobile.

‘Alex just messaged me,’ she said. ‘Apparently we’ve set alarms off accessing the White Brethren site.’

‘Don’t suppose he offered to help?’

‘He’s coming up today. They’re getting very jumpy about this turning into a domestic terrorism story, I guess. Or they’ve fucked up their brief and we’re going to take the fall for it.’

Zigic poured a cup of coffee. ‘Maybe he wants to take the reins.’

‘Would you care if he did?’

‘I just want to catch this bastard.’ He handed over her coffee, poured another for himself. ‘If Alex knows something useful we need to talk to him.’

‘I don’t think we get a choice.’ Ferreira smiled. ‘Unless we catch him this morning.’

Zigic went to the murder board. Two names outstanding; today’s work would be tracking them down and bringing them in, taking swabs, getting alibis, checking them out. He was beyond the point of optimism now. Even the tentative kind. Too many dead ends already gone down. Too many suspects through the interview rooms.