Tell No Tales (44 page)

The desk sergeant was watching them across the top of his newspaper and Grieves looked to him for help, got a shrug in response. She was toxic now, sharing Palmer’s taint, and she would find out how quickly her fellow officers turned once that happened.

‘Do you really think I was helping him?’

‘You helped him before,’ Zigic snapped. ‘If you’d had the spine to tell the truth when he killed that young lad he might not have got the chance to do any of this.’ He poked a finger in her face, making her flinch. ‘This is on you, Grieves, and I’m going to make damn sure Riggott knows it.’

‘This isn’t fair.’

‘Fair? Go to the hospital and tell Mel what’s fair.’

Grieves shouldered past him at that and bolted for the door, down the steps and into the car park, and Zigic watched her all the way, thinking that if there was any justice she would never walk back into the station as a police officer.

But he knew the outcome wouldn’t be so drastic. An official reprimand, an extensive carpeting in Riggott’s office and then a few uncomfortable months before she was transferred to another station.

Plenty of coppers had done worse than her and survived it.

Wahlia met him on the other side of the door and walked with him to the lifts.

‘Hospital called,’ he said, speaking loudly. ‘Mel’s out of surgery.’

‘How is she?’

‘Sedated.’

A detective sergeant from CID strode past them, paused to shake Zigic’s hand and said something he didn’t hear, his mouth barely moving. No obvious expression on his face to judge by.

Zigic felt like they’d screwed up. Failed to catch Palmer in time, failed to contain him, and now Ferreira was lying unconscious in a hospital bed, God knows what damage done.

It could have been worse, he told himself, if Palmer had got into the city centre with a nail bomb this would be a major incident, dozens dead or injured, more even, but he felt no better for the knowledge.

‘What does Riggott want?’ he asked, sure that he was shouting.

‘The guy from Domestic Terrorism’s here,’ Wahlia said. ‘For debriefing.’

They went up to one of the infrequently used meeting rooms which had been done out for guests with a tray of tea and coffee, bottles of mineral water and biscuits, but it wasn’t exactly inviting, despite the late-afternoon sun streaming in through the south-facing windows. The light was cold and harsh, showing up the shoddy padded chairs and the dust across the conference table.

Riggott was already in there, seated with his back to the window, Nicola Gilraye next to him, both of them looking to the man at the head of the table who rose as Zigic entered the room.

‘You must be Dushan – I’ve heard a lot about you.’ They shook hands. ‘I’m Alex.’

He was about Ferreira’s age but looked much older, serious and capable in his sober grey suit, carried an unmistakable aura of influence around him.

‘Sorry to have dragged you in,’ he said. ‘But I need to know we’re all on the same page and this is your case.’

Zigic sat down opposite Riggott, noticed the strain around his eyes, an uncharacteristic slouch in his posture.

‘So, where are we at?’ Alex asked.

Zigic brought him up to speed on the morning’s developments, precising the run-up to it, knowing it didn’t reflect well on them.

When he finished Alex paused for a moment and Zigic thought he was going to ask after Ferreira, but he didn’t.

‘Do we know what set Palmer off?’

‘We think the attack on the Polish Club provoked this today,’ Zigic said. ‘But there’s no way to know for certain. Whatever it was, it started with the White Brethren. Someone there must have been pulling his strings, helping him with the bomb-making.’

Alex frowned. ‘Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. This is a gang thing. There’s nothing to suggest we’re dealing with a terrorist organisation.’

‘Except for the fact that they were being monitored by your Domestic Terrorism Unit?’

Riggott lurched forward, spine stiffening. ‘You knew they had a presence here and you didn’t tell us?’

‘They weren’t considered a credible threat.’

‘Well, they look pretty fucking credible from where I’m sitting.’ Riggott threw himself back in the chair. ‘How many other cells are there? D’you know that at least?’

‘This isn’t helpful.’

‘If he was part of a wider, UK-based organisation we need to know about it.’ Riggott threw his hands up. ‘What’re you going to do if this shite spreads?’

‘It won’t.’

‘You fancy laying your job on that?’

‘We’re moving off-topic.’ Alex reached across the table for a bottle of sparkling water, poured it into a glass. ‘As far as we can ascertain this gang is operating independently from the central organisation in Poland and there’s nothing to suggest this is anything other than an isolated incident, inspired by actions abroad, but with no concrete links to the power structure over there.’

It was a meaningless string of words, a politician’s answer.

‘Palmer’s been posting to the White Brethren site,’ Zigic said. ‘That’s a concrete link as far as we’re concerned.’

Alex sipped his water, placed the glass down carefully in front of him. ‘Granted, it appears that there may be a degree of communication and possibly encouragement, but that doesn’t make this a concerted or organised campaign.’

‘And that’s the whole point of small, independent but ideologically allied cells, isn’t it?’ Zigic said. ‘If you unearth one, the others remain safe. However many of them there are.’

‘The existence of other cells isn’t your concern. You are dealing with a
gang
of thugs with far-right sympathies.’

There was a moment of silence as they considered the implications, nothing any of them could say to that. Alex might be outside their own hierarchy but he still had rank over them, and if he needed to pull it in order to make sure his message was accepted, Zigic had no doubt that he would.

‘So we’re clear,’ Riggott said slowly, steepling his fingers on the tabletop. ‘You’ve tear-arsed up here to “advise” us not to frame these crimes as acts of domestic terrorism.’

‘They don’t constitute terrorist acts.’

‘Don’t you tell me about terrorism, son,’ Riggott snarled, giving Alex the full benefit of his West Belfast rasp. ‘I see a man making bombs in the cellar of a fired-out pub that’s fucking terrorism. We’ll toe the line for you – we don’t have a choice – but don’t sit there and come that bollocks with me.’

Alex folded his fist into his palm like he was thinking about throwing it at Riggott’s face. ‘What do you imagine will happen if this becomes a domestic extremism story? You’ve already seen the effects of rising tensions between the Polish community and the local Muslims.’

Zigic thought of the shops on Lincoln Road which had been vandalised last night, windows smashed, interiors wrecked. A Polish cafe and the grocer’s next door, owned by the same family, respectable, hard-working people with no links to the criminals whose actions had brought this down upon them. Further along a hairdresser’s had been trashed, its mirrors shattered, chairs thrown out onto the pavement; a Lithuanian business but the distinction hadn’t mattered at the time.

‘Do you want these retaliations to escalate?’ Alex asked. ‘What starts here could spread right across the country. Every Polish person in every town and city in Britain will come under suspicion of being a closet neo-Nazi. You know how pernicious that can be, neighbour against neighbour, nobody feeling safe to walk the streets. Then the vigilantes step in with their baseball bats . . .’

Riggott said nothing, face set hard against the truth of it.

‘This could easily erupt into full-scale race riots.’

Riggott rose from his chair, buttoned his suit jacket and smoothed his tie. He gestured towards Gilraye, who had sat silent through the entire meeting.

‘Speak to Nicola, she’s head of lying to the press.’

‘Actually –’ Alex reached into his pocket, brought out a folded sheet of A4. ‘I came prepared.’

He slid it across the table towards Zigic, gave him a pointed look.

‘I’m not doing this,’ Zigic said.

He stood up and walked away before anyone could stop him and if they were arguing he couldn’t hear them, didn’t care how it would look when the lead officer didn’t face the press, didn’t care if Domestic Terrorism put a black mark next to his name. They had blood on their hands and he’d be damned if he was going to take responsibility for their public cleansing.

He signed out a pool car, the station steps cleared now, everyone in the Media Room waiting for the story of the ex-copper with the right-wing sympathies and the Polish mother who’d blown himself to pieces this morning. Zigic was sure that however Alex chose to spin it, the story would hang together perfectly.

Later he would have to tell Sofia Krasic why her sister was dead, that despite their assumptions it was nothing personal, just a callous act by a man trying to protect his liberty. Her bail hearing had been scheduled for this morning and he realised he had no idea where she was, remanded into custody as a flight risk or returned to the house where she’d colluded in covering up her boyfriend’s murder.

But right then it was just another task he couldn’t face.

He stopped at the petrol station near the hospital, bought tobacco and papers and a disposable lighter, knowing Ferreira would be cranky from nicotine withdrawal when she came round.

A nurse in A&E escorted him up to the fourth-floor ward where she was recovering in a private room with the curtains drawn and that chemical smell filling the air, snagged in her hair and soaked into her skin. She was lying on her front, partially covered with a blanket, legs bare, face turned towards the far wall, away from the light glowing next to her bed.

‘Don’t try to wake her,’ the nurse said. ‘She needs to rest.’

Zigic closed the door behind him and went round the bed, placed the makings of her cigarettes on the side table.

He tried not to look at her legs but after a few minutes sitting in the visitor’s chair he found his eyes straying towards them. Dozens of bruises dotted her skin from heel to thigh, a wound at the centre of each one, stitched up and shining with antiseptic under transparent dressings. Some of the wounds were small, where the nails had gone in straight, but he knew those were the ones which had done the most damage, driven deep into muscle and sinew and cartilage. The shallow ones would distress her most though, he thought, the long, raking gash across her left calf, another just above the back of her knee.

The stitches were small and neat but the scars would always be there.

Looking at her face, clenched with stress even through the sedation, he cursed himself for letting her get so close to the door, for being slow to process Palmer’s actions and too stunned to push her out of the way before she pushed him.

None of this should have happened.

He rearranged the blanket, drawing it down across her legs.

She didn’t stir.

He sat for a while, replaying the moment in his mind, the split second which passed between seeing and acting stretched out impossibly. Could he have closed the cellar door? Should he have taken Palmer’s threat more seriously? Pulled back and waited for the armed response team to arrive rather than trying to reason with him?

A nurse came in and checked on Ferreira, asked him if he wanted something to drink.

He didn’t.

She turned on the television set high in the corner of the room before she left, the sound down too low for him to hear even though the buzzing in his ears was beginning to subside, some house-hunting programme. Anna was probably watching it in the kitchen, daydreaming of high ceilings and original features and three spare bedrooms.

Zigic found the remote control and changed the channel to the BBC News, catching the tail end of the press conference, Riggott doing the talking, his posture ramrod-straight and defiant. He finished with a curt nod, stood up and left the Media Room without the usual invitation for questions.

A breaking-news banner flashed up on the screen and they cut away from the empty table to pre-recorded footage of Richard Shotton at some local event, the silver fox in full-on charm mode –
English Patriot Party leader steps down over bodyguard’s neo-Nazi links.

Zigic laughed, turning to Ferreira automatically, forgetting that she was in no position to respond. Her eyes were still closed, the dark spots of her irises darting back and forth behind her lids, dreaming or remembering or some horrific conflation of the two.

There was nothing he could do for her and no point in him being there, but he couldn’t leave.

Not yet.

Acknowledgements

A massive thank you to my wonderful editor Alison Hennessey; no writer could ask for a more dedicated and positive influence. If you’ve enjoyed this book it’s down to her editing as much as my writing. It’s been a real pleasure working with the whole team at Harvill Secker, an ingenious and energetic lot who’ve graciously smoothed my path into the professional writer life. Bethan, Áine, Louise and Vicki, thank you ladies.

Thanks also to my agent, Stan, for doing what he does how only he can.

I owe major thanks to all the bloggers and reviewers whose kind words and generosity made the experience of releasing a book into the world so much less daunting. Special mention to the folks at Crimesquad and Crime Fiction Lover – drinks when I see you! Drinks too for Luca Veste, Howard Linskey and Nick Quantrill, for providing moral support and patient ears when called upon, for Col Bury who put me straight on the awkward details of police procedure, and Kyle MacRae who patiently explained how to set up a pan-European terrorist forum. Any mistakes are of course my own.

Lastly to my family – I couldn’t have done this without your support and constant encouragement, those vital chats and long lunches and much needed days away from the laptop. You’re the best.

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