Tell No Tales (17 page)

The interview-room door opened and a PC stuck his head in, pink-eyed and sniffling with a cold. Zigic sent Ferreira to deal with him and turned back to Sofia, who was staring at the tabletop while the fingers of her left hand opened and closed nervously, the only sign he’d seen yet that she understood how serious her situation was.

‘You wouldn’t have got away with it,’ he said. ‘You took a taxi to the hospital, for God’s sake. You asked for Gilbert at reception. And even if you hadn’t you’d be the first person we went to when Gilbert died.’

She pressed her fist hard against her mouth, every muscle in her face tensing.

‘What were you thinking?’

‘I told you, I only wanted to talk to him. You do not know him like I do. Even if he lied to me I would see the truth.’

Zigic saw the tears shining in her eyes and regretted being so hard with her. No matter what she’d done tonight, what she would have done if she’d got the chance, she was still raw with grief.

‘You have to stay away from him, Sofia. Do you understand?’

She gave the barest nod.

‘If he’s responsible we won’t let him get away with it,’ Zigic said.

Sofia swiped a tear away as it ran down her cheek.

‘What will happen to me now?’

Just then Ferreira came back into the room, the PC hovering in the open door as she walked over to the table and bent down to whisper a few words in Zigic’s ear.

He was up before she finished. ‘Interview terminated at ten fifty-five.’

He turned to the PC, who stood wiping his nose on the cuff of his jumper.

‘Take Ms Krasic down, please.’

Then she was standing. ‘No, you cannot do this.’

But he was already gone.

22

PEOPLE WERE HURRYING
up Westgate as they approached the crime scene, clubbers clutching bottles and cans, mobile phones in their hands, ready to film whatever they could see. Zigic prayed that the uniforms had done their job properly, sealed off the short stretch of Cromwell Road to stop them getting in.

He realised they hadn’t had time when he spotted a couple of high-visibility vests and a single patrol car. Nothing more. Friday night, every spare body they had would be attending drunken punch-ups or post-pub domestics, scattered across the city.

The line of painted terraced houses sat isolated and vulnerable-looking, lying in the shadow of a hulking office block four storeys high, opposite the dark, open terrain of a car park, beyond that a patch of wasteland, screened by security fencing which was buckled and toppled over. The ghouls would find a vantage point if they were prepared to ruin their good shoes scrambling for it, and as Zigic pulled onto the pavement near the buff-brick and smoked-glass bulk of Queensgate shopping centre he saw that a dozen of them had gathered on the scrub, directly opposite the spot where the patrol car was parked with its headlights on full beam, throwing low, hard illumination along the sparsely lit street.

None of them had made it any closer though.

A group of Asian men had formed a cordon across the mouth of Cromwell Road, some with baseball bats, others empty-handed but no less formidable-looking. Sprays of broken glass littered the pavement in front of them.

‘Where the hell is everyone?’ Ferreira said, climbing out of the car. ‘There’s supposed to be a van on the way.’

‘Let’s stay calm, alright, Mel?’

‘This is a fucking joke.’ She slammed the door and strode across Westgate, putting her hand out to stop an oncoming car, its stereo booming, bass pounding in shock waves.

The air was crackling, tension rising off the men at the end of the street, excitement fizzing around the onlookers, more of them appearing all the time, alerted by text messages, pulled out of the nearby pubs and nightclub queues, wanting to be able to say they were there when the news broke, post photos on their Facebook pages. Zigic knew this could get ugly very fast, the white audience wanting a show from their Asian neighbours. He told Ferreira to call in and check on the backup.

‘Everyone they can get, right now.’

Just then a shout went up.

A thickset bald guy bellied up to the cordon, beer in one hand, takeaway bag in the other.

‘Shift it, Osama.’

The men held their position, hands tightened around bats, bracing for trouble.

One man spoke up, not the largest but clearly the leader, and told him to go home.

‘Fuck are you, telling me where to go?’ The bald guy took a step forward, into the man’s face, spread his arms wide. ‘Get out the way.’

‘You are not coming through here.’

Zigic shoved his arm between them. The bald man smelled of whiskey and cigarettes, had a Bluetooth stuck in one ear, a woman’s voice bleeding through it, high and insistent, not stopping for breath.

‘This is a crime scene, sir. Please find another route.’

‘Coppers are they?’ he asked, shuffling back but only a few inches. ‘Fucking crime scene, my balls.’

Zigic grabbed the front of his shirt and shoved him away. ‘Leave or I’ll arrest you.’

The man smirked. ‘You want to think about who pays your wages, mate.’

He lobbed the bottle he was holding over the men’s heads, liquid arcing out before it smashed in the middle of the road, eliciting whoops from the onlookers. Then he turned and walked away, laughing to himself as he headed back into the centre of town.

‘You were more polite than I’d have been,’ Ferreira said, pocketing her phone. ‘Van’s on the way. Five minutes. I’ve told them to hustle up forensics too.’

Zigic nodded, still watching the figure receding along Westgate.

Ferreira nudged him as the cordon parted for an elderly man with a wispy, hennaed beard, dressed in a white djellaba which billowed and snapped in the wind, a black astrakhan hat perched on his head. He looked frail, leaning heavily on a walking stick, but Zigic knew he ruled the half-dozen streets around his mosque with an iron fist, settling neighbour disputes and matrimonial problems. Keeping a hundred small crimes a year from their proper place on the police system.

‘Inspector.’ He held his hand out and Zigic shook it. ‘Such are the things which bring us from our beds at night.’

‘Mr Shahzad, I take it we have you to thank for the security.’

He put his hand to his chest, bowed lightly. ‘When I hear of what has happened I realise we must protect the area. Your people arrived very punctually but they are only two and the road is busy this time of evening.’

‘It’s greatly appreciated,’ Zigic said. ‘Could you show us the body please?’

They walked past houses with their windows lit up, people visible behind the curtains, a few standing in their open front doors, a man in striped pyjamas, a woman holding a grizzly child on her hip. Zigic was aware of the loose throngs of onlookers in the car park, indistinct in the gloom.

Shahzad led them to a house at the centre of the row. The two uniformed officers were standing nearby, both pale and shaken-looking, one sucking furiously on a cigarette he hid behind his back as they approached.

A body lay half on the pavement, half in the road, hidden by a white sheet. Blood had soaked through it, creating a large dark stain which hinted at what they would find underneath.

‘We have covered the young man,’ Shahzad said. He gestured away. ‘For his dignity.’

It created complications but now wasn’t the time to worry about that.

Ferreira squatted down and gingerly took hold of the corner of the sheet, the material sticking and sucking as she peeled it back from the man’s head. Shahzad turned away, muttering what sounded like a prayer.

What remained was completely unidentifiable, a gruesome pulp of blood and bone and grey matter, the man’s face caved in, his skull cracked and sickly misshapen, glints of very white teeth through his ripped cheek, a small spot of gold in a flap of skin which had been his ear.

Ferreira replaced the sheet and exhaled slowly as she straightened up, a queasy expression on her face. She pushed her fingers back through her hair, her eyes fixed on the blooming stain.

They were both thinking the same thing. The ferocity of the attack, the ethnicity of the victim. Zigic glanced along the road, looking for CCTV cameras, knowing their man would want to salute them once again. The nearest was fifty yards away, pointing at the entrance of a house which had been converted into office space.

A siren wailed at a distance, cutting through the murmur of voices and the dim sounds of music wafting across the car park from the pub. Zigic started planning how to deploy the approaching uniforms, knowing he needed them to take control of the locus but that he might not have enough to do that and start the door-to-door. He wanted to speak to the neighbours straight away, while their memories were still fresh and unpolluted by speculation or sleep.

He didn’t want to give them time to think better of coming forward.

Blue lights appeared at the top end of Westgate, three vehicles in convoy, the sirens blaring closer.

‘Will you take him now your people are here?’ Shahzad asked.

‘We have to wait for forensics,’ Ferreira explained. ‘They need to take photographs, make a preliminary examination with the body in situ.’

‘No, you misunderstand,’ Shahzad said. ‘The man who did this terrible thing, you will take him away?’

Zigic’s attention snapped back. ‘What? You know where he is?’

‘We have kept him for you.’

‘How did you get him?’ Ferreira asked.

‘The people in the house heard screaming.’ Shahzad nodded towards the front door and Zigic saw a smear of blood on the flaked white gloss paint. ‘They came outside to see what was happening. They are holding him for you.’

Zigic glanced at Ferreira, saw the triumph lighting her eyes, a grim smile tightening her face, and felt the same dark pleasure. They had him. None of their own doing but what did that matter? They had their man.

‘They were brave to tackle him.’

‘We must keep our streets safe,’ Shahzad said, a hint of accusation in the comment.

He rapped on the front door with the head of his cane and a thin young man with a bushy beard reaching to his chest opened up, looked between them quickly and stepped back to let Shahzad inside.

Zigic and Ferreira followed him into the living room. It was small and neat, a riot of heavy patterns, paisley carpet and papered walls, a burgundy three-piece suite too large for the room, a flat screen hanging over the old gas fire, the same scene you’d find in a thousand terraced houses in the city.

Except for the man sitting on the floor with his wrists bound. He wore black head to toe, combat trousers and a shirt with military styling, leather gloves and highly shined boots smeared with blood and brain matter which he had tracked across the carpet and wiped on the rug. Someone had pulled off his balaclava and thrown it down nearby, leaving his dirty blond hair standing at angles from his square head. He had a bruise under one eye but it was days old and Zigic marvelled at the restraint they had shown.

Three men stood around him, two armed with large kitchen knives, the third held an iron bar, and curled up on the sofa a little boy, no older than four, watched them with his thumb stuck in his mouth, bored but still interested as only children that age can be.

‘What’s your name?’ Zigic asked.

The man stared back at him, blue eyes steady, flat and cold and without expression. Maybe it was shock at being caught but Zigic didn’t think so. There was a hardness to the man’s creased and lined features, a firm set to his thin-lipped mouth which suggested defiance even in this situation.

He looked like a captured soldier.

‘Get up.’

The man didn’t move.

Ferreira started towards him and Zigic grabbed her elbow, held her back. He could be armed for all they knew, and given the violence he was capable of without a weapon he didn’t want to risk anyone else getting damaged.

Shahzad spoke a few low words and the guards quickly descended on the man, dragging him to his feet. He threw his chin up, stared down his nose at them, baring smoke-stained teeth in a hungry grin.

Zigic opened the front door and called the uniforms in. One took a set of handcuffs off his belt and snapped them around the man’s wrists, over the twine which had been used to bind them. They found the firmest holds they could and walked him out to the car, flanked by the men from the house who were ready in case he decided to make a break for it.

He went passively though, walked past the shrouded corpse like it was nothing to do with him, didn’t even glance towards it.

As the group reached the patrol car a chant started from the end of the street.

‘E – E – ENL.’

Ferreira smirked. ‘I fucking knew it.’

Half a dozen ragged voices, each man shouting, fists pumping the air.

‘E – E – ENL.’

Ferreira snapped at the reinforcements jumping down out of the recently arrived van, divided them up quickly and set them in a second cordon, twenty-five feet away from the body.

As they formed into position a couple of people in the car park took up the call, then the rest followed, maybe not even knowing what they were shouting for, and suddenly they were surrounded by it, bombarded.

‘E – E – ENL.’

Zigic banged on the top of the patrol car. ‘Get him out of here.’

Ferreira was on her phone again. ‘I don’t care what you have to do, just get some more fucking bodies down here . . . Yeah, listen?’ She held her phone up for a couple of seconds, catching the chanting. ‘That’s what two minutes before a riot sounds like, so just do it.’

The cordon of men at the top end of the road parted for the patrol car to get through.

More people were arriving, laughter and excited screams cutting through the chanting which was increasing in volume and fervour, threatening to become a pounding war cry. Zigic realised it was only a matter of time before they tried to break through Shahzad’s men.

‘We need to do something,’ Ferreira said, stepping up close to him. ‘If – fuck –
when
this gets nasty we’re going to have to explain why we let a group of armed civilians close off our crime scene.’