Hit and Run

Chapter Seven

Marta had barely slept, a dull ache in the centre of her, a sick fear about Rosa. It could happen to her… She imagined Rosa’s family receiving the news. Terrible news from the UK. Rosa’s family had been farmers for generations, working the same acreage on the central plains. Raising pigs, growing cabbages and potatoes. If things had been tough under communism they had been even worse in the wrench of change to a free market economy.

‘We tried to sell some land,’ Rosa had told Marta. ‘But no one was interested. My father thought he had a jewel, a crock of gold but it was like trying to sell shit to a bishop. The prices fell so low that it wasn’t worth driving the pigs to market. They cost more to feed than he could sell them for. Yet people were still hungry. ‘People have to eat,’ he used to yell. I almost felt sorry for him.’ Rosa hated her father; she often called him the swine, the pig. He’d been a rough bully who had played the tyrant in his home and had few friends even among the other farmers.

Rosa’s mother had moved to get work in Krakow, stacking shelves in a small supermarket. The journey took an hour each way. ‘We all moved there and my father stayed at the farm. It was better for us. He went a bit mental – no one to make him feel big.’

Then Rosa’s father had died. It had been three days before he was found and by then the last few pigs were going mad with hunger. There was no phone at the farm. No way to keep in touch. The authorities had been promising a connection for years. ‘Not that the old bastard would have bothered,’ Rosa told Marta.

The family had argued about the land. Sell it for a song or keep it. Neither of her brothers would consider taking it on and Rosa wasn’t interested. Up to her neck in pig shit and cabbage stalks? No, thanks. In the end, a compromise had been reached. A cousin would lease it for five years, for a pittance, stop the place going back to the wild.

In the months after her arrival, Rosa had become depressed. She couldn’t stomach the work. There was nothing to do but wait it out. Marta had tried to jolly her along, talking about what they would do when they had saved enough money. Marta would open a little shop, maybe a beauty salon. She’d always liked cutting hair and had a knack for it. Maybe Rosa would be discovered and become a model? Or do her teaching? Rosa nodded her head. She could teach English conversation to Polish kids – or Polish to people planning to travel there. Who’d want to learn Polish, Marta thought, aid workers? But she said nothing because Rosa was looking a little brighter and she didn’t want to spoil it.

At Easter, Rosa seemed much better. She was dancing at the club by then and that made all the difference. She was allowed to get the shopping too. That weekend she had brought a packet of cheap felt-tip pens and fresh eggs back from the mini-market. She hard-boiled them and handed them round when the others appeared for breakfast. The girls teased her, groaning at the sentimentality, joshing her for being old-fashioned. Petra drew a face on her egg rather than a pattern but they soon fell into reminiscing and the talk turned to food. Here all they ever ate – oven chips, pizzas, ready meals – was plastic food: ready in ten minutes and hungry again ten minutes later. But at home…

Soon they were inventing favourite menus, boasting about the sweetest cakes, the spiciest sausage, the most perfect pieroji. ‘Thick and glossy,’ Marta had said, ‘meat soft as butter and every vegetable you can imagine.’

How often did we actually eat like that, Marta thought; how often did we go hungry or put up with cabbage and potato day after day? Their daydreams were a far reach from the reality of life back home. But dreams didn’t cost anything.

After they had eaten the eggs, Rosa had pulled a bag from the drawer where she had hidden it; spilled the bars onto the table.

‘Chocolate!’ They chorused.

‘With tea, proper tea,’ Marta decided. Shunning the instant coffee and the milk, she found glasses, made drinks with sliced lemon and sugar.

Marta climbed quickly out of bed. The air was nippy and goose pimples rashed her arms. Rosa had been happy then, she thought, that Easter morning. I could write maybe, tell her family about that. Her kindness, buying us treats and recreating a little piece of home.

Richard tried not to be distracted by the skimpily dressed girl giving it her all on the pole. The rest of the club was deserted, plunged into gloom but the girl swayed in an isolated pool of light. Harper was watching from a table nearby. The place was chilly and the cold seemed to intensify the aroma of stale beer and cigarette smoke that the soft furnishings soaked up.

‘Bit early, isn’t it?’ Richard drew up a chair beside Harper.

‘Audition – we’re one girl down.’

Richard gave him a look.

‘The show goes on.’ He was unapologetic.

‘Lee Stone, your doorman – were you aware he had a criminal record?’

Harper shrugged.

‘Car theft amongst other things. He’s helping us now with our enquiries into the hit and run accident.’

Harper’s attention shifted sharpish from the dancer to Richard. He frowned. ‘You think Stone nicked my car?’ Surprise was replaced by outrage as the full meaning hit home. ‘I’ll bloody have him… The bastard!’ He ran a finger round the collar of his shirt.

‘Any trouble between you?’

‘Nothing that I was aware of. And I think I’d have known; he’s not exactly subtle.’

‘So why would he steal your car?’

The girl hooked one knee round the pole, arched backwards, her hair almost sweeping the floor, one hand running slowly from her collarbone, over her breasts and down to her thigh. Richard wrenched his gaze back to Harper.

‘Search me. But if you do find out let me know, won’t you?’ He shook his head with disbelief. ‘Bloody idiot.’ He gestured to the dancer to stop. Moved to turn off the music. ‘Thanks, love, I’ll give you a bell.’

The girl nodded, wandered off to get dressed.

‘I’d book her,’ Richard muttered. He leafed back a couple of pages in his daybook, to the notes of Harper’s first statement. ‘Rosa didn’t turn up for work on Monday. What about Stone?’

‘It’s his day off.’

‘But they both worked Sunday?’ Harper nodded.

‘Anything going on between him and Rosa?’

‘No, I’d have noticed. I don’t like him round the girls.’

‘Why’s that, then?’

‘Bit rough round the edges, nasty mouth on him. They shouldn’t have to put up with that.’

‘Anything physical?’

‘Once or twice, harassment, copping a feel. I made it plain to him, any more of it and he’d be out.’

Richard nodded, wondering whether Stone’s harassment had involved Rosa this time and whether it had got out of hand. Whether sexual assault had led to murder?

At the police station, introductions had been made for the tape and Janine and Butchers faced Stone and a duty solicitor across the table in interview room one.

Janine took in the truculent expression on Stone’s face, the insolence in his watery blue eyes. He was a big man, solidly built, with the look of someone who could ‘handle himself’. No match for a slender girl like Rosa.

‘You work for Mr Harper,’ Janine began. ‘Why did you steal his car?’

‘What car?’ Playing innocent. His eyes mocking her. Janine changed tack. ‘Tell me about Rosa Milicz?’

‘What about her?’

‘You like her?’

‘Not especially.’

‘Why’s that? She turn you down?’

Stone sneered. ‘No.’

Janine sensed the question rankled. She could feel the anger not far below the surface. Like many of the violent men she had dealt with, Stone had a short fuse and his aggression belied an insecurity that made him quick to respond to imagined slights or insults.

‘Mr Harper doesn’t trust you with the girls.’

‘What! A gentleman like me!’ He swung his neck this way and that as he mocked offence. The gesture reminded Janine of the dances of the rap artists Michael used to like; that male posturing, the come and get me pose.

‘When did you last see Rosa?’

‘Sunday. At work.’

‘Did you ever have a relationship with her?’

‘I prefer my brunettes with bigger tits.’ He leered pointedly at Janine.

Prat. She hoped he could read the cold loathing in her expression.

Butchers shifted uncomfortably.

‘Let’s go over everything very slowly again,’ she said, ‘just in case you missed something.’

An hour and a half later, Stone had maintained his brash front and they all needed a break.

In the corridor outside Butchers sighed loudly. ‘What about the witness?’ he suggested.

It was a good idea. If the witness could identify Stone and Gleason as the men she’d seen running from the blazing car, Janine would have stronger grounds for further interviews.

‘Get them in this afternoon if possible,’ Janine told him. ‘Book the ID suite.’

Butchers nodded and set off, looking a little happier now he had a mission.

‘Boss,’ one of the DCs approached and handed her a document with a note attached. These told her that dental records in Poland matched their victim. The dead woman was one Rosa Milicz, believed to be living with family members on the outskirts of Krakow. Least we know we’re talking about the right person now, she thought. She told the officer to arrange for the Polish authorities to make sure any family were formally notified.

Shap came out of interview room two, where he’d been talking to Gleason. He looked fed up.

‘Well?’ Janine asked him.

‘Off-pat but he’s shaking. Yours?’

‘Cocky. Can I?’

Inside the room Shap updated the tape and sat back with his arms folded, happy to let Janine have a crack.

‘I’ve just been having a very interesting talk with Lee Stone,’ she told Gleason, who was rubbing at his long face repeatedly and whose body odour tainted the air. ‘He’s been very helpful.’

Gleason kept quiet.

‘Bit of a chequered past, Lee Stone. Now you, you’ve never been in prison: suspended sentence, community service order. We see that a lot, you know, associates who get dragged into things, get out of their depth. What can you tell us about yesterday morning?’

‘Nothing,’ he said urgently.

‘The car, the little girl?’

‘I don’t know what you’re on about.’ He bit at his thumb nail.

Janine waited a moment, studying him. ‘That little girl died last night. We won’t stop till we’ve got a conviction. Case like this – feelings run high.’

Gleason swallowed, his Adam’s apple large on his scrawny neck.

‘Half eight, nine a.m. where were you?’ Shap asked.

‘Home.’

‘We’ve already got one witness,’ Janine pointed out, ‘saw you and Lee Stone running from the car. And there’ll be others. Evidence too, on the car, in the car.’

‘People make that mistake: fire, think it all goes up in smoke but the technology we’ve got now – fantastic.’ Shap sounded positively delirious.

Gleason’s eyes swerved between the pair of them, he brought his arms across his chest. Defensive, Janine thought, hiding, protecting. He scratched at his forearm.

‘Who was driving?’ Janine said sharply.

The scratching stopped. ‘No comment,’ Gleason said, a waver in his voice.

Sod it. Janine rolled her eyes at Shap. The ‘no comment’ told her two things: Gleason had something to hide and they would not get anything else out of him now.

Butchers stared at the woman. He couldn’t believe he was hearing this. It was all arranged, she was their best hope, and now she was standing there, her eyes shifty, face twitching, telling him she was pulling out.

‘All you have to do is look through the glass. See if the men you saw are there.’

She shook her head, moved as if to go inside.

‘You were happy to help us yesterday. Has someone been getting at you?’

She blinked rapidly, locked him with a defiant stare. ‘No. I just don’t want to get involved.’

‘But the little girl…’ He could barely contain the sense of righteous anger mounting inside him. She had to help them. She had to.

She shook her head, refusing to listen and shut the door.

Butchers stood there, his jaw tight, his hands clenched, his breathing ragged. Across the waste ground the sky arced, a canvas of heavy clouds interrupted here and there by shafts of vibrant sunlight. She’d seen it all from here, Butchers thought, a clear view across to where the car had been left. And now? Had she got kids? He wanted to bray on the door again, drag her out and force her into his car. He waited long enough and then, feeling sick, turned to go.

‘I had to release them,’ Janine told him when he reported to her office. ‘Without that witness…’

‘Changed her mind,’ he laughed harshly. ‘Had it changed for her, more like.’

Shap nodded in agreement.

‘But they’re good for it,’ Butchers insisted. ‘They were seen leaving the car.’ He was agitated, reluctant to accept the situation.

‘By a witness who won’t stand up,’ she said emphatically. ‘We need something stronger. We’ll keep tabs on them, a couple of DCs round the clock, and keep digging. Pull them back in as soon as we’ve a stronger case. We’re getting wall to wall press coverage and I’m sure we’ll get more people coming forward.’

‘But, Boss…’

‘That’s the way it is, Butchers. Deal with it.’ She was surprised at his pushing it. He knew the rules.

‘Now I’m going to pay a call on the Chinleys, later.’ She paused, looking from one of them to the other by way of invitation. Shap avoided eye contact, Butchers showed willing. ‘’Bout five thirty,’ she told him. ‘Come and find me.’

The remaining couple of hours flew by as she read reports from the teams on the cases and double checked that she’d recorded everything she had to in her case-book.

She was almost ready to leave when Richard arrived back from the Topcat Club.

‘Harper wasn’t best pleased to learn Stone is down for nicking his car,’ he said.

‘But he didn’t put Rosa and Stone together?’

Richard shook head. ‘And no one else did either.’

Janine groaned. ‘It’s like juggling soot.’

‘Welcome back.’

She rocked her head from side to ride, trying to ease the tension in her neck. ‘I’ve done a day’s work before I clock on. I knew I’d be stretched but I didn’t expect it to be quite so full on so soon.’

He smiled. ‘How about dinner,’ he said, ‘my treat? Next evening we get free.’

Oh, God. She hadn’t the energy. Any free evenings were for chores and kids and collapsing – not sparkling conversation and long, leisurely meals.

‘Richard, thanks. But… you’d have to stab me with a fork just to keep me awake. My biggest ambition is eight hours unbroken sleep… six,’ she amended. ‘I’ll let you know when she starts sleeping through.’ She smiled as she opened her office door. ‘Took Tom three years.’ She laughed at the ripple of exasperation that crossed his face.