Dead in the Dark

5

It wasn’t quite five p.m. on a Monday, yet the shutters were down on almost all the shops in the centre of Shirebrook. Diane Fry had parked her Audi in the deserted marketplace, where acres of free parking stood empty and unused. Apart from hers, just two cars occupied the whole area. This would never happen in Edendale, let alone in Nottingham, where parking spaces were at a premium, a privilege you had to pay through the nose for.

A group of children ran past her. Their chatter was in a language she couldn’t understand. She could see the only shops doing business were Maxi Foods polski sklep, the Polo Market, and Zabka European supermarket. She turned to look the other way. Oh, and Bargain Booze.

First-floor flats over every shop were occupied, and above them the attic rooms had been converted to living space, with curtains in tiny dormer windows. Men yelled to each other across the square from one betting shop to another, from William Hill to Betfred. In the alley by the Co-op the paving was littered with cigarette ends. A few people stood smoking outside the working men’s club.

And a few yards away, Krystian Zalewski’s blood was still soaking into the carpet and dripping through to the ceiling of the shop below.

Fry watched a group of press photographers clustering at the corner of the square with their camera bags slung over their shoulders. Reporters had been in town earlier, stopping people at random in the street to get their instant reactions to the murder. Shirebrook would be on the news tonight.

She found DCI Alistair Mackenzie at the crime scene in the alley, talking to a very tall uniformed constable from the Shirebrook Safer Neighbourhood Team who was acting as scene guard.

The entire alley had been taped off, with a guard posted at each end. A forensic tent had been erected at the spot where the attack appeared to have taken place. A pool of blood was drying on the brick paving, and the crime scene examiners had lifted shoe marks from prints left in the blood. A clear trail of blood spatters led away from the marketplace to the street entrance, highlighted by a zigzag series of yellow evidence markers. From there, it was only a short distance to the yard at the back of the shop.

Mackenzie nodded at Fry as she arrived.

‘The crime scene guys say it’s difficult to know how many people were here at the time of the attack,’ he said. ‘There seem to be at least three distinct shoe types, one of which is a match to the trainers Zalewski was wearing. But there could be other individuals who stayed clear of the blood. We have no way of telling.’

‘I don’t suppose there’s any sign of Mr Zalewski’s phone, sir?’ asked Fry.

‘Yes, in a way. Not a sign of its presence, but its absence.’

‘I’m sorry, sir?’

Mackenzie pointed into the opening of the tent. ‘In the middle of the patch of blood there. A clear spot the size and shape of a mobile phone. Perhaps a Samsung Galaxy, or something similar.’

‘So he dropped his phone when he was attacked,’ said Fry.

‘And someone picked it up, yes. If we find the phone, it will have traces of Mr Zalewski’s blood on it.’

‘Any other traces that would help us, sir?’

‘We’ve had officers doing a fingertip search the length of the alley.’ Mackenzie screwed his face in disgust. ‘I don’t need to tell you everything they found. There was nothing useful, except this.’

He held up a sealed evidence bag. Fry had to look closely to see what was glinting inside.

‘An earring?’ she said.

‘Exactly. And Krystian Zalewski doesn’t look the sort of man who would wear them.’

‘The earring is significant, then.’

‘It may help an identification,’ said Mackenzie. ‘It’s covered in latent prints and possibly DNA. But we’ll have to send it to the lab at Hucknall.’

‘It might mean one of his attackers was a woman. If there was a fight, she could have lost that earring in the struggle.’

‘You’ll see that there’s no lighting in the alley,’ said Mackenzie. ‘Nothing along this whole stretch between the market square and the street that runs at the back there.’

‘A perfect place for someone to lie in wait.’

‘It seems Zalewski was on his way back from the shops when he was attacked.’

‘The polski sklep?’ said Fry.

‘Of course.’

‘He took his shopping with him after the attack. We found it in his flat. Bread and milk, nothing of interest. Zalewski seems to have been a perfectly ordinary, law-abiding citizen.’

‘Do you know,’ said Mackenzie, ‘one of the residents here has kept a file of offences that migrant workers have been charged with. A sort of diary or scrapbook. His file goes back years, from when the first East Europeans started arriving in Shirebrook, just after Poland and a bunch of other countries joined the EU in 2004. The information has been gleaned from court records and various items published in local newspapers.’

‘What sort of offences?’

Mackenzie shrugged. ‘Run of the mill, most of them. One man was convicted of driving without a licence or insurance, taking a vehicle without consent and being over the breath alcohol limit. Another stole a beard trimmer from a pharmacy in Mansfield. A third admitted affray and actual bodily harm after a fight in the street here in Shirebrook. It’s pretty much what you’d expect in the courts every week.’

‘Anything serious?’

‘No serious convictions. There was a sexual assault on a woman a few weeks ago. Everyone seems to believe the perpetrator must have been a migrant worker, but there’s absolutely no evidence of it. A suspect has never been identified.’

‘So it could have been anybody.’

‘Absolutely. But that fact doesn’t convince anybody.’

‘I’m not surprised.’

Mackenzie looked at her closely and lowered his voice.

‘You’ve read all the intelligence reports on the shopkeeper, Geoffrey Pollitt?’ he said.

‘Yes, I’m up to date.’

‘It may not be relevant to the present inquiry, but keep it in mind. Mr Pollitt has been flagged up on multiple occasions for his right-wing extremist connections. But don’t alert him yet to the fact we know about his activities.’

‘I’ll treat him like any other witness, sir.’

Mackenzie smiled. ‘I suppose that will have to do.’

At the side of the market square, the bus shelters were plastered with posters printed in English and Polish. And another language in Cyrillic script. Russian? Bulgarian? Fry wasn’t sure. But they all set out the conditions of a three-year Public Spaces Protection Order, the geographical version of an ASBO.

Some of the corners of the posters were torn off. They spelled out the warning of a one hundred pound fixed penalty or a fine of up to a thousand pounds on conviction. The order covered the whole of Shirebrook and neighbouring Langwith Junction, including the huge distribution centre on the former pit site.

No person shall consume alcohol. No person shall have an unsealed vessel containing alcohol in their possession. No person shall urinate other than in a public toilet. No person shall dispose of any litter other than in the bins provided. No persons shall congregate in groups of two or more within the alleyways which lead to Shirebrook Marketplace.

Someone had burned cigarette holes in the plastic cover of the bus timetable. Shan and Ryan had added their names in graffiti.

Other signs here warned that arson was a crime. Why would you need to explain that to anyone? Well, it must have been considered necessary in Shirebrook.

Incidents of arson had been increasing in the last couple of years, mostly in Nottinghamshire but spreading across the border into Derbyshire. A lot of them were in and around the old coal-mining towns too. Perhaps there was some deep-seated psychological reason for it.

Jamie Callaghan loomed up behind her and peered over her shoulder at the posters.

‘Should we arrest Shan and Ryan? It would be a result of sorts.’

Fry turned. ‘What have we got?’

‘Well, we’ve got a couple of potential witnesses who are willing to talk,’ said Callaghan, ‘which is a bit of a minor miracle. They don’t look very hopeful, but it’s all we’ve got. They’re scheduled for interview tomorrow morning.’

‘English or Polish?’ asked Fry.

‘One of each.’

‘Okay. Then we’d better talk to Mr Pollitt before he disappears.’

‘He’ll be waiting for us in the shop,’ said Callaghan.

They made their way across the square to the shop. The sign on the fascia was broken in half, as if it had been torn away by a strong wind. The only word left was ‘Shirebrook’ followed by the start of another, a capital ‘P’. What had the name of the shop been? Shirebrook Pets, Shirebrook Portraits? Shirebrook Pound Shop?

Like everywhere else, a shutter was down on the window, but the door was still open. Fry knew that the shop owner locked up at the end of the afternoon and drove out to his new-build semi on a Bellway estate in Warsop Vale, retreating across the border into Nottinghamshire when he wanted to escape Shirebrook for the night.

‘How do you want to handle this?’ asked Callaghan.

‘We play it absolutely straight. Mr Pollitt will expect to be interviewed again. He’ll know it’s normal procedure in a murder case. If we left him alone, it would make him suspicious. So just treat him like any other witness.’

‘Understood.’

‘Lead the way, then.’

The shopkeeper was a stocky, middle-aged man with a barrel chest and incipient beer gut. The width of his torso forced him to carry his arms away from his chest. Fry noticed that he held them awkwardly, like a gunslinger constantly about to go for his guns. He was wearing baggy jeans and a black T-shirt. A leather jacket slung over the counter suggested that he was ready to leave and go home to Warsop Vale, perhaps on a motorbike.

‘I’m Geoffrey Pollitt,’ he said. ‘Everyone round here calls me Geoff.’

‘I know you’ve already been spoken to, Mr Pollitt,’ said Fry, ‘but we’d like to know as much as we can about your tenant, Krystian Zalewski.’

‘He weren’t no trouble. Not like some of them. I’m open-minded, me. Poles are as good as anyone, as long as they have the money.’

Fry turned to look at the shop. There wasn’t much to see. A bare counter ran most of its length, with an electronic till and a card reader at one end. A display case down the middle of the shop floor contained a few tools in blister packs. Hammers, screwdrivers, chisels, a lot of loose nails and tacks. A thin covering of dust lay over many of the items on display. The shelves on the back wall were empty, but for some posters advertising heavy metal concerts. Savage Messiah and Rob Zombie at Bloodstock in Catton Park. Slipknot and Marilyn Manson at the Download Festival. All the posters were a couple of years out of date.

‘Is business not very good, Mr Pollitt?’

‘What?’ He looked startled. ‘Oh, the shop? I haven’t really got it up and running properly yet.’

‘How long have you been here?’ she asked, though she knew the answer perfectly well.

‘Just a few months, like.’

Fry nodded. She knew it was more than a year, of course. It was in the intelligence reports. But it looked as though Mr Pollitt was making no attempt to establish a viable business.

‘It’s hard to compete these days,’ said Pollitt, as if that explained everything.

Fry’s foot hit something solid but yielding on the floor. She looked down. A bag of cat litter. A stack of similar bags stood against the counter, with some trays of pet food tins.

‘Is this a hardware shop?’ she said.

‘You might call it that.’

Jamie Callaghan had drifted along the far wall towards the back of the shop as she was talking to Pollitt. She could see the shopkeeper’s eyes never left him as they followed his progress. Right at the back was a door marked ‘Private’, which presumably led into the storeroom or an office of some kind.

‘I’m trying to give customers what they want,’ said Pollitt. ‘If they come in here and ask for dog food, then that’s what I get in for them. The thing is, I can order in anything they want, get it next day from the cash and carry. So I might look as though I don’t have much stock in, but the turnover is better than you think.’

‘Isn’t Shirebrook a pretty quiet place?’

‘It looks quiet now, but we have markets four days a week here. Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday. It’s cheap, too. A ten-foot pitch with a council stall only costs twelve pounds. But it’s the hours that are a problem. You have to be there for a six-thirty start in the morning, and the market closes at two-thirty and gets dismantled. Shift change is at three.’

‘Shift change?’

‘When the workers come out from the distribution centre.’

‘Oh, I see.’

‘After that, there’s no point staying open.’

‘So you pull the shutters down for the night.’

Pollitt gave her a sideways glance. ‘It’s a lot safer that way.’

‘You get trouble?’

‘Not me. But some of the other shopkeepers, they’ve had problems.’

‘Problems with the Polish people?’

Still Pollitt didn’t rise to the opportunity.

‘There’s quite a lot of them in Shirebrook,’ he said with a smirk, ‘as you’ve probably noticed.’

Callaghan had completed his slow tour of the shop and arrived at the counter. He casually ran a finger along the surface.

‘Tell us again about when Krystian Zalewski first came here. How did Mr Zalewski find out you had a flat vacant?’

‘I advertised it in the Polish shops,’ said Pollitt. ‘I got a girl in one of the shops to write it out for me in their language. I knew it would get a response pretty quick. They all want somewhere to stay, don’t they? And I don’t charge much for the rental.’

‘The flat isn’t exactly luxurious, is it?’ said Fry.

Pollitt shrugged. ‘It has all you need.’

‘And it’s small.’

‘One bedroom. It might suit a couple at a pinch, but I was happy to have a single tenant. Less chance of rows, you know.’

‘Mr Zalewski seems to have had a violent row with someone,’ said Fry. ‘A fatal row.’

‘Well, I can tell you straight, I don’t know nothing about that. As far as I’m concerned, he were a good tenant.’

‘And it was you who found the body this morning?’

‘Yeah. I had to go up there to see what was wrong.’

‘Had to?’

‘Because of the blood. Look, you can still see the stain,’ said Pollitt almost proudly, pointed at the ceiling.

A red patch had gathered near a light fitting, where blood had soaked into the plaster and spread sideways, forming uneven tidemarks and darkening in the centre as it dried.

‘I’m afraid it will be there permanently, sir, unless you redecorate,’ said Fry.

‘Aye, I reckon it will.’

Looking round the shop, Fry thought that prospect was unlikely. It hadn’t been decorated in here for some years.

‘That’s what told me something was wrong,’ said Pollitt, still craning his neck to admire the stain.

Fry stared with distaste at the view she was getting of his double chin, covered in a patchy stubble.

‘Well, you did the right thing, sir,’ she said.

‘How long had he been dead?’ asked Pollitt. ‘Do you know?’

He was asking too many questions now. Fry’s instinct told her that his interest was prurient. People she met were often like this, peripheral witnesses to a violent crime who felt they’d earned an entitlement to all the gory details.

‘We’re not sure,’ she said.

‘Oh.’

‘What time did you notice the blood on your ceiling?’

‘About seven-thirty, when I opened the shop.’

‘You were here early, sir.’

‘You have to open up early to get the customers,’ said Pollitt. ‘Passing trade, like.’

‘Passing trade?’

‘People call in for odds and ends.’

Fry knew she mustn’t push it. There was a fine line between not asking enough questions and seeming to know too much. Best to stay focussed on the main issue for now.

‘Mr Pollitt,’ she said, ‘did you ever see anyone visiting Krystian Zalewski?’

He shook his head. ‘No. But then, I wouldn’t. You’ve seen it — you get into the flat from the backyard. And the lad was out most of the day. If he had visitors, maybe they came in the evening after I locked up the shop. The only day I even knew he was here was on a Saturday now and then. He reckoned to work about every other weekend. If he was at home I could hear his radio sometimes. That was it, really.’

‘You never had to go up to the flat to speak to him?’

‘Only once or twice,’ said Pollitt. ‘He didn’t know how to use the wheelie bins — what rubbish to put in which one, you know what I mean? I had to explain it to him. They won’t take your bin if you’ve put the wrong stuff in.’

‘What about collecting the rent?’

‘I didn’t have to bother. He put it through the door of the shop once a week without fail. Cash in an envelope. He always paid in full and never fell behind. Like I said, he were a good tenant.’

‘So you’ll be sorry to lose him,’ said Fry.

Pollitt shrugged. ‘There’ll be another along in a day or two. There’re plenty of migrants. It’s one thing we’re not short of around here. Not until Brexit, anyway.’