For Richer, For Poorer

by Kerry Wilkinson

  Jessica didn’t know if he was goading them into shooting him but he certainly didn’t seem too bothered. Space was tight with four gunmen in one doorway, five in the other and her trying to keep a distance from Pavel while also making sure both sides had a clear shot just in case. Over the shoulders of the officers in the door, Jessica could see pedestrians beginning to mass and point. This was the last thing they needed.

  ‘On. The. Floor.’

  As he continued smiling, Jessica could see a golden tooth glinting towards the back of the mouth.

  ‘Shoot,’ Pavel said with a grin, egging them on.

  Jessica didn’t want to say ‘don’t shoot’ out loud but she hoped the officers would know well enough. They bloody should, considering the amount of forms they had to fill in for every bullet fired. One of the officers close to the front door lowered his gun and took a step forward, reaching for his handcuffs. Behind him, the other four tensed, weapons still focused on Pavel.

  ‘You heard the lady,’ he said firmly.

  Jessica had long suspected the firearms lot presumed they were one step away from being in an action film and that confirmed it. If he arrested Pavel and followed it up with a ‘You’re welcome, Ma’am’, she’d show him why she was being called Ball-breaker around the station.

  Pavel glanced from Jessica to the officer and back again, knowing there was nowhere to go, that he was heavily outnumbered, and that they weren’t going to shoot for the sake of it.

  In a flash of movement, he reached towards the counter, picking up the large Victoria sponge and hurling it over his shoulder just as the officer from the front door rugby-tackled him. Three more piled in, wrenching his arms backwards and cuffing him. One rested on his legs while another knelt in the crook of his back.

  Considering no one had been shot and one of their most-wanted was in custody, on the surface it couldn’t have gone much better. Unfortunately for Jessica, the first sniggers began as soon as the officer who had rugby-tackled Pavel looked up to see if she wanted to read the caution.

  As she picked the sponge, icing and jam out of her eyes, Jessica told the officer he could do it.

  38

  Jessica glanced up at the red light underneath the camera and then peered across the table in the interview room. After twenty minutes in the station’s shower, she was pretty sure she’d got all of the cake out of her hair but there was still a slightly sugary smell, the origins of which she couldn’t quite figure out.

  Pavel was cuffed to the table but it still felt as if he could wrench his way free Hollywood-style if he really tried. Someone had mentioned something about needing specially enlarged cuffs to fit his wrists, which hardly made Jessica feel any better. His sleeves were rolled up, exposing broad, hairy arms that looked like giant caterpillars. His vast shoulders were hunched forward with that too-small head facing the table.

  ‘Is your name Pavel Adamek?’ Jessica asked.

  His reply was thick with accent but perfectly clear: ‘I do not speak English.’

  ‘Were you born in Serbia?’

  ‘I do not speak English.’

  ‘If that’s true, we’re obliged to get you a translator. Is that what you want?’

  ‘I do not speak English.’

  Two hours later and they were back in the same positions, this time with a dark-haired woman sitting next to Pavel. She’d moved the chair away to give herself a little space but he was so big that it was almost impossible unless she swapped to the other side of the table.

  Jessica glanced towards the translator and then back at Pavel.

  ‘Is your name Pavel Adamek?’

  ‘I do not speak English.’

  The woman translated, ending with the words ‘Pavel Adamek’.

  Pavel replied in a language that sounded similar but the translator turned to Jessica with an apologetic sigh: ‘He says he doesn’t speak English.’

  ‘Were you born in Serbia?’

  ‘I do not speak English.’

  The translator tried again only to be met by something that sounded like: ‘Ya knee go for rim English ski.’

  She turned to Jessica: ‘He said he—’

  ‘I get it.’ Jessica wasn’t quite sure what to do yet persisted anyway: ‘Did you come to the UK illegally?’

  ‘I do not speak English . . . Ya knee go for rim English ski.’

  ‘Did you marry Rosemary Dean in order to stay here?’

  ‘I do not speak English . . . Ya knee go for rim English ski.’

  ‘It’s going to be a long day if that’s all you’ve got to say.’

  ‘I do no—’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, you enjoy rimming on a ski slope and you don’t speak English. I get it. I used to go out with a guy like this – not the rimming. The moment you asked him to do the washing up or anything really, he forgot which language he spoke.’

  Pavel didn’t move. ‘I do not speak English.’

  ‘You might not speak the language but you definitely understand it – so you can sit there refusing to talk and I’ll tell you what’s going to happen. First—’ The translator cut in but Jessica held a hand up to stop her. ‘First, we’re going to test the swab we took to confirm for absolute certain that samples of your skin were found under the nails of the drug dealer you beat to death. It will come back positive and you will go to jail for it whether or not you speak English. Second, you’ll be charged with entering the UK illegally. There’s also every chance we’ll be able to charge you with false representation offences, such as getting a priest to marry you without him knowing you weren’t allowed to be here. We’ve got enough to charge you for money-laundering, threats, exploitation under the Sexual Offences Act, people trafficking . . . it’s quite a shopping list.’

  ‘I do not speak English.’

  ‘I want to ask you about the burglaries you were charged for in Serbia.’

  ‘I do not speak English.’

  ‘Who did you tell over here?’

  ‘I do not speak English.’

  ‘Was it members of your gang or someone else?’

  He peered up from the table for the first time, staring her straight in the eyes. His were grey and emotionless. ‘I do not speak English.’

  ‘Who was the man with the local accent?’

  ‘I do not—’

  Jessica slumped back into her seat, defeated.

  ‘—speak English.’

  Jessica sat in the station’s canteen, machine-made tea in a plastic cup, man-made egg on toast uneaten on a plate. Well, there was probably a chicken involved somewhere but the man behind the counter had certainly fried it.

  Across the table, someone squeaked a chair across the floor and then slid in. ‘All right?’

  DC Dave Rowlands was looking tired, bags under his eyes, hair flat, and a general sagginess to his face that was otherwise hard to describe.

  ‘Do you want egg on toast?’

  ‘Go on then.’

  Jessica slid the plate across the table and handed him the knife and fork.

  ‘How’s life?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ve got to get away from Franks. The guy’s a lunatic. Because you were involved in all those arrests this week, he keeps saying you’ve got one over him and we need to catch up. He’s one step away from us going door-to-door to ask if anyone’s committed a crime. Plus he keeps disappearing. One minute, he’ll be there asking why you’ve not arrested someone, the next he’s gone for an hour.’

  ‘He probably sneaks out to Whitworth Park to sniff the seats in the public toilets.’

  Rowlands swallowed some of the toast and smiled. ‘How was the cake?’

  ‘For crying out loud – how does anyone ever get anything done around here? The minute something happens, the gossip merchants are out in force.’

  ‘That doesn’t answer the question.’

  ‘Fine – the cake would have been good if I wasn’t wearing half of it. I had to walk onto the street covered in it and then I was in the back of one of the cars returning here.�
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  ‘Someone with a camera phone must’ve got a picture of that.’

  ‘They’d better bloody not have done.’

  ‘What about your Serbian bloke?’

  ‘He does not speak English.’

  Dave reached across and had a sip of Jessica’s tea. ‘I thought he’d been here for a while.’

  ‘Oh, he has. All I could get him to say was that he didn’t speak the language. Then he told the translator the exact same thing. There are more insightful things written on the walls of the women’s toilets.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Never you mind. Anyway, the point is that we’ve got him for about half-a-dozen charges – but he won’t say a word about the robberies.’

  ‘Have you got anything to link him?’

  ‘Only the fact that his criminal record in Serbia has the exact type of home invasions on it. Not just similar – they’re the same. It can’t be a coincidence and yet if someone that size broke into your house, you’d remember it, wouldn’t you? Even if he didn’t speak.’

  ‘So it wasn’t him?’

  Jessica took her tea back and drank the rest in one as Dave sliced into the yolk, sending the yellow liquid running pleasingly across the plate.

  ‘It was and it wasn’t,’ Jessica replied, ‘but we’re not going to get it from him. I think he told someone what he’d been up to in Serbia and they took his idea and ran with it.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘If I knew that, I wouldn’t be sat here watching you eat my lunch, would I?’

  Dave delved into his pocket. ‘Have you got fifty pence?’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Another tea.’

  Jessica stood and fished in her pocket. ‘Somewhere, I . . .’ She stopped, a thought suddenly dropping into her mind.

  ‘What?’ Rowlands asked.

  ‘Rosemary.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘She said she’d gone to ask her friend for money but she was after thousands.’

  ‘You’re talking to yourself, Jess.’

  Jessica sat back down. ‘If you wanted thousands of pounds, tens of thousands, you wouldn’t go to a normal mate, would you? You’d go to someone you knew had cash who might be willing to give it away. Or at least lend it. Rosemary said she was a naughty child after her parents broke up. I wonder which school she went to . . .’

  Jessica was halfway towards the door when she stopped, spun, and strode back to the table. She planted a fifty-pence piece next to the plate, kissed Dave on the forehead and muttered ‘I miss you’, before rushing off to her office.

  39

  The collection of items on the driveways around Martin Teague’s house was down to just the one skip, although there were still three cars each with a wheel missing, the row of rusting motorbikes, the vandalised green telephone exchange box, garages with paint peeling, scrap and old number plates. In addition, just to make the area feel more welcoming, someone had used a black marker pen to draw a penis onto the exchange box.

  Welcome to Manchester.

  As she rang the bell next to the cherry wood double-glazed door, Jessica could hear Joy Division thundering out from the inside, not sounding particularly joyful.

  She thumped on the doorframe, then the window, then tried the doorbell again. Eventually, the music went quiet and Teague opened the door, wearing what appeared to be the same dressing gown she’d seen him in last time: ‘For God’s sake – that bitch next door is lying to you,’ he thundered. ‘We weren’t even arguing – we just had a few mates over. Is that a crime now?’

  ‘Can I come in?’ Jessica asked.

  Teague didn’t move, blocking the door: ‘Are you actually asking this time?’

  ‘You remember those words that just came out of my mouth; the bit where I said “Can I come in?” – that was me asking.’

  ‘Suit your sodding self.’

  Teague stood to the side as Jessica wound her way through the house into the living room. A couple of the magazines seemed different but there were still music videos playing silently on the television and the entire place had a morbid, desolate feel to it.

  ‘There are no tea bags so you can get stuffed,’ Teague said as he sat.

  ‘Charming. You’re not doing that reality TV thing where they host dinner parties, are you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Thought not. Anyway – I’ve got a question for you.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘How do you know Pavel Adamek?’

  ‘Who?’

  Teague didn’t blink and neither did Jessica. ‘Bloody hell: for someone who’s been arrested as many times as you, you could at least string it out a bit. “Pavel who?”, “I don’t know an Adamek”, that kind of thing. I was expecting a good hour out of this.’

  Teague stared at her as if she was speaking a foreign language. Not another one . . .

  ‘Okay, I’ll make it easy for you,’ Jessica said. ‘It’s called word association. I say something and you reply with the first thing that pops into your head. Here goes: Pavel Adamek.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Fine, if you’re not going to play along, how about Rosemary Dean?’

  Teague had the same fixed, emotionless expression on his face: ‘Who?’

  ‘Oh, for f—. Look, you can’t deny knowing her – you went to school together. I checked and everything.’

  Teague’s eyebrows met in the middle as he screwed his features up. ‘Rosie Dean?’

  ‘If that’s what you call her. When was the last time you spoke?’

  He shrugged. ‘Rosie? I dunno. Ages.’

  ‘Rosemary was looking for money to start a business. She couldn’t get money from a bank, so she thought to herself, “Now who do I know with nine point eight million lying around?” Mistakenly, she thought you had money left, so she popped around for a brew and asked if you could lend her some. Perhaps she had a business plan with her?’

  Jessica still hadn’t been able to get Rosemary to talk about her friend but there had been enough recognition when the woman was asked about Martin Teague that she knew she was onto something.

  ‘Oh, aye, I do remember,’ Teague replied, scratching his head. ‘It was a little while ago – I don’t think she’d seen the papers. She phoned up and asked if I could help but all my money had gone.’

  ‘Right, so you told her you had no cash but you knew someone who might be able to help – and that’s when Pavel Adamek’s name came up.’

  ‘I don’t know who that is!’

  ‘Bollocks don’t you. Look, I get it – you grew up with nothing, suddenly had the world at your feet, and then lost everything again. You were looking to get it back. Someone like you who’s been in prison must have a few street contacts, so you put the word out asking if there was work about. Someone mentioned Pavel and away you went. You sent Rosemary his way to help him out and in return you had a cosy little chat about money-making schemes.’

  Teague waved the back of his hand towards her. ‘You’re crazy.’

  ‘I’ve been called worse. Anyway, we both know what happened next – do I have to spell it out?’

  ‘Spell what out?’

  ‘You hooked up with a couple of your old street pals, perhaps even someone Pavel knows, and you went back to the area where your old mansion was to rob a few houses. You knew the area because you used to drive around there. You figured it’d be an easy target – go for those with money and possessions but not the super-rich because their security would be too high. It was a good plan but there wasn’t as much cash as you thought. You didn’t know what to do with the jewellery because it’s too hard to sell for any real amount of money so you panicked a bit. You ended up delivering smallish amounts of money to all sorts of charities, making people think you were a good guy.’

  Teague was shaking his head. ‘I don’t know what you’re on about.’

  ‘If you won’t admit you know Pavel then at least tell me where the jewellery is.’

  ‘What jewellery?’<
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  Jessica sighed. ‘All right, sod this. At this exact moment, there are some big bastards in your garden with some huge feet and a massive battering ram – and that’s not even a euphemism. You can either let them in, or they’ll break in anyway.’ She reached into her pocket and passed the warrant across. ‘Don’t even ask what I went through to get that on a Saturday.’

  Teague took the page, skimmed the top line and then stared across at her open-mouthed, saying nothing.

  Jessica shook her head, stood, walked into the hallway and opened the front door, telling the first officer to follow her. She went up the steps into the final bedroom she’d sneaked a peek at the previous time she’d been. The roll of carpet was still pushed to the side, although the hammer that had been resting on top of the bare floorboards was gone.

  ‘Under there,’ Jessica said, nodding at the naked wood.

  The officer with the crowbar strode forward confidently, sticking the flat end in between two of the boards and wrenching it upwards. Jessica stood and watched as five, six, seven, eight more were pulled away. The officer got down onto all fours and peered both ways underneath the floor.

  ‘Anything?’ Jessica asked.

  He twisted to stare up at her.

  ‘Not even a stray pound coin.’

  40

  Sunday: Jessica’s second ‘day off’ in a row spent at the station. It was fair to say Saturday had been a mixed success. Topper had called her to offer his congratulations on how smoothly the arrest of Pavel had gone, missing out the flying cake part, and then asked why exactly she’d arrested Martin Teague and why he’d vouched for a warrant early on a Saturday afternoon. She repeated everything she’d told him at the time and clarified that Rosemary still wouldn’t talk about how she’d met Pavel and was threatening to withdraw all cooperation if they kept pushing her. He’d made a non-committal ‘hmmm’ sound and then initially asked to be kept up to date if anything changed, before deciding he was coming in anyway. It sounded to Jessica as if he wanted to get away from the kids for a day.