Killing Time

by Mark Roberts

  ‘Karl, how did you get on with their landlord, Mr Zięba?’ she asked, as she combed the walls from ceiling to skirting board with torchlight.

  ‘They were model tenants, always paid their rent on time, took care of any repairs or decorating that needed doing. Respectful and hard-working men.’

  ‘Did they have any enemies?’

  ‘Not according to Mr Zięba. His words were, How could such men have enemies? How could they meet such an end? Why? They bought from me to give to the food bank, not just a couple of cans but bagloads of provisions for the poor.’

  Slowly, Clay turned, training her torchlight on each and every square centimetre of the walls, ceiling to floor.

  ‘Oh my, my, my!’ she said, pausing her light just above the skirting board beneath the blackened window. You really do mean business, she said to herself.

  ‘What’s happening?’ asked Stone.

  ‘Step inside, Karl, see for yourself.’

  On the space between the bottom of the window and the skirting board, she kept the light on six neatly painted words. With Stone at her shoulder she read them out: ‘Killing Time Is Here Embrace It.’

  She caressed the dark language with light. ‘This reads to me like a gun going off on the starting line.’ Turning, Clay picked out the esoteric circle on the wall facing six spray-painted words. ‘They’ve also left us something a little less obvious.’

  They looked at the geometrical graffiti in silence.

  ‘What’s your hunch, Eve?’

  ‘There’s no sign of a forced break-in. The men who lived here trusted the perpetrators, let them into their personal space. Even though their friend Aneta said they didn’t have people over, she wasn’t with them all of the time. How could she know?’

  Clay walked down the narrow hallway and noticed that the walls were interspersed with framed portraits of the Virgin and Child. Clay focused on the first image, a mosaic made of brightly coloured cubic blocks. The Virgin Mary wore a vivid red head dress and gown, and the infant Christ, in a pale blue tunic, looked up at his mother with great love, holding his little arms and hands out as if trying to climb his mother.

  Clay counted six such images in the hall.

  Familiar footsteps ascended the stairs and, before she could see him, Clay said, ‘Terry, brace yourself.’

  Scientific Support officer DS Terry Mason and his assistant Sergeant Paul Price appeared at the head of the stairs.

  ‘What do you want us to focus on, Eve?’ asked Mason.

  ‘The bedroom to begin with, and the symbol on the wall facing the window. Clean the wall as best you can and reveal the graffiti that the perpetrators left behind. And check the writing on the opposite wall. Killing Time Is Here Embrace It.’

  ‘How do we know it wasn’t the victims who wrote on the wall?’ asked Sergeant Price.

  ‘Look around the flat, Paul, and you’ll see that the people who lived and died here were neat, tidy, house-proud and well organised. They weren’t the type to write on the wall. These poor men were decent. It appears they were religious. Faith in action – they fed the hungry. Try and find evidence that will give us a picture of what was important in their lives. Find any contacts, address books, notes to self...’

  As Mason and Price moved past her, Clay began descending the stairs and welcomed the draught of air from the powerful fan and the weak daylight at the open front door.

  ‘What do you want me to do, Eve?’ asked Stone.

  ‘Stay here, and hot-line me any significant finds as and when they crop up. Find out if they have a priest, where they worship.’

  As Clay left the flat, the words Killing Time Is Here Embrace It raced in a loop through her mind.

  Who, Clay wondered, have you enraged? And what have you done to provoke this barbarity?

  11

  10.28 am

  As Jack Dare passed the closed living room door, he pictured his brother Raymond behind it, lapping up a single voice spouting from the television like toxic gas, and in his mind’s eye, he could see the silent, hypnotised horde listening to that hate-fuelled noise.

  The letterbox opened and a parcel landed face down at the bottom of the front door. When Jack picked it up, it felt thick and heavy; he turned it over and felt what appeared to be a book in an envelope addressed to Mr Raymond Dare. As he walked to the top of the stairs, from behind the living room door, Hitler finished speaking and, after a split-second silence, the masses found their collective voice.

  ‘Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!’

  At his door, Jack unlocked the padlock and listened to his mother in her bedroom singing along to Chain Reaction on the radio, drowning out the mass hysteria playing out downstairs from another time and place.

  He entered his bedroom and bolted the door, opening the parcel as he made his way to the gym bench in the tight central space.

  Jack looked at the cover and title of the book: White Supremacists by an author called Dwayne Hare, sitting above a group of mugshots of sour-looking men whose eyes all had one thing in common. Something essential was clearly missing from inside each one.

  Jack opened the book and saw from the contents page that each individual or organisation formed a separate case study.

  In the first chapter, he looked into the face of a man not much older than himself, looking depressed as if the truth had finally ambushed him: life was over before it had had a chance to begin. Dressed in an orange jump suit, surrounded by prison guards and being led to a high-security van, his hands were cuffed and his feet chained. Beneath the picture was a bland-sounding name. Timothy McVeigh.

  Jack skimmed the writing beneath the picture and picked out the words: McVeigh said, ‘I do believe in God, yes. But that’s as far as I want to discuss it. Beneath the writing was a colour picture of a modern building wrecked by a bomb blast.

  Flicking past McVeigh, he looked at the pictures of Waco and saw what looked like a mild-mannered man in glasses with his name beneath the picture: David Koresh. Alongside this image was a picture of an American tank outside a burning compound.

  He continued to flick through and saw the heading: ‘The Woman Who Killed For God’. Sarah Sarah. There was a colour picture of her in court being led away to the cells in an orange jump suit, hands cuffed, feet chained.

  Jack slipped the book back inside the envelope, took it to his small pine bookcase under the window and slotted it in a gap between two titles: The Everlasting Man and The Lamb’s Supper.

  He lay down on the bench and gripped the bar with a forty-kilo weight on either side, and wondered how much Raymond knew about those people. Jack lifted the bar from the stand and positioned it in the air above his chest. He lowered the bar to his chest, lifted it into the air and pulled off another fourteen repetitions. The words McVeigh, Koresh and Sarah chased after each other through his head like bluebottles on a hot, bone-dry day.

  Replacing the bar on the stand, Jack sat up and felt the muscles in his arms pulsing with power, and a flash of inspiration that linked all the people in the book he’d just confiscated.

  So, little brother, Jack concluded, it looks like you’re no longer just a run-of-the-mill Neo-Nazi. You’re a wannabe white supremacist.

  12

  10.35 am

  In the incident room at Trinity Road Police Station, Detective Constable Barney Cole listened to the computer-generated voicemail message on Lucy Bell’s iPhone for the eleventh time in twenty-five minutes.

  ‘The person you’re calling isn’t available to take your call right now. If you’d like to leave a message after the tone, please do so, or simply hang up after the beep.’

  And after the tone, for the eleventh time, he said, ‘My name’s DC Barney Cole and I’m calling you because you contacted emergency services after you’d come across the missing child Marta Ondřej. Please contact me immediately on 0151 706 2341 and...’

  The landline telephone on his desk rang out. He disconnected the mobile call and picked up the receiver.

 
; Behind the caller’s silence, Cole heard the competing voices of what sounded like a call centre. ‘Detective Constable Barney Cole, Merseyside Constabulary.’

  ‘I’m Alan Davies, returning your call, from O2.’

  ‘What have you got for me, Alan?’

  ‘Because of data protection...’

  ‘No offence, Alan, but I’m going to stop you right there. We’re investigating the abduction of a minor and your client is a key witness in that investigation. I need a name. I need a number. Pronto.’

  ‘I’ll put you on hold.’

  Dance music invaded Cole’s ear and he held the receiver away from himself, his frayed patience further unravelling as the seconds flew by. The music stopped and Alan came back on. ‘Thanks for waiting.’

  ‘What’s the news, and make it good news?’

  ‘Under the Data Protection Act of 1998, we can only release personal information about the account holder if the account holder has given his or her express permission. As you’re a third party, you need proof of the account holder’s permission before we can release data to you.’

  ‘She’s not picking up for me. I suggest you get your customer services to get in touch with her and see if she’ll pick for them. Like in the next minute. Are you going to do that for me, Alan?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘That wasn’t a bit convincing,’ said Cole, his grip on the receiver tightening.

  ‘I’ll put you through to customer services.’

  He held the receiver away from his ear, heard the music stop and listened.

  ‘Georgina Grey, customer services. Am I speaking to DC Cole?’

  ‘Give me your email address please, Georgina. I’m going to email you a picture of my warrant card...’

  ‘You’re looking for a name and address of one of our customers, correct?’

  ‘Correct. Please don’t quote the Data Protection Act at me. I know her name’s Lucy Bell but I need her home address or the address of her place of employment from you. If this is too big for you, put me onto a supervisor or someone who has the authority.’

  ‘No need. I can help you with that. Email me your warrant card and I’ll do what I can as quickly as I can. We’ll get back to you the instant we have positive information.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Georgina hung up and, as Cole replaced the receiver, a middle-aged constable who wasn’t based at Trinity Road Police Station entered the incident room.

  ‘Detective Constable Barney Cole?’

  ‘Yes. You have something for me?’

  The constable handed Cole a carrier bag. He looked inside and whistled at the collection of tagged pen drives.

  ‘This is all the CCTV footage from Picton Road and the surrounding neighbourhood, from the Royal Liverpool Hospital to the Fiveways roundabout at Queens Drive.’

  ‘Thank you,’ replied Cole, the potential scale of the task kicking off a low-level headache. ‘You’ve kept the one nearest the scene separate, the CCTV from the mini-market?’

  From his pocket, the constable produced a pen drive in a small plastic bag. ‘I’ve heard there may be more coming in,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you very much.’ Cole picked up the landline and dialled Sergeant Carol White. As the call connected, he said, ‘Carol, bring your eye drops with you. I’ve got the CCTV footage from Picton Road.’

  13

  10.45 am

  Detective Sergeant Karl Stone stood in the doorway of what used to be Karl and Václav Adamczaks’ flat, and called their landlord on his iPhone. After three rings, Mr Zięba picked up.

  ‘Who is this, please?’

  ‘Hello, Mr Zięba. It’s Detective Sergeant Karl Stone. We spoke earlier about Karl and Václav.’

  ‘Yes. Are you telling me I can come back to my shop now?’

  ‘Not yet, sorry, Mr Zięba. As soon as you can return, I’ll let you know immediately. I was phoning with a couple of questions, if you don’t mind.’

  Stone looked right at the Wavertree Library in the distance and to the left where the Picton Clock Tower stood over the entrance to the main road, and saw it was a quarter to eleven.

  ‘Fire away, Mr Stone.’

  ‘When we went in to the flat above your deli, we found several images of the Virgin Mary with the infant Jesus. We assumed that these are Polish religious icons.’

  ‘You assume correctly.’

  ‘Did you put them there, or did the Adamczaks put them up?’

  ‘The Adamczaks put them up. I’m not a religious man.’

  ‘They were both religious?’ asked Stone.

  ‘To different degrees. Karl was a practising Catholic. So was Václav. Václav, though, he was a very, very religious man. I have a cross on the wall in my shop. This is to bring me good luck more than anything else, and to please the old ladies who come in for provisions. Václav thought I too was very religious and started talking to me about praying to the Virgin Mary to intercede to God, and how if everyone prayed to the Virgin, the world would heal itself. I’m summing up. It was a long, passionate speech. At the end I didn’t have the heart to tell him I’m agnostic. Maybe I should have just been honest. Every time he came into the shop, it was God the Father this, the Holy Father that, the Virgin Mary the other—’

  ‘Do you know which church they went to?’

  ‘Different ones. The Metropolitan at the top of Brownlow Hill was a big favourite of Václav. They worked away some weekends so they had to go on Saturday evenings to whichever Catholic church was closest. They sometimes went to local churches. They were good men. They didn’t deserve this. I am saddened beyond words. There was a priest who came into my shop sometimes. He knew Václav.’

  ‘What was his name?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Stone put himself in Mr Zięba’s position, and wondered what he would be thinking and feeling if it had been his property where murder and arson had happened.

  ‘You know your property...’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Above your deli, there is some damage. There was a fire but it was contained in one room. The rest of the flat is unharmed.’

  ‘On a day of incredibly bad news, that is a crumb of comfort. Thank you for that.’

  As Stone prepared to close the call down, Mr Zięba said, ‘I will talk to people who knew the brothers and see if they have any idea about why this happened.’

  ‘And I will call you the moment you are free to return to your shop.’

  14

  11.06 am

  On the third floor of Alder Hey, Marta Ondřej lay on top of her hospital bed with Detective Sergeant Gina Riley sitting door-side to the right of her and Kate Nowak by the window to the left.

  ‘Marta,’ said Riley. But the girl stared straight ahead and appeared not to hear.

  ‘When’s the shrink coming?’ asked Kate.

  There was a knock on the glass door and a nurse came into the room, carrying a tray of food covered with a metal dish.

  ‘After the food,’ smiled Riley.

  ‘OK, Marta,’ said the nurse. ‘Seeing as you demolished the cooked breakfast, the chef thought, why wait until lunchtime for the next meal? As you wouldn’t tell us what you wanted I made an educated guess based on what most of the other kids on this ward ask for...’

  He waited for a reaction from Marta and, when he didn’t get one, looked at Riley.

  ‘She doesn’t understand English.’

  The nurse placed the tray down on the bedside cabinet in line with Marta’s head. Lifting the metal dish, he said, ‘Fish and chips. Enjoy!’

  As the nurse left the room, Marta sniffed the air. She sat up suddenly and, looking at the food, plunged her hands into the plate. In one bite she took a third of the battered cod and stuffed a handful of chips into her mouth.

  Riley checked her watch and timed her. It took Marta fifty-three seconds to demolish the food and start licking the grease from the plate. Then, slowly, she placed the plate on the bedside cabinet.

  Riley mo
ved her face close to Marta’s and pointed at the toilet cubicle in the corner of the room. ‘Come with me, Marta.’

  She helped the girl to her feet and guided her to the toilet. For half a minute, Marta stood looking down at the toilet, as if it was an abstract sculpture. Riley walked into the space and turned Marta round by the shoulders. She gathered the hem of Marta’s gown and placed it in the girl’s hands. Gently, she placed her hands on Marta’s shoulders and the girl offered no resistance as Riley sat her down on the toilet.

  As water hit the pan, Riley turned her back on Marta and smiled at Kate.

  ‘You’re very good with children, Gina.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  When Marta had finished, Riley turned and lifted her from the seat. She took the girl’s hands away from the hem of the gown and the garment fell, covering her legs to the knees.

  Riley mimed washing hands by rubbing hers together, and turned on the tap. She placed Marta’s right hand under the soap dispenser, filled her palm with foam and guided her hands to the stream of water.

  Marta’s hands were as still as stone. Water poured through her fingers and over the backs of her hands.

  ‘I’ll help you.’

  Riley turned the girl’s hands in the stream, rubbing soap into each hand and rinsing off the bubbles. She took Marta’s hands to the air dispenser and watched her face as the warm breeze flooded her hands and a brief flash of pleasure crossed her features.

  As Marta followed Riley out of the toilet, she paused in the doorway and her face filled with a look of pure uncertainty. She turned a quarter circle to face the toilet wall, and as Riley moved closer, she saw Marta looking at her own reflection in the mirror.

  She appeared to be looking at someone she vaguely knew but didn’t completely trust, and confusion swept over her face. As if her arms didn’t quite belong to her body, she raised her hands to her head and patted the patches of stubble and baldness.