Killing Time

by Mark Roberts

  Aneta looked at the evidence bag, glanced at Ms Jennings and said, ‘Eight, I’d say.’

  ‘Your relationship with the brothers was platonic?’

  ‘Yes. There was never any question of a romantic or sexual relationship. They were like brothers to me. Had there been a sexual relationship between me and, say, Karl, I’d have answered ten for Karl and eight for Václav. In reality, it was eight for both.’

  ‘Aneta,’ said Ms Jennings. ‘Just answer the questions flatly. One word would have been sufficient to respond to that question. Eight.’

  ‘Aneta?’ Clay drew her in with her name and when she had full eye contact, she said, ‘Aneta, it’s clear to me that you are eager to cooperate. Your solicitor’s here to intervene in case we step over the edge of what’s right and professional. You’re an intelligent woman. Use your own judgement to answer our questions in as much detail as you think appropriate. If you want to, give us a no comment interview. Your call.’

  Clay looked at Ms Jennings, then carried on. ‘Context is everything,’ she said, sliding the evidence bag in front of Hendricks. Aneta’s eyes tracked the movement of the brown paper bag.

  In the inside pocket of her jacket, Clay felt her iPhone buzzing, and the still silence in between the blasts of vibration felt deep and dark.

  ‘You were close to both the brothers?’

  The silence deepened and the tremor grew stronger through her clothes, against her skin and into her blood.

  ‘Yes, I was.’

  ‘So you’d notice if anything unusual was going on, Aneta?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘Did you notice anything unusual going on, say in the last eight days?’

  ‘No, everything was normal. I’d arrive at their place, let myself in because they’d long gone to work. I’d clean the flat. I’d pick up my money at the end of the week. And I’d speak to them on the phone every other evening or so.’

  ‘Did they appear agitated?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did they follow their usual routine?’

  ‘As far as I know, yes. I wasn’t with them twenty-four/seven.’

  ‘How thoroughly did you clean their flat?’ Silence against her skin; the phone stopped vibrating.

  ‘Thoroughly. Each room from top to bottom.’

  ‘And there was no one else in the flat with you?’

  ‘Excuse me,’ said Ms Jennings. She turned to Aneta. ‘If DCI Clay or her colleague DS Hendricks refuses to name the linked child abduction case to the murder of the brothers, I’m instructing you to put in a no comment interview.’ She looked directly at the camera up in the left-hand corner of the room. ‘Did you get that? I instructed her to go no comment. No comment does not equate to guilty. This is not a fair interview.’

  There was a sharp and rapid succession of knocks on the door and, before Clay could respond, the door opened. Sergeant Harris stood in the doorway, and the look on his face told Clay it was serious.

  ‘Eve? A moment please.’

  Clay stood and said, ‘DS Hendricks, show Aneta and her solicitor the evidence.’ She heard the bag rustle as Hendricks turned it over.

  ‘What’s this?’ asked Aneta.

  ‘What does it look like?’ replied Hendricks.

  Aneta looked inside the evidence bag and said, ‘Human hair.’

  ‘We’re sure it belongs to Marta Ondřej,’ said Hendricks. ‘Do you know where it was found?’

  Sergeant Harris drew Clay out of the interview suite and spoke quietly. ‘Eve, there’s been a body found near the railway bridge in Otterspool Park. Female. In her thirties or thereabouts. She’s been set on fire.’

  ‘Phone whoever’s at the scene and tell them I’ll be there in ten minutes. Wait a moment, please.’

  Clay returned to the room, her head rammed with the figure twenty-four hours, the need to buy time and a growing number of spinning plates.

  ‘Aneta?’ said Clay.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I have to go now.’

  ‘You do?’

  ‘Something very serious has happened. I need to talk to you as soon as possible. But for now, you’re free to go.’

  Clay looked at Aneta’s solicitor and addressed her directly. ‘We have evidence in the bag in front of you. Karl and Václav Adamczak are directly linked to the abduction and kidnap of Marta Ondřej. Your client had the key to their flat. Do you want to advise your client or do you want me to do so? We’re not keeping her in custody for now.’

  ‘Make yourself fully available for questioning, Aneta. Go to your workplace or stay at home, nowhere else. Keep your phone on at all times. Do not attempt to travel.’

  ‘Good advice, Ms Jennings. Because, Aneta, in the last days of their lives, it looks like your friends abducted Marta and kept her prisoner in their flat.’

  ‘They... they wouldn’t do such a thing. Never,’ said Aneta.

  ‘Really?’ asked Clay. She looked at her watch, felt her pulse quickening and blood pounding in her head as she moved closer to Aneta.

  ‘What do you need to do, Aneta?’ pressed Clay.

  ‘I’ll do exactly as Ms Jennings has said.’

  ‘Good. I’m circulating your picture to all ports and airports.’

  Clay stood across the table, leaned closer into Aneta’s face.

  ‘Running away’s an admission of guilt. Run away if you want to, but we will catch you.’

  45

  2.45 pm

  Poppy Waters stood at the window of her office and looked at the iPhone found under the boards at Picton Road. On the surface of the cement-flecked and soiled device, she saw remnants of white fingerprint dust and sections that had been covered in sellotape to lift the prints at the scene.

  There was a knock at the door. Instinctively covering the phone with her other hand, she said, ‘Come in!’

  The door opened and a tall man with jet-black hair and sky-blue eyes stepped into the room.

  ‘Poppy?’ His voice was gentle, and accented. He walked towards her, smiled and held out his hand, a visitor badge hanging from his neck. ‘I’m Robert Baliński.’

  ‘Much as I’d like to shake hands with you,’ said Poppy, ‘I’m in the middle of something.’

  He looked at her hands in latex gloves. ‘I understand.’

  ‘You’re my Polish translator?’ she asked.

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Can you do me a favour, Robert? Could you go to the canteen and have a coffee? I need to look at something before you help me with the emails and other documents that are in Polish. Twenty minutes, say?’

  ‘I’ll be back then.’

  As she watched him leave, she thought, Handsome and nice manners with it.

  She used her right index finger to unlock the iPhone. At first, she typed in her own password; it was declined.

  ‘Here we go then,’ she said, pressing Emergency and 9111. She pressed the green call button several times and each time she did so, the red close call sign came on-screen. *911#. 108. As soon as her call to 108 connected she declined the call and waited, counting to five in her head, and watching a band of snow advance inland from the Mersey estuary.

  She smiled as the screen saver came up along with a set of icons. She remembered the instruction Eve Clay had emailed to her as she waited for the iPhone to come in: look at the photographs and videos first.

  She looked at the screen saver behind the icons: two identical men on either side of a woman. Poppy guessed they were the victims and the woman who had called 999.

  She pressed photos and a camera roll with sixty-five pictures and My Photo Stream with eighty-two items appeared. Not prolific photographers, she thought, hoping as she brought the camera roll on-screen that she wasn’t about to see something that would come between her and her sleep.

  Slowly, she scrolled through the images and quickly saw a pattern of five. She went back to the bottom and saw that the first set of five was a single building in various stages of construction, from the flattened groun
d to the finished item, with the rising exterior and the roof either side of the midway stage.

  The next set of five followed the same pattern; scrolling through the camera roll, she did the maths. The dead men had worked on thirteen building sites.

  She pressed Albums and then My Photo Stream.

  Pictures of the two men with the same woman at different places around Liverpool. The three at the Albert Dock, outside both cathedrals, in the Echo Arena at a concert – three nice-looking hard-working people having fun.

  Poppy pressed the videos icon and saw eight jet-black boxes in two rows with various timings in white in their lower left-hand corners.

  She pressed the box on the top row, left-hand corner, marked 4.32.

  She counted five seconds and the on-screen blackness gave way to an image of a bare light bulb hanging from a white ceiling, crackling as it came to life. There was a noise like choking as the camera panned down the wall and around the bare walls of a room not much bigger than a cupboard with a door.

  The camera panned down and Poppy said, ‘Oh no! No! No! No!’

  She paused the image and, taking out her mobile, called Eve Clay. Her phone rang out and, after several rings, went to the answer service.

  ‘Eve, it’s me, Poppy Waters. I’ve opened the phone from the crime scene. I’m going to send you footage I’ve found on the phone. It’s Marta, Marta Ondřej.’

  46

  2.48 pm

  ‘Thank you for attending, Lucy.’

  In Interview Suite 3, Detective Constable Clive Winters sat across the table from Lucy Bell and smiled at her as she sat down.

  ‘This isn’t the same room that DCI Clay interviewed me in.’

  ‘We have more than one interview suite because there are times when more than one interview is taking place. But it has exactly the same features.’ He pointed at the video camera in the left-hand upper corner and the audio recorder on the table.

  ‘I’ve formally opened the interview, Lucy, but I’ll ask you again. Would you like legal representation?’

  ‘I’ve done nothing wrong.’

  ‘I know all about the events around your discovery of Marta Ondřej, but what I need to find out is what you were doing during the eight days leading up to your 999 call.’

  ‘Where’s DCI Clay?’

  ‘She got called away to another matter, so I’m sitting in for her.’

  ‘It’s just that she said she would speak to me next time.’

  Winters kept the words You can’t take everything literally inside his head and said, ‘If she’d been available, she would have spoken to you personally because you are an important witness. However, she can’t.’

  ‘The last eight days leading up to my 999 call? Yes, I can tell you absolutely everything, more or less.’

  ‘Go on, Lucy.’

  She bent down and placed her bulging leather satchel on the table.

  ‘Marta went missing on Monday, 24th November 2020. On Monday, I was teaching all morning from 9 am until 12.30 pm with a break at 10.30 until 11 when I drank a cup of tea and gave an academic surgery for...’ She took an A4 blue hardback notebook from the satchel and flicked through the dog-eared pages. ‘A good diary is like a much-loved Bible, a little the worse for wear around the edges. Here it is. 10.30 until 11, I spoke to James Wade, Eileen Penn and Rupert Ross, all first-year undergraduates.’

  She placed the satchel back on the floor and pushed her diary towards Winters. He scanned the first page marked Monday, 24th November and took in all the details, that she got out of bed at 6.30 am, prayed in her bedroom until 7 am; from 7 am until 7.30 am, she showered and dressed; 7.30 am until 8 am, she made tea and toast for her father’s breakfast and a single serving of cornflakes with 220ml of milk for herself, and home by 6.13 pm as she did each and every night.

  ‘That’s not much of a breakfast, Lucy.’

  ‘I cannot cook. I am not domesticated.’

  ‘Tell me what happened after 12.30 pm.’

  ‘I went to the sweetshop in Mountford Hall, the student union building across the road from the Tate Building near the top of Brownlow Hill, and purchased four bars of chocolate for my lunch. I do this every weekday. The lady who served me, Madge, doesn’t even have to ask me what chocolate I eat, and she says she can set her clock by me. I got there on Monday at 12.41 pm – it’s a three-minute walk from where I was teaching.’

  ‘Thank you for that, Lucy. Would you mind if we photocopy pages from your diary?’

  ‘Of course not. But you’ll only need to copy the pages that cover those eight days.’

  Winters took out his phone, and got through to Sergeant Harris. ‘Could you come to three, please, Sarge. I need a favour.’

  ‘I ate the chocolate bars going back to Abercromby Square where I had a meeting at 1 pm until 3 pm with my academic supervisor, Dr Ben Reid.’

  He glanced down at Lucy’s perfectly formed handwriting, skimmed 1 pm and scanned Dr Reid’s name and room number – 103.

  ‘We discussed my ongoing PhD thesis, with which he was pleased.’

  ‘What’s your subject, Lucy?’

  ‘How twentieth-century political ideas and doctrines were influenced by classical and ancient theories. I still haven’t formulated a well-balanced conclusion but that will come with time.’

  ‘I’d like to come back to that later, if you don’t mind. It sounds fascinating.’

  There was a knock on the door and Sergeant Harris stood in the doorway.

  ‘Excuse me for a few seconds, Lucy.’

  Winters took Lucy’s diary out of the interview suite and, closing the door, handed it over.

  ‘This is her diary,’ he told Harris. ‘As a priority, I need you to arrange a photocopy of Monday 24th November until Monday 1st December. But I’d like the whole thing copied. I’ll keep her talking. Thank you.’

  He returned to the suite and sat across from Lucy again. ‘Thanks for that, Lucy.’

  ‘As I understand it, Detective Constable Winters, from what I’ve heard through the media, Marta went missing at around 2 pm from the Smithdown Lane area of Edge Hill.’

  ‘Yes’

  ‘I was with Doctor Reid at that time, in room 103 in Abercromby Square,’ said Lucy, sitting up a little. ‘I have a solid alibi from an utterly reputable witness.’ She spoke with mounting confidence. ‘I had nothing to do with the disappearance and kidnap of Marta Ondřej. I just happened to chance upon her and alert you to my discovery. If I’d have harmed the child in any way, would I have phoned 999? I don’t think so, Detective Constable Winters.’ She looked at him without blinking and said, ‘May I ask you a question?’

  ‘Go on?’

  ‘Isn’t it rather difficult at times for you in the police?’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Being a black man in an institutionally racist organisation like the Merseyside Constabulary.’

  ‘Things are not as bad as they once were, Lucy.’

  ‘I wrote an article for History Today about the policing of the Toxteth Riots in 1981, and how the police used the sus laws to police the black community. It was policed on a colonial model. I’m still shocked at what I discovered.’

  ‘Lucy, the Toxteth Riots happened nearly forty years ago.’

  Lucy was quiet for a few moments but maintained eye contact with Winters. ‘The chief constable at the time said the black population of Liverpool was a result of sexual encounters between black seamen and white prostitutes. Which was not true and was not nice.’

  ‘If any chief constable said such a thing now, they’d be out of the door before they drew their next breath.’

  She nodded. ‘I guess so. But...’

  ‘But?’

  ‘Do you know how many people were employed by Merseyside Police in 2017? Over seven thousand, including police officers and people in a wide range of roles. In 2017, there were twenty black police officers in Merseyside Constabulary.’

  ‘It’s not a good statistic. I was one of the twenty. Wh
at can I say? I’ve got two or three more questions to ask you, Lucy.’ In his mind he saw pages from her diary mounting up in the photocopier tray. ‘So, I had a brief look at your diary, at the entry for Monday, 24th November, and it seems clear you have an alibi. But what happened on the following days, leading up to Monday, 1st December? Would you like to give me a little précis while Sergeant Harris copies the pages for those days?’

  ‘Yes. But can I ask you a question first, Detective Constable Winters?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘If I had anything to hide, would I have handed over my personal diary?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘My life consists of two parts. Domestic and university. Domestic. I can tell you, I am either at home with my father or in church or performing duties related to my work as a Eucharistic minister or helping out in a women’s refuge. University. I am either teaching or with Doctor Reid or studying in the Sydney Jones library. In between domestic and university I am on public transport, invariably the 86 bus or the 86A.’

  ‘You didn’t learn to drive?’

  ‘No. I had one lesson. I couldn’t stand it one little bit.’

  ‘OK, Lucy. I see. Now, DCI Clay asked me to ask you about Jack Dare. How do you know him?’

  ‘He works for my father, performing heavy chores around the house and in the garden. My father is getting very old.’

  ‘Is he your friend?’

  ‘No. I like him. He is a good worker. He is polite.’

  ‘Thank you. Well, that’s it. But we ask you to make yourself available for interview, if—’

  ‘I know. I’ve already promised DCI Clay I’d keep my phone on at all times and that is a promise I will keep, in spite of my own personal wishes on the matter.’

  Winters sat back in his chair and formally closed the interview. As he turned off the audio recording, Lucy asked, ‘Am I free to go now?’

  ‘Yes, by all means. However, I’m intrigued by several details in your diary – one detail in particular. 6.13 pm. You always arrive home at the presbytery at 6.13 pm, come hell or high water. Why?’