by Mark Roberts
‘I’ll stay on the line. How is she?’
‘A lot better.’ Riley looked at Marta and hoped that a vile memory was transforming with time into a bad and fading nightmare. ‘I’ll put you on speakerphone.’
‘Thank you, Gina.’
Marta looked up at the new, disembodied voice in the room and then back down at her colouring book. She placed the green felt-tipped pen down, picked up a red and went over what she had already coloured and the lines she was supposed to be staying within.
‘Kate?’ Riley could feel the pulse inside her ears. ‘Tell Marta to stop colouring and hold out both her hands.’
With the picture away from Marta’s eyes, Riley sat on the edge of the bed and smiled as Kate spoke to the child and took the colouring book and packet of pens away from her. Then the translator pulled down the first of the blinds over the glass partition between Marta’s room and the corridor.
‘Tell Marta I’m going to show her a photograph of two men.’
The room darkened a little as a bank of cloud passed over the weak winter sun.
‘Kate, ask her to tell you if she recognises the men.’
Riley placed her iPhone on the duvet and smiled at Marta as Kate spoke to her.
‘Ask her if she understands,’ said Riley.
Kate spoke and, after a moment, Marta nodded and almost smiled.
Riley placed the photograph face down on the bed and took in a huge breath. She picked it up by the top left- and right-hand corners and slowly revealed it to Marta.
For a few seconds, Marta’s face was blank as her eyes drilled in to the picture of the Adamczak brothers. She looked at Riley and then back at the picture.
She reached out her right hand and touched the picture. Her head bobbed forward and her mouth opened into a crooked smile. She nodded and looked at Riley, who summoned up her willpower to ask, ‘Are these the men who took you away?’
Kate translated.
The smile on Marta’s face sank as quickly as it had formed, and she dragged her finger across the surface of the photographic paper.
Marta spoke quietly, in hesitant and pause-studded language.
‘What did you say, Marta?’ asked Riley.
‘Two men... the same... the same... place. How can two men who are the same be in the same place?’ said Kate.
Riley saw that there was no terror in Marta’s eyes but, instead, a light built up.
‘Ask her again, Kate. Did these men take you away?’
Marta took the edges of the paper and gently pulled it away from Riley. She shook her head and smiled.
Marta pulled the picture closer, so the tip of her nose was against the surface of the page. She kissed the picture twice and, Riley estimated, it was a kiss to both of their faces.
She sank back onto the bed, pressed the picture onto her chest and folded her arms over it.
Marta looked at Riley and spoke slowly and deliberately, three times.
‘What did she say, Kate?’
‘He’s a nice man this two man one. He kind to me. I’m tired and want to go to sleep now.’
87
10.18 am
As she rushed down the corridor towards Interview Suite 1, Clay came face to face with Raymond Dare, escorted by Sergeant Harris and his solicitor.
‘No comment,’ whispered Raymond, looking directly at Clay as Harris opened the door.
‘You haven’t listened to a word I’ve said, have you?’ Mr Robson looked on the verge of losing his temper.
Sergeant Harris closed the door of Interview Suite 1.
Clay’s iPhone vibrated in her jacket pocket, and she remained on the corridor as she connected to Winters.
‘Clive, what have you got?’
‘I went to Anfield to the CJ Construction redevelopment project and spoke to the site manager, Damien Wright. He showed me the rotas for the dates that Aneta Kaloza gave us, and there was no sign of the Adamczaks at all. So, it looks like they were lying to her.’
‘Looks like they were lying?’ asked Clay.
‘After I was done in the site manager’s office, I spoke to co-workers there. They told me quite the opposite. The Adamczak brothers were on site during the dates in question. They’d been on site going back weeks. CJ Construction is in a lot of financial trouble at the moment. The company’s living hand to mouth. They’re paying a whole raft of people cash in hand to cut financial corners, and two of them were Karl and Václav Adamczak. Three other workers confirmed that this was true. The Adamczak brothers even worked Saturday and Sunday the weekend before they died.’
‘What kind of hours were they working?’
‘Six in the morning until eight or nine at night.’
Coldness swept over Clay. She worked it out. Including travel, the Adamczak brothers were away from their flat for fourteen hours a day.
‘Are you still there, Eve?’
‘Hold the line for me, please.’ A terrible possibility crossed her mind, and the answer lay behind the door of Interview Suite 1. ‘The men you talked to – did any of them confirm if the Adamczak brothers had been on site on Monday, 24th November?’
‘They hadn’t had a day off in weeks.’
‘You got names and numbers of these witnesses?’
‘Yes, I’ve got the names and contact details of four people who’ve got a lot to lose with the Inland Revenue but who are completely at the end of their tether and grieving with it. They were with the Adamczak brothers on the afternoon Marta Ondřej was abducted.’
‘Thank you, Clive.’
‘You sound pissed off, Eve.’
‘I am. The sewer rat in Interview Suite 1 who snatched Marta and killed the Adamczak brothers has been taking the piss out of us.’
As Clay hung up, she made her way towards the front reception desk. ‘Sergeant Harris, please tell Aneta Kaloza to make herself available and stay within touch. But for now, she’s free to go.’
Then, leaving the Black Sun files with Sergeant Harris, she marched back to Interview Suite 1.
Remaining on her feet, Clay leaned down over Raymond and said, ‘I was going to ask you about Black Sun, but I’ve just learned something that not only says a lot about you, but it also makes it clear that you are sinking deeper and deeper down by the hour. I’m going to collect some evidence you need to look at. I’ll be back shortly. While I’m away, I’d like you to think about why you kidnapped Marta Ondřej.’
‘No comment. What are you on about?’
‘You don’t like foreigners, and you don’t care how old they are.’
‘No comment.’
‘That wasn’t a question, Raymond. It was a statement. A statement of plain and simple fact.’
88
10.30 am
At Liverpool Festival Gardens, hungry seagulls drifting from the River Mersey outnumbered the humans by ten to one, their cawing and screaming loud and hysterical.
DS Karl Stone made his way from his car to the tape around a burned-out Fiat Uno. The two constables watching over the car were shivering, rubbing their hands together against the bitterly cold wind whipping over the water.
Stone snapped on a pair of latex gloves. ‘Well done finding the car. What made you drive onto the site?’
‘There was a burglary on Moel Famau Close. They took the car keys and the car from outside the house. It was probably kids because they drove the car they’d robbed five minutes earlier into a streetlight and must’ve escaped on foot. We’ve been looking for them on Riverside Drive and then we thought, see if they escaped through the Festival Gardens. That’s when we came across this.’
‘Well, if it’s any consolation, you’re involved in frying a much bigger fish with this find.’
Stone looked over the Fiat Uno on both sides, then at the front and boot at the rear.
The front end was badly damaged by fire; it looked like the majority of the petrol had been poured over the driver and passenger seats. Scorch marks tapered up the sides of the car but petered out in the meta
l of the back doors. The boot was relatively unscathed by fire, but had buckled near the lock in a collision of some sort.
Stone turned as a vehicle pulled up near him: DS Terry Mason’s Scientific Support van. He continued filming inside the front, through the wound-down window, where oxygen had made its contribution to the blaze. The driver’s and passenger’s seats were like a hearth that hadn’t been cleaned for a long while. The seats in the back were burned, but still kept some semblance of their shape.
He looked at the front of the Fiat Uno where the engine and electrics had been burned out, and listened to the rattle of what sounded like a vehicle carrier making its way deeper into the Festival Gardens.
‘Karl?’
‘Hi, Terry. You were quick.’ Stone led Mason to the boot of the car.
‘You were quicker.’
‘Can you open the boot for me, please?’ asked Stone.
‘Paul!’ Mason called to Price who was at the back of the Scientific Support vehicle, organising the necessary tools. ‘Can you bring me black fingerprint dust and a crow bar. We’ll open up the boot and after we’ve done that, we’ll dust the lid for prints.’
A brown and off-white seagull landed three metres away and made a sound like a human being going out of their mind and laughing in the process.
Sergeant Price stuck the lip of the crow bar under the lock and gave it a heavy tug. Metal creaked but nothing shifted. He rubbed his hands and tried again, harder this time.
The boot of the Fiat Uno creaked open and the three men looked inside.
‘Oh, well, would you look at that?’ said Stone, smiling at the contents of the boot. He pressed record on his iPhone’s video camera and thought, Eve Clay, you’re going to love this.
89
10.45 am
As Police Constables Andrew Jones and Sarah O’Neil came to the end of Jacob Street, she commented, ‘We’ve asked forty-eight people so far and everyone hates Raymond Dare. That’s quite an achievement. How many doors didn’t open?’
Jones checked his notebook. ‘On Jacob Street and Isaac Street, sixteen. We’ll go back and knock them off when we’ve tackled David Street. Odds or evens?’
‘Odds,’ replied O’Neil.
They each went to one side of the road, and O’Neil knocked on 111 David Street. The door opened immediately, and a black teenage boy towered over her.
‘I know why you’re here. Social media’s flying off its tits.’ He looked excited and happy. ‘How can I help you?’
‘We have a Raymond Dare in custody at the moment.’
Two pairs of footsteps hurried down the stairs.
‘Get in there!’ said an advancing voice, as the other voice laughed.
Two boys and a girl, sixteen to nineteen, filled the doorway.
‘Raymond Dare, the fucking fascist bastard,’ said the girl. ‘What’s he done now?’
‘I’m here to ask you questions, and I’m not at liberty to divulge information.’
‘Facebook says he’s been arrested for murder.’
‘Do you want him nailed?’ asked O’Neil.
‘Sure as fuck we do,’ replied the girl.
‘We’re looking for two people. We don’t know their real names. We do know their handles. CJ and Buster. Do you know anyone who goes by those names?’
They all looked blank.
‘Do you know what,’ said the boy who opened the door. ‘I don’t hate him just because he called me a fucking nigger every day when we were in the same form group in the same school, until he got sent off to that school for dickheads...’
‘You didn’t have to put up with that racial abuse from him.’
‘Are you suggesting I should have grassed? I’m not a grass.’
‘Is there any point in me talking to you?’
‘Grassing doesn’t apply to murder, especially when it’s innocent people who’ve been killed by some Nazi psycho head-fuck.’
‘Why do you really hate him?’
‘He tried to make out that his brother was a political prisoner. He wasn’t any such thing. He got sent away because he battered three Asian lads after he’d racially abused them. Not according to dickhead Raymond. The Asians started it, Jack finished it.’
As soon as they shut the door, thought O’Neil, call DC Cole to tell DCI Clay.
‘What do you want to know?’ asked the girl.
‘Yours is the third street we’ve tried. No one knows them from their street names. You haven’t answered my question. CJ and Buster. Do you know them?’
‘No.’ Each of them sounded solid, looked O’Neil in the eye as they replied.
‘Everyone hates him round here,’ said the girl. ‘He robs from his neighbours, he sells weed to junior school kids and he’s a Nazi. There’s nothing at all to like about him. He has no friends round here. I reckon you’re looking in the wrong place for these two mates of his. I know nearly everyone round here and there’s no CJ or Buster. They probably live in some other part of the city.’
O’Neil knew the girl was talking sense.
‘Thanks for your help. One thing. If anyone racially abuses you, tell us straight away. It’s not grassing. How can we stop this if people don’t report it?’
‘You can’t stop it. No one can. Ever.’
As soon as the door closed, she got out her mobile phone and called the incident room at Trinity Road Police Station.
PC Jones crossed the road. ‘Have you got something?’
‘DC Barney Cole speaking.’
‘DC Cole, it’s PC Sarah O’Neil. I think we need to run a background check on Raymond Dare’s brother, Jack. And his mother, too.’
90
11.03 am
Clay looked across the desk at Raymond Dare and said, ‘Raymond, I want you to know that as you’re sitting here with me, and as we speak, I’ve got a large contingent of police officers knocking door to door, starting on your street, and knocking on all the doors over your neighbourhood, looking for CJ and Buster. They will be found.’
‘No comment.’ He looked away.
‘Look at the things on the table!’
On the table, next to the Black Sun files, were two small evidence bags, Raymond’s iPhone, Václav Adamczak’s iPhone and two photographs placed face down.
‘You and Václav Adamczak have identical models of the same Samsung iPhone. Coincidence? Maybe?’
‘No comment.’
‘Maybe not?’
‘No comment.’
‘Do you remember what you were doing on the afternoon of Monday, 24th November?’
‘No comment.’
‘Let me prompt you, Raymond. You were in the Smithdown Lane area of Toxteth, quite close to the police station. It was day one of your Black Sun project to stir up racial violence...’
‘No comment.’
‘Black Sun.’ Clay tapped the files in front of her.
He looked as if he’d been stung by a bee as he muttered back, ‘No comment.’
‘Let me tell you what I think’s been going on. You abducted a Roma child from the street she lives on. You kept her locked up in a broom cupboard or a lock-up of some kind for eight days, during which time you tortured her and cut off all her hair.’
‘No! No comment.’
‘Where did you keep her?’
‘No comment.’
‘We’ve got footage of you abusing her.’
‘No comment.’
‘You then did several stupid things in a very short space of time, Raymond. You released Marta. You raped and strangled Dominika Zima, and then burned her. Then you went to Picton Road and killed Karl and Václav Adamczak. Well?’
‘No comment.’
‘You sent the footage of Marta Ondřej from your phone to Václav Adamczak’s phone and planted it under the floorboard along with Marta’s hair. You wanted to stir up racial hatred – Czech Roma killing Polish people, then the Polish would retaliate. You knew there was a raw nerve there, you’re not as stupid as you’re making out. Who were
you going to go for next?’
‘No comment.’
‘But you also wanted to lead us astray. So you stole the following items from these men.’
As she turned over the photographs of Karl and Václav Adamczak, Hendricks poured out two silver crucifixes from the evidence bags onto the table.
‘I’ve never met these fuckers in my life. No comment...’
She pointed to the blown-up photograph of the crucifixes on the Adamczak brothers’ chests and pointed at the crucifix Raymond had handed over to Sergeant Harris at the desk.
‘No comment.’
‘Look at the silver hallmark on the backs of these crosses.’
He closed his eyes and placed his fingers in his ears. ‘All the voices say, Tell the bitch opposite you to fuck off and die. Fuck off and die, bitch!’
‘I’d like to take a pause in this interview,’ said Mr Robson.
‘I’m happy with that,’ replied Clay. ‘But first, Mr Robson, please look at the silver hallmark.’
He looked closely at the back of the crucifixes. ‘I can see the letters K, W, the numbers 875 and a Romanesque head in profile.’ Mr Robson looked back up at Clay, bewildered.
‘It’s a uniquely Polish silver hallmark,’ said Clay. ‘It enables us to trace the necklace to Warsaw, where the crucifix was made and hall marked. Karl and Václav Adamczak lived in Pruszków, a small city close to Warsaw.’
Clay and Hendricks sat in silence, creating a man-made void into which Raymond could fall head first.
‘I—’ Raymond stumbled. ‘I-I-I-I-I...’
‘I?’
‘I don’t know fuck all about the kid, I’m not some fucking nonce, right! Right?’
‘And?’
‘We shagged Dominika in Otterspool Park, but she was fucking up for it all the way, the fucking foreign slag. I shagged her with pure hate in my heart.’
‘We?’ asked Hendricks. ‘You shouldn’t be doing this on your own, Raymond. Would CJ and Buster save your skin? Hmm? Give us their names. That could be a big game-changer for you.’
