by Adam Croft
Zoran had suggested they try to find the town centre or somewhere with lots of people around, so there’d be witnesses and they could seek help more easily, but Milan wasn’t keen on the idea. He didn’t know who they could trust, he said. They’d have to lie low until they’d sorted their heads out.
Nobody seemed to be passing through the park at this time of night. Milan was pretty sure the main gates had been closed. He vaguely remembered seeing them as they darted down the alleyway that ran down the side of the park, before clambering through a gap in the fence a few yards further down. They were sheltered from the wind by the nearby cricket pavilion, and the ambient temperature wasn’t too bad. They’d be fine here for a while.
‘We can’t stay here forever,’ Zoran said in their native language.
‘I know. But we can’t go running yet either. They’ll be looking for us. We can’t go anywhere near the roads. You can hear the cars from here. How do you know which ones are safe? Do you know what cars these guys drive?’
‘We got away once. We can do it again. We can’t go living in a bush for Christ’s sake.’
‘Zoran, listen. These guys are dangerous. That guy I had to… the guy they put me with. He’s a judge at the High Court. He won’t be the only important person who goes there to get his disgusting little kicks. The place is crawling with them, I bet. Do you have any idea how much money, power and influence is going to be involved with a place like that? If they find us, they will kill us.’
‘Don’t be stupid. They’re not going to kill us,’ Zoran said.
‘Keep your voice down! And yes, they will. They don’t care about us. What they care about is keeping the secrets of the rich and powerful. That money is worth far more than our lives, believe me. Do you think we’re the first guys they’ve got to do that? We won’t be the last either. Not unless we put a stop to it.
‘Put a stop to it? How?’
‘I don’t know. We need to tell someone.’
‘Like who?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know! For all we know the police could be involved too. That’s how these places get to keep running. They can’t do it unless they’ve got people involved at every level of power. That’s why these places never get shut down.’
‘Oh great. Well maybe we’ll let the local fishmonger know. He can get it shut down for sure.’
‘For Christ’s sake, Zoran, will you keep your voice down? I don’t want us getting caught just because you can’t learn how to whisper properly.’
‘Get over yourself, man. You’re speaking louder than I am anyway.’
‘Sshh! Shut up a minute. Listen.’
Zoran listened, but he didn’t know what he was meant to be hearing.
‘Can you hear that?’ Milan whispered.
‘Hear what?’ he replied, a millisecond before the sirens first became audible to him. ‘Oh shit.’
‘What do you think it is?’
‘Dunno. Maybe the police boss has just found out his favourite rent boy has done a runner.’
Milan punched Zoran on the arm, and the pair listened as the sirens got closer and closer. They winced as they heard the car doors slam shut. That meant they were near.
The pair held their breath, squeezed their eyes tight, listening as the footsteps got louder and louder. Milan opened one eye slightly and saw the moving light of a torch swishing across the ground.
One of the people spoke. ‘Neil. In here, look.’
‘Alright. We see you. Come on, come out.’
Milan and Zoran looked at each other, and knew they had no option.
17
‘What were you doing in the bushes?’ one of the police officers asked them. He was young, probably not a whole lot older than they were, but he spoke with an air of authority.
‘Nothing,’ Zoran said.
‘Well you don’t just sit inside a bush for no reason, do you? The park’s been closed for three hours. How did you get in?’
‘A hole in the fence,’ Milan said. Zoran kicked him.
‘What are your names?’ the officer asked. His colleague had walked a few paces away and was speaking into his handheld radio.
Zoran looked at Milan and indicated that they shouldn’t speak.
‘Alright, where are you from?’
Again, the boys didn’t speak.
‘Staying silent isn’t going to help you, I’m afraid. We had a call from a local shopkeeper who’s reported a theft. Now, are you going to tell us what you were doing here or are we going to have to bring you in and ask you about those, too?’
Milan was desperate to talk. He wanted to tell the officers what had happened, where they’d escaped from. He wanted to blow the lid on it all. But he could tell from the look on Zoran’s face that he wasn’t entertaining this idea at all.
‘It would be better if we tell them,’ Milan said to his friend in Serbian. Zoran’s English wasn’t as good as his, and he presumed his friend didn’t understand the gist of the conversation and was, instead, focused only on the overly-authoritative tone of the police officer’s voice.
‘No. No. We tell them nothing,’ Zoran replied in their native tongue.
‘English only, please. Any more of that and we’re going to have to separate you to speak to you. Now, are you going to tell us what you were doing here?’
Milan looked at Zoran, who shook his head.
‘Right. In that case. Stu?’
The second officer came over and put a pair of handcuffs on Milan, whilst the first officer arrested Zoran.
‘We’re arresting you both on suspicion of theft. You do not have to say anything. But, it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence. Do you understand?’
This time, Zoran nodded his head.
18
Jack thought he probably knew every blob and swirl of the artex ceiling in his bedroom. He’d spent many a night lying, eyes open, staring at it. Occasionally, he’d make out patterns. One patch might look like a person’s face in profile if he squinted the right way. Another might make out a fat bloke doing a disco dance.
When he couldn’t sleep, there was very little he could do. Reading didn’t help. If the book was good it’d keep him awake even longer, and if it was rubbish his brain would wander off onto other things and he’d have to go back and read the same page seven or eight times over.
His mobile phone vibrated on the bedside table for the umpteenth time that night. This time, he decided to check it. It wasn’t as if he was going to get much sleep anyway.
There were four emails — three of them junk, and one of them a reply from the manufacturer of his fridge telling him they’d send a technician out to repair it on Tuesday. Nestled in amongst them in the notifications list was a text message from Chrissie.
How about coming over to mine tomorrow? I can cook or we can get something in. Your choice Cx
He thought about this for a minute. All his professional training told him meeting in public was best, but he found it highly unlikely Chrissie was a crazed axe murderer and, in any case, the last thing he wanted was to be spotted out on a date in a local restaurant. No. Not a date. A friendly dinner.
Sounds good. Don’t go to the effort of cooking, though - you handle the hospitality and I’ll handle the takeaway x
That was the middle ground, as far as he was concerned. The last thing he wanted was for her to turn out to be lovely but a terrible cook. He’d only met the woman once, and for all he knew her house could be infested with maggots. At least this way he’d be able to escape early without food poisoning.
He didn’t expect Chrissie to be awake at this hour, so he locked his phone and put it back on the bedside table. Within seconds, though, it buzzed again.
He looked at the screen.
Lovely. 7.30 sound OK? I’ll text you the address in the morning Cx
Sounds great. X
Jack locked his phone, put it back o
n the bedside table again, then rolled over and closed his eyes.
19
The inside of the police station looked as drab and depressing as the outside. In the custody suite, the arresting officers told the custody sergeant what the boys had been arrested for, explaining that a concerned local resident had phoned to report the trespass and that the officers were concerned as there had been a number of burglaries in the area recently. He also mentioned that the boys had been unwilling to cooperate and hadn’t provided their names.
The custody sergeant asked them if they spoke English.
‘I do,’ Milan said, ‘but my friend’s is not so good.’
‘We’ll organise an interpreter for him. What language does he speak?’
‘Serbian. But I can translate.’
‘No, sorry. We need to use an official translator. Do you understand the reasons for your arrest?’
‘Yes.’
‘And are you willing to give me your name and address?’
Milan looked at Zoran, who shook his head.
‘No. Sorry.’
‘Your friend understands more than he lets on, doesn’t he?’
‘Sometimes. But he’s not very good at speaking it.’
‘So I see. You’re allowed to make one call to a family member or friend to notify them of your arrest. Do you have someone you’d like to call?’
‘No.’
‘We can notify your solicitor of your arrest, or provide you with access to a duty solicitor. Would you like us to do that?’
Milan nodded.
The custody sergeant indicated that Milan should be put into cell M3.
‘Wait. What about him?’ Milan said, gesturing towards Zoran.
‘We need to process him properly first, with a translator. He’ll be put into his own cell afterwards.’
‘In a different one?’
‘Yes. Separate cells only, I’m afraid.’
Milan looked at Zoran, and knew that the next few hours would either make or break their friendships — and their lives.
20
PC Karim Rashid didn’t mind conducting interviews. Actually, he quite liked it.
He knew a lot of police officers who preferred to be out on the beat. Not so long ago, he’d been one of them. But that part of the job wasn’t anything like he’d expected. It mostly consisted of sitting in people’s living rooms, taking statements about disputes with neighbours or arguments over spilt milk.
Sure, he’d had his fair share of juicy calls, too. He’d been the first on the scene at a couple of murders, and that had sparked his desire to move into the backrooms of policing. He found far more stimulation in working through the processes and logistics of solving crimes. He quite enjoyed being tasked with reviewing CCTV images, cross-referencing car registration data with the DVLA and following up on claims made in statements.
If he was true to himself, he’d have to say he rather fancied a stint in CID at some point. He knew how much of the real policing work was done behind the scenes, despite what many members of the public believed. It was a common perception that having fewer police officers on the street was a bad thing. In many ways, that was true. But there was no denying that serious crime on a national level had fallen in recent years, and that was largely down to the huge amount of resources put into backroom intelligence. Locally, the picture was rather different, with serious crime still being a major issue for Mildenheath Police to tackle.
From what he’d been told about the interview he was about to conduct, it all seemed pretty pedestrian. On the face of it, two lads had been found hiding out in the park, suspected of having stolen from a local shop. They’d refused to speak to the police, wouldn’t give their names and seemed to be generally uncooperative. But Karim had a feeling there was something else to be uncovered.
It didn’t quite sit right with him. The shopkeeper who’d reported the theft was quite adamant that the lads who’d stolen the food were homeless. He claimed he’d seen them sleeping rough around Mildenheath. Despite that, the two men in custody showed no sign of being rough sleepers. They didn’t have sleeping bags, possessions or anything of the sort which might indicate they’d made a home on the streets. That’s not to say they looked like they were happy and healthy — they clearly didn’t have any money and weren’t going home to their four-bedroom detached properties at the end of each day, but Karim was sure there was more to the story than simple vagrancy.
The fact that the stolen food was nowhere to be found was a little odd, too. The bushes in the park were the ideal hiding place. They were there because the park was shut and there’d be no passers-by. It would be the perfect place to keep their new stash of food. There was no way they’d eaten it all whilst heading for the sanctuary of the park — there was enough for days — and it would have been barmy to have hidden it en route. There was nowhere less public and conspicuous than the hiding place where they were found.
If it was a case of mistaken identity, though, why did they not want to cooperate with the police? Why wouldn’t they even give their names? There was something else going on here, and Karim was determined to get to the bottom of it.
He walked into the interview room and sat down at the table. He’d been asked to interview the man who actually spoke some English. His friend would be interviewed separately by another officer, using the services of an interpreter.
The man looked nervous and concerned as Karim sat down. The duty solicitor smiled benevolently, trying to put him at ease. They’d had time to discuss things between themselves, and no doubt they’d have a plan of action up their sleeves. More often than not, this involved answering ‘no comment’ to every question in the hope that it would frustrate the police and give the suspect the advantage of not inadvertently perjuring oneself. In practice, though, that was not the case. If and when cases reached the court, no-commenting his way through the interview process was not going to be seen as a mark in the favour of the defendant. Many times, sentences were increased or juries were swayed by the defendant’s refusal to cooperate with the police.
Either way, Karim was happy. He would continue to ask the questions he had to answer, and it was up to the suspect to ruin his own chances of being viewed as an innocent party. Sometimes it was tempting to ‘do a Paxman’, and to keep barking the same question at the suspect over and over, in the inimitable style of the dogged BBC presenter. But that wouldn’t do the interviewing officer any favours when it came to court. It was far better to ask the question once, perhaps reframe it if it was answered with ‘no comment’, then move on to the next question. The result was that the interviewing officer would be seen as having acted fairly and impartially, and there would be no question of him or her having been unduly influenced by the suspect’s stubborn refusal to cooperate.
Karim pushed the button on the recording machine to begin the interview.
‘PC Karim Rashid, conducting the first interview with an unidentified male in the presence of the duty solicitor, Kevin Randall. First things first, do you want to give me your name or are you going to remain unidentified?’
Before the man could speak, Randall interrupted.
‘My client would like to make it known that he wishes to apologise for not cooperating with the police at the time of his arrest, and that external influences were responsible for that decision, which he now regrets. We discussed the reasons and the facts behind this, and I suggested that he might like to provide the police with a prepared statement, but he declined.’
Karim nodded. He knew that legal privilege meant he could only ask what was discussed, but that the suspect and the brief had no obligation to tell him.
‘My name is Milan Nikolic,’ the man said. Karim wrote this down. ‘I came to this country from Serbia.’
‘Okay, Milan,’ Karim said. ‘And how long have you been here?’
‘Only a couple of days, I think. I do not know exactly.’
‘Did you enter the country illegally? Is that why you were reluct
ant to speak to my colleagues?’
Milan shook his head. ‘No, no. I mean, it is not why I would not speak.’
‘So you are here illegally?’
Milan nodded. Karim made a note to himself that this would have to be passed to the immigration services once they’d established whether or not any crime had been committed.
‘So why didn’t you want to cooperate with the officers who arrested you?’ Karim already knew from speaking with the arresting officers that the influence of Milan’s friend had likely been the main reason, but he wanted to hear it in Milan’s words.
‘We were worried,’ he said, before looking at his brief.
The solicitor simply nodded, but it seemed Milan had clammed up.
‘My client was concerned that he couldn’t trust the police if he were to tell them what had recently happened to him. In his homeland the police often have corruption issues, but I reassured him that this was not the case here and that he could feel entirely comfortable speaking with you.’
Karim nodded his thanks to the solicitor. It was extremely rare for a brief to be this frank and honest. More often than not, their focus was on protecting their client’s interests. Karim sensed that there must be a sense of working for the greater good, and that whatever Milan might be accused of was small fry compared to what he had to tell.
‘When we tried to come to this country, we came through Europe. We came to the Netherlands, to Rotterdam. We met a man who told us he could help us get to the UK easily. On a boat. He said he was involved with a business in the UK and that we could work for the business and have a place to stay. He said they were desperate for workers, because the English people don’t want to do the work.’