by Mark Roberts
Verka’s brow creased into a frown. ‘I know these faces,’ she said. ‘I saw them. The first week I was here, living on Smithdown Lane. They were working three doors down – and then they did some repairs in our house. The same landlord, you see. At first...’ Verka smiled a little. ‘I thought it was just one person. This man, he was amazing. He could appear in two different places at once – he’d be up the stairs one minute and ten seconds later coming in through the back door of the kitchen. Then one day, I saw them together, and it made sense.’
‘Do you know their names?’
Verka shook her head. ‘No. And I couldn’t tell them apart at all. One of them was a bit distant but one of them was lovely to Marta. On the day they finished working, the nice one gave Marta sweets. And a £10 note.’
‘Thank you, Verka. That’s all.’
Riley went back out into the corridor and called Clay.
‘What have you got, Gina?’
‘The Adamczak brothers knew where Marta lived, had direct contact with her. Listen to this.’
41
2.15 pm
From the door of the lock-up he shared with CJ and Buster, Raymond looked out across the River Mersey and pictured Jack hanging on to the flashing buoy in the middle of the water, his wet fingers losing their grip as the water chopped around his head and swamped his face. He swallowed a mouthful of water and in the fierce attack of coughing that followed, his fingers slipped from the wet surface of the buoy.
To his right, Jasmine cried and whimpered as her head dipped under the rough surface of the river, and when she was thrown up into the air by the power of the water, her face turned into Jack’s and his face turned into the bitch’s.
Raymond laughed his loudest as their faces switched back, each to his and her own.
‘Raymond, I’m begging you, save me, save me, Raymond!’
Jack’s fingers and hands came away from the buoy and he thrashed in the water, desperately trying to hold on and screaming at the top of his voice.
Raymond opened the door of the lock-up and, turning on the light, looked back at the water.
Something white and mobile moved through the dark water towards Jack. The white thing swelled up like a living balloon and then shrank back into a cylinder.
Raymond closed the door, walked to the punch-bag in the corner of the lock-up and drank in the aroma of sweat and damp that always clung to the wooden walls.
He closed his eyes and the jellyfish came closer to Jack. Swelling itself up to its largest proportions, it pulled its hood down over Jack’s face and head, making him look subhuman and distorted, and then like a freak with a cowl where his face should have been. Jack grabbed the jellyfish by the arms that dangled from its body and in trying to pull it from his head, pulled himself and the creature under the water.
He looked around the lock-up at the plasma screen televisions, laptops, iPhones and Wii consoles. In a series of jewellery boxes items were separated out: rings, chains, bracelets and watches, other people’s shit from other people’s houses.
Raymond punched the bag with his right fist and then his left, right, left, right, left, Jack, right to Jack’s head, right to his fucking smug face, left to his windpipe.
There was a noise outside. Raymond stopped and recognised CJ and Busters’ voices.
‘Is that you, Raymond?’ asked CJ.
Knuckles stinging and grazed, Raymond opened the door and let his friends in. CJ walked to the corner and picked up a cardboard box that Raymond hadn’t seen before. He placed it on the work surface and took out a litre bottle of clear fluid with no label.
‘What’s that?’ asked Raymond.
‘Vodka,’ said Buster.
‘But we don’t drink vodka,’ said Raymond.
‘Maybe we should start, broaden our tastes,’ said CJ, unscrewing the cap.
‘Where’s it from?’ asked Raymond.
‘Dreyfuss, the gimp who lives in that flat in Princes Road. He makes it himself and sells it to winos for jack shit money but gets to shag their women. He’s got a fucking brewery in his kitchen. I threatened to blow him up to the cops if he didn’t give me a batch. And that’s the way it’s going to be from now on. We’re expanding our business, Raymond.’
‘What’s the plan?’
‘The plan is,’ said Buster, ‘we’re not selling this shit to winos. We’re going to stick Smirnoff labels on the bottles and go round the pubs on Park Road near closing time when they’re all bladdered, and sell them fake vodka. A tenner a litre. Here’s to our new business venture.’
CJ took a swig from the bottle and, passing it to Buster, said, ‘Not half bad at all.’
Buster drank from the bottle, three hard glugs, then let out a satisfied, ‘Aaaahhh!!’ He handed it to Raymond.
‘Come on, Raymond,’ said CJ. ‘Down the fucking hatch, old bean.’
Raymond swallowed a mouthful of tasteless vodka and as it went down, his throat burned, but something deep inside him made him take a second and then a third hit.
‘We can’t sell weed on the prom anymore,’ said Raymond. They both looked at him, silent and incredulous. ‘Jack’s on to it. He didn’t say as much but he kind of...’ He searched hard for the right word. ‘Implied he’d kick our fucking heads in if we dealt it to junior school kids.’
‘Fucking St Jack come to save the planet single-handed,’ laughed CJ.
The alcohol kicked in to Raymond’s veins and he felt a glow at his centre that caused him to laugh along with his friends, and take another hit before passing the bottle to Buster.
‘How many cases a week is he giving us?’ asked Raymond.
‘Two cases of twelve which works out at £240 a week, nearly a grand a month. We can buy a lot of weed, coke, ecstasy, smack with that money. We could make a fucking fortune. We haven’t got enough cash flow to make a big success of our dealing,’ said CJ, taking the bottle from Buster.
‘It’s too hit and miss at the moment,’ said Buster. ‘We’re smoking more than we sell.’
‘You two sound like you’ve been binge-watching University Challenge,’ laughed Raymond.
‘We need a plan,’ replied CJ.
‘I’m fucking tired of being skint.’
‘I can get with that,’ said Raymond. ‘Shall we all take one bottle home with us, so we can have some when we’re round at each other’s houses?’
‘Sure.’
‘How come I wasn’t there when you went round to Dreyfuss’s flat?’ asked Raymond.
They looked at him and then at each other.
‘You were there!’ said Buster.
‘I’m shitting you!’ It came flooding back to Raymond. ‘I kicked Dreyfuss in his bad leg when he objected to giving us the booze. It was all my idea, right?’
‘You’re the ideas man, Raymond,’ said CJ, lighting up a joint and handing it to him. ‘Your idea to break into this empty lock-up. Your idea to change the lock and make it our own private business premises.’
The glow inside Raymond was growing. He took a hit and passed it on to Buster and, although he didn’t say anything, and never would, he was glad that they were his friends and counted himself lucky that he was not alone. There was a bond between the three of them and love was not a word to be thrown around lightly, but every time he was with CJ and Buster, that feeling grew stronger.
42
2.15 pm
On the ground floor of the Novotel Hotel overlooking Liverpool One, Detective Sergeant Karl Stone followed Neville Pearson, the duty manager, into the lift. As the doors closed, Pearson pressed seven and the lift started its smooth ascent.
‘How long has Aneta Kaloza worked here?’ asked Stone.
‘Two years.’
‘What’s she like?’
‘Pretty strange to begin with, cultural differences I guess. But as time’s moved on she’s become a model employee. I wish they were all like Aneta. She hasn’t had a day off sick. I mean, she’s in today, for God’s sake, after what happened. Awful.’
Stone noticed the way Pearson seemed to drift into himself as he imagined the scene.
‘Neville!’ said Stone, with a hint of steel. ‘Tell me about Aneta, please.’
‘She always works hard and is extremely good at what she does. She’s polite to the guests and she’s respectful to her colleagues. She’s worked her way up. She supervises the domestic staff but she’s not afraid to roll up her sleeves when we’re short-staffed.’
Stone looked above the door, saw they were at the fourth floor.
‘So, you’re saying she’s a saint?’
He heard a catch of laughter in the duty manager’s throat.
‘Dish the dirt, Neville!’ said Stone, seeing the fifth floor fly by. ‘We’re going to be seeing her soon. What made you laugh when I said saint?’
‘My dad was a copper and he drilled it into me: if the police come asking you questions, tell it as it is. They’ll find out in the end anyway. First couple of months she was here, she liked to spread her favours with the men and women she worked with. She was promiscuous.’
Stranger in a strange land, thought Stone, feeling nothing but compassion for Aneta. Throwing sex at people as a means of finding friendship or even love.
‘Was? You know what, Neville I heard a silent and in that statement.’
The lift doors opened with the merest sigh. Stone stepped out, looked up and down the corridor and saw a domestic loading bed linen onto a large metal trolley, well out of hearing range.
‘OK.’ Neville dropped his voice into confidential mode. ‘It wasn’t just the sleeping around that made her stand out in her early days here. Some of the political and racial views she expressed were really out there.’
‘As in?’
‘She was a little to the right of Mussolini. When she first came to work here, days after she’d stepped off the plane from Poland, when she obviously didn’t understand what was and wasn’t acceptable here, she made some massively racist remarks to another domestic.’
‘Did she racially abuse her colleague?’
‘Her colleague was white and from Liverpool. She was on about people from the Czech Republic and Slovakia being lazy good-for-nothing scumbags. She had a particular downer on the Czech Roma population. Thieves, liars, murderers and rapists down to the last man and woman. The children were no better. Hitler had it right in taking gypsies to the death camps. Blah, blah, blah!’
‘What happened?’
‘Her colleague reported her. She was hauled into the general manager’s office. I was there in the room as a trainee manager, I hadn’t been here long myself. He confronted her, read back every word that had been reported by the other domestic. She stood there with this look on her face. I read what was going on in her head and it was, like, Why are you bothering me with this? The general manager...’
‘What’s his name?’
‘He’s not here anymore. He said What have you got to say for yourself, Aneta? She said, Well, it’s the truth. Don’t you agree with me? He told her that such talk was unacceptable in England and that if it happened again, she was facing the sack on the spot. She looked at me and then at the general manager and said to him, Can I speak to you in private, please? He asked me to leave. I stood outside the office and a minute later, the general manager sticks his head round the door and says, Stay there. If you want a career in hotel management, you stay right there – you’re not to let anyone knock on my door under any circumstances. I don’t care if World War Three breaks out. Stay there! Five minutes later, the door unlocked and she came out with this triumphant look on her face. I’ve been informed, she said, I understand how things work in England. He told me to come in and close the door. He was a big bloke and his face was bright red. I’ve dealt with it, he said. Neither of us saw or heard a thing. It’s her word against her colleague. And I believe her. Who do you believe, Neville?’
‘So what happened to the racism and over-friendly behaviour?’ asked Stone.
‘She canned the racist, right-wing talk as soon as she’d had that meeting with the boss. She was still sleeping around for two or three months after that. She went off on leave one Thursday with long peroxide-blonde hair and came back on the Saturday with jet-black hair in a shoulder-length bob. All the sexual shenanigans stopped and she started projecting this aloof and ladylike version of Aneta the Artiste, formerly known as the Novotel Bike.’
In a fragment of a moment, Stone weighed up each and every word that Neville had said and asked, ‘What did you say when the general manager asked you who you believed over the racist shite?’
Neville’s shoulders sank slowly as he said, ‘Aneta.’
As soon as Pearson said her name, the padded quiet of the corridor was disturbed by the creaking wheel of an approaching trolley, and a female voice. Stone turned and saw two women approaching: a domestic pushing a trolley and another woman in a smart uniform walking slightly behind her.
‘When you’ve finished helping Carys on the seventh floor, I need you to go to the eighth to help Julie, please. Alexa has called in sick.’
The woman in the uniform spoke precisely and with a small hint of a foreign accent, but with the air of a woman who took No for an answer like a personal insult.
The domestic’s face was stony, but her voice was light when she responded, ‘Yeah, sure, Aneta...’
Stone made eye contact with Aneta. She eyed him up and down in a glance, and said, ‘You’re from the police, right?’ She didn’t blink or break eye contact with him and he thought, Born with a face to play poker. ‘Have you caught the people who murdered my friends?’
Stone showed her his warrant card. ‘No, not yet. I’ve come to collect you for questioning at Trinity Road Police Station.’
‘But I told your colleague, DCI Clay, everything I know.’
Silence fell on the corridor, but Aneta defied Stone with eyes that swam with confidence and anger.
‘I see,’ said Aneta, folding her arms across her middle. ‘You think I’m somehow responsible, don’t you?’
‘Change into your day clothes, Aneta,’ said Neville Pearson. ‘You’re not walking in to Trinity Road police station wearing a Novotel uniform.’
43
2.35 pm
After uploading the reconstructed image from the Adamczak murder scene onto his YouTube account, Detective Constable Barney Cole took a moment to look at it. With its central black circle and concentric circumference, the circular line close to the centre gave the overall image a sense of order that was in direct opposition to the twelve crooked blocks of black that linked the circumference through the smaller dark spoke to the centre.
The broken spokes caused the blocks of white between their crooked neighbours to form a recurring image. The twelve white blocks looked like an abstract representation of a dozen people kneeling to be beheaded.
With his picture on-screen, Cole went on to Google Chrome and clicked Search by image. He right-clicked, and clicked Search Google with this image.
In under one second, Cole had a direct match.
Black Sun.
Cole pulled up a range of pictures that made his spine tingle. He patted himself on the shoulder when he saw that he had matched the other esoteric wheels on the internet. There were some in black and white like his, and others with the sun blazing, fires shooting up from the wheel imprinted on its surface.
He scrolled down and saw an increasingly bizarre range of images. A stag with its skeleton exposed inside its body. Subhuman warriors from the world of fantasy. Superhuman men with bodies carved out of muscle.
And then a familiar face from the dregs of twentieth-century history. An insipid-looking man, balding, middle aged, rimless glasses, weak chin, arms folded across his chest.
He dialled Clay and, as she connected, he heard that she was driving at great speed.
‘What’s happening, Barney?’
‘I’ve got a match for the symbol at the Picton Road murder scene. It’s called Black Sun. It looks like an occult sy
mbol, and I think it’s going to prove beyond anything that the murder of the Adamczak twins was racially motivated.’
‘How so?’
‘I need to research it, Eve. I’ve only just this second cracked it.’
‘Great work, Barney. I’m on my way in. Where are we up to with Aneta Kaloza?’
‘Last thing I heard, Eve, she’s sitting in reception with Karl Stone, waiting for you like a good girl.’
‘That’s good, because she’s going to be booked in, swabbed and fingerprinted within the hour. She’s a suspect in the abduction and kidnapping of Marta Ondřej.’
As soon as Cole placed the receiver down, his desk phone rang out.
‘Detective Constable Barney Cole speaking.’
‘Hello, Detective Sergeant Cole.’
‘Deputy Commissioner Aleksander Kasprzak, you have some information for me about the Adamczak brothers?’
‘Yes, indeed I do. Are you listening, Detective Sergeant Cole?’
‘I’m listening...’
44
2.45 pm
In Interview Suite 1, Aneta Kaloza and her solicitor sat across the table from DCI Clay and DS Hendricks. Clay looked at the solicitor’s visitor badge and said, ‘Welcome to Trinity Road Police Station, Ms Jennings.’
Ms Jennings looked up from her spiral-bound pad and said, ‘My client has lost her two best friends in what is most likely a racially motivated double murder. I’ll be listening very closely to your questioning, Ms Clay. It’s common knowledge that the Merseyside Constabulary is an organisation plagued by institutional racism.’
‘Listen for as long and as hard as you like, Ms Jennings. You won’t hear a racist word from me or my colleague, Detective Sergeant William Hendricks.’
Clay formally opened the interview, looked directly at Aneta and counted to ten in silence.
‘Why have you brought me here, taken me away from my work?’ asked Aneta.
Clay glanced at the evidence bag face down on the table and asked, ‘On a scale of one to ten, Aneta, one being minimal and ten being completely intimate, how close were you to the Adamczak twins, Karl and Václav?’