Стивен Бут - Dead in the Dark

Someone had burned cigarette holes in the plastic cover of the bus timetable. Shan and Ryan had added their names in graffiti.

Other signs here warned that arson was a crime. Why would you need to explain that to anyone? Well, it must have been considered necessary in Shirebrook.

Incidents of arson had been increasing in the last couple of years, mostly in Nottinghamshire but spreading across the border into Derbyshire. A lot of them were in and around the old coal-mining towns too. Perhaps there was some deep-seated psychological reason for it.

Jamie Callaghan loomed up behind her and peered over her shoulder at the posters.

‘Should we arrest Shan and Ryan? It would be a result of sorts.’

Fry turned. ‘What have we got?’

‘Well, we’ve got a couple of potential witnesses who are willing to talk,’ said Callaghan, ‘which is a bit of a minor miracle. They don’t look very hopeful, but it’s all we’ve got. They’re scheduled for interview tomorrow morning.’

‘English or Polish?’ asked Fry.

‘One of each.’

‘Okay. Then we’d better talk to Mr Pollitt before he disappears.’

‘He’ll be waiting for us in the shop,’ said Callaghan.

They made their way across the square to the shop. The sign on the fascia was broken in half, as if it had been torn away by a strong wind. The only word left was ‘Shirebrook’ followed by the start of another, a capital ‘P’. What had the name of the shop been? Shirebrook Pets, Shirebrook Portraits? Shirebrook Pound Shop?

Like everywhere else, a shutter was down on the window, but the door was still open. Fry knew that the shop owner locked up at the end of the afternoon and drove out to his new-build semi on a Bellway estate in Warsop Vale, retreating across the border into Nottinghamshire when he wanted to escape Shirebrook for the night.

‘How do you want to handle this?’ asked Callaghan.

‘We play it absolutely straight. Mr Pollitt will expect to be interviewed again. He’ll know it’s normal procedure in a murder case. If we left him alone, it would make him suspicious. So just treat him like any other witness.’

‘Understood.’

‘Lead the way, then.’

The shopkeeper was a stocky, middle-aged man with a barrel chest and incipient beer gut. The width of his torso forced him to carry his arms away from his chest. Fry noticed that he held them awkwardly, like a gunslinger constantly about to go for his guns. He was wearing baggy jeans and a black T-shirt. A leather jacket slung over the counter suggested that he was ready to leave and go home to Warsop Vale, perhaps on a motorbike.

‘I’m Geoffrey Pollitt,’ he said. ‘Everyone round here calls me Geoff.’

‘I know you’ve already been spoken to, Mr Pollitt,’ said Fry, ‘but we’d like to know as much as we can about your tenant, Krystian Zalewski.’

‘He weren’t no trouble. Not like some of them. I’m open-minded, me. Poles are as good as anyone, as long as they have the money.’

Fry turned to look at the shop. There wasn’t much to see. A bare counter ran most of its length, with an electronic till and a card reader at one end. A display case down the middle of the shop floor contained a few tools in blister packs. Hammers, screwdrivers, chisels, a lot of loose nails and tacks. A thin covering of dust lay over many of the items on display. The shelves on the back wall were empty, but for some posters advertising heavy metal concerts. Savage Messiah and Rob Zombie at Bloodstock in Catton Park. Slipknot and Marilyn Manson at the Download Festival. All the posters were a couple of years out of date.

‘Is business not very good, Mr Pollitt?’

‘What?’ He looked startled. ‘Oh, the shop? I haven’t really got it up and running properly yet.’

‘How long have you been here?’ she asked, though she knew the answer perfectly well.

‘Just a few months, like.’

Fry nodded. She knew it was more than a year, of course. It was in the intelligence reports. But it looked as though Mr Pollitt was making no attempt to establish a viable business.

‘It’s hard to compete these days,’ said Pollitt, as if that explained everything.

Fry’s foot hit something solid but yielding on the floor. She looked down. A bag of cat litter. A stack of similar bags stood against the counter, with some trays of pet food tins.

‘Is this a hardware shop?’ she said.

‘You might call it that.’

Jamie Callaghan had drifted along the far wall towards the back of the shop as she was talking to Pollitt. She could see the shopkeeper’s eyes never left him as they followed his progress. Right at the back was a door marked ‘Private’, which presumably led into the storeroom or an office of some kind.

‘I’m trying to give customers what they want,’ said Pollitt. ‘If they come in here and ask for dog food, then that’s what I get in for them. The thing is, I can order in anything they want, get it next day from the cash and carry. So I might look as though I don’t have much stock in, but the turnover is better than you think.’

‘Isn’t Shirebrook a pretty quiet place?’

‘It looks quiet now, but we have markets four days a week here. Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday. It’s cheap, too. A ten-foot pitch with a council stall only costs twelve pounds. But it’s the hours that are a problem. You have to be there for a six-thirty start in the morning, and the market closes at two-thirty and gets dismantled. Shift change is at three.’

‘Shift change?’

‘When the workers come out from the distribution centre.’

‘Oh, I see.’

‘After that, there’s no point staying open.’

‘So you pull the shutters down for the night.’

Pollitt gave her a sideways glance. ‘It’s a lot safer that way.’

‘You get trouble?’

‘Not me. But some of the other shopkeepers, they’ve had problems.’

‘Problems with the Polish people?’

Still Pollitt didn’t rise to the opportunity.

‘There’s quite a lot of them in Shirebrook,’ he said with a smirk, ‘as you’ve probably noticed.’

Callaghan had completed his slow tour of the shop and arrived at the counter. He casually ran a finger along the surface.

‘Tell us again about when Krystian Zalewski first came here. How did Mr Zalewski find out you had a flat vacant?’

‘I advertised it in the Polish shops,’ said Pollitt. ‘I got a girl in one of the shops to write it out for me in their language. I knew it would get a response pretty quick. They all want somewhere to stay, don’t they? And I don’t charge much for the rental.’

‘The flat isn’t exactly luxurious, is it?’ said Fry.

Pollitt shrugged. ‘It has all you need.’

‘And it’s small.’

‘One bedroom. It might suit a couple at a pinch, but I was happy to have a single tenant. Less chance of rows, you know.’

‘Mr Zalewski seems to have had a violent row with someone,’ said Fry. ‘A fatal row.’

‘Well, I can tell you straight, I don’t know nothing about that. As far as I’m concerned, he were a good tenant.’

‘And it was you who found the body this morning?’

‘Yeah. I had to go up there to see what was wrong.’

‘Had to?’

‘Because of the blood. Look, you can still see the stain,’ said Pollitt almost proudly, pointed at the ceiling.

A red patch had gathered near a light fitting, where blood had soaked into the plaster and spread sideways, forming uneven tidemarks and darkening in the centre as it dried.

‘I’m afraid it will be there permanently, sir, unless you redecorate,’ said Fry.

‘Aye, I reckon it will.’

Looking round the shop, Fry thought that prospect was unlikely. It hadn’t been decorated in here for some years.