And they both watched Richard Nowak sprinting frantically across the showground towards them.
20
Diane Fry gazed out through the windscreen at the streets of Sheffield. They were in an area of the city she didn’t know at all. Firth Park. Narrow streets, endless rows of brick terraces. Satellite dishes sprouted in clusters from gable ends, wheelie bins stood on the pavement outside every front door. On the corner, a kebab and burger shop showed the only signs of life.
‘What are they playing around at? It’s like waiting for paint to dry.’
DI Hitchens was tapping the wheel impatiently. Fry could see that he hated not being in control. The operation was in the hands of South Yorkshire Police, and they were taking their time. Fair enough. They wanted to get it right.
‘There’s no hurry,’ she said. ‘We’ve got all day.’
‘Sod that. I don’t know about you, Diane, but I’d like to get some time off this weekend.’
Fry nodded. Station gossip had it that the DI’s girlfriend was pregnant, and that she was pressuring him to make plans. That sort of thing was difficult to keep to yourself. It was true that he was less keen these days to spend more time in the office than was strictly necessary. Fry felt she ought to be able to sympathise. A work-life balance, and all that. But you probably needed to get a life first, before you could properly understand.
‘They know what they’re doing,’ she said. ‘They’ve done the surveillance, collected all the intel. Let them have their moment. We’ll soon have ours.’
Down the street was a lock-up shop. This one looked as though it had been locked up for years. Steel shutters were drawn down over the windows and the front door. A delivery entrance in a side street was protected by locked gates, with a No Parking sign faded almost to illegibility. Behind the shop, a derelict building was starting to crumble, cracks splitting the brickwork, weeds growing out of the window ledges and between the slates in the roof.
Fry looked up. Dirty net curtains hung over the windows on the first floor. A broken drainpipe had left a dark stain down the wall. You wouldn’t imagine that anybody lived there. But surveillance by South Yorkshire officers had confirmed that someone did.
Hitchens had begun to whistle under his breath. It was a habit that Fry found particularly irritating.
‘It’s time, surely.’
‘Okay, here they come now.’
A van came down the street at speed. A marked police vehicle appeared and blocked off the junction at the top. Officers in black jumped out of the van. The strike team didn’t bother with the steel shutters, but went straight for the gates. The padlock was snapped off, and they were into the delivery yard in seconds. Fry heard the battering ram hit the back door, and the shouts of officers as they entered the building, clattering up the stairs to the flat.
The radio crackled, but Hitchens was already out of the car.
‘All right, they’re in. Suspect detained.’
‘Let’s hope he’s the right suspect,’ said Fry, as they ran into the yard.
A door stood open on to a set of bare wooden stairs, the steps splintered and scattered with decades of dust. A stale smell oozed out of the flat.
Hitchens turned for a moment at the foot of the stairs.
‘If one of the Savages had to live anywhere, this would be it.’
Red in the face and breathing heavily, Richard Nowak ran a few more paces across Riddings showground towards Cooper and Villiers, slowing down suddenly as he got nearer.
Cooper realised that Nowak hadn’t been running towards them for assistance, as he thought. He hadn’t even recognised them as police officers. He had been running away from the confrontation with Alan Slattery. That seemed out of character, from what Cooper had seen of him.
‘Mr Nowak? Not enjoying yourself?’
He scowled. ‘I must be a masochist, coming here.’
‘These occasions can be difficult, if you don’t fit in.’
‘It’s not the occasion that’s difficult. It’s the people.’
Nowak glanced over his shoulder. The sun was out now, and he was sweating. He wiped a hand across his brow, while he struggled to regain his breath. Cooper could see that Nowak’s wife had stayed where she was, and was talking to some other women. Slattery had vanished, though. Maybe he had recognised the police when Nowak didn’t.
‘So what’s your problem with Mr Slattery?’ asked Cooper.
‘It’s his problem, not mine,’ snapped Nowak. ‘He had the gall to accuse me of making his mother ill.’
‘Why?’
‘He says I’ve been putting her under too much pressure.’
‘I didn’t know you had issues with Mrs Slattery.’
‘Why should I tell you? It’s nothing to do with the police. It’s a matter of courtesy and reasonable behaviour.’
‘Even so, sir. It would help if we’re clear.’
Nowak let out a long sigh. ‘Look, it’s the way her house and garden have been deteriorating, ever since the old doctor died. She hasn’t been carrying out maintenance at all. The fences are falling down, the trees are growing over our side of the boundary, and the weeds are waist high. We’ve been seeing rats in our garden, and I’m sure they’re coming from South Croft. She has a septic tank a few yards from the boundary, and it hasn’t been emptied for years. It’s just not acceptable. It’s bringing down the value of our property. But when I speak to her about it, she just gets upset. And now I’ve got her blasted son on my case.’
‘So that was what the argument with Mr Slattery was about just now?’
‘Yes, of course. Why should I accept the situation, even if she is a widow?’
Villiers had been watching Nowak carefully. ‘Are you feeling calmer now, sir?’ she said.
‘I’m fine,’ he said sullenly. ‘Fine.’
‘So where were you running to?’
‘To my car, if you must know.’
‘I hope you weren’t about to fetch a weapon to continue the quarrel?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. I have my camera in the car. I wanted to show him the photographs I’ve taken, to prove what I was saying.’
‘Perhaps it would be best to leave it for now, and let everyone calm down.’
‘That sounds like good advice, sir,’ said Cooper.
‘Oh, for…’
Nowak walked away a few steps, then turned back.
‘I want to be a reasonable man,’ he said. ‘I want to get on with my neighbours. But we came here to this village and they tried to push us around, because they think we’re foreigners. They say to themselves, These people don’t belong here, they won’t know their rights. But I’m not stupid. I know my rights. And I won’t be pushed around. It’s something they have to learn about me.’
‘A reasonable man?’ said Villiers, as Nowak headed towards the car park.
Cooper shrugged. ‘Perhaps. But what’s reasonable?’
‘The million-dollar question, Ben. It depends entirely on your point of view, doesn’t it?’
‘Entirely. If you’re convinced that you’re in the right, then everything you do is reasonable in your own mind. It might not seem reasonable to somebody on the outside. And certainly not to the person you’re in dispute with.’
It was the middle of the afternoon now, and the show was in full swing. There were kids clambering all over the tractors, having their photographs taken yanking a steering wheel backwards and forwards. Members of the band were queuing at the tea tent for their refreshment break. Thirsty work, blowing a tuba.
‘What’s the name of that man with the sports car?’ said Villiers.
