Being friendly
KAREN DOWELL HAD brought coffee and chocolate bickies into the interview room. Not quite Starbucks. Bit of cosy and a bit of edge, putting out conflicting messages.
Nice Karen, to start off with. Big sister Karen.
‘Danni, we’ve talked to you about the last time you saw Wictor’ – Danni James shuddered – ‘alive,’ Karen said. ‘Now I’d like to go back a bit.’
‘Jag,’ Danni said. ‘He liked to be called Jag.’
Bliss and Vaynor were watching on the telly up in CID. Maybe Danni had guessed they were there; everybody must’ve seen a reality TV cop show. If only they knew how often the system broke down.
Danni, dark hair, small but pulpy lips, was wearing a short purple leather jacket to match the gemstone in her nose. She seemed well up for the experience, taking in what few features the interview room possessed, eyeing the recording equipment.
‘Don’t worry, I’m not recording this,’ Karen said. ‘Just trying to establish some background.’
‘I wasn’t worried.’
Danni had a querulous little-girl voice. She’d probably still have it when she was an old woman, Bliss thought, as Karen asked her how she’d got involved with Jaglowski.
Deliberate use of the word involved, provoking the first small sign of alarm.
‘My dad said if I needed a lawyer—’
‘I’d tell you if you needed a lawyer, Danni. I have to.’
Karen in a dark grey woollen top with a pink silk scarf, poshed-up for the murder room. She got Danni talking about her few months with Jag. The weekend in Paris they’d had, staying at his mate’s apartment. He seemed to have mates all over Europe. Karen tried for an address for the Paris flat, but Danni was hazy on street names.
‘I was just, like, shopping in the daytime, and then we went to some clubs at night? He talked to people in French. I think it was better than his English.’
Cosmopolitan playboy? Bliss thought of the concrete garage on the Rotherwas, the array of bangers on the forecourt.
‘—wasn’t working for him or anything,’ Danni was saying. ‘He had an accountant and a woman in the office for all that. As well as the two mechanics.’
Danni was like between jobs. She’d been a receptionist at the Green Dragon; not clear why she’d left.
‘Danni,’ Karen said very softly, ‘I should tell you that we’ve found evidence which, if Jag was still alive, could have put him in prison for several years. Do you know what I’m talking about?’
There was to be no mention of the Makarovs in the inspection pit unless Danni revealed some knowledge of them.
She was shaking her head, rapidly.
‘No. No, really, I don’t know anything about whatever it is. He never talked about his business.’
‘What did you think his business was, then?’
‘Cars? He was getting me a top-of-the-range Cooper.’
‘Nothing exactly top-of-the-range on his forecourt,’ Bliss said to Vaynor.
‘What about his friends?’ Karen said. ‘Did you meet his friends?’
‘Some of them. They were OK. Nice. Fun. Some of them.’
‘Men? Women?’
‘Both. Mainly men.’
‘You recall any names?’
‘Yeah. I think. One of them runs a bar in town. Thomas? That’s spelt in Polish. Probably with Zs everywhere.’
‘Were they all Polish, his friends?’
‘Dunno, they always spoke English in front of me. I don’t really know a Polish accent from whatever, but they were always really, you know, polite. Like, you could tell it was hard for some of them, speaking English, but they did their best when I was there.’
‘Just like I’m sure they all will when we talk to them,’ Bliss said.
He watched Karen bringing out a fresh pad and a pen, sliding them to the middle of the table.
‘Danni, I’m going to ask you to write down for me as many names as you can remember.’
‘They’re all Polish!’
‘Write it down phonetically. How they sounded. We’ll work it out. But we’ll leave that for now. What about his brother? Lech.’
‘Well he’s away.’
‘He’s in prison, Danni.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Do you know why he’s in prison?’
‘Cigarette smuggling, that’s all. It was like a really stiff sentence? Especially when all he was doing was trying to help some friends.’
‘Mother of God,’ Bliss murmured. ‘There were friggin’ vanloads.’
‘Close, were they, Lech and Jag?’
‘I suppose.’
‘Danni, did Wictor… Jag ever give the impression he might have enemies?’
‘Not really. I only ever met his mates. He had good locks on the front door. Well, you’ve seen— But he had a lot of valuable kit in there – home cinema? But like he wasn’t always looking over his shoulder and stuff. He kept saying what a great place to live Hereford was, and how he was going to buy a house in the country? He loved it here. He was having a good time. We went out a lot.’
‘He had lots of money?’
‘Yeah, he was… generous, obviously. He always carried cash. He wasn’t into cards.’
Bliss smiled.
‘And he always went to church?’ Karen said.
‘He went to mass. Kept going on about thanking God for looking after him.’ Danni’s mouth shrank. ‘Yeah, right. Straight out of church to thank God, and then down the garage and gets himself—’
Her head went theatrically down into her hands on the tabletop. Bliss had listened to the recording of Danni’s 999 call, from her mobile after she’d run outside the garage. Yeah, my boyfriend… he’s really badly hurt… his head’s all… all blood? You’ve got to send somebody, it’s horrible, he won’t move…
Karen found her a tissue, said, ‘Do you know which church?’
Bliss nodded. The priest might be helpful.
‘I’m not too sure,’ Danni said, but I think—’
Then the picture went off. Sometimes Karen could fix it, but mostly not. Bliss turned to Vaynor, who was shaking his head slowly.
‘Not going to be an easy one, this, boss. Whoever did it could be out of the country by now.’
‘Or just in a different city. Might’ve come here specially to do the job. Lorra fellers up for it in Birmingham… Cardiff… Gloucester, even. You think she’s telling us everything she knows?’
‘They never do, do they? But I don’t think she’s covering for anybody. She was just having a good time with a bloke throwing his money about and not thinking too hard about where it came from.’
Bliss thought about it.
‘Might be worth you having a word with the parents. If she spent last night back in her old home being fed hot soup, something might’ve come out that Mum and Dad might feel better if we knew about.’
‘We’ve spoken briefly. They’re, you know, liberal-minded people. They met Jaglowski once or twice. Her mother said he was charming and her dad didn’t want to be suspicious or disapproving, but I reckon he’s having a re-evaluation now. You want me to visit his surgery?’
‘Yeah, nab him in his lunch hour. We don’t want Danni around. Or the mother if she found Jag charming.’
‘Maybe he was. Snapping up a girl like Danni. Good-time girl, along for the ride. A lot to be said for it.’ Vaynor was with a woman he’d known when they were at Oxford together. ‘So I’m told.’
Bliss had been set up to do a short interview for Midlands Today with Amanda Patel who he got on with most of the time. Seasoned veteran now, Mandy, compared to the kids from the other networks. They walked out into the car park, where Bliss spotted ITV and Sky unloading their kit. Gun-crime terror grips peaceful country town.
‘Might be easy to overreact on this one, Mandy. While a shooting in Hereford not involving a twelve-bore is comparatively rare… and we can’t actually say there’s no danger to the public… it’s probably no more than an underworld disagreement.’
‘Have you got an underworld in Hereford?’
‘You’d be surprised. I’m just saying I wouldn’t get overexcited about the idea of a dangerous armed felon on the loose.’
Mandy nodded. They walked down into the public car park opposite the red-brick magistrates’ court.
‘Frannie, what about this connection with the farmer who was killed?’
‘Is there one?’
Bliss gazing out over the car park, keeping his voice loose.
‘Didn’t Jaglowski own the van that killed that guy on a country lane? Driven by a guy who came into the country through the people-smuggling trade and did a spell as a slave to pay for it?’
Bliss didn’t look at her.
‘Where’d you get that, Mandy?’
‘Is it important?’
‘Might be.’
If this interesting if possibly irrelevant connection was in the public domain, the chances were that it had seeped out of Gaol Street.
‘I don’t have to reveal my sources,’ Mandy said, ‘but, seeing it’s you, think of a well-known local councillor running for high office in law enforcement.’
‘And what exactly did he say about it?’
‘Nothing. He just told me. Being friendly.’
‘Yeah, that’s how he is,’ Bliss said, tightening up. ‘Friendly.’