‘I don’t know what I can tell you,’ she said.
‘Anything would be helpful.’
‘You’d better come in, I suppose.’
She showed them into the kitchen, where she began folding a stack of washing from a basket. T-shirts and socks hung over the radiator. A kettle and microwave were plugged in on the worktop, but there was no offer of a cup of tea.
‘Is this your house, Miss Beresford?’ asked Fry.
‘It’s rented. I live here on my own with my boy, Jayden. He’s ten.’
‘Is he at school at the moment?’
‘Of course. Why wouldn’t he be?’
‘No reason.’
Fry looked around for a chair. She moved a pile of towels to make room on a dining chair at the table. Callaghan remained standing by the door and Tammy Beresford ignored him.
‘You know why we’re here,’ said Fry. ‘We’re making inquiries into the death of Mr Krystian Zalewski. He’s a near neighbour of yours. Or he was.’
Tammy beat a sweater flat. ‘Yes, I heard.’
‘Did you know him well?’
‘Hardly at all. We don’t know any of them. I tell Jayden to stay away from them at school, but he can’t avoid it.’
‘Them?’
Tammy sneered at her. ‘The Polish. Don’t you know anything?’
‘You have a problem with the migrant workers in Shirebrook.’
‘A problem? Yes, I’ll say there’s a problem. Why should people have to put up with them camping in front of our homes, sleeping in garages and sheds? You have Poles and the rest sleeping rough, using hedges and alleys for toilets, and looking in recycling bins for clothes. You try to get an appointment at the health centre because your child is sick and it’s booked solid, and when you go all the names being called out are Polish. They love our health service. And there’s rubbish everywhere. You can see it yourself. We’re a dumping ground. They’ve swamped us.’
‘I can see you’re angry—’
Tammy slammed the basket back down on the tiled floor.
‘My dad was a miner,’ she said. ‘One of the last men working at Shirebrook pit. He says this place was brought to its knees in the 1980s by the closures at Shirebrook and Langwith. It put hundreds out of work. He feels so let down by the government — not just this one, or the one in the eighties, but all of them. And so do I. We’ve been ignored for too long now — like my dad says, British people are second-class citizens in their own country.’
‘Are you going to say “I’m not racist, but...”?’ asked Fry.
The woman flushed. ‘It’s all right for you to sneer. But I bet you don’t live in a place like this.’
Fry opened her mouth to explain that she lived in the city of Nottingham, which was much more multicultural than anywhere in this part of Derbyshire. But Tammy didn’t give her a chance.
‘You can see perfectly well what the problem is,’ she said. ‘The Polish use their language as a barrier to keep separate from us. Yes, it makes me angry that a place where everyone used to help each other has become like this, with people divided into different groups, speaking in different languages. We’re not a community any more. I’d like to get Jayden away from here, but I don’t know whether I can afford it.’
Fry glanced at Callaghan, who gave her an ironic smile. She thought he had probably known what she was letting herself in for with this witness.
‘We wanted to talk to you specifically about Krystian Zalewski,’ she said.
‘Well, go ahead then.’
‘How often did you see Mr Zalewski?’
‘We’ve seen him at the back from time to time, going up the stairs to his flat.’
‘Did you ever see anyone with him?’
‘No.’
‘Never?’
‘He seemed to be one of those loners that you hear about.’
‘Yes, I think he was,’ said Fry. ‘Go on.’
‘But then one day we went down to the Polish shop, Zabka.’
‘You shop in the polski sklep?’
‘What else is there? Besides, Jayden likes the sausage.’
‘Kielbasa?’
‘That’s it. I have to get it for him, or he nags me about it.’
‘I see. So you were in Zabka—’
‘And he was in there too, this bloke.’
‘Mr Zalewski. Did he speak to you?’
‘Not exactly. Jayden spoke to him, because he saw he was buying the same type of sausage. He’s a friendly kid, you know. A bit too friendly sometimes. I’ve told him not to talk to strange men, but he’d seen Zalewski a few times and knew he was a neighbour. I suppose he hasn’t learned yet that a neighbour can be just as dangerous as a stranger.’
‘Especially those loners,’ said Fry.
Tammy scowled at her. ‘Well... yes.’
‘And did Mr Zalewski seem to present a danger to your son?’
‘Obviously not, or I would have done something about it. He was surprised to be spoken to at first, but he smiled and was quite pleasant actually. Jayden liked him, though he told me the man spoke a bit funny.’
‘Mr Zalewski’s English wasn’t very good?’
‘A bit basic. But at least he had some English. Some of them don’t bother.’
‘When was this meeting in the shop?’
‘Sunday teatime.’
‘That was the day he was killed,’ said Fry.
‘I suppose so.’
‘Did you see him speak to anyone else?’
‘He was still in the shop when we left.’
‘Was there anyone in the street outside?’
Tammy shook her head. ‘No more than the usual. Nobody I would have looked at twice.’
Fry wondered if Tammy Beresford looked at anyone twice, or whether she took the trouble to look at anyone at all.
‘Could you describe Mr Zalewski?’ she said.
‘I told you — I’d seen him going up the stairs to that flat above the shop. I knew it was him.’
‘So you recognised him, but you can’t describe him.’
‘What’s the difference?’
‘Thank you, Miss Beresford,’ said Fry. ‘I think you’ve told us what you can. I assume you’ll be around if we need to speak to you again?’
‘I suppose so. But I’m not sure I’ll stay in this town for long,’ she said.
‘But you’ll be here for the foreseeable future?’
Tammy peered out of the window to see who was down there in the market square.
‘It’s all these takeaways I don’t like. People eat at those places for breakfast, lunch and dinner. They probably nip in for a snack in between to see them through. Then at night you get a group of Neanderthals fuelled up on Tennent’s Super Strong, roaming around looking for someone to fight. A punch-up outside a fast-food place doesn’t even raise an eyebrow. It’s just the evening’s entertainment.’
‘Is that the East Europeans, Miss Beresford?’
Tammy looked at her with a sneer, but didn’t reply to the question.
‘Are you done now?’ she said.
Next on Jamie Callaghan’s list were a Polish couple, Michal and Anna Wolak. They had rented a two-bedroom terraced house only a street away from Tammy Beresford and Krystian Zalewski.
‘I came here because of my sister,’ said Michal. ‘She came to Britain before me. She told me this was a place you can get work if you do not speak English.’
Michal Wolak was a fair-haired young man with neat sideboards and pale blue eyes. He wore a loose, short-sleeved shirt, which revealed powerful muscles in his forearms, covered in dense blond hairs.
‘It must be hard to get a job anywhere else if you don’t have the language,’ said Fry.
‘Yes. I couldn’t speak English too well when I came here, but I took a course. I’m better now, do you think?’