‘So you struggled with them. How long?’
‘It seemed a long time, but it must only have been seconds.’
‘Did they threaten you? Did you see a weapon at all?’
‘It didn’t occur to me at the time. But since then I’ve been thinking about it. One of them did have something in his hand. He was holding it at his side like this.’
Nikki bent her right arm away from her body with fist clenched.
‘Was it a knife?’ asked Fry.
‘I couldn’t say. Not on oath. But considering what happened afterwards...’
‘Okay, Nikki. So what did happen afterwards?’
‘Another man came into the alley. I don’t know whether I’d called out or screamed by then, or if he’d seen the men trying to grab my bag, but he ran to help me. That’s what he did. He came to stop me being robbed.’
‘And this was Krystian Zalewski?’
‘I think it must have been. I didn’t know him, of course. He was Polish, wasn’t he?’
‘Yes, he was Polish.’
Callaghan moved restlessly and seemed to be about to speak. Fry gave him a look and he relaxed again. It would have been better if he wasn’t here at all, but she was stuck with him.
‘Why didn’t you come forward to tell us about him before, Nikki?’ she asked. ‘Didn’t you see his photograph in the local paper?’
Nikki flushed, a mottled red spreading up her neck that looked oddly out of her place with her image. The cool blonde dressed in black, blushing like a child.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But I didn’t recognise him. It all happened so quickly that night, you know. Really fast.’
‘So what exactly did you see of Mr Zalewski?’
‘Not much,’ said Nikki. ‘He ran up behind me shouting something I didn’t understand. When the two men turned towards him I managed to pull free, and I legged it. I mean, really legged it. I was terrified, and I wasn’t stopping to look back. So I had no idea what happened afterwards. I saw the photograph, but I suppose I just didn’t make the connection at first.’
‘I see.’
Nikki looked up at Fry with a slightly puzzled expression.
‘To be honest, I didn’t read the whole story,’ she said. ‘I saw his name, and I thought... well, I thought it was just another row between the Poles. They get drunk and start fighting each other. You know what it’s like. It happens all the time. I reckoned it was a row that had gone too far and one of them had got unlucky.’
Fry recalled the statistics. Two prosecutions for affray in the past three years, the dramatic reduction in incidents of drinking in public and drunk and disorderly offences. Even Geoff Pollitt’s impeccable record-keeping showed nothing like the picture of Shirebrook this woman was suggesting.
‘We have no reason to think the men who tried to rob you were East European,’ said Fry.
‘But it’s what you expect, isn’t it? After everything else that’s happened around here in the last few years.’
‘Perhaps.’
‘Have you caught them?’ asked Nikki, a small tear glinting in her eye for the first time during the interview.
‘No, not yet.’
‘I’d hate to think they’ve got away with it,’ she said. ‘That would be awful.’
Fry remembered the map of the Public Space Protection Order, with that thick red line running all the way around Shirebrook.
‘They weren’t contained within the sack,’ she said.
Nikki looked baffled. ‘What?’
‘Never mind.’
‘I suppose you’ll ask me why I didn’t report the attempted robbery at the time, too,’ said Nikki.
‘Yes, I was going to ask that. It’s a serious incident. You should have contacted us straightaway. Why didn’t you dial 999?’
Nikki shrugged and looked embarrassed.
‘I didn’t want all the fuss,’ she said. ‘I suppose that’s the truth. It didn’t seem worth going through all the bother of dealing with the police and giving statements and all that. I thought it was something that passed without any serious consequences. And I didn’t lose anything. I kept hold of my bag.’
‘But you did lose something, didn’t you, Nikki? You lost something during the struggle in that alley.’
Nikki Frost stared at Fry as if she was a magician.
‘Yes, I did. I didn’t realise it until I got home, and I wasn’t entirely sure where I lost it. For all I knew, it might have been at the gym, or in the toilets at Pizza Hut, or in my friend’s car. But you’re right, I did lose something. I lost an earring.’
‘Thank you, Nikki. I’m glad you came forward in the end.’
‘There was one other thing,’ said Nikki. ‘I saw an appeal on the TV last night.’
Fry frowned. ‘Yes?’
‘An Asian detective, it was. I didn’t catch his name.’
‘Something to do with Krystian Zalewski? I’m not aware of it.’
She shook her head. ‘No, it was something else. A robbery at a corner shop in Edendale.’
‘I don’t understand. Why do you mention it?’
‘There was a bit of CCTV. It showed two men robbing the shop. And there was a red crash helmet one of them was wearing. It looked familiar. I think it was like one I saw that night in the alley.’
The DCRO controller shone his torch through the iron grille of the adit. A totally incongruous object lay on the uneven stone floor of Mandale Mine, reflecting the light from his torch.
‘Wait a minute,’ said Ben Cooper. ‘What’s that?’
‘A mobile phone,’ said the controller in astonishment. ‘It looks as though someone has thrown it through the grille. Why would anyone do a thing like that?’
‘Why indeed?’ said Cooper.
The controller unbolted the grille, and it lifted like a giant cat flap to be secured by a couple of hooks on the walls. Two Cave Rescue members entered the adit to reach the shaft. Their torches and helmet lamps illuminated the whole area.
‘Don’t touch it,’ said Cooper.
He pulled out an evidence bag form the pocket of his jacket and pulled on a pair of gloves. Stooping, he gathered up the phone and slipped it carefully into the bag. It was an iPhone 7. He pressed the home button, but nothing happened. Then he remembered that the button was a pressure sensitive fingerprint scanner. It wouldn’t work while he was wearing gloves, or even inside the bag. He tried the power button on the side, but still got nothing. The battery was most likely dead.
It would have to go back to the lab for examination. In the meantime, he had little doubt who it belonged to.
‘Are we okay to go in now?’ asked the controller.
‘Let’s do it.’
You were supposed to check out the area when you arrived at a scene, make sure you knew where all the entrances and safe exits were. That kind of knowledge could save your life in a dangerous situation. But how could he do that here? No one knew how many entrances there where to these mine workings, which passages might lead to the surface and which were blocked at some point before they got there.
Entering the shaft, Cooper felt the instant change of temperature as the chill struck through the rock. He sensed the alteration in sound too, as the peace of the woods was lost and the noise of his own movements became amplified, the sound of his breathing too loud in the enclosed space. He watched his breath cloud in front of his face, and a drop of moisture glittered in his torchlight as it fell from the roof.
The mineshaft itself was quite large. Downstream from the adit entrance Cooper could see the arched and fragile top end of Mandale Sough, which finished in the collapse he’d reached from the other side.
A DCRO team set off to wade through the passage. They were soon lost from sight. Some levels of Mandale Mine were a long way from the entrance.