‘Thanks, Dev. I hope the interviews go well.’
Cooper couldn’t resist a twinge of envy. Two suspects whose luck had run out. In fact, fortune had swung the other way, and Dev Sharma had benefited. It would look good on his record when the time came.
An hour or so later, Cooper saw Dev Sharma pass his office with Luke Irvine and Becky Hurst. They looked tired and no longer quite so jubilant. Cooper put his head out into the passage.
‘How are the interviews going with the robbery suspects?’ he said.
‘As you might imagine, sir,’ said Sharma. ‘A lot of “no comments”. And when we do get them talking, it seems to be all about their political views.’
‘Political views?’
‘They’re rather right wing.’
Cooper could understand now why Sharma had brought both Irvine and Hurst in for the interviews.
‘Basically, they’re racists,’ said Hurst. ‘They got on a rant about immigrants and the EU.’
‘It’s an issue about immigration, not racism,’ put in Irvine.
Hurst laughed. ‘If you say so, Luke.’
Irvine’s face flushed. ‘It makes me really angry when people have this knee-jerk reaction and want to condemn everything as racist. It’s an attempt to shut down any discussion of immigration. It’s an attack on free speech.’
Hurst appealed to the rest of the group.
‘Did you see how angry Luke got? As soon as the word “racism” is mentioned they always insist what they say isn’t racist, don’t they?’
‘He might have had some justification,’ said Sharma.
‘Come off it, Dev.’
‘Well, freedom of speech—’
‘Bollocks to your freedom of speech,’ said Irvine.
Hurst’s eyes widened, and Cooper could see she was about to answer in the same vein.
‘That’s enough,’ said Cooper. ‘All of you. Have you asked them if they’re members of a right-wing organisation?’
‘We’ll ask them in the next session,’ said Sharma, ‘if we get a chance. To be honest, I’m experiencing a bit of a problem. The two brothers we have in the custody suite are from Manchester and their accents are very thick. I’m having difficulty understanding them.’
‘Really, Dev?’
Sharma nodded.
‘I’m embarrassed to say I may need a translator,’ he said.
‘What about the search of their address?’
‘It’s going to take long time to go through their haul of stolen goods,’ said Sharma. ‘They have all kinds of stuff at the address in Clay Cross, besides a pile of cash. They don’t seem to have got rid of anything.’
‘Perhaps they were waiting for the attention to die down,’ suggested Cooper.
‘Either that or they’ve been so busy carrying out robberies they haven’t had time to sell anything. But there’s one interesting item I’d like to show you.’
‘Okay.’
Sharma came back to Cooper’s office a few minutes later carrying an evidence bag.
‘There were a lot of mobile phones taken from robbery victims,’ he said. ‘We happened to pick this one out. A Samsung Galaxy. It’s an interesting one, I think.’
‘Why?’
‘There are a lot of text messages and emails on it. And they’re all in Polish.’
‘Polish?’
‘One of the lads from scenes of crime is half Polish. He recognised the language, though he couldn’t translate it completely. The incoming messages are all for someone called Krystian. And here... look at the email address.’
Cooper peered at the screen. ‘Zalewski.’
Sharma nodded. ‘That rang a bell, so we checked with the phone company. The number belongs to Mr Krystian Zalewski. His current address is in Shirebrook, Derbyshire. Well, when I say current—’
‘He’s the murder victim,’ said Cooper.
‘Right. The one EMSOU are scratching their heads over. I hear they’ve been pulling in members of the BNP.’
‘They’re working on the possibility of a hate crime.’
Sharma laid the phone on Cooper’s desk. ‘Well, it looks as though he might have been the victim of a street robbery. But one that went badly wrong.’
‘Our suspects? They’ve never injured anyone in previous robberies. Threats, yes. People frightened and shaken up afterwards. But there have been no injuries. Why was this incident so different? Why did someone end up being stabbed to death?’
‘He must have tried to fight them off, I suppose,’ said Sharma.
‘In a previous incident, when a victim resisted, they simply ran off. These lads weren’t up for a fight. They relied on surprise and speed, intimidating a victim into cooperating, then getting away fast.’
‘I don’t know the answer,’ said Sharma. ‘We might be able to get to it during the interviews. We’ll be adding a charge of murder, it seems. That might shake them up enough to get one or both to talk.’
‘Of course.’ Cooper leaned back in his chair. ‘I suppose they must have picked up his phone after the attack. It was stupid of them to keep it.’
‘Well, they’re not the brightest of criminals, sir,’ said Sharma.
For a moment, Cooper stared at the phone in its evidence bag on his desk. He could hardly believe that one of his team’s inquiries had helped solved Diane Fry’s murder case.
Cooper didn’t have long to wait for the expected reaction to his latest message.
‘Are you expecting a visitor, sir?’ said the front desk. ‘Detective Sergeant Fry is here from EMSOU Major Crime Unit.’
‘Yes, I’m expecting her.’
‘I’ll send her up. She says she knows the way.’
Cooper hesitated. ‘No, she’s a visitor. Escort her up.’
‘Will do.’
Cooper waited, wondering what he should do in the meantime. Straighten his desk, or leave it as it was to show that he was busy? He got up and moved one of the chairs back from the desk a bit.
A few minutes later, Diane Fry was sitting opposite him with a look of incredulity sharpening her features.
‘You seriously think you’ve solved our case?’ she said. ‘That’s a bit much even for you. Your little team can’t compare with the expertise and resources we have at EMSOU.’
‘I didn’t think it was a competition,’ said Cooper mildly. ‘We’re on the same side, aren’t we? I’m offering our assistance.’
‘The crime happened in Shirebrook,’ said Fry. ‘It’s a long way from your Local Policing Unit here in the Eden Valley.’
Cooper didn’t like the way she said ‘Local Policing Unit’. Somehow, she added a hint of a sneer to the phrase.
‘There are no borders in Derbyshire,’ said Cooper. ‘People can drive from Edendale to Shirebrook without passing through Customs, you know. It takes less than an hour, even through Chesterfield.’
Fry frowned. ‘What does Chesterfield have to do with it?’
‘Never mind.’
‘So what exactly have you got for me?’
He dropped the evidence bag on the desk with a smile of triumph.
‘A mobile phone,’ he said. ‘Very useful, mobile phones. I’ve got one in my own case. It can tell you an awful lot, as long as you find it in good condition and get access to it.’
She leaned forward. ‘Whose phone is this?’
Cooper knew she must have figured it out as soon as she saw the contents of the bag. There was no point in dragging it out any further.
‘It’s Krystian Zalewski’s,’ he said.
In Lathkill Dale, the DCRO had come back with a report of high carbon dioxide levels in the upper entrance of Lathkill Head Cave. A group descended the cave with a CO2 meter to measure the atmosphere. On the surface, the reading was barely 0.01 per cent. The highest levels were found in a choke between two chambers called where readings went up as far as 2.31 per cent, where there was little air flow near the stream.