Cooper realised Gamble was looking at him eagerly, as if he suddenly felt like part of the team and might be employed for his natural detection abilities. There was nothing worse than an interfering amateur who felt they’d been given some encourage ment.
He nodded to Villiers, who took Gamble’s arm.
‘We know where to find you if we need to speak to you again, Mr Gamble.’
‘I’ll be around,’ said Gamble.
‘I’m sure.’
Villiers was smiling when she returned from escorting Gamble away.
‘Lovable eccentrics. You can’t beat ’em.’
‘Well, it’s surprising what good sources of information they can make,’ said Cooper.
‘Fair enough. Is it Mr Nowak now?’
‘In a minute.’
He remembered Barry Gamble’s account of the way he’d discovered the attack on the Barrons. He had been here in Croft Lane, he’d said. No. What he’d actually said was thereabouts. He was standing near a tree when he’d heard a noise. A thumping crash. He had looked towards the Barrons’ house, Valley View. And what did he see? A light on in the kitchen.
From Croft Lane, Cooper walked down the garden as far as the hedge, turned and looked at Valley View. He was in no doubt now. There was no way Gamble could have seen the light in the kitchen from here.
Well, when you were looking for a suspect in a murder investigation, there was always the person who found the body. In this case, Barry Gamble.
15
‘My neighbours? My neighbours? You know what? I wouldn’t lift a finger to help those people. If I saw their house being burgled, I wouldn’t bother to phone the police. In fact, I’d help the thieves load up their swag myself.’
Cooper was looking at Richard Nowak’s large, powerful hands. They were gripping a glass and a half-empty bottle of whisky. Nowak already smelled of alcohol and his face was flushed.
‘We’re thinking about a particular set of neighbours,’ said Cooper. ‘The Barrons.’
‘Jake Barron. He’s such an aggressive man. Have you spoken to him?’
‘He’s still critically ill in hospital, sir. Serious head injuries, following the assault on Tuesday night.’
‘Oh, yes. Of course.’
‘Had you forgotten?’
‘I don’t think about the Barrons all the time. Why would I?’
Nowak put the bottle down on the table in his kitchen and looked at the glass thoughtfully. Perhaps he wasn’t so drunk as he’d appeared at first. It was very early in the day, after all.
‘Last time we spoke to you, you talked about how the police might react if you took the law into your own hands.’
‘Not me personally. I was speaking theoretically.’
No one could pronounce those words so clearly if they were drunk. Cooper began to relax. Nowak’s reaction must have been due more to emotion than alcohol.
‘We know you were involved in a dispute with the Barrons, sir. It went on for quite a long time, didn’t it?’
‘You don’t give in to people like that. Appeasement never works. They just walk all over you, if you let them.’
Nowak put the glass down as well now. He didn’t even bother to finish the whisky in the bottom of it. His wife, Sonya, appeared behind him, her expression cold. Perhaps it was the sound of her footsteps that had sobered her husband up.
Through the open door, Cooper glimpsed what looked like a well-stocked bar. If he wanted to, this man could probably go on drinking all day and all night, without leaving the house. Yet he didn’t look like a habitual drunk. He had the appearance of a strong, fit man who had given in to stress.
‘I know what my rights are,’ said Nowak. ‘Why shouldn’t I stand up for my rights? This is a free country, they tell me. What’s mine is mine, and I’ll take it. Jake Barron was in the wrong from the start.’
‘So you never accepted the court’s decision, sir.’
‘No, and I never will.’
There was silence for a moment. Nowak turned to the window, and pointed in the direction of Riddings Lodge.
‘Listen to that awful noise,’ he said. ‘Just listen to it.’
Outside, a chainsaw was whining in the coppice. Cooper had to admit it was one of the most irritating sounds that you could ever hear. It had a nasty, angry pitch to it, like a huge mutant wasp. If that sort of noise went on all day outside his flat, he’d be climbing the walls. But perhaps it did. He wasn’t at home during the day, so he wouldn’t be aware of it. Here, people were at home. They were all too conscious of what was going on at the edge of their territory.
‘They’re cutting trees down,’ said Nowak. ‘Mature, well-established trees, not some bit of birch scrub. I don’t know what they’re thinking of, despoiling the environment like that. It ruins the area for all of us. But there’s no preservation order on that coppice, and the council aren’t interested, so they just do what they like.’
‘Does the noise go on for long?’ asked Villiers, frowning.
‘All day. Sometimes it lasts right into the evening, until it gets dark. We’ve spoken to them about it, but they just blank us, pretend they can’t understand what the problem is. I’m telling you, after a while it starts to feel like a deliberate provocation.’
Cooper looked at him more sharply. ‘Have you taken steps against your neighbours, other than speaking to them?’
Nowak’s expression was suddenly wary. ‘Not like you’re thinking of.’
‘And what am I thinking of?’
‘I wouldn’t do any damage or resort to violence. I might take legal action, if necessary. That’s what I did over the land. And that’s my right as a citizen.’
‘All right.’
Sonya moved closer, not quite touching her husband, but a supporting presence nevertheless. Nowak looked up and met Cooper’s eye.
‘I wouldn’t do anything like what happened to the Barrons. I wouldn’t be involved in anything violent. It’s not in my nature. Not in my history.’
Mrs Nowak spoke then for the first time since Cooper and Villiers had arrived.
‘Richard was born in a refugee camp in East Germany,’ she said. ‘None of us can understand what an experience like that does to a child. But my husband has a horror of violence, I can tell you that.’
‘It’s true,’ said Nowak. ‘I was part of the displaced people of Europe. But my family came here, to Sheffield, when I was very young.’
He laughed ruefully, fingered the whisky glass, but didn’t pick it up.
‘As a small child, I spoke only Polish,’ he said. ‘Like my parents. But my older brother was already bringing English into the house. I remember hearing how different it sounded when he spoke. And, of course, when I went to school I learned to talk just like my classmates. A Polish accent did no favours in those days. We weren’t so multicultural then.’
Cooper nodded. He was thinking how interesting it was that Mr Nowak had said ‘here, to Sheffield’ when he was actually living in the Peak District. Many of the people living in this area came here because it wasn’t Sheffield. It was as different to Sheffield as they could get and still be within commuting distance. But for a child born in an East German refugee camp, this was all part of the country he’d come to. For Mr Nowak, Riddings was as much Sheffield as Pond’s Forge or the City Hall. They were all one place in his imagination – the sanctuary he’d escaped to.
They walked out of the house, and Nowak took a deep breath. The noise of the chainsaw was even louder out here – a nagging, intermittent sound that could set the teeth on edge and induce a headache.
‘Look at these people here,’ said Nowak with a wave of his hand. ‘They don’t have the least bit of consideration for their neighbours. Rude, arrogant, ignorant, offensive, supercilious, inconsiderate, selfish, vulgar, nasty, self-obsessed…’ He took a deep breath. ‘Words fail me.’
‘So I see.’
Nowak smiled, in a moment of self-awareness. ‘Well, I could think of a few more names, given time.’
‘Those will do. We get the general impression.’
‘It’s a shame,’ he said. ‘This would be such a nice place to live, without…’