THE SILENT ASSASSIN STALKING THE STREETS OF MEDIEVAL SALISBURY
▶ Paul Peachey reports from a city where a nerve agent attack on a Russian has rattled residents
The run-up to Mothering Sunday would normally be flower seller Mark Fitzpatrick’s busiest week at his stall in the centre of the medieval English city of Salisbury.
This year, however, his lucrative site was, and still is, the scene of a high-profile international crime and is sealed off by a police cordon.
Mr Fitzpatrick’s spot is only 10 metres from the bench where a Russian former double agent and his daughter were found unconscious after they were exposed to a nerve agent last weekend.
Sergei Skripal, 66, and Yulia, 33, remain critically ill in hospital after what is believed to have been a Russian state-sponsored attack.
Mr Fitzpatrick returned to the scene yesterday and could only point to his stall beyond a line of blue-and-white police tape, guarded by an officer.
The area will probably be sealed off for at least another 24 hours as police and toxicological experts try to work out who and what substance was behind the attack, officials said.
“All week we have been on tenterhooks because they never said when it would reopen,” Mr Fitzpatrick said. “It was our number one week of the year and pays for all the lean weeks. I normally take about £15,000 [Dh76,500] to £20,000 but I’ve ended up with about a 10th of that.”
Mr Fitzpatrick’s anxiety summed up the unintended consequences that followed what police say was an assassination attempt. Despite its small-town feel, Salisbury is a centre of British military expertise and is home to current and former military experts.
Salisbury Plain outside the city is the British Army’s largest training area. The nearby Boscombe Down is a military aviation centre where defence companies have secured contracts from Boeing and maintain Apache helicopters, said the city’s council leader, Matthew Dean.
Porton Down, 13 kilometres away, is home to the secretive chemical and biological testing centre where scientists have been trying to isolate and identify the agent used against Mr Skripal.
“The city has a high proportion of military people living here and I think there’s been a slightly more relaxed view about what has happened because of that,” Salisbury councillor John Walsh said.
“People have a certain amount of knowledge about this sort of thing from their previous experience in the military. If this had to happen anywhere, then at least here there was less chance of people getting really worked up.”
If Mr Skripal was the target of a state-sponsored attack, analysts said that it cast doubt on the ability of the intelligence agencies to attract and protect defectors.
The area where Mr Skripal was found has many security cameras – CCTV was installed across the city last year in a £400,000 project, Mr Dean told The National. The camera project, which had suffered teething problems, was fully up and running last weekend.
The high-definition footage is sharp enough to identify car number plates and a great deal has been handed over to the police, he said.
Police have yet to reveal where Mr Skripal was attacked. One theory is that the nerve agent was kept in a package that Yulia unwittingly brought over from Russia and opened at his home. If so, the footage may show little that could lead police to the would-be killers. Officers continued to maintain a cordon at the end of his quiet residential road, 1.6km from the town centre, allowing access only to the neighbours, to go in and out.
The two places Mr Skripal and his daughter were known to have visited in the hours before they became ill – the Zizzi pizza restaurant and The Mill pub just a few metres away – remained closed and guarded by police yesterday.
Health officials on Sunday said there might have been “limited contamination” in the two places and encouraged anyone who had been there to wash their clothes and possessions.
They said it was a “precautionary approach” because of a small health risk linked to repeated contact with contaminated items.
As the owner of Salisbury’s only independent dry-cleaning shop, Ashley Ford was yesterday expecting a rush of customers following this advice. His shop is just a few metres from the cordoned-off zone.
Mr Ford said he ventured out last week to go to the bank in the days after the attack. He was caught up in a security alert when a woman working in an office next to the contaminated restaurant fell sick.
“It was like a scene from a film,” Mr Ford said. “There were police, ambulances, the fire brigade, a helicopter flying around …”
In such a small place, an event of such international importance was the only topic of discussion for the first few days, he told The National. The point was illustrated by a customer who arrived at his shop with a bundle of curtains to be cleaned.
“I have quite a lot,” she said. “But they definitely don’t have nerve agent on them.”
It was like a scene from a film. There were police, ambulances, the fire brigade, a helicopter flying around ...
ASHLEY FORD
Owner of dry-cleaner’s, Salisbury