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Salisbury residents have recalled the “eerie” aftermath of the novichok attacks which plunged the peaceful city into a “world analogous to James Bond”.
The inquiry into Dawn Sturgess’s fatal poisoning by the Russian nerve agent is taking place in Salisbury this week, as it seeks to determine whether the 44-year-old was caught in the “crossfire of an illegal and outrageous international assassination attempt” on former spy Sergei Skipal and his daughter.
The stark contrast of the worlds that collided with the Skripals’ poisoning six years ago on a snowy Sunday in March 2018 was once again on display on Tuesday, as market traders and shoppers filled the central square in a weekly tradition that has endured since the city’s charter was established nearly eight centuries ago.
Yet just metres from this everyday scene, TV cameras and police officers on a heightened lookout for any security threats focused their attention on the adjacent Guildhall building, where the inquiry heard that the perfume bottle carrying the Novichok had contained “enough poison to kill thousands of people”.
Its discovery by Charlie Rowley, who gifted it to his partner Dawn with fatal consequences in July 2018, was described as a tragedy by Dawn’s mother on Tuesday morning. But Caroline Sturgess told the inquiry her family took solace from the fact that the poison did not claim more lives, including that of Dawn’s young daughter.
Speaking to The Independent, Salisbury residents and market traders recalled the uncertainty of the weeks that followed the discovery of the Skripals’ unconscious bodies on 4 March 2018, and of their shock to hear that authorities’ fears of a wider risk had been confirmed with Dawn’s death four months later.
“When we turned up for work on Tuesday morning, it was all barricaded off – and that was the first I knew about it,” said Sol Rimer, a co-owner of Wilton’s Wholefoods.
Recalling asking a local police officer whom he knew personally – who was working to keep the public away from the site of the poisoning – what had happened, Mr Rimer said: “He didn't know. That was kind of weird. And then we went through that period of, ‘gosh, where could [the Novichok] be?’”
Mark Chum, who runs a stall selling music and games, described a “very weird [and] eerie atmosphere” in the weeks that followed, adding: “It was all anyone talked about.”
The 48-year-old, who moved to Salisbury 15 years ago “because it was a quiet little town”, said: “There was definitely fear because you were like, ‘what the hell has been released? What is it?’ ... you’re like ’s***’, is that like a 50-mile radius?’ You just don’t know.”
He added: “They boarded off all the car parks down the edge [of the market], there was all the police tape everywhere and you couldn’t go certain places ... You could see the camera helicopters just above all the time. It was just a weird spotlight of the world on little Salisbury all of a sudden.”
However, for the most part, daily life carried on in Salisbury as normal, traders said, with residents and regular customers from further afield rallying to support the market to make up for any custom lost as a result of concerns about the poisonings.
But musician Lynda Smith believes the incidents have “left their mark”. A piano teacher and Salisbury resident of 47 years, Ms Smith said she and her husband had walked past the police cordon shortly after the Skripals were found unconscious.
“If we'd been an hour or so earlier ... we would have been the kind of people that would have stopped to help. So what would that have meant for us? I feel so sad for those people that really were affected by it, including Dawn Sturgess,” said Ms Smith. Police officer Nick Bailey, who was first to enter Mr Skripal’s home, also fell ill after being exposed to the chemical.
She added: “What was horrible was the fear that people had about coming to Salisbury. We would be coming home to Salisbury on the train and getting off in Salisbury and people would comment to us: ‘Oh be careful, there’s poison in Salisbury’.”
While government advice not to pick up litter remained in the city for several years to the council’s chagrin, Salisbury was declared free of Novichok in March 2019, following an extensive clean-up by some 200 military personnel spanning 13,000 hours at 12 sites feared to potentially have been contaminated.
“We couldn’t evacuate the city, life had to go on,” said Ms Smith, adding: “But it did colour Salisbury for a long time, it held a cloud over it.”
But residents also widely expressed a sense of having moved on from the events of six years ago.
Paul Smith, a 66-year-old retired solicitor who has lived in Salisbury for 40 years, recalled that there was “a great shock and obviously you were scared” upon hearing of the attack on the Skripals.
“To my mind, in a world which was analogous to James Bond, where the good are getting more technical as the baddies are getting worse, it had that sort of anxiety about it,” said Mr Smith.
He added: “I’m not focusing on it any more. I think that it will just be a memory.”
Mr Rimer also recalled the shock of the international connotations of a potential Russian assassination attempt on UK soil becoming clear, “and how fragile I guess we are all are to that sort of outside influence”, adding: “Coming from somewhere like this, you don’t ever think that international news will affect you.”
But he agreed that “weirdly, we have benefitted a lot” since, adding: “Salisbury was perhaps a forgotten place, like most provincial towns and market cities and towns are”. But pointing to the news coverage and royal and prime ministerial visits that followed, he said: “That was all supremely beneficial.”
While some questioned why the current inquiry was revisiting the attack six years on, Mr Rimer said he thought it was important that the government was still seeking answers over the incident.
Speaking of the discarded perfume bottle which cost Dawn Sturgess her life, and citing the barrister who told the inquiry this week that it could have caused a “massacre” if sprayed in a more public setting, he said: “At the end of the day, it could have been catastrophic had someone else discovered it.”
The inquiry continues on Wednesday.
