After You Die (27 page)

‘This isn’t fair. I haven’t done anything.’ He looked at Warren and his expression faltered for a second, fear rather than guilt showing around his eyes. ‘They’re taking my computer. They can’t take that.’

‘Yes, we can,’ Ferreira said. ‘You’ve mounted an eighteen-month-long campaign of harassment against Holly and that’s a serious offence. We can do things you won’t even believe.’

‘I didn’t.’

‘He didn’t,’ Sally said, squeezing around Jones, getting herself in front of Benjamin like a human shield. It took Ferreira a second to catch on to what Sally had already seen.

She snatched at Warren’s shirt but it was too late. He barged Sally out of the way and threw a wild punch at Benjamin’s face. The boy took it full force on the jaw and fell against Jones, who rolled him away from her and sat him on the ground, blood already flowing from his mouth as he screamed and shouted.

Sally was shouting too, telling Warren to stop.

He moved in again and this time Ferreira caught him and managed to pull him off balance, the kick he’d aimed at Benjamin missing by a few inches. She dragged him away, feeling the full weight of his paternal fury pushing against her, and shoved him two handed towards the kitchen table. He hit it hard, sending the apples tumbling onto the flagstone floor.

‘That’s assault,’ Benjamin shouted, triumph lighting his face. ‘I want him charging. He hit me. He can’t hit me!’

Sally was crying, looking between the men in her life, and her decision took less than two seconds to make. She went to Benjamin, squatted down and cupped his face.

‘I’ll call Mr Harold, he’ll be at the police station when you get there.’ She kept hold of his face as Jones dragged him up, moving with him, ignoring how he tried to shake her off. ‘Mummy’s going to sort this all out.’

‘Does Mummy think she can sort murder out?’ Warren asked.

Sally glared at him. ‘Pack your things and get out of this house. I don’t want to see you here when we get back.’

‘Maybe he won’t be coming back.’ Warren looked at Ferreira, a ragged desperation on his face. ‘You think he killed them, don’t you? This isn’t just about some online harassment.’

Sally was looking at her too, holding her breath, one hand at her throat.

‘I can’t discuss it right now.’

Sally moaned lightly, buried her face in her hands for so long she didn’t even see Jones and Green take her son away. Warren did, though, he watched every wobbly step towards the back door with a vicious smile, eyes boring into Benjamin, throwing every last scrap of contempt he could muster at him.

‘Proud of him, are you, Sally? Your little prince.’

She snapped into action suddenly and Warren tracked her movements around the kitchen, stayed on her heels as she found her car keys and her handbag.

‘I told you there was something wrong with him, but you wouldn’t listen.’

She unplugged her mobile from where it was charging on the counter and started dialling as she made for the door, stony faced and moving with a new sense of purpose.

‘He is sick in the head,’ Warren shouted after her. ‘You made him like that.’

For a moment Ferreira thought he was going to run after her but he didn’t, only stood in the doorway, breathing heavily; still full of fight and with nobody else to throw it at he turned on her.

‘How long have you known?’ he demanded. ‘We still don’t know for sure,’ Ferreira said. ‘That’s why we need his laptop.’

Warren’s hands hung in loose fists by his sides. ‘If he killed Holly …’

‘What? You’ll kill him?’ she asked. ‘Do you really want to say that to me? You’re in enough trouble as it is.’

‘Have you got children?’

‘No.’

‘Then you don’t understand,’ he said. ‘I would happily spend the rest of my life in prison if it meant I could go to sleep every night knowing I’d got justice for her.’

‘It’s not your place to do that.’

He shook his head, gave her a pitying look she wanted to slap right off his face. ‘You wait. One day you’ll get it.’

Ferreira wanted to tell him that being a parent didn’t give him a monopoly on grief or some special right to retribution. She’d had that shit thrown at her so many times since becoming a police officer that she knew the routine down pat.

‘I have to charge you with assault,’ she said.

‘He deserved it.’

‘Don’t make things any worse for yourself, Warren.’

He went along with no more drama, walked quietly to Ferreira’s car and paused for a brief moment to take one last look at the house where he was no longer welcome, before getting in. On the drive he tried to roll a joint and she warned him that she’d have to add possession to his offences if he didn’t throw the little nugget of weed away. Reluctantly he opened the window and tossed it out onto the verge.

At the station she officially charged him, explained that he’d probably get away with a slap on the wrists but he didn’t seem to care what happened to him. She put him in an interview room with a cup of vending-machine coffee to drive any last vestiges of the afternoon’s smoking from his brain and went to process Benjamin.

According to PC Jones he’d become even more agitated on the journey, started threatening Green and her with lawsuits and online exposés, called them fascist bitches, but only under his breath. By the time they were out of the village he’d retreated into a sullen quiet, visibly uncomfortable with the temporary confinement and the smell of the patrol car. By the time the custody officer came for him he was fully mute and shivering with nerves, complied with every request like the well-brought-up child he almost was, removed the laces from his trainers and the dog-tag necklace with a name on that wasn’t his. When Ferreira asked who Kurt Montana was he blushed and said it was his Call of Duty ID.

It made her wonder how much time he spent in reality. How far he identified with the characters he pretended to be when he was gaming and whether he realised that attacking Holly was a different kind of game altogether.

He never expected it to catch up with him, Ferreira guessed. He was going to say it was all a joke, it didn’t mean anything. It wasn’t real.

Assuming there was anything on his laptop for him to deny.

‘Bowe’s out of the frame, sir.’

Zigic looked up from his phone, a missed-call alert from Anna showing in the locked screen. There were two messages underneath, sent within a space of twenty minutes, but he’d been too busy to answer them yet and now Colleen Murray was standing over him.

‘What? But his alibi was rubbish.’

‘I tracked down the CCTV from his building,’ she said. ‘There’s two doors out – the emergency exit’s got an alarm on it but that wasn’t triggered, which only leaves the main entrance and that’s covered by a camera on a week-long loop. He got home just after five on the Thursday and didn’t go out again until he left for work the next morning.’

Zigic threw his hands up. ‘Okay. Street him them.’

‘Yes, sir.’

She closed the office door after her and as it clicked shut he immediately regretted how short he’d been. She’d done well, acting in her usual effective manner, and it wasn’t her fault that what she found cleared Bowe rather than implicating him.

Too late to do anything about it now.

He went back to Anna’s messages.

Call me please
.

Problem at school. Call me NOW
.

‘Shit.’

His brain ran quickly through all the terrible possibilities as he rang her back: an accident at the gates, a fire in the building, Stefan choking on something or falling over something else, lost eyes and head injuries and predators waiting for an opportunity.

She answered almost instantly.

‘Stefan’s been suspended.’

‘What? Why?’

‘He bit someone.’

‘Not Mrs Lomax.’

‘No, it was Sara and John’s little girl – Amelie – he bit her on her arm. Dushan, you should see the mark he left, I felt sick just looking at it.’ Her voice was high and quavering, the way it went when she was really angry. ‘Sara’s absolutely livid, of course. She wants him expelled.’

Zigic rubbed his face. ‘She’ll calm down.’

‘Why should she?’ Anna demanded. ‘I wouldn’t. You wouldn’t. She’s right, it’s completely unacceptable behaviour. I’m so bloody ashamed of him.’

‘Hold on a minute, we don’t know what happened. Stefan isn’t a bully. Did Amelie hit him or something?’

An icy blast of silence came down the line. ‘Mrs Lomax saw the whole thing. They were all sitting down in a circle for storytime and Stefan just grabbed her arm and bit her.’

‘He’s never done that before.’

‘Well, he’s done it now.’

Zigic looked helplessly around his office. No advice there. ‘What are you supposed to do with biters? Do you bite them back?’

‘I really don’t think that’s going to help, do you? Maybe you could go the whole hog and take your belt off to him.’

He sighed. ‘I didn’t mean to hurt him, as you well know. I thought it was supposed to show them how wrong biting is. That’s all. I’m sure I read it in one of your books.’

She groaned. ‘I thought you’d know how to handle this.’

‘We tell him off. What else can we do?’

‘Have you ever known that to work with him?’ Anna asked, suddenly tired-sounding, and he realised that she’d already endured one post-mortem of the incident, excused Stefan and apologised for him, been forced to show contrition for both of them.

‘How long’s he been suspended for?’

‘Two days,’ she said. ‘And I’ve got a good mind to make him stay in his bedroom on his own the whole time.’ She gave a little grunt of annoyance. ‘I hate that woman. Of all the kids he could have bitten, why did it have to be her precious Amelie? Christ – I can’t even have a glass of wine.’

Zigic smiled despite himself. ‘Won’t a cup of tea be just as nice?’

‘Oh, shut up. Maybe I’ll pour your vodka down the sink, then we’ll see how calming tea is.’

Ferreira knocked on the glass partition and he held his hand up to keep her on the other side of it for a minute longer.

‘Can you send a couple of PCs around?’ Anna said. ‘They could pretend to arrest Stefan and put him in a cell for a little while. Maybe that would scare him into behaving.’

‘Is that a joke?’

‘No if you can do it, yes if you won’t.’

‘I can’t,’ he said.

‘Then you’ll have to scare him into behaving on your own.’

‘I’ll talk to him when I get in, okay? I’m sure he just needs a talking-to.’

They said their goodbyes, the usual ‘I love you’s and Zigic waved Ferreira in, still thinking about Stefan, trying to picture him snatching up a little girl’s arm to bite her for no reason. He was an excitable, often infuriatingly energetic child, but he had never shown signs of aggression like that before. Maybe Anna hadn’t heard the full story, too busy minimising the damage and soothing the injured parties.

‘I’ve got Benjamin Lange downstairs,’ Ferreira said. ‘And I’ve got Warren in an interview room. It all kicked off when I brought him in. We’ve got to charge Warren with assault – he punched the kid.’

‘The kid is very punchable,’ Zigic said, remembering his attitude that first time at the house.

‘Ethan’s going through his laptop, that’ll take a while.’

‘Has he found anything that points to him being responsible?’

‘Oh, yeah. He was in the process of deleting one of his fake email accounts when Jones slammed the lid of the laptop down. It booted straight up to the page.’ She tucked her hands into her pockets. ‘Guess Warren told Sally about my visit, Ben got wind and decided he’d better wipe out his tracks before we caught on to him.’

‘How much did he wipe?’

His own computer pinged as an email came in and he looked away from her to open it up.

‘We don’t know yet. It’s all recoverable though.’ She started going into details and most of it went over his head but he made the right noises while he read the message from Jenkins.

‘I think we need—’ Ferreira stopped. ‘Okay, that’s obviously a really fascinating email.’

‘It’s from Kate. She’s found blood in Arnold Fletcher’s car.’

‘The marks under the console?’

‘Consistent with the driver wearing bloodstained trousers,’ he said, imagining Fletcher sliding into his seat, knees brushing against the moulded plastic, the blood rubbing into the dimples.

‘But we’ve got evidence of someone cleaning up at the house. He shouldn’t have had blood on him to transfer onto the console.’

‘The killer cleaned up but unless this was carefully planned he wouldn’t have a change of clothes with him and he could hardly walk out onto the street buck naked, could he?’ She seemed to be considering the feasibility of it. ‘So, he’s wiped the worst of it off him, leaving enough on the fabric to smear inside the car. Kate said they’re only small deposits. Which makes sense in that scenario.’

‘Nothing on the steering wheel?’

‘More on the steering wheel, but it’s been cleaned. Along with the carpet and the inside of the door. And the gearstick.’

Ferreira smiled. ‘They never learn – fire not bleach. Do you want to take another run at him then?’

‘No, let’s wait until Kate’s got something a bit more substantial. A type match would be a good start.’ Zigic closed the email. ‘We’ve got Fletcher for at least twenty-four hours yet. Might as well let him suffer.’

‘Ageing hard man like that,’ Ferreira said. ‘A night in the cells won’t break him.’

‘“Ageing” being the operative word. He’ll find them far less comfortable than he remembers.’

‘They’re not that bad.’

‘Yeah? When was the last time you slept in one?’

‘Back in uniform,’ she said. ‘It was fine. Quieter than home too.’

He resisted the urge to ask how things were there, had tried a few times since she came back and received ever more terse replies. He knew her parents had been against her joining the police right from the start and when he met them at the hospital, mere hours after she’d come out of surgery, still unconscious, they’d not held back from blaming him and the job for putting her in that position.

He could only imagine what pressure she’d faced during her recovery and how angry they were at her for returning and placing herself in danger again.