After You Die (33 page)

‘They must have dispatched a car,’ Zigic said.

‘Yeah. Looks like they didn’t see anything amiss, though.’

‘Find out who the responders were and get them up here, right now.’

Zigic stalked away into his office, feeling a ball of rage swelling in his chest, told himself to hold it down. He paced the narrow channel between his desk and the wall, thinking of that patrol car pulling up outside the house on Saturday evening, Holly still alive upstairs, fading fast, the toxins backing up into her bloodstream.

Did they knock? Did she hear them and think she was saved?

She was probably in a coma already, he realised, wouldn’t even have known she’d been abandoned, failed again, by people whose sole concern should have been investigating what was happening inside that house.

A couple of minutes later new voices entered the office and he went out to find PCs Jackson and Cooper standing by the door, unwilling to come in any further. Jackson was the older of the two, pushing retirement, old enough to know better, and his seniority put him in the firing line. His posture said he realised that, spine ramrod straight, hands going into the small of his back as Zigic approached.

‘Saturday evening,’ Zigic said. ‘Elton. You two geniuses left a dead woman and a dying child in a house. How the hell did you manage that?’

Cooper inched back a few steps. Jackson swallowed, forced himself to hold Zigic’s stare.

‘We didn’t see any sign of occupation.’

‘Her car was on the drive.’

Jackson’s Adam’s apple bobbed again. ‘We knocked on the front door, sir. There was no answer.’

‘Because Dawn Prentice was dead inside,’ Zigic shouted. ‘You get a call reporting an injured woman and you didn’t think she might not be a position to answer?’

‘We went around back,’ Jackson said, voice wavering as if it could be a lie. ‘The blinds were down in the kitchen window. There was nothing to see. No signs of disturbance. What were we supposed to do, kick the door in?’

‘You didn’t need to. The back door was unlocked.’

Cooper’s head snapped around, eyes wide, watching Jackson.

One of them would have gone down the side of the garage, to the back of the house, the other would have stayed out front, knocked and waited, looked through the letter box, through the window into the living room. Done that rather than walk a few yards past the skip and check the door cut into the new extension the way he should.

Jackson, he guessed. With age came the privilege of not having to dirty your boots on unpaved ground or risk snagging your arms on overgrown hedges.

‘What happened?’ Zigic asked. ‘You had it down as “just a domestic”? Nothing you needed to take seriously.’

‘Sir, with all due –’

‘Don’t you fucking dare.’ Zigic jabbed a finger at him. ‘Go over there. Look at the board.’

Reluctantly the pair of them crossed the office to the murder board, a fast glance passing between them.

‘Look at her,’ Zigic said. ‘Holly Prentice. Sixteen years old. That girl was lying in her bed dying and you two walked away, got in your car and left her. If you’d done your job right she’d still be alive now.’

Cooper’s head dropped, eyes on his highly polished boots. Next to him Jackson was studying the spread of information tacked up there, probably deciding this dressing-down was buck passing from a DI whose case was hitting the skids. Nothing he hadn’t been through before.

Zigic felt the anger thrumming in his chest. Knew Jackson was just waiting for him to finish saying his piece and excuse them. Maybe he truly believed they’d done enough to be spared their share of blame. Maybe he’d manage to sleep soundly tonight without Holly Prentice invading his dreams.

Zigic wanted to grab Jackson by the back of the head and slam his face into the board. Force that photograph into his brain, make sure he never forgot what Holly looked like.

‘This bloke,’ Jackson said, tapping the board. ‘He ran past the house as we were leaving.’

Warren Prentice.

Did he really trust the observational skills of a man so inept he couldn’t even be relied upon to turn a door handle?

‘That’s him, isn’t it, Wayne?’

Cooper nodded, croaked out his agreement.

Zigic swallowed the rest of the bollocking he’d been preparing to see them off with.

‘You say he was running past the house. Running like exercising or running like getting the hell away from something?’

Jackson considered it. ‘Coudn’t say. He was wearing trainers and shorts, though.’

‘What direction was he going in?’

‘Out of the village, towards Alwalton.’

Away from his house, Zigic thought, meaning perhaps he was intending to go to Dawn’s and the sight of a police car kept him moving, forced him to act like any other jogger out on a perfectly innocent evening run.

‘Why did you notice him?’

Jackson shrugged. ‘Didn’t like the look of him much. The beard and that.’

Zigic pushed them for more but it was all they had and he dismissed the pair of them back to their duties. He’d have to take it up with their superior, but that could wait.

Warren Prentice just happened to be running past the house after the 999 call was made?

No, he didn’t buy the coincidence.

‘We’ve got the recording,’ Wahlia said, straightening in his chair, hand going to the mouse. ‘Okay, here we go.’

Zigic braced his hand against the desk, waiting, sure he was going to hear Warren, maybe disguising his voice, although he felt confident he’d spent enough time interviewing the man to see through any attempt at misdirection.

A small box appeared on screen, the sound file starting automatically, a woman’s voice, calm and even, the standardised first response and then a Liverpudlian accent:

‘I need the police. She’s hurt.’

‘Who’s hurt?’

‘You have to hurry.’
Voice cracking.

The woman pressed him for more details and the sound of breathing filled the long pause before she was answered, gasping breaths and a foot scuffing the ground. Seconds of it, five, six and Zigic saw Nathan standing in the phone box, eyes wide, clutching the receiver. Was it a stunned silence or a moment of realisation? He’d put himself on record, he’d created a trail that led from Dawn’s murder back to him and there was no undoing it.

He blurted out the address and put the phone down.

Wahlia swore. ‘We’ve got a new suspect then.’

‘A witness at least,’ Zigic said, heading into his office to retrieve the photograph propped up on his desk. ‘Getting hold of him’s going to be the problem.’

He stuck Nathan’s photo to the board and took out his mobile, scrolled down to Rachel’s number, looking at the boy’s smiling face as he waited for her to answer.

The first hour of the search went smoothly enough, no traffic to speak of, only a few early-morning runners and dog walkers out in Elton to witness the figures in white plastic bodysuits combing Dawn Prentice’s garden and the ragged line of uniforms stretched out along the footpath which looped around the northern edge of the village, swiping at the undergrowth, occasionally stooping when they saw some silvery glint which might have been the handle of a stainless-steel kitchen knife but so far wasn’t.

By half past seven the commuters were stirring, emerging from their houses suited and fully caffeinated, only to find that the lane from the main road down to the kennels was sealed off and they couldn’t get out of their driveways to make the ten-minute journey to the train station.

Most people were understanding, irritated but accepting of the necessity when a murderer was on the loose in their safe little village.

Things got dicey again when the school run kicked in, leading to a hastily convened meeting near the village shop and some creative car pooling. Ferreira apologised to them too, noticing that Sally and Benjamin Lange hadn’t appeared; he wouldn’t be going in today, though, not with what he had hanging over his head.

A short while later it was the primary-school crowd, but they were within walking distance and didn’t prove as problematic. The odd, ever-so polite enquiry into what was going on, some expressions of regret and sympathy, and an ear-splitting scream when a man in a bodysuit suddenly emerged from a narrow stone cut, startling a small girl in an all-terrain buggy.

After that the village retreated into a quiet spell again and the search team worked on in peace, steadily progressing up the slight rise of Church Lane from the kennels, heading towards the main road. Slow but thorough, eerily quiet as they moved, the whole scene slightly surreal, even to Ferreira who’d done this countless times before. Maybe it was the lack of civilians, combined with the closed blinds and empty front gardens. It felt as if a bigger tragedy had happened, something which had wiped out everyone but them.

Watching them work she felt surplus to requirements, so she moved between the sites, trying to drive out the last dregs of her hangover and walk off the stinging pain in her calf that was worse this morning than it had been last night. It didn’t bother her as much now, though. It was a good pain, bright and clean, her body healing finally.

Still, some ibuprofen wouldn’t go amiss.

The village shop was open but doing very little business, thanks to its position inside the search perimeter. If the owner was annoyed he didn’t show it. He made her for a copper right away, asked if there were any developments, if he should be worried for his family’s safety. She gave him the standard replies, a politer version of ‘no comment’ and ‘no need’, then asked her own questions.

The man knew Dawn, liked her, kept a particular brand of boxed pink wine in stock just for her. He hadn’t seen Holly since the accident, remembered her coming in for sweets when she was still at the village primary.

‘Lovely young girl, very clever.’

But he didn’t know anything useful.

Her mobile rang as she walked out, down the concave stone steps.

‘Mel, I need you to go to Julia Campbell’s house.’ There was excitement in Zigic’s voice, more energy than he’d mustered at the morning briefing. ‘We’ve got a nine-nine-nine call from the Saturday night, someone reported an incident at Dawn’s.’

‘What?’ Ferreira stopped dead; she knew they’d been hiding something. ‘Was it Julia?’

‘No, it’s almost certainly Nathan who made the call. It’s definitely a boy rather than a man. Liverpudlian accent. And it ties in with when he ran off.’

‘Then we need to bring him in.’

‘First we need to positively identify his voice,’ Zigic said. ‘And Julia’s our best bet.’

‘What about Rachel?’

‘She isn’t picking up. Unsurprisingly.’ He was running up the stairwell, footfalls echoing against the glass-block walls. ‘If we can ID Nathan on the call she’ll have to cooperate.’

‘Okay, send me it over.’

‘It should be in your inbox,’ he said. ‘Go gentle, Mel. You’ll get more out of her.’

He ended the call and she stood for a moment, looking at the screen, wondering why he felt the need to give her direction like that. Would he have done it a year ago? Didn’t he trust her to handle someone as uncomplicated as Julia Campbell?

On the way down the lane she listened to the recording, heard a boy’s wavering voice, choked with emotion, barely able to form the few words he said.

Did he sound guilty? Or just scared?

The sun was shining on the front of Julia Campbell’s house, showing up the dirt on the small mullioned windows and the hint of scorching on the flowers in their wooden planters. A wasp was buzzing around them and it darted at her as she knocked on the door. She swatted it away, stepping back as it went in for another attack, and she saw Julia’s face retreat quickly from an upstairs window as she moved.

She knocked again, the wasp bored with her now, and tried to remember which bedroom that was. Nathan’s she thought, the cold blue walls and the single bed.

Julia opened the door, holding a defensive hand over the curve of her stomach. She looked better today, skin glowing, a slick of red lipstick brightening her face, all traces of worry wiped away now that Nathan was safe.

‘What do you want?’

Ferreira held her phone up, hit Play on the recording and watched Julia’s reaction as Nathan’s voice said:

‘She’s hurt.’

Her hand went to her mouth and stayed there as he gave the operator Dawn’s address, eyes on the phone which Ferreira had angled away from her, not wanting her to see any of the information attached to the sound file.

When the clip finished playing Julia turned back into the house and Ferreira followed her through the hallway and the kitchen, where something sweet and chocolatey was baking in the oven, through another door that stood open, into what looked like a converted garage, full of painted furniture and chairs that needed throwing out. It smelled fusty and slightly mouldy, with a chemical undertone from the bottles and tins lined up on sturdy pine shelves. The late-summer sun left the room untouched and Julia had lit a wood burner to raise the temperature.

At least, Ferreira hoped that was why it was lit.

Julia went to a long workbench set under a window that looked out across the back garden, her seat placed in front of a sewing machine where two pieces of gingham fabric had been left mid-seam, the needle pinning them in place. She turned something on the side of the machine and the needle lifted, allowing her to remove the fabric. She held it on her lap, staring out of the window.

Ferreira moved closer, saw that her eyes were damp.

Julia’s initial reaction was as good as an admission but Ferreira needed to hear the words.

She bit down on the urge to prompt her and waited out the silence, hearing the gentle tick of the logs in the burner and the hum of the oven in the next room, watching the passing seconds and minutes wearing down Julia’s resolve more effectively than anything she would say.

‘It doesn’t mean he killed her,’ she said.

Ferreira didn’t reply.

‘You don’t know Nathan’s history. Seeing her like that … all he did was call for help. How can you think that makes him a murderer? He did what any decent person would have done.’ She tugged at the stiff cotton fabric. ‘He’s a good boy.’