After You Die (7 page)

The yelps became a growl and as his eyes adjusted to the thin light seeping in around the blackout blinds he saw Stefan crouched alone under the window, furiously scraping at the rug as if he was trying to dig his way out of the room through it.

‘Stop that,’ Zigic snapped.

Stefan cocked his head, starting to pant with his tongue stuck out.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Just take him back to bed,’ Anna said. ‘You know there’s no point trying to reason with him when he’s acting like this.’

Zigic picked him up and threw him over his shoulder, Stefan whimpering and pawing at his back as he carried him out through the hall into the bedroom he shared with Milan. The star-shaped nightlight in there was glowing softly in the corner, beams falling across the mess of scattered toys.

‘Is it time to get up?’ Milan asked, knuckling his eyes.

‘No, go back to sleep.’

Zigic put Stefan in bed. Immediately he was up again, turning a circle before settling down at the centre of the mattress, still playing his game of make-believe.

‘Alright, sleep, both of you,’ he said. ‘You’ve got school in a couple of hours.’

He pulled the door closed behind him and went downstairs into the kitchen, started a pot of espresso on the stove, fully awake now, mind already turning towards the coming day; the tasks waiting for him and the rest of the team, the challenge of unpacking the background to Holly and Dawn’s murders.

More than anything he wanted to see Ferreira’s original report.

The sparse information on the harassment was worrying him. It was possible that Dawn only reported it in order to satisfy her insurers and push forward the claim for damage against her vandalised car, but he didn’t believe it was that simple.

Before the establishment of Hate Crimes he’d done an eighteen-month stint in Anti-Harassment, working alongside a put-upon but determined detective sergeant who managed a caseload running into the high three figures and rarely saw the perpetrators spend any time in prison. It was a dispiriting period in his career, more akin to social work than policing, doling out sympathy to the victims of stalking cases that had been running for years, offering advice about how to minimise the disturbance to their lives and stay as safe as possible when they had no expectation of being completely free and at ease ever again.

The coffee bubbled up into the top of the pot and he took it off the heat, poured a double measure, one eye on the clock, thinking about going for a quick run. His arms were aching from the day before’s painting and he realised he wasn’t in the mood to go tramping around fields and woodland this morning.

He switched the television on and ate his breakfast at the kitchen table while the news played in the background; Iraq leading, then Ukraine, an unexpected by-election victory in the north-east for the English Patriot Party. A Labour stronghold falling.

By rights they should have imploded after Richard Shotton stood down in February, but like most noxious substances they were persistent, and within hours of his resignation one of his deputies had stepped into the breach. The scandal around Shotton did less harm to the party’s reputation than anyone expected. They ran effective damage limitation in the run-up to the general election, distanced themselves quickly and completely enough to maintain the momentum Shotton had been building and went on to capture six seats. Seven now.

Zigic switched the TV off and went to get ready for work.

The road was quiet on the way in, pre-rush hour, pre-school run, and he made Thorpe Wood station in ten minutes, finding the car park almost empty but Ferreira’s Golf already slotted into a space near the main doors.

She was alone in the office, seated at her desk with a coffee and a half-eaten panini, going through a small black notebook he recog-nised as Dawn’s harassment log. The search team had delivered it, along with Dawn and Holly’s laptops, early yesterday evening, just as Zigic was preparing to leave.

‘You’re in early,’ he said.

‘I wanted to have a look at this before we got started.’

He sat down opposite her at DC Wahlia’s desk. ‘Did you find anything interesting?’

‘Not really. She hardly logged anything after I spoke to her. So it was either very sporadic or she wasn’t seriously intending to pursue the issue. See what you think.’ Ferreira tossed the book to him and went back to her breakfast.

Zigic had read a lot of these logs during that eighteen months working in Anti-Harassment and what surprised him about them was the inevitable frequency of the incidents; most victims barely went a day without something bad happening, as their stalkers sought to keep them constantly on edge.

Looking through the half-dozen pages Dawn had filled he saw no pattern, no escalation. There were instances of damage to her garden, silent phone calls, hoax calls on a couple of occasions which resulted in unwanted pizza deliveries and taxis arriving at her house. Petty stuff, annoying but impersonal, in no way related to Holly’s disability.

If it wasn’t for how her car had been vandalised this case would have gone to Anti-Harassment rather than Hate Crimes.

‘It’s thin,’ he said.

‘And across a very short time period. I make it about six weeks.’

‘When exactly did you first go there?’

Ferreira nodded towards his office. ‘I put the original report on your desk.’

He found a slim file sitting waiting for him, brought it back to the main office.

Dawn had reported the vandalism on 4 December last year, called the non-emergency number and was finally put through to Hate Crimes, to Ferreira who went out to the house the following day for an initial interview. All the relevant details were there, a statement from Dawn which was short and to the point, no emotion in it, photographs of the silver people carrier she’d taken delivery of a few days before, its slashed tyres sitting on their rims and its driver’s-side doors spray painted in black, the word ‘CRIPPLE’ in block capitals almost a foot tall.

‘No witnesses?’ he asked.

‘I tried the neighbour but he wasn’t at home. Dawn said he worked away a lot and wasn’t there the night it happened.’

‘Definitely an overnight thing?’

‘Yeah, that’s what she said.’ Ferreira put down her panini. ‘They’re out of the way, edge of the village. No witnesses except the neighbour, potentially. And maybe someone driving by. I could hardly put out a call for a petty vandalism, could I?’

‘What about Neighbourhood Watch?’

Ferreira swivelled in her chair, fist balling. ‘I didn’t speak to them. We were in the middle of a major case at the time, I shouldn’t even have been dealing with it.’

Zigic looked back at her without speaking, waited for some of the heat to drain out of her face.

The last thing she’d written in the file was ‘Follow-up call’ and a date. Before that, notes of three other calls which Dawn had terminated. He could fully understand how she’d let it slip; whoever shouted loudest got the attention and Dawn had gone silent.

‘This isn’t my fault,’ Ferreira said, voice even but he could see she was working at it. ‘Nobody could have anticipated an act of petty fucking vandalism blowing up into a double murder.’

‘I didn’t say it was your fault.’

‘Like you’re not thinking it.’

Zigic leaned forward across the desk. ‘Mel, if I thought you’d missed something I’d tell you. In no uncertain terms.’

She slumped where she sat, threw her head back and let out a long, slow breath before she straightened up again, started to roll a cigarette. ‘I think we need to talk to the builder today, he’s been at the house for a while by the looks of it. If anyone’s been hanging around he’ll have seen them.’

‘He’s got access,’ Zigic said, thinking of the new extension which linked the kitchen to the garage conversion. ‘And there’s a fair chance he’ll have a key, since it isn’t finished yet. Do we know who he is?’

‘I got his details from the sign outside the house,’ Ferreira said, holding the unlit cigarette between her fingers as she pulled her keyboard towards her. ‘Company name, Oundle phone number. Hold on, I’ll see if I can find him.’

Zigic got up from Wahlia’s desk and went over to the murder board which had been started yesterday afternoon. They were running two other major investigations, both stalled with little prospect of new movement. He was grateful this had come at a quiet period for them, sensed that it was going to suck up man hours. Last night he’d spoken to Riggott about expanding the team, made clear the emotive nature of the case and the attention it would invariably draw down on them, but he didn’t hold out much hope for support.

CID was undermanned, the recently arrived DI Sawyer off after a car accident, a detective constable on suspension following the disappearance of evidence from a murder scene, Grieves taking leave for stress. Not that he would have tolerated her back in Hate Crimes.

An internal investigation had cleared her of colluding with Christian Palmer but she’d returned to a hostile environment she was ill-equipped to withstand and hadn’t lasted a month back at the station before she cracked. Word was Riggott had come down hard on her, frequently and very publically showing his contempt, and where the DCS led the rest followed.

It was exactly what Zigic had wished on her – exile – but he took little pleasure in knowing she was suffering it now. He’d rather she’d kept her mouth shut when Palmer started nosing into their investigation and continued to be the hard-working and diligent copper he’d been coming to regard as a worthwhile part of his team.

‘He’s got a website,’ Ferreira said. ‘Looks like the business is based out of a yard on the edge of town.’

Zigic continued to stare at the board where Dawn and Holly’s photographs, taken from the house, were stuck up. Holly in her school uniform, fresh faced and smiling slightly, her hair worn long with a blunt fringe. It was the kind of image which the press liked and potential witnesses felt tugging at them when the time came to speak up. Nothing like the girl she’d been for the last two years of her life.

Dawn was smiling in her photo too, deeply but without conviction, her eyes heavily kohled, pixie-cut, peroxide-blonde hair giving her a punky vibe. She didn’t look old enough to be Holly’s mother, skin unlined and dewy, but maybe that was cosmetic. Zigic never could tell.

There was little else on the board so far.

No murder weapon. That was a worry.

Jenkins’s team had turned the house and garden inside out looking for the knife that killed Dawn and found nothing. Two missing from the wooden block, both needed finding. The next step would be an organised search of the surrounding fields and roadsides. Assuming he could get Riggott to agree to it.

‘Gary Westman,’ Ferreira said. ‘Westman & Sons General Builders Limited. Excellent reviews on Rated Tradesmen dot com. Thirty-eight years old, couple of speeding tickets, couple of instances of drink-driving and he did two years back in his early twenties for possession.’

‘Of what?’

‘Class B drugs.’

Ferreira turned her chair over to him while she went to light up, swearing as the window refused to open without a fight, the metal frame swollen from the heat.

Zigic scanned Westman’s record, rereading what Ferreira had already told him before returning to the mugshot. It was too old to draw any conclusions from and his form suggested nothing more than a reckless streak.

‘We’ll talk to him this morning,’ Zigic said. ‘Get it out of the way. What time are the post-mortems scheduled?’

‘Ten-thirty start.’

‘You’d better sort out the identification for this morning then. I’ll talk to Westman.’

She flicked ash out of the window. ‘You could send Bobby.’

‘No, I need him here. Whoever Riggott gives us won’t be as effective. It’ll probably be Parr, you know he’s always surplus to requirements downstairs.’

‘We always get the rejects.’

Zigic smiled. ‘Doesn’t say much for the rest of us, does it?’

Fifteen minutes later Parr walked into Hate Crimes, grey suit jacket thrown over his shoulder, shirtsleeves turned back to his elbows and a bright orange tie neatly knotted. With his light tan and gelled hair he looked like the manager of a mobile-phone shop, clean-shaven but somehow sleazy.

‘The boss reckons you needed reinforcements,’ he said, standing with his hands spread to his sides. ‘Double murder, yeah?’

Zigic led him over to the board and brought him up to speed, explained that he’d be managing a mobile incident unit in Elton, marshalling the second round of door-to-door and making contact with local Neighbourhood Watch. They discussed the best place to site the van and settled on the village green, wanting visibility even if it meant they’d attract the odd passing ghoul.

Parr seemed more focused than usual, asked plenty of questions, made some decent suggestions. Zigic wondered if hed judged him too harshly before, mistaken the stress and sleeplessness of new fatherhood for incompetence and disinterest. He wasn’t ready to write that impression off completely but he felt better about having Parr involved now.

Wahlia arrived as they were finishing up, trailing a handful of uniforms, two of them new faces to Zigic, recent recruits he’d have to remember to split up and pair with older heads. The PCs scattered around the room, taking up positions at the empty desks nearest the murder board, all eyes focused on the photos of the victims.

Zigic clapped his hands together, silencing the murmuring voices. ‘Okay, ladies and gents, this is a bad one.’

Accompanying family members to identify their dead was the worst part of the job. Even more awkward and painful than the dreaded house calls to inform of a loss. This was where it got real. No more hopeful denials, no more fantasies of clerical errors or innocent mix-ups. After this morning Warren Prentice would have an image of his daughter’s corpse in his head and nothing would completely clear it away until the day he died.

And Dawn, of course. Objectively that was the more disturbing sight – she’d been dead longer, decay had set in – but something told Ferreira it wasn’t going to bother him quite so much.

She’d asked Warren to meet her in the cafe at City Hospital, suggested he brought someone along for moral support. Most people were in no condition to drive home afterwards.