Long Way Home (12 page)

‘OK,’ Harrington said slowly. ‘Have they done something they shouldn’t?’

‘It’s an ongoing investigation, I can’t go into details.’

‘Have you got a warrant?’

‘I can get one.’

Harrington cracked a sly smile. ‘Pulling your leg, Inspector. You know we’re always happy to help.’ He dragged the keyboard towards him. ‘What’re the names?’

‘Stepulov,’ Zigic said and spelled it. ‘Jaan and Viktor.’

Harrington frowned at the computer display. It was a common occurrence, judging by the deep trenches cut either side of his mouth. The air of joviality was reserved for clients and coppers, Zigic imagined.

‘Alright, here we are.’

‘Did they give you a next of kin?’

‘We ask but if they don’t want to that’s their business. Neither of these two have. It’s not unusual.’ Harrington leaned back in his chair, swivelled it from side to side. ‘I don’t know how useful this is going to be to you, Inspector, we haven’t had any contact with either of them since last year. Looks like they moved on. Or went home. That’s a sight more common than it was.’

‘Did you struggle to place either of them?’ Zigic asked.

‘I wouldn’t have dealt with them,’ Harrington told him, straightening up as he spoke. ‘They’re both down here as D1 – that’s our basic class. Poor language skills, no qualifications. There’re plenty of posts about for blokes like that but a lot of them think they should have something better. You know, they all come over expecting big wages and the big wages aren’t there any more.’ Harrington shrugged. ‘Problem is the recruiters back in old country don’t tell them we’ve got a recession on. Fact is they’re as well off at home now, what with the cost of living and that.’

The printer on Harrington’s desk started to purr, working quickly, spitting out time sheets and copies of passports, tax documents, various internal forms.

‘This wouldn’t be to do with that death over New England, would it?’

‘We’re still waiting on a positive ID,’ Zigic told him. ‘But yes.’

‘Bad business. You reckon it’s a racial thing?’

‘Why do you say that?’

Harrington reached into his pocket, took out a mint. ‘A lot of our workers get hassle off the locals. Minor stuff, nothing they’d bother you lot with, but it’s persistent. I’ve been saying to Euan for years, it’s only a matter of time before one of them gets done over by some nutter – doesn’t take much, does it? Headcase loses his job, sees it go to a migrant . . . you don’t know how that sort thinks. Torched his doss, didn’t they?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Hell of a way to go,’ Harrington said, shaking his head. ‘You wouldn’t wish it on your worst enemy.’

He gathered the papers from the printer, squared them up with a couple of sharp taps against the desk and slipped them into an envelope.

‘Hope that’s of some use to you.’ Harrington stood up to hand it over, smoothed his gold silk tie as he did, and Zigic stayed seated. Reluctantly Harrington sat again. ‘Would a reward help? If he was one of our workers I’m sure Mrs Nye would be more than happy to put a few grand up. Might get someone to come through for you.’

More conspicuous charity, Zigic thought. A few grand they could set against their tax bill and what would it achieve? They’d get a lot of time wasters hunting the reward, more dead leads to run down, and if by some miracle it brought out a useful line of inquiry the eventual prosecution would be undermined when the defence flagged the financial motive. He’d seen it before, didn’t want his case compromising like that.

‘I’ll discuss it with the higher-ups,’ he said. ‘They don’t let lowly DIs make those kind of decisions.’

‘Well, like I say, I’m sure she’d like to help however she can. We take the welfare of our workers very seriously.’

‘And what about their living conditions?’

‘If we’d have had any idea he was sleeping rough like that we’d have found him a room,’ Harrington said, piqued now.

‘With Andrus Tombak?’

Harrington didn’t reply. Held his breath, waited.

‘Did you know Tombak had a run-in with Jaan Stepulov?’

Harrington cleared his throat. ‘It happens.’

‘Tombak attacked one of my officers when we went to talk to him.’

‘Is he alright?’

‘She’s fine. Thankfully. But we’ll be charging him with assault, so if I were you, for the sake of your company’s good name, I wouldn’t get involved with his defence.’

‘I don’t know what Tombak’s told you but he doesn’t work for us in that kind of capacity. He brings men in, we fix them up when we can. He’s a free agent.’

‘Does he bring you workers very often?’

‘Offhand, I couldn’t say.’

‘Maybe you should check your records,’ Zigic said.

For a long moment they stared at each other and he saw the wheels turning behind Harrington’s serious grey eyes, weighing up the pros and cons of refusing. Did he want to look involved? Was Tombak worth enough to them?

He must have been expendable because Harrington took another pass at his keyboard.

‘I can give you a list of men registered to his address, but that’s all we’ll have on file.’

‘It’s much appreciated, sir.’

Zigic took the list and went back out through reception. A gang of men had come in, one doing all of the talking, his tone stern as Euan stood bored and implacable, hands on his hips. Until the man jabbed a stiff finger at his chest, then he snapped.

‘Look, I’ve told you we don’t pay for overtime if it isn’t signed off. You don’t have the dockets so you don’t get paid.’

‘You pay these men.’

‘Bring the dockets.’

‘I bring last week.’

‘We don’t have them.’

‘I give you myself,’ the man said.

‘Are you calling me a liar?’

Euan’s face was tight and he seemed taller and broader suddenly, nothing like the man who had shown Zigic into Harrington’s office.

‘No dockets, no pay. You understand that?’

Outside the sun was shining on the cathedral green, glimmering across the stained-glass windows and picking out the specks where the yew trees were coming into bud. A group of tourists came into the precincts through the Western Gate, the Gothic facade looming up ahead of them, blasted and weathered, the saints and patrons indistinguishable from one another. There were a few people taking photographs from the grass, more of them sitting outside the cafeteria in the breezy winter sunshine, an elephantine American woman filling the air with her opinion on how quaint it was, how absolutely darling. But the rest of the place?
My Lawd
. . .

This cloistered little corner of Peterborough was not the city though, and Zigic imagined the ones who’d come here because they’d seen it in
Barchester Chronicles
must have been disappointed by the brutal sixties architecture of the centre and the closed-down shops. They’d head on to Stamford maybe, see where
Pride and Prejudice
was filmed and feel they had found something infinitely more English at last. Some authenticity.

FERREIRA STARTED A
fresh pot of coffee while her computer booted up.

Wahlia was trying to get hold of Stepulov’s medical records, hoping to trace his next of kin from them, but it sounded like he was running into resistance. Hold music bled out of the phone and she saw a familiar moue of annoyance on his face. He tugged on the gold stud through his left lobe and snapped to attention as the music cut dead.

Obviously he’d got a woman this time. His voice deepened and he smiled while he talked, telling her it was OK, he understood how it was.

‘The name’s Stepulov, Jaan,’ he said, and gave her the date of birth from his file.

Ferreira slipped into her seat and started opening up the pages she had bookmarked under ‘Fascistas’ – the BNP, National Front, Combat 18 – starting with the English Nationalist League’s website, then their Facebook page and the main boards for the local chapters. East Anglia and the West Midlands were growing factions; over the last year she’d watched their membership rise steadily with sudden spikes after the Wootton Bassett fracas and the clashes in Luton. A big one when news broke in Bradford of Muslim men grooming young white girls for sex. Every time the
Daily Mail
ran an inflammatory piece about migration or unemployment, or some English company lost a contract to a foreign competitor, a few more disillusioned bigots joined up.

She clicked a link to the English Patriot Party site, the ENL’s unofficial parent organisation. On the front page was a reminder to their members that
Newsnight
would be featuring their leader next week. They took it as a sign of greater acceptance that Paxman was prepared to lock horns with him.

Ferreira thought of the performance Tommy Robinson gave on
Newsnight
and wondered if Richard Shotton would do any better.

He’d put himself forward for the Police and Crime Commissioner elections in Cambridgeshire last year, causing a brief stirring of concern which increased as the low turnout was announced, but in the end he took less than 10 per cent of the vote. He responded by stating his intention of running for Parliament.

‘Mel, where’s your mug?’

She found it sitting empty in the top drawer of her desk and gave it to Wahlia.

A few minutes later he placed a cup of hot, strong coffee next to her hand and it went cold, untouched as she scanned the boards, barely blinking, sitting still with her chin propped on her fist, tapping at the keyboard to take her deeper in.

There was no specific mention of Stepulov’s death but plenty of vitriol aimed at migrant workers; they were parasites and scum, living off benefits and jumping to the top of the council housing list.

Ferreira hadn’t come across a migrant worker yet who was living in council accommodation. It didn’t work like that. You came over with just enough to get yourself established, or, more usually, the gangmaster who employed you provided some run-down bedsit and charged it against your wages at a premium rate. There were thousands of Andrus Tombaks out there, putting people in the kind of accommodation these people wouldn’t tolerate in a million years.

She felt her face flushing with anger as she read on and knew she should leave it. She was weeks before Stepulov’s death now and nothing anyone said was going to help the inquiry, but she couldn’t stop scrolling down. It was a kind of masochism, like picking at a scab, the need to know just how much people like her were hated.

Not that she needed these websites to show her it.

In Spalding, growing up, the Portuguese and Polish kids were treated like filth. The first year at school there were only three of them, Mel and two other girls, and they formed a tight gang despite not particularly liking each other. It was necessity, stand together or be picked off individually by the clique of blonde princesses.

Mel’s mother went to the charity shop on the high street for her clothes. Mel, tall for age, was sent to school in old women’s trousers from M&S and misshapen jumpers with badly darned moth holes.

One Saturday her mother came home with a new winter coat, jewel red with a fur-lined hood and huge buttons. It was too big on the shoulders and it smelled faintly of damp but not so badly that it couldn’t be aired on the washing line. Monday she walked through the school gates in it and one of the blondes – Becky Deere, she still remembered the bitch’s name – said it was one of her sister’s cast-offs. Her friends started laughing and Mel lashed out, dragged her to the ground and beat her around the head, using all the moves she’d learned fighting with her brothers. Becky Deere lost two front teeth and the tip of her tongue.

The bullying didn’t stop though, not right away, and it was only when more foreign kids joined the school and they had numbers behind them that things changed. Then the parents started getting involved, saying their kids were being held back while the teachers concentrated on basic language skills. It wasn’t racism, it was concern for their little darlings’ educational development.

A couple of years out of university, while she was still in uniform, Mel pulled Becky Deere over on a country road between Peterborough and Spalding. She’d put on weight, dyed her blonde hair black and been sprayed a deep mahogany, and Mel smiled to herself, thinking how desperately she’d wanted to be pale and blonde when they were kids.

Becky pretended not to recognise her, played the innocent. She was three times over the limit but just for good measure Mel took out her baton and smashed the car’s offside brake light. Becky complained but Mel’s partner backed her up and she lost her licence for two years.

It was a small, petty pleasure, but she felt she deserved it.

‘Hey, Mel.’ Wahlia’s hand came down on her shoulder. ‘Can I borrow your lighter?’

‘Yeah, hold on.’ She stood up, her legs stiff and numb from sitting in the same position so long. ‘Where’s Zigic?’

‘Gone on to the post-mortem.’

‘I’ve been doing this for two hours?’

‘You looked like you were in the zone.’

‘Is that why I didn’t get another cup of coffee?’ She worked her lighter out of her back pocket. ‘What’re you doing?’

‘Checking out the recently released arsonists.’

‘Anything?’

He cracked open one of the long metal windows before he lit up. ‘Some kid who’s just been released from Claire Lodge – he burned down his foster-parents’ house in Fletton. That was personal, I guess – it was his first offence anyway. And a guy who tried to torch his girlfriend’s place.’

‘Unlikely suspects then.’

‘Yeah, but –’

‘Hold on, gotta pee.’

Mel grabbed her handbag and went downstairs to the Ladies, striding the tightness out of her legs. She needed to get back into the gym but by the time they knocked off she couldn’t face it. Maybe in a few weeks, when the clocks changed and the evenings were lighter. She missed running on the road, that feeling of eating up the miles, the wind streaming past her face. Charging full pelt at a wall which never moved just didn’t match it. Especially when there was some idiot on the next treadmill who didn’t understand the gym etiquette of ‘earphones in; I’m ignoring you’.