Long Way Home (25 page)

‘What bracelet?’ Zigic asked.

‘The skinny guy, he’s wearing a bracelet – you can just see it between his glove and his cuff.’

Zigic hadn’t noticed.

The men made slow progress onto the train tracks, the smaller one losing his grip at one point and dropping Stepulov’s legs. He squatted down and tried another approach, hooked the legs under the thighs, holding his part of the load high around his own hips. He looked more comfortable with the weight then, but it restricted his movement and he duck-walked away out of the right-hand side of the shot, Viktor Stepulov disappearing with him, feet first, never to be seen whole again.

‘Please tell me they drive away over the crossing,’ Zigic said.

‘I don’t know, I haven’t watched that far yet.’

The tape kept rolling and they let it play in real time, the rain swirling in the light as the wind changed direction, the barrier pinging quietly to itself. A rat darted into shot and out again, just a dark blur through the shadows.

Suddenly the barrier juddered and began to drop. The alarm sounded. The warning lights flashed red.

A few seconds later the men reappeared, the skinny one running at full pelt until he came to the barrier and he vaulted it like a world-class athlete, landing smartly on the other side. His partner followed close on his heels, jacket flapping around his body. He ducked under, the skirts dragging his beanie off his head, revealing dark hair in a ponytail. He was a couple of steps away when he realised he’d lost it and he turned to retrieve it as the lights of the oncoming train washed the tracks. Too late.

The train trundled through. A goods vehicle, slow and heavy, dozens of containers passing the camera, their sides printed with the names of shipping companies, bodies ancient and rusted. Zigic held his breath, willing them to stop coming, hoping the men were waiting to cross, sitting stunned in the front of their vehicle with their hearts pounding, scared still for a few minutes by their close escape.

‘Is this on a loop?’ Ferreira asked. ‘Wind it on, Bobby.’

‘Let it play,’ Zigic said.

As the tracks finally cleared, the headlights retreated and Zigic swore into his fist – they were backing up, leaving the way they came. They weren’t stupid, they knew the crossing had security cameras. That’s why they’d parked at a distance and covered their faces. He turned away, stretched his neck and looked up at the ceiling, a humourless smile twisting his face.

‘Idiots,’ Ferreira said.

He looked back just in time to see the rear bumper of the vehicle come into shot, brake lights flashing, white paintwork and there, smeared with mud which had been partially washed away by the rain, a number plate.

LINDSAY HATED DRIVING
at night. She knew the statistics on this stretch of road, twelve fatalities last year, four people dead in a single accident, when a car full of teenagers skidded on a patch of black ice and plunged into a waterlogged dyke.

She was working in A&E when they were brought in, two stick-thin girls in tiny dresses and spiky heels who had survived the initial impact but died eventually of hypothermia, trapped and pinned in the twisted wreck of the car with their boyfriends’ corpses for six hours, waiting for someone to come along and call an ambulance. The boys had been luckier, dead on impact; one went through the windscreen, severing his jugular, the other sustaining massive head trauma, the damage compounded by the cocaine and alcohol in his system.

She thought of her own girls, eleven and thirteen, knowing that they’d soon be getting into cars with their friends, driving this same dark and winding road, going into Peterborough for the clubs, and it made her blood run cold, imagining the nights she was going to spend sitting by the phone until 3 a.m., waiting for them to get in, convinced as the minutes ticked by that something terrible was happening.

A motorbike screamed past her, doing at least eighty, and she glanced in her rear-view mirror, saw the rider take the next corner without slowing.

There was a sign warning bikers about the bends but rather than putting them off it encouraged them to come in from all over the county and ride the black route, like skiers wanting to test themselves against a tough run.

One had come in tonight, a few minutes before her shift was due to end, his skin stripped off the right side of his body where he’d been dragged along the tarmac as his bike went out from under him. He had broken bones in his arms and legs, internal bleeding, ruptured organs. It looked unlikely he would walk again. If he survived.

Lindsay yawned into the back of her hand.

She wanted her bed but home was twenty minutes away still and the dog would need to be fed when she got in, the washing machine loading and the dryer emptying. Half past six now; by the time she’d done all that Martin would be getting up, banging around their bedroom, and she just knew the shirt he’d want would need ironing and then the girls would be out of bed, fighting over the bathroom mirror and screaming for their gym kits or money for lunch, and once that was sorted the dog would be whining by the back door, needing to be walked.

She’d be lucky if she was in bed before nine.

How much longer could she do this for? Since they’d moved out of Peterborough the drive was killing her. A two-hour round trip after a twelve-hour shift, longer if she was bullied into covering for someone. Yes, the house was nicer than their old place in Paston and the garden was bigger, but was it worth this constant bone-tiredness?

She cracked the window and cold air trickled across her face, sharpening her focus on the road ahead of her.

The sky was tinged grey on the horizon but it still felt like night, a starless sky filled with clouds, nothing but darkness all around her.

She put on the stereo and music pounded out of the speakers, some cheesy pop on Lite FM. She shoved the CD in. Martin had been promising to sort out the dock for her iPod for weeks but it was still sitting in the box on the kitchen worktop. Amy Winehouse’s voice filled the car and she sang along, trying to keep herself alert.

Another yawn shuddered out of her, making her eyelids drop, and when she opened them again she saw a figure darting across the verge.

She stamped on the brakes. The tyres squealed against the tarmac.

‘Please, God.’

There was a thud and the car stopped. The music kept playing but she could hardly hear it, blood pounding in her ears.

She could see a body in the headlights.

She reached for her mobile but there was no signal. She had to get out and check if he was alive.

But she didn’t move. Where had he come from? There were no houses around here, nothing but fields for miles in every direction.

Lindsay climbed out of the car, and the wind blowing across the fields whipped the door back on its hinges. Her knees were weak as she walked towards the man. She told herself it was just like work, assess the situation and deal with it professionally.

‘Can you hear me?’

She stopped a few steps away from the man. He rolled over and she saw his face was badly damaged above a thick black beard, blood on the front of his grey T-shirt.

‘I’m a nurse, I’m going to help you.’

He groaned and kicked his legs weakly. ‘Please.’

Lindsay moved closer. The wind tore at her hair, snapped her coat around her body.

‘We need to get you to hospital.’

‘Help me.’ He reached out to her. ‘Please, help me. They’re coming.’

‘Who?’

‘Please.’ He was crying. ‘I don’t want to die.’

His accent was foreign, thickened by the tears and his broken nose. Lindsay took his hand and he got to his feet, bracing himself against the car. He was bleeding heavily and she saw a ragged wound high on his chest.

Had he been shot?

Fear gripped her spine.

‘What happened?’

‘There are men coming.’

‘What have you done?’

‘I –’ He froze. ‘We must go. Now. They are coming.’

He pointed into the darkness and Lindsay saw headlights jumping over a field, heard the rumble of a throaty engine.

He stumbled away from her, making for the passenger side of her car, but she was rooted to the spot, watching the lights come closer, the engine growling. A shot rang out and she ducked instinctively.

This wasn’t real. This didn’t happen.

‘Please. They will kill you.’ He opened the door and got into her car. She saw his face, bloodied and beaten, skin very white under the interior light.

Lindsay threw herself behind the wheel again and started the engine.

A horn sounded to her right and she saw the headlights, fifty or sixty yards away, bearing down on them.

‘Go!’

She backed up quickly on the grass verge, saw the lights in her rear-view mirror, seconds away from them, and accelerated off. The CD was still playing and she stabbed at it, one hand on the wheel, eyes on the road, focusing now on getting them away.

‘They shot you.’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘They killed my friend,’ the man said. ‘They are bad people.’

Lindsay glanced at him, saw his fingers coming away bloody from the wound in his shoulder.

‘You need to put pressure on it.’ She took hold of his hand and pressed it onto the gunshot. ‘Like this. Press it hard. You need to stop the bleeding.’

‘You will take me to hospital?’

‘Yes,’ she snapped.

The other vehicle was on the road now, headlights sitting high and another set of lamps a few feet above it. A truck of some kind, she thought. Slower than her car, but they had guns and if they had shot at her once they would do it again.

She shifted gears, put her foot down, accelerating away from them on the long stretch of open road. They were coming up to a village. In a few minutes they would be among civilisation but she realised there would be no point stopping.

What would she do? Knock on random doors at this time of morning and hope some kind soul opened up? And what if someone did? Was she prepared to draw armed men to a stranger’s house?

‘What is your name?’ the man asked.

‘Lindsay.’

‘Thank you, Lindsay. You have saved me.’

Her hands tightened around the steering wheel and she felt tears pricking her eyes, thinking of Martin at home, her girls sleeping safely in their beds, dreaming of shoes and boys and fame, and prayed to the God she didn’t believe in that this man wouldn’t get her killed.

ZIGIC WAS AWAKE
before the alarm sounded, lying on his back with Anna snuggled up close to him, her head under his chin. Her breaths came slow and even against his skin, her face perfectly placid in the dim light from the hallway. He always envied her ability to sleep soundly no matter what was happening. She just shut it out, closed her eyes and drifted away. It didn’t seem to bother her that the same troubles would be waiting when she woke up.

Carefully he removed her arm from his chest and slipped out of bed. He pulled on his dressing gown and went to look in on the boys.

A night light was glowing softly next to Milan’s bed, where he was curled up small under the covers. His thumb was stuck firmly in his mouth and Zigic pulled it out, tucked his hand under his pillow. It was a habit they’d thought he was finally growing out of but he’d returned to it since starting school last autumn and the teacher had sent a note home twice now, advising them to talk to their doctor about it. As if it was some aberrant behaviour pattern akin to torturing cats.

Milan was a sensitive boy. Shy around strangers, quiet even with his friends, and Stefan tyrannised him despite being two years younger, always bossing him around, but Milan took it with grace, gave his little brother the toy he wanted, didn’t fight back when he stole food from his plate.

Zigic feared what would happen if he didn’t toughen up. The village primary was a calm, safe environment but what about after that? In a few years he would move up, and Anna was talking about sending him to Stamford Boys, as if the money wasn’t an issue. He was intelligent enough to get into King’s, a couple of years ahead of his peers already, but even twenty years ago, when Zigic was there, the school had its fair share of bullying, and the area around it was rough, blighted by street crime, often targeted at the pupils who made easy marks in their dark blue blazers.

Anna’s father had suggested they send him to a martial arts class, said it would make a man of him. Their five-year-old boy. He was a reactionary old bastard. Ex-Air Force, still played rugby at fifty-four, did Ironman triathlons. To his mind every problem in the world could be solved with the reintroduction of conscription and corporal punishment.

He was delighted when he found out Anna was dating a policeman, but the initial flush passed quickly and Zigic still cringed at the memory of their first meeting. A pub in Elton with dark beams and horse brasses on the wall, neutral ground. They shook hands, all smiles, and then he asked Zigic where he was from. Peterborough wouldn’t do – ‘But where are your people from?’

Zigic told him and they spent the remainder of the afternoon listening to war stories from his tours in Bosnia and Kosovo, what he’d seen in a Sarajevo, the places he’d bombed. Anna kept squeezing his hand under the table and Zigic forced down the urge to take his steak knife and stab her old man, confirm all of his racist opinions about Serbs.

They saw her parents only a couple of times a year now. They came down for Anna’s birthday and Boxing Day, spent the majority of their visits talking about how well their son was getting on in Saudi, where he worked as an engineer. Anna was drifting away from them and Zigic was secretly glad of it, didn’t want their influence to spread to his boys. They’d done enough damage to their own kids.

He stepped over the toys littering the floor and picked up the duvet cover Stefan had kicked off in the night, drew it up to his chin and kissed him on the head before he crept out again, pulling the door shut behind him.

Downstairs he switched the radio to the World Service and started a pot of espresso on the stove, listened to distant horrors with half an ear while he thought of the more immediate ones he had to deal with.