Long Way Home (8 page)

Zigic picked up a marker pen. ‘When did Stepulov leave Fern House?’

‘Three weeks ago, bolted as soon as this guy showed up. He never went back. Then the same guy was at Maloney’s a couple of days ago,’ she said. ‘So that would have been Monday. Stepulov hadn’t been in there for a while though, and according to Maloney he was pretty much a fixture at the poker table.’

‘Winning or losing?’

‘Winning,’ Ferreira said. ‘With a bit of mechanical intervention. So we know what he was living off anyway.’

Zigic added the dates to the timeline, working back from Stepulov’s murder.

‘Did you get a description of this bloke?’

‘Tall, skinny, pale. Tattoo of a bird on his neck.’

‘Run that through the system and see if it hits,’ Zigic said. In the suspects column he wrote the brief description. ‘Sounds like it could be the man Gemma Barlow saw arguing with Stepulov.’

‘He told Maloney he was Stepulov’s son-in-law,’ Ferreira said. ‘Chances are he was lying but you never know, I guess. He knew Stepulov drank there and he knew to find him at Fern House so there’s obviously a connection of some sort.’

‘Is Stepulov old enough to have a grown-up daughter?’

‘If he had her in his teens, but why would he run away from his son-in-law at Fern House?’

‘Families can be weird,’ Zigic said, going over to the coffee machine. He poured the last half-cup out of the pot and threw it down, felt the grounds grate the back of his throat. ‘Stepulov had been living rough for almost three months, maybe there had been acrimony and he didn’t want them to find him. You know as well I do there’re a hundred good reasons to fall out with your family.’

THE CALL ZIGIC
was waiting for came in a few minutes after six, patched through from the patrol car he’d sent to Burmer Road, waiting outside Andrus Tombak’s house.

‘The van’s just pulled in, sir. Should we take him?’

‘No, wait for me.’

‘He’s looking over here,’ the PC said, his voice rising with excitement. ‘He’s clocked us, sir, he’s coming over.’

‘Fob him off,’ Zigic said. ‘Don’t make a move unless he looks like he’s going to run. You got that?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Twenty minutes later Zigic pulled up outside the halal butcher’s on Burmer Road. Its shutters were down but the smell of stale blood rose from a wheelie bin on the pavement, and there were old crates piled up near the door, faded and stained. Across the street the patrol car sat with two wheels on the kerb, a small red dot flicking on and off as the driver smoked a crafty fag.

The street lights glowed orange, every other one dead; cost-cutting measures from the city council. There was road noise in the distance and the incessant, droning hum of the industrial estate, but the street felt strangely isolated and hunkered down.

‘Which one is it?’ Ferreira asked.

‘With the green front door,’ Zigic told her.

As he spoke it opened and a man came out, carrying a rubbish bag he dumped in a ragged patch of garden. There were a dozen or so already, tossed in among the docks and the thistles which stood chest-high and desiccated, scraps of paper snagged in their barbs, sheets of rotting newsprint and smashed bottles in the long grass.

The house was lit up behind papery blinds and as they crossed the road the door opened again. Eight men came out in single file, each holding the door for the next, and they moved without speaking, tired-looking with drawn faces and haunted eyes. They turned right and headed up Burmer Road where a van was parked under a street light, waiting for them.

Zigic caught the door as it swung closed and they went inside, Ferreira on his heels, radiating tension.

The smell of contained bodies hit him, the sour, sweaty odour of too many men crammed into close proximity, the whole house like a locker room after a losing game, that edge of fear and dejection. The linoleum floor was tracked with mud and sticky in places and up the uncarpeted stairs he heard somebody coughing, a deep, rattling hack like they were about to lose a lung. Footsteps trudged overhead, no energy in them.

‘Don’t wander,’ he told Ferreira.

Doors stood closed on either side of them but the voices and the snores bled into the corridor, too many for such a small space.

Ferreira knocked on one of the doors and opened it without waiting for a reply.

The room was in darkness but in the dim light from the hallway they saw the entire floorspace was taken up with mattresses, three of them tucked tight together. The men slept doubled up on them, back to back, curled away from each other.

Ferreira closed the door quietly.

‘Who are you?’

A man came downstairs to them, a grubby towel around his neck and the front of his grey vest spattered with water. He wore unlaced work boots thick with dried mud.

‘We’re looking for Andrus Tombak,’ Zigic said.

‘I do not know this name.’

‘This is his house.’

‘You are police?’

‘Mr Tombak was attacked a few weeks ago,’ Zigic said. ‘His arm was broken.’

‘I was not here,’ the man said.

‘We know who attacked him. We just need to speak to him about an identification.’

The man let out a rattling chain of Polish, told Zigic he didn’t understand what he was saying, he spoke very little English, he would have to ask somebody else, and ducked quickly into the front room.

‘He was scared,’ Ferreira said.

‘And he’s not Polish,’ Zigic told her. ‘He speaks it pretty well but his accent’s totally wrong.’

Cooking smells wafted along the hallway from the back of the house, garlic beginning to singe and a hit of spice. They followed it to a small kitchen with ancient palm-leaf wallpaper and a stripped concrete floor with a couple of thin rugs thrown down. It had a haphazard, scavenged look, white base units and wooden ones on the wall, some with missing handles. A washing machine was wheezing and creaking in the corner, a basket full of damp clothes on top of it. The kitchen was warm though, and steamy, two pans of water on a rolling boil and a fug of smoke sweetened with marijuana. After a sixteen-hour shift it would pass for homely, Zigic thought.

A fat man in a denim shirt and combats was stirring something in an old enamel casserole dish, holding the wooden spoon like a dagger, the movement made awkward by the cast on his left wrist. He didn’t look up as they entered but the men sitting around the scrubbed pine table fell silent, their eyes fixing on the new arrivals.

Zigic felt their hostility and made himself straighten up.

‘Andrus Tombak?’

One of the men nodded towards the chef then swiftly looked away, concentrating on his bottle of beer as if it was the most fascinating thing in the world.

Tombak glanced at Zigic.

‘Who let you in?’ he asked, picking up a cleaver from the worktop.

‘The front door was open.’

‘The door is never open.’

‘We’re police, Mr Tombak.’ Zigic flashed his warrant card. ‘DI Zigic, this is DS Ferreira, we’d like to talk to you about the man who broke your wrist.’

Tombak grunted and turned away, taking the cleaver to a cut of belly pork. The meat smelled high, an unhealthy bloom on it. As he sliced off thin strips, pinning it to the chopping board with the fingertips of his left hand, it bled greyish juices. He barked a brief command and the men rose obediently, went out into the back garden. Through the kitchen door Zigic noticed a large shed at the bottom of the garden. Dim light glowing through the newspaper tacked up across its windows.

How many men did Tombak have here? Six in the front room, perhaps six more in the room opposite that and the same again in each of the bedrooms. Three dozen men crammed into a space designed for the classic, four-person nuclear family of the 1970s. Each of them paying him ninety pounds a week and whatever extra he could squeeze out of them.

He didn’t look rich but Zigic knew better than to make snap assumptions with men like Tombak. They lived close to their tenants so they could control them. They needed to watch them every hour of every day.

He hadn’t expected this situation and he cursed himself for arriving unprepared.

‘Can you tell us what happened, Mr Tombak?’

‘I do not wish him to be arrested.’ He threw a handful of pork into the pan. It sizzled as it hit the hot oil. ‘I tell other police this.’

‘He attacked you,’ Zigic said. ‘Broke your arm. Didn’t you want him to be punished for that?’

‘It was fair fight. He won.’ More meat went into the pan. ‘Is an English problem you have, say I lose fight this man must be punished. No. If I win is fair, if he wins is also fair. I make no complaint to this.’ He turned away from the stove. ‘Where is your woman?’

Ferreira was gone.

Tombak barrelled past, shouting in a language Zigic didn’t understand. He flung open the first door he came to, catching a man standing naked at the foot of his mattress. He scrambled for his trousers but the door was closing already.

Zigic shouted to Ferreira, got no reply.

Tombak threw open another door, sleeping men, darkness, a radio playing at a low pitch. He swore in English, slammed the door again and made for the stairs. The whole house shook under the weight of his rage.

Upstairs a couple of men were queuing for the bathroom, each stripped to the waist and holding washbags. Tombak shouted at them and they averted their eyes, looking at their feet, shuffling where they stood. They were cowed and emaciated, like something from a famine zone.

A loft ladder blocked the landing and Tombak inched around it to get to the bedrooms. A tanned face with thick glasses and blunt, black hair appeared in the hatch for a split second and disappeared again with a crack of timber.

‘You cannot search my house without warrant. I know my rights. I have lawyers,’ Tombak snarled, opening another door. ‘Where is she?’

Ferreira came out of the bathroom, smiled at Tombak.

‘Sorry, sir, women’s troubles.’ She smoothed her hand over her abdomen, made a queasy face.

‘How many men are living here?’ Zigic asked.

‘Eight.’

‘I’ve seen at least a dozen.’

‘They want bring friends home after work sometimes. I do not stop them.’ Tombak folded his arms across his chest, nodded to himself. ‘You want a bribe? Yes? To keep the council from visiting me?’

‘We want some straight answers from you,’ Zigic said. ‘If we don’t get them this place will be cleared by the end of the week.’

Tombak leaned against a rickety banister thick with layers of old gloss paint. It complained but held.

‘I bribe you or I bribe them. Is all the same. Council man is cheaper than police.’ He threw his hand up. ‘Ask question then.’

Zigic gestured to the men waiting outside the bathroom.

‘You’re not worried about them hearing?’

‘They speak no English. Stupid Bulgarians, only good for moving thing from here to there. Look – hey, Pyotr, you want to suck my cock?’

The man blinked, his eyes roving between the three of them. ‘I speak no English.’

Tombak laughed. ‘See. Ignorant Bulgarian peasant.’

‘Where were you between three and six this morning?’ Ferreira asked.

‘I was here. I get up at five, get these animals up and ready for go to work.’ He smiled with half his mouth. ‘I have plenty witness. You see how many men I have. All tell you same thing. I am here. Go nowhere. Do nothing. I am here whole time.’

‘Did you know the man who attacked you?’ Zigic asked. ‘Jaan Stepulov – he was an Estonian. Like you.’

‘No.’

‘Was he living here?’

‘I say. I do not know him.’

‘So you’re saying he never stayed here?’ Ferreira asked.

Zigic caught something in her tone and realised Tombak had too. What was she really doing in the bathroom? There was water running now and yet nobody had gone in or come out. She’d spoken to someone and covered for them when Tombak came charging after her.

‘We know Stepulov was living here,’ she said.

Tombak straightened. ‘Who tells you this lie?’

‘We have a positive identification, Mr Tombak,’ she said. ‘Who gave us it is none of your business. Not until the trial, then the CPS will hand over everything to your lawyers.’

‘Get out of my house.’

Tombak grabbed Ferreira’s arm and tried to bundle her towards the stairs but she twisted sharply, using his momentum, and slammed him into the banister, driving his broken wrist against the newel post. He dropped to his knees, a suppressed howl vibrating in his throat.

‘Assaulting a police officer,’ Zigic said. ‘Think yourself lucky you’re in England, Tombak, we’re only going to arrest you for that.’

He took Tombak downstairs and out onto the street, handed him over to the uniforms waiting on the kerb. Before they pulled off he told them to have the doctor check him out, then called the station for more support.

All of those men in the house to question. Someone had spoken up about Stepulov already and he only needed one of them to be brave enough to break Tombak’s alibi.

IT WAS A
long few hours of repetitive conversation in broken English and pidgin Polish, conducted in the back kitchen under a fizzing strip light with the smoke from dozens of counterfeit cigarettes thick in the air. After a while the meat Tombak had left cooking on the gas hob stuck and burned and one of the men threw the pan in the sink. He ran cold water on it but the stink of scorched flesh didn’t go away, it just altered slightly, becoming even more like the smell of Stepulov, dead in the shed that morning, his body doused but still smouldering.

Zigic told one of the uniforms to open the window and thought, for the first time in years, of smoking a cigarette. Anything to smother that smell.

Most of the men were reluctant to speak, the presence of uniforms making them nervous and small even though every one of them was on legal papers and Zigic made sure they realised there would be no problems with immigration even if they weren’t.

He just needed some facts on record and right then he would have given anything he had in order to get them.

The man Ferreira had spoken to in the bathroom changed his story once they took Tombak away and he looked terrified as she questioned him again, getting increasingly frustrated, colour rising in her cheeks. She kept repeating what he had told her and he kept denying it.