Long Way Home (9 page)

‘Stepulov was here before Christmas,’ she said. ‘You were sharing a room with him.’

‘No.’

‘You told me you worked the same shifts.’

‘No. I say nothing about this.’

In the end Zigic told him to go and Ferreira retreated to the back garden where some of the men were drinking beers and passing round a bottle of vodka. It was on her breath when she returned but she seemed calmer so he said nothing.

They had statements from four men confirming that Jaan Stepulov was living at the house when the fight between him and Tombak broke in December. They gave varying accounts of its cause but all agreed that Stepulov was in the right without being able to say why precisely.

Tombak wasn’t just their landlord, Zigic discovered. He owned the house but he owned the men too, took money off them for board and food, controlled how and when their wages were paid and where they worked. The shifts were irregular and unpredictable, nobody staying at one place long enough to know exactly how much they should be earning. Tombak was getting rich off them and they resented it, but the situation was the same everywhere and Zigic felt their resignation heavy on him.

Stepulov wasn’t prepared to stand for it, he suspected, and that was probably what they fought over.

The next man came into the kitchen. He was the oldest yet, late forties, sturdy and tanned with wavy black hair going to grey. He shook their hands with an air of stiff formality, his skin calloused and dry. He wore a narrow gold wedding ring and a couple of saints’ medals on a thin chain which hung outside his T-shirt. He looked powerful around the arms but age was catching up with him and there was softness at his belly and ribs.

‘DI Zigic. This is DS Ferreira.’

‘Marco Perez.’ He sat down at the table and turned towards Ferreira, started speaking to her in Portuguese.

‘He says his English is bad.’

‘OK, you do this,’ Zigic said.

Their conversation proceeded at pace and Zigic watched without understanding more than an occasional word, noticing how Ferreira’s voice mellowed when she spoke her native language, becoming higher and almost melodious.

‘He knew Stepulov,’ she said, and Perez kept talking, glancing once or twice at Zigic but always returning to her. His face was becoming more serious, drawing into a pained expression. ‘He saw the fight . . . it was over a broken kettle?’ she asked Perez again and he nodded, went on. ‘Yeah, a kettle got broken and Tombak said Stepulov did it and he was going to take the money out of his wages.’

‘Was that all there was to it?’ Zigic asked.

Ferreira put her hand up. Perez leaned towards her, his voice dropping low, and he spoke in an uninterrupted stream for a minute or more. A light came into Ferreira’s eyes and her mouth opened as if she wanted to say something but she didn’t, only listened, and Zigic wanted to ask her what the man was saying but he looked so serious he decided not to.

‘Stepulov’s brother was here,’ she said. ‘Viktor.’

‘When?’

‘Last year. Late summer – they were harvesting strawberries. Jaan came here to look for Viktor. He told Mr Perez because he’s been here longest – they were friends,’ Ferreira said.

‘How? He doesn’t speak English.’

‘He doesn’t speak it well, he said.’

‘But well enough for them to have a conversation about Viktor?’ Zigic asked. He studied Perez’s face, saw nothing which looked like dishonesty, but still it didn’t make sense. ‘What did Jaan tell you, Mr Perez?’

‘His brother Viktor, he is not phoning home for two month,’ Perez said, stumbling around the words. ‘He comes here to see him but Viktor is already gone.’

‘Did you know Viktor?’

Perez nodded and started to speak to Ferreira again, emotion thickening his voice. She reached across the table and put her hand on his shoulder, leaned her face into his. When she spoke he shook his head and talked over her, visibly agitated.

‘What is it?’

‘His cousin is missing,’ Ferreira said. ‘That’s why Stepulov confided in him. Mr Perez’s cousin disappeared early last year, he said he was going back to Lisbon but he never arrived and nobody’s heard from him since. They think he must be dead.’

‘Was he living here too?’

‘He was in Peterborough but not here,’ Ferreira said. ‘He couldn’t find work so Mr Perez gave him the money to get a bus back. That was it. Dropped off the edge of the earth.’

‘Has he filed a missing persons report?’

Ferreira sat back, gave the man some space. ‘I’ve told him to come in and I’ll take care of it.’

‘How did Stepulov know his brother had been here?’

She asked Perez.

‘He doesn’t know but the brother was only here for a few days.’

‘Another fight with Tombak?’ Zigic asked.

‘He got offered a better job and he left to take it.’

‘Does he know where?’

‘
Onde ele va?
’

‘
Eu nao sei
.’

Ferreira shook her head. ‘He didn’t say.’

‘I bet Tombak knows,’ Zigic said. ‘And I’ll bet he’s still taking a cut off the top of his money too.’

Ferreira called in a PC with bad skin and too much product on his hair, told him to take Mr Perez to the station and fill out a missing persons report. It would be fruitless but she needed to feel like she was doing something for the man. He’d give them his cousin’s details and they would disappear into the system, swallowed up among all of the other missing men who nobody looked for. The husbands who stormed out after an argument and never came back, the depressed and drunk and transient thousands who were old enough to take care of themselves until they were fished out of a river, bloated and unrecognisable.

Perez’s cousin probably didn’t want to be found, Zigic thought. He’d come over here to work and it hadn’t panned out how he expected. He was probably too ashamed to go home and admit the failure, have it rubbed in his face by family members who’d say ‘I told you so’.

Ferreira heaved a huge sigh and started to roll a cigarette at the table, taking tobacco out of a battered tin with the Virgin Mary on the lid.

‘How many more are there?’ she asked.

‘Just a couple.’

‘Tombak’s alibi’s going to hold.’

Zigic was getting that impression himself. Even the people who hated Tombak agreed that he was here all morning, banging on doors and kicking anyone too slow to haul themselves out of bed.

‘It doesn’t mean he’s not involved.’

‘We need to find Viktor,’ she said, sealing her cigarette. ‘If he’s still alive.’

ZIGIC’S MOBILE RANG
as he pulled into the station car park; DCS Riggott.

‘The press officer’s after your balls, son. She had to shove young Bobby out on the steps for the hacks to play with.’

‘He likes the camera,’ Zigic said, climbing out of the car.

‘And I like some rank on the teatime news. Show the civilians we’re taking them seriously. You’ll have a good excuse – and that’s not a question – you
will
have a good excuse.’

‘We’ve brought a suspect in.’

‘Good. Come up and tell Daddy all about it.’

The night shift was ticking by in CID, nothing much to do yet, too early for the drinks to have kicked in. A young woman in a dark suit was stationed at his old desk, sitting with her legs tucked under herself, earphones in, eyes fixed on her Kindle, and he wondered if she was reading about fake crimes while she waited for a real one to break.

The desk outside Riggott’s office was empty, his receptionist gone for the night, the dust cover slipped neatly over her computer and not a paper clip out of place.

Zigic knocked on the DCS’s door and was told to come in.

Riggott’s office had one of the best views in the station, windows on two sides overlooking the rolling parkland of Ferry Meadows, dark clusters of woodland and the river cutting through it. But not now.

It was dark out and the reflection of the office was superimposed over the view, cream walls and framed hunting prints like something from another century. Riggott fancied himself the country gent away from work and Zigic imagined it was an appealing idyll when you’d grown up in West Belfast, watching guns being put to their proper use. There was a pair of stuffed cock pheasants in a glass case on top of a filing cabinet and Riggott would inform anyone who asked, and many who didn’t, that he’d bagged them on a shoot with the Chief Constable.

Zigic had told Anna about it, expecting her to laugh at his boss’s pretensions, but she gave him a serious look and told him he should think about getting a shotgun licence.

Riggott had his feet up on the corner of his desk, handmade chestnut oxfords gleaming under the light from an anglepoise lamp, while he flipped through a copy of that night’s
Evening Telegraph
.

‘Well, they spelled your name right, Ziggy.’ He threw the paper aside and gestured for him to sit down. ‘Drink? Course you will.’

Riggott produced another tumbler from a drawer and poured a double measure of Connemara whiskey, pushed it across the desk. ‘Twelve years old that, like licking peat off a witch’s tit.
Sláinte.
’

‘
Zivili.
’ Zigic took a sip, tasted dirt and scorched wood and forced himself not to pull a face.

‘So, you’ve released the racist householders and brought me what?’

Zigic debriefed him about the fight between Stepulov and Tombak, explained the situation at the house on Burmer Road and their clutch of unwilling informants.

‘Break one of them and get him charged. We don’t want this becoming politicised.’ Riggott stared into his drink, a look of pure disgust on his raddled features. ‘Press is already floating the ENL angle.’

‘Where did they get that from?’

Riggott spread his hands wide, whiskey sloshing up the side of his glass. ‘You’re in charge of the investigation, Ziggy, I just sit here signing time sheets and adding up how much you spend on translators – which is down this month, by the way, gold star for you.’

‘There’s a lot of graffiti in the area.’ Zigic took another sip of his drink. It was getting better. ‘I don’t see it though, they’re more mouth than action.’

‘You know who Peterborough are playing this weekend?’ Riggott asked. ‘We’ve got Luton at home. You’ll have ENL wankstains coming up by the coachload. Better stamp on the possibility before their publicity department starts printing up flyers.’

Back in Hate Crimes Ferreira and Wahlia were standing smoking near the open window. The smell of Ferreira’s rough tobacco had filled the room already, even with a breeze blowing through that was strong enough to lift the sheets of paper tacked to the murder board. Tombak’s mugshot was up there now, promoted above the Barlows’.

Wahlia saw Zigic first and flicked his cigarette out of the window like a naughty schoolboy, nudged Ferreira who was talking in a low voice, her eyes fixed on the floor between her booted feet.

‘Why have I just been asked about ENL?’

‘Don’t look at us,’ Ferreira said. She took a final long drag on her roll-up and pitched the butt out of the window. ‘There’s graffiti at the top of Highbury Street – so they’re active in the area.’

‘Is there any chatter on the boards?’

‘I haven’t checked yet,’ Ferreira said. ‘I’d be surprised if they’re not shouting about it already. I’ll look if you want.’

Zigic glanced at the clock. Almost nine. He wanted to go home and wash the smell of dead fires and grinding poverty off his body.

‘It can wait until tomorrow,’ he said.

‘What about Tombak?’

‘He can wait too. We’ve got nothing to hit him with yet anyway. Go on, get off home the pair of you.’

‘Pub?’ Wahlia asked.

‘Not tonight.’

Ferreira pulled on her coat, whipped her long black hair out of her collar. ‘I could go for a quick one.’

Zigic caught a look pass between them but decided it was none of his business. If they wanted to save themselves a grim trawl through the bars by hooking up who was he to interfere? As long as they managed to maintain a professional distance at work he’d let it go.

He closed the window and switched the lights off as he left the office. In the stairwell he passed one of the regular cleaners, an ageless Latvian woman with hennaed hair and a lot of thin gold necklaces stacked on top of her tabard. Another cleaner was in reception as he went out, mopping up blood spots from the floor. The guilty party was sitting handcuffed on a chair, woozy-looking with a split lip weeping onto his pink silk tie. He touched his knuckles to his mouth and Zigic saw bone, very white, through the ripped skin.

He pulled out of the station car park onto Bretton Parkway, a knot of traffic at the roundabout but it cleared quickly, then he was through the dark cordon of Muckland Woods and into Castor, the village huddled in a shallow basin, two miles from the rough tumult of Bretton’s mid-rise council blocks and ‘problem families’, but it felt like more as he passed the millionaires’ houses on The Heights, then small limestone cottages all warmly lit and inviolate-looking, the Royal Oak with a fire up the chimney, the village hall hosting a movie night, which he remembered just then Anna had wanted to go to. Some Italian film they’d missed when it was on at the John Clare in Peterborough and missed somehow at Stamford Arts Centre too. He would buy a copy online later, get a good bottle of wine and cook her something special. Involtini. Maybe some of the veal saltimbocca she liked.

She was in the kitchen when he got home and he sat for a moment in the car watching her move in the lit window, unaware of him. He’d lost count of the number of times he’d told her to close the blinds at night but she never did and he knew it was this place, it felt so perfect and remote that it was difficult to believe anything bad could ever happen here.

She’d been to the hairdresser today and he noticed how differently she moved with her highlighted hair freshly styled and still bouncing, turning and catching sight of herself in the black glass.

He got out of the car and walked down through the side gate, let himself in through the back door and she was pouring him a glass of wine before he had even taken off his jacket. She held it away from him until he kissed her, then put it in his hand.