Tell No Tales (15 page)

‘Andrea Dymek?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m sorry but I have bad news.’

‘Pyotr?’

‘Yes. Do you speak English?’

‘No.’

Zigic continued in Polish, stumbling around the words as he explained that there had been an accident. He’d learned the language in the fields, working with men like her husband during a rebellious summer spent out on the fens during his teens, and the vocabulary he’d picked up wasn’t fit for this job, too colloquial, too basic. He wanted to soften the blow somehow but the words weren’t there, and as she cried he kept apologising.

‘He saved a woman. He was a hero.’

‘He should have saved himself,’ Mrs Dymek wailed. ‘Who was this woman? Was he fucking her?’

Zigic knew that word.

‘No, Mrs Dymek. No, she was a stranger to him.’

‘Then why did he do that?’

‘He was a good man,’ Zigic said.

She let out a wail which hit him like a gut punch. ‘He was not a good man. Never.’

The phone went dead in his hand.

19

SOFIA SAT ON
the edge of Jelena’s bed, the duvet cover thrown back and rumpled just as she’d left it, clutching a pillow to her chest, inhaling the smell of her sister’s hair, the faint trace of perfume. Her face was damp but her tears had dried up.

She’d been there for hours, ever since Zigic left, had dragged her battered body up the stairs and lain down in the space on the right side of the bed where Jelena always slept. She wanted to sleep but she couldn’t, despite the fatigue which made her limbs feel like lead and the hollow ache in her chest. She wanted some respite, just an hour of oblivion, but it wouldn’t come.

Even the pills weren’t helping.

Her mind kept ticking away. Her thoughts looping, how she should have protected Jelena and what would happen now she was gone. Gilbert was dying and that was good, but what if he survived?

There was too much left unfinished between them.

Jelena had lied to her, stayed in contact with Gilbert, made plans with him even though she’d said she’d ended it.

That was what Zigic believed and as she sat on Jelena’s bed she realised it was true. All of those conversations she’d overheard late at night, whispered in here behind a locked door, the ones Jelena had denied the next morning. She should have seen what was going on.

She pressed her nose into the cushion and looked at the dress hanging on the back of the bedroom door, a short tight thing in purple leopard print.

Jelena had bought it a week ago, had squealed when she’d found it on the sale rail in Warehouse and held it up to herself for Sofia’s opinion. She’d thought it looked cheap but she didn’t say, only followed her into the changing rooms and waited for her to try it on. She’d come out from behind the curtain beaming, standing on tiptoes in the dress and a pair of striped knee socks, saying she would need to borrow Sofia’s best black shoes to wear with it.

The tags were still on the dress and Sofia felt fresh tears pricking her eyes as she realised Jelena would never wear it. Those tags would stay there and the night out they’d planned – putting Tomas and Gilbert behind them – would never happen. No more nights like that ever again.

She went over to Jelena’s dressing table, saw the purple nail varnish she’d chosen to go with her new dress, one more bottle added to her collection.

Sofia’s eyes drifted to the mirror, ringed with ticket stubs from the cinema and notes from bouquets Gilbert had sent her in the early days, photographs of them together taken in booths, one she remembered Gilbert buying from a photographer in a bar – him and Jelena, her and Tomas. She snatched at it and tore it into pieces, took the next one and the next and ripped them up, the stubs and the notes, dropped them into the bin.

Immediately she regretted it.

She sank to her knees and retrieved a scrap lying on the floor, half of Jelena’s smiling face, one brilliant-blue eye staring out at her, and she wept again, every sob tearing afresh at the slowly healing tissue around her ribs.

One more pill. Just to take the edge off.

When she was halfway down the stairs somebody rapped on the front door and Sofia froze. They would go away. Her suffering was not so important it would keep them from whatever they wanted to watch on television.

The letter box snapped open and her neighbour Mrs O’Brien looked in.

‘Sofia, poppet, I’ve brought you some soup.’

‘I do not –’ She choked on the words.

‘Now, you don’t have to eat it this minute, we can put it in the fridge and you can heat it up later if you’re feeling peckish.’ The old woman had a soft, musical voice which Sofia had always liked. It was the kind of voice you never heard at home. ‘Would you let me in, lovey?’

Sofia unlocked the front door and Mrs O’Brien bustled in, a blur of motion in a long green cardigan. ‘I’ll just pop this in the kitchen for you.’

Sofia followed her in there and began to clear the debris of yesterday’s breakfast from the small pine table. Mrs O’Brien took hold of her hands.

‘No you don’t. You just sit down there and I’ll have a quick tidy for you. You don’t want to look at all this mess, do you?’

The plate with the remnants of Jelena’s last breakfast was gone in an instant, a slice of toast with one mouthful taken scraped into the bin, the plate put in the sink, and Sofia felt a gnawing in her chest. If she had made her finish it – if they had left the house five minutes later – would she still be alive?

Mrs O’Brien was talking to her but Sofia didn’t listen to the words, only the rise and fall of her voice as she stacked the clean plates on the draining board.

She was a kind woman, one of those small round dumpling women who existed for nothing else in life but to care for other people. Sofia remembered just before Christmas when Jelena had caught flu and been too sick to go into work. She was delirious, burning with fever, saying nonsensical things in her sleep, and Mrs O’Brien had stayed with her during the day while Sofia was at the farm. She was the sort of woman their mother should have been.

‘Is this from the people at your work?’ Mrs O’Brien asked, looking at the box of vegetables on the counter. ‘Stupid lot they are sending you that. Why don’t you go in the front? I’ll bring you through some tea.’

Sofia returned to the sofa, pressed another pill out of its foil and dry-swallowed it, then sank down into her nest of pillows. She closed her eyes and when she opened them again Mrs O’Brien was sitting in the armchair watching her.

‘Have you told Tomas?’ she asked. ‘He was very fond of Jelena, wasn’t he?’

Sofia nodded. ‘I should tell him, yes.’

Mrs O’Brien fetched the telephone from the hallway and Sofia dialled his mobile number, thinking of what best to say, feeling fresh tears creeping up on her. It went to the answer service and the sound of his voice made her chest hurt.

‘It is switched off.’

‘The silly boy will have forgot to charge it,’ Mrs O’Brien said. ‘You know what they’re like when you’re not around to tell them what to do.’

Sofia ended the call without leaving a message. ‘I will try later.’

Car doors slammed outside and through the slatted wooden blinds Sofia saw a man and woman walking through the front gate. A few seconds later the doorbell rang and Mrs O’Brien rose from the armchair, her bones creaking.

‘Please, tell them to go away,’ Sofia said. ‘Whoever they are, I do not want to see them.’

Mrs O’Brien drew her cardigan around herself and marched out of the room. Sofia stared at the wall trying to ignore the voices in the hallway which were getting louder, coming closer as the front door closed.

A woman came into the living room, smiling broadly, showing very white teeth. She was small and blonde, with bad skin under too much make-up.

‘Hello there, Sofia,’ she said, holding out her hand for Sofia to shake it. ‘My name’s Nicola, I work with Detective Inspector Zigic. Dushan. You remember him?’

‘Why are you here?’

Nicola pulled one of the armchairs – Jelena’s chair – closer to the sofa.

‘Dushan told me a little about you and Jelena – I am terribly sorry.’

Sofia glared at her through stinging pink eyes. ‘What do you want?’

‘There’s a gentleman from the
Evening Telegraph
who’d like to talk with you about Jelena. Both of you, your lives in Peterborough. Well, I’m sure you understand.’

Of course she understood. The police wanted witnesses and the newspaper wanted to sell copies.

‘I will see him.’

The man came into the room then, Mrs O’Brien at his heels. He smiled at her too but there was a more genuine warmth in it and Sofia thought he looked kind.

‘Hi, Sofia, I’m Paul.’

She shook his hand.

‘Would I make everyone a cup of tea?’ Mrs O’Brien asked.

‘That would be lovely,’ Nicola said, and hustled her out of the living room, complimenting her cardigan and asking where exactly in Ireland she was from.

The man sat down. He asked if she minded him recording the conversation and he placed his phone on the arm of the sofa when she told him it was fine.

‘So, how long have you and Jelena been in Peterborough?’

‘Six years nearly.’

‘She was a very pretty girl,’ he said.

‘She was beautiful.’

‘You look very alike.’

‘No,’ Sofia said. ‘Jelena was always the beautiful one.’

The reporter began to ask the questions he’d come here for, ones the paper and the police would be happy to print. He asked about their childhood home and what had brought them to Peterborough, their work at the farm and did they enjoy it, about what Jelena liked to do, what her hopes for the future were. Bringing her to life so she could die all over again on the front page.

And then there were no more questions and he was putting away his things, thanking her for talking to him. They left in a bluster of condolences, the woman insisting that she should rest now. ‘Jelena wouldn’t want you to make yourself ill.’

Sofia crumpled as the front door slammed, hugging her arms around her battered body. The tears running fast down her face and she couldn’t believe she had any left in her.

The phone began to ring and she ignored it.

She might as well be dead. If she was going to feel like this, if it was never going to go away – and it wouldn’t, she knew that.

The phone kept ringing.

‘That’ll be your Tomas,’ Mrs O’Brien shouted.

A fresh sob rocked Sofia’s body but she reached for the phone, knowing it wasn’t him.

‘Hello?’

‘Sofia, it’s DI Zigic.’

‘What do you want?’

‘Just checking how you’re doing. Have you taken any more pills?’

She looked at the packet, half empty now. ‘No.’

‘Has Tomas called?’

‘He is coming home.’

‘Good,’ Zigic said. ‘You need him with you.’

Sofia closed her eyes, pushing away his concern and her own lie. There was only one thing she wanted from Zigic and she steeled herself before she asked the question which had been plaguing her all afternoon.

‘Is Anthony dead?’

Zigic sighed lightly. ‘No, he’s still unconscious but the doctors are confident he’ll make a full recovery now. We’ll be able to question him in the next day or two.’

She lowered the phone without responding and pressed the button to end the call.

‘Was that himself?’ Mrs O’Brien called.

‘No. It was no one important.’

Sofia let her head drop back onto the pillows, too heavy to lift now, full of grief and memories and the lies she had told. She thought of Anthony Gilbert unconscious in a hospital bed and Dushan Zigic sitting in his office waiting for him to wake up.

Gilbert would lie too. Or he would tell the truth. Neither would bring Jelena back.

Better that he died and said nothing at all.

20

‘
HE’S GIVING YOU
the eye,’ Wahlia said, grinning around the bottle of Beck’s he held a couple of inches from his mouth. ‘Short guy, plaid shirt.’

Ferreira glanced towards the bar, saw a sea of short guys in plaid shirts, nothing she liked the look of. Not yet anyway, but it was early still. There were a dozen more of them dotted around the Draper’s Arms, shooting pool at the battle-scarred table down the back, one pumping the quiz machine next to the dark wood booth they’d got lucky nabbing, and as she scoped out the blue velvet sofas near the front door another one walked in.

‘When did this happen?’ She reached across the table, flicked the pocket of Wahlia’s own red-and-charcoal-check shirt. ‘When did plaid become you guys’ off-duty default?’

‘Hey, I was wearing them years before they were fashionable.’

She grinned. ‘Fucking hipster.’

‘I’m not a hipster.’

‘Yeah, you are. Black geek glasses, big-ass turn-ups, ironic digital watch. You’re a hipster, Bobby.’ She sipped her dark rum, ice cubes stinging her lips. ‘How many pairs of vintage Adidas trainers do you own now?’

‘They’re an investment.’

‘Against what? A global old-skool shortage?’

‘It could happen.’ He shook his empty beer bottle at her. ‘We got time?’

Ferreira checked her watch – the band they were going to see wouldn’t get started until ten. It was a five-minute walk through the centre of town. ‘Yeah, quick one.’

‘Double?’

‘Do they come another way?’

Wahlia slid out of the booth and she watched him ease through the crowd to the long mahogany bar, noticing how people moved aside for him. He was short but powerfully built, broad through the shoulders, thick at the arms, hours of gym time giving him the air of a man you did not want to fuck with.

If they knew what a pussycat he was the reactions would be different, she guessed. Hundreds of nights they’d been out together and she’d rarely seen him lose it, even when he was provoked, and that happened often enough, a consequence of his skin colour and the habit he had of sidling up to women who obviously weren’t alone.

He was wasted in the office, she thought. Five years older than her, better educated; he should have progressed further than Detective Constable by now and they all knew it.

Laughter erupted from the booth behind her and a fist pummelled against the wooden partition. It was getting loud already, four hours of post-work drinks loosening ties and tongues, everyone pretending Monday wasn’t coming, seeing the weekend as an endless stretch of glittering possibilities.