Tell No Tales (28 page)

‘I told you, he went home.’

‘His phone’s switched off,’ Zigic said. ‘It’s been switched off for days.’

‘I know. I have tried to call him to tell him about Jelena.’

‘And we have reason to believe he hasn’t left the country. We think he’s likely still in Peterborough.’ Zigic held her gaze, seeing something like fear in her eyes. ‘He’s been in touch with you, hasn’t he?’

‘No.’

‘We only want to talk to him about his friend, Sofia. He isn’t in any trouble.’

‘Why would I care if he is in trouble?’ she said, spitting out the words. ‘He is nothing to me now.’

It sounded like bravado, the same behaviour Zigic had observed in her right from the start, denying weakness, rejecting comfort. She did care though, and she couldn’t hide it; her shoulders lifting defensively, her chin dipping. She stared him down, defying him to contradict her.

Zigic knew there was no point attempting it, but she was hiding something and he wouldn’t leave until he’d teased it out of her.

‘Why did Tomas leave you?’

‘Money. He did not want to pay his part of the bills. I said I would not keep him. So he left.’

‘How long were you together?’

‘Three years.’ She sucked her bottom lip into her mouth. ‘Nearly three years.’

‘Did you meet over here?’

‘Of course over here. I have lived in Peterborough since I was twenty.’

‘What about Tomas?’ Zigic asked. ‘When did he arrive?’

‘Why are you asking me these questions?’ Sofia demanded. ‘They will not help you find him. He has gone back to Poznań. Ask people there.’

‘We’re asking you,’ Ferreira said, her voice low and hard.

She moved to the foot of Sofia’s bed, stood with her hands curled around the bars.

‘In case you’ve forgotten, you’re in custody here, Sofia. You’ve assaulted a police officer.’ Sofia bristled visibly, folded her free arm across her abdomen as Ferreira went on. ‘It’s an offence we take very seriously. Three years in prison seriously. Followed by deportation to . . . where is it you’re from again?’

Sofia turned to Zigic, switching into Serbo-Croat. ‘You are a traitor to your people.’

Zigic ignored the comment. ‘We want to help you, Sofia, but we need you to help us.’

‘So you threaten me? You are no better than the police at home.’

‘I don’t want to see you sent back there,’ he said. ‘But we believe Lukas has killed three men and Tomas is the only person who seems to know him. We need to speak to him and one way or another we’ll find him. It would be best all round if you’re the one who tells us where he is.’

She looked down at her stomach, her arm pulled defensively across it, bruised from elbow to wrist. ‘If I knew where he was I would tell you.’

But Zigic didn’t believe her.

‘Has he threatened you?’

Her face flushed. ‘He would not dare.’

‘What about Lukas? Do you know where he lives? Where he works maybe?’

‘I only saw him once.’

‘OK. Tomas probably has gone home,’ Zigic said. ‘We’re going to need some details on his family, friends over there. What’s Tomas’s surname?’

‘Kaminski. I do not know anything of his family.’

‘Do you seriously expect us to believe that you lived with him for three years and you never met his family?’

‘He would not be here if they were important to him,’ she said.

‘Then why did he go home to them?’ Ferreira asked.

‘You must ask him this.’ Sofia rearranged her pillows and burrowed down the bed, pulling the cover up to her chin. ‘I am tired. My doctor says I am to rest. You must leave.’

Ferreira shot him a questioning glance but Zigic stood up and gestured towards the door. They left without another word.

What else was there to say? Zigic felt he could sit in that small, dim room for hours without breaking through the wall of denial she had constructed. He didn’t believe for one second that Tomas had gone back to Poznań and, despite her grudging explanation of an argument, he felt sure Sofia knew his whereabouts.

‘If we’re seriously considering Tomas as a suspect we need to move fast.’

‘Call Bobby and Parr, get them into the office.’ Zigic opened the stairwell door and she slipped through ahead of him, eyes on her mobile. ‘We need to make sure Tomas hasn’t actually left the country.’

Maybe Tomas had fled back to Poland after killing Didi – if he was involved – but it was Asif Khalid’s murder they needed to focus on now, and if he’d returned to the city to take part in that attack, with no knowledge that he was a suspect, there was only one place he’d be staying.

35

EARLY AFTERNOON ON
Green Street was quiet, some of the residents out on their second or third jobs, the rest enjoying a few hours’ leisure before the evening made its fast march towards night and bed and everything starting again on Monday. A man was washing his car on the pavement opposite Sofia and Jelena’s house, alternately soaping the bonnet and flicking water at his small daughter as she squealed and laughed, ducking away behind the rear bumper.

As the uniforms climbed out of the patrol car he called to her and sent her back inside, following a few seconds later, bucket in hand, only to reappear at the front window with his wife.

Zigic sent PC Hale down the side of the house, heard him fighting with the gate for a moment before it opened creakily. He looked up to the bedroom windows where the curtains were drawn, no indication whether Tomas Kaminski was inside or not.

He couldn’t believe the man would be stupid enough to hang around if he was guilty. Couldn’t believe they would get that lucky either, but his nervous system ignored the argument and he felt adrenalin surge through his veins as he unlocked the front door.

PC Moore charged straight up the stairs, Ferreira headed for the kitchen, baton held low by her side, and a few seconds later Zigic heard the back door open, PC Hale blundering in, Ferreira snapping at him. Then a call of ‘clear’ sounded from the top of the stairs and the expected feeling of disappointment sucked all the tension out of the moment, leaving the four of them standing in an otherwise empty house, chilled by its lack of recent occupation and the lingering shadows of Sofia’s grief.

Zigic dismissed Moore and Hale, who looked irritated that they’d been brought out for a scuffle which never materialised. Their radios were going as they left the house though and from the sound of the report they would get one soon enough.

‘Wouldn’t be fun if it was easy, hey?’ Ferreira said.

Zigic smiled. ‘It’s like you don’t want a weekend.’

‘Shall we toss the place then?’

‘What do you want, up or down?’

‘Down.’

He started up the stairs. They were steep and narrow, with treads that creaked underfoot, betraying how old and badly maintained the house was despite the care Sofia and Jelena had gone to in decorating it. The landing was laid with striped runners, abstract prints in box frames on the walls, everything bright and clean.

The master bedroom was at the back of the house and the tidiness stopped at the door. The double bed was unmade, clothes on the floor, shoes sitting where they had been kicked off. He opened the wardrobe and found enough of Tomas’s things inside it to suggest that he hadn’t actually left Sofia. He could have packed a bag to go home for a few days and left so much, but this didn’t look like the aftermath of a broken relationship.

Unless Sofia was the sentimental type, which he had seen no evidence of.

She was the kind of woman to throw clothes out of the window, he thought, pile them up in the back garden and start a bonfire.

No, Tomas hadn’t left her, Zigic felt certain of that.

In the bedside cabinet, a shiny white thing from IKEA, he found men’s underwear and socks, a few condoms dropped in among them, a heavy metal watch still in its box. It was relatively decent, perhaps two hundred pounds’ worth. Would Tomas have left that here?

Zigic checked under the bed, found nothing but dust, tried the chest of drawers, carefully searching the folded jumpers and T-shirts, a mix of Tomas’s and Sofia’s, hoping to come across a badly hidden passport, something which would indicate where Tomas was, but closed them again empty-handed.

Beneath him he heard Ferreira rattling around in the living room.

‘Anything?’

‘Not yet,’ she shouted back.

He went into the bathroom; more of Tomas’s personal items in there too, a navy-blue bathrobe hanging from a hook, shaving things and cologne, antibiotics with his name on the sticker, the prescription four months old.

As he went back across the landing he heard Ferreira open the cupboard under the stairs and begin riffling through its contents. She was good at this. He didn’t know how she did it but she seemed to magnetise towards things which didn’t want to be found. He guessed it was growing up with three brothers, always having to hide her most precious belongings from then. When you knew how to hide things you knew where to find them.

The smaller bedroom at the front of the house was like a teenage girl’s, painted hot pink, with patterned curtains drawn against the street, candy-stripe bedding and sequinned cushions. It seemed far too young for Jelena but perhaps it was partly Sofia’s doing, another way to infantilise her little sister and keep her close, convince her she wasn’t ready for a serious relationship, that Anthony Gilbert was too old for her.

He’d crept into the room though.

On the floor around a wicker bin he found the ripped-up remains of bouquet notelets and cinema stubs for romcoms, lots of pieces of glossy print which a few minutes’ patient reassembly revealed to be photographs of Jelena and Gilbert.

It was the group one including Sofia and Tomas which drew his attention though. An overlit bar, everyone drunk and grinning madly, and they looked genuinely comfortable with one another. Close. Sofia’s arm around Gilbert’s waist, his draped across her shoulder, the other holding Jelena tight to him.

Sofia hadn’t hated him right then, Zigic thought. She might have been play-acting for Jelena’s sake but he didn’t think so. Her eyes were red, her face slack, too much drink inside her by that point in the night to keep up the pantomime.

What had happened to break the link? he wondered, as he left Jelena’s bedroom and headed back downstairs. Had Sofia seen something in Gilbert she hadn’t noticed before? Something she didn’t like? Or was it the opposite – did she get a little too close to Gilbert? Was it a simple case of sibling rivalry?

They were missing something.

Zigic went into the kitchen, found the back door standing open, letting in a chill breeze which carried the scent of woodsmoke and recently mown grass, and went out to where Ferreira was standing at the foot of the garden, peering into a wheelie bin.

As he approached she stepped back, a plastic carrier bag in her gloved hand.

‘We’ve got blood,’ she said, holding it open for him.

The bag was stuffed with clothing, too much for the size of it, balled up and crumpled. On the top was a pair of dark green combat trousers, heavily stained with telltale brown-red marks.

‘There could be an innocent explanation,’ he said.

Ferreira nodded. ‘There could.’

‘It’s a lot of blood though.’

‘That’s just what I was thinking.’

Carefully she lifted the waistband of the trousers to expose the label inside. H&M menswear, a thirty-four-inch waist, thirty-six-inch leg.

‘This has to be Tomas’s clothing,’ she said. ‘Neither of the women would be wearing this size.’

On the other side of the fence something clanked and they both looked towards it, but the person was already moving, feet crunching along a gravel path back towards the house.

‘Put it back and call forensics,’ Zigic said. ‘Tell them this is top priority.’

His phone rang as he was passing through the hallway. Grieves.

‘I’ve found them, sir. Half an hour before Didi was murdered they show up on Lincoln Road, near the junction with Green Street, they go into the same cafe we saw them at earlier, they have a drink, then they head north towards the locus and that’s the last I can find.’ She swallowed. ‘They don’t appear again on any of the surrounding streets.’

‘Have you found them leaving the locus?’ Zigic asked, pausing with his hand on the newel post.

‘Yes, there’s a ten-minute gap then Tomas reappears –’

‘Alone?’

‘Yes. He takes the same route, minus the cafe, and disappears again at Green Street.’

‘Great work. Thanks, Deb.’

Zigic went outside, thinking of Tomas and Lukas setting out through this same door the night they killed Didi, leaving Sofia and Jelena at home, watching TV or already in bed, no idea what they were planning. And then Tomas returning alone? In bloodstained clothing, high from the kill?

He wondered which one of them had actually killed Didi, because the CCTV footage proved it wasn’t a joint endeavour. Which one of them had looked on, admiring, enjoying his friend’s brutality? Which of them was the man who had then turned to the camera and raised a Nazi salute?

The state of Tomas’s clothes suggested he was the likely perpetrator but until forensics had been over them everything was open to debate. Maybe they weren’t Tomas’s clothes at all.

Zigic knocked on the neighbours’ door and it was answered quickly by a small, moon-faced woman with a floral apron over her clothes.

‘Mrs O’Brien? Detective Inspector Zigic. You spoke to one of my colleagues a couple of days ago . . .’

‘Oh, Nicola, yes, lovely young woman.’ She beamed, showing a set of false teeth slightly too large for her mouth. ‘Will you come in, Inspector?’

He followed her into the hallway, past the living room where a television was playing with the sound up high, the roar of a football crowd crashing over the muttered commentary of an elderly man. He glanced towards the door as Zigic passed, put his hand up in a vague greeting or dismissal.

‘Best we go in the back,’ Mrs O’Brien said. ‘Himself won’t stand any blather when the match is on.’

A stew was simmering on the hob, filling the kitchen with a salty, sour aroma. There was stout in there, Zigic thought, and sure enough he saw a small glass of it on the kitchen table where Mrs O’Brien had been sitting, flicking through the
Sunday Mirror
.