Tell No Tales (3 page)

A moment later Devlin came back down the stairs, phone in hand, shaking his head.

‘Sorry, I deleted it.’ He shrugged. ‘There was no point keeping it once he’d paid.’

Zigic crossed his arms. ‘So, basically, I might as well arrest you right now.’

Devlin put his hands up. ‘Look, I can show you the auction details on eBay. It’ll have his buyer ID on there – can’t you get his name and address and everything from that? You can do that, right? They’ll tell you if you ask.’

He started swiping at his phone’s screen.

‘I can’t believe this is happening.’

Zigic looked back out through the open door, saw PC Blake pointing towards the house, a small, blonde woman with a baby on her hip nodding, talking in a fast, animated fashion, her free hand gesturing wildly. Devlin wasn’t their man. Zigic was 90 per cent sure of that. The eBay auction could be an elaborate ruse but he doubted it.

‘Here.’ Devlin handed his mobile over and Zigic checked the completed listing, a small photograph of the white Volvo sitting on his driveway, a sold price of four hundred pounds. ‘Bogdan879 – that’s his user ID.’

Zigic nodded. ‘That’s very helpful, Mr Devlin, thank you. If wouldn’t mind coming down to the station, I need you to make a statement.’

‘Now?’

‘Yes, now. Get dressed.’

PC Blake crossed the road as Zigic went out onto the drive.

‘Lady over the road remembers two ugly-looking blokes turning up the other week,’ Blake said. ‘Arrived in a burgundy Mitsubishi 4x4 with blacked-out windows. Big lads, she reckons, six foot, dark-haired, built like the proverbials. They were here about fifteen minutes, giving the car a good going-over.’

‘And they definitely took it?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘OK, that’s something.’ Zigic nodded, more to himself than Blake, feeling the momentum building, a definite line of inquiry emerging. ‘Take Devlin to the station and park him for a bit.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Zigic climbed back into the car and rang Wahlia as he pulled off the kerb, gave him the eBay user details, told him to work his charms.

‘Any news?’

‘Mel just called, they’ve taken the car away and the road’s reopened.’

‘That’s the council off our backs anyway.’

‘Riggott’s sent up a couple of helpers too,’ Wahlia said. ‘I’ve got them going through the witness statements and the CCTV, thought that’s what you’d want.’

‘Great, thanks, Bobby.’

‘And the press officer’s looking for you.’

Zigic’s hands tightened around the wheel. ‘Of course she is.’

4

FERREIRA WATCHED THE
low loader pull away from the kerb, the Volvo firmly secured to its flatbed, on its way to the garage for the next round of forensics examinations. The perimeter of the locus was quickly dismantled, the police tape stripped away, releasing the vehicles built up beyond it, and within a few seconds the traffic on Lincoln Road was moving freely again. Like nothing had happened.

She cast a last glance at the patch of pavement around the broken remains of the bus shelter, where a council crew were preparing to clean away the final traces of the accident, then walked away in the opposite direction, heading home to change out of the night before’s rank clubbing gear.

Her parents’ pub, The Angel, sat at the quieter end of the New England suburb. It was a sprawling white-painted brick building surrounded by terraced houses carved up into rent-a-room flops, Polish nail bars and Lithuanian hairdressers’, convenience stores specialising in Eastern European produce and counterfeit tobacco, cafes and off-licences with tables out front, the kind of places which were buzzing at 7 a.m. as the night-shift workers came home. She passed a tattoo parlour with a man standing smoking a joint in the open doorway and a second-hand furniture store where the owner was beginning to bring his wares out for the day, pine chairs and old fridges, a sagging sofa already on the pavement.

She rolled a cigarette as she walked, trying not to think about the black-haired man she’d seen impaled on a metal pole from the bus shelter, still alive she was sure as she ran towards him.

The pub’s front doors were thrown open onto the street, a blackboard outside announcing that they were serving a full English breakfast. They pulled in a lot of natives at this time of morning, builders and van drivers en route to the retail parks nearby, the kind of men who wanted to drink a beer with their breakfast without being judged.

Ferreira slipped down the side of the building and into the car park, where a delivery van was ticking over, no sign of the driver but the cellar doors were open. He was probably down there listening to her father cracking jokes. He’d decided early on that the famous British sense of humour was the best way to assimilate and he’d taken to it so enthusiastically that around other men his entire conversation was set-up, punchline.

She ran up the metal fire escape, ignoring how it swayed under her, and let herself into their living quarters. Four bedrooms, a sitting room and two bathrooms for five people. The pub opened at 6 a.m and closed when the last customer left and the only way to manage those hours was in shifts. Her brothers did lates, her parents days, and if she wasn’t careful they’d have her down there now clearing tables and loading the dishwasher.
Just twenty minutes, Melinda – do you think the whole city will descend into chaos if you aren’t at your little desk?

She showered quickly, finding the water tepid as usual and nothing but a hand towel to dry off with, dressed in fresh black jeans and a grey jumper, stamped her feet into her boots as she brushed her hair with one hand and packed her bag with the other.

Her bedroom door opened as she reached for the handle and her mother poked her head in. She looked tired, despite her heavily applied make-up, as if the only thing keeping her eyes open was how tightly she’d drawn back her greying hair. Always in the same neat bun, ever since Ferreira could remember.

‘Mum, I haven’t got time for this.’

‘For what? I only want to know if you are staying for breakfast.’

She grabbed her keys. ‘I’ve got to go.’

‘They are saying on the radio that there was an accident.’

‘We’re not sure it was yet.’

Her mother crossed herself. ‘Such people there are to do this.’

Ferreira kissed her on the head and made for the door.

‘Be careful, Melinda.’

‘Always am.’

She hit the rush-hour traffic in the city centre and for the thousandth time cursed the distance between her home and Thorpe Wood Station, then she cursed the driver in front of her for stopping at an amber light when the pedestrian crossing was obviously clear, then the roadworks on the Crescent Bridge which held her up for five minutes even though there wasn’t a workman in sight.

Wahlia called as she pulled into the station car park, asked if she was planning on coming in today, and she looked up to see him staring out of the office window, gestured for him to get her a coffee and received a two-fingered salute in return.

She ran up the steps, ducked through reception where a reporter from the
Evening Telegraph
was gossiping with the desk sergeant, after information he wouldn’t be allowed to print. She went upstairs through the bustle and hum of CID, heard DCS Riggott’s sharp Belfast accent rattling across the office and saw that the press officer was on the receiving end, standing with her arms folded and an expression of amused contempt on her face.

Wahlia met Ferreira at the door with a mug of black coffee.

‘Thanks, Bobby.’

‘Don’t get too used to it.’

He went back around to his side of the desk, where his phone was playing amplified hold music, interrupted every so often by a voice reassuring him that his call was important and would be dealt with soon.

‘Where’s Zigic?’

‘In his office.’

The door was closed but through the venetian blinds she could see him moving, the room too small for a man of his height to pace properly. There were two extra detective constables, drafted in from CID, working quietly at the usually unoccupied desks across the room, one hunched over, chewing on a pen lid as she watched CCTV footage, another just as focused on the screen of his computer, tapping his fingers against the keyboard.

Ferreira went to the whiteboard where the investigation was plotted out, their victims listed on the left. Jelena Krasic, deceased; Sofia Krasic – the sister she presumed – at A&E; a man, seriously injured, currently nameless.

It looked worse, she thought, all of that carnage. It looked like a massacre.

There was a single name in the suspects column.

‘What’s happening with this Devlin guy?’ she asked.

‘He’s giving a statement right now. Don’t think he’s our man,’ Wahlia said. ‘He sold the car on eBay, I’m trying to track down the buyer. If they ever fucking answer.’

He had the feedback profile open on his computer – Bogdan879 and a list of positive reviews from people he’d bought cars from. Ferreira reached over and scrolled down the page. Dozens of cars going back across the last four months.

‘He’s a dealer then,’ she said.

‘Looks like it.’

‘So pretty unlikely he was driving.’ She went back to the top. ‘I thought they told you where the person was based on here. It just says UK.’

‘Devlin reckons he’s local,’ Wahlia said.

‘Did he give a description?’

‘Two blokes, dark-haired, well built.’

‘Driving a burgundy 4x4, right?’ she asked, heading for Zigic’s office.

‘Yeah.’

She knocked on the door and went in, found him standing behind his desk with his arms crossed, an expression of muted fury on his face as he stared at the flat-screen monitor.

‘The BBC have picked it up,’ he said. ‘Look at this.’

The footage was on a loop, filmed on a camera phone from the middle of the road, focused on the Volvo. She saw the driver sprint away from the car, figures running after him, followed until they disappeared round a corner, then it reset and the moment the Volvo ran into the bus shelter came so swiftly that she gasped.

‘They can’t show that.’

‘There it is,’ he said, dropping into his chair heavily.

A cool voice spoke across the muffled screams.

‘Although details remain sketchy at this point it is believed that the victims are all migrant workers local to the area. Within the last few minutes Cambridgeshire Constabulary have confirmed that they are not ruling out a racial motive.’

The voice went on, detailing the immigration figures for Peterborough and hinting at unrest among the natives, housing shortages, overstretched local services, peripheral issues which had no bearing on the situation.

Zigic closed the page, let out an uncharacteristic string of expletives.

Ferreira waited for the outburst to pass, then said, ‘If you’re done, I think I know who Bogdan879 is.’

5

‘WE’VE MISSED IT,’
Ferreira said, twisting to look back between the seats. ‘Yeah, I’m pretty sure it was where all the signs were. You need to double-back.’

Zigic drove on into the Eastern Industrial Estate, passing self-storage places and builders’ merchants, low-rise retail developments arranged around concrete standings.

There were a few houses built close to the busy road and they all had the same forlorn look about them, patches of neglected front garden and exhaust-stained facades, overgrown trees blocking out the light and cracking the pavements. Even inside the car he could smell the sickly sweet chemical scent coming from some hidden factory and hear the constant drone of the power station which loomed ahead of them against the grey spring sky.

He swung the car around in the entrance of a glass manufacturer’s and followed Ferreira’s directions back the way they’d come, turned down First Drove, going slowly along the patched and uneven single-track road.

Dozens of small businesses were crammed cheek by jowl in badly maintained buildings, with cheap signage and spiked metal gates, some of them no bigger than a double garage, a bike shop next to a wood yard ringed with a high barbed-wire fence, companies selling solvents and ceramics, an alien landscape of obscure specialities.

There was a sense of hustle around the place though, a lot of cars and vans with their side doors thrown back, men milling between them, and he wondered how a city as deprived as Peterborough kept all of these companies running.

‘He’s right down the end,’ Ferreira said. ‘Past the greyhound track.’

Ahead of them Zigic saw the blue-roofed stadium curving away, all red brick and dark glass, and the broad oval of grass at the centre of the track, two men in high-visibility vests standing talking as they watched their muzzled dogs chasing each other in tight circles.

He pulled up outside Hossa Motors.

It was the last lot on the road, nothing but a Portakabin on a scrap of tarmac surrounded by a low brick wall topped by a high fence, its vicious spurs snagged with ripped carrier bags and plastic wrapping which rustled in the breeze. Beyond that was a stretch of wasteland running down to the River Nene, a line of electricity pylons marching alongside it, following its course all the way out to the Wash.

‘How do you know this bloke?’ Zigic asked, as they walked through the gate.

‘My brother bought a car off him last year. Total wreck.’

There were eight vehicles parked in two rows with little space between them, mostly hatchbacks, nothing over three thousand pounds, and they looked decent from a distance. But as they got closer Zigic noticed patches of filler around wheel arches, grazes on bumpers and mismatched tyres.

The door of the Portakabin banged open and a mountainous figure in a black leather jacket came down the steps, shaking the building on its blocks. He was lightly tanned with dark hair cut close to his scalp, a square face wearing an expression of hungry affability, tinged sinister by a chipped front tooth and gold incisor which winked out of a broad smile.

‘Good morning, my friends.’ He spread his hands wide, looked between them and finally settled on Zigic. ‘A little car for the little lady?’

Zigic showed his warrant card. ‘Bogdan Hossa?’