Tell No Tales (31 page)

‘We’ve identified another suspect but we’ve got no idea where he’s hiding. He’s probably out of the country by now.’

Anna rubbed his shoulders, concerned, but he could tell she didn’t want to hear any more about it, and he could understand her reaction, she wasn’t living inside it like he was.

‘Why don’t you try and forget about it for a couple of hours? You can’t do anything else tonight.’

They ate dinner in the kitchen, Anna talking about the new development being planned for the edge of the village, a hundred houses she was convinced would spoil the community. He knew she was right, this was an oasis compared to most of the places around Peterborough, small and close-knit, with a good primary school and nice pubs, but there was a ulterior motive to her bringing it up. She was already looking for their next house, wanted a bigger garden for the boys and an extra bedroom in readiness for when she got pregnant again.

Life moved in a straight line for Anna, always progressing, always improving, and he wondered if she realised how lucky they were to be so comfortable. She’d never known anything else though, didn’t want to think about how close they were to people with radically different lives.

Four weeks earlier, a five-minute drive away from where they sat now, a young Somali man had left the dingy flat he shared with three virtual strangers, hopped on a bus into the centre of Peterborough and, just by pure chance, a moment of terrible luck, he crossed paths with a pair of men who kicked him to death for the colour of his skin.

If he pointed that out to her, she’d say, ‘Well, we definitely need to move further out then.’ And perhaps she’d be right; the new development being planned would link the village to the chaotic sprawl of Bretton, with its low-rise flats and no-go areas, and slowly this would become the kind of place he would worry about his children growing up in.

His boys with their foreign surname to mark them out in the classroom and the playground. Their fourth-generation status wiped away by their Slavic Christian names. That was Anna’s idea but he’d gone along with it, wanting to maintain a link back to the country of his grandparents’ birth, even though it meant little to him now. No more than a fading oral history and a series of villages which had been bombed out of existence long ago.

Why had he tied his sons to that?

He wasn’t patriotic, didn’t trust the concept. It kept unpleasant company; nationalism and xenophobia and dangerous ideas about racial supremacy which didn’t belong in the twenty-first century.

Soon Croatia would join Europe and when they started to arrive in the UK they would bring a fresh wave of sectarian hatred with them, old scores to settle in a new country. It was a hidden racism, something the English barely conceived of, the festering, blood-borne conflicts of Eastern Europe which lay at the heart of so many incidents they dealt with. The Poles hated the Lithuanians, the Bulgarians hated the Romanians, everyone despised their respective Roma. White-on-white racism predicated on name alone.

So much pointless contempt and nothing he saw suggested it was fading. The world became smaller and yet less intimate, homogenised on a superficial level only, and it seemed to him that the further people moved from home the more aggressively they defended the perceived uniqueness of their own culture.

DAY FIVE

38

MONDAY MORNING’S WORKLOAD
picked up where Sunday night’s left off, tasks unfinished on desks returned to smoothly, everyone kicking into gear fast, knuckling down straight after the most perfunctory of briefings.

Zigic stood at Asif Khalid’s board, looking through a list of hostels and hotels which Parr had compiled the day before. He recognised most of the names but a few places were new. They sprang up monthly, went in and out of business, changed hands according to arrangements it was impossible to fathom, retaining the same staff and occupants, only the title deeds moving from one solicitor’s office to another. It was an area of sketchy regulation and grey economics, occasional council inspection and unchecked expansion, the kind of places where nobody asked too many questions because the owners were often as dodgy as the residents, running women or illegal labour or any of a dozen other scams under the cover of ‘rooms for rent’.

Parr had struck through a third of the list, was on his way into the city centre now with a couple of uniforms in tow to work through the remainder. So far nobody had any knowledge of Tomas Kaminski or Lukas. Or if they had they hadn’t admitted it.

He trusted Parr to make clear the benefits of cooperating and what the cost of lying would be if either man was later found to have been staying with them. The threat of a charge for assisting an offender might prompt an act of good citizenry, but the heat they could bring down from the taxman and environmental health would be the killer.

Parr had been shocked by the living conditions he’d seen, dingy, overcrowded rooms with a dozen types of mould climbing the walls, leaky windows and sagging ceilings and infestations. He said he’d stood under a scalding hot shower for an hour when he’d got home last night, trying to scrub off invisible spores and the tickling sensation of fleas and ticks which weren’t really there.

It was a long-overdue wake-up call, Zigic thought. If Parr was going to be a copper in Peterborough these were the streets he needed to walk.

At the very least it would make him grateful for his lot when he returned to CID in a few days’ time.

Or weeks, Zigic realised, with a sinking feeling.

‘Got the number you wanted,’ Wahlia said.

Zigic went into his office and told him to shout it, dialling as he did so.

He waited, looking at the mess of paperwork across the desk, time sheets he should have filed yesterday and notes which needed turning into reports, thinking how good it would be to have a secretary for this stuff.

A gruff-voiced man answered. ‘Strug.’

Zigic introduced himself, continued in Polish, hoping to keep things simple. ‘Inspector Strug, I’m looking for information on a suspect from your city. We think he’s gone home.’

‘You speak Polish like a peasant, Inspector.’ Strug laughed, low and rattling. ‘But you are the first English policeman who has made an effort and, for that, I thank you.’ A lighter flicked at his end, the sizzle of cigarette paper catching. ‘Now, who is this suspect and what havoc has he caused?’

‘His name’s Tomas Kaminski.’ Zigic spelled it out. ‘He’s wanted in connection with a murder.’

‘A domestic?’ Strug asked.

‘No. Why, has he got form?’

‘Usually it is a domestic when one of your people calls us. They knock the girl around, you get involved, they run home to Mama and Papa.’

‘This was racially motivated,’ Zigic said. ‘And there’s high probability it isn’t the only one he’s been involved in.’

‘Then you will be under pressure.’

‘We are, yes.’

Strug blew out a long breath and Zigic imagined him in an office just like this one, the same filing cabinets and corkboards, photos of his family on another chaotic desk.

‘Let me see what I can do,’ Strug said. ‘I will be in touch.’

He put the phone down before Zigic could thank him.

Through the open door he saw Kate Jenkins come into the department and make a beeline for Ferreira, who was underneath her desk fiddling with the guts of her computer. By the time she was upright Zigic was out there too.

‘What have got for us, Kate?’

She brandished a folder at him. ‘DNA results are back for the hit-and-run.’

‘You didn’t have to come down for that.’

‘Thought I’d best deliver the news personally.’ She frowned as he took the folder from her. ‘It’s not Anthony Gilbert’s blood on the airbag.’

‘It must be,’ Ferreira said. ‘You need to double-check.’

‘We run multiple tests, Mel.’

‘Maybe the samples were contaminated.’

Jenkins crossed her arms. ‘I know this is the last thing in the world you want to hear right now but I’m afraid it’s definite.’

‘Who is it then?’ Ferreira asked.

‘He’s not on the system. No previous at all.’

Zigic sat down on the edge of Ferreira’s desk, seeing the bottom drop out of the case in one swift movement. Jenkins apologised but he barely registered it, looking at the yawning void in the suspects column underneath Anthony Gilbert’s name.

They’d been too quick to jump on him. Too keen to shift the hit-and-run onto the back burner so they could return their main focus to Didi’s and Ali Manouf’s murders.

‘We are so fucked,’ Ferreira said. She took the file out of his hands, as if looking at it herself could change the results. ‘Why did he try to kill himself if he wasn’t guilty?’

‘He said he heard it happen while he was on the phone to Jelena – wouldn’t that be enough to tip you over the edge if you loved someone?’

‘Just because he was on the phone to her doesn’t mean he wasn’t driving.’

‘No, the DNA results mean he wasn’t driving,’ Zigic said sharply. ‘Have you got anything we can use, Kate?’

Jenkins made a non-committal gesture with her hand. ‘The car was cleaned very thoroughly prior to the incident. We recovered a few items from the boot but the only fingerprints on them belong to the previous owner, your Mr Devlin. The shovel was new, no prints on that at all. The actual interior was vacuumed and washed down, every single surface. He was careful.’

‘Meaning this was definitely premeditated?’

‘Seems like it. If anything else turns up I’ll let you know.’

Jenkins left the office, her promise a meaningless act of kindness. There would be nothing new recovered from the car. Zigic knew she was too much of a perfectionist to let anything slip her beady eye.

Ferreira dropped down into her chair and picked up a half-smoked cigarette, held onto it without lighting up.

‘Maybe we’re not as wrong as we think we are,’ she said slowly. ‘We thought this was personal. It might still be.’

‘Tomas, you mean?’

‘We know him and Sofia have a volatile relationship, we know she threw him out. And he seems to have a propensity for violence.’

‘She wasn’t the only person at that bus stop,’ Zigic said.

‘No, but she’s the only one who’s pissed somebody vicious off lately.’

‘What about Dymek?’ he asked. ‘When I spoke to his wife she said “he was not a good man”.’

Ferreira shrugged. ‘That can mean a lot of things.’

‘He wasn’t supposed to be there,’ Zigic said, thinking of the CCTV footage, Dymek in the wrong place at the wrong time, pausing to light up as the car cut across the road. ‘If this is as premeditated as it looks, Dymek is a pretty unlikely target.’

‘Exactly. How would anyone know he was going to be there?’ Ferreira straightened in her chair, the idea taking hold. ‘No, forget about Dymek. He’s collateral damage. Everything we thought about Gilbert and Jelena is applicable to Sofia and Tomas. It actually makes way more sense because they hadn’t split up after all but Sofia and Tomas had; he’s got cause to go after her.’

‘Like this though? Tomas is a very different kind of man to Anthony Gilbert. He wouldn’t need a car to do his dirty work.’

‘But the same logic applies. You stab someone, or strangle them, or whatever, it looks personal. And who gets arrested first in a case like that? The boyfriend. A hit-and-run is messier, it might be an accident, it might be deliberate, and instead of one victim you have several, any of who could be the intended target. It muddies the water.’

Zigic looked at the diagram of the accident tacked up on the board, seeing how the driver had struck Jelena first, straight on, almost dead centre of the bumper; but Sofia had been standing directly behind her. The only way to be sure of hitting her was to go through Jelena. If it wasn’t for Dymek shoving Sofia away at the last second she would have died too.

‘If Sofia is protecting Tomas this should be enough to get her talking.’

39

OUTSIDE ON THE
ward the visitors were arriving again, bringing bright voices and kind words, and Sofia pressed her face into the pillow, jaw clenched, willing herself not to cry.

Everybody had someone. Except her.

She wanted the door to open and for Jelena to walk in, no flowers, no gifts, just herself, and sit down in the seat at the foot of the bed, but even in her dreams she couldn’t pretend it was possible.

She thought of Tomas, her big bear, remembering the moment they met. It was his first day at the farm and he was trying so hard to make a good impression, doing twice the work of the other men shifting crates in the pack house, carrying one on each shoulder, muscles flexing against his T-shirt. She’d told him off, quoted the health and safety regulations at him, and he just smiled, said she was a tough woman to please, like it was the highest compliment he could give.

A week later they slept together. A month later he moved in. For the first time in her life she could see a future she actually wanted to live rather than one she could simply endure. They would work hard, save money, start their own business. Her and Tomas and Jelena. Maybe they would have children; they’d stopped using protection, leaving it to fate.

Some nights, lying awake in bed beside him, imagining a baby growing inside her, she would panic, fearing what kind of mother she would be, afraid of repeating the mistakes her own mother had made. Not mistakes, her behaviour was more deliberate than that. She was a bad woman, cold and distant, incapable of love. What if she was no better when the time came?

But in the morning she would see Jelena and the fear would go. She’d raised her little sister, nurtured her like a mother should, protected her from the boys, then the men, who wanted to exploit her, all the Anthony Gilberts of the world who saw her as a pretty thing to be used up and discarded. None of them were good enough for her and him least of all.

Jelena wouldn’t accept it though.

If she’d survived Sofia was sure she’d still be making excuses for him.

She was like a child. In so many ways. Incapable of seeing Gilbert for what he really was. A control freak and a manipulator who watched and waited and when he saw an opportunity, a moment of weakness, tried to take over their lives.