Long Way Home (28 page)

Paolo let out a string of prayers and curses and his heart rate kept rising.

‘Stop now,’ Perez said. ‘He cannot do this.’

Adams leaned across the bed. ‘Mel.’

‘I get nurse.’ Perez bolted for the door and she heard him calling out to someone in the corridor. ‘Please, he is dying. Help him.’

Ferreira rose from the chair and within a couple of seconds the room was full of bodies, pulling her aside, telling Adams to move, then they were on the ward again and the door was closed on them. Perez stood with his hands clasped around the back of his neck, looking through the window as a nurse dropped the bars on the side of Paolo’s bed.

Adams drew her away, his face stony.

‘What the hell was that?’

‘He’s terrified.’

‘Yeah, I got that. What did he tell you?’

‘He said he doesn’t know who shot him.’

‘Bollocks he doesn’t.’

‘He couldn’t give me a name or a location or anything.’

Adams shoved his fingers back through his hair, blew out a long, controlled breath. ‘He told you something. He didn’t freak out like that for no reason.’

‘You’ve got another murder, that’s what he said.’

BY MIDDAY VIKTOR
Stepulov’s board was beginning to look chaotic, the morning’s yawning white spaces colonised with information coming in from the teams Zigic had deployed to canvas the farms and nurseries scattered across Holme Fen. A quick audience with DCS Riggott had got him four fresh bodies for the day and he was told to use them wisely.

He drew a ten-mile radius around the dump site on the railway crossing and divided it in half, the area taking in twelve villages, dozens of farms, four nurseries and another two accommodation sites beside Bob Drake’s. Three had been ruled out already, nobody knew Viktor Stepulov, he had never been there. He struck them through as the news came in, aware that the teams would be lied to if they hit the right place, but what else could he do other than trust the instincts of the officers Riggott had given him?

They were good people, there was no reason to think they would miss the hints, but the idea that he should be doing their job himself gnawed at him as he paced the office, unable to rest for more than a few seconds in one place.

It wasn’t usually like this. They were working in a vacuum with the Stepulov brothers. These men were transient and cut off from their families, with no friends to speak of and no solid workplaces to investigate, no laptops to sift through, no definite phone lines or bank accounts to interrogate.

He wondered now how previous generations of coppers ever solved a crime. When you removed all the electronic ephemera of modern lives, what were you left with but that hitch in your gut that told you something was amiss?

He felt that hitch now.

In the office his computer gave out a two-tone ping and he went to check his emails, cleared some space on his desk to get at the keyboard. Dr Irwin with the post-mortem results, photos attached but he wasn’t interested in seeing them unless it was absolutely necessary.

He knew plenty of DIs who papered their walls with the goriest images they could find, spurred on by them, but it always seemed wilfully macabre to him, just another pissing contest – look what I can handle.

He scanned quickly through the report, knowing what he wanted to see.

‘. . . signs of malnutrition . . . no alcohol in his system . . . X-rays reveal hairline fractures to cheekbone, fully healed . . . four broken molars on the same side, consistent with impact injury . . . massive trauma to the chest and abdomen . . .’

‘Understatement of the year,’ he said to the empty office.

‘. . . break to the tibia occurred approx four hours prior to death . . .’

‘Cause of death . . .’

‘. . . inconclusive . . .’

Zigic dialled Irwin’s office number, waited five rings for an answer and was met with a mumbling hello.

‘Have I caught you in the middle of something?’

‘Lunch.’

‘Look, quick question? Was he dead before the train hit him or not?’

Irwin swallowed audibly. ‘It’s all in the report, Ziggy.’

‘You said inconclusive.’

‘I can’t tell you what killed him, no. If you’d like me to speculate I’d say there was a fatal wound somewhere on his torso and placing him across the train tracks was a deliberate attempt to obliterate any evidence we might have recovered from said wound – that is purely speculation though, so don’t quote me.’ Irwin broke off to drink a mouthful of something. ‘He was definitely dead when the train went over him, though.’

‘Can I quote that?’

‘Anywhere you like.’

Zigic thanked him and rang off, went back into the main office with the findings swirling in his head. Malnutrition. No alcohol in his system. He thought of Mrs Stepulov walking the long dim corridor to the mortuary with him, implying that Viktor was always drunk, so she wasn’t surprised he’d been hit by a train.

Drink was a curse and comfort blanket to migrant workers. Away from home, separated from everyone and everything you know, you had to drink. So why had Viktor given it up suddenly? Money was always a factor, but if he was as bad as Mrs Stepulov suggested he would buy vodka or beer before food.

She might have been lying about him.

The more Zigic thought about it the more convinced he became that she was. Viktor had no criminal record, here or in Estonia, and they had no evidence to suggest that he was a violent man.

Maybe she simply disliked him. For any of the thousand petty reasons people disliked their in-laws, and she was impugning his character out of habit.

‘Bobby, where are you with the phone records?’

Wahlia had the sheets spread out across his desk, call logs from the Stepulov house and the family’s mobile phones covered in pink highlighter.

‘There’s something weird here,’ he said, scratching his eyebrow with his thumb. ‘I’ve gone back to early August and the traffic’s pretty much standard – they talk to each other a lot, there’re a few calls a month back home – but the only thing that stands out is a call from a petrol station payphone in Wisbech. Evening of November the fifth, a Monday.’

‘That could be Viktor. What time was it?’

‘Eight ten,’ Wahlia said. ‘Lasted less than a minute.’

Zigic nodded. ‘Why would he ring off like that? Mrs Stepulov said he didn’t tell them where he was or what was going on.’

‘But if he’s in a petrol station why would he have to cut it short?’

‘Maybe he ran out of money.’ Zigic sat down at an empty desk, drummed his fingers against the top. ‘We know where he was anyway. He could have been working there if he called at that time of night.’

‘Or he stopped on the way home.’

‘So, again, why ring off? Get in touch, check their employee records. And send someone over there with his photo. It might be his regular post-work stop-off.’

Zigic stood up again, paced to the window, saw Ferreira’s car turn into the station, the stereo so loud he heard it three floors up.

‘What about Jaan’s phone?’

‘Also weird,’ Wahlia said. He turned away from the desk, swivelled in his chair. ‘He’s had no contact with the family since he left home nigh on three months back. Nothing at all – right? But we’ve got dozens of calls logged to this mobile number in the weeks before he died. All hours night and day, some very long conversations, half an hour, forty minutes, in the middle of the night.’

‘A woman?’

‘What I’m thinking, yeah.’

‘And you’ve called it?’

‘It’s dead.’

‘Naturally.’

Wahlia shoved his sleeves back to his elbows, getting down to it. ‘The last call Jaan made to it was the night before he died, just gone ten.’

‘A pay-as-you-go?’

‘Wouldn’t be anything else, would it?’

There should be no such thing as untraceable pay-as-you-go phones, Zigic thought. What kind of person had them? What did you use one for except no good? Crime and affairs. That was it.

‘Run it down.’

‘Sure thing, boss.’

He poured a cup of coffee from the machine, stood stirring sugar into it for a few seconds, thinking about the woman Gemma Barlow said she saw coming to visit Jaan Stepulov in their shed.

What kind of woman got involved with a man in his situation? Gemma assumed she was a prostitute but that was more about her prejudices than anything else. The kind that Jaan could afford wouldn’t make house calls very often, and if they did they definitely wouldn’t make them to sheds. It was too dangerous for one thing.

Surely it wouldn’t be an affair either.

No. More likely that last late-night call was to the person who killed him.

Ferreira came into the office with a broad smile on her face, walked straight over to Jaan Stepulov’s board and moved Clinton Renfrew’s mugshot to the top of the suspects column, stood next to it looking very pleased with herself.

‘How’d it go at the hospital?’ Zigic asked.

‘Adams has got problems,’ she said. ‘We, on the other hand, have solutions.’

Zigic crossed his arms. ‘Intrigued. Go on.’

She took an evidence bag out of her jacket pocket and held it up in front of him. Three gold rings inside.

‘I saw Renfrew in town.’

‘And you mugged him?’ Zigic took the bag from her and shook the rings out into his palm. ‘What’s the significance?’

‘They’re Phil Barlow’s. Check out the inscription on the pinkie ring.’

He read it, thinking nobody would give away something so sentimental without good reason.

‘How did you get them?’

‘I followed Renfrew down to that little jeweller’s near the university –’

‘Have you arrested him?’

Ferreira perched on the edge of her desk, fists thrust down into her jacket pockets. ‘No. He doesn’t know we’re on to him. I thought they’d be more useful as leverage with the Barlows.’

Zigic slipped the rings back into the evidence bag.

‘What’re you thinking? Blackmail or payment?’

‘What’s the difference?’ Ferreira said. ‘They’re guilty either way.’

He weighed the rings in his palm. ‘Renfrew’s working cheap if this is all he got. There can’t be more than three hundred quid’s worth here.’

‘Two-ten, but we’ve got to assume there’s more, haven’t we?’ Ferreira said. ‘Barlow was loaded with chains and shit when we interviewed him. And it explains why we’ve not seen any lump sums go out of their back accounts.’

‘Have they got lump sums?’

Ferreira nodded. ‘They’re ticking over, lot of credit card debt, but there’s a Post Office savings account with four grand in it. Joint names but it’s mostly Gemma’s wages in there.’

‘Probably a holiday fund,’ Zigic said.

‘They’re not stupid. They realised we’d find out if they used that to pay Renfrew off.’ Ferreira straightened away from her desk and buttoned her suit jacket up. ‘You want me to bring them in?’

Zigic’s mobile vibrated – Jenkins,
more good news.

‘Hold on for ten minutes, Mel.’

She planted her fists on her hips. ‘This is what we’ve been waiting for.’

‘And we can wait ten minutes longer.’

KATE JENKINS WAS
at her desk in the small glass-walled office attached to the lab, working with her earphones in, singing along in a tone-deaf voice, provoking amused looks from her assistants as they pored over a set of tattered, bloodstained clothing on the other bench. DI Adams’s case, he guessed, seeing one of them poke a gloved finger through a bullet hole in the shapeless black cotton T-shirt.

Zigic knocked on the open door.

‘Kate.’

She belted out another line, nodding along, fingers skipping across the keyboard.

‘Kate.’

He went up behind her and hooked out one of the white buds. She turned sharply.

‘I was just getting to the good bit.’

‘I heard,’ he said. ‘I think the whole station heard actually.’

She whipped out the other earphone and the music kept running from it, a man’s voice, high and screechy. ‘Why weren’t you at the PM?’

‘Had some extra troops to marshal.’

‘Aw, and I said it was because you were delicate.’

‘What have you got for me?’

She pulled a Manila folder out from the stack on her desk. ‘Let’s wait for Adams, OK, I don’t want to have to go through it all twice.’

‘What’s it got to do with him?’

‘There’s been a development.’ She picked up a bag of Skittles. ‘Want one?’

‘Kate.’

‘No, he’ll be here in a second.’

Zigic took a couple of sweets. They tasted plastic and saccharine.

Jenkins put her feet up on her desk, pink Crocs spattered with God knows what, and rocked back lightly in her chair. The music kept bleeding out of her earphones like white noise waiting for the voices of the dead to come through.

Zigic looked at the postcards arranged across the corkboard above her desk, small reproductions of Impressionist landscapes and still lifes, Pissarro street scenes and Cézanne apples. Bland, safe art to resettle her eye after hours staring at blood-spatter patterns and body parts disrupted from their natural arrangement.

She tossed a yellow Skittle in the air and caught it in her mouth.

‘How’s the family?’ Zigic asked.

‘Good. Yours?’

‘Yeah, good.’

She flicked another Skittle up in the air and a hand snatched it as it began to drop.

Adams popped the sweet in his mouth. ‘What’ve you got for me, red?’

‘Same thing I’ve got for Ziggy.’

They nodded to each other and Zigic realised Adams was as happy with the development as he was. Nobody liked sharing a case.

‘Come on then.’

Jenkins went back out into the lab, taking the file with her, and they danced around each other for a moment, an excess of good manners which Adams managed to turn into a pantomime, a stupid smile on his face as he half bowed and ushered Zigic out of the door.

He was supposed to be an excellent detective, vicious and intuitive by turns, and rumour was he’d be replacing DCS Riggott within the next five years, but Zigic couldn’t see it, dreaded the idea of having him as a superior. Not that he didn’t like the man. They’d been sergeants at the same time, worked on several major cases together, and Adams struck him as capable, but he treated the job like a game, glided through it seemingly unconcerned with the victims or their families, unless he was trying to screw one of them.