Long Way Home (44 page)

‘I didn’t know,’ Craig said weakly.

‘We realise that, believe me, we do.’

‘I didn’t want him coming back. I thought if I burned the shed he’d have to find somewhere else and Dad and Gemma wouldn’t have to put up with him any more.’

‘Alright, Craig.’

‘I’m sorry.’ He pressed his knuckles into his eye sockets, looking like an overgrown baby, swaddled in puppy fat and his big white hoodie, and when he spoke again each word was punctuated with a gulping sob, ‘I didn’t mean to hurt anyone. I’m so sorry.’

Craig wiped his face dry and Kerry rubbed her hand across his shoulder.

‘Can I go home now?’

‘There’s a process,’ Mr Dean told him.

Zigic placed his hands flat on the table. ‘Craig Barlow, I am charging you with the manslaughter of Andy Hudson, do you understand the charge?’

‘Yes.’

Ferreira stopped the tapes and Zigic began to explain the next stage in proceedings, statements to be signed, forms to be filled in which would release Craig into his mother’s care until the trial. But Craig wasn’t listening, he was whining and cajoling, desperation tightening his voice as he tried to get Kerry to do something which was out of her power.

Finally she shushed him. ‘We’ll be going home soon. Now be a big boy.’

Back in the corridor Zigic looked ready to pass out, slouching where he stood, eyelids beginning to droop. Whatever small reserve of energy he’d started the interrogation with was now exhausted.

‘Do you want me to finish up here?’ Ferreira asked.

He rubbed his face with both hands, yawned expansively. ‘No, you’ve had as long a day as I have.’

‘Actually you had a sofa break this morning.’

He smiled dozily. ‘Yeah, I’m such a slacker. Look, I’ll deal with Craig, you go and give Phil the good news.’

‘My pleasure,’ Ferreira said. ‘What am I charging Mr Barlow with?’

‘Conspiracy should just about cover it. Bail him, then you can get off.’

‘And Gemma?’

He shook his head. ‘Already dealt with.’

Ferreira went down to the custody suite, where a drunk was kicking up enough noise for two men his size, singing a pornographic version of ‘Maggie May’ at the top of his voice while a WPC tried to remove his belt.

She gestured to one of the guards, who was looking on grinning, and told him to bring Phil Barlow out.

A minute later he strode up to her, red-faced and furious.

‘I want to confess. Right now. Take me up. I set fire to the shed.’

‘It’s too late for that, Mr Barlow. Craig came clean – he was very brave.’

A pained moan sounded low in his throat and he turned away from her, hands clamped around the back of his neck like a man preparing for a firing squad.

‘But you can confess to covering for him if you like,’ Ferreira said, when he was facing her again. ‘It’ll make life a lot easier and you can get home to Gemma tonight. I’m sure she’s missed you.’

The fight was all drained out of him and he nodded once, eyes closed, in absolute surrender. She told the guard to get him a cup of strong tea and went to fetch the paperwork.

By the time she returned the drunk had been spirited away, his voice now muffled by two thick doors, and Phil Barlow was sitting in the corner of the room with his elbows on his knees and his head dropped into his hands. Seeing him like that she felt a vague sense of pity; he was only trying to protect his son, just like any father would.

She sat down next to him and ran through the charge. He nodded, gave short answers, his voice cracked and weak. That of a broken man. He signed where she told him to and took back his possessions from the custody sergeant, shoved his watch and shoelaces into his pocket, and it was only as he was slipping his wedding ring onto his finger that he asked if he would go to prison.

‘I honestly don’t know,’ Ferreira told him. ‘If you get a sympathetic judge, probably not.’

‘What about Gemma? She only lied because I begged her.’

‘I’m sorry, I couldn’t say. It all depends on the judge.’

Ferreira called a patrol car to take him home and left him waiting in reception, between a prostitute in red thigh-high boots and a serial burglar who was checking her out, then headed back up to collect her things, thinking about dragging Bobby out of bed to hit the clubs. She was definitely getting her second wind now.

In the office she found Zigic struggling to get his parka on, one arm in it already but the other one kept flapping away from him and he winced as he stretched to reach for it.

‘Do you want a hand with that?’

He pulled it off and threw it onto a chair. ‘Not that cold out, is it?’

‘No. Come on, I’ll drive you home.’

PAOLO WAS ALREADY
at the crematorium when Ferreira pulled into the car park, standing out front under the fluted canopy with his cousin, Marco. They both wore dark suits, shirts and ties, and she felt a knee-jerk sense of pride towards them, her countrymen; as poor as they were they respected the occasion enough to spend money they didn’t really have on clothes they would never wear again.

As she was locking the car Adams drew up next to her, managing to take up two spaces with his sleek black Audi. He climbed out and pitched his cigarette butt into a narrow flower bed planted with stunted rose bushes just coming into bud, small copper plaques dotted between them bearing the names of the deceased.

‘What’re you doing here?’ she asked.

‘Thought it was the least I could do. Pay my respects, you know.’ He took off his sunglasses, slipped them into his pocket. ‘Poor fucker dies four thousand miles away from home, someone’s got to be there to see him off, right?’

Ferreira nodded, thinking of Viktor Stepulov’s funeral the week before. Arina and Tomas Raadik had turned out to see him off, no sign of Mrs Stepulov who Arina had insisted unconvincingly was at home with the new baby. Jaan and Emilia had stood on the other side of the grave, close together under an umbrella as the flimsy pine coffin was lowered into the ground. They had both been bailed, despite presenting a credible flight risk, and Ferreira had made a bet with herself right there that neither would show up for their hearings next month. It was easy to slip out of the country on a packed coach, half the time customs didn’t even check for passports. Easier still to lose youself in the grey economy of another city.

A hearse swept past, slowing on the long curve towards the main doors. There was a single wreath on top of the pine coffin, a simple arrangement more foliage than flowers, just a few white lilies standing out against the green.

Adams crossed himself and looked expectantly to Ferreira when she didn’t follow suit.

‘You’re Catholic, aren’t you?’

‘I was,’ she said, starting across the car park. ‘Then I grew up.’

A few fine drops of rain hit her face and she quickened her pace, reaching the main doors as the hearse came to a final stop. Paolo smiled, too warmly for the setting, and shook her hand, kissed her on both cheeks. He’d put on a few pounds since leaving hospital, had a haircut, and he looked a different man to the one she’d seen, close to death, only a couple of weeks earlier.

There was still that darkness in his eyes though, and she doubted if any amount of good food and sunshine would shift it.

‘You look very well, Paolo.’

‘Thank you.’ He nodded to Adams. ‘Xin Gao would be happy we are here.’

‘Have you found his family?’ Marco asked.

‘We’ve been in touch with the consulate,’ Adams said. ‘But they’ve got no record of him. Chances are he was trafficked over here. They’re making inquiries but it’s a long process, lot of red tape.’

‘The people who killed him, what is happening to them?’ Marco asked.

‘We’ve charged them with murder,’ Adams said. ‘They’re in prison now, awaiting trial. I doubt they’ll see the light of day for a good twenty-five years.’

‘And what about the others?’ Paolo asked. ‘They were just as guilty.’

Adams frowned. ‘We’ve got them on slavery, tax evasion, some weapons charges. They’ll be punished, Paolo. Believe me, the courts will want to make an example of them to stop something like this happening again.’

They fell silent as four large men in matching suits came out to the hearse and unloaded the coffin, working quickly and precisely but still managing to maintain a posture of deference as they carried Xin Gao inside on their shoulders.

The minister, a short, waxy-skinned man with dyed black hair and thick glasses, ushered them through the high wooden doors into the chapel, where some dour music was playing softly. It was a cold, functional space, with rust-coloured carpet and lacquered pine pews, bare white walls and a lectern where there should have been an altar.

There were no hymns for Xin Gao, no speeches from his family members, no tears, just a single person who had briefly met him, shared a quick cigarette, and three who knew him as nothing but a murder victim. Paolo got up and said a few words about the kindness Xin Gao had shown him, the goodness he’d sensed in the man, but he could say nothing more without resorting to lies or clichés, so he returned to the pew.

Ferreira found his hand and squeezed it quickly.

Then the minister was saying the Lord’s Prayer and somewhere a button was pressed and Xin Gao’s coffin slipped quietly away, disappearing behind a thick velvet curtain and into the flames.

A few minutes later they were outside again and it was like the whole thing never happened. Lapsed as she was Ferreira still thought it felt like a hollow sham. Death demanded candles and incense and wailing.

‘We should send his ashes to the family,’ Paolo said.

‘I’ll take care of it,’ Ferreira told him, realising he hadn’t really absorbed what Adams had told him. He’d come too close to suffering the same fate to accept the possibility that a man could die without his people knowing.

Xin Gao’s remains would go into the ground in the garden of remembrance and back home his family would continue with their lives, believing he had found something here which made them unimportant. Another woman maybe, a better life. That was what you came to England for after all.

‘What are you doing now?’ she asked.

‘We fly home this afternoon,’ Paolo said.

‘They have a big party planned for him,’ Marco said, and put his hand to his mouth. ‘I have ruined the surprise.’

Paolo smiled vaguely, looking away across the lines of rotting floral displays, the car park where people were arriving for the next service, climbing out of cars and clinging to one another under umbrellas as the rain lashed down on them.

A taxi pulled up and the driver helped out an elderly woman in a black dress, her face hidden by a fine veil. She was clutching a rosary in a gnarled hand heavy with gold rings.

Marco called for the man to wait. ‘We must go now. We will miss our plane.’

They said their goodbyes and Ferreira and Adams stood under the canopy, watching the taxi pull away, waiting until it disappeared out of the gate.

‘We should go for a drink,’ Adams said.

‘Bit early, isn’t it?’

He grinned at her. ‘That’s very English of you.’

‘Just for that, you’re buying.’

I owe a huge, gushing thank you to my agent Stan for his wisdom and guidance, and for taking that first big gamble on me. Equally effusive thanks to my wonderful editor Alison Hennessey, whose keen eye and good judgement refined the book I wrote into the one you now hold in your hands. I feel immensely privileged to be part of the Harvill Secker gang and am deeply grateful to the whole team for the hard work they have put into making this book happen.

Thanks also go to Luca Veste for being the best example an aspiring writer could have and a source of boundless optimism and moral support. The crime writing community contains some of the warmest, most generous people I’ve ever met, too many to thank by name, but you know who you are and that there’s always a drink behind the bar for you.

Finally to my family; my long suffering, endlessly patient, constantly encouraging family – thank you for always believing that ‘author’ was a perfectly reasonable career choice and for never letting me give up on my dream.

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Epub ISBN: 9781448163304

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Published by Harvill Secker 2014

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Copyright © Eva Dolan 2014

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This novel is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

First published in Great Britain in 2014 by

HARVILL SECKER

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