Long Way Home (5 page)

‘When was this?’

‘First week of January. They were taking the Christmas tree down.’

‘OK,’ Zigic said, looking at the board, seeing how it fitted together.

The hostel was a five-minute walk away from Highbury Street, at the city-centre end of Lincoln Road, right in the heart of things. They would have given Stepulov a bed for as long as he needed it, clothed him and fed him, found him work if he wanted it and helped him get back to Estonia if he asked.

‘Why the hell was he squatting in the Barlows’ shed if he had a place at Fern House?’

‘They’re pretty strict about drugs,’ Wahlia suggested.

‘And they lock up at ten,’ Ferreira said. ‘Kind of limits your social life.’

‘Five to one he’s stolen something.’

‘They’re Christians,’ Ferreira said. ‘They wouldn’t throw him out for that.’

Zigic half listened as they speculated but none of their ideas sounded credible.

‘Let’s talk to Gemma Barlow,’ he said finally. ‘Then you can go over and see why he left.’

‘Why?’ Ferreira kicked her desk drawer shut. ‘We know who killed him.’

‘Right now we don’t even know for certain that he was murdered.’

‘He didn’t lock himself in there, did he?’ Ferreira said, a hard edge coming into her voice. ‘They wanted to burn him out. Come on. Bobby?’

Wahlia put his hands up and turned away. No help there.

Ferreira shook her head. ‘Fine. But I’m right.’

THE STRIP LIGHT
was fizzing in interview 2, making the room judder intermittently.

Gemma Barlow sat slumped in her chair, an untouched cup of milky tea in front of her, next to a pile of shredded tissues. She looked washed out in the bluish light, every imperfection visible through her spray tan.

‘Have you let Phil go?’

‘Not yet.’ Zigic took the seat opposite her and noticed a smear of dried blood on the back of her hand.

She gnawed on her lip and a fresh bead sprang up.

‘Do I need a solicitor?’

‘Do you want one?’

‘I haven’t done anything.’

‘You’re only here to give us a statement.’

‘Then I can go?’

Zigic nodded.

Again Ferreira ran the litany and made the prompts. Gemma Barlow leaned forward to give her name, voice raised.

‘Just speak naturally please,’ Ferreira said.

Gemma glared at her and Zigic wondered if he should have brought Wahlia in with him instead. He was more subtle than Ferreira in these situations, had a way of handling people so gently they hardly noticed he was manipulating them. Women especially.

Ferreira was like sandpaper on shredded nerves some days. He should have realised in the office that today was one of them.

‘I’d like you to take a look at a photograph for me, Gemma.’ She stiffened as he opened the file with Stepulov’s mugshot in and a panicked expression clenched her face. ‘Is this the man who was living in your shed?’

‘I –’

Zigic pushed the photograph across the table and she drew her hands away into her lap.

‘His name was Jaan Stepulov. Do you recognise him?’

‘We didn’t know anyone was in there.’

‘We’ve spoken to Phil,’ Zigic said. ‘He’s explained the situation to us. This man Stepulov broke in while you were visiting your mum and dad.’

Gemma closed her eyes and a couple of quick tears ran down her cheeks.

‘It’s definitely him?’

She nodded.

‘For the benefit of the tape Mrs Barlow is nodding,’ Ferreira said.

Her eyes snapped open and she shot a pink-rimmed scowl at Ferreira.

Zigic nudged her leg under the table, telling her to rein it in.

‘Had you had any contact with him before that?’

‘No. We just came home Sunday morning and the shed door was open and he was sitting there on one of our sunloungers drinking. It wasn’t even ten o’clock.’

‘What did you do?’

‘Phil asked him what he thought he was playing at and got a mouthful of abuse.’

‘In English?’

‘I don’t know what he was speaking. I thought he was Polish.’

‘Then he hit Phil?’

Gemma scrambled a fresh tissue out of the packet. ‘Phil’s a teddy bear. I know he looks hard but he’s so sweet, really, he’s never been in a fight in his life. This Stepavic –’

‘Stepulov,’ Ferreira said.

‘This Stapolov just belted him. Out of nowhere.’ She wiped her nose. ‘I told Phil to stay away from him after that.’

‘That must have been difficult with him out in your back garden,’ Zigic said. ‘Was he there all the time?’

‘On my God, you don’t – you can’t –’ Gemma broke down again, crying into the tissue, fat tears streaking her face and when she spoke again her voice was thick with emotion. ‘Phil goes to work first thing, he’d got no idea what it was like for me in that fucking house on my own. I couldn’t hang my washing out or go to the bin because he was out there. Every time I went in the kitchen he was out there. I was terrified. Do you understand?’

Zigic nodded, thinking that Phil Barlow wasn’t much of a man to leave her alone like that. He’d let her endure weeks of it before he finally acted.

‘I’d be washing up and he’d come and knock on the window. I didn’t know what he wanted or if he was going to try and break in. He was shitting in the back garden and going through the bins like an animal.’ She dragged her fingers through her hair, tugging at it as her eyes lost focus. Then she was back. Fresh disgust twisting her mouth. ‘He had a woman in there last week. Some skanky Polish hooker. You believe it? He can’t afford a bedsit but he could afford that. Jesus Christ, these fucking people. It’s not right. Nobody should be living like that in this day and age.’

Ferreira leaned forward and propped her elbows on the table. ‘If I was in your position – living under that kind of threat – I’d have burnt the shed down in a heartbeat.’

‘Maybe where you come from that’s how people behave, but we don’t.’

Zigic stepped down lightly on Ferreira’s toes and she pulled her foot away.

‘We were going to demolish it,’ Gemma said, looking back to Zigic. ‘We’d decided to do it this weekend. I told Phil if we took it apart he’d have to leave.’

‘Why this weekend?’

‘He goes somewhere else at the weekend.’ She laughed darkly. ‘He’s probably got a shed in someone’s garden on the coast. His holiday place.’ Her face creased. ‘I thought he’d left for good, the first time it happened. I was so relieved. I hadn’t slept properly for days, you know, and then he was gone and it was all like some mad nightmare that never really happened. Monday morning I went to hang some towels out and he comes out the shed shouting. I ran back in the house.’ She shook her head, couldn’t look at them. ‘He kept shouting and I realised he wasn’t shouting at me, it was someone on the road. And then this other one turns up.’

‘Did you recognise him?’ Zigic asked.

‘I don’t know them,’ Gemma said. ‘Are you listening to anything I’m telling you?’

Zigic rested his chin on his fist. ‘And then what happened?’

‘They both went inside the shed. Could have been shagging each other’s arses for all I know.’

‘Did Stepulov have other visitors?’

‘Oh yeah, he was popular,’ Gemma said, an acid smile on her face. ‘There’d be three or four of them some nights, out there singing and shouting at each other, pissed out of their heads.’

‘Would you recognise any of them if we showed you some photos?’

‘The young guy maybe.’ Gemma nodded to herself. ‘I did get a pretty good look at him the other day when they were arguing on the lawn.’

Ferreira sighed and Zigic felt it too, Gemma trying to turn their focus away from her and Phil.

‘What did he look like?’

‘Young, twenty probably, not much older.’ She tipped her head back in a childlike thinking pose. ‘He was tall.’

‘Compared to who?’ Ferreira asked. ‘Stepulov? Your husband? You?’

‘He was just tall. He was about the same as Stupulov.’

‘Anything else? Hair? Was that the same as Stepulov’s too?’

‘He had short hair. Blondish. I think he was wearing an Adidas tracksuit. A blue one. And white trainers.’

She’d just described 70 per cent of the twenty-year-old men in Peterborough.

‘Skin colour?’ Ferreira asked.

‘Lighter than you,’ Gemma said.

‘But not as orange as you?’

Zigic winced.

His mobile vibrated in his pocket; forensics.

‘Interview suspended eleven fourteen.’

In the corridor he checked the message from Kate Jenkins while Ferreira muttered to herself in Portuguese. He recognised a few of the words, none of them were particularly complimentary.

‘We’ve got a partial on the padlock,’ he said.

‘Which one of them is it?’

‘Neither. It’s Stepulov.’

‘So he locks the shed up when he’s not there and they use his padlock to seal him in.’ Ferreira folded her arms. ‘What does it prove? Any idiot knows to wear gloves if you’re going to kill someone.’

‘Go to Fern House and see if they know any of Stepulov’s associates.’

‘Christ, you didn’t buy that, did you?’ Ferreira stepped up close to him. ‘We’ve got them and she knows it, so she’s thrown up some bullshit argument with a non-existent person to try and deflect us.’

She started towards the interview-room door and Zigic blocked her off.

‘Go to Fern House or go home.’

For a couple of beats she just looked at him, weighing the situation, then she smiled thinly and stalked off up the corridor.

THE TRAFFIC WAS
slow on Lincoln Road, an accident at the roundabout according to the radio, but all Ferreira could see was a white van with its side panel thrown back and a couple of uniforms milling about uselessly. A guy in orange council overalls was spinning a Stop/Go sign, letting through a dozen cars at a time.

She turned up the stereo and rapped her fingers against the steering wheel, the bass line from the tricked-out speakers pounding through her head and shaking her spine.

The cars inched forward and the song changed.

That fucking Barlow woman and her attitude. Zigic didn’t see it, but why would he? He had the foreign name and the high Slavic cheekbones but he was still English.

Gemma Barlow was a racist. Out and out. Mispronouncing Stepulov’s name like it was beneath her to get it right. Only the English thought it made them clever to be so ignorant.

She could have slapped her.

The driver behind her honked his horn and Ferreira saw the road empty ahead of her, the sign spun to Go.

The man beeped again and she counted five seconds before she pulled off.

If he wanted to follow her to Fern House and start something in the car park he was welcome to try it.

In her rear-view mirror she saw him turn across the traffic to get to the Booze and News, then she swung down Lime Tree Avenue and onto the short stretch of hard standing behind the hostel. There was fresh graffiti on the gates of the bed and breakfast opposite, Nigga and Paki in uneven black spray paint, and as she walked round to the front of the house she noticed the telltale acid-fade on the crumbling red bricks where a tag had been recently blasted off.

Two middle-aged men were sitting on the front wall drinking from cans; they eyed her as she went up to the door then returned to their conversation.

A buzzer sounded as Ferreira entered but nobody came to meet her.

The lobby was cluttered with softly stuffed big bags, the smell of unwashed clothes rising from them, overpowering the bunch of freesias sitting primly on a table pushed hard against the wipe-clean white walls. Above them a corkboard bore health notices and postcards, small signs in a dozen different languages for legal aid and taxi firms, a few job adverts among them and a comprehensive list of church services.

The door to Helen Adu’s office was open and the phone was bleating on her unmanned desk. A cigarette was smouldering in the ashtray though, so she was about.

Late morning the place was always quiet. They turned the residents out at nine o’clock, didn’t let them back in until eight, but somewhere nearby a woman was crying and Ferreira followed the noise through to the lounge. It was a large, high-ceilinged room done out with donated furniture, mismatched armchairs and a rag rug on the wooden floor, an ancient teak coffee table with old magazines in piles. Two small boys were sitting in front of the television, watching cartoons with the sound turned down low.

Joseph Adu squatted next to a mousy young woman, holding her hand between his as she cried into a tissue, speaking to her in heavily accented Polish. She looked at him with her big blue eyes shining, nodding, answering briefly, but even without understanding what she was saying Ferreira could see she didn’t believe it.

Joseph moved onto the chair next to her and put his arm around her shoulder. She rolled into his chest and let the tears flow.

He still looked like a boxer and even approaching forty Ferreira could imagine him stepping into the ring, an ageing journeyman lacking his old speed but full of guile and unpredictable angles, giving some young prospect an education. If he hadn’t got injured he’d probably be back in Bukom doing just that.

All it took was one bad fight to derail his career.

He’d told Ferreira about it the first time they met. They’d shaken hands and she’d noticed his knuckles, swollen up like ball bearings, asked what weight he fought at.

His manager had sent him over from Ghana, a late replacement in a middleweight title fight and he couldn’t believe his luck, thanked the Lord for the opportunity which should have been another couple of years away at that point. It was a good belt too, he’d told her proudly, WBC, a Commonwealth title. He saw Las Vegas in his future and Madison Square Garden, thought he’d be the next Ike Quartey. All he had to do was put in a solid twelve rounds at Bethnal Green.

In the fourth he took a wild elbow to the left eye and the world jumped. He boxed on though and his corner, men he didn’t know, supplied by the promoter, either didn’t notice the injury or didn’t care. He knew he should tell them but the boy in front of him was unskilled, had no chin, so he kept going and by the end of the fight he was ruined.