Hope Road (16 page)

“Me too,” he says, speaking as he chews. “My dad. I also didn’t choose that he was a
communist
!”

He glares, wide-eyed, as if this is hilarious.

“Party member?”

“What, my dad? Sure! Supervisor in a Kiev candy factory! Earned shit. But a big party man. I grew up in an apartment with a shared kitchen and a bathroom at the end of the corridor you had to take your own tap handle to use the bath. What, you’re not hungry?” he asks, taking another donut and holding it up close to his mouth as he speaks. “I was nineteen. The Soviet Union was collapsing, and all we heard in our house was how great the USSR had been and how things were gonna get worse for all of us.”

“And did they?”

John brings over the coffee.

“Oh yes. Dad was right. First time in his life! Ukraine got independence, corruption, and a recession. Me, I just wanted to escape. So I came to England.”

“London?”

Bilyk frowns, just for a second.

“Don’t look so surprised,” John says, sitting down opposite Bilyk and taking a donut. “It’s where anybody would go. As for escaping, I did exactly the same. Soon as I could I left this place. Like I said, I’m not a crow.”

He pops the donut into his mouth.

“Two men who went in search of their destinies,” Bilyk says with a sugary smile, fanning out his hands as if completing a conjuring trick.

John crosses his legs and chases the donut down with coffee.

“So here we are,” he says.

“Here we are.”

“But your partner is not, Mr Bilyk. And there’s a young girl lying dead in a morgue.”

“Fedir got scared. Ran away.”

“He didn’t look scared when he was punching her corpse around for the cameras on Friday night.”

“He put on a little show, yes.”

“That’s all he did, is it? Where is he now?”

“Where would you be, in his shoes?”

Off the ferry at Zebrugge and halfway round the world.

“You think he’s coming back?”

Bilyk doesn’t need to answer.

“Actually,” John says, “I’m surprised
you’re
still here.”

“I spent most of yesterday afternoon and evening at the police station. Glad to help. Public spirit etcetera. Actually, I have nothing to hide! Absolutely nothing.”

“Yes, I saw the surveillance video, sitting in the lounge while someone else cleaned up after you. Wouldn’t want to get yourself involved in a murder, would you?”

“I had nothing to do with it, I assure you. Fedir and me, we did not kill that girl.”

The Ukrainian puts down his coffee.

“Ask yourself,” he says, “what possible motive do I have? And remember, the last one to leave the room was Freddy.” He pauses, shaking his head. “No, no. Murder is not good for my business.”

“Your
tractor
business.”

“Ha! You don’t believe?” More unfurling of the hands. “The police have taken all my possessions. But when they give me back my order book, why don’t you go and check up on my clients, see how many sales I’ve made?”

“Unbelievable value, I heard.”

“You know what our slogan is? Fuck John Deere up the ass.”

“Subtle.”

John can’t help but smile.

“By the way,” he asks, “how did you get such a faultless accent?”

“Like I said, I studied here,” he says, clearly pleased by the question.

“Shit. Kiev to London. I bet that was some change. University?”

He nods.

“Nineteen years old in a new country, nothing to lose!”

“You studied languages? Or linguistics?”

Again, the compliment lays Bilyk’s pride wide open.

“Chemical engineering. Languages I just pick up easy. And you?”

“My dad’s from Spain. I studied Spanish and a bit of Portuguese. Never learned anything else, I’m afraid.”

“Shame.”

“Yes.”

Bilyk finishes his donuts.

“Why was Freddy hanging around you, up at the hotel?” John asks.

The Ukrainian nods as he licks the sugar off his fingers.

“Freddy?” he says Bilyk. “He works for you, doesn’t he?”

“Not at midnight.”

“We don’t sell tractors at midnight. At night we relax. That’s what the girl was for.”

“A gentlemen’s luxury?”

“Fedir’s. I never touched her, found her rather aggressive. I’m a little bit, how do you say,
old school
. But with Fedir it became a regular thing.”

“And why the hotel?”

Bilyk sits back in his chair. Breakfast is over.

“We’ve been using it as a base. It’s cheap and we’re normally the only ones there. Leeds is perfect. From here you can cover the whole north of England. But of course you know that, it’s where your father set up his own little empire.”

“Well, these days,” says John, “there’s a new emperor in town.”

“Yes, I heard that.”

“Freddy? How does he know Donna? He met her at the hotel?”

“As far as I remember, Freddy met Fedir in the city one night. Two young guys, you know how it is, same age, same interests. From then on, any time we were celebrating, Freddy’s there waiting at the bar, a big smile on his face.”

“Could he have been looking after Donna?”

“She could look after herself, believe me.”

“Why did she smash up the room at the hotel?”

Bilyk’s bonhomie is draining away fast.

“Money, my friend. The old story. Does it ever change? It’s always about money, in the end.”

“Ain’t that the truth. Tell me, why…”

“Enough questions.”

“…why are you really staying in that hotel? I mean…”

“
Fuck
the hotel!” Bilyk’s shouting, already out of his seat, leaning across the table until John can see the blackheads on his nose. “And fuck the dead bitch in your car!”

John doesn’t flinch. A trick his brother taught him. Bilyk looms there, his torso over the table. But John never wavers, his eyes dead still.

And it works.

The Ukrainian drops back into his seat with a massive
hudumph
.

“Money. Fake money, Mr Ray!” he says, jabbing a finger onto the table as he speaks, a little out of breath. “In your car, the car that Freddy had. Whose money was it?”

“Counterfeits, you say…?”

“Don’t play clever with me.”

“Is that a threat?”

“Yes.”

It’s Bilyk’s turn to keep his gaze steady. And it frightens John half to death. “We’ll be talking again soon,
John Ray
.”

With that he stands to leave.

John also rises and is about to extend a hand, keen not to make an enemy out of Bilyk. But the Ukrainian is already making his way through the cars, a curious bounce in his step, something coiled up and dangerous. Then, as the automatic glass doors sweep open, he turns.

“I bet Tony Ray would’ve had a straight answer for me!” he shouts.

“I’m not Tony fucking Ray!” John bellows, surprising himself with the force of his voice, and knowing that if the Ukrainian were to make one step back towards him he’d be out through the back door like a hare.

But Bilyk stays where he is. He laughs, a big hearty laugh of derision, then turns once more and makes his way out onto Hope Road.

John grabs the perspex
Auto Trader
award and hurls it into the side window of a red Audi 3, sending tiny fragments of glass skidding across the floor.

F
reddy opens his palms, looks down at his big, thick fingers.

A minute passes.

Two.

Next to him Moran is keen for the interview to end.

The young DCs opposite are the best Baron’s got. One male, one female. Jack and Jill they call ’em. Sharp, subtle, and very patient. They seem to have all the time in the world. And since the first interview, yesterday afternoon, they haven’t raised their voices or threatened Freddy in any way. Even when they talk about Donna’s dead body, they say
Miss Macken
, as if she’s still alive, as if there’s still some hope for her.

Moran has to admit that whatever they’re teaching ’em over at the training centre in Wakefield these days, it’s effective.

Finally Freddy looks up.

“Yep,” he says, “that’s it.”

The officers nod, terminate the interview, and stand.

Freddy seems confused. Looks at Moran, then back at the detectives. He’s like a lost kid, desperate for assurance, a friendly face. Had anyone in the room known him before all this, they’d have seen how severe the change in him has been, the extent to which he’s crushed on the inside.

But they don’t know him. And it doesn’t much matter. He’s under arrest for murder, and now, as he and his lawyer prepare to leave the interview room yet again, he sinks back into a state of groggy bewilderment.

“I’m going to talk to John,” Moran whispers to him, “then I’ll be back. Okay?”

Freddy is taken back to his cell, where he will spend the next hour in tears.

“He had
sex
with her!” Moran announces.

John is sitting on a metal bench at the far end of the bus station, his black, size ten Dr Martens shoes up on the bench opposite.

“Now why does that not come as a surprise?” he says as Moran steps over his legs and takes a seat next to him.

“On the back seat of your Mondeo.”

“Classy. They got his DNA?”

“Not yet. Don’t need it anyway. He told ’em.”

“And he just remembered this, did he?”

“Yes, right there in the interview room. The first I’d heard!”

“Shit. What else is he saying?”

“Same as before. Knows nothing about the money. He’s sticking to that.”

Good lad.

“But the girl, he’s all over the place. Loved her, tried to get her to stop, she needed to be patient… He’s talking his way into a charge here. Simple as that.”

“Stop what?”

“No idea.”

“Someone else took the car, that still his story?”

“Yes.”

“You believe him?”

Moran emits a terse gasp of exasperation. “They dragged her out of the hotel, dead. It was either Freddy or the Ukrainian kid who drove. I can’t
force
clients to tell me the truth.”

“Fedir, Fedir something, he’s called. The Ukrainian. He’s disappeared.”

“Then they’re gonna stay with Freddy as the main suspect. What else can they do?”

A turquoise and cream double-decker pulls up into the bay in front of them.

“What on earth is going on in there?” says John, as if he’s asking the bus.

Moran screws up his face, stifles a yawn. “The problem is what’s going on inside Freddy’s head. Those two are building up the trust. I’ve never seen a suspect get so much tea. Then he tells ’em he had sex with her in a lay-by, Thursday evening.”

John pulls himself up.

“Thursday? So they know he took the car Thursday as well?”

“One of the many facts he offered up to Jack and Jill, his new best friends.”

“What was he doing in the car with her on Thursday night?”

Moran shakes his head, as if amused.

“They
just drove around
, apparently. And they
did it
in a lay-by somewhere near Wetherby. He can’t remember exactly where.”

“At least he’s not being too specific.”

“I just wish he’d be a bit more specific with me.”

“Hold on,” John says.

He punches redial and presses the iPhone to his ear.

“Quick question from the Falcon,” he says when Bilyk answers. “You said Donna was Fedir’s idea. What about Freddy?”

“Ha!” Bilyk says, but the ebullience has gone from his voice. “When it comes to young women, no man is a communist, yes?”

“Fedir didn’t like sharing the goods?”

“I think that is a fair assessment.”

He hangs up and sits there, hands pushed down into his jacket pockets. The driver of the bus in front of them, having let his engine idle for several minutes, now turns it off and swings out of his seat.

“Funny thing,” says Moran, “most of the questioning has centred on the fake money.”

“Do they have a theory?” John asks, watching as the driver locks up his vehicle and wanders off.

“Way it’s looking, they think Donna got her hands on some fake notes, or was tricked into taking them. Always back to the money, that’s how they’re playing it. And, what with one thing and another, that puts Freddy right in the frame. The fact that he’s banging her does not help him, clearly.”

Clearly.

Moran continues: “There’s some sort of altercation at the hotel, which might have had something to do with fake notes. In the course of that, she dies.”

“Accident?”

Moran shrugs. “Who knows. It’s complicated. She’d been beaten, and she’d had sex. Could have been forced. But it was the smashed skull that killed her. They’re hinting at a fall.”

John exhales, letting his lips flap together.

“You’re talking as if it’s a done deal.”

“It’s what I’m picking up. What I don’t understand is why Freddy has nothing to say about the money.”

Moran stops, waiting for his own thoughts to come together. Then: “You know why your dad spent so little time in jail?”

The question surprises John. But he knows there’ll be a point.

“Go on.”

“Because he never said anything. Didn’t matter how long, or what they asked, how much they threatened… Never said a single word. And he was so damn insistent about it, as if he was doing the respectful thing by not talking.”

“They used to laugh about it, didn’t they?”

“The police? Yes, because outside the interview room he was courteous, knew everybody’s name, always used the correct rank. They knew where they were with him.”

“Yeah. Nowhere.”

They sit a while in silence.

“I never really thanked you for looking after my dad all those years.”

“I got paid.”

“You kept him out of jail. I think after mum died jail would have been the end of him. He took it pretty hard.”

Moran smiles. “He kept
himself
out of jail. After your mum was gone he became very cautious, did everything through me, sometimes Joe, but mainly me. He didn’t give the police a chance.”

“You think he feared going to jail, to lose mum then get locked up?”

“No, it was for you,” says Moran, his eyes locked on the gaudy red metalwork of the station’s ceiling.