Long Way Home (21 page)

‘Where did you find her?’ Ferreira asked.

‘Your lot cleared her out of a whorehouse in Paston year before last. She came in here after a job.’ He picked up his cigarette, knocked ash off the tip. ‘I took one look at those big blue eyes . . . what was I going to do? Couldn’t see her out on the street. Five minutes she’d be in the same state with some evil bastard or other. Peterborough’s a veritable Sodom and Gomorrah these days.’

Ferreira almost managed it. She took a mouthful of coffee to try and scald the words off her tongue, swallowed it, reminding herself that she needed Maloney, she couldn’t afford to antagonise him. In her head she heard Zigic telling her to stay quiet.

The cup chimed against the saucer.

‘So, she’s not whoring here?’

Maloney took a long draw on his cigarette, squinted at her through the smoke. ‘She is when she wants to. But that’s between her and the clients. I don’t take a penny off her, or any of them, since you’re asking.’

‘That’s a very enlightened approach.’

‘I’m a safe haven, Sergeant. It might not sound like much to you but these girls appreciate it.’ He leaned back in his chair and the wood creaked, his gut bulging against the candy-striped shirt which was too young for him.

Ferreira wondered if one of his girls had chosen it, pictured him trailing around John Lewis behind Olga, while she picked things off the racks and held them up to him, telling him how handsome he would look, that blue really suited him. In Olga’s position what would she do? In a heartbeat she knew the answer, exactly the same thing. Maloney would extract his payment but he was good value in comparison to what the girls were used to. And how often could he manage it now anyway? Pushing sixty, overweight, it would be touch and go every time, whether he came or had a stroke.

‘I’m sorry.’

Maloney waved it away. ‘You wouldn’t be doing your job if you didn’t disapprove. The world’s a cold place though, never forget that.’ He offered her a cigarette and when she declined took one for himself. ‘Tombak, then? Don’t know what I can tell you you won’t already have gathered.’

‘I’m not here about Tombak.’ Ferreira slid the photograph of Viktor Stepulov across the table. ‘Do you recognise him?’

Maloney put his reading glasses back on and studied the photograph with his chin tucked into his neck. ‘Rare-looking fella.’

‘It’s Jaan’s brother.’

‘I couldn’t swear to it but I reckon he came in here now and again. Kept to himself.’ He put the photograph down again, went for his cigarette. ‘Are you after arresting him?’

‘Jaan was looking for him, he’d disappeared,’ Ferreira said. ‘He didn’t mention this to you?’

‘We didn’t have that sort of conversation. The football, the weather. He played a hand or two of dominoes with us, there were no heart-to-hearts.’

‘But you’re the centre of Peterborough society,’ Ferreira said. ‘When I’m looking for someone I come and ask you. Jaan must have realised his brother might come in.’

‘Might be why he spent so much time in here. Do you want to see if the girls recognise him?’

Before Ferreira could answer Maloney called them over and as they formed a cluster near the table she realised how similar they looked, eight pale, petite blondes of various nationalities, none above twenty-five, none above nine stone, all with the same watchful expression in their over-made-up eyes. These were women who’d been under the boot, alive to every slight shift in a man’s temperament and aware of the price of misreading them.

‘Sergeant Ferreira wants you to look at this photograph.’ He passed it to Olga.

‘His name’s Viktor Stepulov,’ Ferreira said, watching the photo move between their hands, cheap rings and gleaming nail polish. ‘He might have been calling himself something else. Do any of you recognise him?’

Quiet ‘nos’, head shaking, disinterest.

‘He’s Estonian, from Tallinn. Are any of you Estonian?’

Maloney answered for them. ‘Emilia is.’

The girl holding the photograph looked quickly between Maloney and Ferreira, then dropped her gaze, nodded. She looked about eighteen, sharp features and a gamine haircut, barely five foot tall in her black patent hooker heels.

The others strode back to their work and Ferreira asked Emilia to sit down.

‘You mind, Maloney?’

‘Go and call my bookie.’ He picked up his
Racing Post
. Emilia, you answer Sergeant Ferreira’s questions, no silly business now, you hear.’

Ferreira waited until he was out of earshot before she spoke.

‘How well did you know Viktor?’

‘He came to see me a few times.’ Emilia recrossed her legs, turned her body away, arms folded over her boyish chest. ‘I think he is lonely. We talk about home.’

‘What about work?’

‘Sometime yes. He tells me I am too good for this place.’

‘And his work?’

‘He is angry that there is no good jobs here. He is – what is word? With wood? He make things with wood?’

‘A carpenter.’

She nodded. ‘He tell them at agency he can do this and they give him work in factory packing salad. It is not a good job. Very bad pay. Many chemicals you breathe.’

‘When was the last time you saw Viktor?’

Her gaze slid across the table, the lip-stained cups and the coffee pot, the ashtray overflowing with butts. ‘I have not seen since in last year. He come here, want to go up to room but when we go and I ask him for money he says he has none.’

‘Did you still sleep with him?’ Ferreira asked.

‘I am not girlfriend. I tell him this and he is sad, he says he is going to start new job and he will be gone for some months. He says he will miss me.’ Emilia looked down at her fingers, started to pick at the ink-blue varnish on her thumbnail. ‘He tells me when he comes back he will pay.’

‘But you’ve heard that one before?’

Emilia smiled with faint humour. ‘He is nice. Gentle. I give him handjob as goodbye.’

A group of Englishmen in suits and ties came into the pub, their voices crashing ahead of them, all fake bonhomie and work-speak, trailing a metallic-tinged cloud of aftershave and body spray. They beelined for the bar and Emilia glanced over nervously, shifting on the stool to get up.

‘I should help.’

‘We’re nearly done,’ Ferreira said. ‘Where was Viktor’s new job?’

‘London. He was going to build the Olympics.’

The words sprang up like a brick wall. It was the kind of lie a man like Viktor would tell, especially to Emilia, self-aggrandising and vague at the same time. Either that or he was making a very long commute from Holme Fen. Not impossible, but unlikely.

‘Did he get the job through an agency?’ Ferreira asked.

‘No. He has a friend who is looking for good workers.’

‘From back home?’

‘No, an Englishman,’ Emilia said. Again she looked to the bar and Ferreira realised why she was so impatient, watching the suity boys jangling their change, eyeing the other girls; Emilia saw revenue going elsewhere. ‘What has Viktor done?’

‘He died just over a month ago. Hit by a train.’

‘That is very sad,’ Emilia said flatly. ‘He was nice man.’

Ferreira wondered if they would find anyone who cared that he was dead. What was it about the Stepulov brothers which provoked such cold ambivalence?

She took the photograph of Jaan out of her pocket. ‘This is Viktor’s brother. Jaan. He drank in here quite regularly . . .’

‘Yes.’

‘He’s dead too.’

‘Yes, I hear this.’

‘And you don’t find that strange?’ Ferreira asked. ‘Two brothers, dying so close together?’

Emilia shrugged. ‘People die.’

‘Jaan was looking for Viktor when he was murdered. He came in here looking for him. He must have asked you girls if you’d seen him?’

‘No.’

‘You’re Estonian though, he would have asked you even if he didn’t talk to the others.’

‘No.’

Ferreira decided to wing it. ‘A young woman matching your description was seen visiting Jaan a few days before he died.’

‘It was not me.’

‘Jaan was squatting in a shed on Highbury Street.’

‘I tell you. I do not know him.’ Emilia stood up and smoothed her hands over her hips, straightening her short black skirt. ‘Can I go?’

‘Jaan and Viktor were involved with very bad people, Emilia. Now they’re both dead. If you know something you’d do well to tell me.’

‘I tell you all I know.’

For a second they looked at each other and Ferreira scrutinised her face, but it was locked down and implacable, an expression honed over the course of a hard life. Finally she told her to go and watched her return to the bar. Emilia found a professional smile for the men waving notes at her, poured their drinks and took their compliments, and when she glanced back at Ferreira, some minutes later, there was only the vaguest trace of unease around her mouth.

HOW LONG WOULD
the policewoman sit there watching her?

Emilia held her hand steady as she pulled a pint of bitter for the loud Englishman in the cheap suit, eyes lowered, focusing on the pump like she had never done it before. She felt a flush creep up her cheeks and hoped her foundation would hide it.

‘Ah, you’re blushing,’ the man said, laughter in his voice, proud that he’d got a reaction from her. ‘But you are, I’m serious, you’re really pretty. You should be a model.’

‘Thank you.’ She dug deep and found a smile, one of the fake, plastic ones men like him couldn’t tell from the real thing.

She wondered if any woman had ever been genuinely delighted by him. This ugly man with his bad skin and receeding hairline, so full of himself to think she should be flattered by his approval.

She placed his pint on the bar.

‘Three pounds eighty.’

He placed four coins in her hand. ‘Keep the change, sweetheart.’

Emilia went to the till, her movements automatic, all the while watching the policewoman out of the corner of her eye, seeing her sip her coffee, looking to the bar across the rim of the cup. She slammed the drawer back harder than she meant to, making the glasses near it jingle against each other.

‘Who is next?’

She served more customers, concentrating on the sound of their voices, wanting to appear unshaken as she drained vodka from the optics and opened bottles of beer. She pulled pints and made coffee and took orders for all-day breakfasts, enquired after the health of the regulars and smiled through more stupid, repetitive compliments, and when she finally looked back to Maloney’s regular table the policewoman was gone and he was back in his rightful place, reading the newspaper.

Very bad people,
she had said. As if she knew what those words meant.

Had she been burned with cigarettes and bitten until she bled, fucked so hard she couldn’t walk for a day? Did she spend her seventeenth birthday servicing men old enough to be her grandfather on a stained mattress in a locked room in a country she wished she’d never come to?

No. She knew nothing of
very bad people.

Olga tapped her on the shoulder. ‘Clear the tables.’

Emilia went out onto the floor and began gathering empties, trying to avoid the places where people’s mouths had been. Not wanting their spit on her fingers. She filled one tray and placed it on the bar, filled a second, feeling eyes moving over her, appraising her.

She could appraise them too; that bull-necked Latvian with the baby dick, the Bulgarian who could only get it up with the light switched off. If they knew how the girls laughed about them they would never dare to show their faces.

Viktor she didn’t joke about with the others. He was the gentlest man she’d ever been with and she hated herself for speaking of him so dismissively to the policewoman. But what alternative did she have? She couldn’t tell her the truth.

Emilia felt her eyes beginning to prickle.

Not now, not here. She couldn’t let them see her crying.

The pub was getting busier, lunch hour drawing closer, the crowd thickening. Through the glass wall at the back she saw a coach pull into the car park and knew she would be expected to go upstairs soon. The men came in flush with the cash they had saved to get themselves set up, but the journey was a long one and their balls spoke louder than their brains, demanding to be emptied before they could concentrate on finding their contacts in this strange, new city.

Viktor had come in like that, one day last spring, crumpled from the bus, all enthusiasm, and every day for the last four months she expected him to come in again. At some point the expectation gave way to dim hope and finally she realised she would never see him again.

And then there was Jaan.

She put another tray of empties on the bar.

‘Emilia, love,’ Maloney shouted. ‘A drink when you’re ready.’

Meaning now.

She went behind the bar and poured him a whiskey from his special bottle, took it over to his table and placed it on a beer mat. He caught her wrist as she moved away.

‘What did the sergeant want?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Come on now, she never talked to you all that time over nothing.’

‘She thinks I know these dead men.’

‘But you told her you didn’t.’ His grip tightened on her wrist. ‘If you’ve gone and gotten yourself involved in something you shouldn’t . . .’

‘I fuck them,’ she said, making her voice hard and cold. ‘What else am I good for?’

Maloney let go of her, picked up his glass.

‘Clean your face, darling, you look like something the cat threw up.’

Emilia strode away quickly, through the door marked Staff Only and up the back stairs to the rooms above the bar where they brought their clients. Behind a closed door she heard a man grunting, the girl he was with encouraging him on, trying to talk him into coming quickly.

She went into the bathroom and locked the door. She could still feel Maloney’s fingers on her wrist and she rubbed the red marks, tears springing into her eyes.

Viktor was dead, and crying would change nothing.

She had to think of herself now.

Somehow they knew she was involved. She had suspected as much and now she knew for certain. She needed to get away before they worked out just how deeply.