Long Way Home (26 page)

Viktor Stepulov’s post-mortem was scheduled for ten. He didn’t expect much from it. The body was in pieces, it had been left out overnight to be gnawed at by animals and rained on. So the chances of DNA transfer from the men who’d dumped him were slight.

On Saturday morning he’d led a hastily convened search of the area along the train tracks on Holme Fen. Riggott insisted their budget wouldn’t run to extra bodies or overtime so it had been him, Ferreira and Wahlia – the two of them hung-over and bleary-eyed, reeking of the club they’d rolled out of a couple of hours before. Kate Jenkins agreed to come along in exchange for lunch and admitted, as they walked the line, eyes down, that she was happy to escape the birthday party she was supposed to be taking her daughter to.

It was a long shot. Twelve weeks after the event, but they found what they were looking for, the man’s brown woollen hat which he’d lost in the rush to escape the oncoming train. It was sodden and filthy, sitting snagged in buddleia bush a hundred yards away from the crossing, dragged along in a slipstream.

Zigic knew that if it ever came to court the hairs Jenkins recovered from it would be considered dubious evidence. They couldn’t conclusively prove how or when it got there, but if the owner was in the system it would be a start at least.

They’d been arrogant, dumping Viktor on railway tracks which they must have known were covered by security cameras. Arrogant or stupid, and both possibilities boded well. They would have made mistakes elsewhere. Once they’d been identified better evidence would follow, he felt sure of it.

If the hat’s owner was in the system.

They’d identified the make of van used to transport Viktor’s body to the railway crossing. A Citroën Berlingo, 05 model, but the number plates were stolen or cloned, registered to an identical vehicle scrapped last year after a pile-up on the A1 just south of Grantham. The owner was a family florist’s in Rutland, the driver dead.

Wahlia had called around the local scrapyards to see if a white Berlingo had come in some time during the last month, but so far no joy.

The coffee bubbled up into the top of the pot and Zigic whipped it off the heat before it burned, took down a white espresso cup from the shelf and poured a double shot he sugared and splashed with cream.

He drank it standing at the kitchen window, looking out across the empty road to the allotments opposite, a patchwork of black and green and the rotting yellow of last year’s crops which hadn’t been cleared yet, clumps of rhubarb insulated with straw and lines of old plastic bottles being used as cloches. It would be built on eventually and he would miss the view. There was something reassuring about seeing the old men from the village working away there on a Sunday morning, the few young mums who’d taken plots showing their kids how to grow vegetables.

Zigic cut a slice of rye bread from the loaf in the tin and drank another espresso while it toasted, feeling the caffeine start to stir his system. He felt like he could run this morning, but the twinge in his groin had reasserted itself over the weekend and he knew he should rest it.

Half an hour later the boys were up and he made their breakfast – toast with honey for Stefan, cereal for Milan – while they chattered across the kitchen table, talking about wrestlers and who could beat up who. He put cartoons on the television for them and went upstairs to get ready for work.

There was a thin layer of frost on the windscreen when he went out to the car, ice on the gravel and on the leaves of the clipped buxus either side of the front door. He ran the heater at full blast as he drove through the village, overtaking a pair of women on horses riding two abreast up the steep climb of Loves Hill, thinking about the coming autopsy and listening to the bulletin on Hereward FM. A shooting in the early hours of the morning being reported with more gusto than solid information. An unidentified man. A country road.

They were appealing for the good Samaritan who left the man at A&E to come forward and rule himself out of their inquiries. Translation – we know you were involved, you bastard.

It would keep Riggott busy at least, something so high profile, and give them some much needed breathing space.

Ferreira was in the office already when he arrived, sitting at her desk with a coffee and a cigarette, going through old case notes. She was uncharacteristically smart today, a slim black trouser suit and white shirt, her hair pulled into a sleek ponytail.

Zigic tried to remember the last time he’d put a suit on for work. He had a wardrobe full of ones he never wore and by the time he needed them again, promotion or the ongoing threat of the department’s closure driving him back to CID, they would be too dated.

Some mornings he wanted to put one on, needing to feel armoured against the coming day, but the dress code in Hate Crimes was strictly casual, and the suits stayed where they were, sealed up in nylon body bags.

‘Are you in court today?’

She glanced up from her notes. ‘Ten thirty. It’s that boy who got beaten up outside the Polish club in Fletton last year. You remember?’

‘No.’

‘No. It’s kind of fuzzy for me too,’ she admitted. ‘I hate this part so much. They always make you feel like an idiot.’

‘Just try not to get rattled.’

‘I always wonder what kind of person goes into criminal law. They know their clients are guilty most of the time and they stand there in court ripping into us, trying to break the victims.’

‘Someone has to do it,’ Zigic said, going over to Viktor Stepulov’s board.

He did it every time he walked into the office. As if a magical pixie would have cracked the case in his absence and left the evidence for him. They never did.

‘They’re worse than the people they defend,’ Ferreira said. ‘Scumbags.’

She shook the coffee pot at him.

‘No, thanks. I’ve had about six cups already.’

He went into his office to check his messages. Nothing new there either. The cleaners had been in, emptied the bin, wiped the dust off his computer screen, leaving a faint whiff of lemon-scented polish behind them. They’d moved the photographs of Anna and the boys and he returned them to their proper alignment near his in tray; Anna barefoot and brown on the beach in Novi Sad, Milan and Stefan posed on the bench in his parents’ back garden. He remembered the day it was taken, didn’t recall them being so well behaved.

‘Have you heard about the shooting?’ Ferreira said.

‘It was on the radio. What’s the story?’

‘Adams has caught it. He’s got it down as a gang thing. The guy’s in surgery apparently, they’re waiting for him to come round so they can question him. Doesn’t look serious, shoulder wound.’ She shrugged. ‘Wouldn’t mind something easy like that, would you?’

‘Right now I’d take a non-fatal gunshot to get rid of this case.’

Ferreira smiled. ‘We’ve got a dirty old hat to go on, what more do you want?’

IN THE CORRIDOR
outside Court 4 Ferreira went through her notes again, not wanting to have to refer to them while she was questioned. It looked stronger to answer from memory, as if the defendant’s guilt was so obvious you didn’t need to check a single detail. She wanted the jury to see that.

If they were paying attention.

When she was called, twenty minutes later, she saw that they weren’t. Eight men, four women, all bored-looking and slumped in their seats, except for an old guy in a tweed jacket who sat ramrod-straight, a notepad resting on the ledge in front of him.

She stepped up into the witness box, feeling a flush creep across her cheeks as the eyes of the court turned on her, and she swore the oath with her shirt sticking to her back and dampness under her arms suddenly.

The prosecutor, a thin, young man with rimless glasses and a receeding hairline, asked her the questions they had already rehearsed and she answered them smoothly, heard her voice coming out strong and certain.

When she walked out ten minutes later she couldn’t remember anything she’d said to the defence lawyer. She knew she’d spoken, knew as well that she’d begun to stumble around the answers even before her mobile phone rang, prompting a wave of stifled laughter and a verbal lashing from the judge.

After that was a blank.

She went into the Ladies and splashed cold water on her face. Her cheeks still burned. She patted her face dry with a handful of paper towels and swore at her reflection in the mirror.

She didn’t wait for the verdict.

Outside she switched her mobile on again and saw two missed calls from an unfamiliar number. She threw her phone back into her handbag; whoever it was they could wait, the bastards, showing her up like that.

A chrome burger van was parked up outside the magistrates’ court, two women in red uniforms and hairnets slinging junk food for passing shoppers and the gathering throngs of people waiting for their appearances. The smell of frying meat and onions just beginning to singe filled the air, bludgeoning the exhaust fumes and the rotten brown odour of the River Nene thirty yards away.

Ferreira ordered a sausage butty and a Coke, ate quickly at one of the aluminium cafe tables set up on the pavement, needing to put something on top of the angry nausea which was making her stomach roil. An elderly couple, heavily insulated against the cold and weighed down with bags from the supermarket in Rivergate, joined her at the table, started talking about their sick cat, glancing at her as if they expected her to have an opinion.

She rolled a cigarette, hiding behind her sunglasses, and said she was more of a dog person.

After a few deep drags she started to feel calmer. It would be a story to tell if nothing else, one more inopportune phone moment to add to the list.

Nearby a voice barked out and the couple at the table threw disapproving looks towards the burger van.

‘I gave you a twenty.’

‘It was a ten, sir.’

‘It was a fucking twenty.’

Ferreira turned to see Clinton Renfrew up on the balls of his feet, holding a hot dog smothered in toxic yellow mustard.

‘I’m sorry –’

‘Gimme my change or I’ll come up there and get it myself.’

The other people in the queue were finding the pavement and the surrounding buildings fascinating suddenly, all frozen silent. Behind the counter the two women were conferring, trying to decide whether it was worth the hassle, if he looked like the kind of bloke who would kick the side door in.

‘Well, what’s it to be?’ Renfrew asked.

The older woman went to the till and returned with a handful of change she slammed down on the counter, asked who was next.

Renfrew strutted away from the burger van, head held high as he took a bite of his hot dog. As he walked past, Ferreira clocked the label on his jeans and the logo on the side of his wrap-around sunglasses. The combined price was more than he would earn in a week at the garage and she wondered why he wasn’t under a car right now. Monday mornings were busy, all of those clanks and rattles which emerged over the weekend to deal with.

Maybe they’d sacked him.

Maybe he’d come into some money and quit.

At the table the old man started to complain about falling standards and how the schools were to blame, his wife agreeing as she blew on her tea.

Ferreira gave Renfrew five seconds’ head start then hitched her handbag onto her shoulder and went after him, seeing the swagger in his walk, a bolt of added confidence from the small scam he’d just pulled. He stopped at the traffic lights where Bridge Street crossed Bourges Boulevard, four lanes dividing the edge of the Woodston suburbs from the city centre proper, standing behind a woman in a grey skirt suit, so close that she took a step forward, almost moving into the road.

The lights changed and Ferreira let get him fifteen feet ahead of her. He blended into the crowd of shoppers ambling down the broad, tree-lined street, just another average-looking, middle-aged bloke with a shaved head. Only the wings tattooed across the back of his neck marked him out.

It was a crisp, bright morning and Bridge Street was bustling with people brought out by the weather and the mid-season sales, New Look’s window screaming 70 per cent off, M&S 50. Renfrew stopped to check out the display at a small menswear boutique and Ferreira swerved away to lose herself between the metal benches and market stalls which ran up the centre of the street, skirting a railed-off section of seating outside Deli France, where women were sitting talking over their lattes, wrapped in coats and sunglasses, smiling into the unseasonal sunshine.

Renfrew threw the rest of his hot dog to the ground and moved off again.

Where was he going?

A straight line through the centre of town would take him to the Barlows’ house but Ferreira didn’t think she was that lucky.

She kept him in view as they passed the town hall, a small anti-cuts protest clustered around the main doors, their ringleader talking to an ageing security guard who’d probably had his hours and wages slashed. One of the protesters had sloped off to the Costa nearby, was sitting out front with an espresso and a panini, his placard leaning against the wall behind him.

It was no way to start a revolution, Ferreira thought.

The cathedral bells rang the hour as Renfrew crossed the main square and Ferreira fell in step behind him, a dozen people between them as they moved up Long Causeway, passing a coffee wagon and a flower stall which filled the air with pollen, making her nose twitch. The road gave way to flat grey cobbles, more cafe tables on the pavement and a
Big Issue
seller outside the back entrance of Queensgate shopping centre, fighting for spare change with a busker playing an inevitable Bob Dylan cover.

A Securicor van was parked in front of Halifax and Renfrew gave it a speculative look as he walked past. He probably thought he could take it, tough guy like him.

As they crossed Westgate, Ferreira realised Renfrew was likely going to sign on. If he’d been sacked Friday this was his first opportunity to get in there and demand some money, but he kept going, walking faster now, hands tucked into his pockets, a new determination squaring his shoulders.