Tell No Tales (27 page)

Anthony Gilbert was in a private room, a guard on his door.

In another part of the hospital, at a safe distance, Sofia Krasic was in bed. Another uniformed guard was stationed outside her room in case she somehow slipped free and came looking for Gilbert to finish the job she had denied starting on Friday evening.

It was a precaution for her as much as him. Protecting her from herself.

The PC stood as they approached and Zigic told him to go and get a drink or something while they were in with the suspect, stretch his legs.

Anthony Gilbert was sitting up in bed, as pale as the sheets he had kicked off, except for the skin under his eyes which was a bruised purplish-grey. He looked dehydrated, despite the drip, his lips cracked, cheeks stubbled and hollow, and Zigic saw that he hadn’t touched his breakfast, which sat on the table pulled across the foot of the bed.

There was no sign of Sofia’s visit on him.

‘Mr Gilbert, I’m Detective Inspector Zigic, this is Sergeant Ferreira.’ He closed the door. ‘We’re glad to see you’ve pulled through.’

Gilbert licked his lips. ‘I didn’t kill Jelena. Whatever Sofia has told you, she’s lying.’

Zigic pulled a chair over to the bed and sat down, while Ferreira moved away to the window and perched on the sill, her attention fixed on Gilbert who didn’t know who to focus on now, kept darting between them, wondering who would be most sympathetic.

‘We’re aware that the situation was complicated,’ Zigic said.

‘No, it wasn’t. Jelena wanted to move in with me and Sofia wouldn’t let her.’

‘So you killed her,’ Ferreira said.

‘No.’

‘Or maybe you didn’t want to hit Jelena. Maybe it was Sofia you were trying to take out and you fucked up. Is that why you tried to kill yourself?’

Gilbert turned back to Zigic, tears in his eyes. ‘I heard it happen, that’s why I did this. Jelena was on the phone to me when that car hit her. I heard her die.’

He wept quietly, shoulders shaking.

Zigic glanced at Ferreira, got a shrug.

Gilbert sniffed, his voice thick when he spoke again. ‘I can’t live without her. When I get out of here I’ll do it again and nobody can stop me. I need her. I can’t – I loved her so much.’

‘She obviously didn’t feel the same way,’ Ferreira said. ‘She’d have stood up to Sofia if she did.’

‘You don’t understand.’

‘We’ve seen your record, Gilbert. We understand exactly what kind of man you are. I think it’s fair to say you don’t take rejection well.’

‘Jelena didn’t reject me,’ he snapped. ‘We were going to be together, we were just waiting for Sofia to come round.’

‘Why did it matter what Sofia thought?’ Zigic asked.

‘They only had each other, Jelena didn’t want to lose her. She’d have come round eventually.’ His voice hardened, ‘She didn’t have any choice.’

His words hung in the air for a moment, with the sound of the heart monitor beeping, his pulse rising, and the nurse’s too bright voice bleeding in from the corridor outside. Zigic watched him tug against the restraint shackling his left wrist to the bed’s raised bar, a sudden surge of anger directed at Sofia. In his head this was all her fault and that could only be the case if he was guilty.

‘If you weren’t driving –’

‘I wasn’t. I told you. I was at home when it happened.’

‘If you weren’t driving the car then why does the blood on the airbag match yours?’

Gilbert twisted where he sat, like he wanted to get up, but the restraint held him. ‘It can’t. It wasn’t me. You’re lying.’

Not lying, but not quite telling the truth either. They only had a type match but Zigic wanted to see how he reacted. Gilbert was weakened by the overdose and this would be their best opportunity to study him before they got him into an interview room, with the reassuring presence of his solicitor. He decided to push a little harder.

‘And if you weren’t driving, why does CCTV at the place where the car was bought show a man who bears a striking resemblance to you handing over the money for it?’

Gilbert clutched his head with his free hand, fingers tugging at his hair. ‘This is insane. I haven’t done anything.’

‘It’s not the first time you’ve tried to run someone down who got in your way,’ Ferreira said. ‘That woman’s boyfriend a couple of years ago.’

‘That was an accident.’

‘The judge didn’t think so.’

‘He ran at me, I tried to swerve.’

‘Well, you did a much better job this time,’ Ferreira said. ‘You’ve killed two people – you would have killed Sofia too but she got lucky. Was it her you wanted to hit?’

‘I don’t want to talk to you any more.’

‘Why go after her like this?’ Ferreira asked, straightening up off the windowsill. ‘You could have stabbed her while she was alone, broken into the house and made it look like a burglary gone wrong . . . you might have got away with that.’

Gilbert kicked out at the table, sending his breakfast to the floor, cold baked beans and tea spattering the lino. ‘Get out. I’m not going to say anything else without my solicitor. I know my rights.’

Zigic stood up. ‘Gather your strength, Mr Gilbert, we’ll be back tomorrow.’

They left him muttering under his breath, a combination of denials and disbelief, and went back out through the silent corridors and the grey stairwell, a few early visitors arriving in the reception area as they left.

‘What do you think?’ Ferreira asked.

‘We need those DNA results back before we can do anything more.’

‘Should be in tomorrow.’ She stopped to dig in her handbag for her sunglasses. ‘A guilt-induced overdose makes sense though. He’s going for Sofia, he gets Jelena.’

‘We’ll see.’

‘We’re screwed if it isn’t him,’ Ferreira said.

They crossed the road to the almost empty car park, their vehicles parked next to each other.

‘What happened with your friend then?’ Zigic asked. ‘Did he give you anything useful?’

Ferreira slowed her pace, frowning. ‘I don’t know how useful it is, but short version – Joe Selby is working for Richard Shotton now and Shotton has paid off the ENL and a bunch of other groups to behave themselves until after he’s elected.’

‘How does he know all this?’

‘Alex is MI5. They’re monitoring Shotton.’

‘Why?’

‘He wouldn’t go into details.’

Zigic’s mobile peeped and he took it out of his pocket, wondering why Ferreira’s friend had given them that information and what he would expect in return.

He opened the text message. Grieves.
I think I’ve found our mystery man
.

34

‘
I THOUGHT I
told you to take the day off.’

Grieves spun away from her desk and stood up, looking justifiably pleased with herself. ‘Dan’s got his kids this morning, so I thought I might as well come and put a few hours in on the CCTV. There’s so much of it.’

Zigic heard Ferreira snort softly behind him and felt a prickle of annoyance at her attitude. While she was sleeping off her hangover Grieves was in here diligently ploughing through hours of mind-numbing, eyeball-furring footage of the streets around New England. And now it had paid off.

‘OK, let’s see what you’ve got.’

She tapped her keyboard, brought up a still lifted from the video. It showed a Polish cafeteria on Lincoln Road, a few people sitting out front in the sunshine, their faces blurs of movement as they held animated conversations. All except the two men at the table furthest from the door, who were both staring out across the road, faces still and crisp enough to make a positive identification.

One was the man they had arrested for Asif Khalid’s murder, but it was his drinking buddy who made Zigic swear under his breath.

‘What?’ Ferreira asked.

‘That’s Sofia’s boyfriend. Tomas.’

‘Are you sure?’

He leaned across Grieves’s shoulder, needing to be certain. Tomas had a distinctive appearance, broad-shouldered and heavily muscled, with a lean bony face and light blond hair worn long on top and shaved at the sides. Zigic thought of the photos he had seen in Anthony Gilbert’s house, the ones of them all together on Jelena’s Facebook page, and knew he was looking at the same man.

‘It’s him. I’m positive.’

His eyes drifted down to the time code at the bottom of the screen. The footage had been taken four weeks ago, a Friday afternoon.

‘This is the day before Didi was murdered.’

‘Wasn’t that around the time Gilbert and Jelena were talking about him leaving Sofia?’ Ferreira asked. ‘Do you think she’s covering for him?’

‘I don’t know. Gilbert and Jelena seemed to think he’d dumped her – that was a private conversation, so we have to assume it’s legitimate.’

He thought of how flustered Sofia became when they discussed Tomas, and he’d put it down to embarrassment at the time, a desire to conceal the fact that she’d been dumped, but now he wondered if it was a tactic to stop him pursuing the subject.

‘If anyone knows where to find Tomas, it’s Sofia.’

‘Maybe this is why they split up,’ Ferreira suggested. ‘She finds out what he’s done, doesn’t like it, they argue, she throws him out.’

‘Why wouldn’t she report it to the police though?’ Grieves asked.

Ferreira laughed. ‘Seriously? I don’t know if you’ve noticed but we’re not exactly popular around that neck of the woods.’

Grieves looked away, cheeks burning. ‘Maybe she’s scared of him.’

‘No,’ Zigic said. ‘She’s scared of us.’

‘She didn’t act like it when we pulled her in.’

‘That was about avenging her sister. Her own safety wasn’t a consideration. But she wouldn’t have risked exposing herself to report Tomas. She can’t afford the scrutiny.’

‘Why?’

‘Her papers are dodgy.’

‘Good, that gives us leverage.’

Zigic looked again at the two men, relaxing in the afternoon sun, and wondered what conversation they’d been having. Was it the usual work and women and football stuff? Or was it something altogether more serious?

‘Have you found any more footage of them together?’

Grieves looked back at the screen. ‘Not yet – this is the first thing I found. I thought you’d want to know right away. They stay at the cafe for about twenty minutes then they walk south down Lincoln Road and turn off onto Green Street, but there’s no cameras on the road so I don’t know where they went afterwards.’

‘Sofia and Jelena’s house is on Green Street,’ Zigic said.

He walked over to the whiteboard with Didi’s photograph at the top, picked up a marker pen and added ‘Tomas’ to the suspects column, then did the same for Asif Khalid’s and Ali Manouf’s.

‘Deb, see if they’re using that cafe regularly, we can chase up on that then. And concentrate on the next thirty-six hours of footage. Didi was killed a couple of streets away, it’s possible you’ll spot them now you know what we’re looking for. And print a copy of that, would you?’

‘Yes, sir.’

He turned away from the board. ‘Mel, make a file up, you know what we need.’

‘Gore?’

‘I’m not sure that will have much effect on Sofia, but we’ll try.’

On Wahlia’s desk he found the mobile phone number they had for Tomas, dialled it and heard it go straight to voicemail again. He was keeping it switched off or he’d discarded the SIM card for some reason. If he was involved, the latter was most likely. Especially since his partner had been arrested.

Zigic tried not to get ahead of himself. Having a beer together didn’t make them brothers in arms, but Tomas’s sudden disappearance and Sofia’s reticence bothered him.

Ferreira came over with a cardboard file tucked under her arm.

‘Back to the hospital then?’

The car park was busier now, Sunday visiting duties to be done. As they walked up to the ward where Sofia was they passed people with bunches of flowers and arms full of magazines, bags of food and books to help ease the annoyance of confinement.

Sofia had none of those luxuries.

When they went into her room she was lying with her back to the door and she didn’t stir at the interruption. Zigic walked round the bed and saw that she was sleeping, but not peacefully. Her face was drawn into a tense frown, her hands curled into tight fists, ready to fight despite the restraints.

Gently he shook her shoulder and she came round with a start, snapping upright so quickly that she gasped and pressed her hand to her ribs. Three days on from the hit-and-run she was still delicate and he wondered if her injuries were worse than she’d made out. The doctors had her on what looked like a morphine drip, a button attached to it so she could self-medicate. But she didn’t reach for it, only settled back slowly against the pillows, biting down on the pain.

Zigic held his hand out to Ferreira and she passed him the file. He found the photograph of Asif Khalid’s murderer and showed it to Sofia.

‘Do you know who this is?’

She glanced at it, no change in expression. ‘Why do you want to know?’

‘He’s a friend of Tomas’s, is that right?’

‘What has he done?’

‘Who is he?’

Sofia scowled at him. ‘Lukas.’

‘Lukas what?’

‘I do not know his other name,’ she said. ‘What has he done?’

Zigic slipped the photograph away, found one of Asif Khalid dead on the pavement in Cromwell Road. ‘This.’

Sofia looked at the image for a couple of seconds without any discernible change in expression. He didn’t expect her to be shocked – she had grown up in a war zone, seeing people dead and dying on the streets, shot by snipers, bodies shredded by shell debris, this photograph was too remote to provoke a reaction.

‘I did not like him. Tomas brought him to the house once. I told him I would not have him in my home again.’

‘Why?’

‘I have seen men like him before. I knew what he was.’

‘And what was that?’

‘A soldier. I could see it in his eyes that he has killed people. When I ask Tomas he says, yes, Lukas was in the army but a medic. I did not believe him.’

‘We need to speak to Tomas, he’s the only link we have to Lukas right now and there’s a chance he’ll have vital information.’ That got a reaction. She tried to fold her arms but the restraints stopped her. ‘Where is he now?’