Tell No Tales (29 page)

‘Would I make you a cup of tea?’

‘No, thank you. I won’t keep you long, but I wondered if I could ask you a few questions.’

‘It’s no bother.’ Mrs O’Brien sat down at the table and waved him to join her. ‘How’s Sofia? The poor dearie’s back in hospital, is she?’

‘Yes. But she’s recovering well,’ Zigic said.

‘Strong young woman, that one. And she was devoted to Jelena, like a mother to her she was. Lovely thing, so pretty.’ She closed her newspaper. ‘And now Sofia’s all alone. Breaks my heart to see her like that.’

‘Hasn’t Tomas been back?’

‘No. She phoned him a couple of days ago to tell him the bad news but . . . well, they’ve gone their separate ways now, haven’t they.’

‘When was the last time you saw Tomas?’

Mrs O’Brien turned a beady eye on him. ‘Why? You don’t think he was the one who hit them?’

‘No, it’s an unrelated matter,’ Zigic said. ‘A friend of Tomas’s is in trouble and we need to speak to him, but nobody seems to know where he is and Sofia isn’t in a fit state to help us yet.’

‘I’ve not seen hide nor hair of him since he took himself off.’

‘And when was this?’

She tapped her finger on the table. ‘It was the second of last month.’

‘That’s very precise,’ Zigic said. ‘Are you sure?’

She bristled. ‘Of course I’m sure. I might be getting on but I’ve not gone soft in the head yet.’ She pointed at him. ‘Now, I remember because it was Willy’s – that’s my husband – it was Willy’s birthday and I was in here icing his birthday cake and I heard an almighty carry-on from next door. They were shouting and throwing things. Well, the walls in these houses are so thin . . .’

Zigic thought of her loitering in the back garden and imagined she hadn’t exactly tried to ignore it, but he was grateful now. Police work would be ten times harder without ‘concerned’ neighbours.

‘Then it all went quiet.’ She paused, looking away at the party wall. ‘And a few minutes later the front door slammed so hard I’m surprised it didn’t fly right off its hinges.’

‘And you didn’t see Tomas again after that?’

‘No. I only know because he was supposed to come and fix my tap.’ She gestured towards the kitchen sink, where the hot tap was dripping rhythmically, pinging against the stainless steel. ‘He was very handy with that sort of thing. I asked Sofia if he wouldn’t mind coming round and having a wee tinker with it and she said Tomas was after going home for a bit. She said she’d send him round when he came back but –’ She shrugged. ‘He never did.’

‘Did you ask her about the argument?’

Mrs O’Brien looked at him like he was mad. ‘You don’t ask a woman a question like that. But that
other
one was there. Jelena’s boyfriend. Although I can’t see as he’d be much help to you after what he’s gone and done.’

‘We’ll try him.’ Zigic took Lukas’s mugshot out of his pocket and handed it to Mrs O’Brien. ‘Have you seen this man visiting the house at all?’

She put on a pair of reading glasses and frowned at the photo. ‘I remember this one. Sure, you don’t forget a face like that. Fearsome-looking creature, wouldn’t you say? He used to come round when the girls were out at work.’

‘Often?’

‘A few times that I saw.’ She gave it back to Zigic. ‘What’s he done? No good, I bet.’

‘You’re a fine judge of character, madam.’ He tucked the photo away again and stood up, pushed the chair back under the table. ‘Thank you for your time, you’ve been a great help.’

‘Oh, it’s no bother.’

She saw him out, asked him to pass on her best to Sofia when he saw her, no idea of how serious the next conversation they had was going to be.

Back to the hospital. Again. Three times in four hours and Zigic was beginning to feel like he’d spend the rest of his life in the place, walking endless claustrophobic corridors, pushing through infinite sets of swings doors then sanitising his hands, nose full of bleach smell and sickness and pollen from the flowers already wilting in their plastic vases on the nightstands.

Visiting hours were over and dinner time not yet started, the minutes between stretched, with nothing to do but watch the sun creep across the sky and think about what was happening inside your broken body, completely out of your control.

He’d been there himself. Last year when a fight with a suspect ended with him on the wrong end of a handgun, only the bulletproof vest saving him from being shot in the heart at point-blank range. It was a minor injury but they kept him in for a few hours which felt like days, tests and pills and ‘you’re a very lucky man, Inspector, a few inches higher . . .’

In the end he discharged himself, not wanting to lie there any longer like a victim.

Sofia was struggling with it too, he realised. She thought she was strong, she’d been through enough in her life to prove it, and yet here she was. Sedated the nurse said, explaining how agitated she’d become since their last visit, wanting to leave, shouting and cursing, threatening to hit the doctor when he tried to examine her.

She looked small under the sheets and very fragile, stripped of her defences.

Zigic stood in the doorway for a few minutes, watching her sleep, wondering how much information she had locked away in her head, and whether he would be able to get it out of her. She was protecting Tomas, through fear or loyalty.

Fear, he thought.

If Tomas had kicked Didi to death, stamped on his skull until it no longer resembled one, what on earth was he doing to Sofia? Men like that didn’t save their psychopathic behaviour for strangers. He might consider himself a soldier and claim there were battle lines scratched in the sand, but the moment Sofia did something he didn’t like he would have lashed out. So much rage couldn’t be neatly compartmentalised.

Zigic closed the door and went up to the ward where Anthony Gilbert was.

‘What do you want?’ Gilbert said wearily. ‘I’ve already told you I’m saying nothing else without a solicitor.’

‘This isn’t about you.’

Zigic switched off the television opposite Gilbert’s bed and sat down in the chair next to the window, sunlight washing the room, throwing his shadow across the twisted sheets.

‘I want you to tell me about Tomas.’

‘What about Tomas?’ Gilbert licked his cracked lips. ‘What’s he got to do with anything?’

It would come out soon enough and Gilbert wasn’t in a position to tell anybody what they were going to discuss; shackled and under a police guard, he might not talk to another civilian for days.

‘Have you see the news today?’

Gilbert nodded hesitantly.

‘The young man who was murdered on Saturday night,’ Zigic said. ‘We’ve arrested one of Tomas’s friends. We think he might have been involved too.’

‘That’s impossible. Tomas went back to Poland weeks ago.’

‘Did he?’

‘Didn’t Sofia tell you?’

‘Maybe she believes that. We don’t.’

‘Well, I don’t know where he is, if that’s what you’re here for.’ Gilbert reached under the sheets to scratch his leg, eyes fixed on the dead television screen. ‘Tomas and me weren’t friends. If it wasn’t for Jelena I wouldn’t have had anything to do with him. Either of them.’

‘You didn’t get on?’ Zigic asked and still Gilbert wouldn’t look at him. ‘Why was that?’

‘He didn’t like Jelena going out with an English guy.’

‘Any English guy? Or just you?’

‘Maybe just me,’ Gilbert said. ‘I don’t know, it’s just what Jelena told me. It’s not like he came out and said it to my face, but he made it pretty clear he didn’t think I was good enough for her.’

Gilbert closed his eyes for a moment, lost in memories of Jelena and him. Zigic had seen guilty men make elaborate displays of innocent grief before though, and he didn’t let this one colour his judgement. Gilbert might not have wanted to kill Jelena – Zigic was convinced that the man genuinely loved her – but he was still their only suspect and his regret changed nothing.

‘What kind of man is he?’ Zigic asked.

Gilbert gathered himself again, but when he spoke he picked his words carefully, wary of saying anything which might further implicate him. ‘He’s your typical East European meathead. Not very clever and he hates anyone who is. You know, the type who thinks being physically strong’s the only way you can be a real man.’

‘He looks like a powerful guy.’

‘He used to pick Sofia up and carry her around the house over his shoulder. She hated that.’ Gilbert’s face darkened. ‘He did it to Jelena once. Sofia screamed at him to put her down and he just laughed at her.’

‘Did they argue a lot?’ Zigic asked.

‘Not really.’

‘But he left her,’ Zigic said, trying to catch Gilbert’s eye, which had wandered again and settled on a spot in the corner of the room, near the sink with its pink hand sanitiser and plastic-wrapped medical supplies. ‘Or did Sofia throw him out?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘But you were there when it happened?’

Gilbert’s attention snapped back to him. ‘When what happened?’

‘The fight,’ Zigic said. ‘Sofia’s neighbour reported hearing an argument the night that Tomas left the house. She told me you were there too.’

‘I don’t know what the fight was about, I was upstairs. It got heated. Jelena wanted to go down. I said we should stay out of it. Then the next thing I know Tomas is coming up and Sofia is still shouting at him but he doesn’t answer her. Jelena got up to see what was happening – I tried to stop her but she was worried about Sofia. Tomas had packed a bag by then and he was leaving.’

‘Did Sofia try to stop him?’

‘No.’

She wouldn’t have given him the satisfaction of begging, Zigic imagined.

‘Has she been in contact with him since?’

‘No.’

‘Would she tell you if she had?’

‘No,’ Gilbert said. ‘But she would have told Jelena.’

Zigic considered it for a moment, something niggling away at the back of his mind that he couldn’t quite catch hold of. Was Sofia the forgive-and-forget type? He didn’t think so, but he had very little to base that assumption on, only the impressions he had gathered during a couple of conversations. There would be whole swathes of her character he hadn’t seen.

‘This was around the time you and Jelena had to cool things off.’

Gilbert didn’t reply. His eyes were shining wet.

‘Sofia didn’t want you in the house any more?’

‘No.’ A croaky whisper.

‘Why was that? She must have given Jelena a reason.’

He just shook his head and gave in to the tears.

There was only one reason Zigic could think of, and it was speculative at this point, based on incomplete evidence and gut instinct, but when he looked at the situation as a whole it made perfect sense. Tomas came home covered in blood; Sofia challenged him. Perhaps she knew exactly what he had done; worked out the link between his behaviour and the murdered man all over the local paper. Perhaps only that it was something which might bring trouble to her doorstep, but she would want him to leave for a while until the danger passed.

Tomas could have spun her a line, called Didi’s murder self-defence. If she loved him she would want to protect him and eventually she would want him to come home to her.

It would be risky though, and the fewer people who knew he was back in Peterborough the better. So Jelena would have to end it with Gilbert.

Or was he misjudging Sofia? She’d shown so little emotion he found it hard to get a handle on her thought process. Did she seem like a woman in love? Or a woman in fear?

Nobody had been able to give Zigic a satisfactory reason for the sudden, enforced break in their relationship and that bothered him, smacked of guilty secrets. This explained it. Explained the vagueness too.

But it didn’t tell him where Tomas was now.

Only Sofia could do that.

36

FERREIRA WAS GETTING
out of a cab as Zigic pulled into the station car park and she waited on the brown brick steps for him, hands shoved down into the back pockets of her jeans.

‘Make sure you claim for the taxi,’ he said.

‘I can’t be bothered with the paperwork. Not for a fiver.’

They went in through reception, empty on a Sunday afternoon, everyone with better things to do than raise hell. Zigic debriefed her on his conversation with Anthony Gilbert as they climbed the stairs, answered her questions, which were the same ones he’d asked himself, and felt reassured that his theory sounded more solid out loud than it had in his head.

‘Do you think Gilbert knows more than he’s saying about this?’ she asked.

‘He’s got no reason to lie.’

‘We’re getting ready to charge him with multiple murder. I wouldn’t help us if I was him. Not without getting something in return.’ She stopped at the vending machine and shoved a handful of change into it. ‘Do you want anything?’

Zigic shook his head and she started punching the buttons.

‘Because it sounds like he’s trying to keep Sofia in the clear,’ Ferreira said. ‘She bullies Jelena into dumping him, tries to kill him and he insists she doesn’t know where Tomas is. It’s like he’s protecting her.’

‘Or he genuinely doesn’t know.’

She gathered her Coke and chocolate from the tray, then leaned against the machine. ‘I had a look around the house while I was waiting for forensics, there’s a sleeping bag in the loft. Pillows and stuff.’

‘Did it look recently used?’

‘Tough to say. It’s pretty clean up there.’ She opened her Coke. ‘I found Sofia and Jelena’s stash too. A shoebox hidden in an old chest of drawers. There’s twelve grand in it.’

It was a crazy amount of money to leave lying around the house, even if it had been well hidden, but a lot of migrant workers didn’t trust the banks or were employed on the black. Some didn’t have the right paperwork to open accounts; more still had been forced from their homes by warfare or ethnic cleansing, driven out with whatever possessions they could carry. It was a lesson you didn’t need to learn twice. After that you would keep your money portable and to hand.

That was why they’d seen a steep year-on-year rise in burglaries in predominantly immigrant areas, they were lucrative places to hit, no need to find a fence, no trail left through pawnbrokers, just anonymous cash.