Tell No Tales (9 page)

He picked out a narrow mid-grey suit, single-breasted, three-button, a white shirt and a dark blue tie. Changed his mind and switched it for a black one.

Anna came in as he was pulling on his trousers. She eyed the outfit on the bed.

‘A blue tie would look better with that suit.’ She fetched the one he’d just put back and laid it against the jacket. ‘It must be something important if you’re dressing up.’

‘Press conference at five,’ he said. ‘There was a hit-and-run on Lincoln Road this morning. Bad one. Two dead.’

‘I saw the news. Why are you handling it?’

‘Where it was, everyone assumed it was going to be racially motivated.’ He shoved his feet into a pair of black brogues, squatted to tie them. ‘Which it might still be. We’re just not sure yet.’

Anna handed him his shirt and when he’d slipped his arms into it she began to button it up.

‘And I thought you’d crept out to see me,’ she said, a slight smile touching the corners of her mouth as she brought it close to his. ‘We could lock the boys in the cupboard under the stairs so we’re not disturbed . . .’

‘Tempted, but I really haven’t got time.’

‘This is how it starts, you know? Middle age.’ She knotted his tie and folded his collar back down over it, stepped back to admire her handiwork with that glint still in her eye. ‘I forget how good you look in a suit. Very authoritative.’

He laughed. ‘Seriously, I’ve got to go.’

‘You get a girl started then you run off.’

He grabbed his jacket from the bed, kissed her quickly and bolted for the door before she stepped up her efforts. Milan was waiting for him in the kitchen, holding both hands behind his back, and he glanced around conspiratorially, checking Stefan wasn’t watching before he produced an orange lolly in a plastic wrapper which was sticking ominously to the sweet.

‘Thank you.’

‘I only had a bit of it,’ Milan said.

Zigic tucked the lolly into his breast pocket and shouted his goodbyes.

12

FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER
he pulled into the station car park, struggled to find a space and eventually tucked in behind Ferreira’s red Golf. Another news van had arrived, its side panel open while the crew hauled out their equipment to take upstairs. A couple of local print hacks he recognised were standing smoking on the steps, laughing over their war stories, and he walked in without acknowledging them, feeling the nerves stirring in his stomach.

Upstairs Wahlia was swearing at the vending machine in the hallway, squaring up to it like his gym-toned bulk would do any good. Ferreira shouted at him from the office, ‘You want to hear what it said about your mum.’

Zigic tried to block them out, checked on Grieves and Parr, discovered nothing new had happened during his absence. He went to the murder board and looked at the scant progress they had made in the last ten hours, wishing he had something more significant to take to the Media Room with him.

He paced into his office and out again, poured a coffee he didn’t drink and watched the comings and goings in the car park, thinking about Sofia Krasic lying to him from her hospital bed and whether she might have cost them the most important hours of the investigation by pushing her own agenda.

If Gilbert wasn’t driving the car, if this wasn’t about him and Jelena, then the person they were actually looking for could be long gone by now.

Then it was time and he was moving through the doors into a dull blue room full of cameras and lights and the babble of low chatter, rows of chairs lined up facing a long table with the force’s logo on the wall behind it, more of the chairs occupied than not, a larger gathering than he’d ever had to face in here. He recognised a few of them, the ones in the front row, but beyond that they were indistinct, blurred by his nerves. Nearby he saw DCS Riggott standing talking to a veteran in a bad suit, the press officer peeling away from them, heading in his direction. Riggott patted the old guy on the back and followed.

The press officer shoved a sheet of paper into Zigic’s hand and retreated, replaced at his elbow by Riggott who nudged him in the direction of the table.

The chatter subsided as they took their seats and Riggott cleared his throat noisily to silence them completely, moved the microphone in front of him a touch closer before he spoke, his usually abrasive Belfast accent tempered in deference to the occasion.

‘Ladies and gentleman, thank you for coming this afternoon. I’d like to introduce Detective Inspector Dushan Zigic. Dushan is the senior investigating officer in this case. He will be giving a short statement, then we’ll take your questions. Dushan?’

‘Thank you. The inquiry into this morning’s hit-and-run on Lincoln Road is now a murder investigation . . .’

The cameras snapped and he kept reading, hearing his voice coming out stronger than he expected, detailing the vehicle involved and the number of deaths and injuries. The statement was all padding and as he spoke he became aware of how many questions it left to be asked and that in few minutes those questions would be fired at him.

‘Somebody out there holds vital information which can help us find the person responsible for this callous act,’ Zigic said, lifting his eyes from the statement. ‘And I would urge anyone who has any information about this crime to come forward and contact us. Thank you.’

Hands went up then across the room and the questions started.

‘Why is this investigation being carried out by the Hate Crimes Department?’

Riggott jumped on that one. ‘We do not currently believe this to be a racially motivated crime. DI Zigic’s team is handling the investigation because they’re familiar with the area and the particular challenges of carrying out an investigation there.’

‘Do you believe the nationality of the victims may have motivated the driver?’

Riggott again, his voice hardening. ‘There is absolutely no evidence to suggest that this was a racist attack.’

‘Can you confirm that Jelena Krasic’s boyfriend has been hospitalised with an overdose?’

How did they know that?

Zigic waited a beat, no answer from Riggott so he took it.

‘A man we believe to have been involved with Ms Krasic is currently being treated for a suspected overdose, yes.’

‘Is he a suspect?’

‘At this stage in the investigation, I’m keeping an open mind,’ Zigic said.

A young man with horn-rimmed glasses and folk singer’s beard put his hand up.

Zigic pointed to him. ‘Yes?’

‘Alistair Whitman,
Independent
. Are you investigating potential links between today’s hit-and-run and the recent murders in the area of Ali Manouf and the young Somali man known as Didi?’

A murmur passed around the room. Apparently the rest of them hadn’t done their jobs quite so well as the young man now smirking at Zigic from the second row.

‘There is absolutely no evidence to suggest a link between the crimes you’ve mentioned.’

‘Have you made any progress at all with those murders, Detective Inspector Zigic?’

‘We are here to discuss this morning’s hit-and-run. If you have questions pertaining to any other investigations I suggest you direct them to our press officer, Ms Gilraye, at a more appropriate moment.’

Riggott intervened then, unable to fully smother the anger in his voice as he proceeded with the usual niceties.

‘Thank you for coming this afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. If we have any further developments to report you will be informed through the usual channels. Thank you.’

DAY TWO

13

NICOLA GILRAYE WAS
waiting for him when Zigic got into Hate Crimes, sitting on an empty desk with her feet on a chair, looking at the whiteboards where the murders of Ali Manouf and Didi had spread to their eventual dead ends, witness statements which added nothing, suspects identified and swiftly eliminated through unbreakable alibis or DNA.

There was a copy of the
Independent
on the table next to her. He knew she read the papers online, so it was just a prop brought along for effect.

She was big on effect and Zigic imagined that as a press officer style would always be more important than substance, which was why her suits were always precisely tailored and her make-up so well applied that you could only see the old acne scars along her jawline when you were a few inches away from her. At a distance she was television perfect, petite and blonde and very slightly plastic.

‘I take it you’ve seen the
Independent
this morning.’

‘Shame they’re not as malleable as the locals.’

‘Not quite as easy to get nationals’ balls in your palm unfortunately.’ A faint smile flitted across her face. ‘But I think the best way to counter it for now would be a nice, friendly interview in tonight’s
Telegraph
with one of the family members.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Ziggy, sweetheart, do I come in here telling you how to make some Kosovan cabbie ignore your war criminal surname? I wouldn’t dream of it.’ She slipped off the desk, heels clicking down onto the floor. ‘You need time to work these cases, don’t you? You cannot afford for people to start looking for a political angle in this yet. And believe me, when you’ve got your man I will have the press rain down their approval on you; you will be embarrassed by the love. But today you have a problem which is best solved by my putting a beautiful Slovenian girl on the front page of the evening paper.’

‘Sofia Krasic?’

Gilraye nodded.

‘She’s still in hospital, you know,’ Zigic said.

‘That isn’t necessarily a problem, is it? She got out of it with minor injuries I heard.’

‘If she wants to talk to you . . . fine.’

‘I thought Paul Naysmith might be the best person to speak to her,’ Gilraye said. ‘His balls are in my palm after all. It’ll be half a page of entirely apolitical suffering. She speaks English, doesn’t she?’

‘She’s been here years.’

‘Not all of them do.’

Zigic swallowed his annoyance, knowing she was right, thinking of his grandparents, both here since the early fifties but you would take them for migrants straight off the bus if you spoke to them. A couple of months ago a man in the post office had barracked his grandmother for taking a pension she had no entitlement to, thinking she had only just come over, told her it was her fault his wife couldn’t get a hip replacement. She gave him the benefit of her English then, every piece of bad language she’d picked up working in the local brickyard canteen.

‘I need to talk to her this morning,’ he said. ‘I’ll let you know when I’m done.’

‘Be a sweetie and find me a decent picture of the sister,’ Gilraye said, already dialling. ‘Teeth are good, legs are better.
Dovidenja
.’

As the stairwell door came to a slow close behind her Zigic felt a sense of discomfort settle between his shoulder blades. It stayed there as he hung up his waxed cotton parka and opened the bank of windows in the east-facing wall, letting some fresh air blow in, clearing the noxious pine scent the cleaners had left behind them.

Last night, lying in bed unable to sleep, he had begun to wonder if the hit-and-run even had a deliberate target. Was the driver just looking for a group of migrant workers to take out and they were simply unlucky enough to be standing at a point on Lincoln Road where he found it easy to accelerate and build up enough speed to do an impressive degree of damage?

It was a spectacle. An act guaranteed to attract attention from the press and prompt the inevitable debate about immigration in the city. If that was what the driver was trying to achieve he had done it. First item on the evening news last night, a brief mention on the BBC News Channel just before midnight, and this morning on page 11 of the
Independent
.

Zigic thought of the CCTV footage from their murders, the masked man dressed all in black, raising a stiff-armed salute to his intended audience, knowing exactly how they would react when they saw it. But they hadn’t reacted. Not publicly at least. Five days on from Manouf’s murder, four weeks from Didi’s, the man was still a nobody, his agenda kept under wraps.

Would that be enough to provoke a change in tactics?

He put the coffee machine on and ate a Mars bar he found at the back of his desk drawer while he waited for it to brew.

Gilraye had left the paper behind her, folded open at the headline.

They’d told less than half the story but it was easy to be judgemental when all you had to do was produce five hundred words a day.

He poured a coffee and retreated to his office. The door had been left closed overnight and the small radiator under the window turned up high so that the room was stifling now and fusty-smelling, as if the heat had peeled all the old layers of sweat and smoke and body odour from the previous occupants off the walls.

There was a reason he rarely used the office but for now he wanted the privacy, even with the rest of the department empty. Soon they would start arriving, Ferreira and Wahlia coming in muffled by their inevitable hangovers, Grieves and Parr sparking from the promotion to a major investigation. Once they were all settled at their desks he would have to go out there and explain how they were going to find a man they had already spent the better part of a month trying to identify with no success.

He opened the case file on Didi’s murder and began to reacquaint himself with the finer details, ashamed how much he had forgotten in a matter of four weeks, distracted by court appearances and other cases, less violent ones but solvable. Then Ali Manouf’s murder five days ago.

It felt like longer, the first forty-eight hours stretched in his memory as they chased down witnesses from the cafe round the corner from the alley where Manouf was killed. Just after 1 a.m. on Sunday and the street was packed with people promenading between the bars, drinks in hand, hundreds of potential sightings of their killer but nobody saw anything. Too many bodies on the street for one more man to stand out.

He must have walked away calmly, they figured, rolled his balaclava back from his face so he blended in with the crowd.