Contents
Cover
About the Book
About the Author
Also by Eva Dolan
Title Page
Prologue
Sunday
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Monday
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Tuesday
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Wednesday
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Copyright
Long Way Home
Tell No Tales
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
Epub ISBN: 9781473523135
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Harvill Secker is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.
Copyright © Eva Dolan 2016
Eva Dolan has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
First published by Harvill Secker in 2016
www.vintage-books.co.uk
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 9781910701010
‘I’m not scared.’
Nathan repeated it under his breath as he walked, focused on the words, using them to block out all the worse ones buzzing around in his head. The loud and terrifying ones which wouldn’t leave him, the begging and pleading and swearing.
He heard the scream, the sound of her body falling to the floor.
‘I’m not scared.’
A car passed him in a surge of engine roar and aggressive bass, moving so fast that its slipstream tugged at his clothes. He looked up from his feet, watched it disappear as the road dipped, brake lights blinking.
It would be easy to walk out in front of the next vehicle that came. Wait for one of the big lorries that thundered along this road, heading down to the A1. He’d seen it happen on TV. A bang and everything went black.
‘I’m not scared.’
But he was. Too scared to do that, even though he knew it would mean an end to the voices and the danger. Even though everyone would be safe if he was gone.
Nathan kept walking along the hard shoulder, the grass bank rising steeply to the left, as high as a house, blocking out the final flare of the evening sun, casting a shadow deep enough to raise goosebumps on his bare arms and hide the bloodstains on his camo-print trainers.
A car slowed as it approached him and he tensed but kept moving, fighting the urge to turn, knowing not to make eye contact with the driver. If he did that there would be no escaping. They’d see what was wrong with him and then he’d never get away.
The window opened as the car drew up next to him, something rattling under the bonnet, and a woman’s voice asked:
‘Are you alright?’
He sneaked a glance out of the corner of his eye; a small red car, an old woman, grey-haired and posh-looking, with a fluffy white dog on the passenger seat.
‘Does your mother know you’re out?’ she asked.
The scream again, in his head.
‘I’m on me way home,’ he said.
It was a stupid lie. There were no houses here. Nothing but the road cutting between the steep and tangled banks, then the service station on the side of the A1 and the industrial estate beyond that.
‘You shouldn’t be out here on your own at this time of night,’ she said. ‘It isn’t safe for a boy your age.’
‘I’m okay.’
‘Why don’t I take you home?’ she said. ‘I’m sure your mother must be worried sick about you.’
He shook his head, felt his throat tightening, closing up around the words he barely managed to force out. ‘I live there.’
‘Where?’
He pointed across the road towards a gated farm track, still avoiding her eyes. ‘Down there.’
‘Alright. Well, be careful crossing the road, they drive like maniacs along here.’
She pulled away, but slowly and he realised she wasn’t going to leave while he was walking along the hard shoulder. She was probably already taking her mobile out, thinking about calling the police, telling them about the boy out walking alone in the middle of nowhere on a Saturday evening. Children didn’t do that here.
Nathan ran across the road, towards the metal gate, and when he saw it was padlocked climbed over it, scratching his arm on a branch from the hedge. There was a farmhouse ahead of him, barns and tractors, barking dogs.
He began to walk towards it, slow, shuffling steps, and when he’d walked far enough turned and double-backed, peeped around the hedge to check that the woman had gone.
He waited, hands shaking, for a few long minutes, in case she double-backed as well, and when he couldn’t wait any longer climbed over the gate again and started on towards the service station.
There was just enough light from the setting sun to make out where he was going – no street lights here – and he felt safer in the gloom, his tear-stained face and the blood on his trainers hidden.
‘I’m not scared.’
He tried not to think. He knew he couldn’t let the fear overwhelm him again.
The service station spread out in front of him, lit up bright and cheerful, people everywhere, coming out of the fast-food places and the hotel, couples and families, men and women on their way home. They would be like the lady in the car, asking questions, wanting to help him. The wrong kind of help.
Nathan made his way to the petrol station, skirting the main forecourt, and headed to the area where the lorries filled up, looking for one heading in the direction he needed to go. There were a few parked up for the night nearby and he thought it would be easy to cut a slit in the fabric side of one and slip inside, curl up and wait for morning.
Most of them had foreign writing on them, foreign number plates. He hadn’t planned for that. One was from Birmingham, a bakery. Not where he wanted to go but on the way.
As he turned the knife handle around in his pocket, willing himself to make the cut, a heavy hand came down on his shoulder and he flinched away, just managed to stop himself bringing the knife out.
‘What you doin’, son?’ The man was smiling and when Nathan didn’t answer, he cocked his head. ‘You speak English?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Thought you was a stowaway or something.’
‘No.’
‘What you doing hanging around here then? Waiting for your dad?’
‘I need a lift.’
The man looked him up and down and Nathan’s fingers tightened around the knife in his pocket, the perforated steel sticky against his skin. ‘Bit young to be hitch-hiking, aren’t you?’
‘I’m sixteen,’ Nathan said, adding five years on, praying the man would believe him.
He nodded. ‘And not from round this way, I reckon?’
‘No.’
The man pressed his key fob and the bakery lorry’s lights flashed as the doors unlocked. ‘You running away from home?’
‘I’m trying to get home,’ Nathan said.
‘Where’s that?’
‘Manchester.’
‘You don’t sound Manc.’
‘I am.’
The man sighed as he opened the driver’s-side door, paused with one foot on the step. ‘Alright then, young’un. Let’s get you home before you get yourself in trouble.’
Nathan walked around the lorry and found the passenger’s-side door open already, the man leaning across the seat, holding out his hand.
‘You get up alright on your own?’
Nathan hauled himself up and into the cab, smelling the bread in the back, but something else too, sharp and sour.
They’d been driving for a few minutes before the man spoke.
‘You’re not really sixteen, are you?’
‘I am.’
‘I’d say you’re more like eleven or twelve.’
Nathan gripped the hand rest. ‘I’m small for me age.’
‘Don’t worry, son, I’m not going to tell anyone.’ The man laughed and something about the sound put a cold lump in Nathan’s stomach. ‘It’ll be our little secret.’
Through the grimy window he watched fields smear by, the tops of houses gone in seconds, the village he’d left falling away behind them, so quickly that he wanted to shout for the man to stop, turn around, take him home. But it wasn’t his home, never had been and never could be. Not now.
‘I’m not scared.’
‘I’m not sure now,’ Anna said, standing in the doorway of the box room, one hand cupped under the bump showing through her tunic. ‘It’s very pink.’
Zigic stopped painting and stepped back from the wall, the ghosts of four darker shades still visible through the first coat of paint he’d put on, ragged patches half a metre square.
‘You liked it an hour ago,’ he said.
‘The light was different then.’
He suppressed a sigh of irritation.
They’d spent most of Saturday looking at colour charts, Anna placing them against the Cath Kidston fabric she’d already picked out for the curtains and the very specific ivory of the new cot he didn’t want to put together yet, sure they were tempting fate by getting the nursery ready when she was only six months gone. He told her to choose whatever colour she wanted, he was just the muscle, and after an exhaustive decision-making process they arrived at this one – Middleton Pink.
‘It didn’t look this bright in the tin,’ she said.
‘Paint always dries lighter.’
‘The first coat’s dry.’ She touched her hand to the wall, showed him her palm. ‘Look, completely dry.’
Zigic dropped the sheepskin roller into the tray, spattering paint across the dust sheets which still bore traces of the emulsion they’d used to decorate the nursery for Stefan in their old house. Five years ago now and seeing the spots and arcs of sky blue he felt a plunging sadness about how quickly the time had passed. He could still remember the red checked shirt Anna wore, knotted above her cumbersome stomach as she knelt down to do the skirting boards, Milan ‘helping’ her with a tiny brush. Didn’t remember the decor choices being such a nightmare then.
This was different though.
This was the little girl Anna had always wanted.
‘Do you want to change it?’ he asked.
She made a non-committal murmur, eyes moving around the room.
‘I don’t mind redoing it,’ he said. ‘But let’s decide now while it’s early enough to go out and buy something else, okay? I might not have another weekend off in a while.’
Anna grimaced. ‘I’m just not sure.’
‘Think about it for a minute.’ He kissed her cheek as he walked past, heading for the door. ‘I’m going to have a beer. This manual labour stuff is harder than it looks.’
Downstairs the boys were playing on their Wii, the curtains in the living room drawn against the late sunshine battering the back of the house. They leapt about, on and off the sofa, flinging their arms around wildly, raising more racket than should have been possible for two small children, although most of it was coming from Stefan, who was providing his own sound effects every time he struck a ball.
Zigic closed the door on them and went into the kitchen.
A chicken was simmering in a pot on the hob, the smell of salty, herby stock filling the room, ready for the risotto Anna would make later. It was too hot for it really. Too hot to eat anything. Definitely too hot to be painting a small, south-facing room where even with the window wide open there was no cooling breeze.
The weather had been stifling for weeks, still and relentlessly sunny, a combination which seemed to bring out the worst in people. Encouraged reckless driving and frayed tempers, started people drinking earlier and kept them at it till later at night. Like their colleagues in CID, the Hate Crimes department had experienced a spike in activity as the summer drew on into early September; more senseless violence, more harassment. A recent influx of Roma into Peterborough had sparked a series of scuffles on the streets around New England, the rest of the residents forgetting their old rivalries to turn on the newcomers as one.
Thankfully the situation was settling down though. They’d charged three of the most vocal instigators with a range of offences which would see them serve a few months in prison, enough to stop the momentum from building any further, he hoped.
Zigic took a bottle of Peroni from the fridge and snapped the top off, stood in the open door letting the chill blast him while he drank, wondering if having a second and putting himself over the drink-driving limit might save him from another expedition to B&Q. Knowing it probably wouldn’t he closed the fridge again, smiled automatically at the photo of his new daughter pinned to the door with a heart-shaped magnet.
His child. Curled up. Sleeping. Waiting.
Two weeks ago he’d ducked out of work to take Anna to the hospital, sat holding her hand while the nurse explained what they were looking at, an image he had seen twice before but which still provoked a sense of awe.
When the nurse asked if they wanted to know the sex of the baby Anna said:
‘I already know. It’s a girl.’
As if she’d managed to will it. The nurse smiled, took it in her stride, well used to the fervent certainty of expectant mothers, Zigic guessed.
Anna came into the kitchen as he was opening another Peroni.
‘I can’t decide,’ she said. ‘Maybe we should get the second coat on and look at it again.’
‘“We” should do that?’
‘I’ll make it worth your while.’ She took his beer from him, held the bottle a few inches from her parted lips but didn’t drink. ‘What do you say?’
‘Is that why the plumber didn’t charge a call-out fee when the boiler broke down?’
She swore at him, laughing, and handed back his beer. ‘Come on, Dushan, you’ll be finished in an hour, then you don’t have to do anything else up there for months.’
He flicked an eyebrow at her.
‘Okay, weeks.’
‘I’ll remember you said that.’
An hour later he was still at it, the room close and fumy, the sounds of his neighbours’ lazy Sunday afternoons wafting in through the open window, along with the smell of meat charring on a barbecue and freshly mown grass.
Three walls down, just the long blank one left to do and his arm was aching, the muscles across the back of his neck and shoulders tight. He stopped for a moment to stretch and looked at the squares of darker pink still stubbornly showing through the second coat of paint. He should have blanked them out before he started but thought he’d get away with it, despite the advice of the man in B&Q: ‘Fail to prepare – prepare to fail.’
He abandoned the roller and started painting a strip of wall just above the taped-off skirting board, his right thigh complaining every time he shuffled forward to reach the next section. A gnawing pain centred on the spot where a two-inch carpenter’s nail had been driven deep into the muscle, courtesy of a bomb vest strapped to a neo-Nazi ex-police-constable who’d decided he wouldn’t be taken alive.
Seven months on, it was an old injury. That’s how he thought of it, trying to contain the incident, and every physio he’d seen, as well as his GP and an acupuncturist, had all told him it was perfectly healed now, but still it twinged. Part of him believed it was psychological, a little stab of guilt for his failure to anticipate Christian Palmer’s homicidal intentions, for failing to contain him, and mostly for failing to protect Ferreira.
The surgeon who treated her had removed three dozen tacks and nails from the backs of her legs, a payload which would have hit him full on, abdomen and groin, if her reflexes hadn’t been so sharp. He imagined the pain he felt now multiplied thirty-six times and the guilt jabbed at him again.
She’d been off work for four months afterwards, fell out of contact with them all, holed up at home being nursed by her mother, an enforced absence he knew her well enough to realise must have been almost unbearable; went through several operations to treat damaged ligaments, extensive rehabilitation and weekly visits to a police-approved psychiatrist which had recently ended with him giving her a clean bill of health, freeing her from the desk where she’d been stationed across the summer on light duties.
Zigic was far from convinced that she was ready for a return to the front line.
As her senior officer he’d read the psychiatrist’s report, saw her recovery develop in fits and starts, the usual process of anger and denial, the desire for revenge she would never get followed by a ‘cathartic outburst’ which was marked as a significant turning point.
Exactly what the man wanted from Ferreira.
Reading about the ‘comfort she’d found in her faith’ sealed it for Zigic. She was desperate to get back to work and had sold the psychiatrist a line. Given him just enough resistance to make the final, tearful acceptance of her situation seem real.
She hadn’t accepted it. Wasn’t ready. Wasn’t better.
Superficially she was the same Mel who walked into the burnt-out shell of the Polish Ex-Servicemen’s Club back in February, all mouth and unshakable instinct, but she was putting on a show for them. He saw the expression on her face when she thought no one was looking, the new hardness in her eyes.
Outside, a lawnmower started up and he inched forward into the corner of the box room, painting the final half-metre of wall above the skirting board, biting down on the pain in his thigh as he moved. At the last brushstroke he collapsed back onto the dust sheets, his hand coming down in the paint tray.
He swore loudly and wiped his palm clean on a rag.
Anna called his name from the hallway.
‘I’m fine,’ he shouted back. ‘Just a spill.’
Her feet came up the stairs, slow and careful, and he was righting himself when she appeared in the doorway holding out his phone.
‘Mel, for you.’ She drew back her hand as he moved to take his mobile from her. ‘If you arranged this to get out of decorating …’
She smiled but there was no humour in it. They both knew what phone calls on Sunday afternoons meant.
Ferreira sat on the bonnet of her car, parked at the mouth of a gated farm track opposite what remained of the house. It was one half of a pair of semi-detached cottages owned by the estate, like dozens of other properties around Elton village. ‘Cottages’ was too pretty a word, suggested stone walls and leaded windows and thatched roofs. These were ugly, squat houses, concrete tiled and shabby, with small single garages to the side and short front gardens, set at the northern edge of the village, cut off from their nearest neighbours by a cobble-walled village hall advertising the previous day’s antiques fair.
At least the house which remained was.
Twelve hours earlier, just after 1 a.m, its neighbour had been ripped open by a gas explosion which blew out its rear and side walls, sending debris flying into the field behind, leaving the facade precariously standing and badly cracked, the metal windows forced open by the blast, twisted in their frames, shattered glass sparkling in the parched front lawn and across the road, which was still closed to traffic.
Fire investigators were inside now, making the reinforcements necessary for them to search the site. The early thinking was a slow build-up of gas from the hob, which hadn’t been turned off fully. No immediate signs of foul play but they were keeping an open mind. Too many ‘accidents’ looked that way to begin with and the absence of the owner was a cause for suspicion.
The attached house – the one Ferreira had visited late last year – was cordoned off behind police tape. An entirely separate crime scene.
The pathologist had given her his preliminary thoughts to pass on to Zigic, all very straightforward, he said, then went home to enjoy the last few hours of his weekend, promising he would make a slot for them tomorrow afternoon – Not that I expect to find anything interesting.
Absently she reached down to scratch her calf. The scars didn’t itch any more. This was something different. Something she didn’t even want to think about. The doctor had warned her that there was other material in her legs which they hadn’t been able to reach. Assured her not to worry, it would migrate to the surface eventually, then he could deal with it.
She wished everything that irritated her could be cut out so easily.
Zigic’s car turned onto the Oundle road and he honked his horn at her before pulling into the car park of the village hall, where most of the other police vehicles were. Earlier there had been a few onlookers too, but they had moved on quickly, once they realised no one was going to give them the gossip they were so desperate to hear.
It said a lot about the place that a gas explosion and a police presence had provoked so little interest. Not one of those close-knit, incestuous English villages, Ferreira thought. It was too affluent, full of commuters who probably didn’t know their neighbours’ names or care if they lived or died.
Problematic from an investigative perspective but she could understand the appeal. After suffering months stuck in her parents’ pub, enjoying a dubious celebrity among the Portuguese community they served, constantly questioned about what had happened and how she felt and whether she would return to work, anonymity seemed like a luxury worth paying Elton’s overinflated property prices for.
She met Zigic at the cordon. He’d put on something approaching work clothes, jeans and dark shirt, but there were flecks of light pink paint in his hair and she noticed more of it dried on his forearm and hand when he gestured towards the ruptured house.
‘At least that one’s not ours.’
‘You might wish it was when you see what we’ve got.’
He stopped at the chaos in the driveway, chunks of masonry lying here and there, pieces of plasterboard covered in scorched patches of patterned wallpaper.
‘I’m guessing it’s pretty messy in there,’ he said.
Ferreira followed his gaze to the exposed interior, the staircase and chimney stack basically intact, everything else churned up, ripped up and mangled, as if a tornado had dropped down through the roof and spun the house around. That wasn’t their concern.
The hole punched through the dividing wall into the neighbouring kitchen was.
‘Wait until you see it from the other side,’ she said.
‘How bad?’
‘The fire was put out fast,’ Ferreira said. ‘So there’s that to be thankful for. We could have lost everything.’
‘Where’s the owner?’
‘Don’t know yet. Away, somewhere.’
‘We need to find them. First priority.’ He slowed as they passed a corroded blue skip parked in front of the house, a few off-cuts of plasterboard sitting on top, brick rubble underneath. ‘What’s this about?’
‘Our house has got the builders in,’ Ferreira said. ‘They’re converting the garage and linking it up.’
Zigic went along the driveway ahead of her, peered in through the window newly cut into the brickwork. She’d done the same, found a bare room divided from the main part of the house with thick plastic sheeting hung like a curtain.
They went back to the scientific support van, pulled on bodysuits and foot protectors before they could go inside. The scene was already contaminated, had been entered previously by the attending fire crew, anxious to evacuate the occupants, then the uniformed officers they called to deal with what they discovered, but the rules had to be followed.
Zigic paused at the door.
‘Are you okay?’
‘I’ve been in already,’ Ferreira said, ignoring what he was getting at; her first case back on full duties and it was an explosion, the scorched odour lingering, the memories she would deny it provoked if he pushed her. ‘I’m fine.’
He opened the door and immediately recoiled from the smell, gathered himself before he went in, Ferreira following, breathing through her mouth, shallow breaths, trying not to take too much smoky air into her lungs.
Dawn Prentice’s body was laid out in the middle of the kitchen where she’d fallen, one leg folded under her, arms flung wide; bloated from lying undiscovered in the relentless summer heat, skin blistered and discoloured, but the stab wounds in her chest still clearly visible.
The pool of blood around her was long set, muted by the coating of debris. Dried smears either side of her body suggested her attacker had stood or kneeled astride her hips, struggling to keep their footing on the slick floor. Hopefully slipping and putting out a hand to stop them falling.
There was no sign of that though. Areas of interest were marked out, colour coded and numbered, but nothing that looked like usable prints.
Zigic took one small step towards the body.
‘Don’t come any closer,’ Kate Jenkins said, from behind her face mask. ‘We’ve had enough big, clumsy feet in here already.’
She straightened up from bagging Dawn’s left hand, preserving what, if anything, was under her fingernails.
‘How bad is it?’ he asked.
‘Worse than it looks. If you can believe that.’ She gestured to the blood, a few inches away from Zigic’s feet. ‘The grunts weren’t careful when they came in, we’ve got partials, police-issue boots, fire-issue.’
‘And the good news?’
Jenkins pulled her mask down to her chin, frustration written clear on her face. ‘Thin on the ground, I’m afraid.’
‘Murder weapon?’
‘No sign of it,’ she said. ‘But there are a couple of knives missing from the block. Might be in with the washing-up – she wasn’t exactly a domestic goddess.’ She stopped him as he went to speak. ‘It’s my next job.’
Ferreira looked at the sink, full of water, a few plates and wooden handles poking up through the surface. The worktop beside it was scattered with crockery and she imagined the moment the explosion jabbed through the wall, sending a pile of dirty dishes flying, how they would have splintered, slivers of cheap whiteware shooting in all directions.
Her calf started to itch again and she fought the urge to reach down and scratch it.
‘Mel, time of death?’ Zigic asked, his tone suggesting it wasn’t the first time he’d said it.
‘No less than forty-eight hours,’ she said quickly. ‘He wouldn’t commit to anything more precise before the PM.’
She filled him in on the basics from the pathologist; ten distinct wounds to the chest – frenzied – some quite shallow, the angles varied, one to the throat, a direct hit on her windpipe, just a nick but enough to kill her. Defence wounds on her hands but they hadn’t slowed down her killer.
‘Any signs of forced entry?’
‘Fire crew found the back door closed but unlocked. After they’d kicked the front door in. So she either let them in or they had a key.’
‘Or she kept the back door unlocked.’
‘Not very security-conscious of her.’
‘Not everyone thinks like a copper.’
Zigic didn’t look up from the body, brows knitted together above his mask. ‘Is there a boyfriend?’
‘Dawn didn’t mention one when I talked to her,’ Ferreira said.
‘What about the daughter?’
‘I seriously doubt it.’
As she spoke the floor overhead creaked and all eyes followed the noise.
‘You need to change before you go up,’ Jenkins told them.
They went out onto the driveway again, sucked down lungfuls of fresh air. In the rear garden two more suited figures were making a fingertip search of the grass, a challenging job when there was so much rubbish out there from the neighbouring house and the building work in progress.
Ferreira stripped out of her suit and pulled on another one, aware of Zigic watching her, something he was doing more often now that she’d returned to work.
‘How far did you get with this?’ he asked, as they headed for the front door, taking a clean route back into the house.
‘I did a preliminary interview. She didn’t have any idea who was responsible. There was no real evidence we could use.’
‘You told her to start a log, though?’
‘Yeah. I made a couple of follow-up calls but she seemed to lose interest in the whole thing.’
Zigic nodded at the PC stationed on the long, shallow ramp which led up to the front door and he let them inside.
‘That’s common with harassment. They want you to come in and fix the problem straight away, then when they find out you can’t they get dejected.’
‘It was minor stuff,’ Ferreira said, thinking back to the conversation, how unaffected Dawn Prentice was, more irritated than scared. ‘There was nothing to suggest it would escalate to this.’
Zigic paused at the bottom of the burgundy-carpeted stairs. ‘It isn’t your fault, Mel. These cases are unpredictable.’
‘Yeah, I know that, thanks.’
She went up ahead of him, pushing away the annoyance, eyes on the family photos hung on the wall, ones going back to before Holly’s birth, people who must have been Dawn’s parents and grandparents, bleached images, old Polaroids in frames the wrong shape for them, beach holidays and birthday parties, Holly growing up in her school photos as the stairs rose, until she hit her early teens and they stopped abruptly, the last one hanging above the stairlift Dawn had used to move her severely disabled daughter.
On the landing the crime-scene photographer was packing away his equipment, wiping each piece with a soft cloth before it went back into the case, and he looked up briefly as they approached, inched over so they could squeeze around him.
‘Don’t touch anything in there. We’re not done yet.’
This room was exactly as Ferreira remembered it. Undisturbed by the blast. Nothing but the dust floating in the air to suggest what had happened. An ordinary teenage girl’s bedroom, painted sunflower yellow, posters on the walls and a desk with a closed laptop on it. Unremarkable except for the wheelchair in the corner and the hospital bed with raised bars which was tucked under the window, placed so Holly could see the sky and feel the sun on her skin as she lay, unable to move, hour after hour, day after day.
She was still there, propped up in a sitting position, a tiny, half-wasted figure in light cotton pyjamas covered with soaring birds. Her hands were in her lap, a purple iPod by her fingertips, earphones still in place. Holly had a limited range of movement after the accident, couldn’t raise her arms, just use her hands enough to manipulate whatever devices Dawn gave her.
Zigic stood over her, one fist pressed to his mouth.
‘She hasn’t been dead as long as her mother.’
‘No,’ Ferreira said. ‘Twelve hours, not much more.’
‘Because of the gas leak?’
‘He doesn’t think so. Again – wouldn’t commit. But he thinks it’ll turn out to be natural causes.’
‘This isn’t natural,’ Zigic said.
Neither of them spoke for a few minutes, as he worked through the implications and Ferreira waited, knowing he was picturing the same sequence of events she’d worked through as she waited for the pathologist to arrive.
‘There’s no sign of violence,’ he said. ‘Could she talk?’
‘Yes.’
‘So she could have raised the alarm?’
‘If there was anyone to hear her, yes.’
Ferreira looked at the iPod, one of the few connections Holly had to her old life, and wished it was a phone in her hand, or her laptop, something that would have allowed her to call for help.
Instead she’d been forced to lie there, alone, scared, wondering where her mother was, why the house was so quiet, wondering what the smell rising up from the kitchen was.
Did she think Dawn had abandoned her?
Or did she hear everything? Know exactly what had happened and realise that she was absolutely alone and helpless?
‘How did she get like this?’ Zigic asked quietly.
‘Rock-climbing accident. Holly’s rope wasn’t tied off properly, she fell, broke her back. Her spinal cord was completely severed. That was about two years ago.’
He moved away from the bed, eyes pinkish above his mask, and went over to a pine shelving unit where Holly’s trophies were lined up. Cups for cross-country running and windsurfing, junior championships, county-level competitions. Medals for netball and hockey. In the team photographs she was always front and centre, dark hair pulled into a high ponytail, smiling triumphantly, a short but powerfully built young woman; a natural athlete.
Two years’ incapacitation had whittled her away to a pale and shrunken version of herself.
‘Was she having physio?’
‘Yeah, once a week. Dawn said it was helping.’
‘How did she seem?’ Zigic asked. ‘Holly? Was she coping?’
Ferreira shrugged. She’d barely spoken to her at the time. Came up and poked her head around the door, felt a clenching discomfort when she saw the drip and the catheter, said ‘hello’ and all but bolted out of the room again.
It was a moment of selfishness she hated herself for now.
If she’d put aside her awkwardness and actually talked to the girl would things have gone differently? It was easy to dismiss Dawn’s complaints because she didn’t seem bothered by what was happening. Would Holly’s version of events have been more compelling? Stirred Ferreira’s sympathies enough to drive the investigation on?
A scenes-of-crime officer was hovering in the doorway, waiting for them to take the hint and leave.
They took it.
Zigic waited at the bar while Ferreira went out into the Black Horse’s beer garden, a ten-pound note clutched in his hand, listening absent-mindedly to the conversations going on around him; two couples, already drunk, talking about a shared holiday, a small group of middle-aged men at a nearby table discussing some football match. Quieter, underneath the carefree chatter, he caught a woman regaling her lunch companion with the moment she heard an almighty bang and thought a plane had come down in the village.
He turned slightly, saw her sitting in the front window, head bent close to another woman who might have been her mother, white haired and frail, but neatly put together, paying scant attention to the story as she picked at her cheesecake.
Right now it was just a shocking accident with no fatalities, but the uniforms arrived while he and Ferreira were in the house and he deployed them in three teams to canvass the village, wanting to make an early start on the door-to-door, catch people while they were at home, no excuses not to take the necessary few minutes to answer questions.
Within the hour news would start to filter out. Two deaths. Unthinkably brutal. Here, of all places.
When Ferreira first gave him the address on the phone he thought he’d misheard her. It was so far away from their usual territory, socially if not geographically, the last place he expected to find a hate-crime report filed from. And it was a naive assumption for a detective, he knew that, but Elton seemed too comfortable and moneyed to be a breeding ground for aggressive prejudice.
Perhaps that was why Ferreira hadn’t pursued it. ‘What’re you having?’ The barmaid waited with her hands on her hips.
He ordered two Cokes, wanting something more astringent to wash the taste of the crime scene off his tongue but aware that the day wasn’t over yet, even if the constraints on overtime meant the real work wouldn’t begin until tomorrow morning.
‘Did you see?’ she asked, nodding away to the north end of the village. ‘That explosion? Crazy. My mate reckoned he heard it all the way over in Oundle. That’ll be five-twenty.’
‘You know who lives there?’ Zigic asked, handing her the tenner.
‘Yeah.’
She took her time scooping his change out of the till and dropped it into his palm already looking for her next customer, only to find there wasn’t one.
‘They weren’t home when it happened,’ Zigic said. He showed her his warrant card and it softened her expression but not very much. ‘We need to talk to them, let them know the situation so they can make arrangements.’
‘Was it an accident?’
‘We believe so.’
She still looked dubious but she slipped her mobile from the pocket of her black tabard. ‘Luke – he did our website when we had the refit.’
‘Surname?’
‘Gibson.’ She gave Zigic the number and he keyed it into his phone. ‘He’s a nice guy. He wouldn’t have done something like that on purpose.’
Zigic thanked her for her help and went out through the bustling dining room into the beer garden, a north-facing terrace bordered by a high stone wall and wallowing in shadows deep enough to have driven the afternoon trade inside. Ferreira had claimed the table furthest from the door and he was glad they wouldn’t have an audience for their conversation.
‘Is there anything in that?’ she asked, as he put down her drink.
‘No, thought we’d be better keeping clear heads.’
‘It’s going to take way more than a shot of rum to drive that lot out of my head.’
He sipped his Coke, resisted the urge to ask if she was okay. A year ago it would have been a flippant comment, now he was looking for a buried cry for help in it.
‘Holly must have heard everything,’ Ferreira said. ‘Can you imagine what that must have felt like? She would have heard her mother getting murdered, then she had to lay there knowing she couldn’t do anything about it. For days.’
‘Didn’t Dawn have people coming in to help with her?’
‘A nurse, yeah. Not sure if she came in every day though.’
‘Still, we’re talking, what, two days with nobody visiting the house or coming to check up on them.’
‘She seemed isolated when I talked to her. It was just a feeling I got, but living like that, having to be a twenty-four/seven carer … people stop visiting, I guess. They don’t want to keep listening to the same old complaints, do they?’ Ferreira started rolling a cigarette, one butt already in the ashtray. ‘I don’t know how she coped with it.’
‘You look after your kids, no matter what,’ Zigic said. ‘That’s the deal when you have them.’
Ferreira kept shredding tobacco, more than she needed. ‘Yeah, but you’re signing up for eighteen years, maybe a couple more, not the whole of their life.’
She didn’t understand and she probably never would.
‘What about the father?’
‘They’re separated. Divorce was in progress when I spoke to her.’
‘Acrimonious?’
‘Not according to her.’
‘You think he might have been behind the harassment?’
She sealed her cigarette. ‘He lives in the village, so he’s near enough to make a nuisance of himself if he wants to. Dawn didn’t accuse him, though, and most dumped women are pretty quick to put the finger on their ex.’
‘He definitely did the leaving?’
‘Oh, yeah, Dawn was very clear on that.’ She lit up. ‘He had a total breakdown when Holly got injured, fucked up his business, went completely off the rails. Dawn reckoned it must have been going on for a while before that, though. The other woman took him in. She owns that boarding kennel down near the green.’
Zigic knew the place. It was less than five minutes’ walk from Dawn’s home, straight through the centre of the village. Not a good route to take if you were covered in blood but the street lights in Elton were few and far between and by early evening the place was silent.
They didn’t have a time of death yet but he saw this as a crime committed under the cover of darkness, couldn’t imagine it going down any other way. Not when it had remained unreported for days.
‘Tell me about the harassment,’ he said.
She leaned forward in the black rattan chair, hunched against eavesdroppers who weren’t there. ‘It started soon after Holly was moved home from hospital. Very minor stuff. Nuisance factor more than anything else – silent phone calls, bit of vandalism in the garden. Dawn ignored that – it’s a nice area but you’ve got stupid kids here just like everywhere else.’
‘Then what?’
‘She got a modified people carrier to take Holly out in. It was on the drive for a day before the tyres were slashed.’ Ferreira frowned. ‘Someone sprayed the word “cripple” across the side of it. Which is why it got sent up to us, of course.’
They’d dealt with a few cases centred on prejudice against the disabled but nothing which had gone this far before. Taunts and threats, occasional broken windows.
Nobody could see Holly as a danger, though, surely.
‘Did Dawn have any idea who might’ve been responsible?’
‘No. She said she thought it could be someone pissed off because she was getting more support from the council than them.’ Ferreira shrugged. ‘I don’t know, it sounded unlikely to me, but I suppose that kind of thing bothers some people. Say their benefits have got cut – bedroom tax kicking in, something like that – and there’s her being given a brand-new Espace, getting a load of building work done. A sense of entitlement makes people do some pretty shitty things.’
He considered it for a moment. ‘This shitty, though?’
‘It feels personal, doesn’t it?’
‘I think so.’
Ferreira slapped her palm on the tabletop. ‘I should have pushed her more. She just seemed so comfortable about it all. She said she only called to get a crime number for the car insurance, then I turned up and it was like she was really reaching for things to complain about because I’m sitting there with my notebook out and she didn’t want to look like a time waster.’
‘What about the follow-up calls?’ he asked.
‘She didn’t want to talk. I tried three or four times but whenever I rang she insisted she was really busy with Holly. I didn’t question it, she was obviously under pressure looking after her on her own.’
‘She must have said something.’
A man came out of the pub, shouting into his mobile as he fumbled a packet of cigarettes from his shirt pocket with his free hand. He moved away to the other end of the terrace but Zigic saw that he kept watching them as he laughed and swore in a polished accent which didn’t sound entirely natural.
‘I honestly wondered if she was making it up to get her husband’s attention.’
He snapped back to Ferreira. ‘You know how rare that is?’
‘Of course I know! And I know you’re never supposed to think it, but her whole attitude was out of step with someone who’s being harassed. She wasn’t scared, she wasn’t even angry – how can you not be angry?’
‘Not everyone has it as their default response.’
Ferreira stubbed out her cigarette. ‘You didn’t see her.’
‘No, I didn’t, so I’m relying on your impressions now.’
‘She wasn’t taking it seriously. That’s my impression. She was a knackered, sad woman – with plenty to be pissed off about in life and a lot to deal with, but whatever hassle she was getting didn’t seem to be impacting on her.’
‘Until now.’
‘You’re assuming it’s all part of the same thing,’ she said, a little defensively. ‘Dawn had a life beyond caring for her daughter.’
‘I thought you reckoned she was isolated.’
Ferreira scowled at him, annoyed at being caught out. ‘You know as well as I do, dead woman, first port of call we should be looking for the boyfriend.’
Zigic drained his Coke. ‘Or talking to the ex.’
Nene House was separated from the village by a hundred yards of dusty and rutted farm track, almost far enough away to stop the insistent barking of their canine residents floating across the grass fields and up to the neighbouring cottages, but not quite.
It was a rambling old place, surrounded by tin-roofed dairy sheds and tumbledown stables, a twin-gabled sprawl, half of it painted white with a sagging pantile roof, the rest stone built and recently re-thatched. It made for a disconcerting first impression, a sense of disjointedness which was only increased by the sight of the breeze-block kennels; the newest, most solid-looking buildings on the site.
As they approached the front door a woman emerged from the side of the house, heavy footed in her wellingtons, a shovel slung over her shoulder. A quintessential farmer’s wife, blonde hair tied back from a scrubbed-clean and weathered face, small eyes in a permanent squint against the elements.
‘Hi, I’m Sally, are you dropping off?’ Her smile died when she noticed Zigic’s warrant card. ‘What’s happened?’
‘Mrs –’
‘Ms Lange.’
‘Ms Lange, I’m afraid there’s been an incident,’ Zigic said. ‘A very serious one, with Dawn and Holly.’
She dropped the shovel. ‘Are they okay?’
‘I’m sorry, no, they were both killed.’
Her hands went to her face, blue eyes widening above her grubby fingertips and Zigic thought he caught the briefest, merest, hint of pleasure in them.
‘I’ve got to tell Warren.’
She ran off towards the kennels, shouting his name, and Zigic saw a man look up from where he was squatting to scratch a spaniel’s belly. He straightened and the dog got up too, followed him as he rushed towards the gate, into the yard.
‘Sally, what is it?’
She blurted out the news and he crumpled back against the fence, opened and closed his mouth a couple of times but didn’t speak. He didn’t look capable of forming words, face slack, hand at his head. Sally stood close to him, rubbing his shoulders and whispering in his ear, words Zigic couldn’t hear and which didn’t seem to be helping.
Eventually she slipped an arm around his middle and drew him into the house, one faltering step at a time.
Again they followed, Ferreira throwing Zigic a questioning look across her shoulder: Are we buying this routine?
He wasn’t sure yet.
The kitchen was large but gloomy, all dark wood units and heavy oak beams blackened by age and generations of cooking grease, a room which should have been homely but somehow wasn’t, dominated by a pine table big enough to seat twelve.
Sally coaxed Warren into a chair and he immediately buried his face in his hands, while she sat next to him, her fingers curled tight around his arm.
Zigic let the silence develop, aware of how uncomfortable Sally was becoming, sitting with her eyes lowered but stealing glances at them through her lashes, shifting incrementally closer to Warren, shielding him.
Around them the house ticked and creaked and Zigic thought of its previous inhabitants laying their dead out on the kitchen table, all the bad news and trauma this room had witnessed. Hundreds of years of it soaked into the stone walls.
Finally the quiet got too much for Sally.
‘Was it a car accident?’
‘No,’ Zigic said, watching them closely. ‘Dawn was murdered.’
‘What about Holly?’
‘At present it looks likely to be natural causes.’
Warren shook his head, tears coming freely. ‘This isn’t real. This is mad.’
Zigic apologised, the words just as useless as they always were, too small, too commonplace to address the obliterating scale of a parent’s grief. Warren doubled over and let out a deep, wailing cry that tugged Sally from her seat.
She went to him but he shrugged her off so forcefully that she stumbled into the Aga’s drying rail. By the time she’d righted herself he was out of the door, moving at a sprint.
Zigic took her by the arm and steered her back to her chair, gesturing for Ferreira to go after him.
‘Where’s she going?’ Sally tried to stand again but Zigic held a firm hand on her shoulder. ‘He needs to be alone.’
‘She’ll be gentle.’
Sally looked unconvinced. Worried what he was going to say without her there to stop him. Did she think he was capable of murdering his estranged wife and daughter?
When he was sure she wouldn’t bolt for the door he sat down again, watching her nibble at a ragged fingernail.
‘He’ll never get over this,’ she said. ‘He’s only just started to deal with Holly’s accident. He blamed himself. Stupidly. He was a serious climber and Holly always wanted to do what her dad did …’ She shook herself out of it suddenly. ‘Can I make you a cup of tea?’
‘Thanks.’
Sally busied herself filling a black cast-iron kettle and set it on the range, talking about Holly’s sporting exploits, how proud Warren was of her, how close they were. And Zigic didn’t doubt the truth of it, but he heard a slight edge coming into her voice, something like bitterness, and he wondered if she’d been envious of their relationship.
‘It must have been very difficult for Warren.’
Sally leaned against the range, hands tight around the rail. ‘She wasn’t the same girl any more. All the light went out of her.’
‘Were you and her close?’
‘I liked her.’
Not what he’d asked but it said plenty.