Whatever she said now would be coloured by the afternoon’s violence and her determination to protect Ben. And if they uncovered some solid evidence against Warren within the next couple of days she’d still be there to talk to, desperate to reveal whatever she’d been hiding about him before.
He was down in the cells now, had gone quietly, face still damp with tears after his outburst during the interview, and Zigic saw resignation on him as he walked away, a PC at his elbow. Guilty or not, Warren felt as if he deserved it.
Zigic didn’t believe Sally’s words but couldn’t quite ignore the accusations she’d made.
‘I know that look,’ Ferreira said, as he walked into the office. ‘What did Sally say?’
He told her.
‘She’s just trying to protect her sicko kid. Forget about it.’
Zigic went to the murder board and eyed the result of a day’s furious activity, lots of names written and crossed out, but they were essentially at the same point as they had been this morning. All of those men questioned and the ones still to do, picked up because of their intimacy with Dawn. The most superficial kind, just physical, brief and perfunctory, the kind which led to violence depressingly often, but he still felt there was more to Dawn’s death.
‘Do you remember what you said? Sunday afternoon in the Black Horse?’
Ferreira rustled around in her desk drawer. ‘Which bit?’
‘You said it always come down to the ex.’
‘Yeah, well, she’s got a lot more exes than we expected, right?’
‘But only one of them who was in the process of divorcing her,’ Zigic said. ‘And by his own admission it was a messy split. She wanted money he didn’t have. She’d stopped him visiting Holly.’
Ferreira pulled an empty sandwich box out of her drawer and dropped it into the bin, moved on to the next one down.
‘It wasn’t exactly a Fathers4Justice scenario, though, was it?’ She binned an old newspaper. ‘Warren didn’t trust himself with Holly, and Dawn didn’t trust him either. They were in agreement. Basically. A weird agreement, granted, but he didn’t seem bitter about it.’
‘If we believe his version of events.’
‘Don’t you believe it?’
‘It was a convincing display,’ Zigic said, remembering how Warren’s helpless anger had punched his own heart. ‘But what was behind it? Was he upset because Holly asked him to end her life and he couldn’t or because he wanted to and Dawn wouldn’t let him close enough again?’
Ferreira kicked the drawer shut. ‘It was a conversation with no witnesses. Why hand us a motive?’
‘Does he seem in full control of himself to you?’ Zigic asked. ‘The whole point of interviewing him when we did was because you thought he was ready to crack. Well, we pushed him and what did we get? A confession that he wanted to end Holly’s life.’
‘Not that he did, though.’
‘We should have kept pushing.’
Ferreira perched on the edge of her desk. ‘Okay, say that’s his motivation – he’s going to kill Holly. He goes to the house planning to do it, runs into Dawn – not a surprise because of course she’s going to be there – so he has to go in fully expecting her to get in the way and fully prepared to kill her. Because he knows she doesn’t approve. He knows she won’t cover for him in a million years and she’s going to try and stop him. If that’s what he’s planning to do why kill Dawn and not Holly? The person he went there to kill. One murder or two, it’s all the same at that point. He’s going to prison whatever.’
Zigic looked at the board, not really seeing any of it, but thinking back to the forensics report, the efforts to clean up and Holly’s closed bedroom door.
‘Assuming he was expecting to get caught.’
‘He’d have to be a complete idiot to think we wouldn’t come for him,’ Ferreira said. ‘The estranged husband? Everyone knows that’s the first port of call.’
‘Maybe he just couldn’t bring himself to do it. He murders Dawn in the heat of the moment. She knows why he’s there. They argue. It escalates. But Holly’s a different matter altogether.’
Ferreira shook her head, giving him a withering look.
‘That makes no sense. Why would he have left Holly like that?’
‘The nurse was due in – what – twelve hours? Less? It wouldn’t have seemed like a big risk.’
Ferreira looked unconvinced. ‘Ben’s the killer in that house. He’s spent a year building up to attacking Holly. Whether he knew it or not he was getting into the right head space for it. You know how this shit works. And he’s got no alibi.’
‘Neither’s Warren.’
‘I just don’t see the motive,’ she said.
Zigic rubbed his face, in no mood for further discussion. It had been a long day of fruitless arguments and endorphin spikes which flattened out hard when the progress they thought they were making turned out to be another dead end. Twenty men still to question tomorrow and a search of the village to be overseen.
Riggott had finally okayed that. Weighed the budgetary issues against the odds of finding the murder weapon somewhere between Dawn’s house and the kennels and decided they could have the resources for a fingertip search, bodies and dogs, whatever it took to get in and out in a day.
A day that would start very early, Zigic thought.
Parr and Murray had gone home already, Wheatley was finishing up with one of Dawn’s men. This one had a sturdy alibi but his attitude to being cornered at work and brought in was less than cooperative and when Wheatley ran his fingerprints he found they matched those lifted off a broken bottle used in a brawl two years earlier, the case still unsolved, the victim permanently disfigured. Somebody had got justice today at least.
‘Alright, let’s pick this up tomorrow. No point staying here any longer.’
Neither of them needed telling twice and he walked out to the car park with them, declined the invitation to the pub and climbed into his car before the suggestion got any more tempting than it already was.
It was a rare night he wasn’t desperate to get home but Anna would be waiting for him to do the stern-father routine and he had no idea how to handle Stefan’s behaviour. He’d spent half an hour in his office googling what to do if your child was a biter and found that it was very common, but not at Stefan’s age, and very difficult to deal with. Mainly because it was a stage children went through at two or three, when they were too young to express themselves or know right from wrong. At five they should have grown out of it. They definitely shouldn’t
start
doing it at that age.
As he pulled into the driveway and climbed out of the car he said a little prayer that Anna had already found a solution and dealt with the issue, but when he let himself in the back door he realised she hadn’t. She was sitting at the kitchen table with her chin in her hands, laptop open on one of the sites he’d visited. It advocated firm words and rewards for good behaviour. He hoped that would be enough.
‘You’re early tonight,’ she said.
He kissed her on the top of her head. ‘How’s he been?’
‘Oh, he’s been a perfect little angel.’
‘Knows he’s in trouble then?’
‘I told him he would be when Daddy gets home.’
‘Yeah, I bet that put the fear of God in him.’
She smiled, tired looking. ‘You’re the only one he ever listens to.’
Zigic opened the fridge, thought for a moment about the bottle of Żubrówka in the freezer below, but took out a mineral water, not wanting to be the kind of parent who disciplined his son with vodka on his breath.
‘I don’t understand why he’s done it all of a sudden. All the sites I looked at said it’s a toddler thing. He didn’t do it then, why start now?’
Anna shrugged. ‘Starting a new school, not being the centre of attention any more maybe? I think he’s probably just acting out but we can’t let this turn into a habit. God, Dushan, it was so humiliating, everyone looking at me like I was the worst mother in the world.’
‘You can’t worry about what other people think of you. Lots of kids do it and every parent feels terrible when they do.’
‘Mrs Lomax was very understanding,’ she said. ‘I suppose that’s something. If Sara hadn’t been so hysterical I don’t think she’d have even suspended him.’
‘A couple of days at home won’t hurt.’ He sat down across the table from her. ‘It’s probably a better punishment than anything we’d do.’
She murmured agreement.
‘What?’
‘Do you think he’s settling in there? Surely he wouldn’t be misbehaving like this if he was happy.’
‘It’s one incident,’ Zigic said. ‘Don’t read too much into it.’
‘But it’s not normal,’ she said, angrier now. ‘Milan didn’t do it – even when he was being bullied that time he didn’t lash out like this. Where did Stefan learn to behave like that?’
‘I’ll talk to him, okay? Maybe he thought he had a good reason.’
‘There’s no good reason for biting a little girl.’
He went upstairs to the boys’ room, found Stefan sitting on the floor between their beds, already bathed and in his Batman pyjamas, playing with a pair of plastic dinosaurs. Milan slipped off his bed as Zigic walked in, tactfully withdrawing from what he knew was coming up, and Zigic tousled his hair as he left the room, thinking what a diplomat he was growing into.
Stefan glanced up at him, all big blue eyes and innocently blank expression, the one he’d perfected during the last year and deployed every time a lamp got knocked over or he was caught at the end of a trail of muddy footprints that ran through the house.
Zigic sat down on Milan’s bed and Stefan kept playing with his dinosaurs, walking them across the floor and making them climb a set of Lego stairs he’d built, leading up to the shelves of picture books and toys in bright stacking crates.
‘Do you want to tell me what happened at school today?’ Stefan ignored him, kept running his triceratops up and down the stairs.
‘Stefan, look at me when I’m talking to you, please.’
He made the dinosaur jump off the top step and Zigic snatched it out of his hand.
‘Why did you bite Amelie?’
‘I didn’t.’
‘I know you did and I want to know why.’
He shrugged extravagantly and Zigic wondered if they should at least stop him watching so much football.
‘I’m not angry with you,’ he said, as gently as he could. ‘But you need to tell me why you did it.’
Stefan kicked out weakly at the air, his little face a picture of sullen reluctance. ‘Amelie’s mean.’
‘Did she do something to you?’ When Stefan didn’t answer, Zigic slipped off the bed and crouched down in front of him, ducking into his eye line, seeing the sadness and childish anger bubbling up there. ‘It’s okay, you can tell me.’
His bottom lip trembled. ‘She pinched me.’
Zigic cursed in his head. ‘Where did she pinch you?’
Stefan pulled up the sleeve of his pyjamas and held out his arm, the faintest pink mark on his skin. ‘It hurt.’
‘I know, but you’re not supposed to bite people, are you?’
‘She started it.’
‘It doesn’t matter. You tell Mrs Lomax.’
‘Amelie’s her favourite.’
‘We’ll get Mummy to talk to Mrs Lomax, okay?’ Stefan nodded and roughly pulled his sleeve down again. ‘If she does it again you tell your teacher, right?’
He looked dubious about the idea and Zigic could see the budding rebellion in his big blue eyes. Remembered his own sister when they were kids, scrapping with all comers, and wondered if Stefan had inherited this behaviour from his side of the family.
‘We don’t bite, do we?’
Stefan’s eyes narrowed.
‘No matter what she does, you don’t bite her again.’
‘But—’
‘No, Stefan. Mummy will talk to Mrs Lomax but you’re going to be a good boy. People don’t bite.’ He held up the triceratops. ‘Dinosaurs bite, people don’t. And what are you?’
Stefan tucked his elbows into his sides and flapped his shortened arms around like a T. rex, roaring at Zigic and laughing.
‘Right. If you’re going to be a baby about it …’ He dragged a box of toys off the shelf and picked up the stegosaurus from the floor. ‘This is what happens when you don’t behave. If you do it again I’m taking two boxes away.’
Zigic shut the door on Stefan’s screaming protests, knowing he’d get bored within a few minutes, and shoved the toys away at the top of his own wardrobe, finding another box of them forgotten up there from the last time Stefan misbehaved.
In the living room Milan was curled up in the corner of the sofa, reading a Roald Dahl book with his brows knitted in concentration.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
again, his favourite.
‘That went well then,’ Anna said, when he returned to the kitchen.
‘He told me Amelie pinched him.’
She frowned. ‘That doesn’t really excuse him biting her, though, does it?’
‘It explains it. At least we know he wasn’t just … attacking her. I said you’d speak to Mrs Lomax about it.’
‘Okay.’ Anna sighed and looked up to the ceiling, following the sound of Stefan’s little feet thumping the floor, muffled by the thick wool rug but still making enough noise to register as an act of protest. ‘Why is everything such a production with him?’
‘Let him get it out of his system.’
‘The neighbours are going to think we’re beating him.’
‘I’m pretty sure they’re used to the sound of his tantrums by now.’ Zigic took the iced Żubrówka out of the freezer and poured a shot. ‘That was by far the worst interrogation I’ve carried out all day and one of the blokes was a hardened animal-rights activist.’
‘Maybe you should have brought Mel home with you to help,’ she said, something arch in her tone.
‘I doubt she’d be much use with a kid.’
Anna placed a bowl of salad on the table and went back to the hob where a pan was heating up, waiting for her to fry two fillets of Dover sole. He watched her movements, trying to decide what that slight edge in her voice meant or if he’d just imagined it, decided it was probably him. Long day, combative discussions; of course he was hearing inflections that weren’t there.
He picked a chicory leaf out of the bowl and ate it with his vodka, the slight bitterness combining nicely with the herbiness of the bison grass.
‘Did you give her that oil I bought her?’ Anna asked.