She lapsed into silence again and Ferreira went back into the kitchen, watched her through the open door as she dialled Zigic’s number; Julia didn’t move, barely seemed to be breathing.
He answered quickly.
‘Is it him?’
‘Yes.’
‘She said that?’
‘Yes.’ Julia cocked her head slightly, not quite as deep in thought as she appeared and Ferreira decided she’d been guarded long enough. ‘Can you send a warrant over? We need to toss this place.’
‘Okay, this is what’s going to happen.’ Riggott took a puff of his e-cigarette. ‘She’ll bring the boy in but she’ll only let him talk to you. No one else can be in there, not even Mel. And you can’t hold a formal interview. No camera, no recording. Best thing would be to use the family suite. It’s out of the way, you can contain him there.’
‘That’s unacceptable,’ Zigic said. ‘We need his statement on the record, you know that. If he’s just a witness we’re going to need whatever he tells us to be handed over to the CPS.’
‘Reckon you’re getting a touch ahead of yourself there, Ziggy. We don’t know what he knows.’
Zigic paced a few steps, trying to walk away the frustration at Riggott’s attitude, the sensation that this was moving out of his control even further, just at the point when the case seemed to be cracking finally.
‘He was at the murder scene. For all we know he might actually be the killer.’
Riggott made a tamping gesture with his hand. ‘One step at a time.’
‘What? You’d stand for this if you were me?’
‘I don’t think you realise what’s going on here.’
‘We’re being fucked about, that’s what’s happening.’ Zigic felt a knot of stress tighten across the back of his neck. He’d spoken to Rachel already, got her usual attitude. Riggott was supposed to fix it, speak to her boss, make clear how unreasonable they were being in refusing to turn Nathan over for questioning.
Instead he’d let himself get fobbed off.
He was going soft, too many hours in this swanky office filling out forms and liaising with other agencies, too many good lunches and fact-finding missions. The old Riggott, the raging gobshite Zigic had come up under, wouldn’t have accepted these ridiculous terms and he didn’t see why he should either.
‘What happens if he confesses?’
Riggott shifted his weight in the soft leather chair and for once in his life didn’t seem to have an answer.
‘You must have thought about it. Can I charge him?’ Zigic asked. ‘If Rachel tries to intervene – say she tries to take him out of the station – can I stop her?’
‘Look, I don’t like this fucking situation any more than you do, but I’m not calling the shots here.’ The colour had risen in Riggott’s face. ‘You can accept it or you can try and pursue this case without the kid, because them’s your options.’
‘This isn’t going to end easy, not if we keep letting them push us around.’
‘I’ve told your woman she can have what she wants,’ Riggott said. ‘Now, if you’re not prepared to play ball that’s it. She won’t let anyone else talk to the boy. So you lose your case and whoever I put on it loses a vital witness.’
‘Fine then.’
‘You bet your bollocks it’s fine then.’
An hour later he got a call from reception and went down to find Rachel standing with her arm around a slightly built boy in baggy shorts and a sweatshirt too warm for the weather, his hood up, hiding his face. Her hand was on the side of his head, the posture forced and awkward looking until Zigic realised she was keeping him turned away from the desk sergeant and the CCTV camera above him.
‘Thanks for coming,’ Zigic said coldly.
‘Let’s make this quick.’
He led them upstairs, taking the stairwell, past CID and Hate Crimes, up to the Domestic Violence unit with its well-insulated walls and the soft carpets that swallowed up their footsteps. There were three lounges, each almost perfectly soundproof, with heavy doors that couldn’t be slammed and curtained observation windows.
Two were in use but you couldn’t tell from the hallway. The third one had been kept empty for him. Zigic gestured towards it and Rachel ushered Nathan inside, told him they’d just be a minute before closing the door again.
‘You know the deal,’ Rachel said.
‘I just want him to tell me what he saw,’ Zigic said, ignoring her attitude because he had to, even though it was already grating on him. ‘Surely you don’t have a problem with that?’
‘I’m happy to help you however I can.’
She gave him a thin-lipped smile and he followed her into the lounge, swallowing the annoyance her sarcastic tone had provoked in him.
The room was cramped and overlit, a too-bright bulb burning through a paper shade, showing up every smudge on the pale green walls, the dinginess of the carpet and well-worn upholstery. A two-seater sofa was pushed against one wall, an armchair opposite it, separated by a low table with a box of tissues on it.
‘Nathan, this is the man I told you about.’
He looked up at Zigic, pale face, watchful eyes. Just a child.
Seeing him like that Zigic wondered how he’d ever imagined he could be capable of murdering Dawn. He was tiny, physically weak and completely passive. Boys of eleven could and did kill, but he didn’t think this one had it in him.
‘Hi Nathan, I’m Dushan.’
He nodded slightly and glanced at Rachel, who slipped the hood off his head as she sat down next to him on the sofa. Zigic took the chair, perched on the edge, elbows on his knees.
‘You don’t need to be scared,’ she said. ‘You’re perfectly safe here. Dushan is just going to ask you some questions.’
‘About Dawn?’ he asked, accent not as thick as it had sounded on the 999 call.
‘That’s right. You tried to help her, didn’t you?’
Nathan glanced at Rachel again, as if he needed her approval before answering, and Zigic though of all the children who’d been in this room before him, reluctant to tell what they’d seen, not entirely understanding the significance or fearing the repercussions, looking to their mothers or fathers or the social workers who were often their only comfort for some cue of how to behave.
‘You called nine-nine-nine,’ Zigic said, drawing his attention again. ‘You said she was hurt.’
‘Yeah.’ Nathan shivered despite the warmth of the room.
‘Did you see her?’
‘Yeah.’
‘You went inside the house, is that right?’
Nathan nodded, queasy looking, and Zigic imagined this child walking into the kitchen of Dawn’s house, a scene which had shocked him, hardened detective that he was. All of that blood, the ferocity of the attack on her openly displayed.
‘Was the door open when you got there?’
‘It were unlocked.’
‘Was that usual?’
He shook his head.
‘How often did you go around there?’
A shrug. ‘Sometimes. In the day and that, I went round with Julia.’
‘To see Holly?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Were you friends?’
‘She were nice. We watched stuff on YouTube. Music and stuff.’ He frowned, a deep trench appearing between his eyebrows, suggesting more stress and worry than any eleven-year-old should have experienced. ‘She’s dead, isn’t she?’
‘I’m afraid so,’ Zigic said. ‘Maybe you can help us catch whoever killed her, though. They shouldn’t be able to get away with it.’
Nathan looked at Rachel again and she placed her hand on his back, gave him a smile that might have been genuine, an encouraging nod of the head.
‘I want to help,’ he said.
‘Can you tell me what you saw? When you went inside the house – as much as you can remember.’
‘Dawn were dead. She were on the floor and there were all this blood.’ His eyes darted across the table as if he was seeing it all over again. ‘She were looking at me.’
Rachel rubbed his back. ‘It’s okay, Nathan, you’re doing really well.’
‘I wanted to go and see Holly,’ he said, tears welling. ‘I couldn’t – I – I didn’t wanna walk over Dawn and I couldn’t get to Holly if I didn’t walk over her.’
He started to cry, big sobs, and Rachel drew him close to her, watching Zigic over his head, giving him a ‘happy now?’ look. The expression of an angry mother protecting her distraught child. She turned away, whispered something in Nathan’s ear that only seemed to upset him more.
‘It’s my fault,’ Nathan said, words muffled against her shoulder.
Rachel’s soothing hand gripped his arm. ‘No, it wasn’t.’
‘It was!’
‘Nathan, we’ve been through this.’
‘But—’
‘No.’
‘What did you do?’ Zigic asked, trying to catch his eye. ‘Nathan, look at me, what did you do to Dawn?’
‘He were looking for me,’ Nathan said. ‘It’s my fault he were there. He found me.’
‘Who?’
‘He’s killed everyone.’
Rachel cupped his face in her hands. ‘Nobody knew you were there, Nathan. How many times do I have to tell you that? It wasn’t about you. You’re safe. Okay? I said I’d keep you safe, didn’t I?’
‘I saw him.’ Nathan’s hands closed around the sofa cushion’s frayed edge, nervous fingers digging in, his knuckles going white.
‘Who did you see?’ Zigic asked.
‘The man. He were there.’
Zigic inched forwards on the chair. ‘What man?’
‘In the car,’ Rachel said. ‘I told you already.’
‘Is that right, Nathan?’
His cheeks were shining wet under the forensic light boiling through the lampshade. ‘In the red car.’
Arnold Fletcher. He’d admitted to being there, placed Nathan there too. But why go back to the house if he’d murdered Dawn two days earlier? Unless it was to check whether Holly had been found, look for the telltale police tape strung over the doors. He’d want to know she was safe.
Zigic took out a photograph of Fletcher.
‘Is this the man you saw?’
Nathan nodded.
‘He wasn’t looking for you. We know who he is.’
‘See,’ Rachel said. ‘It’s not your fault.’
It took her a couple of minutes longer to calm him down and Zigic was surprised how gentle she was with him, a different woman from the one he’d met at the old knothole on the side of London Road. Eventually she coaxed him round, handed him some tissues to dry his eyes.
‘Did you take a knife from Dawn’s kitchen?’ Zigic asked.
Nathan hunched over, feet hitting the bottom of the sofa as he drew away from the question. Zigic fought the urge to move forward, into his personal space, reminding himself that he had to tread carefully with the boy. This could be it, though, the murder weapon they’d been searching for. The vital missing link.
‘Answer Dushan,’ Rachel said, her voice hardening for the first time since they’d entered the room.
‘I were scared.’ Nathan’s freckled hands kneaded at the edge of the sofa cushion again. ‘I thought the man were gonna get me. I needed it.’
‘Where did you take the knife from?’ Zigic asked, willing him to look up from the worn chenille fabric he was fretting at. ‘Nathan, this is very important. The knife you took, where was it when you picked it up?’
‘On the table.’
‘And where is it now?’
‘I lost it.’
Zigic’s hands clenched into fists between his knees. The murder weapon; gone, lost, along with all the forensic evidence laid on it. He stood up, Rachel’s eyes following him and he saw fear in them. Until now Zigic had believed Nathan to be an important witness, an unfortunate stumbling across the scene, but not a credible suspect. This changed everything and she knew that the balance had shifted.
He started for the door.
‘Wait,’ Rachel said, urgency in her voice. ‘Nathan, was there blood on the knife?’
‘No.’ He inched away from her. ‘No, it was on the table.’
The second knife, missing from the scene, the one they thought Dawn might have thrown out for some reason, accidentally or on purpose. Could it be that one he’d taken? A brief hope stirred in Zigic again.
‘What did this knife look like?’ he asked.
‘It were the same—’ Nathan gulped. ‘It looked like the one in Dawn’s chest.’
Zigic blinked at him, processing this new information. One knife taken by Nathan, one remaining at the scene.
‘The knife was still there when you saw her?’
He nodded and started crying again.
The killer went back to retrieve it.
Some time between Nathan seeing it on the Saturday afternoon and the emergency services going in during the early hours of Sunday morning the killer returned and took the murder weapon.
The search warrant arrived within the hour, along with two uniforms who Ferreira dispatched to the first floor of the cottage, telling them to start in the small blue bedroom. Jenkins headed straight for a corroded-metal incinerator in the far corner of the garden while her assistant went out to check the ground around an apple tree where Ferreira had spotted a heavy coating of ash. She’d nipped out for a quick smoke and lingered on the patio area to keep an eye on Julia through the workroom window, noticed it then and thought it seemed odd.
A third person made a beeline for the garden shed, a rickety structure lilting slightly, but freshly painted and bearing a garland of fairy lights.
Was there nothing this woman didn’t feel the need to prettify?
Julia had barely stirred, just moved from the uncomfortable wooden stool to a half-rotten-looking armchair, and she made no effort to protest against the search, as most householders would. She seemed to accept it as an inevitability, too middle class to challenge a police officer or so certain they wouldn’t find anything that she was content to wait it out and demand an apology when they walked out empty-handed.
That wouldn’t be happening, Ferreira thought.
Jenkins’s assistant was kneeling down sifting through the ash, face covered as it blew back up at him.
‘Can you tell what it was?’ Ferreira asked.
‘Not yet, we’ll need to run some tests. There are small fragments of wood, though, so it might just be off a log fire.’
‘In September?’
‘Those old houses get cold easily,’ he said. ‘I grew up in a place like this. It was always freezing, even in summer. We had to wear our coats indoors during the winter.’
It hadn’t felt cold in there to her, especially not the workshop where the wood burner was still chugging away, pumping thin smoke out into the clear blue sky.