Blood Tracks (4 page)

Gina picked up one of her dad’s running trophies that she’d put on display. She then fell to her hands and knees and started frantically to gather up fragments of broken glass and pottery. Tears streamed down her face as she tried to piece together a garish mug emblazoned with the words
World’s Greatest Dad!

She heard Tom call out: “I’m going to check the rest of the house. Don’t touch anything. They might have left fingerprints.”

“I’m coming with you,” she sniffed, picking herself up from the ground and walking past her mum, who stood surveying the room in shocked silence, and Danny, who was sitting on top of the upturned sofa, staring into space.

In the kitchen all the cupboard doors were open and drawers had been pulled out. The window hung off its hinges and the back door was ajar.

“They obviously got in through the window. It looks like it’s been jemmied open. Then they’ve just unlocked the back door and taken the stuff out through the yard,” Tom growled. “I’ll see how things are upstairs. You’re best to stay down here with your mum.” Gina ignored him and followed. She peered into the bathroom at the top of the stairs. They’d even rifled through the cabinet. Soaps, scissors and ointments lay discarded in the sink.

Gina gasped as she saw her bedroom. It looked like a hurricane had hit it. Her dressing table had been upended, leaving her mirror shattered and perfume from cracked bottles seeping into the carpet. Her clothes had been pulled out of the wardrobe and the contents of her underwear drawer had been emptied onto the bed. She shivered with disgust. She looked at her wall of photos. At least they hadn’t been touched.

Gina walked into her mum and dad’s room but quickly retreated. The sight of her dad’s clothes thrown around the floor made her stomach lurch. She found Tom in Danny’s ransacked room.

“Who would do this?” she whispered.

“I’ve heard of this happening before,” Tom spat. “The bastards read the obituaries in the local paper. They know the house will be empty the day of the funeral and the neighbours will probably be there too, so they plan to rob it when there’s no one around.”

“Really? That’s just sick.”

“I’ll call the police.” As Tom reached for the phone in his pocket it beeped. Gina watched his face turn ashen as he opened the text. He went straight to the window and, lifting the net curtain just a fraction, he peered out. Immediately he let the curtain drop and seemed to shrink back into the room.

“What’s wrong?”

Tom cleared his throat. “Nothing,” he replied sternly.

Gina lifted the net curtain and spotted a bulky, bald black man leaning against a silver Mercedes on the opposite side of the street. His arms were folded across his shiny, smart jacket and he was looking straight at her house. Gina noticed that he had rings on several fingers and a stud sparkled in one ear.

“Who’s he?” She turned to Tom.

Tom shrugged his stiff shoulders. “How should I know? Just some man by his car, I guess.”

“What was your text about? Is everything all right?”

“Of course it is,” Tom said. “Come on, Gina. Let’s go and see your mum and Danny. I’ll phone the police from downstairs.”

Gina frowned as she saw the slight tremor of his hand as he put the phone back in his pocket and walked briskly out of the room. She returned to the window and looked out. The man and his car were gone.

A police officer called round early the next morning. Gina recognized him from the previous evening. Gina, Danny and her mum sat, exhausted and bleary-eyed, at the kitchen table.

“Just letting you know that you can start tidying up now. The forensic team finished late last night and we’ve interviewed your neighbours,” the officer said.

“And did anyone see anything? Did you find any fingerprints?” her mum asked anxiously.

“No. It seems that most of your neighbours were at work or at your husband’s funeral and the initial findings by the forensic team aren’t looking like they’ll turn up any prints.”

“Someone told me that burglars read the obituaries and then rob people’s houses when they know they’ll be at the funeral; is that true?” Gina asked.

“Yeah, unfortunately it is. I’ve seen it happen a few times before. All we can do now is go and have a chat with some of our usual suspects and keep our eyes open at car boot sales and in the pubs we know deal in stolen goods. If you’re lucky, we may be able to retrieve some things but I’ll give you a crime number and you can look into claiming on the house insurance.”

Within minutes of the police officer leaving, the doorbell rang and Gina opened it to reveal a gaggle of neighbours.

“We’ve come to help,” Bob from next door said, waving a dustpan and brush. “Don’t let the scumbags grind you down.”

“Thanks.” Gina gave a grateful smile as they filed past her and set to work.

Bob turned back to her. “By the way, Gina, you know you’ve been asking people if they saw your dad the afternoon he passed away?”

“Yeah,” she said. Since the inquest she’d knocked on every door in the street asking the neighbours the same question and getting nowhere. “I’m just trying to find out what he did.”

“I know, love,” he said sympathetically. “And, well, the neighbours may not have seen him, but I’ve just met someone who did.”

Gina gasped. “Really? Who?”

“Well, I was over at the allotments at the crack of dawn today and I bumped into Stefan Poliakoff. I don’t think you know him. He’s an old Polish man, his plot is on the row up from your dad’s. Anyway, I was telling him you’d been broken into on top of all your other troubles and we got chatting, then he comes out and says that he saw your dad the afternoon that he passed away.”

“And what was he doing?”

“Stefan said he was working on his plot. But you’re best to talk to him. If you hurry, he may still be there.”

“Which plot has he got?”

“Number twenty-eight, third row.”

“Thanks, Bob,” Gina said, her heartbeat quickening.

She went into the kitchen and searched through a drawer until she found two small bronze keys with
Allotment
written on the fob. She headed out of the front door and looked down the slope of the street to the unmistakable skyline of the docks; she could pick out her dad’s workplace from the complex of warehouses within the port walls. Gina walked briskly down the hill and onto the dock road before crossing over to the canal. The patchwork of allotments was on the other side of the water. The large green space sat incongruously between the streets of crammed terraces. Gina walked over the footbridge and up the grassy path that led to the allotment entrance. She used one of the bronze keys to open the main gate and trudged along the rows until she came to plot twenty-eight. She was relieved to see an elderly, ruddy-faced man sitting in a deckchair, admiring his neat rows of weeded earth.

“Mr. Poliakoff?” she asked, approaching him a little nervously.

“Yes?” he answered.

“I’m Gina, Martin Wilson’s daughter. Bob just told me that you saw my dad on the day he died.”

Mr. Poliakoff tutted, shaking his head. “Oh, it is terrible for you. I am so sorry for your loss.”

“Thanks,” she said hurriedly, anxious for information. “So what was my dad doing? What time did you see him?”

The old man narrowed his eyes in concentration. “It must have been around three o’clock. I was on my way home. I’d been here since first thing and I could see the dark clouds gathering. I walked past your father’s plot and I saw him digging, digging, digging…like a man possessed. I called to him, ‘Don’t work so hard, you’ll give yourself a heart attack.’ He turned round to me; sweat was pouring down his face. He did not smile. He did not seem himself. Your father and I have often spoken in the past. He was always such a cheerful man. He said to me that afternoon that digging helped him to think. ‘And what is it that you think about?’ I asked him. ‘I’m thinking about what I should do,’ he answered.

“He looked like he had the weight of the world on his shoulders so I said to him, ‘Listen, I have a flask of vodka here. Why don’t we sit down, have a drink and you can tell me all about it?’ But he wouldn’t. He thanked me and told me that he wanted to keep digging. I warned him that the heavens were going to open and I went on my way.”

“And that was it?” Gina asked.

“Yes, and then I heard what happened. I’m so very sorry. I only wish he had confided in me that day; maybe I could have stopped him.” Mr. Poliakoff sighed.

Gina walked over to her dad’s plot and stood, deep in thought.
So that’s why his hands and overalls were so dirty when he picked me up. He’d been here, digging.

She surveyed the random holes that had been dug and the mounds of earth piled next to them. It looked like an army of giant moles had been at work. She felt a physical ache in her chest, thinking about him on that day, wondering what had been going on inside his head. There was so much of her dad in this allotment: all the years he’d spent trying to grow his vegetables. How ecstatic he’d been at the sight of some deformed carrot that had survived the life-sucking soil. All the mud fights he started when he could see that she and Danny were getting bored with helping, and the hours they’d spent playing cards for pennies in the rickety shed that he’d transformed into their den.

How many times had she caught her dad, standing amongst his failing crops, eyes closed, filling his lungs with the fuel-filled air from the docks and city roads.

“Are you in Trinidad again, Dad?” she’d ask him, amused.

“Oh, yes,” he’d sigh. “Lush, rolling hills cascading down to golden beaches, turquoise waters lapping at our toes. Paradise!” And she’d look out at the looming docks and the grey waters beyond and give him a shove.

“We’ll keep saving. We’ll go and visit one day and then you can bore us to death, showing us all the places from when you were a kid.”

She unlocked the padlock on her dad’s shed and opened the double doors. Light flooded into the cramped interior. She stepped inside and inhaled the comforting smell of creosoted wood. Their picnic table and folding chairs sat in the middle, surrounded by gardening equipment. Layers of music posters adorned the walls. Some were Danny’s choice and others were hers, dating back years to singers she was now embarrassed to admit she’d ever liked. Gina picked her way around the shed. Everything seemed just as it should be.

Three little stacks of playing cards were dotted around the table, with a glass jar of pennies in the centre. For a second she had an overwhelming feeling that her dad would stroll in at any moment and sit down to resume their last game, filling the shed with his laughter and groans as he won and lost. Tears filled Gina’s eyes but she dug her nails into her hand until the pain distracted her. She sniffed and wiped the tears away defiantly.

Crying isn’t going to help. I’ve got to stay strong. I’ve got to be organized. I should be looking everywhere, writing everything down.

She took off her muddy shoes as she entered the hallway and slipped upstairs, avoiding the busy neighbours. She popped her head round Danny’s bedroom door and saw him and her mum silently picking through the mass of clothes, books and broken bits of games that had been dumped in the middle of his room.

“Where have you been?” her mum asked.

“I’ve been talking to an old man at the allotments. Dad was there that afternoon.”

Her mother’s face tensed. “And what did he say?”

Gina told her mum, who listened intently.

“What was troubling him?” her mum whispered, staring into the distance.

“Didn’t he tell you he was feeling sad that day, Mum?” Danny asked.

Her mum’s face crumpled. “No, love, I wish he had, but he didn’t. I didn’t even talk to him that day. I just texted to remind him to pick up a fish tank for you.”

At these words Gina jolted. “The fish tank! Of course! That’s another place he must have been that afternoon, before he picked me up from running club. Where did he buy it from?”

“I don’t know,” her mum answered.

“Well where’s the receipt?” Gina asked impatiently.

“I’ll find it. I haven’t even looked at the tank yet. It didn’t feel right without Dad,” Danny said, as he scrambled under his bed and pulled out the box with the fish tank still inside it from under a mound of dirty clothes.

“Danny!” his mum tutted. “What have I told you about putting your dirty clothes in the wash?”

“All right, but at least they hid this from the robbers. They might have smashed it up if they’d seen it.”

Gina examined the contents of the box. She lifted the hood of the tank and pulled out a pump and filter, plants, several bags of bluish bedding stones and another one of fine gravel.

“There’s no receipt in here,” she said, disappointed. “I need to know where he got it from.”

“Maybe it’s somewhere in the house,” Danny said.

“But I don’t think Dad came back to the house; no one saw him.”

“Then maybe it’s in the car,” her mum suggested.

“Have you got the keys?” Gina said, eagerly holding out her hand.

Her mum handed over the car keys and Gina rushed to the Fiesta, which was parked in front of the house. She rooted through the glove compartment and found what she was looking for. The receipt was from Neptune’s Aquarium. She gripped it like it was a golden ticket, and searched frantically for the sales assistant’s name and the time of purchase.

She was desperate to go to the shop straight away but her mum wouldn’t allow it.

“But I have to talk to them, Mum. They saw Dad that day. They might know something important.”

“No, Gina. It can wait until tomorrow. Let’s tidy up the house and then I want us all to have an early night. You’ve got to look after yourself, love. And you need to try and relax.”

But Gina couldn’t relax. That night she sat up in bed until well past midnight, scribbling page after page of notes into a book.

Eventually she put her pen down, exhausted. But still she couldn’t sleep, with her mind whirring and her body a jangle of nerves. She got out of bed and stood in front of the collage of photos on her wall. One picture showed her dad holding a newborn baby; it was her. The look on his face was of pure joy.

“Everything I know is in here, Dad, but there’s more, isn’t there?” she said, waving her notebook at the picture. “If I can piece together your last day, I’ll start to get answers.” She kissed his smiling face. “You know I will, don’t you?”