Long Way Home (39 page)

‘I’m not his fucking keeper.’

‘But he did work for you?’

‘He worked for himself.’

‘Doing what?’

She shook her head. ‘It’s nothing to do with us.’

‘Look, Mrs Gavin, all I’m interested in is finding this man Stepulov. If you can help I’ll be happy to say that you’ve cooperated with the investigation and make recommendations –’

She snorted. ‘I don’t need your recommendation.’

‘We both know that’s not true,’ Adams said, his voice low and oily. ‘Right now you’re on a knife edge, you can go inside with the rest of your fucking brood or you can help us and stay out. I don’t know, maybe you’ll like it in nick, maybe you’ll be queen-dyke and have your pick of the drug mules and baby-killers. That sound like something you’d enjoy, Marie?’

She glared at Adams and Zigic felt the rage radiating from her.

He took Viktor’s photograph out of the file.

‘You know this man,’ Zigic said. ‘He was working for you.’

‘I’m saying nothing.’

‘He’s dead too. Andy and your nephew dumped his body on a railway line three months ago.’

‘Nothing to do with me. Andy had his own stuff going on.’

‘What stuff?’

‘Like I cared.’

‘You don’t care that he involved Kelvin in it?’

‘He’s a big boy. He can make his own mistakes.’

Adams shifted in his chair, fiddled with his watch, straightening it on his wrist. Kelvin Gavin had made the last mistake he ever would.

‘You see, Mrs Gavin, there are two options here,’ Zigic said. ‘Maybe Viktor died on one of your jobs and Andy was getting rid of his body to protect you –’

‘You can’t prove that.’

‘We know he was working on that unit you’re building. We have witnesses who can confirm that he was living at the site. It’s only a matter of time before one of them tells us exactly how he died.’

‘Probably be another industrial accident,’ Adams said. ‘You don’t have a very good safety record.’

‘He didn’t die on a job,’ Marie Gavin said, slapping her palm down on the table. ‘You’re not putting that on us. Hudson kicked the shit out of him.’

‘Why?’

‘Fucking why, I don’t know.’

‘We could ask him,’ Adams said. ‘Except we can’t. Handy for you that.’

‘Ask Kelvin.’

Adams stiffened.

‘Kelvin isn’t going to incriminate himself,’ Zigic said. ‘If you want his name to stay clean in this you have to tell us what happened.’

‘I don’t know. Alright? I heard a ruckus. I looked out the window and saw Hudson laying into this fella. I don’t know what it was over. It could have been anything. Hudson couldn’t control his temper.’

‘Had there been trouble at work?’

‘Not that I knew.’

‘So it was personal?’

‘Hudson didn’t need a reason. If he felt like a fight he’d go and start one. You ask any of them.’

‘We’re asking you,’ Adams said. ‘Think on, Mrs Gavin, you need all the help you can get right now and Andy’s already dead.’

She leaned back in the hard plastic chair, folded her arms over her ample chest and put the eye on Zigic. ‘I want assurances, on paper, witnessed by my solicitor.’

He’d have given her them on vellum, in his own blood, if that was what it took.

‘You have my word,’ Zigic said, ‘and you have it on tape, but we need to move quickly. Please, Mrs Gavin.’

She considered it for a long moment, scrutinising him like she could bore straight through his eyes into the deepest recesses of his soul, then she nodded.

‘Like I say, Hudson started on this fella –’

‘Viktor?’

‘No, another fella, one of the Turks I think it was, and this one –’ she tapped Viktor’s photograph – ‘he decided to be the big man and got in between them. Hudson knocked him about for a bit, just to let the others know who was boss – shut his leg in the van door, that sort of thing, you know? For show.’

Zigic thought of the broken bone sticking out, very white, through Viktor’s skin, and how it had pierced the fabric of his grubby trousers. Imagined how he would have screamed and prayed to pass out from the pain, looking to the men around him for help and finding none.

‘Then what did he do?’

‘He was going to leave it at that, I reckon. He’d made his point. But this Viktor bit him and that set Hudson off again. He got a chisel out of the van and stabbed him.’

‘A chisel?’

‘Hudson kept one in the van door. Big thing,’ Marie Gavin said, her hands eight inches apart in the air. ‘He stabbed him in the chest with it.’ She folded her hands in her lap. ‘We didn’t have any trouble for a good few weeks after that, I can tell you.’

That was why Hudson dumped Viktor on the train tracks then, he knew a chisel would leave a distinctive wound and he wanted all trace of it completely obliterated. In Hudson’s line of work it would be to hand, Zigic guessed, something which wouldn’t get him in trouble if he was pulled over for speeding, but which was capable of inflicting serious damage when necessary.

‘And then what?’ Zigic asked. ‘You told him to get rid of the body?’

‘It was Hudson’s problem. Nobody told him nothing. He knew better than to let it come back to our door.’

‘But it did.’

‘Yeah, well, he always was a thick cunt.’

When Marie Gavin was on her way back down to the cells Adams put a call in to the search team at Knarrs End Drove, told them to look out for the murder weapon, but Zigic didn’t hold out much hope of finding it. Not that it mattered now, victim and killer were both dead, there would be no trial.

MRS STEPULOV WAS
unloading shopping bags from the boot of her car when Ferreira pulled up outside the house. She shuffled towards the open front door, weighed down with both hands full, sagging under the weight, and dropped her load in the hallway.

Was there a sensitive way do this? Ferreira wondered, seeing Arina looking out of the living-room window, arms wrapped around her swollen belly.

She’d never been very good at delivering bad news. She’d been on the training course, tried the tricks they suggested, knew to give people space, let them assimilate the information before starting on the questions. This was a very different situation though, not bad news but not quite good either.

Your husband isn’t dead but we want to arrest him for murder. Don’t suppose you know where he is?

Mrs Stepulov slammed down the boot and locked her car, turned to Ferreira as she walked onto the driveway.

‘You have found who killed Jaan?’

‘No, I –’

‘Mama, what is wrong?’ Arina asked, standing in the doorway now. ‘What is happening?’

‘Maybe we could do this inside,’ Ferreira suggested.

The living room was overheated and stuffy from the electric fire, the smell of something cooking in the kitchen next door wafting in, rich and spicy. An ironing board stood in the centre of the room, an almost empty washing basket on the rug next to it and a pile of clothes neatly folded on the sofa. The television was playing quietly, the BBC News Channel reporting the fatal shooting by police at a travellers’ site on the outskirts of Peterborough –
It is believed the dead man was armed at the time of the shooting. We are expecting a statement from Cambridgshire Constabulary very soon.

‘I have some good news,’ Ferreira said. Mrs Stepulov looked sceptical. ‘We’ve just received the DNA results from the body we thought might be Jaan.’

Arina gasped. ‘It is not Papa?’

‘No.’

Arina reached for her mother’s hands, began talking to her in Estonian, her voice high and bright, the relief lighting up her face. Mrs Stepulov smiled, squeezed her fingers, but her eyes remained hard as Arina hugged her.

‘I must tell Tomas,’ she said, breaking away to retrieve her mobile from the coffee table.

Mrs Stepulov waited until she’d left the room before she spoke.

‘Where is he if he is not dead?’

‘We were hoping you might know,’ Ferreira said.

‘He has not come home.’ Mrs Stepulov slipped off her anorak and threw it into a chair. There were a few small spots of blood on the front of her pink tunic, just above her name tag. ‘Who is this dead man you thought was Jaan?’

‘His name was Andy Hudson,’ Ferreira said, watching Mrs Stepulov closely for a reaction which didn’t come. ‘He worked for a local gangmaster, driving workers around.’

‘You think Jaan killed this Hudson?’

‘Right now we think it’s more likely that Jaan witnessed something which scared him enough to run away,’ Ferreira told her.

‘I do not know where my husband is,’ Mrs Stepulov said. ‘I do not know and I do not care. You tell me he is alive. Why does he not come home to his family? If he is scared he should come to us.’

‘Has he been in touch with you, at all, since we last spoke?’

‘No.’

‘Would you tell me if he had?’

Mrs Stepulov gave her a thin smile devoid of humour. ‘No.’

Ferreira shifted her weight from one foot to the other, trying to decide whether that was arrogance or innocence. Arina was genuinely surprised to hear about her father, she was sure of that, and she couldn’t believe Mrs Stepulov would let her daughter continue to suffer such crushing grief no matter what she felt about her estranged husband.

‘We believe Andy Hudson murdered your brother-in-law,’ Ferreira said.

‘Viktor was hit by train. I saw his body.’

‘His body was placed on the train tracks after he died.’

She went to the sofa and moved aside the stack of ironing to sit down, her face drawn into a thoughtful frown. ‘You want to arrest Jaan for this Hudson’s murder?’

‘We just want to talk to him.’

‘I tell you, I do not know where he is.’

The heat from the fire was giving Ferreira a headache, drying her throat. Behind her the television kept spieling.

‘Would you know where he is if I told you he was seeing another woman?’

Mrs Stepulov glared at her. ‘You are lying.’

‘A waitress,’ Ferreira said. ‘She’s about the same age as your daughter.’

‘Who is the same age as me?’ Arina asked, standing beaming in the doorway.

‘Her name’s Emilia Koppel, she’s Estonian. Maybe Jaan knew her family back home,’ Ferreira suggested, eyes on Mrs Stepulov.

‘We do not know no Koppels.’

‘She appears to’ve been involved with Andy Hudson. As well as Jaan.’

Mrs Stepulov’s jaw flexed, biting down on her reply, and when her daughter began to speak she cut her off with a sharp burst of Estonian which stunned the girl into silence.

‘Now you can see why we’re eager to speak to Jaan,’ Ferreira said. She took a card out of her pocket and placed it on the coffee table. ‘If he gets in touch with you, I want you to call me. Any time, day or night, I’m on this number. And if he comes home –’

‘I will keep him here,’ Mrs Stepulov said darkly.

Ferreira left them to whatever conversation they were going to have about Jaan, hoping she wouldn’t do too much damage to him if he returned to the bosom of his family.

As she got back into the car her mobile rang – Zigic.

‘Any sign of Jaan?’

‘No.’ She could see them arguing through the living-room window already, Arina with her face in her hands. ‘Any sign of Emilia?’

‘She’s on her way in now. You better put your foot down.’

PHIL BARLOW LOOKED
at his hands, the white marks on his fingers where his rings had been, wondering how much longer they were going to leave him down here.

He got up and paced the cell, three steps wide, back and forth, eyes on the green linoleum floor and the recently painted white walls which showed the ghosts of old graffiti, too faint for him to decipher without his reading glasses. If he wanted to read it, which he didn’t. He wanted to be questioned, get it over and done with.

He rolled his shoulder, aching from sleeping on the hard, metal bench and thought about Gemma, coming home to find a half-eaten pizza tossed away in the front garden and the house empty. Would she realise where he was? See the beer bottles in the living room and think he’d had company?

If she called the station they’d have to tell her he was here but that wouldn’t ease her worry.

No. The police must have spoken to her by now. Told her about him and Renfrew.

He dug his fingers into the knot, high on his left shoulder blade, and looked up at the single bulb burning through a metal grille, dust on the cage and a dark speck where a moth had got trapped inside and scorched itself to death.

In the next cell someone was screaming and he closed his eyes, feeling what they were feeling, confined and scared and wanting out so badly he was considering smacking his head into the wall a few times just so they’d have to take him to the doctor.

How long had he been here?

The custody sergeant had taken his watch, along with his belt and the laces out of his trainers. It was a precaution against suicide attempts, but he’d seen enough crime shows on television to realise you could hang yourself with your shirtsleeves or your trousers if you were determined enough. It was something they did so when you managed it they could say they’d made every effort to prevent you. Just arse-covering.

They should have questioned him by now.

The longer he waited the more he worried and part of him realised they were playing with him, letting him stew down here. They wanted him trembling and confused when they finally dragged him up to one of those small, white interview rooms.

He told himself that’s all it was. Technique.

But no matter how many times he repeated it he didn’t believe it. They weren’t waiting, they were out there chasing down the truth. It started with Renfrew and where did it end?

He knew where.

Wasn’t sure how they would have made the leap but the longer he sat, looking at the faded stains on the floor which could only be blood, he became more convinced that he knew exactly what was coming.

The slot in the door opened and a pair of wrinkled blue eyes appeared. The guard said nothing, snapped the slot shut again. It was the same one who had brought him breakfast, hours ago now, a leathery-faced old copper with dyed black hair and grey eyebrows who threw the food at him like he was an animal.