After You Die (2 page)

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 neigh-bouring 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.