After You Die (24 page)

Bowe licked his lips. ‘I liked Dawn, but it wasn’t serious.’

‘To you maybe,’ Ferreira said. ‘You might have thought it was casual but did she?’

‘She knew I’ve got a girlfriend.’

‘Why did you tell her that? Was she getting a bit clingy?’

‘I never told her. She guessed. Women just know, they can smell it on you.’ He glanced at Zigic. ‘She was probably seeing other men.’

‘She was. Quite a lot of them.’ Ferraira leaned in conspiratorially. ‘Dozens.’

‘How does that make you feel?’ Zigic asked.

Bowe shrugged but there was hurt on his face, an almost imperceptible ripple around his lower lip. ‘It’s her business what she does with her body.’

‘If it makes you feel any better you were her favourite,’ Ferreira said. ‘Most of them only got the one go, whereas you, well … six times in just over a month. You were obviously giving her something the others couldn’t.’

This time when he shrugged it was half pride, half faux-humility.

‘What did she tell you about her daughter?’ Zigic asked.

‘Only that she’d had an accident and she couldn’t walk any more.’ He frowned. ‘She stayed with Dawn sometimes, when her ex let her, but she was living with him and his new woman.’

‘Did you ever see her?’

‘No. Dawn wouldn’t have had her in the house when she had dates, would she?’

Neither of them answered him and he seemed to take the lack of reply as agreement with his assessment of Dawn.

‘You know Holly’s dead too.’

‘I saw it on the news.’ Bowe clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. ‘How fucking unlucky was that? Her being there when Dawn died.’

‘Not died,’ Ferreira said. ‘Was murdered.’

‘Where were you Thursday night between seven p.m. and midnight?’ Zigic asked.

Bowe braced his hands against the table and leaned back in his chair. Another unconscious gesture; creating distance, breathing space.

‘I was at home.’

‘With your long-suffering, ever-trusting girlfriend?’

‘You don’t need to talk to her,’ he said quickly. ‘I’m not giving her as alibi. She doesn’t need to be involved in this.’

‘Who were you with then?’

‘No one. I stayed in, ordered pizza and watched
Breaking Bad
.’

‘What series are you on?’

He stumbled. ‘What?’

‘Series?’

‘Um, three.’

‘Yeah, what happens in the first episode?’

He looked at Ms Quinn and she sighed. ‘Really, I don’t think that’s relevant.’

‘If his alibi is sitting at home watching TV he should be able to tell us what he saw,’ Ferreira said. ‘It’s a pretty spectacular opening, Ian. Not one you’d forget.’

He swore under his breath. ‘Alright, I wasn’t watching
Breaking Bad
, I was watching porn. Happy now? I ordered a pizza and had a wank.’

‘That’s a very poor-quality alibi.’

‘Talk to the pizza-delivery guy, he’ll tell you I was at home.’

‘Unless he came in and spent the rest of the evening wanking with you his word doesn’t cut it.’ Ferreira leaned across the table, fists tucked under her chin. ‘I think you went to see Dawn. Your girlfriend’s out at work, you’re all horned up. So you decided to drop by.’

‘No.’

‘You knew Dawn would be up for it. She always is.’

‘I didn’t go there.’

‘She wasn’t happy to see you. Was she with another man?’ Ferreira asked. ‘Was that why you lost your temper and stabbed her ten times with her own kitchen knife?’

‘I wouldn’t hurt her.’

‘Not even if she pushed you?’

‘No.’

‘Not even if she threatened to tell your girlfriend?’

‘She wasn’t like that.’

‘We’re all like that, Ian. When we want someone.’

‘It was just sex!’

‘No. Dawn was looking for love. She wanted someone to take care of her and aren’t you the perfect candidate with your wine and your kindness and all the amazing sex?’

Bowe threw his hands up. ‘Where is this shit coming from?’

‘It’s coming from you,’ Ferreira said, stabbing her finger at him. ‘The kind of man you are. That we know damn well you are.’

‘So you don’t have any actual evidence against Mr Bowe,’ his solicitor said.

‘Of course they don’t, because I didn’t fucking do it.’

He was breathing hard, face flushed puce against the whiteness of his T-shirt, and Zigic could see how hard he was working to stay calm, seem reasonable, in control of himself. Not the kind of man who’d snap and grab the nearest pointed object to end an argument.

‘I’d like a moment with my client,’ Ms Quinn said.

They stopped the recording and went out into the corridor. Ferreira was pumped up, pacing back and forward, virtually strutting. ‘What do you think? He’s rattled, right?’

‘Yes, Mel, you’ve done a very good job of winding him up.’

‘That’s what you brought me along for, isn’t it?’

‘You went in a bit hard.’

‘He’s a piece of shit, you’ve only got to look at him.’

‘He looks normal enough to me.’

She dismissed the idea with a wave of her hand and Zigic wondered if she realised why she’d pegged him as a killer. What precisely about his appearance was antagonising her so much. She was always abrasive in interviews but that one had crossed a line and if he took her back in he felt sure her behaviour would worsen.

‘This warrant,’ he began.

‘It can wait. The kid’s not going anywhere.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘He’ll be in school for hours. Actually, he’ll probably have his laptop with him, won’t he? There’s no point going now.’

She stalked up the corridor and back again, stopped dead as the door to Interview Room 3 opened and Colleen Murray rushed out.

‘We’ve got another sighting of the man in the burgundy car,’ she said. ‘Three weeks ago, a Wednesday evening. He was parked on that scrap of land opposite the Prentice house.’

‘Westman saw him a couple of weeks ago too. So we’ve got him returning during the evening now. Twice within a few days.’ Zigic turned towards Ferreira. ‘Do you think you can go in there and ask Bowe about it without bouncing his head off the table?’

She smiled. ‘I make no promises.’

He turned back to Murray. ‘Did you get a description? Number plates?’

‘He’s convinced it’s a Passat and he’s got one himself so I think we can safely presume he’s right. Assuming he isn’t lying.’

‘Westman thought it was a Passat too.’

Murray nodded. ‘He doesn’t remember the entire reg number but he gave me a partial. We’ll see how accurate that is.’

‘What about the man?’

‘Late fifties, early sixties, he said, bald, overweight, heavy glasses.’

‘Can you send the partial down to Bobby, please?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Anything else from your man in there?’

‘Clean,’ she said. ‘His alibi’s sound. He was at a show Thursday evening, the tickets are hologrammed and require photo ID to redeem them, so we can follow it up but I think he’s out of the frame, personally.’

Ferreira came back out of the interview room, drew the door closed fast behind her.

‘Same story. Burgundy car. Parked opposite Dawn’s house.’

‘When?’

‘Last Tuesday,’ she said. ‘But he didn’t stay in the car this time. He went to the house, knocked on the front door. Dawn ignored it. The bloke kept knocking, she kept ignoring it and Bowe got so pissed off with the interruption he went down to tell him to fuck off.’

‘Why didn’t he tell us about this before?’

‘He said he thought the bloke was a hawker.’

‘Did he fuck off?’ Zigic asked.

‘Yeah. But Bowe followed him down the drive to be on the safe side and saw him get into his car.’

‘That sounds excessive for a hawker.’

‘Security-guard training. He reckons he could tell there was something amiss about the bloke.’ Ferreira shoved her hands in her pockets. ‘Bowe’s a wannabe copper. But he’s got a good eye for detail, I’ll give him that. He got the reg number.’

‘Arnold Fletcher,’ Wahlia said. ‘Sixty-seven years old, based in Corby, with a … colourful history I guess you’d say. Multiple convictions going back to the late seventies.’

Zigic came of out his office, car keys in hand. ‘What for?’

‘Public-order offences, trespass, intimidation, a couple of instances of actual bodily harm. Threats, harassment, criminal damage. Looks like he was heavily involved in the animal-rights movement up until the early nineties. He’s been fairly quiet since then.’

‘Age catches up with all of us,’ Zigic said.

Over Wahlia’s shoulder he could see Fletcher’s last mugshot. Twenty years ago but he was already an old man, all jowls and pouches, bloodshot eyes and skin pricked with broken veins across his cheeks, a drinker’s florid nose.

‘The animal-rights stuff stopped in ninety-four,’ Wahlia said. ‘But he’s been cautioned for harassment since.’

‘Who did he harass?’ Ferreira asked.

‘A hospice in Cambridge. He picketed the entrance for a week.’

‘Who pickets a hospice?’

Wahlia rocked back in his chair. ‘According to his statement he didn’t agree with their line on assisted dying.’

Zigic shifted a few files out of the way, sat down on the edge of the desk.

‘Is that what he was doing at Dawn’s? Picketing her?’

‘Holly was a right-to-die advocate,’ Ferreira said. ‘It’s possible he considered her a legitimate target.’

‘He’s tied up with a pressure group called Compassion Not Killing,’ Wahlia said. ‘Their main goal seems to be opposing any changes in the law on assisted suicide.’

‘Have they been in touch with Holly?’ Zigic asked.

‘Via Twitter, yeah, nothing overtly nasty. Lots of links to articles about injured sports people who were living full lives, still competing, that kind of thing. Very passive aggressive.’

‘Going to the house was a step up.’

‘He wanted something from Dawn,’ Ferreira said. ‘Three visits we know about now, he’s got an agenda.’

Zigic rattled his car keys in his hand.

‘Let’s ask him about it then.’

Corby was an old steel town that had never managed to find another industry to replace the one now gone, impoverished in comparison to the affluent villages they passed through on the way, all stone and thatch, hamlets with only a few well-spaced houses, horses in paddocks and fields already cut and ploughed.

Quickly the rural idyll gave way to suburbs, low-rise offices and industrial units occupied by companies with an impermanent air suggested by cheap signage and sale banners plastered up in the smoked-glass windows, discount places and hand car washes, boxy retail outlets with filthy corrugated walls and empty car parks, advertising services you wouldn’t trust and products you could buy in dozens of other places with more confidence.

On the drive over they’d hardly spoken but as they approached a housing estate Ferreira began to direct him from the map on her phone, stopping when they reached a pebble-dashed semi opposite the train station.

There was a burgundy Passat in the driveway and the toplights in the front windows were open. The patrol car pulled onto the kerb behind them and Zigic gestured for PCs Hale and Bright to wait until he called for them. Fletcher might kick off – he certainly had the form for it – but he was almost seventy and Zigic doubted they’d need back-up to restrain him.

‘How do you want to play this?’ Ferreira asked.

‘Civil until he gives us a reason not to be.’

Zigic peered into the car through its driver’s-side window, saw light grey leather seats and grey carpet in the footwell, smudged by dirty feet and littered with fast-food wrappers. A lot of debris but not enough to cover up the fact that the carpet there was markedly lighter than on the passenger’s side, its pile scrubbed and tufted.

‘Mel, tell me what you see there.’

He stood aside as she shaded her eyes from the sun and looked in.

‘Clean-up job,’ she said. ‘Not a very good one. Whoever did it missed a spot on the underside of the console.’

It was easily done, Zigic thought. He’d not seen it on first inspection and it was only when he looked again that he saw a dark smear where the driver’s knees would have touched the moulded plastic under the steering column.

‘It might not be blood,’ Ferreira said.

The front door opened before they reached it. Fletcher stood in a washed-out cheesecloth shirt and striped pyjama bottoms, looked between the two of them and nodded to himself.

‘Best put some proper kecks on, had I?’

‘Do you know why we’re here, sir?’ Zigic asked.

‘Haven’t got the foggiest but if you’ve brought the knuckleheads with you I don’t reckon you’ll be leaving on your own.’

‘Can we come in, please?’

‘I’ve got nowt to hide.’ He stepped back and let them into a small hallway, cluttered with junk mail and piles of old newspapers. Zigic noticed a stairlift fixed to the wall and wondered if Fletcher was less firm in body than he looked. ‘What d’you want then?’

‘Dawn Prentice,’ Zigic said. ‘What’s your interest in her?’

‘You tell me.’

‘It’d be best for you if you cooperate.’

‘Oh, yeah, I’ve heard that one before.’ Fletcher crossed his arms. ‘Going to knock me about a bit, aye? I’m a pensioner now, you want to think about that before you start getting heavy-handed.’

‘You’ve been harassing Mrs Prentice,’ Zigic said.

‘Has she made a complaint?’

‘Dawn Prentice is dead. She was murdered last week.’

Fletcher’s expression didn’t change.

‘You were hanging around her house last week too,’ Zigic said. ‘And for a good while before that. So, what was your interest in her?’

Fletcher walked away from them and they followed him into the living room, where the curtains were still drawn against the crisp light. A television in the corner was playing Al Jazeera rolling news but Fletcher’s desk was turned away from it, a bulky old desktop computer running noisily.

‘I wanted to give her these.’ He pulled a couple of leaflets out of his desk drawer.

Ferreira took them from him, made a dumb face. ‘Compassion Not Killing?’

‘She’s got a very ill little girl,’ he said. ‘We were getting concerned about her welfare.’

‘Why?’