Tell No Tales
Contents
About the Book
The car that ploughs into the bus stop early one morning leaves a trail of death and destruction behind it.
DS Ferreira and DI Zigic are called in from the Peterborough Hate Crimes Unit to handle the investigation but with another major case on their hands, one with disturbing Neo-Nazi overtones, they are relieved when there seems to be an obvious suspect. But the case isn’t that simple and with tensions erupting in the town, leading to more violence, the media are soon hounding them for answers.
Ferreira believes that local politician Richard Shotton, head of a recently established right-wing party, must be involved somehow. Journalists have been quick to acclaim Shotton, with his Brazilian wife and RAF career, as a serious contender for a major political career, despite his extremist views, but is his party a cover for something far more dangerous?
About the Author
Eva Dolan is an Essex-based copywriter and intermittently successful poker player.
Long Way Home
, the first book in the DI Zigic and DS Ferreira series, was published in 2014 to outstanding critical acclaim.
Also by Eva Dolan
Long Way Home
Tell No Tales
Eva Dolan
DAY ONE
1
AT 5 A.M.
it was easy to tell which houses were still occupied by the English. No signs of life. No thoughts of getting up for a couple of hours at least.
Sofia stood at the window, the bedroom in darkness behind her, watching one light after another come on, skylights glowing in the converted attics. She remembered sleeping on an air bed under low eaves, three other girls squeezed in with her, fifty pounds a week, and at night she could see stars through the gaps in the slate roof. There was no skylight in that house, only a hatch which opened from below to let them out when the van arrived to take them into the endless black fields of the Lincolnshire fens.
It was a long time ago now.
She switched on the lamp and dressed quickly, leggings under her jeans, a vest and a long-sleeved T-shirt and one of Tomas’s thick grey sweatshirts over the top. It was minus five last night and the pack house would be freezing. It was better than being out in the fields, she reminded herself, tramping up and down the rows with fingers so numb from cold that you could cut yourself and not realise until you felt a sudden, wet warmth.
She dragged her long brown hair into a hasty plait and tucked it into her collar, looking at Tomas’s dirty washing sitting in the corner of the bedroom, mud crusted on the hems of his trousers and another man’s blood on the thigh.
The image flashed quickly before her eyes, the Kurd’s severed hand on the pack-house floor, Tomas holding him upright, raising his wrist above his head to slow the bleeding as the old man screamed.
She snatched up the khaki combats, the jumper and the T-shirt which were spotted with blood even though she was sure Tomas wasn’t wearing them that day. They shouldn’t be in the house.
Someone else’s blood – it attracted bad luck to you.
Sofia shoved them into a carrier bag which wasn’t quite big enough, punched them down with her small, bony fist. The stains would come out if she soaked them in vodka but Tomas wouldn’t wear them again.
In the bedroom across the hall Jelena’s mobile was ringing. A different ringtone this week and Sofia was tired of telling her not to waste her money on them.
She heard Jelena moving around, the loose floorboard near her dressing table clacking.
‘Ignore him,’ Sofia shouted.
Jelena came out onto the landing, her pyjama top hanging loose over the waistband of her jeans, thick white socks on her feet.
‘Ja sam neznalica njemu.’
‘English,’ Sofia said wearily. ‘You will not get better if you do not speak.’
The phone kept ringing in Jelena’s hand, the screen flashing in time to the music. ‘I text him last night, tell him no.’
‘You should say nothing. No text. Nothing.’
‘I make him understand,’ Jelena said.
‘You encourage him like this,’ Sofia told her. ‘You must give him nothing.’
Jelena ran her fingertips through her ponytail, a nervous gesture she had brought with her from childhood. ‘He will not stop if I do not speak to him.’
‘I will speak to him.’
Sofia held out her hand but Jelena turned away, pressing the phone to her shoulder.
‘No. He will stop.’
He did. At that very moment. As if he could hear them.
‘We will change your number.’ Sofia rubbed Jelena’s arm, forced herself to smile. ‘Tonight, I will deal with this. Do not worry.’
She went down into the small white kitchen at the back of the house, put on the lights and the television and ran the tap until the water came through properly cold, trying to act like everything was normal. Like last night’s conversation had never happened. Hours later she had been sure she could hear Jelena’s muffled voice coming across the hall as she lay in the centre of the bed, trying to sleep, wishing Tomas was there next to her.
She lit a cigarette from the gas and waited for the kettle to boil.
Anthony was a small, timid man, but he was persistent and she knew at some point she would need to act. Her eyes strayed to the knife block on the black melamine counter – five sturdy wooden handles and five nicely weighted blades.
It would not come to that, she reassured herself.
The kettle rattled to the boil and Sofia called up to Jelena as she poured water into the cafetière, brewing the coffee strong, telling her they were going to be late if she didn’t hurry. She refilled the kettle to make up the flasks and took the bag of ruined clothes out to the bin.
There was frost in the air, spiked with chemicals from the industrial estate nearby, and her breath blossomed in front of her when she exhaled, the cold pricking her nose. Underfoot the grass crinkled softly. It needed cutting but that was Tomas’s job and neither of them knew how to work the temperamental lawnmower he’d bought from the car boot sale at the football ground. He said it was like a woman, required a strong hand, and Sofia told him Slovak women were not like lawnmowers, they only needed one blade to get the job done. He laughed and kissed her, promised he would show her how it worked when he had a day off.
She dropped the bag into the bin and closed the lid slowly, aware of a rustling sound coming from the shadows behind the shed. A cat sprang out and ran across the garden, a white blur gone in an instant.
Jelena was taking their packed lunches out of the fridge when Sofia went back inside, beans and pasta in tomato sauce Sofia had cooked at the weekend and bagged up in individual portions for speed. Sofia had learned how to live on very little and even though they were earning well now the habit stayed with her. The more they saved the sooner they could stop working like this, always for other people’s benefit and so many pairs of hands skimming off the top.
Jelena placed the Tupperware containers in her rucksack and tucked in their flasks, took one out again to double-check the lid.
She was concentrating too hard, her bottom lip between her teeth.
‘You have spoken to him,’ Sofia said.
Jelena zipped the bag slowly. ‘I say I will not see him.’
‘What did he say?’
Her eyes were shining, huge and blue. She swallowed but didn’t reply.
Sofia knew what he said. Always the same threat but he didn’t have the balls to see it through. He would have done it by now if he was going to. An act like that, you did it in the heat of anger and the heat was gone from him now, whether he understood that himself or not. He would get bored, move on to someone else. Another poor foreign girl who would be charmed by his English accent and his big German car.
‘We have to go,’ Sofia said. ‘We will be late for work.’
She took Jelena’s arm as they left the house and dragged her through the gate, joining the other people coming out with their Thermos flasks and packed lunches, everyone moving in the same direction, down towards the main road.
Half past five and the rest of the city was still sleeping, but Lincoln Road was bustling already. The terraced houses lit up and disgorging their occupants onto the street, the road running steady with delivery lorries and white vans heading into the centre of Peterborough, transporters full of workers coming home from shifts cleaning offices, twelve hours packaging produce on the Eastern Industrial Estate. One lot out and a quick turn-around to collect the day workers.
A van pulled up across the road, outside the Polish grocer’s where Sofia and Jelena no longer shopped. They sold counterfeit cigarettes and vodka which was illegally stilled on the fens by a Bulgarian family, rough, raw stuff that was only fit for cleaning your sink with. Out front a few men, just off shift, sat at the cafe tables drinking bottled beer, shattered but not ready for bed yet.
They stood at their usual spot outside the bus shelter, the only two workers for the Boxwood Farm van. The first stop on the driver’s route. There was another man waiting this morning though, hunched and tired-looking, vaguely familiar. Someone Tomas knew. When he muttered a ‘good morning’ she managed to reply, but her attention was focused on Jelena, reaching into her pocket for her mobile. That ringtone blaring.
Sofia shot her a look as she checked the display.
‘Who is that?’
‘Marta,’ she said, angling her body away to shield the screen, taking a couple of small steps closer to the kerb.
The man said something else and Sofia answered him shortly, watching Jelena bite her lip as she listened to the voice on the other end which was definitely not Marta.
In the distance car horns blared above the traffic noise and an engine revved, a deep, throaty rattle as a white Volvo shot across lights and accelerated up Lincoln Road, swerving erratically around a cyclist. Sofia froze as its headlights washed the pavement, silhouetting Jelena’s figure, her back to the car, phone to her ear. Sofia opened her mouth to scream but no sound came out. Then she heard a bang and something slammed into her and the world turned black as her head hit the ground.
2
BY SIX FIFTEEN
they had shut down a hundred-yard stretch of Lincoln Road. Both lanes blocked off, signs diverting the traffic along the narrow side streets, which would be snarled up with delivery lorries trying to get into the shopping centre and vans making for the covered market behind Peterborough Cathedral.
BBC Cambridgeshire was already reporting a hit-and-run. They were sketchy on the details, but DI Dushan Zigic knew there was one dead at the scene, two more, unlikely to make it, on the way to Edith Cavell’s A&E department.
The initial newsflash had reported the dead and injured as migrant workers. Fifteen minutes later the hourly bulletin made no mention of ethnicity, only a group of people waiting at a bus stop. The press officer must have called them from her bed to shut them up that fast, Zigic guessed.
She was fighting the tide though. Before he left the station the desk sergeant showed him footage of the accident on YouTube, filmed by a steady hand as people from the cafe opposite ran across the road to help, shouting in languages Zigic didn’t understand.