After You Die (9 page)

He saw himself walking, late at night, shivering and crying but trying to hide it because he knew that nobody would help him. Crying got you hit. That was what he knew for sure. He saw himself on a street of lit houses like the ones he’d left back home and he heard his brother’s voice in his head telling him he needed to get inside.

But what was he going to do, knock on a random door and ask for a bed?

His brother had a better plan. He always knew how to get round problems like this.

Nathan walked until he found a house without its lights on and a board outside saying ‘To-Let’. They’d broken into houses like that before. Not the ones ‘For Sale’. The people would still be in them sometimes. These were the ones you wanted. You could go in them and smoke and drink and nobody would stop you.

He found the side gate locked but managed to climb over it. That was where he scraped his hand.

The back garden was dark and it scared him but he saw an upstairs window left open. Not easy to get to. Not without his brother to give him a boost, but he climbed onto the roof of the old outhouse and made it to the window, dragged himself up and inside.

He’d landed in the bath. That was where the bruise on his arm came from.

Then there was the other window.

The one so far off the ground that Nathan didn’t think he could drop down without breaking his ankles. But the door was locked and the man was talking and through the windscreen of the lorry he could see the police station, all the cars outside and the big vans and two men in uniforms standing on the street.

The drop didn’t look as scary as the man did, telling him they had to go inside. That the police would call his mum and dad and they’d come to take him home.

Nathan picked at his combats again. They were dark blue but you could see the wet on them. Too obvious to go outside in. He looked around the bedrooms again, checking in the fitted wardrobes, finding them all empty.

Downstairs the rooms were just the same. Nothing in any of them.

Bare cupboards in the kitchen, but through the window he could see into the neighbours’ garden. There was washing out on the line, lots of it, mainly kids’ clothes.

Last night he’d tried the back door and found it locked and now he searched the drawers for a key, the cupboard under the sink and the corners of the empty room. Nowhere to hide anything and nothing to find.

He climbed up onto the worktop, feeling the draining board wobble under his foot, and reached for the window over the sink. The paint was flaking and the catch was old but he managed to open it with a hard shove, then jumped out into a flower bed full of weeds.

For a few minutes he didn’t move. You had to listen and watch, be sure no one knew you were there. The end of the garden had a high wall along it, a factory or something, with no windows for nosy neighbours to see him from. That was lucky.

Nathan crossed the grass and pressed his eye to a hole in the fence. The kids there had a trampoline and a paddling pool, loads of toys chucked about. It was a tidy garden, though, like Julia and Matthew’s, with a vegetable plot down the far end. They’d probably be the same kind of people. They’d help him if he asked because people like that did. But then they’d ask him things and he wouldn’t be able to answer.

It made him feel better about stealing from them, knowing they wouldn’t mind.

Up and over the fence and into the garden, quick as he could, keeping an eye on the kitchen window just in case the woman was at home. He snatched pairs of shorts and T-shirts off the line, took a man’s hoodie that would be too big but there was nothing else warm.

Back over the fence, back into the house. He changed into the clean clothes in the hallway, went and got his mobile from where he’d left it on the wardrobe floor.

He turned it on. The battery was still full. Twenty missed calls and messages – Julia, Caitlin, the woman he was supposed to call Rachel.

Nathan ignored all that and went to the map, saw a little red pin drop down to show him where he was. Grantham.

He pinched the screen until the map zoomed out enough for him to work out how far he was from home. It looked like a tiny journey. An hour or two and maybe it would be if he knew how to steal a car. His brother never let him do that, though. Said he was still too young and how was he going to drive anywhere when he couldn’t reach the pedals?

The little red pin was close to the centre of Grantham. Close to the train station.

He needed money and food. He could get both there. People didn’t pay attention, too many bags and running late. That was how he’d get home.

As he stared at the map, trying to memorise the names of the roads, his phone rang – Rachel.

He started to shake, feeling as if she could see him through the camera. She saw everything, knew things she wasn’t supposed to.

Finally she gave up and he forced himself not to think about her, went back to the map and tried to make the street names go into his head.

The phone pinged. A new message from Rachel flashed up across the top of the screen.

Don’t move. We’re coming to get you
.

Westman & Sons General Builders was a more significant outfit than Zigic was expecting, sitting on an acre of prime market-town real estate with a new Waitrose on one boundary and playing fields on another, water meadows separating the yard from the Leicester Road. A few slow, ginger cows ambled around under the morning sun, a lone, bold heifer coming close to the perimeter fence where an old stone trough was full of rainwater.

The yard was crammed with reclaimed building materials, piled so high they’d give even the most lax health-and-safety inspector an instant coronary; packs of soft red bricks, chipped and dusted with mortar, precarious towers of local limestone, odd chunks littering the ground around them, roof tiles lined up and interleaved, worn slates and pantiles, lengths of old railings and dozens of different chimney pots.

Anna would been in her element here, Zigic thought. Finding things for him to clean up.

He spotted a white-haired man with stooped posture unloading a set of pine doors from the back of a pickup truck, adding them to the selection ranked up in an open-fronted shed. He moved slowly but lifted each door easily, his squat physique toughened by a lifetime of heavy work.

‘Is Gary about?’ Zigic asked.

‘In the office.’ The man gestured towards the main building, a corrugated-metal barn with its sliding door wide open and a mangy tabby cat sunning itself on the threshold.

Inside, the temperature was a few degrees colder than out in the sun, the space double height and echoing, lit by hanging fluorescent strips running along the vaguely defined aisles. There were hundreds of internal doors in racks, sash windows and ancient sanitary ware crusted with dirt and limescale and rust, elaborate fireplaces made of cast iron and wood and four different types of marble, too big for modern houses and too gaudy for modern tastes. Everything smelling of dust and damp.

Zigic found Gary Westman in a partitioned cubbyhole, standing with his big fists planted on his hips as he talked to a woman on speakerphone, quoting her prices she didn’t sound very happy with.

‘If you can find someone else to do it cheaper, then go for it,’ Westman said. ‘But don’t expect me to come and put their work right when they balls it up.’

He cut the woman off, smiled at Zigic.

‘They’ll spend ten grand on an oven but ask six to build the room they want to put it in and you’re a rip-off merchant.’

Westman looked much the same as in his mugshot, a few pounds heavier, a few lines on his square face, but the reckless twenty-something in white sportswear was now pushing forty, respectable enough in his designer jeans and polo shirt, biceps straining at the pink aertex. If he wanted women with ten-grand ovens to use his services he needed to show them the right kind of package.

‘Anyway,’ he said. ‘What can I do for you?’

Zigic introduced himself and Westman nodded immediately.

‘Dawn, yeah? Mate of mine called this morning, said she’d been killed. Holly too, he said. I said, that can’t be right. Not in fucking Elton.’

‘I’m afraid it’s true,’ Zigic said, seeing the bemusement slacken his face. ‘I need to talk to everyone you had working at Dawn’s house. There’s a chance they might have important information.’

‘Yeah, course.’ He took his phone out, got the right unlock code on the second attempt. ‘I’ve been over there a bit. Me and Deano. Dean Carter. You want his number?’

‘And the address.’

Westman read them out and Zigic noted them down.

‘Seems like managing this place is a full-time job. Do you usually go out on site?’

‘Dad manages the yard. He’s getting on a bit. Should have retired years back by rights but there’s no stopping the old fella. He’s convinced he’ll drop down dead the minute he quits.’

‘Still, not your usual kind of project,’ Zigic said.

‘We can’t afford to turn down the small ones. They’re bread and butter, you know. Only so many people round here want bricks at twelve hundred pound a thousand and reclaimed Jacobean staircases.’ He shrugged his big shoulders. ‘And it’s on the estate, anyway. They like to deal with companies they know.’

‘Who was paying for it?’

‘The council. House is owned by the estate but Dawn applied for a grant to convert the garage and it came in.’ The phone on the desk began to ring and he glanced at it for a split second before returning his attention to Zigic, eyes widening. ‘Don’t tell me that’s how they got in. I’ll fucking kill Deano if he left the place unlocked.’

‘Does he do that often?’

‘Kid’s not got the sense he was born with.’

‘When was he last there?’ Zigic asked, itching to call in the man’s name and check his record.

‘Now hold on,’ Westman said, hands going up. ‘He’s a bit dense but he’s soft as shit.’

‘I’m sure you’re right, but we need to establish how the killer got into the house and if Dean left the door open it changes things for us. So, when was he last there?’

Westman calmed down slightly, but the nerves were still buzzing behind his eyes. ‘Thursday morning. Both of us were there till dockey – elevenish – then we went on to another job in Yarwell.’

‘Was Dawn at home when you left?’

He nodded. ‘She didn’t go out much. She was always there when we were.’

‘So, why would you think Dean left the door unlocked?’

Westman didn’t answer, glanced at his feet.

‘Presumably you didn’t leave without telling Dawn,’ Zigic said. ‘The extension is attached to the kitchen, it’s all very open. Did you tell her you were going?’

‘Yes.’ Still looking at his feet.

‘And did she see you out?’

‘She saw me out,’ he said, finally meeting Zigic’s gaze. ‘Alright? You know what I’m saying now?’

He did, but he wanted to hear the full explanation, see how Westman talked about Dawn, what emotions his recollection of that morning would provoke.

‘Clarify it for me.’

Westman sat down in a wobbly leatherette chair at his desk, elbows on his knees, right hand cupping his left, hiding the thick platinum wedding band Zigic had already noticed.

‘Me and Deano stopped by early to get a couple of hours in. The plasterboard was due to be delivered this week and I wanted him to go clear all our stuff out so the dry liners could make a quick start. The job’s been dragging on, fucking delays with the bricks and the windows not right.’

Too much detail, Zigic thought. Off topic. He was hiding something.

‘So I left Deano to get on and I went in to see Dawn.’ He gave Zigic a pointed look, willing that to be enough. ‘I don’t know how long he was working but he was already in the van when I left, so I didn’t bother checking the back door. I was a bit – well – shagged out.’

‘How long have you been involved with Dawn?’

‘We weren’t involved,’ he said. ‘It was just sex. I went there to price up and we got on okay, it just happened. You know how women are with builders.’

‘Married builders.’

‘What are you, the fucking morality police?’ Westman snapped.

‘Does your wife know about this?’

‘She knows what I’m like and she doesn’t care.’

‘Would she say that if I asked her?’

Westman pressed his fist harder into his cupped hand. ‘This hasn’t got anything to do with what happened to Dawn. It was just a casual thing, we weren’t hurting anyone. She had a lot on her plate looking after Holly, you know, she needed someone to make her feel good now and again.’

‘Maybe you weren’t the only one paying her attention,’ Zigic said. ‘Did she mention other men?’

‘We didn’t do much talking.’

‘Did you know she was being harassed?’

‘Like I said, we never talked much.’ Westman frowned. ‘Couple of weeks back, though, me and Deano went over to cut the new window in, and there was some bloke parked up over the road watching the house. Proper eyeballing it. I didn’t think too much of it, but Dawn wouldn’t open up when I knocked and I knew she was in there.’

‘What happened then?’

‘We got started. We could get in round the back but I like to give folks a courtesy knock – just good manners, isn’t it?’

Zigic nodded. ‘Did you see Dawn that day?’

‘Yeah.’ He turned his ring around on his finger. ‘Hour or so later she came out with tea and bacon butties.’

‘And the bloke in the car?’

‘Long gone.’ He leaned back in his chair. ‘Dawn was upset. Really upset, she’d been crying, but she was pretending to be fine. She wasn’t like that normally. Pissed off, sad, yeah, but not like that.’

‘Did you ask her what was wrong?’

‘I should have,’ he said. ‘I didn’t think anything of it until now though.’

A woman in a disintegrating waxed coat came to the edge of Westman’s office, trailing a terrier on a long lead, and asked where the wood burners were. He directed her to the furthest corner of the building and when she lingered, assured her he’d be with her in a few minutes.

‘This man,’ Zigic said. ‘What did he look like?’

He huffed out a fast breath. ‘I dunno. I didn’t really have a good look at him. Bald. Old.’