Long Way Home (14 page)

‘Not yet. He’s proving very elusive,’ Zigic said. ‘We need to speak to Clinton Renfrew, I understand he’s staying here.’

‘No, Mr Renfrew was only here for a week or so.’ Joseph Adu put the newspapers down on the hall table. ‘You do not think he was responsible for Jaan’s death?’

‘We just need to talk to him.’

‘Did they know each other?’ Ferreira asked.

‘I do not believe they were well acquainted but Mr Renfrew did arrive whilst Jaan was still with us, yes.’

‘Was there any trouble between them?’

‘No. Mr Renfrew was very self-contained.’

‘Did you know he’d just been released from prison?’ Ferreira asked. ‘He firebombed a takeaway place on Gladstone Street – a man died.’

Joseph Adu gave her a look of sad indulgence. ‘I spoke to Mr Renfrew about this. He is profoundly aware of the cost of his actions. He told me he met the young man’s mother during his incarceration and begged her forgiveness.’

It explained why his sentence was shortened, Zigic thought. Show contrition, beg if you have to, weep if that’s what they want to see.

‘I do not believe he would murder a man in cold blood,’ Adu said. ‘He does not want to go back to prison. He told me he has missed enough of his children’s lives already.’

‘He’s making some very ill-advised friends if he wants to stay out of trouble,’ Ferreira said.

Adu gave her a questioning look and Zigic cut in before she could explain; there was nothing to gain from exposing Adu’s misconceptions.

‘Do you have an address for Mr Renfrew?’

Adu nodded slowly.

‘We need it.’

‘He is living with his brother,’ Adu said, going into the office, where a printer was methodically throwing out flyers. He checked a book and wrote the address on a sheet of headed paper. ‘But I think you are wrong about Mr Renfrew, he is a good man.’

Ferreira started to speak and Zigic touched her elbow.

‘Thank you, Mr Adu.’

THEY WENT TO
the address in Old Fletton where Renfrew’s brother lived, a 1930s semi-detached built in the shadow of Peterborough United’s south stand. Neither man was home but his sister-in-law, a meaty blonde in pink Juicy Couture tracksuit and a fistful of gold, told them Clinton was at work.

‘Some garage over near that pikey site on Eastern Industrial Estate.’

Mid-afternoon and the road was clear under a darkening sky. Ferreira dropped her car off at the station and they cut back across town, neither speaking, the silence growing charged as Zigic accelerated along the parkway. Ferreira wanted it to be Renfrew but Zigic was unconvinced, sure the man’s history was affecting her judgement.

‘Barlow didn’t have the balls to tackle Stepulov,’ she said. ‘Paying Renfrew to get rid of him makes perfect sense.’

‘Perfect?’ Zigic asked. ‘Really? How would they know each other?’

She shrugged, recrossed her legs. ‘They’re living a few streets apart, maybe they drink in the same pub, I don’t know.’

She didn’t know and that was a constant problem with Ferreira. She was too confident of her instincts, too willing to dismiss the evidence that contradicted them.

‘Renfrew must need money,’ she said. ‘And setting fires is pretty much his only marketable skill.’

‘There’s a world of difference between burning out commercial properties to order and setting fire to a shed where you know someone’s sleeping.’

‘He’s killed one person. Maybe he found out it doesn’t bother him.’

Zigic took the slip road off Paston Parkway, cut back under it and headed into the Eastern Industrial Estate, its plastic and corrugated buildings sprawling away into fenland, the low skyline broken in places by occasional wind turbines attached to factory units and the ugly bulk of the green power station which filled the air with a sickly sweet odour like rotting fruit and mouldering grass clippings.

They passed the travellers’ site, several acres of mobile homes and steel lock-ups, kids playing at fighting and women standing around in the gateway, waiting for the older ones to get off a bus pulled up across the road. A monolithic apartment block rose behind the site, clad in cedar and stretches of very white plaster. Beyond that the tops of pylons, strung along wasteland, followed the curve of the River Nene as it ran away towards the Wash.

Zigic pulled into the forecourt of a garage advertising £40 MOTs and tyres while you wait. A fast-food van was doing a brisk trade in the lay-by, half a dozen white vans parked up, and the smell of it flipped his stomach as he got out, frying meat and onions caramelising. He realised he hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast but it would have to wait.

Ferreira strode away towards the garage. Its front was open, two bays both in action, a red BMW ramped up with a couple of men in grease-stained overalls trying to figure out what was wrong under it, and a temporarily forgotten Subaru with its alloys off.

One of the men elbowed his mate and they both turned to Ferreira as she entered the workshop.

‘Alright, darling, want me to check your points?’

Ferreira shoved her warrant card in his face. ‘Where’s Clinton Renfrew?’

The man backed away, giving her an unpleasant smile. ‘Clint, mate, copper here wants to talk to you.’

Renfrew came out of a small glass-walled office at the back of the garage, wiping his hands on a rag. He was short and lean inside the overalls he wore folded down to his waist, bare arms dirty and heavily tattooed. His right arm was bandaged from the elbow to the wrist, the dressing fresh-looking, and as he came closer Zigic noticed a smear of dried blood on the front of his khaki vest.

‘What do you want?’

‘See they didn’t teach you any manners in Littlehey,’ Ferreira said. ‘Jaan Stepulov, friend of yours?’

Renfrew nodded, gave a tight, pained smile. ‘I get you. The dead bloke from over Highbury Street.’

‘That a yes?’

‘He was in the hostel the same time as me. Wouldn’t have said we were mates but he seemed alright.’

‘For a foreigner?’

‘I’ve got no issue with people coming over here to work, Constable.’

‘Sergeant.’

Renfrew looked past her at Zigic. ‘Right terrier you got yourself there, boss.’

‘Stepulov wasn’t working,’ Ferreira said. ‘He was on the scrounge.’

‘Sure he was looking. Not much work around at the moment, what with the economy the way it is.’

‘You think your lot could do better?’

‘I wouldn’t vote for any of the bastards.’ Renfrew picked up a can of Coke left open on a stack of tyres with unevenly worn treads. ‘This some new approach they’re teaching you now? Political discourse? Want to ask my opinion of the common agricultural policy?’

‘Taught you some long words in the nick anyway,’ Ferreira said. ‘You know how Stepulov died?’

‘I’ve seen the news.’

A compressor screamed across the garage and Ferreira flinched at the sound.

‘You get used to that,’ Renfrew said. He slipped his arms back into his overalls and began buttoning them up again. ‘Some fucker set fire to the shed he was kipping in. You arrested the people whose house it was, didn’t you?’

‘The Barlows.’

‘That’s it.’

‘They’re helping us with our inquiries,’ Zigic said. ‘You and Mr Barlow go way back he tells us.’

Zigic caught a flicker of panic in Renfrew’s eyes, but he blinked it away, shook his head.

‘No. He never told you that.’

‘You think he’s worried about dropping you in it?’ Ferreira asked. ‘Man’s facing life. You remember what that feels like, don’t you, Clinton?’

Renfrew’s jaw hardened. ‘He never told you because I don’t know the cunt.’

The two mechanics standing under the BMW were paying full attention now, and Zigic noticed a third man coming round the other side of the Subaru. A solid lump of aggro with a wrench in his hand.

‘Where were you between four and six on Wednesday morning?’ Zigic asked.

Renfrew dragged his eyes away from Ferreira. ‘At home, where d’you fucking think? Ask my brother.’

‘Your brother isn’t much of an alibi.’

‘I was at home,’ Renfrew said firmly. His feet shifted on the concrete floor, getting ready to run or fight, Zigic wasn’t sure which. ‘Look, I’ve done my time and I am never going back in that fucking place again. I hardly knew Stepulov or whatever his name was. Why would I want to kill him?’

‘You tell us.’

‘This is harassment.’

‘It’s a murder investigation,’ Zigic said, taking a step towards Renfrew. ‘And when we see a recently released arsonist with racist tendencies –’

‘I’m not a racist,’ Renfrew shouted. ‘Fucking hell, my gran’s Belgian.’

‘And how does she feel about your ENL membership?’

‘She’s dead.’

‘She must be spinning in her grave,’ Ferreira said. ‘Or did you have her cremated?’

Renfrew glared but kept it together. ‘The ENL is not a racist organisation. We’re a political group opposed to the marginalisation of the English working class and the dilution of traditional English values.’

‘You’re not going to convert anyone here, Renfrew.’

Ferreira’s mobile rang and she moved away to answer it.

‘This is bollocks. I did what I did and I’ve served my time. You can’t come round harassing me every time there’s a fire in Peterborough.’ He crushed the Coke can and threw it out onto the forecourt. ‘You know why I burnt that place down. I told them when I was charged. The guy paid me. I’ve got no issue with the Portuguese or the fucking Slavs or anyone. It was a job. Place was supposed to be fucking empty.’

The other mechanics stood motionless and silent, watching Renfrew, and Zigic wondered if this was the first they’d heard of it.

Behind him Ferreira was talking in a hushed voice and all he caught was, ‘Keep him there.’

‘Now, I’ve got work to do,’ Renfrew said, taking a pair of latex gloves from the pocket of his overalls. ‘Unless you want to caution me and repeat this conversation with my solicitor present.’

‘Don’t leave town, Mr Renfrew.’

The compressor screeched again and the sound hit Zigic like a heart punch as he left the garage. Ferreira was in the car already, behind the wheel, and her hand was open when he climbed in the passenger side.

‘Keys, quick.’ She grabbed them. ‘Maloney’s got our tattooed man.’

FINTAN MALONEY WAS
at his usual corner table, playing dominoes two-handed against an emaciated old man with a shock of white hair standing at strange angles from his head. There was a bottle between them and their glasses held stiff measures, but he caught sight of Zigic and Ferreira the second they walked into the pub.

The lunchtime crowd was merging into the afternoon one and Zigic noticed a few suits among the regulars, English he thought, stopping off for a quick drink and a blow job before they returned home. The background chatter was a mix of Polish, Lithuanian and Latvian, though, and the natives looked like they knew they were out of place.

A young blond guy in a Tesco’s uniform slipped out of the door marked Staff Only, followed by one of the waitresses, who gestured at his half-zipped fly before she returned to the bar, all smiles for the people waiting to be served.

Maloney came over to them, hoicking the waistband of his jeans up under his wrecking-ball gut. His nose was glowing from the drink and he moved with the exaggerated steadiness of a man who knew he’d had a few too many.

‘Your boy’s over the end of the bar there.’

‘Which one?’

‘In the black Puffa jacket,’ Maloney said. ‘Talking to Olga.’

He was leaning across the bar, one foot resting on the brass rail, a pale young man barely out of his teens. Olga poured him a vodka and when he shot it back Zigic caught a glimpse of blue ink on the side of his neck, the tattooed bird soaring and swooping as his Adam’s apple bobbed.

‘Let’s do this then.’

Zigic headed for the far end of the bar, aware of Ferreira peeling off to his left, taking a slower, circuitous route through the groups of people drinking where they stood and the waitresses bringing out plates from the kitchen.

The man ordered another vodka and said something to the barmaid which made her frown. He tapped his foot against the brass rail and nodded to himself.

Zigic could feel ripples coming off him, a spiky, unpredictable energy. The couple next to him inched away, the woman moving so that her boyfriend was shielding her.

Ferreira stole up to the bar, two stools down from the man, hidden behind a couple of painters in heavily spattered work gear.

The man paid for his drink and necked it, slammed the shot glass on the counter as Zigic reached the bar. The man glanced at him, his expression neutral, and called to Olga for another drink. She was serving someone else, pulling a pint of Guinness with a slow, practised hand, and ignored him.

He tapped his glass on the bar, once, twice, impatient or nervous or maybe he was just the kind of arsehole who liked making noise.

‘Heard you’re looking for Jaan Stepulov,’ Zigic said.

‘Sorry. No English,’ the man said.

‘Did you find him?’

‘No English,’ he said again, giving Zigic a leery smile, big teeth packed crooked in his mouth.

The painters moved away and Ferreira stepped up close to the man’s back, ready to restrain him if he tried to run.

‘Stepulov’s dead.’

The shot glass skittered away from his fingers and smashed on the floor behind the bar.

‘Dead? How is he dead?’

‘He was murdered.’

The man dropped heavily onto a bar stool and buried his face in his hands. It wasn’t the reaction Zigic was expecting.

‘How did you know him?’

‘His daughter, she is my wife.’ He rubbed his face, bringing some blood to the surface of his milk-white cheeks. ‘Why does nobody tell us he is dead? I have been here, looking for him – weeks now – nobody tells me this.’

‘It happened yesterday morning, we’ve been trying to locate his next of kin,’ Zigic said. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Tomas Raadik.’

‘Is Jaan’s family living over here, Mr Raadik?’

He jumped off the stool. ‘I have to tell them.’

Zigic grabbed his elbow and steered him down again. ‘Where are they?’