Long Way Home (18 page)

‘What happened to Viktor?’

Tombak rubbed the skin above his cast, didn’t reply.

‘Did you fight with him too? Maybe you got the better of that brother.’

Tombak glared at him. ‘I tell you, he went to new job.’

‘Is that what you and Jaan were arguing over? He thought you’d killed Viktor?’

‘No. He says nothing about Viktor.’

‘But you knew they were related,’ Zigic said, pressing on. ‘Stepulov’s not a common name. You knew they were brothers.’

‘No.’

‘Viktor calls home, frantic, terrified, so Jaan comes looking for him at your house but he’s gone. What did you tell him about Viktor?’

‘He asked nothing.’

‘You’re lying.’

Tombak turned to his solicitor. ‘He cannot talk to me like this.’

‘I think we’ve reached the point where I tell you to charge Mr Tombak or release him,’ Ahmal said, recapping his fountain pen. ‘And from the sound of things you don’t actually have enough to charge him, so that only leaves one course of action, doesn’t it?’

THE LAST CUSTOMER
left just after 3 a.m, rolled out onto Westgate and promptly threw up in the gutter. A few minutes later Emilia heard him shouting and saw him arguing with a couple of taxi drivers from the rank across the road. The men shoved him roughly away, kicked him up the arse as he was going. He turned back to fight his corner but seemed to think better of it and walked off, still shouting, gesturing from a safe distance.

It had been that kind of evening. Two fights, one knife pulled, and a lot of broken glass to be cleaned up.

Emilia was numb to it all. She kept thinking of how close the police had been to her, that young woman and the tall Slavic man who must be her boss. Only the bar had been between them and she thought she would faint when he mentioned Jaan’s name. She actually gasped when the young man said he was Jaan’s son-in-law but the police seemed as surprised as she was and didn’t notice. She was just another invisible East European cleaning up somebody else’s mess, no need to worry about her.

Now her feet ached and her back hurt and she kicked off her heels while she finished clearing up. Maloney had gone to bed already and she noticed Olga had excused herself from duties, slipped off upstairs to attend to more important ones, leaving Sofia to lock up.

Somehow she got through the next half an hour and then she was pulling on her coat and fitting her feet back into her shoes, saying her goodnights and getting half-hearted responses.

Outside the air was crisp with coming frost and her breath bloomed in front of her when she released the sigh she’d been holding in her chest for what felt like hours.

A few people were out on the street, hanging around the kebab shop on the corner of Lincoln Road, a gang of men playing at fighting, throwing one another into the path of oncoming cabs from the rank outside John Lewis’s back doors. Two girls, clinging to each other on their high spiked heels, came along Westgate, shivering without coats. A lone man, walking with his head tucked into his chest and his hands thrust in his pockets, followed them towards the locked-down bus station near the shopping centre.

Emilia’s mobile rang as she climbed into the taxi and she gave the driver her address before she answered it.

‘Where are you?’ Skinner asked. ‘Need some stuff off of you.’

‘I have just left work.’

‘Good, I’ll come round yours.’

‘No.’

‘Look, love, you don’t want me to come to the pub, you don’t want me to come to your place. Frankly, I’m starting to feel a bit insulted, you know what I mean?’ A lighter snickered at his end and she remembered the smell of tobacco on Skinner’s breath as he moved on top of her, panting, gurning, his fingers in her hair. ‘So, what d’you wanna do?’

She swallowed her revulsion.

‘Come to mine,’ she said and told him her address.

‘Be half hour. Got a bit of business to finish up here.’

The cab dropped her at Rivergate. Most of the other flats were in darkness, and the corridor felt still and haunted as she let herself in. She switched on every light, chasing the ghosts out of the rooms, turned on the television, needing voices around her.

She threw her clothes in the hamper and showered quickly. The heat of the water started her thumb throbbing. There was something in there, stinging close to the cuticle. She examined it under the light above the bathroom mirror, could see nothing, but when she probed it with the tip of her tweezers she found a sliver of glass.

She gritted her teeth and pulled the glass out. Blood welled and she stuck her thumb in her mouth, tasting copper and soap.

She opened the medicine cabinet for a plaster and froze, looking at the bottles of cologne arranged neatly on the top shelf, more of them than any one man needed, his razor and shaving soap and the brush which was losing its bristles; not that he would ever use it again. His toothbrush was still in the holder above the sink, nestled close to hers, and she snatched it up suddenly and threw it in the bin.

His things were everywhere in the flat.

Emilia opened the wardrobe and his clothes confronted her like so many shed skins.

They would have to go, she thought, but as she ran her hand down the sleeve of his favourite blue-striped shirt, she wondered if that was such a good idea. Only a guilty person would throw his things out. If she was innocent she would be wearing one of his big sweatshirts, grieving over the smell of him.

She pulled on jeans and a thick jumper with a polo neck, not wanting Skinner to get any ideas, and went into the kitchen.

The intercom buzzed as she was pouring a stiff shot of vodka. She hit the button to let him in and necked her drink.

He was leaning against the wall when she opened up and he pushed his hoodie back off his bald head, straightened to his full five six and strolled in like he owned the place, looking through the open doors, nodding to himself.

‘Nice set-up you got here, girl. Not what I was expecting. Not what I was expecting at all.’ He sat down on the sofa, placed his messenger bag on the low glass coffee table and took out his laptop. ‘Get us a drink, will you?’

‘Beer or vodka?’

‘You got Bud?’

Like she was at work.

‘Yes.’

‘That’ll do.’

Emilia fetched it and put it on the table, retreated to the armchair near the window. Skinner had switched the television off and the room was so quiet she could hear her neighbour snoring through the paper-thin wall.

‘What do we do?’ she asked.

‘Straight down to business, hey?’ Skinner took a long drink of his beer. ‘I need a photograph.’

She flipped through the menus on her mobile, found the one she wanted.

‘This one.’

He looked at it for a couple of seconds, smiled, showing small, back-slanting teeth.

‘Very attractive.’

He took a cable out of his bag and hooked her phone up to his laptop.

‘This is going to cost you,’ he said, as his fingers poked at the keyboard.

‘I know this.’

‘Two thousand.’

‘I have it.’

‘In cash.’

‘What else would I pay with?’ Immediately she regretted the question, seeing him leer at her across the top of the computer. ‘When will it be ready?’

‘You can have it Tuesday.’

‘This is too long.’

‘Try the passport office if you like,’ Skinner said, going for his beer again. ‘They can do it in twenty-four hours if you explain the rush. They’re very accommodating.’

Emilia curled up in the armchair, pulled her cuffs over her knuckles.

‘No, that’s what I thought.’

He uncoupled her mobile and closed his laptop, stowed it away in the leather messenger bag again. He made no move to leave though, grabbed his beer and settled back in the sofa.

‘You going home?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’

She thought of the little flat overlooking the chemical works. Her old bedroom with its ikons and faded floral wallpaper. Was her sister still there? Sleeping in the narrow wooden bed pushed under the eaves? She would be fifteen now and Emilia hoped Yulia was more sensible than her, stayed where she was safe. She hadn’t spoken to her family for four years. The men who brought her over took her phone and kept her captive and she had an excuse not to contact them then. But she had been free a long time and the only reason not to call home was the fear that they would not want her back.

They had warned her not to come here. Her mother had told her what happened to girls who came to England to be waitresses. The cousin of a woman she worked with had lost her daughter that way, only found out what happened to her when the London police rang one morning, out of the blue, to tell them their girl had been found with her throat cut in a park.

The girl deserved it, Emilia’s mother had said, for living how she had.

‘Maloney won’t be happy you’re leaving,’ Skinner said.

‘He will find another girl.’

Skinner unbuckled his belt one-handed and started to pop the studs on his flies.

‘Come on then,’ he said. ‘Might as well, since I’m here.’

THE BUILDING WAS
taking shape now. Massive steel girders sticking up along two walls, a skeleton waiting to be filled in with heavy grey blocks and corrugated cladding. Paolo had worked on these places before but he didn’t know what they became. Storage perhaps, or processing plants like the one he worked at in Spalding, standing at a conveyor belt in a refrigerated section, packing salad into bags destined for supermarkets and fast-food restaurants, inhaling the metal smell of the chemicals sprayed on them, his fingers numb in the thin plastic gloves which irritated his skin.

He had thought it was the worst job in the world back then, didn’t last a week before the gangmaster had him pulled off and sent home again. Now he would do the job for nothing if it got him away from this hellhole.

They climbed out of the vans and stood around in loose groups, waiting for instructions.

The English were in a huddle around the boss’s car, while he shouted at someone on the other end of his mobile.

One of the Chinese offered Paolo a cigarette and he hesitated a moment before accepting. But the man nodded, gestured at him with the packet and he took one, leaned in for the man to light it and thanked him in English, hoping he had picked up that word at least.

‘You speak English?’

The Chinese man made a ‘little’ sign with his hand, said, ‘How long you?’

‘Six month,’ Paolo said, showing him six fingers.

The man put his hand on his chest. ‘Xin Gao.’

‘Paolo.’ He nodded to the other Chinese man. ‘Your friend?’

‘No. Malay. Not friend.’

‘You came with another man,’ Paolo said.

‘He go today.’

‘He left?’

‘No. Go other men.’

They’d separated them then, Paolo thought. It was something the bosses did to stop you talking, sharing information. There was another Portuguese man on the site but Paolo had never worked on the same job as him.

Divide and conquer.

‘When pay?’ Xin Gao asked.

The English started towards them and Paolo shook his head slightly, telling Xin Gao not to speak any more, and he caught on, stepped away. They divided up the work with hand gestures and shoves, shouting at anyone who didn’t move fast enough. It was unnecessary – they had been on the job for weeks, knew the procedure – but the English liked the sound of their own voices.

Paolo started loading out the long stretch of footing on the north side of the building, piling blocks into a barrow, a dozen at a time. He wheeled it from the loading bay to the wall where four men were working, bending over awkwardly, holding the heavy blocks two-handed and dropping them in place. Every now and again one of them would straighten up to stretch and a shout of ‘back to work’ would ring across the site from the boss, who was leaning against the front of his four-track, smoking and playing with his mobile phone.

On the other side of the building, two hundred feet away, he saw Xin Gao climb out of the trench, his clothes spattered with concrete.

That side of the building was still in the earth, steel spikes sticking up at regular intervals. Paolo had been put on that section originally and it was back-breaking work, driving the steels in with a weighty hammer, then fixing horizontal pieces over the tops, weaving it all together to make a mesh cage they would pour concrete into later. He didn’t have the strength in his arms and shoulders for it and he doubted Xin Gao would last the day. He was small and underweight, no muscle on his body.

They were the wrong kind of men for this work.

A concrete lorry arrived and parked on an area of hard standing a hundred metres away. Jakub and another man were dispatched to handle the hose, an awkward fat snake which they unfurled across the site and dropped into the footing where the steels were. The pump started up and the footing began to slowly fill, one of the English supervising.

They did little but that was one job they didn’t trust to anyone else.

Paolo continued loading out. A couple of times the barrow tipped in the rutted black earth, spilling its blocks. The boss shouted at him to pick them up and he did it, thinking how satisfying it would be to take one of them and break it over his head, see him drop in a pool of blood.

The thought stilled his hands for a moment, so alien to him that it felt like another man’s voice whispering in his head. He wasn’t violent, had never been in a fight in his life, always the one to step in and play peacemaker. This job was changing him, reducing him to a set of animal impulses, sleep, eat, fight, and he added that to the list of reasons why he hated it.

The digger trundled past, one of the English driving it – another job they wouldn’t trust to anyone else – and collected a beam from the stack in the loading bay. It hung precariously over the edges of the forked bucket and Paolo felt his whole body clench as it passed him, convinced it would drop and crush him. Part of him wanted it to but relief washed over him once it was gone, and he threw his weight behind the barrow.