weight making it crack, and studied the photograph for a couple of seconds.
‘He has hat,’ Ivan said. He covered his own forehead with his hands. ‘This. Not see face.’
Ferreira tucked the photograph back into her pocket and returned her attention to Bogdan Hossa, seeing the worried expression on his coarse features as his fingers hovered over the keyboard.
‘You will leave laptop here please?’
‘I’m going to need to take it,’ Ferreira said. ‘I’ll give you a receipt and I promise I’ll get it back to you as soon as possible.’
He was still hesitant.
‘I can get a court order if I need to.’
He bristled at that. ‘I cannot run business with no laptop. Please, I have family. Four children, wife, mother, sister. Ivan. I need business open.’
Ferreira heard the fear in his voice, thought it was genuine. What had he been through back home to make him so wary of the police? They were corrupt enough in Portugal but she knew the forces in Eastern Europe were often worse, just another street gang taking what they wanted, backed up by a legal system rotten to the core. Maybe his last business had been lost with a conversation which started like this.
‘Look, let me take it now and I’ll bring it back to you by the end of the day.’ She held out her hand. ‘You have my word, Mr Hossa.’
His head dropped, revealing a walnut-sized bald spot cut by an old scar. ‘What can I do?’
Ferreira wrote him out a receipt and tucked the machine into her bag, left him staring at the empty desk like some vital part of him had just been amputated.
She went slow up First Drove, trying to avoid the potholes, thinking about where she could get some lunch. She stopped at the first fast-food van she came to and ordered a Coke and a bacon butty, ate it sitting on the bonnet, watching the traffic go by.
As she pitched the empty can into the bin her mobile rang.
‘Sergeant Ferreira?’ A man’s voice with the marked drawl she associated with television costume dramas. ‘Dr Harrow. I’m afraid the gentleman from your accident has passed away.’
‘What happened?’
‘His injuries were more serious than we first assumed.’
He had a metal pole through his chest, Ferreira thought, how did they assume that was anything but serious?
‘OK, thanks for letting me know.’
‘We have some of his things if you’d like to send one of your chaps over.’
‘I’ll take care of it. Thank you.’
She picked up the parkway and headed for the City Hospital in Bretton, catching glimpses of the low-rise housing development between the screen planting which crept up the banks either side of the road. In a few weeks the trees would be in leaf and the rows of terraces would be completely obscured. She thought of the murdered Somali man who’d lived in a flat on the estate, sharing two rooms with four other men. He owned little more than the clothes he’d died in, still didn’t have a proper name, just Didi.
Some outlandish theories had done the rounds at the station, the uniforms in the canteen suggesting a ritualistic killing linked to African witch doctors or revenge for some war crime committed back home when Didi was a child soldier. Zigic came down on the gossip hard, knowing that a misplaced word in the pub could lead to hysteria.
It was human nature to search for elaborate reasons behind mundane events, she guessed, and maybe they would have pursued those lines if it wasn’t for the CCTV footage they’d found.
She toed the accelerator thinking of the black-clad figure standing over the young man’s body, raising a salute to the camera as Didi’s fingers twitched, his brain already dead. She’d forced herself to watch the whole attack, flinching at every silent boot strike, feeling the bile rise up in her throat as Didi’s head was stamped to pulp, but it was the salute which stuck with her, the significance of it lost on no one who saw it.
And that was a small group. Outside Hate Crimes only Riggott and
‘He has hat,’ Ivan said. He covered his own forehead with his hands. ‘This. Not see face.’
Ferreira tucked the photograph back into her pocket and returned her attention to Bogdan Hossa, seeing the worried expression on his coarse features as his fingers hovered over the keyboard.
‘You will leave laptop here please?’
‘I’m going to need to take it,’ Ferreira said. ‘I’ll give you a receipt and I promise I’ll get it back to you as soon as possible.’
He was still hesitant.
‘I can get a court order if I need to.’
He bristled at that. ‘I cannot run business with no laptop. Please, I have family. Four children, wife, mother, sister. Ivan. I need business open.’
Ferreira heard the fear in his voice, thought it was genuine. What had he been through back home to make him so wary of the police? They were corrupt enough in Portugal but she knew the forces in Eastern Europe were often worse, just another street gang taking what they wanted, backed up by a legal system rotten to the core. Maybe his last business had been lost with a conversation which started like this.
‘Look, let me take it now and I’ll bring it back to you by the end of the day.’ She held out her hand. ‘You have my word, Mr Hossa.’
His head dropped, revealing a walnut-sized bald spot cut by an old scar. ‘What can I do?’
Ferreira wrote him out a receipt and tucked the machine into her bag, left him staring at the empty desk like some vital part of him had just been amputated.
She went slow up First Drove, trying to avoid the potholes, thinking about where she could get some lunch. She stopped at the first fast-food van she came to and ordered a Coke and a bacon butty, ate it sitting on the bonnet, watching the traffic go by.
As she pitched the empty can into the bin her mobile rang.
‘Sergeant Ferreira?’ A man’s voice with the marked drawl she associated with television costume dramas. ‘Dr Harrow. I’m afraid the gentleman from your accident has passed away.’
‘What happened?’
‘His injuries were more serious than we first assumed.’
He had a metal pole through his chest, Ferreira thought, how did they assume that was anything but serious?
‘OK, thanks for letting me know.’
‘We have some of his things if you’d like to send one of your chaps over.’
‘I’ll take care of it. Thank you.’
She picked up the parkway and headed for the City Hospital in Bretton, catching glimpses of the low-rise housing development between the screen planting which crept up the banks either side of the road. In a few weeks the trees would be in leaf and the rows of terraces would be completely obscured. She thought of the murdered Somali man who’d lived in a flat on the estate, sharing two rooms with four other men. He owned little more than the clothes he’d died in, still didn’t have a proper name, just Didi.
Some outlandish theories had done the rounds at the station, the uniforms in the canteen suggesting a ritualistic killing linked to African witch doctors or revenge for some war crime committed back home when Didi was a child soldier. Zigic came down on the gossip hard, knowing that a misplaced word in the pub could lead to hysteria.
It was human nature to search for elaborate reasons behind mundane events, she guessed, and maybe they would have pursued those lines if it wasn’t for the CCTV footage they’d found.
She toed the accelerator thinking of the black-clad figure standing over the young man’s body, raising a salute to the camera as Didi’s fingers twitched, his brain already dead. She’d forced herself to watch the whole attack, flinching at every silent boot strike, feeling the bile rise up in her throat as Didi’s head was stamped to pulp, but it was the salute which stuck with her, the significance of it lost on no one who saw it.
And that was a small group. Outside Hate Crimes only Riggott and
Similar Books
