crying several flights above her. She strode out through reception where a small child was throwing an elaborate tantrum, snarling and kicking as his mother looked on bored, waiting for the boy to tire.
In the car she opened the bag and went through the man’s meagre belongings. A set of house keys on a worn leatherette fob, a mobile phone with a cracked screen and a handful of loose change. No wallet. It was possible he didn’t have one but highly unlikely, and she swore under her breath, wondering what kind of bastard would rob a man lying dying on the side of the road.
She resealed the bag and went back down to the mortuary, found the bald-headed man on the phone again, his conversation picked up as if he hadn’t been disturbed. This time when he saw her an expression of mild annoyance crossed his face.
‘I need to see the corpse,’ Ferreira said.
He pushed away from his desk and she followed him across the white-tiled floor to the bank of stainless-steel refrigerators droning lazily into the hush, noticing a moth hole on the back of his chunky cream cardigan.
The drawer stuck as he tried to open it and he smiled.
‘This one’s tricky.’
He hauled on it two-handed and there was a sound like shearing metal then a bump and it slid out the rest of the way.
The right side of the dead man’s face was badly grazed, spots of grit from the pavement embedded in his pale, pockmarked skin, and dried blood at the corner of his mouth which nobody had thought to clean away. Her eyes strayed to his chest, a thatch of thick black hair fanned out across his shoulders and his narrow ribcage, which had been cracked for the surgery that failed to save his life and pushed back together once the surgeons finally stepped away. It was difficult to tell now what was injury and what was intervention but looking at the churned mess above his heart Ferreira was surprised he lived long enough for the ambulance to arrive.
She took a couple of photographs of his face with her mobile phone and thanked the man as she left, hearing the terrible shearing sound once again as he fought the drawer home.
11
ZIGIC STOOD AT the office window, looking down at the car park while he waited for a fresh pot of coffee to brew. Three floors below he saw a maintenance man sweeping the ugly brown steps outside the main doors, dispatched by the press officer to make sure everything looked good for the cameras which would be arriving within the next hour.
The coffee machine spluttered out the last few drops and he poured himself a cup, trying not to think about how many he’d had already today, enough to give him mild palpitations, but there was nothing else to do now but wait and hope that Anthony Gilbert woke up soon in a confessional state of mind.
Hate Crimes was enveloped in the usual mid-afternoon lull which, on casual inspection, could pass for an industrious hush. Grieves was going through Anthony Gilbert’s bank records, trying to track down cash withdrawals to tally with the four hundred pounds he’d paid Hossa Motors for the Volvo. Nothing so far but it was such a small amount of money that with careful planning he might have scraped it together with odd tenners and twenties, covering his tracks in that regard just as assiduously as he had elsewhere.
Parr was scanning the information line messages sent through from control, a mix of badly directed sympathy, armchair hypotheses and racist glee. He looked shattered, slumped in his seat, eyes drifting, but Zigic guessed some of that was due to the new baby at home.
He didn’t know if he could face that again. Sleep broken every two hours for feeds, regardless of which of them actually got out of bed to do it, being woken by crying in between, or, even worse, the sudden awareness that there was no crying then the clutching panic that something must be wrong.
Anna had made her decision though. Later this year when Stefan started school. That would be the best time to get pregnant.
Across
In the car she opened the bag and went through the man’s meagre belongings. A set of house keys on a worn leatherette fob, a mobile phone with a cracked screen and a handful of loose change. No wallet. It was possible he didn’t have one but highly unlikely, and she swore under her breath, wondering what kind of bastard would rob a man lying dying on the side of the road.
She resealed the bag and went back down to the mortuary, found the bald-headed man on the phone again, his conversation picked up as if he hadn’t been disturbed. This time when he saw her an expression of mild annoyance crossed his face.
‘I need to see the corpse,’ Ferreira said.
He pushed away from his desk and she followed him across the white-tiled floor to the bank of stainless-steel refrigerators droning lazily into the hush, noticing a moth hole on the back of his chunky cream cardigan.
The drawer stuck as he tried to open it and he smiled.
‘This one’s tricky.’
He hauled on it two-handed and there was a sound like shearing metal then a bump and it slid out the rest of the way.
The right side of the dead man’s face was badly grazed, spots of grit from the pavement embedded in his pale, pockmarked skin, and dried blood at the corner of his mouth which nobody had thought to clean away. Her eyes strayed to his chest, a thatch of thick black hair fanned out across his shoulders and his narrow ribcage, which had been cracked for the surgery that failed to save his life and pushed back together once the surgeons finally stepped away. It was difficult to tell now what was injury and what was intervention but looking at the churned mess above his heart Ferreira was surprised he lived long enough for the ambulance to arrive.
She took a couple of photographs of his face with her mobile phone and thanked the man as she left, hearing the terrible shearing sound once again as he fought the drawer home.
11
ZIGIC STOOD AT the office window, looking down at the car park while he waited for a fresh pot of coffee to brew. Three floors below he saw a maintenance man sweeping the ugly brown steps outside the main doors, dispatched by the press officer to make sure everything looked good for the cameras which would be arriving within the next hour.
The coffee machine spluttered out the last few drops and he poured himself a cup, trying not to think about how many he’d had already today, enough to give him mild palpitations, but there was nothing else to do now but wait and hope that Anthony Gilbert woke up soon in a confessional state of mind.
Hate Crimes was enveloped in the usual mid-afternoon lull which, on casual inspection, could pass for an industrious hush. Grieves was going through Anthony Gilbert’s bank records, trying to track down cash withdrawals to tally with the four hundred pounds he’d paid Hossa Motors for the Volvo. Nothing so far but it was such a small amount of money that with careful planning he might have scraped it together with odd tenners and twenties, covering his tracks in that regard just as assiduously as he had elsewhere.
Parr was scanning the information line messages sent through from control, a mix of badly directed sympathy, armchair hypotheses and racist glee. He looked shattered, slumped in his seat, eyes drifting, but Zigic guessed some of that was due to the new baby at home.
He didn’t know if he could face that again. Sleep broken every two hours for feeds, regardless of which of them actually got out of bed to do it, being woken by crying in between, or, even worse, the sudden awareness that there was no crying then the clutching panic that something must be wrong.
Anna had made her decision though. Later this year when Stefan started school. That would be the best time to get pregnant.
Across
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