Tell No Tales Read Online Free PDF Page B

Jelena?’
    ‘I’m very sorry, they did everything they could.’
    She crashed back down, feeling a terrible pressure across her chest, the man’s face rushing away out of focus, heard him speak, just a low murmur, and then wailing which only a small part of her brain knew was coming from her own raw throat and bruised lungs.
    She saw the blood on his hands.
    He would not get away with it.
    She said his name.
    ‘What? Sofia, I can’t hear you.’ The man leaned closer. ‘Did you see who hit you?’
    ‘Anthony Gilbert.’
    ‘Who’s he?’
    ‘Jelena’s boyfriend. Her ex. He did this.’

7
    ‘HE’S GOT FORM,’ Ferreira said, relaying the conversation she was having with Wahlia as Zigic drove, catching sight of the patrol car dispatched from Thorpe Wood Station a hundred yards back, shooting off the Serpentine Green roundabout, cutting up a Royal Mail van to gain a few more seconds, lights and siren blaring.
    ‘For murder?’ Zigic asked, hands tight on the wheel.
    ‘No, stalking. First offence back in 2004,’ Ferreira said. ‘An ex-girlfriend. He trashed her car, broke into her house – there was a dead cat. She got a restraining order and that was the end of it.’
    ‘They don’t usually stop so easily,’ Zigic said.
    ‘No. Sounds like he moved on to someone else though. ’06 he’s done for criminal damage, same thing, slashed the car tyres. Harassment, threatening behaviour. This one was a barmaid at his local, no prior intimacy.’
    ‘Did he back off?’
    ‘Eventually,’ Ferreira said. ‘Nothing for a couple of years then there’s an assault charge, brought and dropped. That was another ex . . . What, Bobby?’ She swore, listened and when Zigic glanced away from the road he saw her eyes widen. ‘He went for the boyfriend too, tried to run him over in his works car park. This is it. This is the fucker we want.’
    Zigic accelerated past a line of vaguely Scandinavian-looking houses on Hampton Ridge, the estate proper sprawling away behind them, hundreds of acres of carefully planned closes dominated by heavily ornamented cod-Georgian town houses, screening the cheaper, densely built social housing, along with the methadone clinic and the drop-in centres and the halfway homes. Man-made lakes peeped out here and there, the water dull under the gloomy sky, patches of grassland left to give the impression of clean, countrified living on this reclaimed rubbish dump which was slowly but surely sinking into the sludge below.
    He turned into the main entrance as Ferreira wrapped up the call.
    ‘Piece of shit,’ she said. ‘This road, right here. Then next left.’
    ‘We don’t know it’s him yet.’
    ‘Stalkers will go through anyone to get at their victim. You know that as well as I do. Most people, they want revenge or whatever, they wait until you’re on your own then they strike.’ Her hand knifed the air. ‘Stalkers are a whole different ball game. That obsession has to be satisfied no matter what.’
    Zigic murmured agreement, counting down the house numbers. It was a pretty street, red brick and slate roofs, lead canopies over the doors, a lot of window boxes and topiary. Anthony Gilbert would look like a good catch initially and he obviously had no problem getting girlfriends, just behaving like a decent enough human being to keep them.
    There was no car on his driveway and Zigic felt a cold twist in his gut at the possibility of a drawn-out manhunt.
    Ferreira jumped out of the car before he’d fully stopped and charged up to the front door, banged hard with the side of her fist. Zigic sent the uniforms down the back, heard their boots crunching on the gravel as Ferreira knocked again.
    The curtains in the living-room window were closed but there was a two-inch-wide gap between them and through it he saw a lamp burning on a side table, the glow from the television spilling across the floor. A tufted cream rug, the edge of the sofa.
    ‘The key’s still in the door,’ Ferreira said.