Stacey bit back the tears forming in her eyes.
Oh yes, she recognised the letter all right.
FIFTEEN
‘So, what did you think of our landowner turning up at the site?’ Kim asked, weaving through the traffic. She could no longer cope with the interminable silence of the car.
‘Sorry, are you talking about the guy I spotted and you did not?’ Travis asked smartly.
Kim gripped the steering wheel harder, wishing he was not correct.
So, clearly she was presented with the choice of complete silence or petty little digs.
‘Seemed very interested in whether we’d spoken to the Cowley family,’ she observed.
Travis shrugged. ‘He’s bound to be interested. Human remains have been found on his property. Wouldn’t you want to know what was going on?’
‘Yeah but there was an arrogance there, an expectation of getting his own way. A sense of entitlement.’
‘Not surprised you’d pick up on that, Stone,’ he mumbled as he opened his leather folder and made a note.
Okay, perhaps complete silence was better after all, she thought, biting her tongue. She wondered if four hours was really too soon to drive back to her boss and concede defeat? She decided it probably was.
The ringing of Travis’s phone startled her.
He answered, listened, looked her way, cursed and hung up.
‘What?’ she asked.
‘The Cowley residence,’ he said.
‘Yeah, we’re on our way,’ she snapped. What did he want from her? Travel at the speed of light in an eleven-year-old Golf.
‘Well, step on it because someone there has just been shot.’
SIXTEEN
Bryant pulled up outside a mid-terrace house with heavy green velour curtains suffocating the small downstairs window and a board in place of glass upstairs.
‘You sure this is the address?’ he asked Dawson. The property looked abandoned.
‘Number twenty-three,’ he confirmed.
Bryant got out of the car and almost heard the swish of net curtain as people had a nose out of their windows. He took a look around. It was a small street. The houses had no front gardens so the upstairs windows faced each other across the narrow road.
He approached the door and knocked. He heard a female voice shout something in Polish.
‘Jesus, look at this,’ Dawson said, peering closer at the door. Although painted over, scratch marks into the wood were still evident. The new paint had simply settled in the lines.
Bryant counted seven different profanities and insults that had been scribed into the wood.
The door opened to reveal a slim mousy woman dressed in a washed-out grey tracksuit. A baby was climbing over her shoulder.
‘Mrs Kowalski?’ Dawson asked.
She nodded but didn’t step back as she continued to pat the child on the bare back.
The aroma of a soiled nappy wafted towards him.
‘Who are you?’ she asked, suspiciously.
Dawson introduced them, as the baby offered a loud and satisfying burp and immediately began to cry.
‘May we come in?’ Bryant asked, eager for the door to be closed. The child would catch its death.
She stepped back as a toddler came hurtling towards them. He ran into her calf and fell to the ground. The toddler began to cry. She leaned backwards and pulled him to his feet by the wrist with her free hand.
Bryant guessed the toddler was around eighteen months old.
‘Niech to szlag,’ she breathed, as she ushered him away from the door.
He stopped crying and continued on his journey, rustling a nappy as he went. A lime-green potty was visible amongst the building blocks, books and soft toys that stifled the carpet.
A third cry sounded, and Bryant saw there was another baby, a twin, in a rocker beside the sofa.
The woman placed baby one on the sofa then lifted baby two onto the sofa, placed baby one into the rocker and then put baby two onto her lap.
She lifted her sweatshirt and positioned baby two accordingly.
Bryant felt himself blush slightly and kept his gaze firmly on her face.
Dawson coughed.
‘Sit, sit,’ she said.
Dawson stayed where he was, and Bryant didn’t blame him. A jam-covered blanket and a rolled-up dirty nappy took up most of the sofa. He pushed them to one side and sat.
‘We’ve been to see Henryk,’ he said.
Tears immediately sprang to her eyes but she blinked them away.
Baby one began to grumble. Her left foot slid to the side and began to nudge the rocker back and forth.
The tears in her eyes were replaced with hostility.
‘So, it takes almost him being killed to get your attention?’ she asked.
‘I’m sorry?’ Bryant said, trying not to focus on the black patch of damp he could see crawling up the wall.
‘We have called many times, many problems, but no help.’
‘What kind of problems?’ he asked.
‘Vandalism, insults, threats…’ she said as her voice began to rise.
The toddler looked up from the toy he was banging against the side of the sofa.
Bryant wanted to calm her down. There would be little co-operation at the moment.
‘It’s a nice house,’ he said, ignoring the crack in the wall above the fireplace. ‘How long have you lived here?’
‘Shit hole,’ she said, looking around. ‘But landlord give no care. No interest. No listen.’
He could see where she had made the effort to keep the house as nice as she could. Framed flower prints livened up the stark walls. There were no layers of dust on the surfaces, and the vacuum cleaner was stationed behind the door. Despite her efforts, the aroma of damp was evident.
He got the feeling this woman was tired of being ignored.
‘Go on,’ he said, patiently.
‘Henryk and I moved to UK seven years ago. We want to start a family but not in Poland,’ she explained. ‘We both have jobs to come to in my uncle’s building company. Henryk labourer and me in office. We earn money, we pay taxes,’ she said, defensively.
Bryant felt saddened as he wondered how it must feel to have to explain yourself. They had done nothing wrong. They were legally in the UK and had followed the rules.
‘Sounds perfect,’ Bryant smiled.
The smile in return was brief but it gave Bryant a glimpse of the woman beneath the rage.
She shrugged. ‘There was occasional insults for the first few years but we just ignored them. The babies started coming,’ she said, sweeping her eyes around the room. I gave up my job but business was suffering anyway.
‘A year ago the business died and Henryk lost his job. At first he refused to get help. He did not want to drain a country he had grown to love. We lived on our small savings and began to sell our possessions.’
Bryant had only just noticed there was no television, music centre or evidence of any other technological gadgets.
‘Eventually we ran out of items, and Henryk had no choice but to get state help. Then the insults and threats became worse. Neighbours were shouting nasty things, telling us to go home and take our bastards with us.’
She swallowed deeply, as Bryant felt the anger growing inside him.