After You Die by Eva Dolan Page A

home.
    As he stared at the map, trying to memorise the names of the roads, his phone rang – Rachel.
    He started to shake, feeling as if she could see him through the camera. She saw everything, knew things she wasn’t supposed to.
    Finally she gave up and he forced himself not to think about her, went back to the map and tried to make the street names go into his head.
    The phone pinged. A new message from Rachel flashed up across the top of the screen.
    Don’t move. We’re coming to get you
.

10
    Westman & Sons General Builders was a more significant outfit than Zigic was expecting, sitting on an acre of prime market-town real estate with a new Waitrose on one boundary and playing fields on another, water meadows separating the yard from the Leicester Road. A few slow, ginger cows ambled around under the morning sun, a lone, bold heifer coming close to the perimeter fence where an old stone trough was full of rainwater.
    The yard was crammed with reclaimed building materials, piled so high they’d give even the most lax health-and-safety inspector an instant coronary; packs of soft red bricks, chipped and dusted with mortar, precarious towers of local limestone, odd chunks littering the ground around them, roof tiles lined up and interleaved, worn slates and pantiles, lengths of old railings and dozens of different chimney pots.
    Anna would been in her element here, Zigic thought. Finding things for him to clean up.
    He spotted a white-haired man with stooped posture unloading a set of pine doors from the back of a pickup truck, adding them to the selection ranked up in an open-fronted shed. He moved slowly but lifted each door easily, his squat physique toughened by a lifetime of heavy work.
    ‘Is Gary about?’ Zigic asked.
    ‘In the office.’ The man gestured towards the main building, a corrugated-metal barn with its sliding door wide open and a mangy tabby cat sunning itself on the threshold.
    Inside, the temperature was a few degrees colder than out in the sun, the space double height and echoing, lit by hanging fluorescent strips running along the vaguely defined aisles. There were hundreds of internal doors in racks, sash windows and ancient sanitary ware crusted with dirt and limescale and rust, elaborate fireplaces made of cast iron and wood and four different types of marble, too big for modern houses and too gaudy for modern tastes. Everything smelling of dust and damp.
    Zigic found Gary Westman in a partitioned cubbyhole, standing with his big fists planted on his hips as he talked to a woman on speakerphone, quoting her prices she didn’t sound very happy with.
    ‘If you can find someone else to do it cheaper, then go for it,’ Westman said. ‘But don’t expect me to come and put their work right when they balls it up.’
    He cut the woman off, smiled at Zigic.
    ‘They’ll spend ten grand on an oven but ask six to build the room they want to put it in and you’re a rip-off merchant.’
    Westman looked much the same as in his mugshot, a few pounds heavier, a few lines on his square face, but the reckless twenty-something in white sportswear was now pushing forty, respectable enough in his designer jeans and polo shirt, biceps straining at the pink aertex. If he wanted women with ten-grand ovens to use his services he needed to show them the right kind of package.
    ‘Anyway,’ he said. ‘What can I do for you?’
    Zigic introduced himself and Westman nodded immediately.
    ‘Dawn, yeah? Mate of mine called this morning, said she’d been killed. Holly too, he said. I said, that can’t be right. Not in fucking Elton.’
    ‘I’m afraid it’s true,’ Zigic said, seeing the bemusement slacken his face. ‘I need to talk to everyone you had working at Dawn’s house. There’s a chance they might have important information.’
    ‘Yeah, course.’ He took his phone out, got the right unlock code on the second attempt. ‘I’ve been over there a bit. Me and Deano. Dean Carter. You want his