Long Way Home by Eva Dolan

Ferreira.’
    ‘Marco Perez.’ He sat down at the table and turned towards Ferreira, started speaking to her in Portuguese.
    ‘He says his English is bad.’
    ‘OK, you do this,’ Zigic said.
    Their conversation proceeded at pace and Zigic watched without understanding more than an occasional word, noticing how Ferreira’s voice mellowed when she spoke her native language, becoming higher and almost melodious.
    ‘He knew Stepulov,’ she said, and Perez kept talking, glancing once or twice at Zigic but always returning to her. His face was becoming more serious, drawing into a pained expression. ‘He saw the fight . . . it was over a broken kettle?’ she asked Perez again and he nodded, went on. ‘Yeah, a kettle got broken and Tombak said Stepulov did it and he was going to take the money out of his wages.’
    ‘Was that all there was to it?’ Zigic asked.
    Ferreira put her hand up. Perez leaned towards her, his voice dropping low, and he spoke in an uninterrupted stream for a minute or more. A light came into Ferreira’s eyes and her mouth opened as if she wanted to say something but she didn’t, only listened, and Zigic wanted to ask her what the man was saying but he looked so serious he decided not to.
    ‘Stepulov’s brother was here,’ she said. ‘Viktor.’
    ‘When?’
    ‘Last year. Late summer – they were harvesting strawberries. Jaan came here to look for Viktor. He told Mr Perez because he’s been here longest – they were friends,’ Ferreira said.
    ‘How? He doesn’t speak English.’
    ‘He doesn’t speak it well, he said.’
    ‘But well enough for them to have a conversation about Viktor?’ Zigic asked. He studied Perez’s face, saw nothing which looked like dishonesty, but still it didn’t make sense. ‘What did Jaan tell you, Mr Perez?’
    ‘His brother Viktor, he is not phoning home for two month,’ Perez said, stumbling around the words. ‘He comes here to see him but Viktor is already gone.’
    ‘Did you know Viktor?’
    Perez nodded and started to speak to Ferreira again, emotion thickening his voice. She reached across the table and put her hand on his shoulder, leaned her face into his. When she spoke he shook his head and talked over her, visibly agitated.
    ‘What is it?’
    ‘His cousin is missing,’ Ferreira said. ‘That’s why Stepulov confided in him. Mr Perez’s cousin disappeared early last year, he said he was going back to Lisbon but he never arrived and nobody’s heard from him since. They think he must be dead.’
    ‘Was he living here too?’
    ‘He was in Peterborough but not here,’ Ferreira said. ‘He couldn’t find work so Mr Perez gave him the money to get a bus back. That was it. Dropped off the edge of the earth.’
    ‘Has he filed a missing persons report?’
    Ferreira sat back, gave the man some space. ‘I’ve told him to come in and I’ll take care of it.’
    ‘How did Stepulov know his brother had been here?’
    She asked Perez.
    ‘He doesn’t know but the brother was only here for a few days.’
    ‘Another fight with Tombak?’ Zigic asked.
    ‘He got offered a better job and he left to take it.’
    ‘Does he know where?’
    ‘
Onde ele va?
’
    ‘
Eu nao sei
.’
    Ferreira shook her head. ‘He didn’t say.’
    ‘I bet Tombak knows,’ Zigic said. ‘And I’ll bet he’s still taking a cut off the top of his money too.’
    Ferreira called in a PC with bad skin and too much product on his hair, told him to take Mr Perez to the station and fill out a missing persons report. It would be fruitless but she needed to feel like she was doing something for the man. He’d give them his cousin’s details and they would disappear into the system, swallowed up among all of the other missing men who nobody looked for. The husbands who stormed out after an argument and never came back, the depressed and drunk and transient thousands who were old enough to take care of themselves until they were fished out of a river, bloated and