my friend.’
‘Urgh, I’ve had enough of all this friendship bullshit. This was the problem with Lukas. Useless! You’re here to work.’
‘Leave him alone,’ says Dimitri, almost shouting.
‘It’s all right,’ soothes Matis. He notices Edikas fiddling in his pocket, and before he can react, Edikas’s fist comes up and out, a heavy metal fitting over his knuckles as he punches Dimitri in the face.
‘You come with me,’ Edikas says, pushing a stunned Dimitri towards the bedroom. He orders the men who are lying about on mattresses to leave. Just before closing the door, Edikas puts his head out and whistles, and the dog comes bounding up the stairs and slinks into the bedroom.
Matis hears Dimitri shout ‘Please! No!’
Hears growling, snarling, a cry of pain, then Edikas whistles and says, Enough, calling the dog off.
The door opens. Edikas walks down the stairs, the dog trotting alongside him.
Matis enters the room to find Dimitri on the floor, clutching his leg. The trousers are torn and there is a gash on his calf, bleeding profusely.
Armed with a warrant to search the migrant house, his officers can control what goes on in there and have removed Edikas from the scene. Consequently, the conversations with migrants take a more relaxed turn. Up to a point.
There was an argument, one of the residents tells Davy and Manon, between Mr Tucker and Lukas, on the afternoon before he died. Mr Tucker came looking for him.
‘This argument, was it in English or Lithuanian?’ asks Davy.
‘Both. Mr Tucker shouting in English, Lukas shouting in Lithuanian.’
‘What was Lukas saying?’
‘“It’s not my fault. This is your business, not my business.”’
Davy is momentarily confused and wonders if the migrant is actually saying this to him, but his interpreter confirms these are Lukas’s quotes.
‘Any idea what Mr Tucker was saying?’ asks Manon.
‘Ne.’
‘Was it about Mrs Tucker do you think?’ Davy asks, aware that he’s going beyond facts and into conjecture.
The man nods.
‘What sort of a person was Lukas Balsys?’ Davy asks.
‘Depressive. Very. Always looked sad. A little bit on the outside, you know? Pessimistic.’
Davy nods, feeling affinity with the dead man. What a waste of a good depressive. ‘You think he killed himself?’ Davy asks.
‘Oh no. This was his nature. Nothing to kill himself over. I mean, he was quite cheerful about being sad. Matis said so.’
‘Where is Matis?’
Shrugs. Every time he asks about Lukas’s friend Matis, he gets a downturned mouth and a shrug. People say, ‘Out maybe, he likes a drink.’
When he asks each in turn what happened on the night Lukas died, there are furtive glances to one another, partial sentences, pinched lips. They know, but they’re not saying, Davy thinks. Either they’re protecting someone, or they’re too frightened to talk.
‘Was it unusual for Edikas to not be working yesterday?’ Davy asks a chap who has given his name as Audrius.
‘Yes, I never saw Edikas take a day off before.’
‘And how was Lukas’s relationship with Edikas? Did they argue?’
Audrius grimaces, as if short-tempered with Davy’s stupidity. ‘Edikas is not some kind of friendly uncle. He works us. He fights with all of us.’
‘They know, but they’re not saying,’ says Manon, heaving down into the passenger seat.
Davy is in the driver’s seat, checking his emails on his BlackBerry. ‘This is interesting,’ he says. ‘Previous incident involving Mr Tucker.’
‘Oooh, really? What? Pushing someone up a tree?’
‘Altercation with a motorist. Mr Tucker reckoned this motorist cut him up, so at the next traffic lights, he got out of his car and leered over the chap’s windscreen and bashed on the bonnet with his hand.’
‘Quite threatening,’ says Manon. ‘He’s certainly got a temper. Never underestimate the anger of the overlooked white middle-aged man, Davy Walker, and I say that as someone who lives with one.’
‘Has Mark been overlooked?’
‘Not really, but lots of men who are very invested in their careers feel short changed when they get to middle age and things are no longer … going as well as they thought they would.’
‘Whereas women?’
‘Ah, you’ll make me seem like a throwback. Women have other things to worry about, like being thin. Being thin and looking young, essentially.’
‘Should we talk to the victim of the assault do you think?’ Not that he hasn’t got enough to do.
‘Could do,’ she says. ‘Not sure it was an assault. I mean, having your bonnet thumped and having your head kicked in are not one and the same. Also, what do we learn? That Mr Tucker has a temper? I think we know that. Also, what does it tell us about Lukas’s murder? I mean, his death is not a flare of rage kind of crime, is it? Someone took a rope to a tree with a plan.’
‘Could’ve been an angry plan,’ says Davy.
‘Really? It’s quite a ball-ache of an angry plan. My kind of angry plan would be to push him off a building or under a train. Grab the nearest kitchen knife …’
‘But Tucker’s motive is whopping. Out of everyone, his motive is really … being humiliated like that. And Lukas living next door, and the squalid migrant place wiping the value off his house. I mean, he had grounds and the temperament, from the looks of it.’
‘Yeah, but that lot,’ she says, nodding at the migrant house, ‘they’re proper scared. They’re not scared of Tucker, are they? I think we need to work out some kind of protection set-up with Op Pheasant so they start talking.’
‘Also,’ says Davy, still reading his emails, ‘the trace on Tucker’s car has just come in, and it’s negative.’
‘Wait, which car?’ asks Manon.
‘The Beema.’
‘Ah, that’s Mrs Tucker’s car. Mr Tucker drives a Nissan Micra.’
