It took a couple of phone calls to discover where Harry Sawyer was working. With a landscaping crew at a house at the edge of a village just off the A1, overlooking the rolling terrain of the Leicestershire Downs. There was a small private airfield behind it where a red microlight was dipping and rising on the air currents, body glinting in the afternoon sun.
Zigic pulled up on the untended verge outside the house, no space to park on the twelve-car driveway, which was stacked with large metal skips and vans, men coming and going, plaster-dusted and paint-spattered, in the process of gutting the place judging by all the activity. There were two forest-green vehicles from Moran Exteriors there, a twin-cab pickup truck and a heavier lorry with a flatbed, its ramps down while a mini-digger was loaded onto it, one man driving, another watching his progress, gesturing to keep him in line.
The entire front garden had been stripped back to bare earth and Zigic felt a visceral distaste at the sight of the ripped-up plants piled high, their bare roots to the sky. Large old shrubs and trees which looked ten or twenty years old, all perfectly healthy but surplus to the owners’ requirements. Left there to dry out and die.
Ferreira went up to the man near the flatbed and asked where they could find Harry Sawyer. The man directed them round the back of the house.
‘You know who that is, don’t you?’ Ferreira said, as they headed into the rear garden.
‘Should I know?’
‘It’s Nina’s new bloke, I saw his photo at the house.’
‘So the son’s working for the boyfriend.’
‘Found himself a surrogate daddy, I guess.’ She stepped over a trench running out the side of the house. ‘A properly butch one too.’
The back garden was like a battlefield, lawn churned up with deeply rutted tyre tracks full of standing water, borders run over in places, the plants in them snapped and flattened. Zigic counted half a dozen tree stumps dotted about, five more gaping holes where others had been removed, and as they watched a JCB was straining to pull out another. It was stubbornly clinging on though, a metre wide and sturdy despite the earth around it having been dug away. On the far side of the garden the felled trees were being cut down into manageable sections by one man, while his mate fed branches into a chipping machine, the high, buzzing scream cutting across the site as it sprayed sawdust onto an already significant pile.
‘Why would anyone do this?’ he asked.
Ferreira shrugged. ‘Suppose they want a change.’
‘Doesn’t it … offend you? They’re ripping up perfectly good plants, destroying habitats.’
‘There are worse crimes than remodelling a garden,’ Ferreira said. ‘I’m going to save my limited pool of rage for them.’
She was right, but it didn’t improve his mood and when the tree stump finally came free of the earth with a painful cracking sound he felt he could have quite happily punched the JCB driver in the face.
‘That’s him,’ Ferreira said, as the driver jumped down from the cab to inspect his handiwork, giving the stump a quick kick, as if checking it was really dead.
He saw them walking towards him over the uneven ground and let them come, reaching into his pocket for a leather tobacco pouch and starting on a roll-up.
The man-child in Harry Sawyer’s mugshot was long gone. His shaved head had been replaced with a shock of dark brown hair, his boyish face half hidden by a bushy, ginger-tinged beard, and when he squinted against the sun the wrinkles around his eyes suggested the intervening years had been spent largely out of doors. He carried an air of capable physicality around him, a coiled-up energy in the corded ligaments of his neck and the flat, hard muscles discernible through his T-shirt.
Powerful enough to do damage. Quick enough to get away from it.
Zigic made the introductions and gave their condolences, speaking loud enough to be heard above the wood-chipping machine, the words met with a wince. Maybe because they didn’t sound as sincere as when he’d said them to the rest of Corinne’s family.
Harry nodded his acceptance, then stuck two fingers into his mouth and blew out a piercing whistle, catching the attention of the man feeding branches into the chipper. Harry made a cutting motion across his throat and the man turned the machine off. It wound down slowly, the background noises of the site taking over: a bass-heavy radio pounding inside the house, a generator chugging away, voices and hammering and birdsong.
Harry lit his cigarette before he spoke, and when he did his accent was more cultured than Zigic had expected, suggesting a more expensive education than his job required.
‘Jessie called to say you’d want to speak to me.’
‘Just a few questions,’ Ferreira said. ‘How did you get on with your dad?’
It obviously wasn’t the start he was expecting but they’d decided not to dance around the subject.
‘He wasn’t my dad any more.’
‘You didn’t like Corinne?’
‘We were all supposed to accept her like one of the family.’ He leaned back against the JCB’s mud-crusted tracks.
‘But she was still your dad, too,’ Ferreira said, doing a good job of sounding confused. ‘How different could she really be?’
‘You really have no idea, do you?’ Harry shook his head. ‘Imagine it, one day there’s your dad, doing all the normal dad things, and the next he’s in a dress and wig and heels, talking all like this.’ His voice went high and breathy. ‘Worrying about the state of his manicure, for God’s sake, and whether his breasts should be bigger. Asking you which blouse looked better on him. Your dad. Are you telling me you wouldn’t hate that?’
‘Must have been tough.’
‘Yeah, it took a certain amount of adjustment, I guess you’d say.’ He inhaled deeply on his cigarette, exhaled through his nostrils.
A window opened in the house behind them and rock music poured out, a man singing along to it with a surprisingly good voice.
‘Dad loved that song. He always used to have Zeppelin on in the truck.’ Harry smiled slightly to himself. ‘Zeppelin, Sabbath, Cream. We used to crank the sound up and let it blast out.’
‘When was the last time you saw Colin?’ Zigic asked.
The smile disappeared. ‘Boxing Day.’
‘Where was this?’
‘Mum’s house.’
‘For Christmas dinner?’
‘Something like that.’
He went for another hit of his cigarette, found it smoked down to the filter and flicked it away into a muddy puddle. He immediately started to roll another one and Zigic realised he needed something to do with his hands.
‘What did you talk about?’ Ferreira asked. ‘The last time you saw her?’
Harry scowled at her and Zigic wondered if she’d slipped into the female pronoun by accident or if she’d done it deliberately to rattle him.
‘She only had one topic of conversation,’ he said. ‘Herself.’
‘Must have made for an awkward dinner.’
He sneered. ‘We’re all well accustomed to paying court to Corinne.’
‘Why did you go, then?’
‘Someone had to support Mum. She wouldn’t have got through it on her own.’ He flicked ash away. ‘It takes her days to recover after she’s seen him. Did Jessie tell you he drove Mum to a breakdown?’
When neither of them answered he nodded to himself.
‘No, course not. Her and Lily love Corinne. They don’t give a damn what he’s put Mum through all these years.’
‘Lily?’ Ferreira asked.
‘Our sister. Younger sister. She wanted to see him,’ Harry said, disgusted by the idea. ‘She whined about it all over Christmas so finally Mum gave in and invited him round for lunch. He turned up dressed like a—’ He stopped himself but couldn’t hide the contempt flaring his nostrils. ‘He didn’t stay long. Thankfully.’
‘Why not?’ Zigic asked, hearing a hint of triumph in Harry’s voice.
‘The usual. Him and Mum got into an argument.’ Harry looked away, towards the airfield behind the house, nothing in the sky above it now. He just didn’t want them to see whatever was in his eyes. ‘You forget how toxic a bad relationship can be.’
‘What was the fight about?’ Ferreira asked.
He smiled sadly. ‘They’ve got a lot of unresolved issues. They could argue over nothing.’
‘Did he start it?’ Ferreira shifted half a step towards Harry, into his eyeline.
‘I can’t remember.’
‘Did you argue with your dad?’
‘No. There was no point. He didn’t care what I thought, he didn’t care that he was upsetting Mum, nothing I said was going to calm things down.’
‘Can you tell us where you were between seven and eight on Tuesday morning, please?’ Zigic asked.
Harry blinked at him. ‘I didn’t kill Dad.’
‘It’s standard procedure. We have to ask.’
He looked troubled by the idea and Zigic couldn’t believe it hadn’t occurred to him that he might be a suspect. He knew his record even if they hadn’t alluded to it yet.
‘I was at home until half past seven,’ he said. ‘My girlfriend will be able to verify that if you need her to. Then I left for work. I have to be at the yard by eight o’clock. Uncle Brynn’s very strict on timekeeping.’
The times didn’t quite fit but it was close and a spouse’s alibi wasn’t worth much. They would check it out later.
‘Uncle Brynn?’ Ferreira asked, playing dumb. ‘Colin’s brother?’
‘No, he’s not really my uncle, we just call him that. Him and Dad have been friends since they were at school. They were more like brothers. He’s with Mum now.’
‘That’s nice,’ Ferreira said. ‘That she’s found someone.’
Harry nodded. ‘He’s good for her.’
They thanked him for his time, Zigic gave him a card he put away in the pocket of his combats and he climbed back up into the JCB without looking at them again.
Did he seem relieved? Zigic wondered, as they headed round to the front of the house. There was something he had almost caught as Harry Sawyer turned away, a hint of a smile, a slackening of a face, like he’d been holding a forced expression the whole time.
Out front the guy from the flatbed was closing the side door of a van, holding a chainsaw as he locked up, goggles hanging loose around his neck, protective gloves on, ready for more devastation.
Zigic tried to picture him in that sleek, aggressively modern house, alongside Nina, and found him an awkward fit. He looked the outdoorsy type, well built, with a broad weather-beaten face and wavy black hair threaded with grey. Rugged, Zigic supposed, because there was undeniably something attractive about him. The kind of look many women went for and maybe it was that quality which had drawn Nina to him after losing her husband to his own innate femininity.
‘Everything alright there?’ he asked.
Ferreira nodded. ‘Yes, thank you, Mr Moran.’
‘Listen, about Harry.’ He shifted the chainsaw between his hands. ‘He’s playing the tough guy about his dad, pretending he doesn’t care, but he’s cut up like you wouldn’t believe.’
‘He seemed fine.’
‘Harry’s a deep lad,’ Moran said. ‘Always was, even when he was little. There’s a sight more goes on in that head of his than anyone knows. And I’m telling you, he idolised Colin. Never mind all this that’s happened with him deciding he wants to be a woman, or whatever, Harry loved his old man.’
‘You two were pretty close as well,’ Ferreira said.
Moran nodded. ‘We were. Like brothers. His family weren’t up to much and my mum and dad used to make sure he was fed and that.’
Ferreira braced her foot against the van’s rear bumper. ‘And how do you feel about it? The transition?’
‘I felt like I was losing my best mate,’ he said, face clouding over. ‘It’s so bloody stupid. He wasn’t gone, he was still there, he just looked different. And now he really is gone, it’s – shit, I don’t know.’ He shook his head. ‘Shouldn’t have come in today. None of us should. I thought it’d help Harry to be busy.’
Zigic wondered how Brynn Moran thought it would affect Nina and Lily, being left alone at home to tend their grief. Most families in this situation drew together, sat stunned and silent through the first few days when everything was raw and unbelievable. They didn’t get up and go to work like nothing had happened.
‘Had you seen Colin recently?’ Ferreira asked.
‘No, not since Christmas.’
‘What was the argument about?’
He looked bashful suddenly. ‘It was Nina and him, the usual. He was having a dig at her because she’s lost weight. Kept saying how she barely looked like a woman any more.’
‘That’s all it was?’ Ferreira asked.
‘You don’t leave your wife then criticise how she looks. Of course Nina blew up at him.’ Moran huffed, cheeks flushed. ‘But, yeah, that was it. Typical family Christmas rubbish.’
Zigic asked where he was at the time of Corinne’s murder and Moran was slightly more indignant than Harry Sawyer had been but gave the same answer; he left the house at half past seven to get into work by eight. Nina could vouch for him. Another alibi of dubious worth.
In the car Ferreira asked what he thought about Moran, but he was still trying to grasp what precisely about Harry Sawyer’s behaviour was bothering him so much. Had there been a sly flick at the corner of his mouth as he turned away from them? Like he’d sold them a line and they’d bought it.
‘Moran,’ Ferreira said again.
‘Reaping the rewards, isn’t he?’ Zigic said, pulling onto the road. ‘He gets his mate’s wife, his son, moves into his old house. I’d say he’s done pretty well out of Corinne’s transition.’