Free Tell No Tales by Eva Dolan

the office Wahlia blew out a fast hard breath and rocked back in his chair. Anthony Gilbert’s laptop was open on his desk, delivered fully cracked by a techie about twenty minutes ago.
    ‘Think we got a problem here.’
    ‘What’ve you found?’ Zigic asked, feeling an unpleasant pricking sensation.
    Wahlia stood up to let him get a better look at Gilbert’s Facebook page. He was in the private message section, the sidebar clouded out, the inbox on the other side showing a selection of faces, a conversation with Jelena open, dated two days ago, and it didn’t read like a stalker and his victim.
    Jelena signed off her last one with two kisses and an ‘I love you’.
    ‘Are we sure this is definitely her account?’
    Wahlia reached for a packet of gum. ‘The messages go back for about six months. I’ve checked out her page and that was registered in ’09, she didn’t use it much but it looks legit. Lot of photos of her and Sofia. There’s a bloke who might be Sofia’s boyfriend, Tomas.’
    ‘Blond guy? Kind of Hitler Youth looking?’
    ‘That’s the one.’ Wahlia folded a stick of gum into his mouth, pointed at the screen. ‘Gilbert was sending her links to hotels, picking out clothes for her.’
    ‘Typical control freak.’
    ‘Suppose some women think that’s gentlemanly,’ Wahlia said. ‘She seemed flattered by it.’
    Zigic scrolled back up through the messages, seeing discussions about recent dates, Jelena gushing, saying what a great time she’d had, how lucky she was to go to such nice places. Gilbert’s dialogue was all about her, seemed disconnected from what she was saying.
    ‘ I love walking into places with you ,’ Zigic read. ‘What does that mean?’
    ‘That he gets off on other guys being jealous? She was totally out of his league, wasn’t she?’
    ‘She was a few years younger.’
    Wahlia pulled another chair over. ‘She’s like an eight – if you’re going to be a wanker about women – and he’s, shit, a five on his best day. A two if you factor in his personality.’
    ‘Jelena was poor though. He probably looked like an escape route.’
    Wahlia nodded, took off his heavy-framed black glasses and polished them on the hem of his shirt. Said, ‘Maybe that’s why Sofia didn’t like him. He was taking her little sister away.’
    Zigic went further back into the messages, past long strings of elaborate, late-night sex talk which made him blush, not the content so much as the knowledge that neither of them ever meant for it to be seen. Murders exposed every hidden corner of people’s lives though, and as he kept going he became more convinced that this relationship was not what Sofia had led them to believe.
    Her name cropped up occasionally, always as an excuse to break a date, and at the beginning Gilbert tried to encourage Jelena to ignore her sister’s opinion of him.
    When he returned to the most recent messages he saw how little progress Gilbert had made; all of that wheedling, the chipping away at Jelena’s resolve, but still Sofia had to be assuaged.
    Sofia would not like this. It is best Sofia does not know. She will calm down. Be patient, darling. I will explain to her.
    ‘How does this line up against what we’ve got from her mobile?’ Zigic asked.
    ‘Still waiting on it.’
    ‘Call them and tell them to drop whatever else they’re doing,’ Zigic said. ‘Christ, how hard can it be to shove the SIM card into a new phone?’
    ‘I’ll chase them up.’
    Zigic thought of Sofia Krasic at the hospital this morning, demanding to speak to a policeman through the fog of pain and medication. Every word she had uttered looked like a torture but she had been determined to tell him Anthony Gilbert was responsible.
    How certain could she be though?
    So far they had nothing concrete to tie him to the vehicle only a match to his blood type, one too common to mean much. His neighbours hadn’t noticed him leave the house or return, and it was a small close, the houses