Between Two Evils

by Eva Dolan

  ‘This us?’ Ferreira pocketed her phone and climbed out of the car, immediately pointing at the red Golf parked across the lane behind the forensics van. ‘Kate’s back? I thought she had another week’s sabbatical yet?’

  ‘No, back today,’ Zigic told her. ‘You’ve still got your holiday head on.’

  He popped open the boot of the car and grabbed a couple of overalls, as she dragged her long dark hair up into a ponytail.

  ‘I thought she was done, you know.’ Ferreira stepped into her suit. ‘She took it so hard.’

  Zigic remembered sitting with Kate Jenkins in her office the day after the story about the corrupt lab broke, seeing just how devastated she was. There was no blame attached to her but watching so many of the cases she’d worked on slip away made the job seem pointless, she’d said, looking out at her own lab. He’d told her he felt the same way but that it was no reason to leave. They all had ones that got away, the lack of evidence and the absconders and the juries blinded by tricky lawyers and handsome defendants. It happened. Far too often. But they came intermittently, he’d realised, and you had time to process the rage and disappointment and the weighty burden of guilt you felt for the victims who’d been through so much only to see a case fail.

  So many cases potentially compromised all at once had been overwhelming.

  ‘Guess she just needed a bit of time to deal with it,’ he said.

  They headed for the front door, signed in with the uniform on guard and entered a flagstone-floored, white-painted hallway with monochrome cycling prints hung on one wall and an old bike wheel strung with small lights on the other.

  ‘You actually like that, don’t you?’ Ferreira asked, catching his admiring glance.

  ‘It’s different.’

  Voices led them through into the living room, Kate Jenkins and two of her assistants almost indistinguishable from each other in their coveralls and masks as they presided over the room.

  Jenkins spread her arms wide.

  ‘My two favourite detectives.’

  ‘So good to see you back,’ Zigic said, matching the smile he saw crinkling her eyes above her mask.

  ‘The guy they had covering for you was a nightmare,’ Ferreira told her.

  ‘Yeah, I heard he was a bit of a dick,’ Jenkins said and pointed at the figure peering into a copper bin next to the leather chesterfield. ‘Elliot was keeping me up to date.’

  ‘Got a condom in here,’ he said.

  ‘How could I resist coming back to this?’ Jenkins asked.

  ‘It’s been used.’

  She nodded. ‘Great stuff.’

  Another assistant was filming the body laid out in the smashed remnants of a dark-wood coffee table: Josh Ainsworth. A man of medium build with brown hair and a short beard, dressed in lounge pants and a heavily bloodstained T-shirt. From the state of his skin and the pungent aroma, even Zigic could tell he’d been dead at least a couple of days.

  Zigic looked around the room as Ferreira asked Jenkins how her holiday went, taking in the teal walls and abstract art and the open top of a pizza box protruding from underneath the body. There was a wine bottle toppled on the floor near the sofa, a wine glass next to it, somehow still standing and half full, already marked out for further attention. He wondered where the other one was. If there was another one. The condom suggested company but didn’t guarantee it, he thought, involuntarily wrinkling his nose.

  ‘Actually, you know what,’ Jenkins said abruptly. ‘This is going to go way faster if you’re not in here distracting me with holiday talk and gossip.’

  ‘We’ll get out of your way for a bit then.’ Zigic gestured to Ferreira. ‘You two can catch up later.’

  ‘Drinks?’ she asked over her shoulder, as he was hustling her out.

  ‘Lots of them,’ Jenkins said enthusiastically.

  Outside in the lane they peeled off their suits and Zigic felt how sticky his bare arms had become in a matter of minutes. He tried to figure the heat into a time of death, eager to fix even a vague point for the crime, but stopped himself. There was plenty to do before the post-mortem gave them the information and other, better, ways to make an educated guess.

  ‘I really missed her,’ Ferreira said, with a crooked smile.

  He was surprised how pleased he was to see that smile again. Realised how long it had been since he saw her anything but grimly or bitterly amused.

  ‘She’s one of the good ones, Kate.’

  A silver Corsa came around the green ahead of them and pulled into the lane, trailed by a patrol car. DC Zachary Parr arriving with the extra bodies to set about the door-to-door.

  ‘You want me to deal with that?’ Ferreira asked.

  ‘Thanks, Mel.’

  She met Parr as he climbed out of his car and spoke briefly to him and the uniforms, peering at the tablet he had in his hand, dividing up the houses and setting them to work. It wouldn’t be a long job canvassing the immediate vicinity but the green was likely a magnet for the village’s dog walkers, judging by the sign reminding owners of the maximum fine for not clearing up after their pets. The area was relatively well lit for the sticks, enough street lights that anyone coming along after dark might have been seen and seen well enough to make a positive identification. With the late sunset they had a good chance of potential sightings. So they would ask around and put notes through the doors of any empty houses, hope that someone had seen something useful.

  Small, tight-knit villages like this, there was always a dedicated observer or two. The kind who diligently recorded the number plates of unfamiliar vehicles and profiled any strangers they saw hanging about.

  Zigic headed slowly down the lane, searching for security cameras on the line of cottages; rural crime was on the rise, as always, but with little to no CCTV in these parts lots of people resorted to independent measures. He rounded the green, scrutinising each façade and the eaves of every garage, hoping for a camera pointed across to Joshua Ainsworth’s house. But there was nothing.

  Of course they wouldn’t be that lucky, he thought, returning to number 6.

  Through the fine nets at the neighbouring cottage’s front window, he could see an elderly man peering out, his cat sat on the windowsill, watching them more brazenly but with less interest.

  Maybe they had CCTV after all.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The village shop was a flimsy-looking 1970s addition to what Ferreira guessed had probably been a picture-perfect cottage before they stuck the big white box on the side of it. The windows were plastered with neon stars advertising local cleaners and dog-sitting services, a twice-weekly Pilates class in the village hall and a painter and decorator boasting of his DBS clearance.

  On the path out front, trays of fruit and veg wilted in the heat, the ripe, sweet smell of the bananas attracting a persistent swarm of small black flies and a wasp, which buzzed at her when she got too close. She swiped at it but gave the ground. You couldn’t always be the hero.

  The door stood open, shielded by a plastic strip curtain, which slithered unpleasantly around her as she went inside.

  Behind the short wooden counter, a grey-haired man with a sunburned face sat reading a Maeve Binchy novel. He glanced up as she entered, nodded a greeting tinged with curiosity.

  Always the same in these places, she thought. Remembering the shop in the village they’d lived in when she was a kid, almost indistinguishable from this, with the same truncated shelves scantily stocked with tinned goods and packets of instant mash and tea bags, all extravagantly marked up, because if you found yourself short so far from civilisation, well, that was your bad luck. She remembered how closely she’d been watched when she went in, the sense that they knew this little brown-skinned girl had come from the caravan site and consequently was not to be trusted. She’d watched other kids shoplift with impunity while the eyes of the owner stayed locked on her, suspicious of everything about her right down to the integrity of the coins she used to pay for her chocolate bars.

&
nbsp; But she wasn’t that girl any more, she reminded herself. She was a detective sergeant in a silk blouse and tailored trousers and very smart brogues, who didn’t take shit from anyone.

  She went to the fridge at the back of the store, grabbed a couple of bottles of water. Next to it a freezer hummed unsteadily, half full of ice cream and lollies. The sight of the rockets caused her to stop for a second, remembering a trip to the coast: the whole family stuffed into a borrowed car, eating one as her brothers wriggled and fought beside her, Paolo trying to keep Joe and Tom in line with pinches and small-fisted punches, her parents oblivious in the front, singing along to the radio like they’d forgotten they even had kids.

  ‘Right, I’ve told you,’ the shopkeeper shouted. ‘You’re not welcome in here.’

  There was scuffling noise and swearing, the sound of cans scattering hard across the floor.

  Ferreira rushed to the front of the store, saw him trying to hustle out an ungainly young guy with fluffy bleached-blond hair and wide holes punched in his earlobes. His hand was tight around the man’s skinny upper arm and the young guy, off-balance in a pair of bright green flip-flops, lunged for purchase and cleared a nearby shelf of boxed instant rice as he grabbed for some anchor and missed.

  ‘We only want to get some milk,’ he protested, twisting his arm free.

  Livid red fingerprints sprang up on his freckled skin.

  ‘I told you this was a waste of time,’ the woman with him said sharply, drawing him away. She shot the shopkeeper a fiery look, then turned to Ferreira. ‘I hope you like giving your money to a fascist pig.’

  The shopkeeper watched them go, hands on his hips in a defiant posture but Ferreira could see how shaken he was by the encounter, his mouth in a slack line and his cheeks spotted with colour.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ he said, eyeing the mess they’d made as he went back around the counter. ‘Protestors from the Fleet.’

  ‘Yeah, I think I saw them on the way in,’ she said, feeling his desperation to talk now and knowing he needed little prompting.

  ‘Most of them are no trouble,’ he told her. ‘Old women by and large, teacher types, you know what I mean? Come in for an iced tea and a bit of fruit, inoffensive lot. I’ve got no issue with them quietly going about their business. Peaceful protest … I might not agree with them but they’ve got every right to stand there with their signs if they think it’s helping.’ He jabbed a finger towards the door. ‘But those two …’

  ‘Not so inoffensive?’

  ‘I can’t prove it,’ he said, dropping his tone conspiratorially, leaning across the counter. ‘But someone’s been leafleting the village for months. Really nasty stuff. Going on about what the staff are up to in there. Must be lies, mustn’t it? You don’t get away with that in prisons. Not in this country. There are rules.’ He straightened again. ‘We all know one of that lot’s responsible, but smart money’s on them two. They’re bloody militants, you’ve only got to look at them.’

  She murmured agreement, keeping him going so he’d be receptive when she asked about Ainsworth. ‘What are they saying’s going on there?’

  ‘Bullying and that.’ He nodded at her. ‘Worse.’

  ‘It happens in the best-run prisons,’ she told him.

  ‘Maybe it does,’ he conceded. ‘But nigh on half the staff live in the village. They’re good people and they’re having their reputations dragged through the dirt with out-and-out lies. Lucky we know better than to believe it, but what if we didn’t? That’s how lives get ruined.’

  He frowned deeply, lost in a brief introspection.

  ‘Anyway … you’ll be able to judge the place for yourself soon enough, from what I hear.’ A satisfied smile lifted his face momentarily and he inclined his head towards the door. ‘Josh Ainsworth works there.’ The smile dropped off his face. ‘Worked. Sorry.’

  Ferreira’s turn to nod.

  ‘You can always smell a copper, right?’

  He tapped his nose. ‘Always.’

  Strange thing to be proud of, she thought. A boast she’d only ever heard come out of the mouths of criminals before.

  ‘Was Ainsworth a guard?’

  ‘Doctor,’ the man said. ‘What a waste of a good brain.’

  ‘Who told you he was dead?’ Ferreira asked, reaching into her pocket for some change.

  ‘Old Mr Edwards, from next door. He’s right shook up.’

  Not too shook up to come over here and spread the news though, Ferreira thought.

  She handed him the money for the waters and a card in case he heard anything that she might be interested in.

  When she went back out onto the street, she saw the couple who had been thrown out of the shop had started walking away, towards the edge of the village and the protest at Long Fleet’s gates they were going to rejoin. They’d stopped and were looking towards Joshua Ainsworth’s cottage, too far away for her to read their expressions, but something about the man’s hunched posture and the stiffness of woman’s back made her think they might know something interesting too.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Ferreira was sitting on the bonnet of his car, rolling a cigarette, when Zigic emerged from number 4, and it took him a few minutes further to extricate himself from Ainsworth’s neighbour and his accomplice of a cat, which kept winding between his feet in a figure of eight. He assured the man that they would be in touch if there was anything else they needed from him. Explained once more the numbers on the card he’d handed over and that he didn’t need to worry about the email address if he wasn’t very good with his computer, just ring.

  He half expected to be physically dragged back inside but made it up the short front path and through the freshly painted gate, feeling a twinge of sadness in his chest for the nice old man with the sharp eyes but the faltering hearing.

  ‘Any good gossip from the shop?’ he asked Ferreira as he sat down next to her.

  ‘Ainsworth’s a doctor at the detention centre.’ She handed over his water. ‘Half the village work up there, apparently. And we’ve got an ongoing protest situation that’s verging on harassment of workers. Leaflet campaigns, public shaming. Probably not a million miles off the mark though, given what we know about how those places operate.’

  Roughly the same as he’d just been told.

  There was irritation in Ferreira’s voice but an unmistakable edge of excitement too. He could see it lifting her as she lit her cigarette, could almost hear the cogs turning behind her sunglasses.

  He was already envisioning the pressure he was going to come under from Riggott and all the many layers above and beyond him. Pressures Ferreira only felt at one reserve, protected from them by her rank because he had never been the kind of DI who passed his beatings down the chain of command. As bad as they’d been on other cases, he knew the potential here was significantly worse.

  Long Fleet was operated by Securitect. The same company who were angling to provide Cambridgeshire Constabulary’s emergency call services, their increasing roster of civilian support staff and, for all he knew, the sandwiches in the vending machines that had replaced their canteen a few months ago.

  If Joshua Ainsworth’s murder touched at all on his job at Long Fleet, they were going to be tiptoeing around landmines trying to investigate it.

  It looked personal though. No sign of forced entry, Ainsworth killed in his living room as he ate his dinner, judging by the pizza box and the spilled bottle of red wine. Perhaps killed by the person he’d shared the meal with or why hadn’t they tried to intervene? Or reported his murder right away.

  ‘I think we need to speak to the protestors,’ Ferreira said. ‘There were a couple of them kicking off in the shop when I went in. I dunno,’ she shrugged. ‘They had that air, you know?’

  ‘It looks like a fairly peaceful protest,’ Zigic said hopefully.

  ‘Then we can disregard them quickly.’

  ‘We can’t just pull them all in for questioning, not without grounds.’

  ‘Isn
’t the harassment grounds enough?’

  ‘It would be if we knew who was behind it,’ he told her.

  ‘We’ll never find out if we don’t speak to them.’

  He sighed, hearing the tease in her voice.

  ‘How about we take their number plates?’ she suggested. ‘Get their names, check if there are any known agitators involved, and then we can approach and see what kind of reaction we get?’

  ‘Set Parr on it.’

  She called the DC over and passed on Zigic’s fresh orders, told him to be discreet.

  Zigic gestured at the empty cottage with its curtains all drawn, wanting to change the subject. ‘Nobody in at eight. Holiday let.’

  ‘Here?’ Ferreira asked, incredulous. ‘Who’d come on holiday here?’

  ‘It’s pretty, I guess. Quiet.’

  ‘Not this weekend.’

  ‘No.’ He picked at his shirt, already starting to stick to his back. ‘And someone was staying there, so we’ll need to track them down.’

  ‘Number four was chatty then.’ Ferreira glanced at the house. ‘He’s still in the window.’

  ‘I got the impression he’s a bit lonely.’ The old cat and the interior like a time capsule; he brushed the thought aside. ‘Ainsworth’s been away on holiday too. Just got back Wednesday. But he’d been off work a few weeks before that too. Pottering around the house, his neighbour said.’

  ‘Lost his job, do you think?’

  Zigic shrugged. ‘Or he’d banked a load of holiday time and decided to take it while the weather was good.’

  ‘Did he hear anything?’

  ‘No, nothing out of the ordinary but his hearing isn’t up to much, so that doesn’t mean they didn’t hear something on the other side,’ Zigic said. ‘Ainsworth was a considerate neighbour, he reckoned. No loud music, no midnight DIY sessions. Not much in the way of visitors.’