Between Two Evils

by Eva Dolan

  Had they been watching him for a while? It would be easy enough to follow him home when he left work. Why would they do that? For a leaflet campaign or the sake of some nasty fliers? Just so they would know where he was if they ever wanted to get to him?

  ‘How many of the others knew where Ainsworth lived, do you think?’

  ‘It’s a small village,’ Ferreira said. ‘If the leaflet campaigns are general, maybe none of the others know but if it is targeted at him, then obviously some of them will.’

  ‘Unless the Paggetts are responsible for those fliers?’

  ‘Yeah. But it seems small-time for their records.’

  They arrived at the block of flats where Ruby Garrick lived, a recent development overlooking the parkway, sat at the edge of the Eastern Industrial Estate. The view to the south was across the River Nene and to the west it was the greenery of the embankment. It was relatively upmarket, solidly aimed at young professionals when it had been built, and as they got out of the car, he saw suited men and women coming home, early knock-offs but they all looked slightly fried around the edges, one woman walking barefoot across the car park, her high heels in her hand, their day’s punishment suffered and survived.

  Zigic wasn’t sure where he’d expected the Long Fleet protestors to live but so far he’d found himself vaguely surprised.

  It was stupid to expect them all to live in off-grid eco houses or rural communes, he realised. Some dated utopian ideal. These were ordinary people with ordinary lives who just happened to be dedicating large portions of their time to a fight that was not their own but which mattered deeply to them all the same.

  Ruby Garrick let them in with little question and a warmer welcome than they’d received at the Paggetts. She was in her fifties, with grey-threaded black hair worn in braids, which reached her jawline and a small diamond stud in one of her slim, high brows. A line of finely inked script showed from the cuff of her white cotton kaftan.

  ‘I’ve heard about Josh,’ she said, showing them into a living room crammed with bookshelves and Ercol furniture, old film posters framed on the walls. They sat down when she offered and accepted the rose lemonade she insisted on fetching for them with a comment about the heat and what a long day they must have had.

  When she returned she sank onto a floor cushion near the coffee table, where her laptop lay closed as if she’d been working before they buzzed. Zigic wondered what was on it, guessed the Asylum Assist network was fully consumed with talk of Ainsworth’s murder right now.

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ she said, drawing her knees up to her body. ‘Was it a robbery?’

  ‘Too early to say,’ Zigic told her.

  It was a natural assumption, the one people made because they’d rather believe in the bad faith of strangers than the bad actions of friends and family and lovers. With Ainsworth’s devices missing, possibly as an act of misdirection, he reminded himself that she was a suspect, despite her nice manners and slightly absent air.

  ‘You knew Josh quite well, we understand.’

  ‘I didn’t expect to become quite so friendly with him,’ she said, her gaze going misty. ‘We all have this idea that the staff at Long Fleet are scum. After what came out about the abuses in the place, it’s difficult not to think that.’

  ‘But they cleaned house,’ Ferreira said.

  ‘And replaced them with more of the same, most likely.’ Ruby Garrick took a sip of her lemonade. The drink in her glass was discernibly less pink than the ones she’d brought for them, and Zigic wondered if she’d put something in it. ‘Josh was different though, he genuinely cared about the women in there. He hated what the place was, what it represented, but he knew that somebody needed to make sure there was a safe space for the women to go into and tell what was happening to them. It took quite a toll on him.’

  ‘But he stayed?’ Zigic asked.

  ‘For a few years, yes,’ she said. ‘Eventually it got to him, though. He resigned a couple of months ago.’

  Zigic glanced at Ferreira.

  ‘Are you sure about that?’ she asked. ‘We heard he was taking some holiday time.’

  ‘I’m quite sure,’ Ruby said, a little scorn in her voice as if she was used to being underestimated and didn’t appreciate it. ‘I tried to talk him out of it because those women need all the allies they can get. But … when someone is so unhappy, you have to respect what they want.’

  ‘It sounds like you were very close,’ Zigic suggested softly.

  She turned to him, wearing an unreadable smile. ‘Detective Inspector, he was young enough to be my son.’

  Ainsworth wasn’t, not by some way, and it wasn’t what Zigic had been getting at, but the fact that she’d interpreted the comment that way was interesting. Taking the same insinuation that the Paggetts had made. Perhaps she’d heard it all before. Perhaps she enjoyed the thought. Judging by the gentle smile lingering around her eyes, he suspected as much.

  ‘You were a regular visitor to Josh’s house.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say regular.’ She touched her throat and quickly withdrew her hand. ‘I’d been there a few times for coffee, he made me dinner once – he was a very good cook, doctors so often are, don’t you find?’

  Neither of them replied, no frame of reference to judge on.

  ‘We talked,’ she said. ‘He was a very kind and gentle soul. The first time I approached him was when he was leaving work, oh, some time last summer, and I was in a filthy mood and I saw him coming out of the gates on his bike, and I stepped in front of him and I just started shouting at him. Telling him he should be ashamed of himself working in there, that he was taking blood money, that he was propping up a fascist apparatus that treated women’s bodies as disposable.’ She inclined her head towards Ferreira. ‘All of those things are true. But he didn’t argue with me. He took a flier and promised me he would read it.’

  Ruby rearranged herself on the floor cushion, stared into the tabletop like she was reliving the moment.

  ‘That evening he emailed me,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what I was expecting. An argument, maybe. A defence of Long Fleet at least. But he agreed with me. It went on from there, we talked about the politics of the centre and what was wrong with the immigration policy behind it. Then we started talking about other things too. I’m a history teacher and we discovered that we shared an interest in twentieth-century social history and some things like that. Eventually we decided to get together for a coffee and chat.’

  ‘But it never went any further?’ Ferreira asked and Zigic heard the mistrust in the question.

  ‘No, believe it or not, it is possible for a man and woman to spend time together without jumping into bed.’

  ‘Was Josh seeing someone?’

  ‘I believe so,’ she said slowly, a trace of annoyance in her voice. ‘But I never asked. I thought it was his business and he’d tell me if he wanted to. All I can assume is that it wasn’t a very serious relationship.’

  Was that hope? Pointless now.

  ‘These leaflets,’ Ferreira started, reaching for her glass. ‘How many of them do you put out?’

  The sudden swerve seemed to catch Ruby unawares and she frowned at the question, looking quizzically at Ferreira. ‘As many as we need to. About once a month we produce a new one and deliver them around the village.’

  ‘To all the houses?’

  She nodded. ‘Even Josh’s?’

  ‘I don’t deliver them,’ Ruby said, an evasion Ferreira fastened on immediately.

  ‘Do the rest of the protestors know about your friendship with Josh?’

  Her mouth made a thoughtful moue. ‘I didn’t think it was something I needed to share with them.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He was part of my private life, not my protest activities.’

  ‘How would they have felt if they knew?’ Ferreira asked.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Zigic took his phone out, found a photograph of the flier they’d found in Josh Ainsworth’s
office, the one accusing him of having blood on his hands.

  ‘Do you recognise this, Ms Garrick?’

  She glanced at the screen. ‘It isn’t one of mine. Asylum Assist is dedicated to raising awareness, not harassing people.’

  ‘But you knew Josh had been sent this?’ Zigic asked.

  ‘I did. He’d shown me it.’

  ‘Did he think it was one of yours?’

  She gave him a cold look. ‘Josh knew better than that.’

  ‘Did he ask if you knew the person behind it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And do you?’

  ‘No.’ Even colder this time. ‘I don’t condone this kind of activity. It harms our cause if people can point to something like this and write us off as hysterical cranks. This undermines all the hard work we’re doing.’

  She climbed to her feet, her movements quick and nimble, and picked up her empty glass. ‘Would either of you like another?’

  They both declined, sat in silence until she returned from the break she obviously felt she needed. They were getting close to something, Zigic thought.

  ‘Why did you leave the protest this morning?’ he asked.

  She sighed. ‘One of the others – Michaela Paggett – she told me she’d seen you at Josh’s house. She said there was a forensics van there. Well, it doesn’t take a genius to work out that something terrible had happened. I was upset. I wanted to be on my own.’

  It was a feasible extrapolation but something about the ease with which she claimed to have made it unsettled Zigic. They could have been there for any number of crimes that weren’t fatal.

  ‘You just assumed he was dead?’

  ‘I assumed whatever happened was very serious. I tried calling him but there was no answer.’ She lowered her eyes. ‘Maybe I should have gone round there.’

  Ferreira leaned forward. ‘Were you at Josh’s house on Saturday evening, Ms Garrick?’

  ‘No, I was here.’

  ‘Can anyone corroborate?’

  ‘Only my Netflix account,’ she said, with an odd glimmer of self-deprecating humour that struck Zigic as misplaced. ‘I’m sorry, are you asking me if I have an alibi for Josh’s murder?’

  ‘It’s purely a routine question,’ Zigic told her.

  ‘Did Josh ever mention anyone in particular he was having trouble with?’ Ferreira asked.

  ‘No, apart from those fliers, I don’t think he was having trouble at all. He was stressed at work, but … he resigned. His life should have been getting better finally.’ Her voice thickened and she apologised as the emotion hit her. ‘I’m sorry, is that all? Please, I just need some time to sit with this and process it.’

  Zigic stood, Ferreira following his lead.

  ‘You’ve been very helpful, Ms Garrick, thank you for talking to us.’ He handed her a card and told her they would see themselves out.

  In the car downstairs, looking up at the balcony of her apartment, seeing her move to close the sliding door, he wondered at that sudden swell of sadness. It looked genuine but it felt very conveniently timed too.

  ‘Mel, make sure we get hold of the CCTV for her building. I want to be absolutely sure she was here Saturday night.’

  CHAPTER TEN

  Zigic dashed straight into his office when they got back to Thorpe Road Station. The press pack was already set up on the front steps, the press officer waiting with the statement she’d prepared. She left the room as he changed into his suit and Ferreira watched her knock on Adams’s door and go in, heard Lee Walton’s name mentioned before the door closed again.

  Once the woman had left Ferreira went in there herself, found him ploughing through paperwork, three empty coffee cups on his desk and an unlit cigarette balanced on the packet; the reward he would allow himself when he’d done enough work to justify the break. She smiled to herself as she noticed it. For all his mouth and brio he had a streak of self-discipline that was oddly sweet to see. Sometimes she wondered how much of his attitude was a pose, a defence mechanism against the horrors of the job and the stresses it brought. He’d been another man while they were on holiday, quieter and more thoughtful, less biting in his humour, less cynical in his observations. Someone she didn’t like more, exactly, just differently.

  He looked up as she entered.

  ‘Alright?’ he asked. ‘Developments I need to know about?’

  ‘The case is moving along,’ she said. ‘I’m sure Ziggy will have a full and detailed report for you before the end of shift.’

  He huffed lightly. ‘I do not need another full and detailed report right now.’

  ‘But you did need a briefing from the press officer?’

  Adams lifted his eyes from his work again. ‘This is what happens when Ziggy leaves the hacks waiting downstairs, they start getting restless and asking about embarrassments like our freshly released serial rapist. “Are we going to apologise to Walton for wrecking his good name?”’ Disgust flashed in his dark brown eyes. ‘“Do we have any leads on who was actually responsible for the crimes we fitted him up for?” Oh, yeah, we fitted him up now.’

  ‘Christ.’ She threw herself into a chair opposite him. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I said to tell them they’re working for a dying media and they should retrain as anal-bleaching technicians.’

  Ferreira laughed, letting the tension break.

  It had been a long day and now that she was in here with him, she felt the weight of the hours on her. The accumulation of other people’s grief, their lies and evasions and the constant ticking away of her brain, playing with what they’d been told, trying to slot together the incomplete pieces into something coherent. It was too early in the process but her gut wouldn’t accept that, kept telling her to look closer at the Paggetts, that they should have pushed Ruby Garrick harder.

  The first day was always like this. Information overload but very little of it actively useful. Day one was where your suspicions were raised, she thought. After that a murder investigation took on its own peculiar momentum. Maybe another twenty-four hours before you found the killer, maybe a month or a year or never, and the terrible thing was you didn’t know which it would be, so you carried this nervous energy, this unwieldy burden, with no idea if you’d ever be able to set it aside again.

  And sometimes, like with Lee Walton, even when you thought you’d freed yourself, the case came back at you.

  ‘We’re going to get him, Mel,’ Adams said, but it sounded more like he was reassuring himself than her.

  ‘I know.’ She stood up. ‘Back to your paperwork then.’

  In the main office she detected the same slump in energy as she felt in herself, saw more sugary drinks on desks and junk food wrappers as people tried to drag themselves over the hump. On an ordinary day the room would be beginning to thin out by now, but Ainsworth’s murder was in its first flush of activity, and even Adams and Murray’s case seemed to have developed during the afternoon, judging by the new photographs stuck to the board.

  At the furthest corner of the room, with his back turned and his earphones in, DC Bobby Wahlia was diligently focused on his review of their files on Lee Walton, pausing occasionally to take a bite of the tuna sandwich sitting by his keyboard and stinking up the room. His normally perfectly styled hair had sunk during the day, sitting flat against his skull, except for one tuft at the front that he had a habit of playing with while he was thinking.

  Ferreira looked away, struck by a sudden sadness she didn’t want to examine right then.

  ‘Okay, update me, people,’ she said, going to over to Josh Ainsworth’s board. ‘Keri, where are we at with the couple from the holiday let next door?’

  ‘I’m still waiting for a call back,’ Bloom said. ‘But I’ve tracked down the woman’s social media and it looks like they’re out walking, so could be awhile.’

  ‘She’s posting photos but she can’t be arsed to check her messages?’

  ‘People don’t always check their messages,’ Bloom said with a
helpless shrug. ‘I guess maybe they’re just trying to enjoy the scenery or something.’

  ‘Zach.’ Parr put down the doughnut he was eating and momentarily Ferreira wondered how he could eat such crap all the time but was still rail thin, especially when he boasted of never exercising. ‘We need to get hold of the CCTV from Ruby Garrick’s building. She claims she was home the night Ainsworth died but she’s got no alibi and a totally blatant crush on him, so –’

  ‘You think she was his pizza buddy?’

  Bloom let out a small giggle. ‘Is that what they called it in your day?’

  He pulled a face at her.

  ‘And I want someone to talk to the postie who found Ainsworth’s body,’ Ferreira said.

  ‘He’s not got any priors,’ Parr reminded her.

  ‘Nobody has priors until they do,’ Ferreira told him. ‘What did he tell the first response?’

  Parr clicked around on his keyboard, finding the statement. ‘He said he noticed the door wasn’t fully closed and thought he should check everything was alright.’

  ‘So, public-spirited or opportunistic, do we think?’ Ferreira asked.

  ‘I’ll get onto him again.’ Parr’s face twisted nervously. ‘But …’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘I’m supposed to be taking my kids to the cinema tonight. I promised them ages ago.’

  Ferreira knew she should tell him to rearrange it, that the case came first, that the initial twenty-four hours were eat when you can, sleep when you’re dead territory. But she also knew his kids had taken the divorce badly and had only recently started to forgive him for it. He was on probation there and his eyes said he feared a return to the bad old days of sullen visits to McDonald’s and flat-out refusals to see him.

  ‘Alright, but first thing tomorrow. Even if you have to stalk him while he’s doing his rounds,’ she said. ‘Get in his face and see what the real story is there.’

  ‘Yes, boss.’ The relief washed over him. ‘I’ll try for the CCTV though, right? I’ve got time before I need to go.’

  ‘Someone else can go and pick it up if necessary.’ She looked at DC Weller, spinning a pen around between his fingers. ‘Rob, anything you want to share?’