Between Two Evils

by Eva Dolan

  ‘I’m not sure yet,’ she admitted. ‘We’ve got suspects but nothing concrete tying anyone to the scene and they all seem to have pretty decent alibis.’

  ‘I hate it when suspects do that,’ he said, with a flicker of a grin. ‘This is what I love about all the pubs closing and TV getting so good, everyone stays at home and nobody has an alibi any more. You could fit up anyone you wanted.’

  ‘What about your boy Batty?’ she asked.

  ‘Idiot just used his credit card in Marseilles. I’m waiting on a call from the local gendarmerie. Hopefully, they’ll get their arses into gear and pick him up before he hops a ferry to Morocco or something.’

  ‘What’s he going to do in Morocco?’ Ferreira asked. ‘Bloody Peterborough boy.’

  ‘Hey, I’m surprised he made it as far as Marseilles. His mum reckoned he never left the country before. Only got a passport so he could open an online gambling account.’

  ‘Bolting from an attempted murder charge really does broaden the horizons, doesn’t it?’

  ‘He’ll have some interesting stories for his cellmates, anyway.’ Billy dropped his cigarette butt and crushed it dead. ‘You coming back in?’

  ‘Got a call to make.’

  Once he was gone she dialled her voicemail and braced herself.

  Evelyn Goddard laughed in her ear, a sound throaty and dark and utterly without humour.

  ‘It doesn’t surprise me one little bit that you aren’t brave enough to actually answer your phone to me, Sergeant Ferreira.’ Goddard took a deep, shuddering breath and Ferreira could imagine the tightness at her jaw and the imperious way she would be holding herself for this. Even at this distance it made her feel small. ‘My God, the things we went through for you. What we’ve lost. I let you into our community. We stripped ourselves bare so you could put that animal in prison where he belonged.’

  She wanted to stop now. Delete the message, never know what else Goddard had to say to her, but she kept listening, every word stinging.

  ‘And what did you do?’ Goddard asked. ‘After I gave you his victims? After I gave you the bloody evidence of what he did to Jasmine. You still managed to screw everything up.’

  It wasn’t me, Ferreira thought. But it was a weak and unconvincing statement. Because it might not have been specifically her, but it was very much them.

  Goddard took another deep breath, sighed it out. And when she spoke again she sounded weak and saddened rather than angry. ‘I hope you understand this – the next woman he attacks, every moment of hell he puts her through, it will be your fault.’

  For a long moment she listened to the silence, the reverberation of Goddard’s words rattling around in her head, feeling every drop of poison in them seeping through her ear. She couldn’t blame the woman for her fury and indignation, even though it was misdirected.

  And at the back of Ferreira’s mind was the thought that the next woman Lee Walton raped or killed might be her.

  She deleted Goddard’s message, pulled herself together and went back upstairs.

  Zigic was standing at the board, marker pen in hand.

  ‘That’s Alistair Collingwood out, then.’ He drew a black line across the photo they’d lifted from Collingwood’s LinkedIn account.

  ‘What’s this now?’ Ferreira asked.

  ‘His alibi’s rock solid. Flew out of Stanstead the Friday morning, live-tweeted a series of seminars about 3D-printing techniques for two days straight then shows up in a bunch of group shots taken by one of his colleagues in a cabaret bar at two a.m. Sunday morning.’

  During the morning they’d crossed out Ruby Garrick too. Parr went through the CCTV on her building three times but there was no sign of her leaving at any point during the Saturday evening Josh Ainsworth was murdered. The fire escape was a possibility but the door was alarmed and sent a report directly to the property management company, which said it hadn’t been breached.

  Ferreira stood next to Zigic, seeing their options narrowing down.

  Portia Collingwood was still in the frame.

  The Paggetts were very much a possibility.

  Parr was busy checking their alibis, going through the long list of people who’d attended the same barbecue on the Saturday evening. He seemed pretty content to be welded to his seat, had already worked his way through an entire McDonald’s breakfast and a couple of doughnuts from the big bag he’d arrived with this morning, ‘for the office’. Somehow he could eat in the spaces between asking questions, by taking quick bites, hardly chewing. Maybe that was why he was good at this stuff, she thought, because he listened more than he talked, mouth always otherwise occupied.

  A few minutes after she sat down at her desk again, she heard Parr’s voice lift with a sudden surge of excitement.

  ‘Could you bear with me for a moment, sir?’ he said into the handset, gesturing furiously to Ferreira. ‘I’m just going to pass you over to my sergeant.’

  He hit the hold button.

  ‘Boss, we’ve got a defector,’ he said. ‘Michaela Paggett’s brother-in-law, Ian Carver, I think you’ll want to hear what he’s saying.’

  ‘Send him over.’ She picked up the call. ‘Mr Carver, thank you for waiting.’

  ‘No problem, I’m happy to help,’ he said pleasantly. ‘Should I just tell you what I told the other officer?’

  ‘If you would, please.’

  ‘Well, like I was saying, Damien and Michaela were pretty wasted so I’m not sure how seriously you want to take this. And frankly, they’re always full of plans for what they’re going to do to “tear down the system”.’ She heard the air quotes he threw around the words, the hint of contempt. ‘If they spent half as much time actually working as they do complaining about every tiny thing that’s going on in the world, they’d probably be a lot happier and better off.’

  Ferreira sat back, decided to let him run on unprompted, getting a sense of the man as he talked.

  ‘They’d cornered one of our neighbours, young guy, he was wearing a Corbyn T-shirt so I suppose Damien thought he’d found a soulmate.’ In the background a photocopier whirred softly into life. ‘Damien starts talking to him about the importance of grass-roots movements and how change has to come from the bottom, all of the usual crap. And, I mean, I’d had a couple of beers so I was in a baiting mood, if I’m honest. I started asking him if he really thought that was going to change anything. At Long Fleet, right, because he’d been talking – at painful length – about what they’re doing there. And suddenly Damien gets this look in his eyes, all faraway like, and says, “The best form of protest is spectacle,” and I’m like, what do you mean, and he goes, “If you want people to stand up and take notice, you need to do something too big for them to ignore.” And then Michaela comes over and says, “Long Fleet are kidnapping women, they’re snatching them from their beds at night. How do you think they’d like it to happen to them?”’

  Ferreira straightened in her chair again, making eye contact with Parr who just nodded at her, a look of satisfaction on his face.

  Carver kept going. ‘Michaela says, “Imagine if we treated one of their staff like they’ve treated the inmates.” And I laughed at her because it was just so ridiculous. She wasn’t very happy about that. But Damien was mouthing off again, saying they could record the whole thing, put it online, show people the reality of locking up innocent civilians.’

  ‘Is this the kind of thing they usually talk about?’ Ferreira asked, trying to keep the excitement out of her voice.

  ‘No, not really. I just put it down to the drink, but then I saw about that doctor getting murdered on the news, and I was wondering if it was important when you called me.’ A drawer slid open and closed his end, and Ferreira pictured him in some office, this man who’d got saddled with the Paggetts as in-laws. ‘I don’t know if they’re actually capable of kidnapping but they’ve done some serious stuff, haven’t they? In the past. I mean, they can say it’s not like being criminals because it’s political activism, but th
ey’ve committed crimes.’

  Haven’t they just, Ferreira thought.

  All that preparation, all those trespass charges and the accusations of intimidation.

  This was the logical next step.

  A spectacle.

  ‘What time did Damien and Michaela leave your house, Mr Carver?’

  ‘Around eight.’

  Ferreira glanced at the board: the Paggetts claimed they’d been there into the early hours of Sunday morning.

  ‘Eight in the evening?’

  ‘It was an afternoon barbecue,’ he said. ‘We’re all boring olds, Sergeant. None of us can manage all-night parties any more.’

  ‘Would you be prepared to come in and make an official statement about what you’ve just told me?’ Ferreira asked, looking at the photos of the Paggetts on the board.

  ‘If you need me to, sure. I could come on my lunch hour, I’m only five minutes away.’

  She thanked him and passed him back to Parr.

  ‘Get the name of that neighbour,’ she told him. ‘We need to be sure this isn’t just some family drama.’

  But she didn’t think it was that, despite the relish in Carver’s tone and the way his words tumbled out. And even if it was some long-held grudge at play, that hardly mattered. As long as what he’d said was true.

  Ferreira went into Zigic’s office and told him what Carver had told her.

  ‘An attempted kidnapping gone wrong?’ he asked, not quite incredulously but she could sense the resistance in him, the annoyance too maybe, that the case was heading in a direction he’d wanted to avoid. ‘That’s your theory?’

  ‘I feel like I keep saying this,’ she told him. ‘But the Paggetts have been hanging around Long Fleet staff members’ houses for some reason. This could be it.’

  ‘It seems a very half-arsed attempt.’

  ‘They get drunk and wound up and go off half-cocked,’ she said, playing the scene out in her head. ‘They knock on the door, overpower Ainsworth. He puts up a fight and gets knocked out. Nobody’s saying they’re criminal geniuses.’

  ‘He gets knocked out isn’t the end of it though, is it?’ Zigic said, putting up a staying hand. ‘If they went after him without thinking it through, why would one of them then beat his head in?’

  ‘How many murders are committed to cover up other crimes?’ she asked. ‘We see it all the time. They tried to kidnap him and failed and he knew who they were so they killed him.’

  Zigic sighed. ‘We’re going to need more than drunken party talk.’

  ‘What, like a concerted harassment campaign in the run-up?’

  ‘Witnesses,’ he said firmly. ‘Forensic evidence.’

  ‘They’ve already lied to us about their alibi,’ she told him. ‘They said they were still at the Carvers’ house when Josh Ainsworth was murdered, but they left at eight p.m.’

  ‘And why would they lie about the time unless they knew when he was murdered?’ Zigic asked, as she was poised to say the same thing.

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Okay, pull them in.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  It was a smaller protest outside the Long Fleet gates that morning. Smaller and more subdued. Placards leaned on rather than waved, a couple of the older women sitting on the ground with a banner spread across their thighs. The heat was punishing as midday approached and Ferreira found herself wondering at their dedication. Could think of very little that would impel her to spend her days standing by the side of a dusty road in thirty-degree heat, getting more abuse than support from the passing drivers.

  They stirred as she pulled up, two patrol cars behind her.

  The Paggetts looked nervously at one another, stepped away from the rest of the group, who noticed the move and stiffened their postures in preparation. All except Ruby Garrick. She folded her arms, watching the Paggetts as their conversation became more heated.

  ‘Damien and Michaela Paggett,’ Ferreira said, striding across the road. ‘I’d like you to come with us.’

  ‘We don’t have to go anywhere with you,’ Michaela snapped.

  ‘What’s this about?’ Damien asked nervously, still trying to act the innocent man.

  ‘What do you think it’s about?’ Ferreira said. ‘When you lie to the police, you get pulled in. You should know that by now.’

  ‘We haven’t lied,’ he said, but there was little force in his voice.

  Ferreira read them their rights, seeing Damien’s shoulders slump as Michaela’s firmed for action. When PC Green approached her, Michaela dropped to the ground, making her body a dead weight. Green just sighed and went to get hold of her under the arms, while PC Barnes hitched his belt up and steeled himself, grunting as he lifted her feet.

  ‘This is harassment,’ Michaela shouted. ‘This is what they do to us when we stand up for our principles.’ She kept shouting as she was carried awkwardly across the road. ‘The police are tools of Securitect, doing their dirty work trying to silence us. But we won’t be silenced, we know the truth and –’

  The slammed door of the patrol car cut her off, but she kept going, mouthing angry words through the rear window, pointing at Ferreira, her face red with rage.

  Damien went with less resistance, head down, trudging between the two officers and let himself be put in the back of the other vehicle.

  Nobody spoke up for them, Ferreira noted with interest. Most of the group didn’t even look in their direction as they were led away. It was a subtle but encouraging sign, she thought. If their own comrades were uncertain about them, then maybe she was on the right track.

  ‘Sergeant Ferreira, could I speak to you, please?’ Ruby Garrick stood at the edge of the group, toying with a long beaded necklace.

  ‘Of course.’

  They crossed the road and got into Ferreira’s car, watched all the time by the few protestors now left on the verge.

  ‘Are you sure you’re happy to do this in front of them?’ Ferreira asked.

  ‘We all know what the Paggetts are,’ Ruby said, her disapproval clear. ‘Unfortunately, you don’t get to choose your allies.’

  A lorry went past them, moving too fast for the uneven rural road, its slipstream shaking the car. Ruby shuddered but Ferreira thought she would have done it anyway, her unease rising from something completely different.

  ‘Do you really think they killed Josh?’

  ‘We’ve uncovered some inconsistencies in their stories,’ Ferreira told her. ‘Innocent people don’t usually lie to the police.’

  ‘Unless they’re scared of you,’ Ruby said.

  ‘Did they seem afraid?’

  Ruby looked away into a recently cut field where a flock of crows were picking about in the stubble.

  In her rear-view mirror Ferreira saw a figure emerge from the guard hut at Long Fleet’s main gate, checking the credentials of the driver of a silver Lexus before letting it in. The guard came out once again, stood looking out across the road at the protestors.

  Would this arrest be reported to the governor, she wondered. She couldn’t believe they were as hands-off with the protest as they appeared to be. Suspected some degree of monitoring would be in place. For security if nothing else.

  ‘I wasn’t sure if I should say anything,’ Ruby began, smoothing her hand across the thigh of her cargo pants. ‘But if they are involved, then I think I owe it to Josh to do everything I can to help you.’

  ‘What do you want to tell me, Ms Garrick?’

  ‘There has been a lot of talk among our group over the last couple of days about what happened to Josh.’

  ‘It’s only natural for people to speculate,’ Ferreira said gently. ‘A murder is a big thing to process.’

  ‘It is.’ She blinked slowly, shook her head.

  The grief was still thick around her, an almost tangible thing, and Ferreira resisted the urge to press her.

  ‘I thought we were better than this,’ Ruby said. ‘We are supposed to be decent people. But the way some … elements in ou
r group have talked about Josh’s death has been very disappointing.’ She bit her lip. ‘God, that’s an understatement. I’m trying to be nice and they don’t deserve my consideration. They’ve been vile, Sergeant Ferreira. I’m beginning to wonder about the kind of people I’m associating with.’ She twisted in the seat, facing Ferreira full on. ‘We talk so much about decency and morality and the right way to do things, and I always believed that we were good people.’

  ‘All groups attract a less than perfect element.’

  ‘They’re revelling in Josh’s death,’ she said in a strangled voice. ‘Not just the Paggetts. We’re a group of around two hundred people and half of them think Josh’s death is a good thing for our cause. They don’t feel any sympathy for him or his family. They’ve called him collateral damage.’

  The smell of harvest dust from the nearby field and Ruby’s citrus perfume were making Ferreira’s nose prickle. She turned on the air conditioning.

  ‘I need to see these conversations,’ she said, as softly as she could, not wanting to spook Ruby.

  ‘I’ve taken screenshots for you.’

  She wasn’t expecting that. Was primed for a negotiation, had her most compelling arguments lined up and ready to go.

  But, as helpful as it was, she realised it wasn’t enough.

  ‘Screenshots are really useful,’ she said. ‘But I need to see everything.’

  Ruby Garrick shook her head. ‘Absolutely not, that would be a gross breach of the trust that the group has placed in me.’ She took her mobile out. ‘I have the screenshots here, I’m prepared to give you them. Why isn’t that enough?’

  ‘Because I need to see how those conversations develop,’ Ferreira told her.

  ‘I can keep you updated,’ Ruby said.

  Ferreira took a breath, seeing the agitation in Ruby’s eyes, the sense of some great moral battle taking place behind them.

  ‘Time is of the essence here, okay. Now we’ve taken the Paggetts in, we’re going to see a reaction to that, and I need to be able to view it developing in real time.’ Ferreira held her gaze, needing Ruby Garrick to understand how vital this was. ‘Now, I can get a warrant for your devices, but that will take me awhile. And during that delay somebody might write something or – more likely – delete something that could prove vital in catching Josh’s killer.’