by Eva Dolan
‘But I thought the Paggetts killed Josh,’ Ruby said. ‘Aren’t you sure?’
‘I think you know what the Paggetts are.’ Ferreira curled one hand around the steering wheel. ‘They’ve been saying some worrying things, haven’t they?’
‘They’re all bluster.’ She waved her hand dismissively but her face told a different story.
‘All big talk?’
‘Exactly.’
‘About kidnapping a member of the Long Fleet staff?’
Ruby gasped, pressed her fingertips to her mouth. ‘If I knew about that I would have told you when you came to my home.’
Her eyes were full of tears.
‘You’re the only person who cared enough about Josh to help me,’ Ferreira said. ‘And I’m sorry I have to ask you to compromise your principles. I truly am. But sometimes we have to make these sacrifices for the people we care about.’
‘Poor boy,’ Ruby muttered, shaking her head. ‘That poor, poor boy.’
‘I need you to give me access to the group, okay?’
With a trembling hand Ruby opened her phone’s case and keyed in her code.
‘For Josh,’ she said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Ferreira was prowling up and down the rows of desks, to the board and back, pausing occasionally to look across Parr’s shoulder as he typed up the witness statement about the Paggetts’ kidnapping plans, then over Keri Bloom’s shoulder as she reviewed the CCTV footage from around Portia Collingwood’s house.
She didn’t linger very long there, Zigic noticed from his office window.
Collingwood wasn’t out of the frame as far as he was concerned, but there was no denying the increased likelihood that it was the Paggetts who had something to do with Josh Ainsworth’s death.
The problem was, as certain as Ferreira was, he couldn’t quite shake the feeling that they were innocent. They were angry and nasty and had a long history of criminality, but somehow he couldn’t buy the idea of such an inept kidnapping.
Hanging around the village when they were so distinctive-looking, running a harassment campaign targeting Long Fleet staff … they were putting themselves so thoroughly in the frame for any act of violence against Josh Ainsworth that they couldn’t possibly have been planning to go any further.
Even explaining how it would all work at a barbecue. What kind of kidnapper did that?
Then going out – that very same night – and doing it.
No. Nobody was that stupid.
They were smart enough to insist on having solicitors called before they would speak anyway. Both were stuck down in the cells right now, waiting for them to arrive. Usually a brief stint on a hard bench, behind a heavy door sharpened a suspect’s mind. The Paggetts had been there before though; they’d been locked up plenty of times, both with several short stretches inside to their names, and he doubted that an hour in detention would rattle either of them.
Zigic went out and made himself a cup of tea, saw that Ferreira was back at her desk, focused now as she tapped away.
‘Something interesting?’ he asked.
‘Ruby Garrick has just opened up their private Facebook group for me.’
‘I thought Asylum Assist was a campaign group,’ he said curiously. ‘What are they going to achieve if what they’re doing is private?’
‘No, this is a different one. Anglia Migration Support,’ she said.
They’d already gone through the screenshots Garrick gave her, found a lot of unpleasant chatter in the aftermath of Josh Ainsworth’s death, far too much gloating for a bunch of moral guardians, Zigic had thought, but nothing they could actually use against the Paggetts. And none of it pre-dating the murder.
He pulled up a spare chair.
‘I could just send you this,’ she said, shuffling aside slightly so he could see the screen.
She was scrolling so fast he couldn’t see how she was taking any of it on board, but maybe it was an age thing. He’d found his ability to deal with the blare of information from social media wasn’t as sharp as hers, mainly because he never used it.
He glanced away as Bobby Wahlia passed behind him going into Adams’s office with a file in his hand. He’d been in and out of there all morning, blinds drawn at the internal window, no noise escaping, as if their conversation was so delicate that it could only be conducted in hushed tones.
Something was coming, Zigic thought. No other explanation for it. The office was radiating a kind of contained energy, almost pulsing with it.
‘Shit,’ Ferreira exclaimed.
‘What?’ His attention snapped back to the screen.
She pointed to a comment with Michaela Paggett’s name next to it.
‘That,’ she said.
He read the comment, then went through the rest of the conversation. ‘Did Ruby Garrick mention this?’
‘No.’ Ferreira frowned. ‘I suppose she might not have seen it.’
‘She’s the admin, right?’
‘Doesn’t mean she’s monitoring every single conversation in the group. And it’s pretty well buried in there.’
Zigic stood up. ‘Let’s see what Mrs Paggett’s got to say about this.’
‘Her solicitor arrived about twenty minutes ago,’ Ferreira told him. ‘That’s plenty of time, isn’t it?’
They went to the interview room where Michaela sat slumped next to a middle-aged man in a black suit and a blue shirt, his thin greying hair plastered to his ruddy scalp with perspiration. Michaela eyed them as they entered, didn’t shift or straighten in her seat, made none of the usual attempts to appear pulled together or upright. She was more comfortable in these rooms than most people, remaining unfazed by the process of setting up the recording equipment and stating her name, when she was prompted, in a flat and emotionless voice.
‘On the evening of Dr Ainsworth’s murder, you attended a barbecue at your sister’s house, is that correct, Mrs Paggett?’ Ferreira asked.
‘Yes.’
‘And you told Detective Inspector Zigic and myself that you and your husband were there until the early hours of Sunday morning, didn’t you?’
‘I don’t think I gave you an exact time,’ Michaela said, pulling a confused face at them. ‘I believe I told you it was a late one, but as I didn’t take particular note of the time myself, I wouldn’t have given you a time.’
She was contradicting herself already and Zigic realised that underneath the surly demeanour and the supposedly relaxed body language she was worried.
‘Would you like to tell us what time you left now?’ Ferreira asked pleasantly. ‘Make a stab at it?’
‘Late,’ Michaela said shortly.
‘You seem to be having trouble remembering your precise whereabouts for the evening in question,’ Ferreira said. ‘Fortunately, we have two witnesses from the party who can say with certainty that you and Mr Paggett left the barbecue around eight p.m.’
‘No, it was later than that.’
‘Our witnesses also state that you’d been drinking quite heavily, so perhaps it’s only to be expected that you can’t remember the details of your movements on the night Josh Ainsworth was murdered.’
‘We weren’t drunk,’ Michaela said defiantly. ‘I was driving, so I only had two small glasses of wine.’
‘Then you’d say your memory of the evening is clear?’
Michaela nodded, a flicker of suspicion in her eyes. ‘I didn’t take note of the exact time we left because I had no reason to. But I wasn’t drunk.’
‘That’s good,’ Ferreira said brightly. ‘You’ll be able to explain these comments you made then.’
Michaela stiffened, rose incrementally in her seat for a moment before catching herself and visibly forcing herself to relax again.
Ferreira took out the neighbour’s statement. ‘I quote, “Michaela said, ‘Long Fleet are snatching innocent women out of their beds at night, how do you think they’d like it if we did that to one of them?’”’
Michaela let out a
high peel of laughter, so sudden and unexpected that her solicitor started slightly in the chair next to her.
‘That’s it?’ she asked, incredulous. ‘I make an offhand comment at a party and you drag us in here like dogs.’
‘You and Damien expounded at length to this gentleman about the need for direct action against staff members from Long Fleet Immigration Removal Centre,’ Ferreira said. ‘It was hardly an offhand comment, more of a manifesto.’
‘A statement of intent,’ Zigic suggested.
Michaela turned to him. ‘It speaks.’
Ferreira was reading from the statement again. ‘Damien said, “If you want to effect change you have to do something too big for people to ignore.” Well, we’re paying attention now, Michaela. You’ve got what you wanted.’
‘We did not go anywhere near that doctor,’ Michaela said, overenunciating each word, sitting up straight now with her forearms on the table.
‘Come on, “that doctor”? You know his name,’ Ferreira said smoothly. ‘Josh Ainsworth. You knew where he lived. You knew what he looked like. You were posting targeted hate mail directly through his front door.’
‘That wasn’t us,’ Michaela snapped. ‘I told you already, those fliers are nothing to do with Damien and me.’
‘Then how did one of Damien’s hairs get stuck to one of them?’ Ferreira asked.
Michaela’s face coloured and Zigic knew that look well enough: the expression of a wife who had told her husband to do something the right way a dozen times only to still see him screw it up.
‘Well?’ Ferreira asked. ‘How did it get there?’
She didn’t answer, only ground her jaw and stared hard at Ferreira like she was willing her to disappear.
‘There’s two options I can see – either Damien’s hair got in the pamphlet when he was making them up. And we know that isn’t possible because you’ve just told us he isn’t responsible for them. Or it happened when Damien was inside Josh Ainsworth’s house.’
‘No.’
‘When was he there?’ Ferreira asked.
‘No, this is rubbish.’
‘The pamphlet was in Josh’s office. That’s upstairs in his house – which you’ll probably know already but just for the benefit of the tape. So, did Damien go up there before or after he killed Josh?’
‘Neither of us has been inside his house.’
‘Or maybe you killed Josh and Damien was so repulsed that he ran off upstairs looking for somewhere to be sick and just happened onto Josh’s office and that’s how his hair got there.’
‘For fuck’s sake,’ Michaela shouted. ‘We made the fliers, okay. Jesus, what are you on? We made some fliers and stuck them through his letter box. It isn’t illegal and it doesn’t mean we killed him. Because, obviously, we didn’t.’
‘Obviously?’ Ferreira asked. ‘We’ve got you and Damien planning to kidnap a member of Long Fleet staff four hours before Josh was killed.’
‘That was just talk.’
‘You’ve got a weird concept of small talk,’ Ferreira said. ‘You plan a lot of kidnappings in front of strangers?’
‘Do you understand the difference between saying something and meaning it?’ Michaela asked, her hands cutting down hard on the table as she spoke. ‘We’d never do something like that.’
‘It was just a fantasy?’
‘Not a fantasy, just … some stupid thing Damien said one time.’
Ferreira cocked her head, smiled slightly at Michaela. ‘One time?’
Michaela didn’t answer.
‘We’ve been having a look through your conversations in the Immigration Action group.’
‘That’s a private group,’ Michaela said tersely. ‘Have you hacked it?’
‘We were given access,’ Ferreira told her. ‘And it seems like you and Damien have been working on this kidnapping plot for quite some time.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’ She swallowed hard.
‘From June 12th of this year,’ Ferreira said. ‘Here you are suggesting kidnapping a member of Long Fleet staff and then negotiating a prisoner swap for a woman who was on hunger strike.’
‘That was a joke,’ Michaela said, throwing her hands up.
‘You joke about people on hunger strike?’ Ferreira asked, getting a scowl in response. ‘In the same conversation you outline the challenges of taking a member of the security personnel, and eventually decide that one of the office or medical staff would be easier to snatch. And I quote – “a lot of the guards are ex-forces and filth, they’re going to put up a fight. A doctor or a secretary will be a better option.”’
Michaela’s hands curled into fists on the tabletop and she flattened them out carefully and deliberately.
‘It was just talk,’ she said, her voice low and raw. ‘We were angry about what was happening in there and we were dealing with it by joking. Gallows humour, right? You understand that?’
Zigic folded his hands on the table. ‘You need to think very carefully about what you’re going to do next, Mrs Paggett.’
Her eyes widened. ‘Oh, and here comes the paternalistic routine, encouraging me to confess and apologise and take my punishment.’
‘We all know you’ve been here before,’ Zigic said. ‘You obviously understand how it works. So why don’t you take some time to consider what’s going to be best for you now? Talk to your solicitor, weigh up your options.’ He stood and pushed his chair back under the table. ‘In the meantime, we’re going to speak to Damien, see if he’s a bit more forthcoming.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Damien Paggett was far less composed than his wife. Had drunk two full bottles of water while he waited with his solicitor in the interview room next door and crushed the plastic down into semi-collapsed discs. Zigic read agitation or anger in the action.
Seeing how Damien’s eyes fixed on the camera set high in the corner as Ferreira prepared the tapes, he decided it was most likely fear at work.
Damien picked at the front of his T-shirt, the pink cotton sweaty and sticking to his skin, even though the room was relatively cool. Zigic wondered how he’d managed to survive a decade of protests and arrests, how he’d managed to keep it together when they cut their way through fences and snuck up on people’s houses to vandalise their cars and throw blood on their front doors.
Had Michaela been the driving force? Did she wind him up and set him off, or was it simply that without her at his shoulder he couldn’t properly function? There was always a boss in any criminal partnership, always a sidekick. And usually, when you isolated the latter from the person who provided the brains and the backbone, they cracked.
Ferreira led again, asked the same questions they’d run through with Michaela Paggett about the specifics of their alibi and the conversation with the neighbour at the barbecue.
He gave the same answers. Not word for word but close enough that Zigic suspected they had decided to get their stories straight in readiness for this eventuality.
The kidnapping plan was a joke, he insisted. Just talk. Like you talk about selling everything up and going travelling around the world. Something you would never do.
‘Plenty of people sell up and go travelling,’ Ferreira said. ‘Less actually go through with a kidnapping but the ones who manage it tend to spend a good while on the planning. Just like you have.’
Damien buried his face in his hands and rubbed it until his cheeks were red. He was already jittery, his knees jiggling under the table and his gaze flitting around the room. Every answer he gave was addressed to the walls or the ceiling or the centre of the table between them.
‘We’ve got your DNA inside Josh Ainsworth’s house, Damien,’ Ferreira reminded him.
‘I’m not denying that we’re the ones who made the fliers.’
‘But you were so scrupulous with them,’ Ferreira said, playing up her confusion. ‘I mean, you didn’t leave a single fingerprint anywhere on them, so we know you were wearing gloves – why would you do that?’<
br />
‘Because you have my fingerprints on record,’ he admitted, squirming in his chair.
‘And why would you suppose we’d ever fingerprint the fliers?’
He shrugged one narrow shoulder. ‘I just thought I should be careful.’
‘There’s nothing illegal about putting fliers through someone’s door,’ Ferreira said. ‘So, why would we be checking them for fingerprints?’
He didn’t answer.
‘The only explanation I can see is that you were planning to do something much more serious to Josh Ainsworth, and you didn’t want the fliers to tie back to you.’
‘No,’ he said determinedly. ‘That isn’t what happened. We were worried about being sued for libel.’
Ferreira laughed. ‘Libel? Come on, Damien. You two broke into a fur farm and released a hundred mink. You’re telling me you had the confidence to do that but you were worried about a libel charge?’
‘We were younger then,’ he said, eyes fixed on one of the crushed bottles. ‘We were stupid.’
‘You’re hardly smart now. You’ve been seen hanging around Josh Ainsworth’s house, you’ve made threats, you’ve harassed him. And now we’ve got evidence of you planning to kidnap a member of Long Fleet staff just hours before he was murdered.’ Ferreira tapped her fingertips against the table. ‘What happened, Damien? You got all drunk and pumped up and decided to take a stand?’
‘No.’
‘You thought a doctor would be easier to take down, we know that. But when you got to Josh’s house, you found out he was stronger than you were expecting.’ Ferreira’s voice was soft with regret and understanding, pitched just right. ‘He put up a fight, things got messy and he falls and hits his head. Is that it?’
‘No,’ Damien said, finally looking at her. ‘None of that happened. I’m not a violent person. I believe in direct action but that doesn’t include violence. If we act like that we’re no better than they are.’
‘You think Josh Ainsworth was a bad person?’ Ferreira asked.
