by Eva Dolan
‘I know he was,’ Damien said sternly.
‘Because he worked in Long Fleet? He was a doctor, Damien. Those women need medical care and he was in there trying to help them. Josh Ainsworth was not your enemy, he was your ally. And if you’d taken the time to actually speak to him instead of bombarding him with hate mail, you would have found that out for yourself.’
A wry smile lit his face briefly. ‘Ruby tell you all that, did she?’
‘She was his friend,’ Ferreira said, opening her hands up wide. ‘I’d say she knew him better than you did.’
He nodded to himself. ‘Yeah, okay, right.’
Zigic could see how desperate he was to be prompted and guessed Ferreira could too and that was why she sat back in her chair and made a show of picking something non-existent off her trouser leg.
‘Have you talked to any of the women who left Long Fleet?’ Damien glanced at Zigic and then back to Ferreira, the skin around his eyes tight, nostrils lifted by disgust. ‘No? You didn’t think that might be important? You just talked to a bunch of people who all thought Ainsworth was God’s gift.’
‘Is this your defence?’ Ferreira asked flatly. ‘You’re going to tell us Josh Ainsworth was a piece of shit and he deserved everything you did to him?’
‘We didn’t touch him,’ Damien said. ‘But he did deserve what he got and fair play to whoever did it. You’ve seen the fliers we sent him, where do you think we got that stuff from? Do you think we just made it up?’
‘Yes.’
‘Ainsworth was not a good guy.’
Ferreira rolled her eyes theatrically and Zigic felt the same impulse, seeing where this was going. Damien Paggett trying to draw them away onto someone else just like Michaela had when they first went to speak to them in their workshop and she directed them to Ruby Garrick.
‘Long Fleet made a big song and dance about clearing out all their abusive staff members, but they didn’t get all of them.’ Damien Paggett wet his lips. ‘Ainsworth was just as guilty, but he got the accusations in first so he looked clean.’
Ferreira groaned. ‘This is rubbish, Damien.’
‘No, you look into it and you’ll see I’m right.’
‘Where did you get this from?’ Ferreira asked wearily. ‘We need names.’
‘It’s all online.’
‘Oh, it’s online, is it? Well then, it must be true.’
‘Just because people maintain their anonymity, it doesn’t mean they’re lying,’ he said hotly. ‘They’re scared.’
‘Great, online and anonymous.’ Ferreira smoothed her hand back over her hair and turned to Zigic. ‘Do you want to listen to any more of this?’
‘I don’t think he’s got anything sensible to say,’ Zigic told her and gestured for her to end the interview.
They had Damien Paggett taken back down to the cells and returned to the office.
‘Are we giving any credence to that?’ Ferreira asked, taking out her tobacco and beginning to roll a cigarette.
‘It seems unlikely, doesn’t it?’ Zigic perched on the corner of her desk, remembering the sly expression that had crossed Damien Paggett’s face as he spoke. ‘He was going to tell us that whatever. It’s like he’d worked out a way of shifting attention off him and Michaela, and he was going to run with it regardless of how stupid it was.’
‘The governor purged Long Fleet two years ago. I don’t think Ainsworth would have survived that if he was guilty.’
‘He’s got no evidence,’ Zigic said. ‘If he’d really seen an accusation coming from a reliable source, he would have given us their details.’
‘I’m pretty sure Michaela would have mentioned it too.’
‘There’s no way he knows about it and she doesn’t, if it’s true.’
‘We need to stay on them.’ Ferreira was looking at the private Facebook group, still open on her screen. ‘My guess is it went down how we think. It’s too much of a coincidence that they’d identified a doctor as a good potential target and then Josh is killed.’
‘But we haven’t got enough to hold them.’
‘No,’ she admitted irritably. ‘And without forensics we’re not going to be able to charge them, are we?’
He blew out a frustrated sigh. ‘We need a witness.’
‘I’ll send their photos over to the couple from the holiday let, see if they saw them. It’ll give us a stick to beat them with if nothing else.’ She snatched up her lighter. ‘After I’ve smoked this.’
She left the office and he sat there for a moment, looking at the conversation on her screen, thinking of the lack of forensic evidence at the scene and Damien Paggett’s careful use of latex gloves when he was just making fliers. Had they gone into the house prepared? Covered up to make sure they left nothing of themselves behind?
‘Ziggy.’ Adams gestured at him from his office door. ‘Need the benefit of your experience here.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Adams all but hauled Zigic inside, fizzing with energy as he closed the door and went back around his desk, where a case file was spread out around his lunch. Crime scene photos and an image of the victim: a round-faced teenaged girl with dark brown hair in a high ponytail, the grey and white of a school uniform.
Bobby Wahlia saw Zigic looking at it. ‘Tessa Darby. Murdered in ’98.’
He remembered the case, or rather her murder. Back in ’98 he hadn’t signed on yet, was just out of university and taking a gap year, doing field work out on the fens to get some money together so he could start his adult life on the right footing. He’d been living in a shared house in Wisbech with three Polish guys. Grafting hard and drinking too much, getting into fights he gradually started to win, getting hardened when he didn’t need to be but wanting it all the same. To prove what kind of man he was.
Tessa Darby had been a few years younger than him, a student at the city tech college, and her murder was so high profile in Peterborough it even came to dominate the conversation of the migrant workers isolated on the outskirts. What they would like to do to the man who killed her. How he should suffer. How the English didn’t punish the beasts in their midst properly.
A beautiful girl, they’d all said sadly. As if it doubled the tragedy. Such a waste.
‘Sit down,’ Adams said impatiently.
He drew a chair up to the desk.
‘Why are you looking at this case?’ Zigic asked Wahlia. ‘It’s closed. Someone confessed. One of her friends or something. He went down for it.’
‘Yeah,’ Adams answered, before Bobby could. ‘And you know who another one of her friends was? Lee Walton.’
Zigic took a deep breath, trying to dampen the agitation he felt stirring in his gut.
‘Right, okay. So she knew Walton. But someone still confessed.’
‘Fuck me, Ziggy, you know as well as I do how easy it is to get a confession out of someone.’
Zigic laughed, humourlessly. ‘If it’s that easy why do you have two open murders on the boards out there? Just pick a suspect and make them confess.’ He swore under his breath, started to stand up.
‘There’s more to this,’ Wahlia said.
Zigic stopped. Bobby wasn’t stupid and he didn’t have the handicap of ego that Adams carried. If he’d seen some possibility in this case, then Zigic needed to listen.
‘First thing I went looking for was Walton’s victim type,’ Wahlia said. ‘Maybe that’s an imperfect method but we all know he doesn’t deviate from that type. At least not in the cases we’re aware of.’ He crossed his legs, curled his hand around his ankle, thumb tapping the heel of his red suede trainers. ‘And I’m not a psychiatrist or a profiler or anything flash like that, but even I know a serial predator with a type has a original victim who defined his choices.’
‘Tessa Darby could be Sadie Ryan’s sister,’ Adams said. ‘She’s in intensive care, by the way. In case you hadn’t heard. Overdosed after she found out Walton was on the street.’ He gestured at Zigic. ‘Just so you appreciate the st
akes here.’
‘I appreciate the stakes,’ Zigic said coldly. ‘You’re not the only person who worked that case. It’s not your special preserve to care about it.’
Adams just nodded at him, a look in his eye that was almost admiring, and Zigic silently cursed himself for rising to the bait.
‘Can I go on now?’ Wahlia asked. ‘So, we’re not only looking at Walton’s victim type but she was also strangled –’
‘Which we know he’s a fan of too,’ Adams interjected.
‘Was she raped?’ Zigic asked.
Wahlia shook his head. ‘No sign of sexual activity.’
‘This is likely to be Walton’s first victim,’ Adams said quickly, because he knew this deviation from Walton’s MO was a stumbling block almost as big as the fact that another man had confessed to the crime. ‘We see this a lot when serial predators start out. First time, they can’t perform or they don’t even totally understand that the aggressive impulse they’re feeling is sexual. So we just get murder from him this time.’
‘Say you’re right about all of that,’ Zigic said, looking at Tessa Darby’s photograph. ‘You still have a confession, which you’re prepared to disregard just because we need to send Walton down again. And I get it, we do need that. But I don’t think this is the case.’
Adams turned to Wahlia. ‘Give us a minute will you, mate.’
‘Sure.’
As Bobby closed the door behind him, Adams leaned across the desk, elbows on his paperwork.
‘You want to know what the full stakes are here, Ziggy?’ he asked, with a studied calm. ‘Walton was outside Mel’s flat last night. He was waiting for her when she came home.’
The news hit him like a blow.
All day she’d been carrying that and going on with work like usual, and he hadn’t even seen it.
‘Is she okay?’
‘She’s fine. He didn’t do anything, he just wants to know where his girlfriend and kid are and he thinks Mel can tell him.’
‘You need to go to Riggott with this right now.’
Adams threw his hands up. ‘And what do you think he’s going to do about it? Walton hasn’t committed an offence. Even if he goes back there every night for a year, it’s only going to be considered stalking and you know how that goes.’ He stabbed his finger at Zigic. ‘No, we need to deal with him.’
‘By pinning a murder on him?’ Zigic asked, incredulous. ‘Are you listening to yourself? This is insanity. Someone confessed. And even if you’re right and Walton did kill that girl, and we can prove it, how long’s that going to take? Meanwhile he’s out there stalking Mel. We need to tell Riggott.’
‘And what if it was your wife he was coming after?’ Adams growled. ‘Wouldn’t you want to take care of the problem yourself?’
For a surreal moment Zigic thought he was proposing a more radical solution. Half expected him to take a couple of balaclavas out of his desk drawer.
Adams wasn’t shy of violence. A few years back he’d shot a suspect dead as the man held a gun to Zigic’s head, and the killing didn’t seem to faze Adams one bit. He holidayed on his forced leave, strutted back into work like the hero the whole station thought he was. And Zigic was grateful for his cold-bloodedness in the instant, but he knew that if it had happened the other way around, he wouldn’t have been able to brush off the guilt so quickly.
If he’d do that for a fellow officer he didn’t much like, how far would Adams go to protect his girlfriend?
Zigic moved towards the door. ‘I’m talking to Riggott.’
Adams darted over and dragged him back, stronger than he looked, propelled by the fear and anger so intensely drawn on his face that Zigic didn’t fight him.
‘Mel’s staying at mine. She won’t be on her own,’ Adams said. ‘I can protect her.’
Could he?
‘Let’s give it a few days, alright?’ Adams moved into negotiating mode and Zigic realised then just how desperate he was. ‘See if there’s any play in this Tessa Darby case. You know Bobby’s got good instincts. This could be all we need.’
Zigic felt himself softening slightly. Because he knew Adams was right, that they weren’t going to stop Walton with a friendly warning. He’d been attacking women with impunity for years. Been in and out of the interview rooms, always ready with an alibi, delivered in such a way as to make it clear to them that not only was it a lie, but that he knew they knew it and they couldn’t do a thing to get his girlfriend to retract it. And now he’d escaped prison he would be feeling invincible.
‘Alright,’ he said. ‘Give me the file.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Ferreira was beginning to feel a twinge of guilt about the tedious nature of the work she was dumping on Parr and Bloom, as a day largely spent on the soul-sapping, eyeball-drying work of watching CCTV footage had now become two days, only broken by an occasional stint sifting through phone records or credit card statements.
As she watched them from across the office, she thought it might be a good idea to take them out to the pub at the end of shift. Colleen as well, who was taking an afternoon tea break and swiping through profile pics on Tinder, doing it so slowly that Ferreira suspected she was actually giving each one full consideration. A few drinks would do her good, a bit of karaoke, which Colleen harboured a not-so-secret love for. As well as a set of lungs that could sandblast the paint off a boat.
But as she was mentally running through the options of where to go, she realised she wouldn’t be doing anything tonight but waiting for Billy and heading home with him. As much as she hated the idea of having even a single evening of her life dictated by Lee Walton, she knew that for now the wisest course of action was the most paranoid one.
She’d agreed a safe and sedate catch-up with Kate Jenkins at her house next weekend, promised she’d bring dessert. Hadn’t told Billy yet that it would be a couples thing. Or that he’d be making the dessert. This was more uncharted territory for them but Kate’s husband was a nice enough bloke, funny and smart and a big boxing fan, so she figured they would have something to chat about.
Parr got up from his chair and began to execute a series of side stretches with a perfectly straight face, seemingly unaware of the smiles he was raising from the surrounding desks. With a small, satisfied grunt he sat down again.
Ferreira shook her head and went back to Michaela Paggett’s last arrest report: a caution she’d taken for assaulting a demonstrator outside her local polling station during the recent council elections. It was little more than a shove and when Ferreira checked out the guy she’d injured, she found a similar history of agitating in his record.
‘What about this one?’ Colleen asked abruptly, turning her phone to Ferreira.
She leaned over her desk and looked at the photograph of a bloke that might have been lifted from an erectile dysfunction advert. All teeth and hair and leathery tan.
‘He looks like someone who murders rich older women for their life insurance.’
‘Joke’s on him then,’ Colleen said. ‘I’m brassic.’
A text vibrated Ferreira’s phone and she saw that the couple from the holiday let next door to Josh Ainsworth had finally picked up the message she’d sent them an hour ago – the Paggetts’ photographs and a query about whether they’d seen them.
They’d hadn’t. Sorry. Wish we could be more helpful.
She swore under her breath.
She was thinking about running a second set of door-to-doors in Long Fleet with their photos, see if they could build a pattern of loitering for the Paggetts. It would be thin and barely even circumstantial but it would be something. And, she figured, some of the locals who said they’d seen nothing might actually remember these two, as distinctive as they looked.
‘Him?’ Colleen asked, brandishing her phone at Ferreira again.
This one’s teeth were a slightly more natural colour, but there was a hardness around his eyes and a shallowness to his smile that she didn’t like.
‘He’s a bit EDL, Col.’
Murray sighed and picked up her Poldark mug. ‘This one?’
‘You know my feelings on Poldark.’
‘This job’s warped you,’ Murray said, tossing her phone aside.
‘No, I was definitely warped before I got here,’ Ferreira told her.
‘How did you manage to date when you don’t trust anyone?’ Murray asked, exasperated. ‘They can’t all be pieces of shit.’
Ferreira just shrugged, wasn’t about to admit that she’d always been on high alert, always prepared for the man she was with to snap and reveal some side of himself he’d managed to hide through drinks in the pub and the journey back to his place or her own.
She returned to Michaela Paggett’s arrest record, more of the same stuff, going back twelve years, and as she read it she kept thinking about what Murray had said and realised she was pushing away an instinct she didn’t want to admit to.
Damien Paggett’s accusation about Josh Ainsworth was playing on her mind, had been from the moment he tossed it at them across the interview-room table.
She didn’t believe it.
Knew exactly what Paggett was trying to do.
But some small part of her was wondering …
Everything she’d seen about Long Fleet suggested that the house clearing by the new governor had been deep and wide-ranging, the abuse problem so thoroughly entrenched that the only proper way to deal with it was sacking everyone who was implicated. Ainsworth had been a key informer according to the other medical staff, whose own testimonies backed him up.
If Ainsworth was anything but an absolute paragon of virtue, he wouldn’t have survived that purge, would he? His own accusations would have triggered counter-accusations if he was guilty. And the governor would have been forced to thoroughly investigate or risk sacking people on tainted evidence. Opening the company up to wrongful dismissal suits and tribunals that might go embarrassingly public.
The problem was they couldn’t get access to any of the reports around the purge, couldn’t speak to any of the sacked employees because they simply didn’t know who they were.
