by Eva Dolan
But he couldn’t.
Last night he’d gone through the entire file twice, concentrating on the eyewitness reports and the statements from Tessa Darby’s friends and family. There was nothing conclusive in any of it. Her killer – Cooper, the young man who confessed – was known to her, was said by a couple of her friends to be obsessed with her, but there was no hard evidence of that and a handwritten note suggested that the friends were not as close to Tessa as they made out. Not according to her family anyway.
‘I think,’ Zigic said slowly, ‘that if it wasn’t for the confession, Lee Walton would have been looked at a lot more carefully than he was.’
‘They dropped the ball, right?’ Adams’s face lit up, the relief obvious. ‘Tessa’s boyfriend’s in the frame until his mate Walton gives him an alibi. Then when they realise those two’s story isn’t going to crack, they just turn all their focus onto this stupid lad who confesses.’
‘What about the boyfriend?’ Zigic asked, stirring a couple of sugars into his coffee. ‘It’s way more likely Walton was covering for him than the other way around.’
‘Boyfriend’s dead. Army, got blown up in Iraq a few years back.’ Adams dismissed him with a vague gesture. ‘But the way I see it, soldier boy knows he’s bang in the frame – he’s the boyfriend, we always suspect the boyfriend – so he begs his mate to give him an alibi. Inadvertently alibiing Walton who actually killed her.’
Across the cafeteria a woman called out Zigic’s number and he put a hand up. They fell silent as she came over and placed his breakfast on the table in front of him.
‘There’s nothing to tie this bloke Cooper to the murder at all,’ Adams said.
‘Except that he confessed.’
Adams shot him an awkward smile. ‘Except that, yeah.’
‘So why do you think he confessed if he didn’t do it?’ Zigic asked, genuinely curious, and started on his bacon butty.
‘Two options. First one, coercion.’
Zigic swallowed hard, his food moving painfully down his throat. He took a mouthful of coffee.
‘You accept that’s an option, then?’ he asked.
‘Yeah, of course I do,’ Adams said with a shrug. ‘But let’s come back to that. Or –’
‘Because you understand what’s going to happen if we find evidence of coercion?’
Adams glared at him. ‘I understood it the second I read the fucking file, same as you did.’
Zigic nodded for him to continue.
‘Second, better option: Cooper wasn’t quite the full ticket and maybe he was obsessed with Tessa and maybe he somehow, in his confused, not particularly sharp mind, convinced himself he did kill her.’ Adams was trying to sell the idea too hard because nobody who’d looked over the file would ever buy it. ‘We don’t know, maybe he’d thought about killing her before? Maybe all that got jumbled up in his head and then she’s dead and he feels guilty and he can’t tell reality from imagination any more.’
Zigic wiped his mouth on a paper napkin, pushed the empty plate aside.
‘You just inhaled that butty, mate. Anna not feeding you?’
‘We need to cut out this second option rubbish,’ Zigic said firmly. ‘Because if we’re going to pursue this we need to be honest with ourselves about the potential consequences.’
All the jitteriness flooded back into Adams.
And Zigic could understand it. He’d felt the same surge of anxiety and adrenaline when he opened the file and saw DCS Riggott’s name all over it. DCI Riggott back then. Leading an investigation that went high profile instantly, under pressure to get a fast and clean result before people started asking too many questions about the safety of women and girls in the city. Before they started drawing the conclusion that falling police numbers were endangering them and everyone else.
Riggott’s reputation had always been that of an officer who knew how to get a conviction. Tough, they said. Sharp. Not above bending the rules when it was necessary.
But even twenty years ago the rules were strict enough that you could only bend them so far. Whatever Riggott might have been morally capable of, the station should have held him in check.
Theoretically.
‘If Riggott finds out we’re sniffing around one of his old cases …’
‘I know,’ Adams said uneasily. ‘But that doesn’t mean we stop. We just need to tread carefully for a bit.’ He straightened up where he sat, regathered himself. ‘No point poking the bear until we have to, right?’
‘We can only go so far before we start making noise,’ Zigic pointed out. ‘Not very far at all.’
‘You’d be surprised how much you can achieve off-book.’
Zigic shook his head at Adams, wondered if it was bravado or naïveté. ‘We’ve got a couple of days, tops, before someone leaks this to Riggott.’
‘Better make them count then, Ziggy.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Back to Long Fleet.
No preamble this time. Minimal niceties.
Straight into the governor’s office where the air conditioning was running full blast, creating a distracting background hum and rippling the fronds of the fern James Hammond had placed on the corner of his desk. Its leaves had been recently misted, the smell of damp soil in the air, along with the smoked fishiness of lapsang souchong, which always made Ferreira gag.
Hammond took it in a china cup and saucer, which sat on a dainty silver tray. The sparkling glass teapot next to them functioned like a stink bomb.
Ferreira chose the seat furthest away from it, noticing Zigic wrinkle his nose as he moved in to sit.
‘So,’ he said. ‘Tell us about the woman who Joshua Ainsworth attacked.’
Hammond chewed on it for a few seconds, an over-deep frown wrinkling his chin and cutting a line between his fine blond eyebrows. He’d been expecting the question, Ferreira realised with a start.
‘We didn’t entirely believe the accusation.’ Hammond reached out to straighten his pen and the notepad he’d ripped a page off and binned as they walked in. ‘But given the potential for negative press, we thought it was better to err on the side of caution and suggest Josh resigned.’
‘You need transparency for negative press,’ Ferreira said.
‘Why would Ainsworth agree to resign if he was being falsely accused?’ Zigic asked, his attention fixed firmly on Hammond.
‘I think he was coming naturally to the end of his time here,’ Hammond said. ‘It wasn’t how any of us would have chosen to lose him, but we gave him a glowing reference and a respectable severance package.’
‘Is that how you deal with all your accused sex offenders?’ Ferreira asked. ‘Burnish their CV and give them a bucket of cash?’
Hammond glared at her. ‘As I said, Sergeant Ferreira, I didn’t believe the accusation had merit.’
‘Did you explain that to Ainsworth?’
He shook his head. ‘That would just have complicated matters.’
‘It must have been very confusing to him then,’ Zigic suggested.
Hammond cupped his hands in front of him on the desk. ‘He wasn’t happy about the resignation request, no. He denied the accusation vehemently. He was absolutely mortified to have that said about him after everything that had happened here under the previous regime.’ Hammond sighed. ‘Perversely, I think that made it an easier decision for him. He’d given a lot to this place; as he saw it, he’d been instrumental in making our ladies safer, and then one of them made this accusation about him. I think, possibly, he felt there was a lack of gratitude from them. And, probably, from me, because he didn’t receive immediate, unequivocal support.’ For a moment he looked queasy. ‘But when an accusation is made, I have to investigate it whether I believe it has merit or not.’
It didn’t make sense, Ferreira thought. A spotless track record derailed by one accusation. An accusation that Hammond claimed he didn’t trust.
‘Had there been any other accusations against him in the past?’
; ‘No, none. As I told you on your last visit, he was very well liked.’
Zigic scratched his beard. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Hammond, but this doesn’t make much sense. You believed Ainsworth was innocent and yet you sacked him –’
‘Asked him to resign.’
‘Semantics don’t really figure here,’ Zigic said. ‘There must have been something to the woman’s accusation.’
‘Or maybe you wanted Ainsworth out for another reason,’ Ferreira suggested.
Hammond dragged his hands off the desk into his lap, the small movements through his shoulders giving away how nervously he was twisting his fingers together.
‘Fine,’ he said bitterly. ‘He’s dead now so I don’t suppose it matters. Frankly, I thought there may have been some merit to the accusation. We had very little evidence either way. It was simply her word against his, but Josh had been such a vocal accuser of other people over the preceding years that I began to wonder if he wasn’t doing that to cover for his own bad behaviour.’
Ferreira nodded, more to herself than him. She heard the pretence drop out of his voice, replaced by a slightly ragged and exasperated edge.
‘It isn’t the most fair or rigorous way of dealing with an accusation,’ he admitted. ‘And if it had ever come out, we’d have probably been in trouble. But my gut told me to listen to this particular young woman.’
His gaze drifted into middle distance for a moment.
‘We need to speak to the woman,’ Zigic told him.
Hammond’s attention snapped back onto him, his face shutting down, going back into professional mode. ‘I’m not sure that’s possible.’
‘Is she still in the facility?’
‘I’m afraid I can’t give you that information.’
‘You must understand how important it is that we speak to her,’ Zigic said, frustrated. ‘She’s one of the few people who can give us a direct insight into Ainsworth’s behaviour.’
‘You can’t seriously be suggesting she’s a suspect.’
‘I’m not suggesting that,’ Zigic said. ‘It’s very hard to consider what her position might be until we know if she’s still in here or not.’
Hammond reiterated his position, speaking slowly, and Ferreira half listened to his explanation of data protection and human rights, managed not to jump on him at that last one. She heard the stirring of fear under the arrogance in his voice, as if he realised he’d given too much away now for them to simply back down and forget about it.
Zigic went into politician mode, promising discretion and tact, that nothing he told them would be leaked to the press or used in official briefing statements. It was what Hammond wanted to hear but Ferreira doubted it was enough to assuage him.
Hammond was running a fiefdom here, backed by a board of directors who had likely not set foot in the place since the groundbreaking ceremony held for the trade papers. People whose main interest was the bottom line and secondary to that, what needed to be done to keep things running smoothly and their company’s name out of the headlines.
He’d made a unilateral decision on Joshua Ainsworth’s guilt. Just the same as he had with all the abusers and enablers he’d sacked when he started at Long Fleet.
She knew it was wrong but she couldn’t help but feel envious of the power he had.
He saw guilt, he took action. And for all they knew, as long as he refused to hand over his files, there was ample evidence of that guilt.
The more defensive he became about Ainsworth the more convinced she was that the evidence on him must exist. Because how bad would it look if it came out now via a murder investigation?
Especially since he’d made Ainsworth’s testimony the backbone of the wave of firings he had initiated. It threw all of that into question. Opened them up to wrongful dismissal suits and civil action. Gave fuel to Long Fleet’s critics, the ones who had consistently questioned the lack of transparency and oversight.
‘You have to understand, Mr Hammond,’ Zigic said blandly. ‘We now have a former member of your staff making insinuations about Josh Ainsworth on social media. This is a man who was sacked as a result of Ainsworth’s testimony against him.’
Hammond blanched.
‘The sooner we close this case, the less damage you’ll see done to your reputation here.’
‘Ainsworth being murdered by a disgruntled ex-employee is way less embarrassing than a former inmate who you allowed to be abused by him seeking her revenge,’ Ferreira suggested. ‘But until we can investigate those former employees – the ones Ainsworth informed on – well, we have to assume this woman might be responsible.’
Hammond was stony-faced. ‘I categorically cannot give you a list of former employees.’
‘We’ll find out who they are sooner or later,’ Zigic warned him. ‘And it’s going to cause a lot more noise us digging around and making public appeals.’
Ferreira turned towards him. ‘We could use that hidden camera footage – pick out all their faces, have it shown on the local news.’
‘And the national,’ Zigic agreed. ‘Those men could be working anywhere, we’d need national coverage.’
Hammond’s head was hanging now, the inevitability of it so clear that he couldn’t deny it to himself any longer.
‘We would rather do this discreetly,’ Zigic said. ‘Believe me, we’re aware of how important the work you do here is.’
Ferreira just managed to stop herself scoffing at that.
‘Nobody wants this to get ugly,’ Zigic went on. ‘If you can give us what we need, I promise to you we’ll make every effort to do our job as quietly as possible.’
‘Alright, Inspector,’ Hammond said, the merest hint of ire in his tone. ‘I’ll get you the records. And, the other matter … that’s a little more complicated, but leave it with me.’
Zigic stood, held his hand out. ‘Very much appreciated, Mr Hammond.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
‘So Ainsworth attacked someone?’ Keri Bloom asked, shocked and perplexed by the sudden revelation, just as Zigic had been when Hammond unburdened himself in his office. ‘What does this mean for us?’
‘It means we have a potential suspect if the woman’s been released from Long Fleet,’ Zigic told her. ‘But we still don’t know if she has been, so for now we’re going to be concentrating on the former guards who were sacked as a result of Ainsworth informing on them.’
‘How do we know he wasn’t lying about all of that?’ Rob Weller asked, tapping a pen against his desk. ‘If he was at it, maybe he lied to cover for himself.’
‘There’s recorded evidence of abuses,’ Ferreira said, giving him a look that could have stripped his skin from his flesh. ‘You saw the footage. That isn’t up for debate.’
‘And it doesn’t alter the fact that those employees have a strong motive for going after Ainsworth,’ Zigic reminded him. ‘They lost their jobs, they were outed as predators. These are people with an axe to grind and we need to track them down and question each and every one of them.’
Hammond had emailed them the list of former employees and it was up on the board now, twelve fresh names in the persons-of-interest column, printed in angry block capitals by Ferreira. Ten men, two women. All guards.
‘You need to divide them up and get around to them today,’ she said. ‘Sooner we know where we are the sooner we can discount or dive deeper into this lot.’
‘Alright,’ Zigic said, clapping his hands. ‘You know what to do. Get on it.’
He walked away from the board, heading for the door with his keys in his hand.
Ferreira caught up to him at the stairwell. ‘Where are you going?’
‘Family stuff. I’ll be as quick as I can.’
It should have been family stuff, he thought, as he turned onto Thorpe Road, heading in the direction of the school where Anna would already have arrived with the boys done up in their smartest clothes, told to be on best behaviour; she believed in always being early for things. It would have been easy to s
low and turn down the tree-lined driveway, call her and apologise for everything and ask her to wait for him before she went in to plead her case before the headmistress.
But he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Knew he was going to fight this to the bitter end.
Because he couldn’t stand ten or fifteen years of Anna’s sanctimonious, superior parents rubbing his nose in his inability to pay for his children to have the kind of education he didn’t even want for them. Every holiday he’d be reminded of it, every birthday, every new term when their money would fly into the school’s bank account, he would have to deal with their smug faces, even if he didn’t actually see them. He would know they were at home, delighting in their act of charity, congratulating themselves on the good sense of their investments and the efficacy of their tax planning.
He kept his eyes on the car in front of him as he passed the turning to the school, kept driving with the temptation to turn around gradually fading the further across the city he went, until he was pulling up outside a bungalow in Fletton and all that was left of it was a faint hint of regret buried deep in his chest.
Adams had already arrived, was standing talking to a woman with a pair of dachshunds on the small area of scrubby parkland at the centre of the development, under a tree that looked so dry Zigic half expected it to spontaneously combust. Adams was smiling and squatting down, fussing the animals while the woman talked. Even from a distance of twenty metres, Zigic could see she was flirting with him.
The address they wanted was a couple of doors along the road and Zigic eyed it from inside the car, knowing this estate was patrolled by a particularly attentive neighbourhood-watch scheme and that anyone lingering on the paths would soon come to their attention.
It was a 1960s bungalow, hard grey bricks and metal window frames that had been repainted a disconcerting shade of blue, in contrast to the brilliant white of the surrounding properties. The front garden was untended, had been a single gravelled parking space at some point in the past but was now mostly weeds, or more charitably an urban wildflower meadow, Zigic thought, given the preponderance of dandelions and thistles.
