by Eva Dolan
Ferreira made a note and stuck it to Keri Bloom’s desk for Monday morning, straightened up, sucking her teeth.
‘We need those fucking samples.’
‘It’s the weekend, Mel. Some people have them off, remember.’
‘They must have an emergency number.’ She slipped into her seat and started tapping at her keyboard. ‘All of those DNA tests going out to peoples’ houses … how don’t we see murders about this on a weekly basis?’
‘I guess most people keep the results to themselves,’ Zigic said, swivelling to consider the board. ‘But looking at how close this has come to Ainsworth’s return from his holiday, it can’t be coincidence.’
‘No,’ Ferreira agreed. ‘The lab’s website promises a forty-eight-hour turnaround so Ainsworth sent the test in within a couple of days of coming home.’
‘We need to pin down exactly what he was doing between landing and getting killed,’ Zigic said, looking at the yawning chasm those days presented.
Without Ainsworth’s devices they’d found it nearly impossible to ascertain what he’d been doing with himself in the days just before his death. His neighbour wasn’t nosy enough and Portia Collingwood apparently didn’t go in for conversation, simply turned up at his door for sex and left when she’d had it.
Somebody must know, Zigic thought.
He hadn’t locked himself away for four days straight, had he?
At some point he’d met the mother of this child, been given a swab of DNA to send in with his own. Meaning she wanted him to be the father of her child. For financial or emotional reasons, they wouldn’t know until they identified her.
Or was it Ainsworth who wanted to prove his paternity? Claim the rights he was due under law.
And where was the other man in all of this?
Nervously waiting for them to knock on his door and start asking questions he would have no good answers to?
DAY SIX
SUNDAY AUGUST 12TH
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Ferreira lay on the sofa, flicking through a magazine from the Sunday paper. There was nothing much in it but she couldn’t seem to hold her attention on anything more substantial than photographs and snippets of anodyne text. The book she was reading was splayed on the coffee table exactly where she’d left it last night, and even television felt like too much of an effort. She’d scrolled through the channels, settling on one thing for a few minutes before switching again, couldn’t find anything she wanted to watch among the programmes she’d saved on Billy’s planner.
No matter what she tried to concentrate on, her brain kept circling back to Billy and Zigic and what they were doing about Walton.
Last night she and Billy had gone out to the little cinema in Stamford he liked and watched some French film she knew he didn’t want to see but which she would normally have enjoyed. All through it she was aware of him glancing over and checking on her, hardly seeming to watch the screen. And then, afterwards in the cellar bar with all the other couples who looked just like them, he’d been too close and attentive, as if he thought Walton was in there somewhere, waiting to pounce.
They’d played nice with each other. Been kind. Talked about the film and the setting, about taking a couple of days in Paris between Christmas and New Year even though they both knew it would be impossible in that dead time that seemed to send people for each other’s throats. But they’d pretended all the same, taking comfort in the pretence of normality.
Later in the darkened confines of the car, speeding down the A1, he reached across for her hand, ‘I don’t want to lose you, Mel.’
Out of nowhere she’d felt tears welling up and all she could do was squeeze his hand and let her silence stand in for the gratitude she couldn’t express.
He was doing something stupid and probably dangerous and almost definitely reckless for her, and she decided she would hold on to that. Stop and think about it every time she wanted to fly at him.
Because she realised now that she would do the same for him if it came down to it, and how would she feel to have the gesture thrown back in her face?
He returned from the kitchen with a cold bottle of beer and handed it to her.
‘Where’s yours?’ she asked.
‘I’ve got to nip out for a bit,’ he said. ‘Hour. Two, tops. You going to be alright?’
She bit back the urge to ask him if she needed to barricade the door while he was gone or which kitchen knife he thought would be best to defend herself with.
Instead she smiled. ‘I’ll be fine.’
When the front door closed she took a long drink of beer, washing away all the questions she’d wanted to ask him. She went to Netflix and found a big, dumb action film she’d seen a dozen times before, put it on and let it melt her brain.
As the film’s ‘all is lost’ moment approached, her mobile rang – Lee Walton’s ex-girlfriend.
The sight of her name on the screen set Ferreira’s heart racing and for a moment she considered not answering it, knowing it wouldn’t be anything good, nothing she could actually help with. But she owed Dani an ear at the very least.
‘Dani, what’s up?’
‘Lee’s out,’ she said, her voice shaking. ‘Why didn’t you tell me? What are you playing at leaving it down to my mum to call me?’
‘You’re not supposed to be in contact with your family,’ Ferreira reminded her. ‘We discussed this, remember? If they know where you are, then Lee can find you.’
‘How am I supposed to not talk to my mum?’ she demanded.
In the background Ferreira could hear the regular beeping of a supermarket checkout. Was Dani seriously making this call in the middle of her food shop?
‘Good thing I am still talking to Mum,’ she said. ‘You obviously weren’t going to tell me he’s innocent.’
‘He’s not innocent! You know that.’
‘ I –’
‘He got out on a technicality,’ Ferreira said, as slowly and calmly as she could manage. ‘He’s still guilty. You always knew he was.’
‘No, you twisted everything and made me think he was. You lot have always had it in for him.’
‘He’s a serial rapist, Dani.’
‘No, you tricked me,’ she snapped. ‘He warned me. He kept telling me what you what were like and it was true. You fitted him up. I saw the news – I just bloody googled it – he’s in the paper!’
Ferreira took a deep breath, tried to find the right words to make her understand when all she wanted to do was scream at the woman to think clearly for once in her life.
‘I knew he never did it,’ Dani said, as the tannoy in the background blared incoherently.
‘Listen to me, Lee is guilty. He’s only out because someone at the lab misrepresented their qualifications. It doesn’t change what you know about him. It doesn’t change that you gave him false alibis for the times he was out raping women. Or that those women still identified him.’
‘They were lying.’
‘You think all of them were lying?’ Ferreira asked, incredulous. ‘All of those women decided to tell exactly the same lie?’
‘You probably told them to lie and say it was him so you could put him away,’ Dani’s voice was going higher and tighter. ‘You made me leave my home and come to this bloody place –’
‘We’re trying to protect you.’
‘Why would I need protecting if Lee was locked up? You knew he was going to be released and you just didn’t want us to be together.’
She was babbling now, breathless and near hysterical.
‘Lee beat you,’ Ferreira reminded her, remembering the tearful conversation they’d had, the visit to the hospital Ferreira had made, seeing Dani lying in bed with Lee at her side, remembered how pathetically grateful the woman had looked for the few kind words he threw her. All spoken for the police’s benefit, a way of showing them how completely he owned her and how cheaply her compliance was bought.
‘I can’t believe I let you do this to me,’
Dani said wretchedly, a cry from the gut. ‘He loves me.’
‘He put you in the fucking hospital,’ Ferreira said. ‘More than once.’
‘You’re just jealous.’
‘For Christ’s sake, Dani, please. Would you –’
Dani ended the call.
Ferreira swore at the dead screen and the action frozen on the television and the sheer, unfathomable stupidity and weirdness of other people’s abusive, shitty relationships.
She took a couple of deep, calming breaths and when that didn’t work, she drained the last of her beer, then called Dani back.
The phone only rang twice, long enough for her to know that the call had been seen and rejected.
Dani would be phoning Lee now, she guessed. Begging his forgiveness and telling him she couldn’t live without him, blaming everything on Ferreira and the rest of them. And Walton would lap it up, say whatever he needed to in order to get Dani and his son back home, which would be very little. He’d probably just whistle to her like a whipped dog.
Dani had been abused and manipulated and was unable to think for herself. But she’d been given another chance, an opportunity to start her life afresh away from him, make a safe home for her son, and she was going to throw it all away. How could she do that to her child?
At the back of Ferreira’s mind, a hard voice, the voice of self-preservation, said, ‘So, let her come home to him, it’ll get him off your back.’
She didn’t want to listen to it.
Her job was as often about protecting people from themselves as much as from others. But sometimes you failed in the face of their overwhelming urge towards self-destruction.
There was absolutely nothing she could do to stop Dani coming home.
All she could do, all any of them seemed able to do where Walton was concerned, was wait for him to react in his entirely predictable way and then clean up the mess he’d leave behind.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Zigic spotted Adams’s car parked at the bottom of Station Road where the narrow lane became a farm track, heading into open countryside and Ferry Meadows beyond it. Adams had wanted to come to the house but Zigic told him he had Anna’s family around, insisted they meet here. Now he was regretting it.
It felt so inescapably illicit. Would look deeply suspect to any of the neighbours who might see him ambling down the road, trying to be nonchalant. If he saw himself heading for that swanky black Audi, he’d probably think he was buying coke.
And that would be less dangerous, less stupid than what he was actually up to.
He got into the passenger side, found Adams had left a padded envelope waiting for him on the dashboard, nothing written on it, sealed and taped for extra protection. An unnecessary precaution given that the chain of evidence was not a factor here.
Zigic stared at the envelope, sitting there so innocuously. It was the kind that Anna received little handmade decorative objects from Etsy in. But this one held a sample of DNA on a scrap of fabric from the cardigan of a murdered girl. A scrap that had been safely filed away in police evidence up until this morning.
‘Don’t ask how I got it,’ Adams said. ‘Best you don’t know.’
‘Attempting to give me plausible deniability would be a thoughtful gesture if I wasn’t taking it for an illegal off-site DNA test,’ Zigic said, unable to tear his eyes from it but unwilling to actually take hold of the thing.
There was still a chance to back away.
Adams held out a piece of paper with a mobile number on it. ‘Forty-eight-hour turnaround; it’s as quick as I could get.’
‘You could have given them it yourself,’ Zigic said, reluctantly taking the slip of paper. ‘It’s your contact we’re using.’
Adams smiled, both of them aware of why he was insisting Zigic take it in. Both their hands would be dirtied, no going back, no turning on each other. They would stand or fall together.
He could walk away, he thought. Leave the envelope untouched, nothing to tie him to this, not even a single stray fingerprint. Adams would be pissed off but he’d continue alone and get whatever result or punishment was at the end of the process. If he was right Walton would go down and Ferreira would be safe and everyone would breathe a sigh of relief. If he was wrong no one would be any the wiser.
Zigic thought of Tessa Darby’s mother, bereaved and retraumatised by their visit; Sadie Ryan in hiding after her suicide attempt, her family terrified she would try again. All the victims waiting to see if Lee Walton would come for his revenge.
This was an ugly way of getting justice, he thought bitterly.
Taking a deep breath, he picked up the envelope. It was almost weightless, so light and insubstantial it seemed impossible that it held the potential to end both of their careers and maybe even land them in prison.
There would be no compromised lab to spring them, either.
But he had it in his hand now and as much as his head was pounding and his gut screaming at him to be smart about this, he knew he would be no kind of copper if he didn’t follow through on what they’d started.
‘How much does he want?’
‘She doesn’t need paying,’ Adams said. ‘She owes me a favour.’
Zigic climbed out of the car, unwilling to hear any more of this, and walked back up the lane, fighting the fear that told him to fling the envelope over the hedgerow and into the field opposite his house, let it sit there and rot safely back into the earth. Instead he went upstairs and placed it inside an evidence bag, then tucked it away at the back of his wardrobe, ready to be retrieved later this afternoon when Anna’s family were gone and he could slip out to meet Adams’s contact.
Through the bedroom window he could see Anna sitting next to her mother at the table, Emily in her lap. The three of them were staying safely under the broad canvas umbrella while her father added another layer of sun damage to the leathery finish of his arms and face, standing at the barbecue, turning the sausages the Healeys had brought from their local butcher, who was so much better than the one they used.
Everything about Mr and Mrs Healeys’ life was superior to the one he could provide for his family, even down to the quality of the meat in their sausages. Zigic had tried one, didn’t detect any significant difference and knew the boys would have eaten anything, as long as it was smothered in brown sauce for Stefan and red for Milan.
He watched them chase around the large nut tree in the middle of the garden, smiling at how happy Milan seemed today, like a little boy again, instead of the proto-adult he’d been lately, weighed down with burdens he refused to share. He was laughing and shouting, dodging away from Stefan and getting the broad trunk of the old tree between them, feinting and fooling Stefan into going the wrong way until he saw his baby brother’s face begin to redden and his frustration rise, and then he let his movements drag until Stefan tagged him.
It was the school, Zigic thought, with a plunging sensation that drove him away from the window and onto the foot of the bed.
They’d been full of it on Friday evening when he got home. He’d expected that from Stefan, who went wild about anything new he came across, but Milan was just as excited. He’d tried to hide it, too aware of the mood in the house and its cause to openly come out and say he wanted to go there.
Instead when Zigic asked him what he thought, he beamed and said, ‘It’s just like Hogwarts.’
And that was it.
Milan wanted to go and if Zigic somehow stopped that happening, then he knew Milan would never forgive him. Even if the bullying didn’t continue next term and he was fine at the new secondary school he was due to attend. Because what kind of monster would stand in the way of their child going to Hogwarts?
The school wanted an answer by Tuesday.
Anna was going to say yes no matter what he thought.
They were lucky to get two places at such short notice, she’d told him. An unfortunate side effect of the economic downturn, the headmistress said. They’d lost quite a few pupils betwe
en terms so they had openings. For the right kind of people.
Zigic cursed himself for his stubbornness. Told himself all his arguments were petty and egotistical, kept repeating it to himself because that was the only way he could force himself to believe it. Anna knew best. The boys would be happy there. It didn’t matter that her parents were paying. It was a kindness. It was what you did for family. He didn’t have to let it eat him up inside. Once he saw how happy the boys were there, he’d feel nothing but relief and gratitude.
If he held on to those thoughts, drilled them into his brain, then maybe he could convince Anna he believed them too and everything would go back to normal between them?
But he couldn’t do it today.
Not with her parents here, poised to gloat over his acquiescence.
Tomorrow, he told himself, his gaze straying to the wardrobe. He could almost feel the presence of the envelope like some toxic substance he’d brought into his home, slowly polluting everything around it.
If the worst happened, he thought, if it went as badly as it could, at least his boys would be safely tucked away in a nice school. At least Mr and Mrs Healey’s money could insulate his family from the effects of his bad judgement.
DAY SEVEN
MONDAY AUGUST 13TH
CHAPTER FIFTY
Monday morning. The big briefing.
The office was packed and pungent with the scent of shea butter and aftersun, everyone slightly damp and rumpled from the weekend, which had been too hot for rest and recuperation but just right for drinking heavily and falling asleep in the garden without any sunscreen on. Ferreira counted five instances of serious burns, including one civilian support officer who’d apparently nodded off with his arm thrown across his eyes, leaving a fat strip of white skin between two expanses of furious redness and freckles that probably needed a dermatologist.
Most of the weekend shift were still in place too, working on an attempted murder that had hit in the early hours of Saturday morning: gunshots fired at a house in the middle of a nice village on the side of the A1, blood found in the drawing room but no sign of the victim so far. The gun was legally owned, the man who fired it insisting it was a burglar whose description he couldn’t give them.
