Between Two Evils

by Eva Dolan

  At the front of the office, DI Greta Kitson had just wrapped up her briefing and Adams took over, giving the most basic rundown of the cases that had stalled. The minor tasks to be done and old ground to retread. Nobody looked very happy about getting those jobs, but it’s what police work frequently boiled down to. Watch that CCTV footage for the fifth time, combine that information with your third reread of every single interview transcript, then try to find some new angle in it all and decide who best to throw it at in the hopes of scaring them into letting slip something fresh.

  It was often the way cases got cracked, but everyone resented doing it because nobody joined the police to do paperwork. They all wanted to corner the bad guy in a dark alley and take him down hand to hand.

  Until they actually found themselves in that position.

  Ferreira’s fingertips went to the back of her calf, the first time it had itched in months and she straightened again, knowing it was a psychological itch and she didn’t need to scratch it.

  ‘Marseilles police have lost George Batty,’ Adams said, eliciting a few groans. ‘But they tell us Batty was seen hanging around a lorry park on the edge of the city, trying to find an English driver who’d give him a lift.’

  ‘Where was he heading?’ someone piped up.

  ‘If we knew that, do you think my face would look like this?’ Adams asked. ‘Hopefully the stupid bastard’s trying to get home. But we still need to nail down the remaining eyewitness statements.’

  Ferreira tuned him out, her attention on Ainsworth’s board and the timeline of his murder, starting at a point two years before he was killed, the point where he’d reported multiple guards for sexual assault and coercion of Long Fleet inmates.

  Zigic thought it was unfeasibly far back to go. That nobody would wait two years for revenge and so far the list of sacked staff members had returned nothing but strong alibis and insistence of innocence.

  But she was wondering if they’d gone far enough.

  The paternity test wasn’t a coincidence. It couldn’t be.

  And Zigic was right that it was strange timing. Paternity tests suggested wrangling over money or responsibility, deep and complicated splits in relationships, love triangles and abandoned children, and all those big, ugly emotions that could so easily escalate into the kind of murder Ainsworth had suffered.

  If the results were known.

  But how did the mere act of collecting samples and sending them off lead to a murder?

  Ferreira took her tobacco out of her drawer and started to roll herself a cigarette, her fingers moving with practised certainty as her eyes stayed on the timeline, looking at how tight the window around Ainsworth’s murder was.

  On Wednesday, he flew home from Uganda. Taking travel and rest time into account, he must have gathered the DNA samples on Thursday or Friday. Saturday he was murdered.

  Ferreira was convinced all the explanation they needed would be on his missing phone. This must have been argued out and organised while he was away and since the records of his texts revealed nothing she could only assume it had been done through a messaging app. The information stored on his phone and impossible to recover without the actual handset.

  They were never going to find his devices though, she suspected. The killer had taken them from his house, probably destroyed them or at least hidden them very well.

  She rolled her finished cigarette between her fingers, listening as Zigic stepped up and took over.

  ‘On Saturday morning Joshua Ainsworth’s neighbour took delivery of a letter that revealed that Ainsworth had used a private lab to run a paternity test.’

  A murmur of interest ran around the room. Even the uninvolved officers’ attention was piqued.

  ‘The test came back positive so we now need to ask ourselves what bearing this has on his murder,’ Zigic said. ‘From what we can work out, the samples will have been collected in the two days immediately after Ainsworth returned from his holiday.’

  He tapped the board next to Portia Collingwood’s name.

  ‘Mrs Collingwood was involved with Ainsworth, she has a daughter. So she’s potentially the mother in this little triangle.’ He pointed at Bloom. ‘Keri, I want you to speak to her again. She probably won’t just admit it to you and her alibi looks sound, but at the very least we should see if she can fill in some of the blanks around the days leading up to Ainsworth’s death.’

  ‘What about her husband?’ Bloom asked. ‘Surely, the man who believes he’s the father is a major suspect?’

  ‘He was out of the country,’ Zigic reminded her. ‘But Collingwood was very eager to hide her affair with Ainsworth, so use that to lean on her.’

  ‘What about the samples he sent in,’ Parr asked. ‘If we get those we can work back from them, right?’

  ‘Mel?’

  ‘I called the emergency line Saturday and they told me the company had destroyed the samples already,’ she told him. ‘They do it at the end of the week, so we missed it by like twelve hours.’

  A collective groan. Another piece of evidence whipped away from them.

  Zigic ran down the rest of the jobs for the day, all resources now turned towards working out where Ainsworth had been on the Thursday and Friday before he was killed. They would go through his phone records again, chase down those calls and ask the tough questions. Re-examine his financials to try and find some pattern in his movements that might give them another suspect.

  ‘We can’t just assume Collingwood is the woman we’re looking for,’ he cautioned them. ‘Ainsworth could easily have been involved with someone else we’ve yet to identify. We need to know who that woman is.’

  Ferreira wondered what result Joshua Ainsworth was hoping for when he sent that sample away.

  Did he want to be a daddy?

  And where was the mother in all this?

  ‘Mel?’ Zigic asked from the front of the room. ‘You look like you’ve just had an epiphany.’

  ‘The paternity test,’ she said slowly. ‘Why haven’t we heard anything from the mother? Ainsworth’s murder has been all over the local news. It made the nationals a couple of times. She obviously gave him her and the child’s DNA samples last Thursday or Friday so we know they’re in contact. Why’s she not come forward?’

  ‘Maybe she’s innocent and hoping we don’t find out about her,’ Bloom suggested.

  ‘We should make a public appeal,’ Ferreira said. ‘Draw this woman out.’

  ‘Do we really want to give that information away right now?’ Zigic asked.

  ‘Don’t think we have a choice, do we?’

  Zigic glanced towards the door where the media liaison officer was standing.

  ‘Can you prepare a statement please, Nicola? We’ll park it until the six o’clock though.’ He turned back to Ferreira. ‘Call Ainsworth’s brother first and get in touch with his parents again; there’s no point giving this information away if one of them knows who she is.’

  ‘Will do,’ she said. ‘And Nadia?’

  Zigic glanced back across his shoulder at the board where Nadia Baidoo’s photograph was stuck up.

  ‘One other potential line we have is this young woman,’ he said. ‘Nadia Baidoo levelled what we now believe is a credible accusation of assault against Joshua Ainsworth. This accusation led to his leaving Long Fleet. Soon after, she was given leave to remain and released.’ He looked at his team. ‘Nadia has now disappeared.’

  ‘She did it then,’ Weller said confidently. ‘Revenge killing, right?’

  ‘Nadia Baidoo is in a vulnerable state,’ Ferreira said coldly, staring at him across the room. ‘She has no money, no contacts on the outside and no family. She doesn’t have a driver’s licence or a car. So, how do you suppose she managed to get to Long Fleet and murder Josh Ainsworth without leaving any kind of trail?’

  Weller shrugged, muttered, ‘Taxi?’

  ‘You can add that to your tasks for today then,’ she said. ‘Call all the local taxi firms and see if anyo
ne went out to Long Fleet on Saturday night.’

  His jaw tightened and slowly he turned back to his desk. ‘Yes, boss.’

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  Adams knocked and came into Zigic’s office without waiting for a reply.

  ‘How did the drop go?’

  ‘Don’t call it that. You make it sound even worse than it is.’ Zigic looked through the internal window, sure that it was obvious to every single officer out there that they were doing something wrong. ‘I gave her it, she took it, said it’ll be Tuesday or Wednesday before she can get back to me.’

  It sounded simple when recounted like that. But it had been nerve-racking, haunted at each step by the knowledge that this was highly illegal and because it was one of Riggott’s cases they were attempting to expose, they couldn’t rely on him to step in and protect them if they got caught out.

  Zigic had sat in his car, tucked away at the furthest edge of a cinema car park, praying that the sample didn’t match and this whole shabby exercise would be rendered pointless and forgettable. There were other ways to take down Walton, he insisted to himself, but none sprang to mind.

  ‘How did talking to Mel go?’ he asked.

  Adams leaned back against the internal window, arms folded, trying and failing to look relaxed. ‘She knows we’re up to something.’

  ‘Yeah, I gathered that.’

  ‘I said I’d tell her everything in a few days; it seemed to calm her down a bit,’

  Zigic seriously doubted Adams was reading the situation correctly, misinterpreting the calm before the storm as actual calm.

  ‘In the meantime,’ Adams went on, ‘there’s someone we should go and talk to.’

  ‘I’ve got a murder investigation getting heated up here,’ Zigic told him. ‘I can’t keep running out on it every two minutes.’

  ‘It’s Cooper’s solicitor. I told her we were looking at the case again and she wants to chat.’

  ‘I bet she does,’ Zigic said. ‘You’re gifting her a civil suit for false imprisonment, you do realise that?’

  Adams shrugged. ‘He probably was falsely imprisoned. Why wouldn’t we want to straighten that out for him?’

  ‘Oh, there’s your moral centre, hiding just behind your naked self-interest.’

  ‘You’re way too far into this to keep playing the puritan with me, Ziggy.’ Adams smirked. ‘So, you might as well come along and make sure I don’t say anything I shouldn’t to the very smart lady.’

  Reluctantly Zigic went, pausing as he passed through the office to give out words of encouragement to Bloom and Weller and answer a question for Parr. On the front steps they passed Ferreira.

  ‘More secret boy stuff?’ she asked, around her cigarette.

  Adams went up to her, hand on her waist, face close to her ear and Zigic couldn’t hear what he said but he saw the smile Ferreira plastered on her face as she nodded, and then how quickly it fell away once Adams turned his back, replaced by an unnerving blankness.

  They drove to an office block in the city centre, tucked between the marketplace and the cathedral precincts, a chunk of relentless brutalism that was all concrete and smoked glass. Cater & Baxter took up a full third of the building but there were huge ‘OFFICES TO LET’ signs in the lower windows, and Zigic wondered what had happened to the firms that had been there last time he’d visited; an engineering company and an accountants, he thought, gone or reduced or relocated out of the centre.

  ‘Who did you speak to here?’ he asked, as they got out of the car.

  ‘Moira Baxter.’

  Zigic stopped in the middle of the gateway. Moira Baxter was one of the leading criminal defence barristers in the area, the kind who got footballers off their drink-driving offences and finessed members of the local gentry into non-custodial sentences when they turned their shotguns on walkers who dared to use the footpaths crossing their land. She’d also been the first QC to question Zigic in court, and he still had occasional nightmares featuring her merciless stare and cut-glass accent.

  ‘Hold on,’ he said. ‘She must have been a big deal twenty years ago. Why was she representing Neal Cooper?’

  ‘Apparently his mum was her cleaner, and she went to bits when he was accused so Ms Baxter stepped in and took the case pro bono.’ Adams headed for the main doors. ‘I suppose she was eager to get Mrs Cooper’s full attention back on her toilet bowl.’

  Inside a receptionist took their names and checked their IDs, the process conducted with a saccharine smile and an over-bright tone, before he showed them to a softly furnished holding pen on the third floor.

  Moira Baxter kept them waiting for fifteen minutes but had the grace to apologise about it as she saw them into her office.

  They took their seats and she went around the other side of her cantilevered desk, smoothing her linen shift dress under her as she sat.

  ‘Detective Inspector, is it now?’ She smiled slightly. ‘Well, I can’t say I’m surprised. You handled yourself admirably for a first-timer.’

  He gave the barest nod of thanks, even as a small thrill went through him. Immediately followed by a quick poke of shame for being so easily flattered.

  ‘And you’re looking into Neal’s case again?’ she asked. ‘May I ask, why now?’

  ‘Information has come to light that suggests another suspect may have been responsible for Tessa Darby’s death,’ Adams said.

  Baxter kept her eyes fixed on Zigic.

  ‘Chief Superintendent Riggott is due to retire next year, I gather,’ she said, steepling her fingers under her chin. ‘How does he feel about you opening up one of his most significant convictions to fresh scrutiny?’

  Zigic heard Adams shift uncomfortably in his chair and resisted the urge to do the same, as she held her steady gaze on him.

  ‘Getting to the truth is more important than any one detective’s feelings,’ Zigic said.

  This time the pleasure lifted her whole face, just for a split second.

  ‘An admirable sentiment,’ she said. ‘So, what can you tell me about this new suspect?’

  ‘Nothing as yet,’ Zigic said slowly, watching her for a reaction she was too experienced to let him see. ‘The investigation is still in its early stages, but we’ll be happy to keep you up to speed as developments occur.’

  He was overpromising and Baxter would know that but she didn’t challenge him and, he realised, she wouldn’t. Because patience and cooperation here would hand her a significant scalp. If Neal Cooper was falsely convicted it would mean a splashy case and a big payout, with the bonus for her of tainting the final months of Riggott’s long and distinguished career. Zigic wondered what history there was between them. As high-flying contemporaries on opposite sides of the legal divide in a small city, there would definitely be something.

  ‘So, what do you want from me?’ Baxter asked, settling back in her chair.

  ‘We’d like to know why Neal confessed?’

  ‘I think you already know the answer to that, Inspector.’ She propped her elbow on the arm of the chair, rested her chin on it.

  ‘We assume the confession was a result of confusion and his obsession with Tessa,’ Adams said.

  Zigic heard a note of genuine hope in his voice, saw Baxter register it too and immediately disregard his input.

  ‘From the very beginning Neal told me he didn’t kill Ms Darby,’ Baxter said firmly. ‘And while I don’t always believe my clients when they protest their innocence, I believed Neal implicitly. I wouldn’t have represented him otherwise. At every point in the process he maintained his innocence. During every interview he was put through, his story never changed.’ A new fire entered her eyes. ‘I could see how desperate Riggott was getting. As the weeks passed it became clear to me that he didn’t have any other suspects and that he was under pressure to charge someone. Pressure he clearly wasn’t up to handling.’

  Zigic felt the knot of anxiety in his stomach writhe and tighten. He could see Riggott behaving just as she suggested, knew how
he would have snapped and raged, that vein pulsing in his forehead as he tried to rally his team, the frustration seething as he took every dressing-down from above and every grilling from the press.

  He’d never handled pressure well, not for as long as Zigic had worked under him. Didn’t seem able to feed off it like the best coppers could. Maybe that was why he went up the management structure so quickly; the higher he went the less damage he could do.

  ‘The penultimate interview Riggott conducted with Neal ran late; it was almost midnight by the time he finished with the boy, and I had to insist on ending it even then because Neal was exhausted and I could see very clearly that Riggott was trying to grind him down to the point where he’d say anything to make it stop.’ She pursed her lips. ‘In all honesty, Neal was not the sharpest young man you’d meet, and there was a sustained attempt to use that weakness against him.’

  Zigic thought of how Adams went after Neal Cooper at his home. Using the same tactics Riggott had, playing the game his mentor had taught him.

  Baxter took a deep breath.

  ‘Neal spent the night in custody,’ she said. ‘And when I went in to see him the next morning, he told me he wanted to confess.’

  There it was.

  The knot in his stomach began to throb, so hard he was sure he could feel it beating against the back of his abdominal muscles.

  ‘What reason did he give for changing his mind?’ Zigic asked.

  ‘He said he’d been lying because he was scared of going to prison.’ She drew her knuckles along her jawline, eyes temporarily losing focus. ‘I told him I knew he was innocent but he wouldn’t listen to me; he insisted on going back in and making a full confession.’

  ‘And there was no way you could stop him?’

  She shook her head. ‘When I pressed him he got angry and told me to leave. But I decided the best course of action was to stay and try to get him the best deal I could.’ A grim smile twisted her mouth. ‘The one thing he was very clear about wanting me to do was to make sure he served his sentence in a young offenders’ institution.’