by Eva Dolan
He shrugged. ‘I suppose the burglars didn’t think they were worth anything. TVs are so cheap now.’
‘It seems strange that someone would go to all the trouble of breaking into your house in broad daylight and not take anything,’ Ferreira said. ‘Paperwork, spare keys, credit cards, they didn’t take any of that?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Did you check?’
He hesitated for a second, seemed to be considering it when it really wasn’t a question that required consideration. ‘I did, eventually. I was more concerned with calming Nadia down. She’d never been through that before and it upset her quite badly.’
‘Lucky she was out,’ Ferreira said.
Sutherland nodded.
‘Did they make much of a mess?’
‘Not really.’ He seemed to think that was enough of an answer but got the hint and continued. ‘They took the glass out of the back door, they didn’t even smash their way in. I suppose we should be thankful they were so considerate.’
‘Most burglars completely ransack a place,’ Ferreira told him. ‘Some will vandalise it after they’ve done looking for whatever it is they want. Especially if they don’t actually find anything worth taking.’
‘Your place looks spotless,’ Zigic added. ‘You’ve redecorated, right?’
‘I bought some new furniture a few weeks ago,’ Sutherland said. ‘Look, is this really relevant?’
‘You’d rather talk about something else?’ Ferreira asked. ‘What would you like to talk about, Patrick?’
His eyes widened, frustration drawn in every line on his face and the way he splayed his fingertips on the tabletop. ‘Well, since you’ve dragged me in here over Josh’s murder, I rather expected we’d talk about that.’
‘We are talking about Josh’s murder,’ Zigic told him. ‘Because we both know it was Josh who broke into your house.’
An incredulous laugh huffed out of Sutherland. ‘That’s ridiculous.’
‘Those spikes on your garden fence.’ Ferreira opened up a photograph of them on the tablet she’d brought in with her, turned it to face Sutherland. She gave him a moment to look at them and then swiped the screen. ‘And the injuries on Josh’s hands. Perfect match.’
‘Just because the wounds match it doesn’t mean they were created by this particular length of – what are they – nails?’ Ben Lawton said. ‘That could have happened anywhere.’
‘This particular stretch of carpet grip has blood on,’ Ferreira said, still looking at Sutherland. ‘The same blood our forensic team found in your kitchen and in your bathroom.’
‘It must have been the person who broke in,’ Sutherland said hesitantly. ‘I mean, I didn’t put them on the fence. I suppose the previous owner did it. This is the first time I’ve even seen them.’
‘It’s not an uncommon way for homeowners to try and deter burglars,’ Lawton added helpfully. ‘Can you prove it was Joshua Ainsworth’s blood?’
‘Even if it is we thought it was just a regular burglary,’ Sutherland said. ‘Me and Nadia were both out. How would we know who broke in?’
He had them and Zigic was annoyed how quickly they’d got here. They’d come in underprepared, both wanting to avoid the inevitable next step of questioning Nadia, which was the job they should have done first, gritting their teeth and accepting the discomfort of it.
‘Why did you lie to me when I asked you about Nadia?’ Ferreira asked, trying to drag the interview back onto useful ground.
Lawton started to intervene but Sutherland spoke over him, and Zigic noticed annoyance flash briefly across the solicitor’s face.
‘I knew how bad it looked,’ Sutherland said.
‘But Nadia has her leave to remain, she isn’t in Long Fleet any more,’ Ferreira said innocently. ‘She’s free to do what she wants. Why would you think that looked bad?’
‘After everything that’s happened at Long Fleet and my involvement in reporting abusive staff members, I thought you’d think I was a hypocrite.’
Ferreira smiled thinly. ‘And why would my opinion matter?’
‘I’m not like those men,’ Sutherland said. ‘And you can’t help who you fall in love with.’
It was a non-answer and Zigic wasn’t even sure he believed it himself. That shame had come from somewhere and he was sure Ferreira’s good opinion was of little to interest to the man. Unless he figured she would see the relationship as evidence of some deeper moral failing and was worried it might lead her to see him as a murder suspect.
‘You love Nadia.’
He nodded. ‘I do.’
‘Enough to kill Joshua Ainsworth for her?’
‘I didn’t kill Josh,’ he said resolutely. ‘And why would I need to kill him for her? What world do you live in where that kind of thing happens?’
‘Josh broke into your house looking for Nadia,’ Ferreira said, fixing her gaze on him. ‘He attacked her in Long Fleet and he got sacked for it. He must have been furious with her. And you. He would have wanted to punish you both for exposing him. Josh Ainsworth, the good guy, the whistle-blower, one of the very few men in Long Fleet with clean hands.’ She brought her palm down on the table. ‘He must have been furious with you two.’
‘This is all completely unsupported,’ Lawton said.
But Sutherland was trapped, couldn’t seem to drag his eyes off Ferreira.
‘And Nadia must have been absolutely terrified,’ she said. ‘We spoke to her earlier and I can see it, Patrick. I can see how traumatised she is.’ Her voice went low and emotional, her hand to her heart. ‘Look, I’m just a copper but I felt for her. I can only imagine how you must feel. Seeing the woman you love so scared.’
‘I think you should present something more substantial than feelings,’ Lawton said, his tone firmer now, impatience showing.
‘I mean, why else would Josh break in except to get to Nadia?’ she asked.
‘We didn’t know it was him,’ Sutherland said again, less forcefully this time.
‘And she got lucky that time, she was out.’ Ferreira shook her head as if she couldn’t bear to think about the alternative. ‘But what about the next time Josh came for her?’
‘These are just feelings with question marks at the end of them,’ Ben Lawton said, bringing his hand down on the table between them and inserting himself across Sutherland’s eyeline. ‘Mr Sutherland is happy to answer your questions. Real questions, DS Ferreira. But you quite clearly have no compelling reason to keep him here.’
‘We’ve got hours to keep him here yet,’ Zigic told Lawton.
He gestured to Ferreira.
‘Interview suspended 6:22 p.m.’
CHAPTER SIXTY
Half an hour later, Nadia Baidoo was in an interview room, her solicitor seated next to her. Ms Hussain was clearly ill at ease with the situation as the recording devices began to roll.
‘Nadia wishes to make a statement,’ she said stiffly. ‘We appreciate that you will have questions for her, but in the first instance, she would like to correct some misinformation she believes you have about her and Dr Ainsworth.’
The room was stuffy, the air thick and stale, smelling of all the bodies that had been in here before them already today: fear, sweat and aftershave, hot feet and a trace of absurdly tropical aftersun lotion. The lighting over the table was blown and the only sun that made it in through the high, narrow window was diffused by the dirt on the reinforced glass, making the room oddly gloomy, everything rendered slightly insubstantial by it.
Nadia looked smaller, hunched over behind the table, her face tight like she was in physical pain. She took a sip of water before she began and even swallowing seemed to give her some trouble.
Zigic felt a bolt of sympathy for her. He was dreading what she was about to say, knowing that if she admitted killing Ainsworth after he had attacked her, he was going to have to charge her and he would hate himself a little for doing that.
‘Take your time,’ Ferreira said gently.
She paused and Zigic noticed Ms Hussein was watching her carefully. She looked troubled and that concerned him too. Whatever advice she’d given, Nadia had obviously decided to speak in spite of it.
‘Before I was arrested I didn’t know I was in the UK illegally. I didn’t understand my status. I was a student. I was working and paying my taxes. I was paying for my home. I thought I was safe.’ She blinked slowly. ‘And then I was in Long Fleet and it was hell. I was so scared I hardly slept, I was like a zombie from the sleep deprivation. It’s like a blur now. I don’t know what I was more afraid of: being sent to Ghana or being kept in there for ever.’
Nadia stared at a point in the centre of the table, her shoulders rounded, hunched slightly forward as if projecting herself into the story she was telling.
‘Everyone was scared. All of the time. Some of the women starved themselves until they couldn’t even walk or speak. Some of them cut themselves. I didn’t understand that but a lady told me it was so they wouldn’t get sent away. They believed that if they could convince people that they had mental health problems, they’d have to be allowed to stay. But it didn’t work because they’d still disappear. We’d hear the doors open in the middle of the night and the next morning they’d be gone. You didn’t even get to say goodbye to them.’
She swallowed hard and inclined her head towards the wall, as if she didn’t want them to see the look in her eyes when she spoke again.
‘We were hopeless. We were … used.’ Her jaw worked at nothing for a few seconds as she steeled herself. ‘You can’t understand it until you’re there. You have to make a decision. One of the other women, she told me to find someone who’d protect me. She told me that if I chose one man, then maybe the others would leave me alone.’ She turned to Zigic, eyes hot with rage. ‘Do you understand what I’m saying? It’s one man or all of them?’
Zigic nodded because he couldn’t bring himself to speak.
She looked to Ferreira and Zigic noticed Mel’s posture now, chin dipped and her hands cupped together in front of her mouth. Closed off and defensive and she knew better than that, knew how important it was to hold yourself open and receptive in here as people unburdened themselves.
He knew where this was bubbling up from in her: Walton.
This was why Adams was prepared to risk so much on his hunch, Zigic realised. Because if she was like this now, then how bad was she in the early hours of the morning, laying awake and wondering if Walton was outside waiting for her?
Nadia gathered herself again, smothered the rage, chewed up all the other words she could have used but decided not to for whatever reason. Because she thought they reflected badly on her or because they were still too raw to share with strangers he didn’t know.
‘I did like Patrick,’ she said. ‘I was lucky because he liked me too. But I made the decision.’ She looked again to Ferreira, desperate for understanding. ‘It was better, right? To be in control of what was going to happen to me?’
‘You did what you had to,’ Ferreira said, her voice low and throaty. ‘But you never should have been put in that situation.’
‘None of you should,’ Ms Hussein said. Her face clouded over and she looked down into her lap. She obviously wasn’t surprised by what she was hearing, just unhappy about it.
Zigic could see her adding this to the mental inventory of Long Fleet’s crimes she carried around. He hadn’t expected the interview to take this turn when he called her, but he found he was relieved she was here rather than some duty solicitor.
‘Patrick knew all about my case,’ Nadia said pensively. ‘I didn’t understand it and my solicitor told me right from the beginning that there wasn’t much point arguing because I didn’t have any good reason to stay in England. Mum was the one who couldn’t go back to Ghana. I’d be safe there.’ She smiled bitterly at the idea, shook her head. ‘One day Patrick told me they were preparing to deport me. He said it was going to be very soon.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I cried. All day and all night. I couldn’t eat. I decided I’d kill myself before I let them send me there. And then I understood why the other women went on hunger strike. They can’t send you back if you do that. So that’s what I did. Within a few days I already felt like I was dying and they took me into the medical bay. Patrick was upset with me. He kept telling me not to give up but what else was I supposed to do? It was better being in there on a drip than being deported.’
She reached for her water again, took a tiny sip, her hand trembling.
‘He told me there was a way I could stay here.’ Nadia shrank slightly into her chair, drawing back from the table and away from Ms Hussein. ‘He said he’d tell me exactly what I needed to say because he knew how the system worked, and you couldn’t get around it unless you understood it inside out. He told me to make a report that Dr Ainsworth attacked me, then I’d be allowed to stay.’
‘But he didn’t?’ Zigic asked, as gently as he could. ‘Dr Ainsworth didn’t attack you?’
‘No.’ The planes of her faces sharpened, pain and shame along every angle. ‘I didn’t want to do it. Believe me, I kept telling Patrick it was wrong. Dr Ainsworth was a good man. He was the only man we trusted.’
‘Why did you trust him?’
‘Because he was a homosexual,’ Nadia said.
‘He wasn’t,’ Zigic told her.
She considered it, frowning, eyes scanning the tabletop as she tried to fit the new information into her conception of Ainsworth.
‘Then he was a very good man,’ she said sadly.
Zigic winced internally, thinking of how low the bar was set for Nadia. That she could conceive of no other reason for a man not to take advantage of his power over her and the other women in Long Fleet than that he was gay.
‘Nadia, I need you to be very clear about what you’re saying,’ he told her. ‘Are you saying that Dr Ainsworth didn’t attack you?’
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘You don’t have the power to charge Nadia for events that took place within Long Fleet’s walls,’ Ms Hussein said, her voice firm, eyes boring into him. ‘Nadia has come clean now because she wanted to set the record straight about Joshua Ainsworth in case it has any bearing on your investigation.’
‘I deserve to be punished for what I did,’ Nadia said.
Ms Hussein put a steadying hand on her arm. ‘What happens in Long Fleet is an internal matter for them.’
She was right, Zigic realised. The complaint had been dealt with internally. The police were never involved. Nadia had been morally in the wrong but legally there was nothing they could charge her with, no reported crime it related to.
And yet he found himself wishing there was.
It was a horrible, discomforting feeling, wishing that on someone who had suffered so much. He understood why she had done it – she’d made sure they understood, a cynical voice in the back of his head noted – but there was nothing to justify lying like that.
Already he was thinking of the damage it would do if it got out. A single high-profile false accusation could derail any number of other assault cases, feeding into the hateful and pervasive misinformation about women who falsely accused men for their own ends. Nobody would remember why she did it, or consider Patrick Sutherland’s Svengali-like role in the whole affair; all that would stick was the idea that women lie.
He thought about how far the accusation against Ainsworth had derailed the investigation. How they’d allowed it to, by believing it.
Because why wouldn’t they? Everything they knew about Long Fleet before and during this case supported the likelihood of it being true. And wasn’t there something tempting about the whistle-blower who turned in all the other offenders to take the heat off himself? Some twisted logic to it.
Sutherland did the same, he reminded himself. The theory was correct but t
he guilty party wrong.
‘I’m sure you have lots of questions for Nadia but after that rather harrowing conversation, I think we need a break.’ Ms Hussein stood up, smoothing her hand down the front of her tailored linen dress. ‘If you wouldn’t mind, Inspector?’
‘Fine,’ he said, still slightly shell-shocked by the revelation.
Ferreira ended the recording and Ms Hussein asked if she could speak to them for a moment outside.
She walked a few paces away from the door and back again, and Zigic realised she was building up to something, but he wasn’t particularly in the mood to listen to justifications or applications for more lenient treatment. A good solicitor would know that, he thought. She would wait until some of the heat had drained from the moment.
She came back and leaned against the wall, exhausted-looking.
‘I can see that neither of you is very impressed with Nadia right now,’ she said, tucking her hands into the small of her back. ‘But I’d like to remind you that she is a vulnerable young adult and that she was under significant mental duress in Long Fleet.’ Ms Hussein glanced at Ferreira. ‘I also think it’s reasonable to say that she is still under a serious degree of duress from Patrick Sutherland.’
Zigic folded his arms. ‘What do you want from us, Ms Hussein?’
‘I know you’re a good guy,’ she said smoothly. ‘You wouldn’t have called me to represent Nadia otherwise. So I’m relying on your moral compass here.’
‘Nadia is staying in custody,’ he said. ‘We might not be able to charge her with false reporting but she’s still a suspect in a murder inquiry.’
Ms Hussein nodded. ‘I’ve discussed the matter with Nadia already and I can tell you she is completely innocent of any involvement.’
‘It’s not really your place to call that,’ Zigic told her.
She shifted where she stood into a more offensive posture, before realising and clasping her hands in front of her.
‘Nadia chose to come clean to you today against my advice,’ she said gravely. ‘She is a decent, honest young woman who has made a terrible decision under circumstances you and I will likely never find ourselves in.’
