You didn’t back down from a bully.
You didn’t give them what they wanted out of fear for their response.
Upstairs she found Zigic ready and waiting to go. ‘Ms Hussein’s here. You ready to start?’
‘Totally.’
The solicitor was in the corridor when they got there, standing at the interview-room door as if she wouldn’t let them enter until she’d said her piece. Ferreira admired her tenacity, thought that if she was ever in trouble this is what she’d want from a solicitor, even as she felt slightly annoyed by the liberties she was taking.
‘Good morning,’ Ms Hussein said brusquely. ‘I’ve impressed upon Nadia the importance of being completely open and honest with you today. She understands that you’re her best hope now, please don’t let her down.’
Zigic looked uncomfortable with her approach but he opened the door for her and ushered her in. Ms Hussein went to take a seat and next to her Nadia seemed very small and very young, dishevelled from her night in the cells, her hair crushed on one side and her skin dry and greyed under the strip light.
Ferreira set up the tapes, hoping Nadia would give them what they needed so they could do their best for her. For all her lies, she was a victim and she deserved whatever protection they could give her.
‘We’d like to talk about the break-in,’ Zigic said. ‘Can you tell us what happened, please, Nadia?’
She glanced at Ms Hussein, received an encouraging look.
‘I was in the kitchen washing up,’ she began, her voice weaker than it had been yesterday, parched and thinner. ‘I saw somebody come over the back fence and I panicked because I thought they must be going to try and break in. So I went to lock the back door and when I got a better look at the man, I realised it was Dr Ainsworth.’ She reached for the water bottle in front of her, tried to open it and couldn’t. Ms Hussein took it from her and unscrewed the lid, handed it back to her for her to drink. ‘I didn’t know what to do. I ran upstairs and hid in the wardrobe.’
‘Did he see you?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘He screamed when he came over the fence but I didn’t wait to see why or what he would do. I just ran and hid. I thought he was going to kill me.’
There was a tremble in her voice, impossible to fake.
‘Why did you think he wanted to hurt you?’ Zigic asked.
‘Because of what I said about him.’
‘Did you know he’d lost his job over it?’
She looked down into her lap. ‘Patrick told me he resigned. He said it was nothing to do with me but I’m not an idiot, I knew it was. I didn’t think that would happen when I said it. I didn’t think about it at all, I was so desperate to get out of there.’
Ms Hussein put her hand on Nadia’s arm. ‘It’s okay, just answer the detective’s questions, you don’t need to explain yourself.’
Zigic frowned, but didn’t pursue the line. ‘What happened when he got into the house?’
‘I heard him in the kitchen, he was swearing and talking to himself,’ she said. ‘Then he came upstairs and I thought I was going to die. I closed my eyes and prayed he wouldn’t find me.’ She wrapped her arms around herself. ‘I heard him in the bathroom, I think he must have been looking for something to stop the bleeding because after he was gone there was blood on the floor.’
So far her story tallied with what they had from forensics, but this was where the evidence fell away and they needed her statement.
‘Where did he go after the bathroom?’ Zigic asked tentatively. ‘Did he find you?’
She shook her head.
‘You need to speak,’ Ms Hussein told her before Ferreira could. ‘It’s for the tapes.’
‘Sorry,’ she nodded to them. ‘No, he didn’t find me. He went back downstairs and I spent a really long time trying to work out whether he was still in the house. I couldn’t hear him any more but I daren’t move in case he was waiting for me down there. I don’t know how long I waited but eventually I got out of the wardrobe and went down and found the house was empty. I called Patrick then and he came home.’
‘Did you tell Patrick who had broken in?’
‘Yes. He wanted to call the police but then I told him it was Dr Ainsworth and he said we shouldn’t call you.’ She folded her hands together on the tabletop. She’d painted her nails a bright coral pink at one point, but the varnish was chipped now and picked at. ‘He said he’d speak to Dr Ainsworth and tell him to leave us alone.’
Was that how it happened? It sounded too perfect, Ferreira thought. The kind of line a solicitor might encourage a client to add to a story or the kind of thing you’d come up with during the long hours after midnight, waiting in a cell to have your say.
It fitted though.
She could imagine Sutherland going around to Ainsworth’s place and warning him off. Ainsworth having none of it. An argument turning into a fight turning into a murder.
But why have that conversation so late? You only went into someone’s home under cover of darkness for nefarious reasons.
‘And when did he go to speak to Dr Ainsworth?’ Zigic asked, a hint of reticence in his voice.
‘Patrick wanted to go right then,’ Nadia said. ‘He was upset and angry and I begged him not to leave me on my own.’
‘And did he go?’
‘No, he stayed with me. He tidied the house up and called someone to come and fix the back door, then he found some cardboard to cover it up with overnight. He was trying to make everything like it
