The first day was always like this. Information overload but very little of it actively useful. Day one was where your suspicions were raised, she thought. After that a murder investigation took on its own peculiar momentum. Maybe another twenty-four hours before you found the killer, maybe a month or a year or never, and the terrible thing was you didn’t know which it would be, so you carried this nervous energy, this unwieldy burden, with no idea if you’d ever be able to set it aside again.
And sometimes, like with Lee Walton, even when you thought you’d freed yourself, the case came back at you.
‘We’re going to get him, Mel,’ Adams said, but it sounded more like he was reassuring himself than her.
‘I know.’ She stood up. ‘Back to your paperwork then.’
In the main office she detected the same slump in energy as she felt in herself, saw more sugary drinks on desks and junk food wrappers as people tried to drag themselves over the hump. On an ordinary day the room would be beginning to thin out by now, but Ainsworth’s murder was in its first flush of activity, and even Adams and Murray’s case seemed to have developed during the afternoon, judging by the new photographs stuck to the board.
At the furthest corner of the room, with his back turned and his earphones in, DC Bobby Wahlia was diligently focused on his review of their files on Lee Walton, pausing occasionally to take a bite of the tuna sandwich sitting by his keyboard and stinking up the room. His normally perfectly styled hair had sunk during the day, sitting flat against his skull, except for one tuft at the front that he had a habit of playing with while he was thinking.
Ferreira looked away, struck by a sudden sadness she didn’t want to examine right then.
‘Okay, update me, people,’ she said, going to over to Josh Ainsworth’s board. ‘Keri, where are we at with the couple from the holiday let next door?’
‘I’m still waiting for a call back,’ Bloom said. ‘But I’ve tracked down the woman’s social media and it looks like they’re out walking, so could be awhile.’
‘She’s posting photos but she can’t be arsed to check her messages?’
‘People don’t always check their messages,’ Bloom said with a helpless shrug. ‘I guess maybe they’re just trying to enjoy the scenery or something.’
‘Zach.’ Parr put down the doughnut he was eating and momentarily Ferreira wondered how he could eat such crap all the time but was still rail thin, especially when he boasted of never exercising. ‘We need to get hold of the CCTV from Ruby Garrick’s building. She claims she was home the night Ainsworth died but she’s got no alibi and a totally blatant crush on him, so –’
‘You think she was his pizza buddy?’
Bloom let out a small giggle. ‘Is that what they called it in your day?’
He pulled a face at her.
‘And I want someone to talk to the postie who found Ainsworth’s body,’ Ferreira said.
‘He’s not got any priors,’ Parr reminded her.
‘Nobody has priors until they do,’ Ferreira told him. ‘What did he tell the first response?’
Parr clicked around on his keyboard, finding the statement. ‘He said he noticed the door wasn’t fully closed and thought he should check everything was alright.’
‘So, public-spirited or opportunistic, do we think?’ Ferreira asked.
‘I’ll get onto him again.’ Parr’s face twisted nervously. ‘But …’
‘But what?’
‘I’m supposed to be taking my kids to the cinema tonight. I promised them ages ago.’
Ferreira knew she should tell him to rearrange it, that the case came first, that the initial twenty-four hours were eat when you can, sleep when you’re dead territory. But she also knew his kids had taken the divorce badly and had only recently started to forgive him for it. He was on probation there and his eyes said he feared a return to the bad old days of sullen visits to McDonald’s and flat-out refusals to see him.
‘Alright, but first thing tomorrow. Even if you have to stalk him while he’s doing his rounds,’ she said. ‘Get in his face and see what the real story is there.’
‘Yes, boss.’ The relief washed over him. ‘I’ll try for the CCTV though, right? I’ve got time before I need to go.’
‘Someone else can go and pick it up if necessary.’ She looked at DC Weller, spinning a pen around between his fingers. ‘Rob, anything you want to share?’
‘Not much to report, boss,’ he said. ‘We’ve had a couple of calls from people in the village who were out during the initial canvassing, but mostly they were fishing for gossip. All of them mentioned the protest at Long Fleet and the leaflet campaign. One of them got pretty arsey about it, said we should be doing more to protect the village from them.’
‘The protest has been peaceful, as far as we know,’ Ferreira said. ‘Unless you’ve been told otherwise?’
‘No, it’s just the leaflets. He seemed to think they constituted harassment.’
‘Does he work at Long Fleet?’
‘I asked, he said not.’ Weller was swivelling back and forth in his chair slightly, knees spread. ‘Thought it might be significant though, if there’s a feeling in the village that Long Fleet is bringing hassle to their doors.’
Ferreira heard what he was saying but read another story in his body language. He’d been slacking today and had nothing to justify his time. She fought down the urge to tell him as much, knew she should have stayed on him and made sure he had tasks in front of him. Some officers you could trust to work off their own common sense, but
