‘Sutherland and Ruth Garner were equally responsible,’ Zigic reminded her.
‘Ainsworth cost people their jobs,’ she said, animated now, hands turning in the air. ‘He probably cost them their relationships too because how do you explain that to your other half?’ She pointed at him. ‘That is a very good motive for murder.’
‘But we don’t have any suspects,’ he said, still half hoping this line of enquiry would fizzle out. He’d driven in through the gate, praying they would leave with nothing, desperate not to have a political hot potato in his hands.
Now it was becoming increasingly likely that Joshua Ainsworth’s murder had something to do with his job and the regime change at Long Fleet. Whether the blame lay with the protestors harassing him or one of these former colleagues who’d be lining up to pay him back for telling the truth about them, he didn’t know.
There were still other possibilities, he reassured himself.
Like the woman who’d been at Josh Ainsworth’s house the night he died. She hadn’t come forward as a witness or to rule herself out of enquiries, as he’d requested during yesterday’s public appeal.
Or the ex-girlfriend his brother mentioned.
Or maybe it wasn’t this job that had brought a killer to his door, maybe something had happened at the private hospital where he did his GP shifts. A symptom wrongly interpreted, a misdiagnosis, an avoidable death …
There were plenty of less politically sensitive possibilities.
‘You think if we approach Sutherland and Garner off-site we’ll get any further?’ Ferreira asked, dragging his thoughts back through Long Fleet’s gates.
‘You saw how scared they are,’ Zigic said. ‘Ruth Garner was downright terrified.’
Ferreira swore. ‘Two more minutes and we’d have got a name out of her.’
‘No, she wasn’t going to do that,’ Zigic said, remembering the relief on Garner’s face when the door opened and saved her from herself. ‘She said more than she meant to. But it’s a start.’
‘So we’re going to pursue this?’ Ferreira said.
‘Do you actually need me to say it?’ She nodded. ‘Yes, we’re going to pursue this. But you need to accept that it’s going to be a slog because Hammond won’t make this easy for us.’
Ferreira waved the warning away. ‘We don’t need him.’
Zigic slowed as he passed through a village. The one Ferreira had grown up in. She scrunched down in her seat and he decided to look for a different route into Long Fleet next time.
Did she know she was doing it? he wondered. He knew she’d had a tough time of it growing up, but he’d never really thought about how visceral the memories still were for her. Never considered the possibility that she hadn’t fully dealt with the emotional fallout. He’d always assumed her anger was a coping mechanism. Didn’t regard it as healthy, but thought it must be working or why would she hold on to it so closely?
‘Are you scared?’ she asked.
‘What of?’
‘What’s going to happen now?’ she said. ‘To your family. If we hard Brexit. If they might get deported.’
He glanced over at her. Saw how tightly she held herself.
‘You’re really worried about getting sent back to Portugal?’
‘Of course I am.’ She turned away, stared out of the window. ‘You go to a place like Long Fleet, you have to see how insecure we are here. None of those women expected to end up there. Half of them probably believed they were here legally, then suddenly their paperwork isn’t quite right or they get a speeding fine, and there’s a knock on the door and bang, they’re locked up, looking at getting deported over nothing.’
‘I really don’t think it’s going to come to that.’
She made a derisive sound. ‘Have you been reading the news at all?’
Zigic didn’t answer, kept his eyes on the road, accelerated to overtake a slow-moving lorry. He didn’t want to talk about it. Didn’t want to even think about it. He wasn’t reading the news. Wasn’t watching it either. Tuned out every conversation about Brexit he heard for the sake of his stress level and his sanity.
‘Your grandparents were asylum seekers, right?’ she asked. ‘What’s going to happen to your grandmother if things go bad?’
‘She’s technically stateless,’ he told her. ‘I don’t think she can be deported. There’s no country there to send her back to any more.’
Ferreira remained tactfully silent, but he could guess what she was thinking because he’d thought it himself already. That that might not matter, if the mood of the country kept shifting, if the government decided to play hardball. His ninety-year-old grandmother being thrown out of the country she’d called home for seven decades, returned to wherever was closest to the place her bombed-out-of-existence village once stood.
‘You won’t get deported, Mel,’ he said finally.
‘Yeah? They’re deporting doctors and scientists. So I really doubt that being a copper is going to be much help.’ She sighed. ‘Did you ever think you’d have to consider shit like this?’
He didn’t answer because it was a question that didn’t seem to need a reply, but the longer they drove on in silence, the more difficult it became not to speak.
‘Anna wants to change the boys’ names,’ he said.
Ferreira twisted fast in her seat. ‘What? Why the hell would she want that?’
‘In fairness it was Milan who suggested it,’ he said, feeling immediately guilty for putting Anna in a bad light. ‘Are you seriously going to tell me you didn’t wish you had an English name when you were at school?’ he asked. ‘Because I sure as hell thought about it. You wouldn’t believe how difficult Dushan is to pronounce. Apparently.’
‘Did something happen?’ she asked. ‘With your kids?’
‘The last week of term, this girl and her little gang … attacked Milan. They gave it all the usual shit about him being a dirty Pole because they’re ten and they think all Europeans are Poles. They pulled a handful of his hair out.’
‘Fucking bitches,’ she spat. ‘What did you do?’
‘What could we do?’ he asked, feeling the hopelessness afresh.
