‘Batter their parents? That’s where they got it from.’
‘The main girl’s parents were totally mortified,’ he said, remembering their expressions of nauseated shock. ‘They blamed the grandparents, they’d been babysitting a lot lately and they were coming out with shit like that all the time.’
‘Probably don’t leave the kid with them then,’ she muttered.
‘So Milan thinks if he has an English name, it won’t happen again.’
Ferreira shook her head. ‘Shit, Ziggy. You can’t let him do that. If he changes his name those bastards win. It’ll be like erasing his whole history.’
‘I know,’ he said quietly.
‘Anna must get that.’
‘She’s scared for them. Milan goes up to secondary school in September and she’s convinced it’ll be even worse there.’
‘She’s probably right,’ Ferreira admitted. ‘The reported incidents in schools have gone through the roof the last few months.’ She winced. ‘But their names. What are you going to do?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You could kill the girls who attacked him?’
Zigic laughed. ‘That’s not funny.’
‘It was always my plan B at school,’ she said, and he wasn’t entirely sure it was a joke.
Was this what he was condemning his children to? A lifetime of scars, deep and wide and never fully healing, of constant self-defence in the face of offhand comments and dirty looks.
Did he want his kids to end up carrying the burden of rage Mel couldn’t rid herself of?
Milan would take it worst, he knew. He took everything to heart, nurtured his pains in private, shielded them for days or weeks before he and Anna managed to coax them out into the open. Stefan – he was a fighter, but that was no comfort. Fighters were only tough until they met someone tougher. And what about Emily? Too young to know what was going on, although he was sure she was picking up on the frosty mood between her parents already, saw how watchful she had become, although her language skills were still all a babble.
‘There must be a better way to deal with it,’ Ferreira said.
For a second he considered telling her Anna’s plan but stopped himself. Because what if Mel agreed with her? If the two most important women in his life both told him he was wrong, then what option would he have but to give in?
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
They found Josh Ainsworth’s ex-girlfriend on the website of the private hospital in Peterborough where he did occasional weekend shifts. She was listed as a head and neck consultant, specialising in reconstruction surgeries after major trauma and disease. She was highly regarded, had published multiple papers and developed a new procedure for rebuilding damaged ears.
‘Portia Collingwood.’ Ferreira turned her phone towards Zigic as he unbuckled his seatbelt.
It was a professional shot, showed a fine-boned, pale-skinned woman with auburn hair pulled back into a severe ponytail. She wore a pin-tucked blue shirt that looked vaguely puritan to Ferreira. She thought about how Josh’s brother had described her – ‘a wild woman’ – and wondered if that was true or just boy talk.
‘Is she what you were expecting?’
‘I don’t know,’ Zigic said. ‘What were you expecting?’
‘She doesn’t look like the Domino’s and quickie type to me.’
‘Come on, Mel. It’s her work photo. What do you look like on the station website?’
‘Like a kick-ass bitch, obviously.’
He shook his head at her. ‘And yet look at you now.’
‘What?’
‘This,’ he gestured towards her blouse. ‘The corporate ice queen in a Scandi thriller get-up.’
‘I like nice clothes,’ she said sternly, but she knew what he meant and wondered how long he’d been thinking it without saying anything.
She had changed her appearance since they’d moved into CID. The skinny jeans and baggy jumpers she’d worn in Hate Crimes felt wrong suddenly, her leather jackets and parkas somehow unprofessional. They were still the right clothes for out on the street but in the office, surrounded by a much larger team who all plumped for suits, that was where she’d felt out of place.
‘You do look smart,’ Zigic said, in the tentative voice of someone immediately regretting an ill-conceived attempt at humour.
‘I’m more comfortable like this,’ she told him.
‘Yeah, you want to be comfortable at work.’ He looked down at his jeans and the white cotton shirt she guessed he’d picked because they were going into Long Fleet today and thought he should smarten up. ‘I should probably wear my suits more.’
‘You’ve made this conversation weird,’ Ferreira told him and got out of the car.
The hospital sat in a slight hollow, surrounded by greenery, carefully tended flower beds and a broad arc of grass, and beyond it a dense stand of trees, which extended for acres into open countryside. It was at the edge of Peterborough but felt entirely removed from it, except for the faint hum of the traffic on Bretton parkway.
As they walked in, entering a reception area that wouldn’t have looked amiss in a boutique hotel, with a main desk where the staff all wore smiles and relaxed airs, Ferreira thought how jarring the transition must have been for Ainsworth; Long Fleet during the week, this place on the weekends. Privilege to penitentiary from shift to shift. Wouldn’t it have been tempting to stay here?
They waited behind people paying bills and making appointments and when they finally got to the front of the queue, the man behind the desk told them they would have to speak to someone in HR. He gave them directions and said he’d call ahead for them.
Laura from HR met them, already showing signs of grief, her eyes puffy and her nose pink through her make-up.
‘Are you here about Josh?’ she asked and didn’t wait for a reply. ‘We’re all in shock. I’m sorry. You just don’t expect something like that to happen to someone you know.’
They followed her into her office and sat down as she searched her desk for the box of tissues that had somehow ended up on the windowsill behind her, next to a line of succulents dusted in glitter and a framed photograph of
