Portia Collingwood unbuttoned the jacket of her smart grey linen suit jacket and sat down. She wore a small gold cross and a saints medal high in the neck of her white silk blouse.
‘I was intending to visit you after my shift today,’ she said, as if this interruption was an unreasonable breach of some agreement they had already made. ‘I’m sure you can appreciate how difficult it is for me to get away.’
‘You didn’t have a chance any other time between Saturday night and now?’ Ferreira asked.
‘I didn’t know what had happened to Josh until I saw the news this morning,’ Portia Collingwood said icily. She shifted her gaze back to Zigic. ‘I’m not an idiot, Inspector, and I’m sure you aren’t either. I’m not going to try and deny being at Josh’s house on Saturday evening.’
‘That’s a good start,’ he said, knowing the denial would come next.
‘I have no reason to try and mislead you because, obviously, I’m not responsible for what happened to him.’
‘For his murder,’ Ferreira said.
Portia swallowed, dipped her head for a moment. ‘Yes, for that.’
‘Why were you at Josh’s house?’ Zigic asked.
She shot him an incredulous look. ‘For sex, of course.’
‘It isn’t the only option,’ he commented.
‘Please, can we dispense with the play of ignorance.’ She put her hands up, impatient already, and they’d hardly begun. She was nervous, he realised. And guilty or innocent she was right to be. ‘Josh and I had a relationship several years ago that neither of us wanted to pursue into marriage. I am married now, but we continued to see each other occasionally because we enjoyed sleeping together.’
Was this bluntness a ploy, he wondered. It was a surprisingly common one. Be brutally honest about the things you knew the police would already know in the hope that they would believe everything else you told them.
‘I am quite prepared to cooperate with you in any way I can,’ she said, showing him a perfectly open face. ‘But I would greatly appreciate it if we could proceed with some discretion. I have my family to think of.’
‘Was your husband aware of your relationship with Josh?’ Ferreira asked, tapping her pen against her notepad.
‘He was not. And I’d prefer to keep it that way.’
Zigic nodded, although it was a naïve wish on her part. She might think her husband was unaware of her affair but in his experience people were never as adept at hiding infidelity as they thought they were. Just because Mr Collingwood hadn’t confronted her it didn’t mean he knew nothing about it.
But they could come back to that.
‘Tell us what happened on Saturday night.’
‘I arrived at Josh’s place around six,’ she said. ‘We had a glass of wine, we had sex. Josh ordered a pizza and when it arrived we ate it. I had another small glass of wine and I left.’
‘At what time?’
‘Around nine.’
‘Where did your husband think you were?’ Ferreira asked, needle in her tone.
‘My husband,’ Portia said, staring back at her, ‘is away in Berlin for work, so I didn’t need to concoct some story for him.’
‘Who was looking after your daughter?’
A flash of a cold smile. ‘We have an au pair. I told her I’d been called in for an emergency consult.’
‘Is that your usual cover story?’
‘It is,’ she said, lifting her chin defiantly. ‘An advantage of our chronic underfunding here. I can be needed at the drop of a hat.’
‘So, you’re a good liar,’ Ferreira commented.
‘I’m not misleading you,’ Portia said firmly. ‘I may not be the perfect, faithful wife but that doesn’t make me a murderer.’ She touched the cross around her neck. ‘I loved Josh. We just couldn’t live together. I needed somebody more predictable and dependable. That’s what Alistair gives me.’
‘You don’t seem particularly upset about his murder.’
Ferreira was pushing her harder now and Zigic knew he was soon going to have to pull her back or take this conversation into the station. He was already regretting giving Portia Collingwood so much leeway.
He didn’t have her pegged for a killer, that was the problem. She was barely eight stone, he guessed, her wrists so slim he doubted she was physically capable of wielding the table leg that killed Josh Ainsworth.
But looks could be deceptive and rage could make you strong enough to do amazing and terrible things.
‘I’m not going to cry just to make you believe me,’ Portia said flatly. ‘I’m heartbroken about Josh. When I saw the news this morning, I felt like somebody had cracked my back open and filled my body up with ice water. I still feel like that. I couldn’t cry then and there because I was giving my daughter her breakfast and how would I explain myself to her? I just changed channels on the TV.’ Her small, pale hand was curled into a fist, the bones of her knuckles a starker white, painfully prominent. ‘I haven’t cried since and I’m not even sure I’m going to because if I do I might never stop, so I think the best option is never letting it start in the first place.’
She sounded genuine, Zigic thought. Barely supressed emotion vibrating her throat, her pulse visibly beating there. The kind of reactions you couldn’t fake.
But guilty people felt them too, he reminded himself.
‘Did you see anyone hanging around Josh’s house when you left?’ he asked.
He watched her carefully for signs of relief as he changed the subject, saw none. She only shook her head.
‘Nobody who jumped out at me as a potential murderer, anyway. There was an old man walking his dog on the green but
