‘If the wounds are several days old, does that mean they might have happened while he was on holiday?’ Bloom asked.
Zigic looked at the timeline on the board.
‘It’s a distinct possibility,’ he said. ‘Mel, call the brother and see if Josh’s hands were bandaged when he picked him up from the airport. He’d have probably mentioned it but we should make sure.’
With a final glance at the board and a few words of encouragement, he retreated to his office again and Ferreira called Greg Ainsworth’s number, wondering why Zigic was so fixated on the odd little marks on Josh’s hands.
They were strange, but they would likely have a banal explanation.
Greg answered fast, the bright and bouncy sound of cartoons playing in the background, and the first question he asked her was whether they’d arrested anyone yet.
‘We’re making progress,’ she told him. ‘But we’re very early in the investigation.’
She asked him about the wounds and he told her that Josh had been fine when he collected him from the airport, no signs of injuries of any kind. The only complaint he had was an infected bite on his backside, which had sent the boys into fits of laughter.
His voice thickened as he recalled it and Ferreira was about to say her thank-yous and goodbyes when he asked, ‘Have you talked to Portia yet?’
‘We have.’
‘What did you think of her?’
Ferreira paused a moment, choosing her words carefully, because she wasn’t expecting him to press her on the matter and wasn’t sure why he would.
‘She seems to be holding her grief very close to herself.’
‘Was Josh still seeing her?’
‘They were casually involved, yes,’ Ferreira told him.
‘Even though she’s married?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then it must have been her husband, mustn’t it?’ Greg said.
‘It best not to leap to conclusions,’ Ferreira warned, sure that he wasn’t the kind of man to go around to the Collingwoods’ house and kick off, but grief could stir the vengeful spirit in even the most placid people. ‘Mr Collingwood’s alibi looks very strong right now.’
‘What about hers?’
‘Why would you think she was responsible?’
‘She had a temper,’ Greg said. ‘I don’t think she was ever seriously violent with Josh, but he described her as “fiery”.’
‘Fiery doesn’t necessarily mean violent.’
‘She was possessive though, isn’t that usually a red flag in situations like this?’
Ferreira supressed the sigh she felt rising in her chest. His story had changed, subtly but definitely since they last spoke to him, taking on fresh aspects at a pace she didn’t quite trust. Usually the worst version of a person came out in the initial interview, as grieving friends and family members transferred their irrational anger towards the victim onto another, still available, target. This felt like Greg grinding an old axe.
‘I can assure you that we are pursuing every avenue of enquiry,’ she said, clicking into the familiar assurances they always used, the ones that were superficially comforting but gave nothing away. ‘Thank you for your help, Mr Ainsworth.’
She ended the call before he could pry any further, went back to the post-mortem results and began a thorough readthrough.
She tried to keep her attention on the job at hand but she kept drifting back to the conversation with Portia Collingwood, remembering her chilly demeanour and her air of self-assurance, wondering how she and Josh Ainsworth fitted together as a couple. If their relationship was really as free and easy as she suggested.
Without his side of the story, she could say just about anything.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Joshua Ainsworth’s clothes were laid out on one of the long steel-topped tables in the lab, ragged-looking even though they were largely undamaged, sad and forlorn under the pitiless lights. Lightweight grey yoga pants and a T-shirt with a Soviet-era cycle race on the front. There was blood on the T-shirt, long dried and darkened to that specific reddish-brown you’d never mistake for anything else.
The clothes looked small for a man of his size. Five foot eleven, according to the post-mortem report, 76 kilos of what must have been lean muscle, the build of a dedicated cyclist.
Zigic had written off Portia Collingwood as his killer because of the size disparity he’d perceived. Had half disregarded Ruby Garrick for the same reason and probably any other woman they might come across during the investigation. In his head it was already shaping up into a man’s crime but now he wasn’t so sure.
A sudden push, a bad fall, a weapon to multiply the force of the killer’s rage: yes, a woman could have been responsible under those circumstances, he thought, looking at the narrow chest of the T-shirt and the span of the trouser thigh.
‘Sorry for the delay,’ Kate Jenkins said, shuffling out of her office. ‘I think every single thing in here has been moved while I was away. In fact, I’m starting to think they did it just to annoy me.’
The small office she used, little more than a cupboard, still bore the previous occupant’s uncomfortably Gothic taste in art and a virtually dead spider plant in a wicker hanger over the desk, untouched by sunlight. Zigic could see that Kate had started bringing her own personal possessions back in, photos of her kids on the drawers of the filing cabinets and a few postcards on the corkboard, but she’d either run out of steam or time, and there was a transitional air to the room, caught between two owners for now.
‘You’ve got the post-mortem report, right?’ she asked.
‘Blunt force trauma,’ Ferreira said. ‘Lots of it.’
‘More than enough,’ Jenkins agreed. ‘But, sadly, very little in the way of wrestling in the lead-up, so we’ve managed to recover some fibres from his clothes, but I suspect they’re going to be from his lady friend’s clothing rather than the killer’s.’
A tray of samples sat on the
