So many cases potentially compromised all at once had been overwhelming.
‘Guess she just needed a bit of time to deal with it,’ he said.
They headed for the front door, signed in with the uniform on guard and entered a flagstone-floored, white-painted hallway with monochrome cycling prints hung on one wall and an old bike wheel strung with small lights on the other.
‘You actually like that, don’t you?’ Ferreira asked, catching his admiring glance.
‘It’s different.’
Voices led them through into the living room, Kate Jenkins and two of her assistants almost indistinguishable from each other in their coveralls and masks as they presided over the room.
Jenkins spread her arms wide.
‘My two favourite detectives.’
‘So good to see you back,’ Zigic said, matching the smile he saw crinkling her eyes above her mask.
‘The guy they had covering for you was a nightmare,’ Ferreira told her.
‘Yeah, I heard he was a bit of a dick,’ Jenkins said and pointed at the figure peering into a copper bin next to the leather chesterfield. ‘Elliot was keeping me up to date.’
‘Got a condom in here,’ he said.
‘How could I resist coming back to this?’ Jenkins asked.
‘It’s been used.’
She nodded. ‘Great stuff.’
Another assistant was filming the body laid out in the smashed remnants of a dark-wood coffee table: Josh Ainsworth. A man of medium build with brown hair and a short beard, dressed in lounge pants and a heavily bloodstained T-shirt. From the state of his skin and the pungent aroma, even Zigic could tell he’d been dead at least a couple of days.
Zigic looked around the room as Ferreira asked Jenkins how her holiday went, taking in the teal walls and abstract art and the open top of a pizza box protruding from underneath the body. There was a wine bottle toppled on the floor near the sofa, a wine glass next to it, somehow still standing and half full, already marked out for further attention. He wondered where the other one was. If there was another one. The condom suggested company but didn’t guarantee it, he thought, involuntarily wrinkling his nose.
‘Actually, you know what,’ Jenkins said abruptly. ‘This is going to go way faster if you’re not in here distracting me with holiday talk and gossip.’
‘We’ll get out of your way for a bit then.’ Zigic gestured to Ferreira. ‘You two can catch up later.’
‘Drinks?’ she asked over her shoulder, as he was hustling her out.
‘Lots of them,’ Jenkins said enthusiastically.
Outside in the lane they peeled off their suits and Zigic felt how sticky his bare arms had become in a matter of minutes. He tried to figure the heat into a time of death, eager to fix even a vague point for the crime, but stopped himself. There was plenty to do before the post-mortem gave them the information and other, better, ways to make an educated guess.
‘I really missed her,’ Ferreira said, with a crooked smile.
He was surprised how pleased he was to see that smile again. Realised how long it had been since he saw her anything but grimly or bitterly amused.
‘She’s one of the good ones, Kate.’
A silver Corsa came around the green ahead of them and pulled into the lane, trailed by a patrol car. DC Zachary Parr arriving with the extra bodies to set about the door-to-door.
‘You want me to deal with that?’ Ferreira asked.
‘Thanks, Mel.’
She met Parr as he climbed out of his car and spoke briefly to him and the uniforms, peering at the tablet he had in his hand, dividing up the houses and setting them to work. It wouldn’t be a long job canvassing the immediate vicinity but the green was likely a magnet for the village’s dog walkers, judging by the sign reminding owners of the maximum fine for not clearing up after their pets. The area was relatively well lit for the sticks, enough street lights that anyone coming along after dark might have been seen and seen well enough to make a positive identification. With the late sunset they had a good chance of potential sightings. So they would ask around and put notes through the doors of any empty houses, hope that someone had seen something useful.
Small, tight-knit villages like this, there was always a dedicated observer or two. The kind who diligently recorded the number plates of unfamiliar vehicles and profiled any strangers they saw hanging about.
Zigic headed slowly down the lane, searching for security cameras on the line of cottages; rural crime was on the rise, as always, but with little to no CCTV in these parts lots of people resorted to independent measures. He rounded the green, scrutinising each façade and the eaves of every garage, hoping for a camera pointed across to Joshua Ainsworth’s house. But there was nothing.
Of course they wouldn’t be that lucky, he thought, returning to number 6.
Through the fine nets at the neighbouring cottage’s front window, he could see an elderly man peering out, his cat sat on the windowsill, watching them more brazenly but with less interest.
Maybe they had CCTV after all.
CHAPTER THREE
The village shop was a flimsy-looking 1970s addition to what Ferreira guessed had probably been a picture-perfect cottage before they stuck the big white box on the side of it. The windows were plastered with neon stars advertising local cleaners and dog-sitting services, a twice-weekly Pilates class in the village hall and a painter and decorator boasting of his DBS clearance.
On the path out front, trays of fruit and veg wilted in the heat, the ripe, sweet smell of the bananas attracting a persistent swarm of small black flies and a wasp, which buzzed at her when she got too close. She swiped at it but gave the ground. You couldn’t always be the hero.
The door stood open, shielded by a plastic strip curtain, which slithered unpleasantly around her as she went inside.
Behind the short wooden counter, a grey-haired man with a
