‘Then you’d say your memory of the evening is clear?’
Michaela nodded, a flicker of suspicion in her eyes. ‘I didn’t take note of the exact time we left because I had no reason to. But I wasn’t drunk.’
‘That’s good,’ Ferreira said brightly. ‘You’ll be able to explain these comments you made then.’
Michaela stiffened, rose incrementally in her seat for a moment before catching herself and visibly forcing herself to relax again.
Ferreira took out the neighbour’s statement. ‘I quote, “Michaela said, ‘Long Fleet are snatching innocent women out of their beds at night, how do you think they’d like it if we did that to one of them?’”’
Michaela let out a high peel of laughter, so sudden and unexpected that her solicitor started slightly in the chair next to her.
‘That’s it?’ she asked, incredulous. ‘I make an offhand comment at a party and you drag us in here like dogs.’
‘You and Damien expounded at length to this gentleman about the need for direct action against staff members from Long Fleet Immigration Removal Centre,’ Ferreira said. ‘It was hardly an offhand comment, more of a manifesto.’
‘A statement of intent,’ Zigic suggested.
Michaela turned to him. ‘It speaks.’
Ferreira was reading from the statement again. ‘Damien said, “If you want to effect change you have to do something too big for people to ignore.” Well, we’re paying attention now, Michaela. You’ve got what you wanted.’
‘We did not go anywhere near that doctor,’ Michaela said, overenunciating each word, sitting up straight now with her forearms on the table.
‘Come on, “that doctor”? You know his name,’ Ferreira said smoothly. ‘Josh Ainsworth. You knew where he lived. You knew what he looked like. You were posting targeted hate mail directly through his front door.’
‘That wasn’t us,’ Michaela snapped. ‘I told you already, those fliers are nothing to do with Damien and me.’
‘Then how did one of Damien’s hairs get stuck to one of them?’ Ferreira asked.
Michaela’s face coloured and Zigic knew that look well enough: the expression of a wife who had told her husband to do something the right way a dozen times only to still see him screw it up.
‘Well?’ Ferreira asked. ‘How did it get there?’
She didn’t answer, only ground her jaw and stared hard at Ferreira like she was willing her to disappear.
‘There’s two options I can see – either Damien’s hair got in the pamphlet when he was making them up. And we know that isn’t possible because you’ve just told us he isn’t responsible for them. Or it happened when Damien was inside Josh Ainsworth’s house.’
‘No.’
‘When was he there?’ Ferreira asked.
‘No, this is rubbish.’
‘The pamphlet was in Josh’s office. That’s upstairs in his house – which you’ll probably know already but just for the benefit of the tape. So, did Damien go up there before or after he killed Josh?’
‘Neither of us has been inside his house.’
‘Or maybe you killed Josh and Damien was so repulsed that he ran off upstairs looking for somewhere to be sick and just happened onto Josh’s office and that’s how his hair got there.’
‘For fuck’s sake,’ Michaela shouted. ‘We made the fliers, okay. Jesus, what are you on? We made some fliers and stuck them through his letter box. It isn’t illegal and it doesn’t mean we killed him. Because, obviously, we didn’t.’
‘Obviously?’ Ferreira asked. ‘We’ve got you and Damien planning to kidnap a member of Long Fleet staff four hours before Josh was killed.’
‘That was just talk.’
‘You’ve got a weird concept of small talk,’ Ferreira said. ‘You plan a lot of kidnappings in front of strangers?’
‘Do you understand the difference between saying something and meaning it?’ Michaela asked, her hands cutting down hard on the table as she spoke. ‘We’d never do something like that.’
‘It was just a fantasy?’
‘Not a fantasy, just … some stupid thing Damien said one time.’
Ferreira cocked her head, smiled slightly at Michaela. ‘One time?’
Michaela didn’t answer.
‘We’ve been having a look through your conversations in the Immigration Action group.’
‘That’s a private group,’ Michaela said tersely. ‘Have you hacked it?’
‘We were given access,’ Ferreira told her. ‘And it seems like you and Damien have been working on this kidnapping plot for quite some time.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’ She swallowed hard.
‘From June 12th of this year,’ Ferreira said. ‘Here you are suggesting kidnapping a member of Long Fleet staff and then negotiating a prisoner swap for a woman who was on hunger strike.’
‘That was a joke,’ Michaela said, throwing her hands up.
‘You joke about people on hunger strike?’ Ferreira asked, getting a scowl in response. ‘In the same conversation you outline the challenges of taking a member of the security personnel, and eventually decide that one of the office or medical staff would be easier to snatch. And I quote – “a lot of the guards are ex-forces and filth, they’re going to put up a fight. A doctor or a secretary will be a better option.”’
Michaela’s hands curled into fists on the tabletop and she flattened them out carefully and deliberately.
‘It was just talk,’ she said, her voice low and raw. ‘We were angry about what was happening in there and we were dealing with it by joking. Gallows humour, right? You understand that?’
Zigic folded his hands on the table. ‘You need to think very carefully about what you’re going to do next, Mrs Paggett.’
Her eyes widened. ‘Oh, and here comes the paternalistic routine, encouraging me to confess and apologise and take my punishment.’
‘We all know you’ve been here before,’ Zigic said. ‘You obviously understand how it works. So why don’t you take some time to consider what’s going to be best for you now? Talk to your solicitor, weigh up your options.’ He stood and pushed his chair back under the table. ‘In the meantime, we’re going to speak to Damien, see if he’s a bit more forthcoming.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Damien Paggett was far less composed than his wife. Had drunk two full bottles of water while he waited with his solicitor in the
