CHAPTER FOUR
Ferreira was sitting on the bonnet of his car, rolling a cigarette, when Zigic emerged from number 4, and it took him a few minutes further to extricate himself from Ainsworth’s neighbour and his accomplice of a cat, which kept winding between his feet in a figure of eight. He assured the man that they would be in touch if there was anything else they needed from him. Explained once more the numbers on the card he’d handed over and that he didn’t need to worry about the email address if he wasn’t very good with his computer, just ring.
He half expected to be physically dragged back inside but made it up the short front path and through the freshly painted gate, feeling a twinge of sadness in his chest for the nice old man with the sharp eyes but the faltering hearing.
‘Any good gossip from the shop?’ he asked Ferreira as he sat down next to her.
‘Ainsworth’s a doctor at the detention centre.’ She handed over his water. ‘Half the village work up there, apparently. And we’ve got an ongoing protest situation that’s verging on harassment of workers. Leaflet campaigns, public shaming. Probably not a million miles off the mark though, given what we know about how those places operate.’
Roughly the same as he’d just been told.
There was irritation in Ferreira’s voice but an unmistakable edge of excitement too. He could see it lifting her as she lit her cigarette, could almost hear the cogs turning behind her sunglasses.
He was already envisioning the pressure he was going to come under from Riggott and all the many layers above and beyond him. Pressures Ferreira only felt at one reserve, protected from them by her rank because he had never been the kind of DI who passed his beatings down the chain of command. As bad as they’d been on other cases, he knew the potential here was significantly worse.
Long Fleet was operated by Securitect. The same company who were angling to provide Cambridgeshire Constabulary’s emergency call services, their increasing roster of civilian support staff and, for all he knew, the sandwiches in the vending machines that had replaced their canteen a few months ago.
If Joshua Ainsworth’s murder touched at all on his job at Long Fleet, they were going to be tiptoeing around landmines trying to investigate it.
It looked personal though. No sign of forced entry, Ainsworth killed in his living room as he ate his dinner, judging by the pizza box and the spilled bottle of red wine. Perhaps killed by the person he’d shared the meal with or why hadn’t they tried to intervene? Or reported his murder right away.
‘I think we need to speak to the protestors,’ Ferreira said. ‘There were a couple of them kicking off in the shop when I went in. I dunno,’ she shrugged. ‘They had that air, you know?’
‘It looks like a fairly peaceful protest,’ Zigic said hopefully.
‘Then we can disregard them quickly.’
‘We can’t just pull them all in for questioning, not without grounds.’
‘Isn’t the harassment grounds enough?’
‘It would be if we knew who was behind it,’ he told her.
‘We’ll never find out if we don’t speak to them.’
He sighed, hearing the tease in her voice.
‘How about we take their number plates?’ she suggested. ‘Get their names, check if there are any known agitators involved, and then we can approach and see what kind of reaction we get?’
‘Set Parr on it.’
She called the DC over and passed on Zigic’s fresh orders, told him to be discreet.
Zigic gestured at the empty cottage with its curtains all drawn, wanting to change the subject. ‘Nobody in at eight. Holiday let.’
‘Here?’ Ferreira asked, incredulous. ‘Who’d come on holiday here?’
‘It’s pretty, I guess. Quiet.’
‘Not this weekend.’
‘No.’ He picked at his shirt, already starting to stick to his back. ‘And someone was staying there, so we’ll need to track them down.’
‘Number four was chatty then.’ Ferreira glanced at the house. ‘He’s still in the window.’
‘I got the impression he’s a bit lonely.’ The old cat and the interior like a time capsule; he brushed the thought aside. ‘Ainsworth’s been away on holiday too. Just got back Wednesday. But he’d been off work a few weeks before that too. Pottering around the house, his neighbour said.’
‘Lost his job, do you think?’
Zigic shrugged. ‘Or he’d banked a load of holiday time and decided to take it while the weather was good.’
‘Did he hear anything?’
‘No, nothing out of the ordinary but his hearing isn’t up to much, so that doesn’t mean they didn’t hear something on the other side,’ Zigic said. ‘Ainsworth was a considerate neighbour, he reckoned. No loud music, no midnight DIY sessions. Not much in the way of visitors.’
‘Girlfriend?’ Ferreira asked. ‘Boyfriend?’
‘A woman occasionally, couldn’t give me a description beyond “very elegant-looking, she is”. Said he went out on his bike a lot in the evenings. It sounds like he was a bit of a loner.’
‘Not much to do of an evening in a place like this,’ Ferreira said. ‘Maybe we should ask at the pub.’
‘Bit early for drinks,’ he warned.
They waited as an ambulance arrived to take away Joshua Ainsworth’s body, and a few minutes later one of Jenkins’s assistants gave them the all clear to enter the house. They found her still in the living room, standing over the remains of the table, making notes. With Ainsworth’s body gone Zigic picked out the glimmer of the second wine glass, which must have shattered under the weight of him as he fell. He winced at the thought, even though a few shards of glass in the back was a minor injury compared to the extensive damage that had been done to his face and head.
Automatically he and Ferreira had moved closer to the table, both picking their way carefully through the room, avoiding the areas that Jenkins and her team had marked up on the floor, pieces of evidence corralled and colour-coded, numbered and logged.
‘Okay, so …’ Jenkins said, in business mode now,
