‘If you loved her then you must want to see her killer punished.’
‘It’s too late.’ He sat down again, stared at the dead electric fire. ‘Leave me alone. I’m not saying anything else to you.’
Adams’s mouth was open ready for another round but Zigic pushed him back once more.
‘I’m leaving you my number, Neal. If you change your mind, call me.’ He took out a card and left it stuck in the frame of a gilt mirror. ‘The sooner you talk and the more you help us, the less likely it is you’ll be charged with any further offences.’
He wasn’t sure if Cooper even heard him.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
It was impossible for Ferreira to concentrate with Colleen Murray sitting across the desk from her, speaking perfectly accented French. Her posture had shifted, becoming looser and more expressive, her free hand wheeling in the air as she berated the gendarme on the other end for something that remained absolutely opaque to Ferreira, other than the mention of a hotel.
Murray pouted as she listened to the person on the other end of the phone. Stayed silent for less than five seconds before she rolled her eyes violently and threw up her hand, letting off a string of invective that concluded with her slamming the phone down.
‘Putain!’
Ferreira knew that one.
‘Col, girl to girl, I have to tell you, you are sexy as all hell.’
She gave a throaty laugh. ‘Maybe I’ll try the French on my next date.’
‘I guarantee that will get you out of any museum trips,’ Ferreira said. ‘Take it they lost Batty?’
‘Yeah, dragged their arses and by the time they got to the hotel, he’d upped and checked out.’ Her face clouded over again. ‘What kind of idiots wait until eleven to pull someone out of a hotel? Bloody place has checkout at ten on its website.’
‘Do they have any idea where he was heading?’
‘They’re looking into it, apparently. Not going to hold my breath though.’ She took a sip of her tea. ‘He’ll be running out of money in the next couple of days. So it’s a toss-up between him making a call home for more cash or winding up somewhere cheap and dodgy and getting himself knifed.’
‘Or getting arrested trying to rob some more?’
Murray shook her head. ‘Batty’s not the robbing sort. Not got the balls for it.’
‘He’s up for attempted murder, Col.’
She sighed. ‘They’re all hard cases with their mates around. Take that away, he’s just another little gobshite.’
Ferreira went back to work, still looking into the Paggetts, even though she felt the likelihood of them being responsible for Ainsworth’s murder fading.
It wasn’t necessarily a valid feeling, she knew that, kept reminding herself that just because a new and more promising line of enquiry had opened up it didn’t mean this one was fully closed.
If she didn’t find something compelling, she would be forced to release them in ninety minutes, and she didn’t think she’d find anything in the contents of their mobiles, which the tech department had delivered late yesterday afternoon.
Both phones had been turned on around the time of Ainsworth’s murder but not used. Which told her nothing. Especially as neither of them was a particularly heavy phone user. They seemed to be doing some kind of digital detox, judging by the pattern of usage, which was divided into strict half-hour blocks four times a day, both of them on the same schedule.
Within those blocks most of their activity was related to the various activism groups they belonged to, regular blogs and Michaela’s habit of posting photographs of whatever custom trainers she was wearing that day.
Annoyingly they hadn’t outlined their plans to kidnap Joshua Ainsworth in the notes app or recorded photos of his corpse for posterity.
Ferreira refreshed her email again, checking whether Hammond had come good on his promise to send over the file on the accusation against Ainsworth yet.
Still nothing.
‘Thought you’d have taken the opportunity to get out of the office,’ Murray said. ‘Nice day like this, don’t want to be sitting on your arse while the kids have all the fun with your suspects.’
‘I overdid it at the gym this morning,’ Ferreira told her. ‘My arse needs the rest.’
‘Mine needs some biscuits.’ Murray opened her desk drawer and brought out a Tupperware container of homemade cookies, held it out to Ferreira. ‘Dark chocolate and cardamom.’
‘Thanks.’ She took one and resisted the urge to shove it in her mouth whole. ‘Damn it, these are good.’
Murray bobbed her head at the compliment, broke her own biscuit in half and dunked it quickly into her tea.
‘Bit of a shocker with your man,’ she said, speaking with her mouth full from behind her hand.
‘I’m not shocked by anything any more.’ Ferreira thought of the moment Hammond came clean about Josh Ainsworth and how inevitable it had felt. She’d become incapable of separating power from its abuses, mistrusted anyone who actively sought out jobs with the vulnerable. ‘Everyone we talked to went on and on about what a good bloke Ainsworth was, right?’ she said. ‘And the more you hear that the more you think it has to be lies.’
‘It’s the job,’ Murray told her.
The second time in two days she’d said it and Ferreira wondered which of them she was trying to convince.
Murray went back to her report and Ferreira blew out a sigh as she returned her attention to the Paggetts, still thinking about Ainsworth and how they’d been right about him all along. Wondered if they’d known he was a predator before Jack Saunders’s tweets started popping up in the public domain.
She opened up the scans of the pamphlets, found the one she was looking for.
Initially she’d assumed it was about Ainsworth’s work at Long Fleet, alluding to what they saw as the fundamental immorality of the place. But now she was wondering.
Did they know about the alleged attack? Would that have been motive enough for them to make the step from harassment to assault?
She
