Ferreira wondered if that was why Joshua Ainsworth had targeted her, the vulnerability radiating from her.
Nadia Afua Baidoo had been released from Long Fleet on June 16th, 2018 and spent her first night of freedom, after a full year locked up, at a hostel on Lincoln Road that was run by an interdenominational charity and staffed largely by volunteers.
After that, nothing.
Ferreira ran all of the usual checks, finding no sign of recent activity on Baidoo’s passport. No criminal record except for the immigration offence for which she’d been sent to Long Fleet. Caught overstaying in a raid on the restaurant in Cambridge where she’d been working. Ferreira remembered the raid. It has caused a minor stir in the press when it emerged that the owners had cooperated with the investigation in order to avoid the fines they should have been hit with, had called in all the affected staff on one shift to make it easier to round them up and ship them off.
She wondered why Hammond hadn’t given them any information about the reasons why she was ultimately given leave to remain.
Overstayers weren’t usually so lucky.
The hostel should be the next move, she thought, eyeing Zigic’s empty office. Obviously the ‘family stuff’ that wouldn’t take long had been more complicated than he anticipated but after two hours’ absence she thought he might at least have texted her.
She went to the board and added a mark on the timeline of Joshua Ainsworth’s murder to show the point where Nadia was released from Long Fleet.
Seven weeks between her freedom being granted and his murder.
Two weeks before Nadia was released, Ainsworth resigned.
Was she reading too much into it?
She knew how infrequently the victims of violence sought revenge.
Revenge was a fantasy, a coping mechanism, something people ran through in their heads to exorcise the demons of their trauma, a little of the pain fading away with each new method of torture and despatch.
Almost nobody carried it through into reality because mostly when you were confronted with the person who hurt you, the remembered terror renewed itself, and your body, which had been so sure and strong in those fantasies, started to shake and go numb, or else to freeze you to the spot. It would take an almost superhuman feat of will to overcome the muscle memory of being victimised, force yourself to move forwards and strike first when every atom in you cried ‘run’.
Ferreira looked down and saw that her hands were in fists.
Her own body going back to the parking garage under her building, back into the all-encompassing burn and thrum of Lee Walton’s personal space.
Was that how Nadia had felt when she saw Ainsworth?
Could she really have got past that lamp-stunned rabbit feeling and shoved him onto a table hard enough to break it? Then picked up one of the smashed legs and methodically struck his temple again and again until she exposed grey matter?
Maybe she was that kind of woman.
Maybe Long Fleet had hardened her.
Ferreira turned to Murray, sitting typing up a report, stabbing at the keyboard like it had offended her.
‘Hey, Col, do you fancy a drive?’
CHAPTER FORTY
Haven House was at the northern end of Lincoln Road, beyond the rows of grand old houses carved up into bedsits, the beauty parlours and solicitors specialising in immigration law, the employment agencies and language schools, the B & Bs and hostels that seemed to spring up weekly and change their names once a year. Portuguese cafes and Polish delis, Turkish restaurants and endless takeaway places. Different ones to when Ferreira had lived there but in the same buildings with the same cramped flats above them.
It was always a disconcerting sensation, returning there, to the place she’d spent her teens and much of her twenties, seeing how everything and nothing had changed.
She slowed as she passed the white stucco front of her parents’ pub, saw that the car park wasn’t as busy as it should have been, fewer smokers outside too. Her mother’s hand was evident in a chalkboard sign offering a full English breakfast and a beer for £4.95. There was no way they could do it for that price, Ferreira thought. Things must be getting desperate.
Why hadn’t they said something, she wondered angrily. Asked for her help.
With a twinge of guilt she realised she hadn’t been to visit them for weeks. Months maybe, if she was honest with herself. Made plans that got blown by work or she used work as excuse to blow them because she had other things she’d rather do with her scant free time. She could blame Billy but knew she’d only been lying to herself. He’d been dropping subtle hints about meeting them for a while now, long enough that she knew he’d probably go in there and introduce himself if she didn’t arrange something soon.
The thought of it sent a ripple of unease across her shoulders.
‘Alright, girl?’ Murray asked.
‘I’m good.’
She pulled up in front of Haven House, a double-fronted Edwardian villa with large bay windows edged in stone and a steep-pitched roof. It had an austere quality from the road despite the well-stuffed flower beds and the pillar-box-red front door, which had been recently reglossed. It wasn’t until they were on the front step ringing for entry that Ferreira noticed the ghost of a swastika showing faintly through the paintwork.
They’d had trouble, she knew, more in the last twelve months than the previous ten years. Dog shit pushed through the letter box and windows smashed, spurious complaints anonymously called in about the place being used by sex workers and drug dealers, anything to cause them inconvenience. Helping refugees and asylum seekers drew as much hatred as it did admiration. Hence the new security measures.
‘Sergeant Ferreira for Mr Daya,’ she said to the intercom.
The door buzzed and they went into the Minton-tiled hallway where children’s drawings had been framed on one wall. Boxes of food donated by local businesses sat underneath them, waiting to
