‘We provided a phone for her – a local phone shop donates the out-of-date models and we put a pay-as-you-go SIM card in them,’ he explained. ‘Nadia was reluctant to take it because she said she had nobody to contact.’
Ferreira felt a stab of sympathy, trying to imagine being so alone in the world.
‘Do you have a number for the phone?’ she asked.
‘I will find it.’ Daya took a ledger from his desk and started flipping through the pages.
‘Did Nadia mention friends she might go to stay with?’ Murray asked, a hint of concern in her voice now. ‘A boyfriend, perhaps?’
‘No, she was very insular,’ he said, hand hovering over the book. ‘Although I did see her with a man a couple of days before she left.’
‘Did he come here?’ Ferreira asked.
‘No, I saw them at the cafe across the road. I remember being happy that Nadia had gone out, even if it was only to have a coffee. I thought it was a positive sign.’
‘Do you think she knew him?’
‘I think so, yes. I watched them for a moment, because of course we have a problem with grooming gangs targeting our ladies, and I was concerned that he might be one of those men. But Nadia appeared to know him. And later, when she came back I asked her about him and she said he was a friend she’d run into.’
‘Didn’t that seem strange to you?’ Murray asked. ‘She said she had nobody but then this guy just happens to run into her?’
‘Nadia seemed relieved,’ he said, thoughtfully. ‘Yes, that is what I remember. She seemed somewhat happier after meeting him and so I thought it could only be a good thing.’
Ferreira showed him a photograph of Josh Ainsworth. ‘Is this him?’
‘I didn’t see his face,’ Daya said. ‘He had brown hair but I cannot say any more than that.’ He turned another page in the book. ‘Ah, here we are.’
He read out the number for Nadia’s phone and Ferreira noted it down, while Murray typed it into her own mobile and dialled it.
She waited.
‘Switched off,’ Murray said irritably.
‘This is very worrying.’ Daya leaned forward, placed his palms flat on the table. ‘She was in a highly vulnerable state when she left, but we are not a prison and I couldn’t force her to stay here, as much as I think this was the best place for her.’ He gave Ferreira a searching look. ‘I think there is something you’re not telling me, Melinda.’
She hesitated a beat too long, feeling caught out under his gaze, a teenager again visiting the Daya house and trying to remain on her best behaviour, be respectful the way Mo had been with her parents.
‘Is this because of the doctor from Long Fleet who was killed?’ he asked.
‘We wanted to speak to Nadia for some background,’ Ferreira said. ‘But we’re quite concerned for her well-being right now.’
A pained expression clenched his face. ‘We should have tried harder to keep her here.’
‘There was nothing you could have done,’ Ferreira assured him. ‘Nadia’s a grown woman.’
‘She’s only a girl,’ he said desperately. ‘She’s a vulnerable girl and we let her go out into the world with a few pounds and a change of clothes. We failed her.’
Ferreira tried to persuade him that he’d done the right thing but he was becoming smaller and older as he sat there. She wished they hadn’t come here and unsettled this good man, but murder investigations created all kinds of emotional collateral damage. Often in the places you least expected. Just another one of the job’s burdens.
He saw them to the door and Ferreira promised she would be in touch when she knew anything more, would tell him when they found her. Hoped it was a promise she could keep, but as she got into the car and pulled away, the uncomfortable sensation that had been growing in her stomach only hardened and settled in.
She had a terrible feeling they weren’t going to find Nadia Baidoo.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
‘This doesn’t feel right,’ Zigic said, as they crossed the gravelled car park into the garden centre, passing people coming out carrying net bags of bulbs and straggly perennials with sale stickers on. ‘We shouldn’t be approaching her at work.’
‘It’s not my first choice, but we’re on a clock here, Ziggy.’ Adams dropped back to let an elderly woman in a wheelchair through, her daughter thanking him. ‘We’ll be delicate, okay? You take the lead.’
A young guy in a green Aertex and an assistant manager’s tag pointed them to Tessa Darby’s mother, working in a distant corner among the piles of terracotta planters and lengths of willow fencing. She was sweeping the brick pathway with a stiff brush, gathering up the mess of a broken pot, the big pieces already in a wheelbarrow, just shards of blue-glazed ceramic and powder remaining.
Wendy Darby looked like her daughter, the woman she would have grown up into if it wasn’t for Neal Cooper.
Or Lee Walton.
Zigic still wasn’t entirely sure. The more the day wore on the more he felt he was being pulled along by Adams’s desperate energy and his desire to make this about Walton rather than chasing actual facts. If this was an open case, if he had to justify his actions at the end of each shift, would he be here?
‘Excuse me, Mrs Darby?’
She stopped brushing mid-stroke, her back stiffening, and turned around slowly. Alerted by the tone of his voice, Zigic thought, the combination of apology and insistence you could never fully shake off once you’d adopted it. She looked scared underneath the weariness and sadness.
‘How can I help you today?’ she said, looking between them, hoping that she was wrong.
But then Zigic made the introductions and her fingers tightened around the broom handle, and he wondered if this was how she’d found out about Tessa. Two strange men approaching her out of nowhere with the worst news a parent could hear.
‘I’m very sorry to disturb you at
