Now that she knew more about Nadia Baidoo, she didn’t want to see the young woman as a suspect, was praying a more likely one would emerge from the list of Long Fleet’s sacked security guards.
She looked back at the house, wondering why Nadia had said she was coming back here when she had no intention of doing so.
Adil Daya had given her money for a bus to Cambridge but he didn’t watch her get on it. She could have gone anywhere, Ferreira realised with a sinking feeling.
She dialled the number he’d given them for Nadia, held her breath until the tone sounded and an automated voice apologised, but the caller could not be reached.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
There was no sign of Ferreira when Zigic got back into the station. Murray gone too, along with the rest of the team, and he felt a moment of dislocation, checked his watch to be sure that the shift hadn’t ended. Twenty past two and the only reason he could see for the empty desks was a list of names freshly printed on Joshua Ainsworth’s board.
Sure enough he found the same list in his emails. The staff members fired from Long Fleet after the purge. A few were crossed out already and he assumed Ferreira had divvied them up and sent the others out to question them.
Maybe she was doing the same but he suspected it was the other name that was absorbing her attention.
Nadia Afua Baidoo – the woman Joshua Ainsworth had been accused of assaulting. Her photo was up on the board and sure enough when he checked Ferreira’s computer, he found the message from James Hammond open on her screen. The details were thin but obviously enough to propel Ferreira into action and out of the station for a few hours.
She hadn’t called to keep him updated but given how he’d spent the better part of his day, he wasn’t surprised. She knew something was going on, would have noticed Adams’s absence and realised they were together.
DC Keri Bloom came in as he returned to the board. ‘I thought the others would be back by now,’ she said.
‘Nope, you’re the first,’ he said. ‘Anything to report?’
‘All of mine look fairly soundly alibi’d, sir.’ She picked up the marker pen and struck through two more names, a man and woman. ‘But everyone I spoke to told me the same thing.’
‘That they were totally innocent?’
She pulled a face. ‘They did say that, yes. But also that Jack Saunders took his dismissal very badly.’
Zigic remembered how ex-PC Saunders had acted when they spoke to him at the DIY store, the barely contained fury, the fierce insistence of innocence even as he openly admitted to multiple abuses.
‘Apparently Saunders confronted Josh Ainsworth over the accusations,’ Bloom said. ‘Three of the people I spoke to live in Long Fleet and evidently they all use the local pub quite regularly – Ainsworth included. Saunders went there a few days after he was sacked and attacked Ainsworth. He didn’t say anything, just went up to Ainsworth and punched him in the face.’
‘He didn’t mention that when we talked to him,’ Zigic said.
‘Maybe we should wait to have it corroborated by the others but I think it’s true. They all took too much pleasure in telling me about it for it to be a lie. I got the feeling they saw it as just punishment for Ainsworth.’
Did it feel that way to Saunders though? he wondered. Or was it an unsatisfying revenge? The kind that only sharpened his focus and made him realise he would need to go further.
‘Has anyone checked out Saunders’s alibi yet?’ Zigic asked.
‘No, sir. Would you like me to make a start on it now?’
‘If you would, Keri.’
‘Of course.’ She went to her desk, carefully positioned her linen jacket over the back of her seat and sat down to begin.
He heard Ferreira and Murray before he saw them, their raised voices coming up the stairwell, speaking over one another; Murray slower but persistent, Ferreira exasperated and angry. Their conversation came to an abrupt halt when they entered the office.
Each had a cardboard box in their arms, ‘Nadia’ written on the sides in swirling capitals.
‘Did you find her?’ he asked.
‘No,’ Murray said, putting the box down next to her desk. ‘Her previous landlady gave us this lot.’
Ferreira dropped hers beside it and quickly filled him in on their day’s work so far: Nadia Baidoo’s brief stay at the hostel, her abrupt departure and the sad story of her life up to the moment she was arrested and taken to Long Fleet. He could see it had affected them both and when he looked again at Nadia’s photograph stuck up on the board, he decided that what he thought was the usual and understandable shock in her eyes might actually have been a deeper emotion, a thorough and inescapable grief.
‘We were just discussing whether she needs to be considered a suspect,’ Murray said.
Ferreira glared at her. ‘Or a potential victim.’
‘Of who?’ Zigic asked.
‘She accused Joshua Ainsworth of attacking her. He lost his job.’ Ferreira shrugged as if the theory was so solid she didn’t need to back it up further.
‘So, you’re thinking revenge?’
‘I am,’ Murray nodded. ‘By her on him.’
‘No,’ Ferreira said sharply. ‘Because women who get attacked never go after their attackers. We know this.’
‘I had a quick poke through the stuff she left at her last home,’ Murray said, gesturing towards the cardboard boxes. ‘Found two pairs of size nine shoes.’ She looked pointedly at Ferreira. ‘Which means we have a size match for the footprints forensics found at Ainsworth’s house.’
‘It’s a really common shoe size,’ Ferreira said.
‘Not for a woman.’
Zigic opened one of the boxes, seeing carefully folded jeans and jumpers inside, a few paperbacks and scented candles in glass pots, a small make-up bag with a broken zip.
On
