It wasn’t much to leave behind you, he thought. Two boxes.
Not enough that you would feel you had to go back for it.
He sat down on the edge of the desk.
‘For now, she’s a person of interest,’ he said. ‘She can give us a perspective on Ainsworth that nobody else has been able to, so we need to find her.’
‘Aren’t you curious why she’s disappeared off the face of the earth?’ Ferreira asked. ‘Nadia left the safety of Haven House, where they were trying really hard to help her, with nothing but a few quid and a phone she’s got turned off.’ She stood with her feet planted wide, a picture of defiance. ‘She had no family here, no boyfriend. Her friends all abandoned her while she was grieving for her mother, so I doubt she’s decided to reconnect with any of them. Even her church – where she was a regular – haven’t heard from her.’
‘I agree it’s worrying,’ Zigic said gently. ‘But we both know there are lots of terrible ways for a young woman in Nadia’s situation to fall between the cracks.’ He watched her face harden. ‘The more likely explanation for her disappearance, given everything we’ve been told, is that Nadia might have killed herself.’
Ferreira threw herself into her chair with a pained grunt.
‘We discussed that in the car,’ Murray told him.
‘Mel, you need to call Missing Persons. Get in touch with Cambridge and see if they know anything about her.’
‘She’s not got anything on her record since she was released from Long Fleet,’ Ferreira said. ‘I already checked.’
‘Which is why you need to get in touch with them directly and see if they know her as a rough sleeper or something like that.’
‘A sex worker?’ Ferreira asked. ‘That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?’
‘Coming out of a facility,’ he said. ‘We know the options aren’t good if she’s going it alone.’
‘That bloke Mr Daya mentioned seeing her with,’ Murray said. ‘He’s the catalyst here. Nadia’s withdrawn and quiet and then suddenly she’s out having coffee with some guy. And then a couple of days later she’s gone.’ Murray shook her head brusquely. ‘You tell me that doesn’t sound like a procurer. He’s seen her weakness and charmed her away from the only people who can help her get back on her feet.’
‘Have we got a description?’ Zigic asked.
‘No. Mr Daya only saw him from the back.’
Zigic rubbed his cheeks, feeling the peaks and troughs of this conversation like so many pinpricks. He wasn’t convinced Nadia Baidoo was a viable suspect, wasn’t even entirely sure she’d be able to tell them anything that would lead them to Joshua Ainsworth’s killer either.
He’d attacked her and been sacked and she’d been released.
Beyond those bare bones, what more was there to know?
Right now they needed to focus on the staff members Ainsworth had informed on. Follow up on the violence between him and Jack Saunders.
‘There is more to this,’ Ferreira said, in a low firm voice.
Murray looked thoughtful. ‘Maybe she went off with someone she met in Long Fleet.’
‘One of the guards, you mean?’ Zigic asked, getting a soft snort of derision from Ferreira.
‘I was thinking more like one of the other women,’ Murray suggested. ‘You know what prison friendships are like.’
‘Not built to last.’
‘But it takes them awhile to realise that.’ Murray nodded towards the board. ‘Other thing about prison relationships … if you want revenge they’re the best kind of help you can get.’
‘They weren’t in prison,’ Ferreira said wearily. ‘These aren’t hardened criminals we’re talking about, okay? She was a waitress who got arrested because her paperwork wasn’t right. What makes you think a year in Long Fleet could turn her into Liam Neeson?’
‘Mel, do you think your empathy might be getting in the way here?’ Murray asked, her face set in an expression of concern that Zigic expected to be wiped off it imminently by Ferreira’s response.
Instead Ferreira took a deep breath, sucked her bottom lip into her mouth.
‘Okay. Maybe, yeah,’ she admitted. ‘But we have to keep in mind how massively unlikely it is that Nadia went from victim to murderer in a matter of weeks. We all know how rarely victims find the strength to stand up to their abusers, right? Getting to a place where they’re capable of murder is a whole other level.’
‘Unless she found someone to do it for her,’ Zigic suggested.
Ferreira sneered. ‘You old romantic.’
She knew, he thought.
She knew exactly what Adams had dragged him into. Knew and didn’t approve.
‘Let’s wait to see if Missing Persons come back with anything,’ he said, wanting to go into his office and close the door, just sit in silence with these racing thoughts for a few minutes. ‘And it might be an idea to take this lot up to forensics.’ He tapped one of the boxes of clothes. ‘Get a DNA sample and see if it hits anything. Fingerprints. Whatever Kate can find.’
‘I’ll go,’ Murray said, stacking the boxes and heading out.
Ferreira was watching him now, on her feet again, an expression like she was trying to burn her way through his eyeballs. She took a couple of slow and deliberate steps towards him.
‘Did you make any progress?’ she asked.
‘What?’
‘You were out all day, you must have got somewhere with it.’
The phone on his desk started to ring.
‘I’ve got to get this, Mel.’
He went into his office, closed the door behind him. Through the partition window he could see her still looking as he went behind his desk and answered the phone.
‘Don’t tell her anything,’ Adams said, on the other end.
Zigic swore at him.
‘That’s exactly what I am, yeah. But we’re not involving anyone else
