‘He was worried about me. He wanted to know if I had somewhere to go.’
‘A lot of women leave Long Fleet with nowhere to go,’ Ferreira said, bracing her hand against the worktop. ‘But you’re the only one living in his house.’
‘It isn’t against the rules.’ Nadia turned to face her, spine straightening. ‘I’m not in Long Fleet any more. I can do what I want.’
‘And is this what you want?’
‘I didn’t have anywhere to go,’ Nadia said softly.
It wasn’t an answer but an explanation and Ferreira could see the terrible logic of it. How Sutherland might have framed it for Nadia, how inevitable it must have felt given her circumstances.
‘Are you two in a relationship?’ she asked.
Nadia nodded.
‘Were you sleeping together when you were in Long Fleet?’
‘No,’ she replied, almost before Ferreira had finished speaking.
And Ferreira didn’t believe it. Couldn’t. She saw the shame in Nadia’s eyes, so deep and profound that it stunned her.
Nadia moved away, heading to the chair in the front window again. As Ferreira turned to follow her, she noticed a spatter of dark stains in the pale grout between the limestone floor tiles near the back door. They could have been a dozen different things, she told herself as she squatted down, but she knew what an old wine stain looked like, how it was more purple than this, how curry sauce bled its oily orange spices as it aged, how jam held its colour and coffee went weak and washed out.
Blood looked like this. Only ever blood.
Zigic was questioning Nadia now, asking her about Sutherland and how he’d talked her into coming here. Repeating the same questions Ferreira had asked but at more length because he was distracting her rather than seeking new information.
Ferreira scrutinised the skirting boards near the door, seeing that the wall there had been repainted recently, several thick coats with the roller’s stipple marks visible. Done in haste, she thought. In desperation.
The back door was uPVC, would have washed clean easily enough. She opened it and saw the telltale scuff marks where somebody had levered the double-glazed glass panel out of the unit. There was more dried blood on the brickwork near the handle, drips and tracks that had a bleached-out quality, but blood was persistent and mortar more porous than brick.
She played it through in her head: someone breaks in, cutting themselves in the process, and bleeds all over the door and into the kitchen.
But it wasn’t that, she realised, as she turned a slow circle, her eyes on the ground, and found spots of what could be blood on the paving slabs. They were bleeding before they even reached the door.
Maybe a first attempt gone wrong, she thought.
Except no, there they were, more spots almost hidden in the gravel path that ran through the centre of the lawn. Stray drips dried on the flowers of a drift of white ox-eye daisies almost a metre away, as if the burglar had tried to shake the pain out of his hand. She kept walking, the trail getting light and sparser until she reached the back fence.
The bed in front of it was planted with low, dark-leaved creepers, viciously barbed like a trap. No more than knee high.
They would prick you wickedly but she wasn’t convinced they would draw so much blood.
If the burglar came over the fence, they might damage their legs but not their hands. It was barely one and a half metres high, not a drop into the unknown. You would lower yourself down.
Reach up and drag yourself over.
She leaned closer, peering at the top of the fence.
‘Gotcha.’
The entire stretch of fence was lined with gripper rods, their spikes short but thick and vicious-looking, designed to rip open the hands of anyone who tried to climb into the garden.
She thought of the mysterious injuries on Joshua Ainsworth’s fingers, the regularly spaced punctures torn ragged but semi-healed by the time he died. Pictured him grabbing for the top of the fence to haul himself over and ripping his hands open.
But not stopping.
Something propelled him, bleeding, along the path and through the back door and into that house.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
They called a car to take Nadia into Thorpe Wood Station, called a solicitor too, knowing that she would need representation before they formally questioned her. Zigic found the business card he’d been given by the woman they ran into at Long Fleet. She’d said to get in touch if they needed anything, and he figured this was something she could help with.
It was beyond the basic requirements of his job at this point, possibly at odds with best practice for a detective, finding good legal advice for a suspect when an uninterested duty solicitor would make his life easier. But he wanted to do this right.
Forensics turned up at the same time as the patrol car and he saw the fear in Nadia’s eyes as she was walked out of the house, tripping over her feet, her gaze magnetised to the bright red van.
Whatever had happened in that house she knew about it.
How far she was involved and in what capacity remained to be seen.
Zigic called over the two extra uniforms he’d requested and briefed them on the door-to-door: anything unusual noticed in the street late last week, any strange activity sighted at the Sutherland house on the night Joshua Ainsworth was killed.
Ferreira was already next door, standing on the front step talking to Sutherland’s neighbour, who kept gesturing behind herself into the house. Ferreira was nodding, making notes. She looked like she was happy about what she was hearing and sure enough, a couple of minutes later, she returned with a spring in her step.
‘Break-in mid-morning on Thursday,’ she said.
‘Broad daylight?’ Zigic asked, amazed at Josh Ainsworth’s gall. ‘Could she give you a description?’
‘She didn’t actually see it,’ Ferreira told him. ‘She went out at nine to hang some washing out, came back a couple of hours later and saw that the glass
