Between Two Evils

by Eva Dolan

  ‘Girlfriend?’ Ferreira asked. ‘Boyfriend?’

  ‘A woman occasionally, couldn’t give me a description beyond “very elegant-looking, she is”. Said he went out on his bike a lot in the evenings. It sounds like he was a bit of a loner.’

  ‘Not much to do of an evening in a place like this,’ Ferreira said. ‘Maybe we should ask at the pub.’

  ‘Bit early for drinks,’ he warned.

  They waited as an ambulance arrived to take away Joshua Ainsworth’s body, and a few minutes later one of Jenkins’s assistants gave them the all clear to enter the house. They found her still in the living room, standing over the remains of the table, making notes. With Ainsworth’s body gone Zigic picked out the glimmer of the second wine glass, which must have shattered under the weight of him as he fell. He winced at the thought, even though a few shards of glass in the back was a minor injury compared to the extensive damage that had been done to his face and head.

  Automatically he and Ferreira had moved closer to the table, both picking their way carefully through the room, avoiding the areas that Jenkins and her team had marked up on the floor, pieces of evidence corralled and colour-coded, numbered and logged.

  ‘Okay, so …’ Jenkins said, in business mode now, voice lower and more stern, eyes focused. ‘This is very preliminary and prepare yourself for a change when we’ve done the real heavy lifting.

  ‘We won’t hold you to anything,’ Zigic assured her.

  ‘So, early thinking on the murder weapon is this table leg right here.’

  Jenkins pointed to a piece of dark wood, lying where it had been dropped a metre from the table. It was fairly slim but substantial enough, Zigic thought, knowing how fragile the human skull was, especially around the temple.

  ‘Multiple blows,’ she said. ‘Front on.’

  ‘Once he was down?’ Ferreira asked.

  ‘You’ll need to wait for the PM for that. But – and don’t you dare quote me – judging by the severity of his injuries, I’m guessing he was put down in the initial scuffle.’ Jenkins took half a step forward, making a shoving motion with her free hand. ‘That’s when the table broke – looked smart enough but it was not well made. Then once he’s down, your killer retrieved the leg and beat him to death with it.’

  ‘Our assailant didn’t want him getting to his feet again,’ Zigic said, turning towards the spray of blood across the carpet and up the sofa. ‘They made a decision to put him down for good.’

  ‘Frenzied?’ Ferreira asked.

  ‘In the grey area,’ Jenkins said.

  Zigic looked at the pizza box, still in situ, one slice left in it. ‘They’re in the middle of a meal and suddenly this happens?’

  ‘Bit more than an argument over the last slice of pizza, surely?’ Ferreira said. ‘The neighbour mentioned a woman visiting. Does this look like something a woman could do? It would have taken a lot of strength to put him through the table.’

  ‘We found a pair of knickers down between the sofa cushions,’ Jenkins told them. ‘Might have been there months but combined with the used condom in the bin and the lipstick on the wine glass, I’d say you’re definitely looking for a female dinner companion.’

  ‘Fingerprints off her glass?’

  ‘And DNA, yes. Likely from the condom too. Find her and you’ll have no problem proving she was here if she tries to deny it.’

  Zigic’s eyes had drifted back to the table leg, imagining the heft of it against his own palm, the force required to swing it over and over again, hitting bone so hard the wood was dented. ‘Do we really think a woman could have done this, though?’

  ‘Isn’t he chivalrous?’ Jenkins said, looking at Ferreira.

  ‘Or a little bit sexist?’

  ‘I’m only saying, because Ainsworth must have fallen with a fair degree of force to break the table.’

  ‘We could get hold of a replica,’ Ferreira suggested. ‘Then I’ll throw you at it and we can see if it breaks.’

  They laughed at him and he shook his head. ‘Alright, forget it. The dinner companion is our prime suspect then.’

  ‘Any fibres?’ Ferreira asked, glancing around herself at the light-coloured carpet. ‘Footprints?’

  ‘We have a few footprints, which the killer has obviously tried to scuff away,’ Jenkins said, indicating the locations she’d marked out. ‘We probably won’t get a complete impression but I’ll be able to give you an idea of size, for what it’s worth.’ She cocked her head. ‘I can’t really give you anything more right now, sorry.’

  ‘What about his phone?’ Ferreira asked.

  ‘No sign,’ Jenkins said regretfully. ‘No tablet or laptop either. We found chargers but not the devices that correspond to them, so either this was a particularly violent robbery or your killer knows there’s incriminating information on them and has had them away.’

  Ferreira swore under her breath.

  ‘We did find his wallet though.’

  ‘Intact?’

  ‘Cards and cash, yes,’ she said. ‘Kind of undermines the robbery theory but tech’s easier to fence than cards and higher value, so …’

  ‘You’ve been a great help, Kate,’ Zigic said. ‘Is it okay if we have a look around the rest of the house?’

  She nodded. ‘If you’re careful. We can’t find any sign of activity beyond the living room though.’

  Ferreira went upstairs, he stayed down. Headed into the kitchen that bore the traces of an initial survey by the forensics’ team, but beyond that it was clean and tidy and told him nothing about Josh Ainsworth, except that he kept his juicer on the worktop and a lot of fruit and veg in his fridge.

  He stood in the middle of the room looking out at the back garden, which was pretty but overgrown and yellowing around the edges from the heatwave. Somewhere beyond its far boundary, across a few fields, Long Fleet stood behind high walls and spiked wire. He wondered if Ainsworth had moved here with the job or if it had been a convenient option when he needed one.

  Ferreira shouted to him from upstairs and he went to find her. She was standing in the doorway of a cramped box room, which had been turned into an office containing a small white desk under the window and a large leather chair. Shelves fitted in wherever they would go, filled with box files and binders, stacks of books and pots of pens.

  ‘Look at this.’

  She directed him in, to a blue box file opened out across the desk.

  ‘Is this how you found it?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s all been photographed already, don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I saw this one on the shelf and thought it might be interesting. Seriously, look at it.’

  He went to the desk. Inside the box file were dozens of leaflets about the Immigration Removal Centre: photographs of women on the covers, presumably inmates, the dates of their incarceration, pleas for their release. One about the suicide rate in Long Fleet, another that was fronted with a list of abuses, an image of a guard with his face fuzzed out. Maybe a stock photo, but possibly not.

  ‘Why was Ainsworth collecting these?’ Zigic asked.

  She shrugged. ‘Maybe he was getting ready to bring harassment charges. This is how you go about it, right? Collect the evidence, build your case, then contact a solicitor.’

  ‘But he’d have to know who was responsible for them.’

  ‘Maybe it wasn’t the protestors then,’ she said, leaning against the door. ‘Maybe he was going to put the harassment on Long Fleet somehow.’

  ‘Mel, come on,’ he said, incredulous. ‘There are theories and then there’s just mad speculation.’

  ‘It’s not mad speculation to suggest he might have held Long Fleet responsible for drawing down this harassment on him, is it?’

  Zigic murmured without agreeing.

  ‘He was off work, wasn’t he?’ she said. ‘And we don’t know why.’

  Ferreira came over to the desk and carefully removed a leaflet that looked different to all the others, more ersatz in style, deliberately punky, and when s
he opened it he saw that this one wasn’t decrying the general regime at Long Fleet, it was directly accusing the medical staff of collusion, addressing Ainsworth by name.

  ‘“You took a Hippocratic oath, Dr Ainsworth. And now you’re cleaning up after the rapists and murderers of an immoral immigration system that criminalises victims.”’

  ‘You think this might be the kind of thing that you’d need a holiday from?’ Ferreira asked.

  Zigic sifted through the box, found another one in the same distinctive style. A flyer this time.

  ‘“How many abortions have you performed in there, Dr Ainsworth? How many suicides have you covered up? The blood of innocent women is on your hands.”’

  He let out a slow and careful breath, seeing his fears about the impact of this case beginning to solidify.

  ‘It might not be relevant,’ he said hopefully.

  ‘Or it might be why he wound up with his head smashed to bits on his living room floor.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ‘Are they here?’ Zigic asked as he pulled onto the verge behind a line of cars belonging to the people protesting outside Long Fleet’s gates. ‘The couple from the shop, do you see them?’

  ‘No,’ Ferreira said.

  He took out his phone, glanced at the list DC Parr had made of the protestors’ vehicles. ‘That tallies, we’ve got a car missing since Parr was here.’

  ‘Must have noticed him and got spooked.’

  ‘None of them have got records,’ Zigic told her.

  ‘They should be happy to help us, then,’ she said drily.

  He wasn’t so sure.

  From the car they looked like a collection of respectable middle-aged ladies, churchgoers and garden centre aficionados, dressed in leggings and linen shirts, with sun hats and glasses to protect them from the midday heat and dust from the road, as they kept up their vigil for the women on the other side of the gates. But as he climbed out of the car and felt their attention turn towards Ferreira and him, he started to get that familiar prickling sensation that comes before trouble.

  They would know their rights, he guessed. Wouldn’t be scared into complying, wouldn’t allow themselves to be rounded up without justification or tricked into acting in a rash and illegal manner that would justify taking them into the station.

  He needed them to want to help, but watching their mouths set into hard lines and their fingers closing tighter around the handles of their placards, he doubted their willingness to aid the police. Even for something as serious as murder.

  All they could see were coppers. No better than the ones who’d raided homes and businesses and sent the women inside them through that gateway with no warning or argument brooked.

  ‘We’ve got permission from the landowner to be here,’ a voice said as they approached.

  ‘We’re not here to move you on,’ Ferreira told them.

  A stout woman at the front of the group drew herself up taller. ‘I’d like to see you try, young lady.’

  Zigic saw Ferreira’s shoulders stiffen automatically then relax again. Knew she’d had to make a conscious effort to do that, show them an open face and a neutral attitude, when she would be desperate to snap back. She was getting better at hiding her temper, he thought. But it was still there and he hoped she could keep it under wraps for a few more minutes.

  Ferreira reached into her bag and brought out her ID.

  ‘I’m DS Ferreira, this is DI Zigic, we’re investigating a murder in the village.’

  ‘Zigic,’ the stout woman said, coming towards him. ‘That’s a Serbian name, isn’t it?’

  It wasn’t the part of the sentence he expected anyone to fasten on. Usually murder blew away any other concerns, but he didn’t feel he could ignore her question when they needed help.

  ‘It is.’

  ‘So your family were asylum seekers?’

  ‘My grandparents were, yes,’ he admitted, feeling her eyes burning through her tinted glasses. ‘A long time ago.’

  ‘And how would you feel if your grandmother was locked up in that gulag?’

  ‘We’re investigating the murder of Dr Joshua Ainsworth,’ Ferreira said firmly, trying to draw the rest of the crowd away from the developing scene.

  The woman took another step towards him. ‘Your grandmother fled oppression in her homeland so you could be born into stability and safety. Why shouldn’t other women have that right?’

  ‘My grandparents were very lucky to be given asylum,’ he conceded, thinking of the bombed-out remains of their village, the livestock stolen and slaughtered, their brothers and cousins executed in the mountainous forests they’d played in as boys. He forced the thoughts away, said, ‘We could debate this issue in detail, but right now I need to find who murdered Dr Ainsworth.’

  ‘Well, you won’t find them here,’ the woman said fiercely. ‘This is a peaceful protest.’

  ‘Have any of you spoken to Dr Ainsworth?’ Ferreira asked, inclining her body away from the woman, directing her words to the more receptive faces.

  There were murmurs but no direct responses.

  ‘Whatever the rights and wrongs of the regime here, Dr Ainsworth wasn’t a guard, he wasn’t an oppressor,’ she said. ‘He wanted the same thing you do, to try and keep those women in there as safe and well as possible. He wasn’t your enemy.’

  Still no reply, but Zigic noticed the collective shape of the group changing, heads going down, shoulders rounding, as the defiance bled out of them in the face of this death.

  ‘Dr Ainsworth has been brutally murdered,’ he said. ‘Nobody deserves to die how he died. Let alone someone who dedicated their life to helping others.’

  ‘That is very sad,’ the woman said, managing to sound genuinely contrite. ‘But if you think any of us were capable, never mind willing, you are very much mistaken.’

  ‘Someone had been harassing Dr Ainsworth.’ Ferreira swept the crowd and Zigic followed her gaze, looking for a reaction, a moment of fear. But they were all too well hidden behind their hats and glasses. ‘We’re already aware of your leafleting campaign in the village.’

  ‘It isn’t illegal to inform people about what’s going on in their community,’ the woman said. ‘And speaking the truth isn’t harassment. It’s the responsibility of every right-thinking woman and man who cares what happens to their fellow human beings.’

  Zigic tried to picture her slamming that table leg into Josh Ainsworth’s face, found the image came to him quickly and not entirely unconvincingly. She was perhaps fifty, strongly built and with a low centre of gravity, easy enough to see this fervour converting into fury and the violence she wouldn’t be able to stop until she’d fully exorcised it.

  ‘We’re not interested in your leaflet campaign,’ Ferreira said, an edge coming into her voice. ‘And we can see that you’re good people fighting for something you believe in. But there’s a chance that the person who murdered Josh Ainsworth has passed through this group. And if when we find them they claim an allegiance with you, that’s going to seriously damage your cause.’

  Another murmur circled the crowd and Zigic heard the word ‘blackmail’ pitched low but strong. Couldn’t see who’d said it.

  The mood was shifting again, hardening.

  ‘If anyone at the periphery of your movement has suggested a more direct kind of protest, we need to know about it,’ Ferreira said, taking a box of cards from her pocket and beginning to hand them out. ‘If there’s been any threat of violence made towards Long Fleet staff, even jokingly, we need to know who made it.’

  The women didn’t want the cards, but they were nice middle-class ladies who’d had good manners drilled into them from an early age and they couldn’t refuse Ferreira’s polite requests or ignore how she thanked them, even under these circumstances.

  ‘I know there are people working in there who are no good,’ she said. ‘But Dr Ainsworth was not one of them.’

  Zigic glanced over the road towards the security hut at the main gate, saw that
the guard was watching them, arms folded, chin thrown up. This was beyond his territory, but it might not stop him investigating and passing back what he saw.

  Zigic would have liked to walk in there without giving the management warning, but that wasn’t an option any more.

  ‘Please,’ Ferreira said earnestly. ‘Ask your compatriots to contact us if they can think of anything. Anyone who made them uncomfortable, anyone who didn’t seem to share your principles. We really don’t want this to mar the important work you’re doing here.’

  A soft snort went up from within the crowd and Ferreira ignored it. Maybe she heard how thickly she was laying it on too, Zigic thought. But of the available options she’d taken the right tack.

  In the car, a few minutes later, with Long Fleet falling away behind them, he found himself thinking of his grandparents again, remembering going through his grandfather’s effects after he died and discovering the small booklet of common English phrases he’d been given on arrival here. It was creased and careworn, stained with the oil from his hands and, Zigic imagined, the nervous sweat that came over him when he was called on to speak at any length in his adopted language. His grandmother had been fluent, did the speaking for both of them most of the time, but his grandfather had always been a man adrift in a foreign country.

  Would he pass a citizenship test now? Zigic wondered. If they hadn’t died would they be fearing for their homes once again, seeing out their old age in the same terror they began their married life in? His chest ached at the thought of his grandfather trying to convince some dispassionate official of his need to stay in broken English, or his grandmother being taken through the gates of Long Fleet under the gaze of that same guard.

  CHAPTER SIX

  ‘I hate doing this,’ Ferreira groaned, as they turned down the long driveway onto Wansford Marina, the water opening up ahead of them, sunlight glinting off it in shards so vicious that Zigic felt every one pierce his shades.