by Eva Dolan
‘Former colleague,’ the guard said under his breath but loud enough to be certain they’d hear it.
‘Call Hammond and tell him we’re here to see him.’
‘Sorry, sir, but I can’t do that. We don’t take appointments at the gate; that’s the responsibility of Mr Hammond’s assistant.’
‘Call Catherine Field, then.’
‘She doesn’t take appointments at the gate either, sir. There’s a process, as I’m sure you can appreciate. And I don’t have any say in it. I just open up when I’m supposed to and keep the gate shut when I’m not.’
Zigic hit the button to close the window, his profile set hard.
‘Are you going to ram the barrier?’ Ferreira asked, only half joking.
‘Only as a last resort.’ He took out his mobile and called Catherine Field, waited, tapping his foot lightly against the accelerator pedal, his hand tight on the steering wheel, until she answered. ‘Mrs Field, DI Zigic, we’d like a word with you, please. If you could call down to the gate and have the guard let us in.’
Ferreira heard her refuse, in a long-winded and icily polite fashion.
‘Well, that’s very unfortunate. Because we’ve just found evidence of a serious crime at the house of one of your employees,’ he said. ‘We also found one of your former inmates living there.’
Silence at her end.
‘Now, we need further information about the situation and there are two options here. We can run a request through this afternoon’s press briefing and see if the public can help.’ He smiled at Ferreira. ‘Or we could come in and have a chat with Mr Hammond. Which would you prefer?’
He hit speaker and Catherine Field’s voice came through clear and tremulous.
‘Bear with me one moment, please.’
Five minutes later they were shown into Hammond’s office.
He looked harassed, shirtsleeves rolled back and his tie recently reknotted, slightly askew, his blond hair lying wrong on his head as if he’d tried to smooth it back hastily and without the benefit of a mirror. There was a half-eaten sandwich on his desk and a pot of tea, the same lapsang souchong that had turned Ferreira’s stomach the last time they’d been here.
Not even the most perfunctory attempt at a welcome today.
‘I don’t appreciate being ambushed like this, Inspector,’ he said. ‘I’ve cooperated with your investigation to the best of my abilities and to have you come here now threatening to leak classified information to the press really is beyond the pale.’
‘And we don’t appreciate being lied to, Mr Hammond,’ Zigic told him. ‘Which is exactly what you’ve being doing since the very first moment we came here.’
‘I strongly resent that –’
‘You knew Joshua Ainsworth was told to resign over a serious assault and you lied to protect your reputation and the reputation of this facility. Now we find the woman he assaulted is involved in a relationship with a member of your staff. A relationship that clearly began while she was interned here.’
Hammond looked genuinely troubled. Field would have told him what they’d alleged so they’d lost the element of surprise, but Ferreira would bet the first he’d heard of it was within the last few minutes.
‘I can assure you we were not aware of this relationship,’ Hammond said. ‘Which member of staff are you referring to?’
‘Patrick Sutherland,’ Zigic said.
Hammond ran a nervous hand down his tie. ‘This is rather a shock, excuse me.’
‘Are any of your staff safe to be working with vulnerable women?’ Ferreira asked.
He didn’t answer, only looked at her with an expression of mild outrage that she guessed would have been stronger if he had had any way to refute the allegation behind the question.
‘Ainsworth and Sutherland were supposed to be your morally upstanding whistle-blowers, right? And now we have one of them assaulting Nadia Baidoo and the other one picking her off like a wounded gazelle almost the second she stepped out of the prison gate.’
‘We’re not a prison,’ he said reflexively.
‘But you have rules about relationships between inmates and staff, I assume?’
‘Nadia Baidoo is no longer a resident,’ Hammond said. ‘I can fully appreciate how troubling this looks though and I will be suspending Dr Sutherland with immediate effect, until we have carried out a full and thorough investigation into this alleged relationship.’
‘Judging by the physical evidence we found at Sutherland’s house, you might not get a chance to suspend him,’ Zigic said.
‘You should have security bring him out to us,’ Ferreira suggested. ‘Much quieter if we take him in from here than wait until he gets home. You never know who’s filming arrests these days.’
Hammond folded his fist into his palm, pressed his knuckles against his mouth. The panic was back, a haunted look coming into his eye; it was clear he was picturing the press circus descending on Long Fleet. The vans and cameras parked up on the verge, reporters filming outside the gates, speaking to the protestors. The eyes of the country drawn to a place that was supposed to operate behind a discreet veil. He would be thinking of the calls to his bosses’ office, the fears of the shareholders and how long he could hold on to this job from inside the eye of a media storm.
He was already sweating, a fine, shining layer across his forehead and top lip, slightly greasy-looking. The camera was going to hate him, Ferreira thought. It would turn him shifty and grubby, magnify his complicity until people started to ask, ‘Well, why would he look the other way on all those abuses? Was he doing the same thing as those doctors?’
Across his shoulder, through the gleaming picture window, she could see three women in dark green tabards working in the vegetable garden, hoeing the weeds from between the lines of salad leaves, the sun across the backs of their necks, each of them eyes down and forlorn-looking. She wondered if they were being paid to do it, knew the inmates were put to work here for a few pounds a day, but would management make gardening a reward rather than a job? Be good and we’ll let you go outside?
Hammond wet his lips. ‘This serious crime …’
‘Ainsworth’s murder,’ Zigic said. ‘What else would it be?’
Wearily Hammond reached for the phone, pressed a button and was immediately answered.
‘Catherine, have Dr Sutherland brought to my office, please.’
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
Sutherland was indignant at first, protesting his innocence in the hallway outside Hammond’s office, accusing them of trying to intimidate him into breaking his NDA by arresting him for a crime he obviously had no part in.
He kept it up as Ferreira cautioned him, speaking over her, addressing himself to Hammond more than either of them, as if he genuinely believed his job was in greater jeopardy than his liberty. Hammond watched him with his arms folded and his skin darkening in increments until it was a deep and livid puce and finally he snapped.
‘You are the absolute worst kind of hypocrite, Sutherland.’
Then he stalked back into his office and slammed the door.
‘No Securitect legal team for you, Patrick,’ Zigic told him.
As they pulled out of the main gates, Sutherland changed tack, asking how they could possibly think this of him in a subdued, almost fully defeated tone.
‘I’m a good person,’ he said. ‘I don’t know how you think I’d be capable of hurting anyone. Never mind actual murder.’
Neither of them answered him. Let him talk because he was giving himself away, showing them the line of defence he would put up once he was in the interview room. The longer he spoke the more they could refine their approach in questioning.
Zigic hadn’t expected him to break down and admit everything. Occasionally they got lucky and a murderer’s guilt did half of their job for them, but even a week on from Ainsworth’s death, Sutherland appeared to be stuck in denial and self-protection.
Maybe because he was innocent.
But Zigic
felt sure he was guilty of something. Actually doing the deed or helping Nadia cover up her own crime. And that should be telling on him.
After a few minutes of silence, Sutherland spoke again.
‘I love Nadia,’ he said, his voice thickening. ‘And she loves me. This is a real relationship. However it might look to you and whatever you might think of me for how it started. We do love each other.’
In the passenger seat Ferreira made a nearly imperceptible gagging noise and Zigic knew she wouldn’t believe Sutherland. He still wasn’t sure, wouldn’t be until they’d laid out everything in front of Sutherland and seen how he reacted to the evidence against him.
Assuming Kate Jenkins and her team could find it.
Sutherland fell silent as they reached the edge of the city and he let himself be walked into Thorpe Wood Station without resistance, only a split-second hesitation as he stepped across the threshold, like a man approaching his execution.
‘I want my solicitor,’ he said.
Ferreira nodded. ‘We’ll call him.’
Zigic left her to process Sutherland and went up to the main office to debrief the rest of the team on what they’d found at the house and get them started on taking apart Patrick Sutherland’s life. Financials and phone records, the uniformed officers stationed on his road to be kept check on, updates immediately given and forensics to call.
He took that job himself. Rang Kate as he rearranged Joshua Ainsworth’s board to reflect their new line of enquiry.
‘Anything you can tell me yet?’
‘You left here barely an hour ago,’ she said, sounding exasperated, but he could hear the familiar thrill of discovery underneath it. ‘There’s not much sign of blood throughout the rest of the house. Basically, what we can plot from the placement of the residue we’ve found is someone coming in the back door and going upstairs into the bathroom.’
‘To look for bandages, maybe?’ he suggested. ‘That would be your first move if you’d ripped your hands open.’
‘Makes sense,’ Kate said. ‘There’s residue on the bathroom cabinet and in the grout on the tiled floor up there. It’s a bugger to get out of grout. They should have refinished the floor if they wanted to hide it.’
‘What about after the bathroom?’ he asked. ‘Is there any sign of him entering the other rooms?’
‘Nothing.’
He thought about it for a moment. ‘He was a doctor. If he bandaged his hands up properly, we wouldn’t expect to see blood anywhere else, would we?’
‘Probably not?’
‘Have you got enough blood to get a DNA match?’
‘I’ve found a few deposits they missed,’ Kate said. ‘Should be enough for a DNA test.’
‘Fingerprints?’
‘We’ve lifted some from the most likely places, so with a bit of a luck we should find a match if it’s there to be found.’
He’d hoped for more, felt himself deflate a little at the idea of going in to question Sutherland with such a scant arsenal.
‘We’re going to talk to Sutherland soon.’
‘Subtle hint there,’ Kate said lightly. ‘We’re actually nearly done, so I should be able to put something together for you before close of play.’
‘Thanks, Kate – before you go, we need every scrap of paperwork you can find. Receipts, delivery notes, all that stuff.’
‘Wow, Ziggy.’ He could almost hear her eyes rolling and winced at himself. ‘I’ve been on sabbatical not meth. I think I know you need the paperwork.’
‘Sorry.’
‘You can apologise in the form of baked goods or not at all.’
Ferreira returned from seeing to Patrick Sutherland, went straight to her desk and started to roll a cigarette.
‘You call his solicitor?’ Zigic asked.
‘On his way.’
He filled her in on what Kate had reported, watched her lose some of her fighting edge as she took the information on board and realised it didn’t give them much to work with.
‘Where was Nadia while he was hanging around in the bathroom, bandaging his hands?’ she asked.
‘Maybe she was out,’ Zigic suggested. ‘You’ve got to hope for her sake that she was, and this leisurely medical session in the bathroom makes me think Ainsworth was alone in the house at the time.’
‘That’s something anyway.’
‘It makes it far less likely that either of them knew Ainsworth was on the warpath though,’ Zigic pointed out. ‘Which means their motives evaporate.’
‘No, it means this motive evaporates. Everything else is still in play.’ She started hunting for a lighter among the debris on her desk. ‘I think we’ve got enough to take a preliminary run at him.’
‘Maybe we should start with Nadia,’ Zigic said unenthusiastically.
Ferreira appeared reluctant and he felt the same resistance. Didn’t want to subject Nadia Baidoo to questioning yet. Speaking to victims of sexual violence was always a harrowing experience, but at least you got to feel you were on the side of right, helping them through, trying to bring them justice. With Nadia she was potentially victim and suspect, and the thought of having to switch between modes with her sent a sick feeling into the pit of his stomach.
‘Sutherland’s the weak link,’ Ferreira said slowly, as if she was still working through the reasoning for herself. ‘Nadia’s been locked up for months, she’s still got that guarded mindset in place. And she expects bad things to happen to her, it’s put her in lockdown. Sutherland is indignant. I think we should use that against him.’
Her reasoning was sound enough if he didn’t examine it too closely. Anything to delay what they were going to put Nadia through.
‘He’s going to expect us to want to talk about Ainsworth’s murder,’ Zigic said. ‘So, we ask him about the break-in instead.’
‘Wrong-foot him.’ Ferreira nodded. ‘Get his story down, then take it apart when we have something more concrete from Kate.’
‘Establish he’s a liar and then go from there,’ Zigic said.
‘He has to lie about it, doesn’t he?’ She shrugged. ‘Unless he wants to actually admit Ainsworth broke into his house and give us a motive for murder.’
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
Patrick Sutherland was on his feet when they entered the interview room, hands pressed together in a pleading gesture aimed at the wall, his back turned to his solicitor. It was rare to open the door onto silence but this time they had, and Zigic wondered if Sutherland had so little to say to his legal advisor because he was guilty or because he was innocent. The guilty often began this process stoically enough, thinking the less they said the less chance of incriminating themselves. But the innocent were frequently stunned into silence, all mental energy diverted to why this was happening to them and what was going to be thrown at them and how the hell they would manage to convince the two strangers coming in of their absolute unsuitability for the role they’d been cast into.
‘Take a seat please, Patrick.’ Zigic waved him into the chair opposite and Sutherland complied.
His solicitor was a young man Zigic had encountered before and wasn’t worried about. He was with a small local firm, worked as a duty solicitor with the minimum level of professionalism required, took his wage and apparently spent most of it on handmade shoes and nice suits and discreet cufflinks.
He wondered how Sutherland had come to settle on Ben Lawton as the right man for the job. Wondered if he’d found himself in legal trouble before, the kind that got tidied away without the involvement of the police. Or if like most seemingly respectable people having their first brush with criminality, he’d just called someone from the firm who handled his last house sale.
He hoped it was the latter. Rather than a personal link, which might cause Lawton to dig deeper into his repertoire.
While Ferreira set up the recording equipment Zigic stared at Sutherland, watching him becoming more uncomfortable by the second. Less than an hour in custody and already his hair was pulled abo
ut, his lips cracked and dark sweat patches had appeared under the arms of his blue linen shirt.
When he stated his name for the recording, he spoke slightly too loud, trying to sound confident but merely giving the impression of barely contained anger.
Zigic had expected more composure from the man. Given the pressures of his job and the added weight of carrying it out somewhere like Long Fleet.
For a few long seconds nobody spoke and Zigic could see how the silence unnerved Sutherland, how desperate he was to fill it with something. There was a story in him, Zigic thought. Excuses and explanations he was desperate to try on them, but he had just enough willpower left in him to hold steady.
‘So, Patrick, why don’t you tell us about your break-in?’
Sutherland blinked at him. ‘What?’
‘It’s my understanding that we’re here to discuss the murder of Joshua Ainsworth,’ Lawton said, seeming just as perplexed as his client.
‘We’ll get to that,’ Zigic said. ‘On the morning of Thursday August 2nd, your house was broken into, Patrick.’
‘We were burgled, yes.’ Sutherland’s forehead creased. ‘I don’t see what that has to do with anything.’
‘Where were you during the break-in?’
‘At work.’
‘And how did you find out about it?’
‘Nadia called me,’ he said.
‘Was she home at the time?’
‘No,’ he said quickly. ‘She’d gone out for a walk. She likes to go out as much as possible. After being locked up for so long, it’s good for her to get used to being able to go where she wants again.’
Ferreira made a note of that. They would check with the neighbours, see if anyone had noticed her coming and going, if she had a routine Ainsworth might have exploited to get in the house while it was empty.
‘What was taken?’ she asked and when Sutherland didn’t answer, said, ‘A burglary typically involves the theft of items from a house. What did they take?’
‘Nothing, as far as we could tell.’
‘You must have something worth stealing,’ she said. ‘I noticed your TV was still there and Nadia’s laptop. Or are they new?’