Zigic thought of how obscure Josh’s working life had remained throughout the investigation. They hadn’t been allowed into the main body of Long Fleet, hadn’t see his office, had spoken to only Sutherland and the nurse, Ruth Garner, who hadn’t mentioned any ructions between her co-workers.
All they’d heard was ‘stress’ and ‘moral discomfort’ from the people who knew him best. No mention of a feud. Nothing that could have led them to Sutherland quicker. Hammond was helping now because they had him on the back foot, leveraging him with the threat of media intrusion, but without that threat would he even be telling them this?
‘What happened to the woman?’ Ferreira asked finally.
‘She was deported.’ Hammond’s gaze dropped to the floor between his feet.
‘You do remember something about her case then,’ Ferreira said, and Zigic heard speculation behind the reproach in her voice. ‘Where was she deported to?’
Hammond frowned. ‘I’m afraid I can’t give you any more information about her. There are rules governing privacy –’
‘This is a murder investigation,’ Ferreira snapped. ‘And whatever happened to this woman plays directly into it.’
‘It isn’t a matter of whether I want to tell you or not,’ Hammond said, calmer than Zigic expected him to be. ‘I simply can’t share her information with you.’
‘We need to speak to this woman,’ he said.
Hammond looked worried, his hand going up in a gesture of surrender or mollification. ‘Inspector, please. I want to help you however I can but this is just something I can’t do.’
‘Then what can you do?’ Ferreira asked.
‘I’ll send you the report I have on Nadia Baidoo’s attack,’ he said, looking to Zigic, hope in his eyes. ‘Sutherland claimed he witnessed Josh attack her. And you know that isn’t true now because she’s told you the truth.’ The hope was morphing into desperation. ‘If you can put Sutherland’s lies about it to him, then surely he’ll have to come clean?’
It wasn’t exactly what they needed but it was as much as they would get from him, Zigic realised, and it was more than he expected from the man as they approached his house.
Showing Sutherland his own lies, there in black and white, might just be enough to upend him.
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
‘So, let me get this straight,’ Billy said, topping up her glass with red wine. ‘Ainsworth knew Sutherland got some woman pregnant inside Long Fleet and then Sutherland convinced Nadia Baidoo to accuse him of assault so he’d be sacked.’
Ferreira took a sip, placed the glass on the worktop next to the chopping board where she was slicing garlic. ‘That’s about it, yeah.’
‘But Sutherland was a whistle-blower?’
‘What better way to look clean than to expose everyone else who’s dirty?’ She scraped the garlic into the pan. ‘Sutherland wanted to keep up his shitty behaviour, he needed rid of Ainsworth. Because he was watching him from that point, I guess.’
‘You can’t prove any of this though,’ he said. ‘Ainsworth’s dead, Hammond won’t go on record and you have no idea where the woman is.’
‘We don’t even know who she is,’ Ferreira told him. ‘I called Ruby Garrick – she runs the Asylum Assist charity – and asked her to put the feelers out, see if anyone she knows is aware of a woman who was deported earlier this year while she was pregnant.’
‘That’s got to be a fair few women,’ Billy said, reaching over to turn down the heat under the pan. ‘The garlic’s going to catch.’
‘Maybe, but I can’t think of any other way we can track her down without a name or a location. Happy to take suggestions from my senior officer if he has any, though.’
Billy pulled a face. ‘He doesn’t have any. Sorry.’
She emptied a tin of anchovies into the pan, where they fizzed and hissed, blooming that salty ocean scent into her face; the smell that always took her back to her childhood, her mother cooking this on the temperamental two-ring hob in the caravan, sending her to school the next day reeking of it.
‘You probably won’t need her anyway,’ he said. ‘I read Ziggy’s report –’
‘You actually read those reports?’ she asked, grinning.
‘Diligently. It looks like Nadia’s going to turn on Sutherland.’
‘Not the grand romance he thinks it is, hey?’
‘Her solicitor’s obviously on the right track. Give evidence against him, hope the CPS don’t prosecute.’ He picked an olive out of the jar and tossed it into his mouth. ‘What I don’t get – yes, she needed him to help her get released – but why did she go and live with him after that? She was free. She could have gone back to her old life.’
‘I don’t think she had much of a life,’ Ferreira said grimly. ‘She’s a kid, Billy. She was eighteen when she was picked up. Her mum had only been dead a few months and she was struggling to deal with it. I think Sutherland saw that she was lost and adrift and he took advantage of the fact that she didn’t have anywhere else to go.’
‘There’s always other options.’
‘You know what coercive control is, don’t you? We investigate that now, DCI Adams.’
‘But is that what you’re looking at with her?’ he asked. ‘I’m not disputing that she was in a very tough situation with limited options. But I think you might need to step back slightly and at least consider the possibility that she might be a bit tougher than you’re giving her credit for.’
‘You think she killed Ainsworth?’ Ferreira asked.
He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. But I wouldn’t rule it out just because I feel sorry for her. And I do feel sorry for her, Mel. Poor fucking kid shouldn’t have had to go through any of that.’
Ferreira sloshed some wine from her glass into the pan and put the lid on.
‘This wants to simmer for a bit.’
They went out onto the balcony. It was barely large enough for a cafe table and
