‘Ruby Garrick called me,’ she said. ‘You want to know about a woman from Long Fleet.’
‘We should discuss this upstairs,’ Ferreira told her and immediately the tension returned to the woman’s face.
‘I’m not going to talk to you here,’ she said.
Ferreira nodded. ‘Okay.’
‘There’s a pub up the road.’
‘Bit early for the pub.’
‘They serve coffee,’ the woman said, starting out of the door.
Ferreira followed, knowing she probably should have insisted. This woman could be a fantasist or dangerous, although she didn’t look like either. She looked like a seasoned protestor, someone who’d already spent time in police stations under circumstances that hadn’t been pleasant, and wouldn’t step into one of her own volition without a very good reason.
As they walked up the road, the woman moving at a swift rate, Ferreira considered trying to get her talking there but decided against it. She might spook otherwise and if she had information she was too important to let slip for the sake of a couple of minutes.
She texted Zigic as she walked, letting him know where she was going.
The Woodman was a new-old chain place on the edge of the golf course, and a few athletes were already in when they arrived, tucking into bacon rolls or full English breakfasts before they set out. There were a couple of suits working at laptops, earbuds in, paperwork out, and a pair of elderly ladies drinking what looked like mimosas with their eggs Benedict. They spoke quietly but laughed loudly and Ferreira half wished she could nab a seat nearby and eavesdrop.
‘What are you having?’ she asked.
‘I’ll buy my own.’
They ordered coffees and went to a seat as far away from the other customers as possible, a small table next to a painted fireplace filled with electric candles. The woman took the straight-backed wooden chair, leaving Ferreira the lower leather wing chair.
It was an interesting move, she thought, but would gain the woman nothing.
‘Judy,’ the woman said finally.
Ferreira doubted it was her real name and she would need more if the woman had the right kind of information, but she’d leave it at that for now.
‘Mel,’ she said. ‘How are you involved with Long Fleet?’
‘I’m not involved with them. I help run a charity for refugee women who’ve been unfairly incarcerated. We try to get them legal help, make sure their families know where they are and can keep in touch with them.’ She was getting angry just describing the work and Ferreira could only guess at the horrors she heard. ‘A lot of women are essentially kidnapped from their homes or workplaces without anyone being informed where they’ve been taken. We try to give them a link to the outside world. Get their stories out, engage their local MPs, the press, anyone who can help with their asylum applications.’
‘That must be frustrating work.’
‘Don’t pretend you care,’ Judy said, shooting her a withering look.
‘I’ve spent the last seven years workings hate crimes,’ Ferreira told her. ‘I see what happens to women on the margins of society, I know how vulnerable they are. Believe me, I have nothing but sympathy for the women in Long Fleet.’
‘But you work for the people who oppress them.’
‘Not everyone in the police force is an oppressor.’
‘No,’ Judy said, the sneer turning into a contemptuous smile. ‘Just enough of them to make life difficult for anyone with the wrong name or the wrong skin colour.’
She wanted to argue with the woman but knew there was no point.
‘The woman you’re looking for,’ Judy said. ‘Why do you want to speak to her?’
‘As I told Ruby, we’ve been given a tip-off that she fell pregnant while she was locked up and we’d like to speak to her about how that happened. I’m assuming it wasn’t consensual.’
‘How can it be consensual in that place?’ Judy snapped. ‘He might not have pinned her down but only because he didn’t need to. Long Fleet had already done it for him, locking her up, taking away her hope and her self-esteem. He groomed her into thinking it was what she wanted.’
‘Does she still think that?’ Ferreira asked.
‘No,’ Judy said quietly. ‘Once she was deported she began to understand what happened.’
The same as with Nadia Baidoo, Ferreira thought. Sutherland using his access and his position of trust within Long Fleet to get to the most vulnerable women, using kindness and charm rather than force, but was it any different, really? Was he any better than the guards he’d helped to get rid of?
She wondered how he saw himself. Not as a sexual predator, of course not. He could point to more blatant ones and distinguish himself from them too easily to see how similar he was. When he said he loved Nadia, he sounded like he believed it. Maybe he thought the same about this woman. Or had wanted to convince himself that he did, that there was a deeper and more meaningful connection in play.
‘Do you know who’s responsible?’ Judy asked her.
‘We have an idea,’ Ferreira said. ‘But from what we could gather she wouldn’t tell anyone while she was in Long Fleet, so we need to speak to her to be certain who we should bring in. Do you know who he is?’
Judy shook her head. ‘Dorcus wouldn’t tell me who was responsible. I strongly advised her to make a formal complaint. Involve her solicitor, insist she brought the police in even if you didn’t actually do anything.’
‘We would have taken her seriously,’ Ferreira said.
A waitress came over with their coffees and for a moment that killed the conversation, both of them waiting for her to finish straightening the chairs at a nearby table and turning a small
