He gestured for them to sit as Field closed the door and retreated to a seat behind them.
‘Terrible news about Ainsworth,’ he said in a clipped voice. ‘I’m sure by now you’ve heard that he wasn’t working with us any more, so I’m not certain how much I can tell you. We’re more than happy to cooperate with our brothers and sisters in blue however we can, though.’
‘Perhaps you could fill in some of the details for us,’ Zigic suggested. ‘Like when exactly Mr Ainsworth left?’
Hammond glanced over Zigic to Field and she piped up from behind Zigic’s back.
‘June 1st this year.’
A little over two months before his murder.
‘And what was the reason for him leaving?’
‘Stress.’ Hammond frowned, turning away to the window beside them, which overlooked a vegetable garden containing rows of canes and plastic cloches, nobody tending to them today. ‘As I’m sure you can imagine this environment takes a lot out of even the strongest of us. It’s pretty relentless, pretty thankless work, and not everyone’s cut out for it. Not long term anyway.’
‘How long did Mr Ainsworth last before it got too much for him?’
‘Five years,’ Hammond said, a hint of admiration in his voice. ‘Longer than anyone expected.’
‘You didn’t think it would suit him?’
‘Joshua was an outdoorsy type, a keen off-road cyclist. We chatted a bit about that when I came on board. The way he talked about being out in the woods, the kind of trails he rode, I didn’t think he’d deal well with being cooped up all day.’
Zigic saw Ferreira’s fingers flexing above the armrest, a sure sign that she was holding in some comment, making an effort to play nice as requested.
Hammond was looking at her too now. ‘Our staff are locked up just as surely as our clients are, Sergeant.’
‘And they get to go home to their families at the end of their shift,’ she said coldly.
‘As a police officer I’m sure you can appreciate the importance of maintaining the rule of law.’ His tone was dry, bordering on sarcastic and Ferreira straightened in her chair. ‘When you encounter a lawbreaker, you do your damnedest to lock them up. When we see someone flouting immigration law, we do the same. For as long as necessary to ascertain their right to remain. And then we release them or deport them as the law demands.’ He folded his arms on his desk. ‘This isn’t a gulag, Sergeant Ferreira.’
Zigic spoke before she could.
‘We need to talk to the other medical staff. Anyone who worked closely with Mr Ainsworth in the weeks leading up to him quitting.’
Hammond nodded curtly. ‘Of course. Catherine will set you up in an office along the hall. Our medical day shift is rather depleted at the moment, but they’re both in this morning so it shouldn’t be any problem having them come in for a quick chat.’
He stood, letting them know this interview was over.
They were put in a disused office three doors down from Hammond’s, half the size, no window and with nothing but a desk and four mismatched chairs around it.
‘Was that what playing nice looks like?’ Zigic asked, once they were alone.
‘He’s full of shit.’
‘People frequently are, Mel. That doesn’t mean you have to pull it out and feed it back to them.’
Field returned a few minutes later with a youngish guy in chinos and a white linen shirt folded back to his elbows. He was blandly good-looking, blue-eyed and lightly stubbled. Attractive enough that Zigic noticed Ferreira giving him a once-over. Her type, he thought, before he caught himself. Since she’d started dating Adams, he wasn’t sure what her type was.
‘Dr Sutherland,’ Field said.
‘Patrick.’ He shook Zigic’s hand as the introductions were made, reached across the desk for Ferreira’s, both of them holding on for a second longer than necessary. ‘Sorry to be meeting you under such sad circumstances. Josh was a lovely bloke. Really great doctor. We’re all a bit shell-shocked right now.’
Field retreated from the room and shut the door behind her as they took their seats.
‘How well did you know Josh?’ Ferreira asked.
‘Fairly well, I think.’ Sutherland frowned. ‘I mean, I thought I did, but then he went off with stress like that, just out of nowhere. I had no idea it was all getting on top of him. He seemed fine. Considering.’
‘Considering what?’
‘This isn’t the easiest place to be a doctor. He’d have been better off in a GP’s post somewhere. We all would, I suppose, but someone has to do the job, don’t they?’
Zigic sat back, watching Ferreira nodding as she watched Sutherland, wondering if she knew how obvious she was being.
‘Did he ever tell you why he came to work here?’ she asked.
‘No, but I know he moved around a fair bit before he settled down here. That’s why I was surprised he left. People who locum for years, generally when they find somewhere they’re content, they stick with it to the end.’ He closed his eyes for a moment. ‘That was a bad choice of words, sorry.’ He took a fast, deep breath. ‘I think there was an ideological component to it for him. I know there is for me. And the way he dealt with patients, you could see he was trying to let them know someone cared about them. That he understood what they’d gone through and he was always going to be incredibly careful not to make them uncomfortable.’
‘You must have a lot of challenging cases in here,’ Ferreira said.
‘A lot of the physical complaints are fairly minor,’ he told her. ‘But what underpins them can be quite heavy. We see a lot of self-harm for instance. So we swab the area and give them a few stitches, but as for what’s causing it … we can’t
