He eyed her warily, knowing she would never give up a hunch so quickly.
‘But I figured that if we can convince Long Fleet’s governor that we believe it, we might be able to scare up some names from him.’
‘What names?’ Zigic asked, feeling a stirring of interest, his anxiety falling away now he could see the sly way her mind was turning.
‘The staff members who got fired over Ainsworth’s abuse reports.’ She leaned back against the wall, a little too casually. ‘I mean, where are we right now? We’ve ruled out everyone bar the Paggetts.’
‘They’re our prime suspects for a reason, Mel,’ he said, but he knew where she was going with this and that she was right.
They couldn’t keep fighting shy of Long Fleet’s influence. And Riggott’s discomfort about the investigation moving closer to it couldn’t be allowed to knock a whole line of enquiry out of play. A couple of days ago when their other suspects were still looking like strong possibilities, it had been easy for him to take the steer from Riggott.
Now he had to follow his gut and his experience.
Both were pointing to Long Fleet.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
DC Keri Bloom found their man.
While the rest of the office was scrolling through PcthirtyOne’s Twitter feed as Ferreira had instructed them to, Bloom was on the phone to the station’s human resource department, asking which former officers had requested references to Long Fleet Immigration Removal Centre.
A piece of detective work that Zigic admired even as he was wondering why Ferreira hadn’t taken that route herself. She was off her A-game, he thought. Understandably with Lee Walton circling her.
He would have to talk to her about it. Couldn’t let this secret fester away between them, keep pretending he believed she was fine when she obviously wasn’t.
‘Do you remember him?’ Ferreira asked, as he turned into the car park of the big-box superstore where former PC Jack Saunders was now working.
‘Not really.’
‘Me neither,’ she admitted.
‘How old is he?’
‘Twenty-seven. So he’d have been in after we both moved upstairs. No reason to notice him unless he was a dick.’
Thorpe Wood had provided him with a glowing reference when Long Fleet came calling because they’d never had any trouble with him and they wanted to help him onwards in his career after he left as a result of stress.
Another one with stress, Zigic thought.
He wondered what kind of reference Long Fleet had provided Jack Saunders with when he left. Maybe they hadn’t given him one at all and he’d excused the break in employment some way, falling back on his excellent, if undistinguished, record in the police force to get him a job flogging DIY supplies.
In the store huge banners and stands everywhere advertised their summer sale, garden furniture and outdoor ovens arranged inside the main door, astroturf displays and pallets stacked high with charcoal.
At the information desk they flashed their credentials and asked where they could find Saunders, were told he was working in the kitchen design centre.
Up the stairs to a mezzanine level under the blast of air conditioning.
‘That’s him,’ Zigic said, pointing to a rangy guy with dark brown hair in an undercut and a prominent Adam’s apple. He wore a shirt and tie, rather than the uniform the other staff sported, but he still looked like a copper. Still held himself that way, rigid-spined and wide-stanced.
Zigic remembered him now. Not from work but from the hidden camera footage recorded inside Long Fleet. Jack Saunders strutting down an over-lit corridor, casting a conspiratorial glance back across his shoulder before opening the door of a cell without warning onto a woman standing in her underwear. He remembered the woman scrambling to cover herself with a sheet and how Jack Saunders had apologised, sincerely and at length, then made a grotesquely racist comment to the person with him as he was closing the door.
Saunders was showing an interested young couple the inside of a range cooker, opening each door in turn, a lot of flourish in his movements.
‘You could cook dinner for twelve in this one,’ he said. ‘It’s the ideal model if you enjoy entertaining.’
‘Not cheap,’ the man said.
‘Quality never is,’ Saunders told him. He turned to the woman, smiled. ‘Does he do much of the cooking?’
She matched his smile. ‘Only in the microwave.’
Saunders turned back to the man. ‘You should always let the lady have her way.’
‘Jack Saunders,’ Ferreira said, letting him hear the official in her voice. ‘We’d like a word.’
Saunders apologised to the couple, said he wouldn’t be a minute, why not check out the worktop options while they waited.
‘Sergeant Ferreira,’ he said, walking towards them and keeping going, trying to move them away from his customers.
They stayed put, forcing him to stop.
Reluctantly, he did.
‘Sir.’ He nodded curtly to Zigic. ‘I don’t suppose you’re here to buy a new kitchen.’
‘Drop the shit, Saunders,’ Ferreira snapped. ‘You wanted our attention, now you’ve got it.’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ he said anxiously.
‘See, this is why you never made it out of uniform. We’ve seen the tweets, we know it’s you.’
‘This is a bit of a comedown from Long Fleet, isn’t it?’ Zigic said. ‘Why did you leave? You seemed to be enjoying yourself there.’
Saunders glanced nervously around them. ‘I resigned.’
‘After Josh Ainsworth reported you to the governor?’ Zigic could see the ire rising in him. ‘Sounds more like you were sacked.’
‘Purged,’ Ferreira said.
Saunders tucked his hands into the small of his back, reverting to his training posture.
‘I was let go with no recourse to legal advice, no tribunal, no nothing,’ he said, anger and self-pity mingling in his voice. ‘All on the say-so of Ainsworth and Sutherland.’
‘And that unfortunate undercover footage,’ Zigic reminded him. ‘And the testimony of the women involved.’
‘But only Ainsworth’s been murdered,’ Ferreira said.
Saunders shuffled where he stood, gaze dropping to the toes of his shiny brogues for a nervous moment before
