CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
The rest of the day shift were gone, the unlucky souls scheduled for Friday night in now and settled around the office as Ferreira waited for Patrick Sutherland to arrive. This was always a strange time, everyone waiting for something to kick off as the evening wore on, the sense of potential mayhem only increased by the hot weather and long days.
Most of her fellow officers were doing the same thing she was, catching up on paperwork, trying to clear their desks before a more urgent task dragged them away. Billy was still in his office. She’d told him to go home without her but he insisted he had a lot of catching up to do.
Earlier she’d overheard him on the phone to Sadie Ryan’s mother, defeated-looking as the woman filled him in about the after-effects of her daughter’s suicide attempt. The physical damage not as bad as her doctors feared but the psychological still emerging. Sadie was out of hospital now and they’d left Peterborough for her grandmother’s place in Kent, couldn’t face knowing they were in the same city as Lee Walton and his apparent legions of supporters who were harassing them via social media.
When she’d gone in to borrow his lighter, Billy was staring at the wall, every furious thought visible as it passed across his eyes.
Ferreira forced her attention back to the reports on the ex-Long Fleet staff that Parr, Weller and Bloom had turned in. They’d tracked down all of them bar one, who had taken a job as a long-distance lorry driver and was currently somewhere in Europe. All had alibis of varying strength, which would be picked at until hopefully one fell apart. A couple had minor offences on their records but nothing to suggest a capability for murder. Not that it always worked that way.
Several had mentioned Jack Saunders attacking Joshua Ainsworth and as she read through the reports, she began to realise that the group seemed to regard him as leader of some kind. Definitely the alpha male when they’d been working at Long Fleet, maybe because he’d been a copper doing the job they’d all dreamed of but couldn’t achieve. It held a certain mystique for a particular kind of person, the sort who frequently ended up in security.
She’d checked his service record, found that a few minor complaints had been made against him by suspects but none upheld. The usual accusations of undue force that everyone collected whether they were deserved or not.
Saunders’s alibi wasn’t as secure as he’d made out when they spoke to him. Keri Bloom had talked to a few of the people he worked with, ones who were there at the bowling alley the night Ainsworth was murdered. Saunders was present but the party started to break up around nine when it moved to a nearby pub and nobody could say exactly what time he left.
If he’d lied about that and failed to mention punching Ainsworth in the face, she had to wonder what else he was hiding.
Reception called at ten past seven – Patrick Sutherland had arrived.
Ferreira picked up the file of random mugshots she’d selected and went down to fetch him.
He looked ill at ease, even though the reception area was empty. Or maybe it was just the usual end-of-week malaise that hit people as their last long shift finished. His dark brown hair was mussed, shirt crumpled at the elbows, and when he tried a smile on her, it barely reached his heavy-hanging eyes.
‘Do you usually work such long hours?’ he asked, as they entered the stairwell.
‘When we’ve got a big case on, yes,’ she told him.
‘You can’t get that many murders in Peterborough.’
‘We get more than we’d like.’ She opened the door to Interview Room 1 and showed him in ahead of her.
His tiredness abruptly gave way to a nervous energy that sent him around the perimeter of the room.
‘Mr Hammond would kill me if he knew I was here,’ Sutherland said with an uneasy smile. ‘Or sack me and then sue me for breach of contract.’
‘This is purely an informal thing,’ Ferreira assured him, knowing that was the only way she could hope to get him to talk. ‘Nothing you say here will get back to Hammond.’
She sat down and a moment later he took the hint and joined her, sliding into the seat opposite.
‘So these are protestors you want me to look at?’ he asked, nodding towards the file under her hands.
‘We’ve been seeing some worrying discussion in private groups online about Josh’s death, and now we need to identify any of the participants who might have been involved in the protest at the gates or hanging around near staff members’ homes.’ She slid the file over to him but didn’t remove her hand. ‘Do you live in Long Fleet village?’
‘No, Deeping St James,’ he said, with the subtle note of pride she was accustomed to hearing from people who lived in the historic almost-town just north of Peterborough. ‘I know a lot of the staff like the village because it’s convenient, but I need to get away at the end of my shift or I feel like I’m not really free of the place.’
‘I know what you mean,’ she said, drawing her hand away. ‘There are some jobs where it’s best if people can’t follow you home.’
Walton popped into her head for a moment, the breadth of him and the crackle of bad energy he carried.
‘Are you okay?’ Sutherland asked.
‘Yep, fine.’ She brushed her hand back over her hair. ‘Long week, not enough sleep.’
‘Do your neighbours know what you do?’ he asked.
‘I’ve managed to pretty much avoid talking to any of them,’ she said. ‘How about yours?’
‘God, no. They think I’m a GP in town.’
‘You don’t think they’d like you as much if they knew you were at Long Fleet?’
‘I suspect
