In the passenger seat Ferreira made a nearly imperceptible gagging noise and Zigic knew she wouldn’t believe Sutherland. He still wasn’t sure, wouldn’t be until they’d laid out everything in front of Sutherland and seen how he reacted to the evidence against him.
Assuming Kate Jenkins and her team could find it.
Sutherland fell silent as they reached the edge of the city and he let himself be walked into Thorpe Wood Station without resistance, only a split-second hesitation as he stepped across the threshold, like a man approaching his execution.
‘I want my solicitor,’ he said.
Ferreira nodded. ‘We’ll call him.’
Zigic left her to process Sutherland and went up to the main office to debrief the rest of the team on what they’d found at the house and get them started on taking apart Patrick Sutherland’s life. Financials and phone records, the uniformed officers stationed on his road to be kept check on, updates immediately given and forensics to call.
He took that job himself. Rang Kate as he rearranged Joshua Ainsworth’s board to reflect their new line of enquiry.
‘Anything you can tell me yet?’
‘You left here barely an hour ago,’ she said, sounding exasperated, but he could hear the familiar thrill of discovery underneath it. ‘There’s not much sign of blood throughout the rest of the house. Basically, what we can plot from the placement of the residue we’ve found is someone coming in the back door and going upstairs into the bathroom.’
‘To look for bandages, maybe?’ he suggested. ‘That would be your first move if you’d ripped your hands open.’
‘Makes sense,’ Kate said. ‘There’s residue on the bathroom cabinet and in the grout on the tiled floor up there. It’s a bugger to get out of grout. They should have refinished the floor if they wanted to hide it.’
‘What about after the bathroom?’ he asked. ‘Is there any sign of him entering the other rooms?’
‘Nothing.’
He thought about it for a moment. ‘He was a doctor. If he bandaged his hands up properly, we wouldn’t expect to see blood anywhere else, would we?’
‘Probably not?’
‘Have you got enough blood to get a DNA match?’
‘I’ve found a few deposits they missed,’ Kate said. ‘Should be enough for a DNA test.’
‘Fingerprints?’
‘We’ve lifted some from the most likely places, so with a bit of a luck we should find a match if it’s there to be found.’
He’d hoped for more, felt himself deflate a little at the idea of going in to question Sutherland with such a scant arsenal.
‘We’re going to talk to Sutherland soon.’
‘Subtle hint there,’ Kate said lightly. ‘We’re actually nearly done, so I should be able to put something together for you before close of play.’
‘Thanks, Kate – before you go, we need every scrap of paperwork you can find. Receipts, delivery notes, all that stuff.’
‘Wow, Ziggy.’ He could almost hear her eyes rolling and winced at himself. ‘I’ve been on sabbatical not meth. I think I know you need the paperwork.’
‘Sorry.’
‘You can apologise in the form of baked goods or not at all.’
Ferreira returned from seeing to Patrick Sutherland, went straight to her desk and started to roll a cigarette.
‘You call his solicitor?’ Zigic asked.
‘On his way.’
He filled her in on what Kate had reported, watched her lose some of her fighting edge as she took the information on board and realised it didn’t give them much to work with.
‘Where was Nadia while he was hanging around in the bathroom, bandaging his hands?’ she asked.
‘Maybe she was out,’ Zigic suggested. ‘You’ve got to hope for her sake that she was, and this leisurely medical session in the bathroom makes me think Ainsworth was alone in the house at the time.’
‘That’s something anyway.’
‘It makes it far less likely that either of them knew Ainsworth was on the warpath though,’ Zigic pointed out. ‘Which means their motives evaporate.’
‘No, it means this motive evaporates. Everything else is still in play.’ She started hunting for a lighter among the debris on her desk. ‘I think we’ve got enough to take a preliminary run at him.’
‘Maybe we should start with Nadia,’ Zigic said unenthusiastically.
Ferreira appeared reluctant and he felt the same resistance. Didn’t want to subject Nadia Baidoo to questioning yet. Speaking to victims of sexual violence was always a harrowing experience, but at least you got to feel you were on the side of right, helping them through, trying to bring them justice. With Nadia she was potentially victim and suspect, and the thought of having to switch between modes with her sent a sick feeling into the pit of his stomach.
‘Sutherland’s the weak link,’ Ferreira said slowly, as if she was still working through the reasoning for herself. ‘Nadia’s been locked up for months, she’s still got that guarded mindset in place. And she expects bad things to happen to her, it’s put her in lockdown. Sutherland is indignant. I think we should use that against him.’
Her reasoning was sound enough if he didn’t examine it too closely. Anything to delay what they were going to put Nadia through.
‘He’s going to expect us to want to talk about Ainsworth’s murder,’ Zigic said. ‘So, we ask him about the break-in instead.’
‘Wrong-foot him.’ Ferreira nodded. ‘Get his story down, then take it apart when we have something more concrete from Kate.’
‘Establish he’s a liar and then go from there,’ Zigic said.
‘He has to lie about it, doesn’t he?’ She shrugged. ‘Unless he wants to actually admit Ainsworth broke into his house and give us a motive for murder.’
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
Patrick Sutherland was on his feet when they entered the interview room, hands pressed together in a pleading gesture aimed at the wall, his back turned to his solicitor. It was rare to open the door onto silence but this time they had, and Zigic wondered if Sutherland had so little to say to his legal advisor because he was guilty or because he was innocent. The guilty often began this
