CW: This scene was quite tough to write and features a discussion of suicide.

At a little after 8pm, Rita waited at the barriers at Plumstead London Overground station. Subeera had insisted on making the 85-minute journey from her mum's flat in Edmonton rather than meet centrally. Rita wasn't complaining. Compared with Valladolid, London was way too big. The crowds were overwhelming. As she waited at the barriers she looked to the side and noticed a group of bus drivers on a break, leaning next to a railing and smoking. Their buses waited with darkened windows.

Dios mio, I could do with one, she thought, imagining the nicotine hit the back of her throat and taking her stress away. One wouldn't do any harm. Would it? She stared longingly towards them, fighting with herself as to whether to give into temptation and ask. She told herself how difficult it had been to give up  in the months after the Henry Dixon case. She'd used it as a crutch and it had built up until she had a 10-a-day habit, again, almost without her realising.

'Coming now,' Subeera wrote. 'See you in a sec.' That settled it. She guessed Subeera probably wasn't a smoker; it wouldn't be fair. Rita turned away from the bus drivers and their cigarettes and watched until Subeera emerged up the train station's stairs.

'Hey,' she gasped, hugging Rita. 'Sorry I'm late. It takes a while to get here from my mum's flat. When she found out what happened, she just wanted to feed me. You know how it is. Mothers.'

'I guess,' Rita said, as they headed away from the station towards a row of shops. On the other side of the road, two men were having an argument outside a takeaway. She didn't have the heart to tell her that her mum's attitude to her food intake had boiled down to nagging her to lose weight and telling her she could be pretty if she made more of an effort.

Subeera pointed to a cafe with a shiny black storefront which said 'Heavenly Desserts' in pink neon lighting, a few doors up from the takeaway. 'Let's go to that dessert lounge over there. Then we can talk properly. Are you OK with that?'

'Sure,' Rita said. 

'If anyone would understand, it would be you,' Subeera gulped. 'I'm guessing we can sit here without being noticed.' Rita followed her inside as she walked to a bench near the back. The floor and walls were black and shiny, and the sofas and armchairs were made of soft red leather. Impossibly gorgeous, stylised desserts, cakes and ice creams were laid out on a glass counter. A revolving disco ball hung in the middle of the ceiling, and 80s style rock music played softly through the speakers, taking Rita back to her younger days. Most of the customers seemed at least 15 years younger than her as well.

'I'll get a mango lassi and a baklava fudge cake,' Subeera said. The baklava cake was much bigger than normal restaurant cakes, had thick layers of icing, and looked deadly.

'What do you want, Rita? I'll get this.'

'I'll get some peppermint tea and a dark chocolate chip cookie,' Rita said, although she really didn't feel like eating. Subeera paid, grabbed a spoon from the counter and they went to sit down on a soft, crimson sofa which lined the wall at the back of the shop. As she sat down, she looked nervous; she sat unnaturally straight and kept licking her lips. When the waiter brought the drinks and cakes, she grimaced and then stared at them as if they were artifacts from Mars.

'What's been going on?' Rita said, sipping her tea.

Subeera took a deep breath. She shook her head and stirred the thick yellow liquid meaninglessly with her spoon. 'So. I might as well come out with it, I'm in enough trouble as it is.' Her eyes darted around the cafe and towards the door. She was wearing an expensive, fluffy jumper but it was on inside out. Suddenly she looked like she was going to cry. When she spoke again, it was in a cold, harsh tone.

'Basically. Three months ago, I met my 17 year old niece for dinner after she had been to the Palestinian protest in Central London.' Subeera breathed out heavily. Her lip was trembling. 'I was in the area, so after the protest, I picked her up and we had a pizza. I'd actually forgotten all about it until today - when my boss called me into a disciplinary because someone had emailed him the photos. So yeah, today's been a great day.'

'You haven't done anything wrong. You weren't there. You just met her.' Rita took a bite of the chocolate cookie. It was nice enough, sweet and chewy, but she no longer felt like eating. 

'I dunno, if I was him, I'd definitely think it looked bad. She was wearing a keffiyeh and a top with a Palestinian flag on it. My sister was 13 when we left. She remembers it more. She married an English guy, but she has brought her up to be proud of where we're from, and - well, why not?' Subeera laughed bitterly. 'Nobody would say the same if it was - I dunno - a Brazilian flag.'

Her eyes were shining with tears. 'It's so bad, Rita. One guy is now demanding to look through all my social media accounts to check that I haven't said something problematic.' She rolled her eyes. 'They won't find anything. I deleted those apps years ago. The fact they even asked - I worked with them for years and suddenly they didn't care about anything else I might or might not have done.'

Rita got up and sat next to her, hugged her tightly on the red sofa. It was hard to find the words here. She spoke under her breath. 'This world where you can lose your job for that and if you know the right people and say all the right things you can get away with murder.'

Suddenly, Subeera was crying. 'All I've done the last year is bury myself in work, come home and watch soaps and quiz shows so I didn't have to think about what's happening back home. So many people I know have died. I can't protest due to my work. I can't say what I think. I feel like I'm fighting an endless battle.' She wiped her cheek with her hand. 'Every day, I try to do the right thing. I thought I was doing the right thing. I don't know what that even is...'

'I don't know what to say. This is awful.' Rita took a sip of tea; couldn't find the words in English. 'Qué bastardo absoluto, quienquiera que te haya hecho esto.' *

Subeera laughed through tears, spluttering her drink. 'Ha. Yeah. You could say that. And I'm pretty sure I know who has done it. Alex just paid him a visit, and I'm sure that had something to do with it.' She glanced around the room. 'Jon Phillips has a grudge against me.'

'I gathered that,' Rita muttered. Subeera pulled away and took several deep breaths.

'Jon Phillips spent seven years inside. He was released five years ago. It was a big scandal. It was considered to be a big miscarriage of justice, and he was given his old job back at one of the London universities,' she said shakily. 'At the time, I was a PC. I was working in Central London. I'd been in the job a year or 2, about to take my exams to become a detective. And one day, we get a call from one of the students.'

Subeera took a huge forkful of cake, but just moved it around on her plate. 'This girl was a couple of years younger than me. She alleged that she had got in a coercive and controlling relationship with him. He controlled what she did, whether she went out, what she wore, everything. And he had been violent.' Taking a breath, she said, 'As he was alleged to have been during the Frances Horsforth case.'

These fucking guys, Rita thought, feeling nauseous.

'I think my boss at the time put me on this case because I was young and inexperienced,' Subeera said in a low undertone. 'Whenever I think of it I'm still livid. And I think he deliberately assigned me to it because he believed that due to my background, I would not be sympathetic to the victim, not investigate thoroughly, and he could avoid all the legal and media drama Jon Phillips had created in the past.'

'That always works out well,' Rita scoffed. The cynicism was unbelievable. But it was all too recognisable.

She remembered what one of the Guardia Civil officers had said to her at the scene of Silvio's murder. 'They won't touch him. They think he's useful to keep around.'

'Well, in a worst case scenario, I reckon he thought he would just blame me and say that my personal bias interfered with the handling. This way, he avoided any trouble in both directions.' Subeera rolled her eyes. 'Because the victim - sorry, the alleged victim - was from an Orthodox Jewish background. Upper middle class family from Golders Green. She'd gone to one of the most expensive schools in the country. Whereas me...yeah.'

'I spoke to the girl and I could see that we were looking at a clear cut case of domestic abuse. And I said to my boss, this guy needs to be off the streets. Regardless of publicity, we need him behind bars.' Subeera swallowed. Her lip started trembling again, then she spat out the words. 'I questioned him. He and his lawyer looked my family up online, and assumed that I'd agree with all the things he was saying about the girl. In the interview, he tried to use our situation to prove she was lying. When I didn't believe him ...'

'Maldito,' Rita whispered.

'Then, he accused me of police harassment. The DCI saw me as some sort of bolshy troublemaker. I took my exams and got out of there. Transferred to my current station where I have been ever since. Phillips wasn't charged with anything. But a few months later...' Subeera swallowed hard, and started crying again.

'I let that young woman down. A few months later she took her own life.'

Rita's stomach dropped. It had crept up with a grim inevitability. She felt sick and vile just through hearing it, imagining the despair that the young student must have been in. There was not much she could say that could make anything better. The story was absolutely horrific.

'So, yeah,' Subeera said, sitting up straighter. She wiped her eyes. 'That's the history.'

'I'm sure you did everything you could.' Of course, that was inadequate. But what was there to say in the face of something so hideous?

'Did I, though,' Subeera said. 'I blatantly didn't, or he'd be inside.'

'There's not much one person can do if the system is against you,' Rita said. Her phone vibrated in her bag but it barely registered. 'We tried for over a decade to bring Javier Castella to justice. Judges didn't want to know. He bribed senior officers. I sat with parents whose kids had died of drug overdoses or as cannon fodder in his gang wars. It's hard seeing what the point is of upholding the law knowing the people above you are getting paid off to do the opposite. I wondered so many times, what the fuck am I doing in this job?'

'Yeah.' Subeera finished her drink. 'I'm wondering that too.'

'Do you think Phillips killed Erica Scott?' Rita said, her heart pounding. Every nerve in her body was screaming that she couldn't get involved, that she had to let someone else handle this - whoever that was.

That this was dangerous.

'Usually I'd be all professional and say I can't disclose any details. Now? Dunno.' Subeera leaned back. She had stopped crying. 'I am not sure it's his MO, but he has to be a suspect, right? Donna Markham mentioned him, not that her word is going to count for anything.' She rolled her eyes. 'The higher ups want a quick result. They want to charge her. Alex is a good copper, bless his soul, but I don't know if he can withstand that pressure.'

'Donna?'

'Yeah. Donna. It's ridiculous. Just lock up a mentally ill person, job's a goodun. She's already in hospital, so that's convenient. I thought we'd moved past that, but clearly not.'

Rita wasn't so sure.

From their short encounter Erica had genuinely seemed to care for Donna. Sitting with her that morning, Rita had the sense she was more of a danger to herself than others. But her shifting moods, vicious anger and hate had unnerved, even frightened her. Donna had been aggressive and pushy, not wanting to take no for an answer about the podcast. And then there was what she'd said - 'Sometimes I really, really fucking hated her.' 

'I listened to that show sometimes, driving back from work. The usual girly banter. A lot of miscarriage of justice stories. They did a couple interesting ones - like, do you know about the Elizabeta Krasovskaya case?' Subeera looked embarrassed.

'Is it an unsolved case? I think I've heard of it, yes.'

'It happened when I was at school. This will sound screwed up, but it was one of those weird disappearances where everyone has a theory. I was so...intrigued by all this. I used to get so lost in books and documentaries. I wanted to be like Miss Marple.' She sighed. 'Life's not turning out that way is it.'

'It doesn't sound screwed up,' Rita said. 'There are always cases you can't let go.'

'There's a couple Case Reports that were interesting for the wrong reasons, too. Like this woman who claimed she was kept prisoner by Satanists. They were just not buying it, especially Donna. The woman was clearly a fantasist.' Subeera scoffed, finishing the last of her cake.

'Satanists?' Rita said, something prickling on the back of her neck, despite her relief that her friend's mood had lifted. She searched for Case Report on her phone's podcast app. The last episode was from last week and a pang of pain hit her to see Donna and Erica smiling, their arms round each other below the podcast's logo.

'Yeah. It's about two and a half hours long. I only managed twenty minutes.' Subeera gave a dry laugh. 'She was actually at the convention. Before all this happened, I was about to go interview her. That would have been...interesting.'

Maybe that was where Rita had seen the woman on the bus with the leaflets. 'What's her name? So I can find the episode?'

'Her name's Carly, though it's not her real one. Carly Hill.'

* Translation: 'What an absolute bastard to do that to you.'