Riggott rubbed his temples, skin creasing into those well-worn worry lines, dragging at the bags under his eyes. He looked old and exhausted now, not the man he was, not even the one he’d been last year. The recent forensics scandal had taken more out of him than Zigic had realised. The loss of convictions, all those countless hours slogging away on cases brought to nothing, more wearing than the PR fallout. Although he’d focused on that publicly, Zigic knew bad PR wasn’t the thing that would have kept him awake at night.
So close to retirement this would feel like one last kick in the balls to see him off.
If retirement was actually the end of the matter. There was every chance Riggott would be investigated about the confession, that he would lose his pension and the security it had promised, maybe worse than that too. Charges weren’t out of the question.
‘Alright,’ he said finally, dragging his spine straight once again. ‘We continue on the quiet for now. But you keep me informed.’ He glared at Adams but there was no heat in it any more, the ferocity spent rather than exorcised. ‘Out. Out, now, go on.’
They started to leave.
‘Not you, Mel.’
CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
Riggott pointed at the sofa and Ferreira went to sit down, feeling a stirring of anxiety. He’d never been the kind of boss to sugar-coat anything; he gave out praise and bollockings in exactly the same manner, rarely enquired after people’s spouses or kids or asked how their holidays were. She couldn’t remember having any kind of personal conversation with him during the ten years she’d served under his command.
She had never once in all that time sat on this sofa.
It was firmer than it looked. Underused, she supposed.
He sat down against the opposite arm, elbows on his knees, said, ‘Why didn’t you come to me when Walton first approached you?’
‘I can handle Walton,’ she said, but she no longer believed it. For the last few days she’d found herself reliving that moment in the garage under her building, remembering how small and weak he’d made her feel, how hard it had been to breathe when he was in her face. And every night as she tried to sleep, she’d run through the terrible possibilities of him catching her unawares. All the ways she was vulnerable and all the places she no longer felt safe. She wasn’t prepared to admit that to Riggott though, was still struggling to admit it to herself. ‘He’s just trying to scare me.’
‘You should be scared of him,’ Riggott told her, voice low and serious. ‘You know what he’s capable of.’
She gritted her teeth. ‘I know what I’m capable of too.’
‘Well, I admire your attitude but that’s the kind of thinking that gets police officers damaged.’
‘Dani’s gone back to him,’ she said. ‘He’s got no reason to hassle me any more.’
‘Do you think that’s going to stop him?’ Riggott asked, incredulous. ‘You know better than that. You don’t take your eye off an animal like Walton, you don’t go thinking you’re safe because he’s slipped into the shadows.’
‘I’m not getting complacent,’ she said defiantly. ‘I know exactly what he is.’
Riggott nodded. ‘Alright. I’m going to have a patrol car outside your place. He comes near you again and we’ll haul him in.’
She felt her face flush with a sudden shame and anger at him for thinking – just like Billy – that she couldn’t look after herself.
‘That’s not necessary,’ she said, forcing her voice to stay even.
‘I’m not asking your permission, Sergeant.’
‘There’s no law against him being there. What are you going to pull him in on?’
‘Whatever I fucking want to,’ Riggott said firmly. ‘He needs teaching that we take care of our own. A few nights in the cells should put it through his thick skull.’
‘I’m staying with Billy.’
No reaction to the news but she guessed it wasn’t news to him. Station gossip eventually percolated up to the higher echelons.
‘Way Adams is running around all over the place playing the fucking maverick, you don’t want to be relying on him to look after you.’
‘I’m not,’ she snapped. ‘He’s no tougher than I am.’
Riggott made a placating gesture. ‘Alright, Mel, this isn’t a gender equality issue. It’s a sheer fucking scale of the ugly bastard issue. I wouldn’t fancy Billy’s chances against him either.’ He gave her a short nod. ‘The car’s going to be there.’
‘How long for?’
He got up and went around behind his desk, yanking his e-cigarette from its charger. ‘Until we get the result of that fucking DNA test.’
She left his office, thinking of the tacit admission in the statement. He knew what result they were going to get, or he was pretty sure about it anyway, which meant he had coerced a confession out of Neal Cooper. Probably in the full expectation that he was guilty, driven by his instincts and whatever scant evidence they’d dragged together in the case. But she knew he, like so many of his team, the ones he picked and shaped because they mirrored him so closely, were gut-driven detectives. And that was their main failing, trusting their guts that step too far.
Ferreira knew she’d done exactly the same thing with Joshua Ainsworth’s murder and it seemed to be paying off now. But as guilty as Nadia Baidoo and Patrick Sutherland currently looked, there was the small matter of the paternity test.
A piece of grit too sharp to ignore.
She grabbed her tobacco and went downstairs for a smoke, tucking herself away around the corner of the building in a spot of shade where nobody else went, needing a few moments alone to decompress.
The first drag took some of the edge off and as she leaned back against the wall with her eyes closed, she realised that the weight
