Zigic got out of his car and looked at the curtained windows warmly lit against the soft pink glow that hung over Orton Wistow, the scent of the bagel factory’s late shift on the air and an acrid hint of cat spray coming from the bushes nearby. Movement at a bedroom window across the road drew his eye; someone who’d heard his car and wanted to see who was about at this hour.
He should have been at home.
Would have been if he’d resisted checking his texts and seeing the results of the DNA test they’d run on Tessa Darby’s cardigan. Or if he’d kept it to himself rather than calling Adams to pass along the news.
He hadn’t expected him to swing into action right away. This could have waited until tomorrow. Should by all rights have waited until they’d rerun the DNA test legally and with the blessing of DCS Riggott, who they needed to reopen the case.
Tomorrow was going to involve a lot of finessed paperwork, he assumed.
Adams wanted Walton too badly to pause and think any of the details through, though. And Zigic understood the urge. They’d taken a gamble on this case, pissed off Riggott, risked their reputations and careers. Of course Adams wanted to move swiftly to prove they’d been right, that it was all worth it.
Adams’s car pulled into the close, a patrol vehicle with its lights strobing but no siren sounding behind him.
Zigic rolled his eyes. Adams wanted this to be a spectacle and the neighbours were already stirring. Lights going on, curtains and blinds opening, windows and doors following, obscured faces watching as the cars pulled up and Adams and the uniforms got out.
‘You two, go round the back,’ Adams said. ‘And watch yourself, yeah? He’s got some bulk.’
Zigic waited until they were through the gate before he spoke.
‘This is stupidly premature,’ he said, voice low. ‘Don’t you think we should have waited until we had proper, legally viable evidence?’
Adams shrugged. ‘We’re here now, just try to enjoy yourself.’
‘And what pretext are you going to arrest him on?’
Adams knocked on the front door. ‘Relax, we’re just taking him in for questioning.’
‘At nearly midnight?’
‘Why not?’
Adams knocked again, harder this time. ‘Police, open up.’
‘Sure you don’t want to bash the door in?’ Zigic asked and immediately regretted it because he wasn’t sure if Adams would see it as a legitimate suggestion rather than sarcasm.
‘They’re obviously up,’ Adams said, going to the front window where the curtains were tightly drawn, not a sliver of the room beyond visible. ‘If he thinks he can hide in there and wait for us to go away –’
‘Sir!’ PC Hobbs emerged from the side gate. ‘You should see this.’
‘You go,’ Adams said. ‘I’m not having Walton give us the slip.’
Zigic went down the narrow path past recycling boxes filled with cartons and old magazines, following Hobbs into the small back garden where a paddling pool sat deflated at the centre of the handkerchief-sized lawn.
‘There,’ Hobbs said, hanging back.
Zigic looked in through the window, the view partly obscured by a set of half-closed wooden blinds, but the blood stood out vividly against the white tiled floor. He could see distinct footprints going in circles around the glass table.
He tried the door, found it locked. But it was flimsy and old, soft wood badly tended, and it gave on the second blow.
He could feel it in the air, recent violence. The stillness after desperate breaths and ignored entreaties. He moved through into the hallway following the bloody footprints and the fingermarks on the walls and the staircase.
The living room was empty. A mug of tea on the table next to a magazine open to a partially filled crossword puzzle and a packet of biscuits. A careful hand had gathered the scattered crumbs into a neat pile to be cleared away later.
The television was showing a film, some old comedy from the eighties.
Zigic started up the stairs, hardly breathing, fully braced for what he already sensed he would find. Hobbs followed behind him, heavier-footed and muttering what sounded like a prayer.
The bathroom door was open, the room lit. Blood on the sink and the towels left on the floor.
At his back he heard the telltale rasp of Hobbs flicking his baton out.
Zigic opened a bedroom door, the room empty.
He kept moving. Opened the next door to the master bedroom, and stopped at the threshold.
‘Call an ambulance,’ he told Hobbs. ‘Tell them we’ve got multiple casualties.’
Mrs Walton lay across the bed, her face turned away from him, and for a few seconds Zigic thought she was still alive. He went closer, checking for a pulse he realised wasn’t coming, seeing the red marks on her neck, the span of Lee Walton’s hands and the strength of the rage that had crushed the life out of her.
As he was straightening again, he saw a pair of feet poking out beyond the foot of the bed.
Dani, left where she’d fallen in the narrow gap between the bed and the wall.
‘Where’s the kid?’ Adams asked from the doorway.
He walked away, shouting at Hobbs to search downstairs.
‘And get the garage opened up!’ he snapped. ‘If we’re lucky, Walton’ll be hanging in there.’
Zigic could already hear sirens at distance but they were too late for Mrs Walton and for Dani. Her face was beaten beyond recognition, skull fractured in several places.
‘Dani, can you hear me?’
He inched forward, the space too tight, his feet too big, and it felt like a transgression against the dead but he needed to be sure.
He reached for her wrist, seeing her pink-painted fingernails still intact, no blood or skin cells under them. She hadn’t put up a fight. Too scared or too quickly overpowered to defend herself.
No pulse.
Gently he laid her hand back on the floor.
The detective part of him was analysing the trauma, the ferocity on display. It saw the purple three-kilo hand weight that Walton had used
