‘You see that bastard Walton in the paper last night? Shooting his mouth off about his false conviction? Waste of fucking skin. I had my way he’d be hauled out onto the fens in the middle of the night and shot in the fucking face.’
Zigic hadn’t seen it, avoided the local paper as much as possible.
‘He’s after suing us,’ Riggott snarled. ‘Grand way to deal with a rapist, aye? Apologise to them and chuck them a wedge of fucking cash.’
‘He won’t get anywhere with it,’ Zigic said.
‘Bet your arse on it?’ Riggott shook his head. ‘Mad old world we’re living in, son. Wouldn’t surprise me if he had the lot of us through court.’
This was why Riggott had pulled him into the office, Zigic suspected. Not the Ainsworth case, which he’d shown little interest in until two days in. Lee Walton’s release was preying on him, just like it was on the rest of them.
‘I’ll tell you something for nothing,’ Riggott pointed at him, ‘I’ll not retire while that fucking beast is loose.’
‘We’ll get him,’ Zigic said, the words feeling and sounding hollow, but it was the mantra they were all clinging to.
‘Oh, aye, because youse had such an easy run with him the first time.’
These weren’t Riggott’s first drinks of the afternoon Zigic was beginning to suspect. It was easy to forget that Lee Walton had been Riggott’s collar too, a stain on his clear-up rate and conscience. Riggott was still a DCI the first time Walton was arrested, for an aggravated sexual assault he walked away from, literally whistling down the station steps, the victim abruptly deciding she couldn’t confidently identify him.
‘And now we’ve got the lawyers telling us to steer clear of the bastard. “Don’t give him any more ammunition”,’ he quoted, in a high and squeaky voice. ‘I know what ammunition I’d like to give him. Both barrels up the shitter.’
Zigic watched the play of dark and malicious thoughts across Riggott’s face, how they knocked a few years off him, bringing out the man he used to be.
‘Does this mean we have to stop the cold case review?’ Zigic asked.
‘Catch yourself on, son.’ Riggott grinned viciously. ‘We’re the fucking law here.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
She didn’t see him until it was too late.
One hand full of shopping, the other thumbing her phone – answering a text from Billy wanting to know where she was – her whole body unbalanced by the effort of keeping her gym bag from slipping off her shoulder and taking her handbag with it. Walking through an underground car park full of shadows and hiding places with her wits split between petty distractions.
So distracted she walked straight into Lee Walton.
‘You should look where you’re going,’ he said. ‘Never know who you’ll bump into otherwise.’
Ferreira took a step back. Involuntarily. Her lizard brain telling her to run while her copper’s brain said stand your ground, Sergeant.
‘What the fuck do you want?’ she asked, her voice coming out at a whisper, pitched between fear and anger. A voice she hardly recognised as her own.
He closed the gap between them. He’d bulked up during his six months inside, arms thick in a short-sleeved shirt, all cord and veins. He looked like he could twist her head right off her shoulders.
She slipped her phone away. Thinking she might only get one shot at him.
‘Well?’
Still he didn’t answer. Just stared at her with that unwavering gaze filled with contempt and hunger and a strange kind of boredom, which only made her more desperate to turn and flee. She’d seen it in the interview room and then in court, where he’d made more of an effort to hide it, needing the jury to see an ordinary man smeared by the police and a parade of hysterical, lying women. Ferreira had waited and watched for it, seeing him turning it on and off like there was a switch marked psychopath just behind his ear.
But it wasn’t turning off now.
It was intensifying.
She thought of the wine bottle in her shopping bag, how quickly she could get it out and smash it across the side of his face. Whether that would be enough to put him down.
She thought of Billy, upstairs in her flat, and whether she could get him here without Walton noticing her texting. If she even wanted to do that.
No. She wasn’t going to give Walton the satisfaction of calling for help like so many women had done before, while he drank in their terror, secure in the knowledge that nobody was coming to save them.
‘Where’s Dani?’
So that was it. The girlfriend.
‘She doesn’t want anything to do with you,’ Ferreira said sharply.
‘She’ll come crawling back the minute I tell her to.’
Not a trace of doubt in his voice or his face. Even though she’d given evidence against him. Finally retracted the alibi, which had kept him safe for so long, then disappeared with his son under a new name to a distant city.
‘You got into her head,’ he said, jabbing a finger in her face.
‘Yeah, I did.’ She dredged some bravado from the pit of her churning stomach. ‘And it was easy. Because you got her so fucked up she didn’t know how to think for herself any more. She was just waiting for someone to tell her what to do.’
‘I want my son back.’
‘Tell it to Fathers for Justice,’ she said. ‘They’ve probably got a Spiderman costume that’ll fit you.’
He grabbed her around the bicep, fingers digging in hard.
‘You’re going to call her and tell her to get back here with my boy.’
Ferreira shook her head. She could hear her heartbeat thundering in her ears, so loud she was sure he could hear it too.
‘Never going to happen.’
His jaw clenched. He dragged her towards him, so close now that she could smell the rage in his sweat, feel the heat burning off his overblown muscles.
‘If you don’t call her …’
‘What?’ She threw her chin up at him.
Walton
