‘It’s not time for work yet, Dad.’
He was right. Barely half six but Adams was calling him, driving the last of the sleep-fuddle out of his brain.
‘What’s happened?’ he asked.
‘We should meet up before shift starts,’ Adams said, the sound of a toaster popping up at his end. ‘Half an hour long enough for you to get yourself together?’
‘Where do you want to meet?’
‘Sainsbury’s caff near you.’
‘You bringing Mel to this clandestine meeting?’
Adams swore. ‘Yeah, you’re right, better make it half seven. I’ll get her off to her spin class first.’
‘Does she know about this case?’
‘I think she’s got enough to stress about right now,’ he said. ‘See you in an hour.’
Adams rang off.
Zigic stood up and stretched the night out of his body, shoulders cracking, ribs complaining. ‘You going to make me breakfast, bud?’
‘There’s no more bread,’ Milan said gravely. ‘But I can make coffee. You’ll have to light the gas for me.’
‘You watch your cartoons, I’ll sort myself out.’
Milan turned back to the TV, reaching for his yoghurt. ‘Are you coming with us later?’
‘I’ve got to work,’ he said, seeing Milan hunch over slightly, the disappointment shrinking him. ‘You look around and then tell me all about it when I get home, okay?’
‘Okay.’ Milan opened his yoghurt and briefly examined the state of the spoon before tucking in.
Upstairs Anna was still asleep, hidden behind a silk eye-mask. At some point in the night she must have got up because Emily was lying next to her, corralled by a couple of pillows to stop her rolling off the bed.
By the time he’d showered Anna was awake, standing at her wardrobe trying to find just the right outfit for this morning’s appointment with the headmistress of the school the boys would probably love and that they definitely couldn’t afford to send them to.
‘The appointment’s at half past eleven,’ she said, as he was putting on his shirt. ‘It would be good for the boys if you were there.’
He bit his tongue, wouldn’t say that she’d obviously made her decision and this was just a formality, wouldn’t ask why she’d made an appointment that she knew his work would keep him from attending.
‘I won’t be able to get away,’ he said.
She sighed lightly, as if this was just the kind of nonsense she expected from him.
‘I want this to be something we’re together on, Dushan.’
‘And I don’t want to disappoint the boys by taking them around a school we can’t afford to send them to,’ he told her, the words out before he could think better of it.
‘They have a scholarship programme,’ she said, gritting her teeth because she was probably tired of saying it.
That stupid lie they were still colluding in, even now, after weeks of disagreement, because neither of them was willing to openly discuss the ugly truth it was covering just yet.
Zigic watched her turn away and select a lightweight shirtdress that she always looked amazing in. He almost told her it was the right choice but stopped himself, said instead, ‘Please don’t make the boys any promises you’ll regret breaking.’
When he got to Bretton the car park was all but deserted but everyone who was there seemed to be in the supermarket cafeteria. He ordered a bacon roll and coffee and went to join Adams at a table set against the far wall. There was nobody else around them, all the other early risers drawn to the sun-drenched tables alongside the picture window.
Adams was jittery. Tired-looking and over-caffeinated, fiddling with the cigarette packet left out on the table.
‘So, what do you think?’ he asked, as Zigic sat down.
He wanted to tell Adams there was nothing there. That Bobby was wrong, that he was just so desperate to make the kill on Walton that he was seeing discrepancies that didn’t exist.
But he couldn’t.
Last night he’d gone through the entire file twice, concentrating on the eyewitness reports and the statements from Tessa Darby’s friends and family. There was nothing conclusive in any of it. Her killer – Cooper, the young man who confessed – was known to her, was said by a couple of her friends to be obsessed with her, but there was no hard evidence of that and a handwritten note suggested that the friends were not as close to Tessa as they made out. Not according to her family anyway.
‘I think,’ Zigic said slowly, ‘that if it wasn’t for the confession, Lee Walton would have been looked at a lot more carefully than he was.’
‘They dropped the ball, right?’ Adams’s face lit up, the relief obvious. ‘Tessa’s boyfriend’s in the frame until his mate Walton gives him an alibi. Then when they realise those two’s story isn’t going to crack, they just turn all their focus onto this stupid lad who confesses.’
‘What about the boyfriend?’ Zigic asked, stirring a couple of sugars into his coffee. ‘It’s way more likely Walton was covering for him than the other way around.’
‘Boyfriend’s dead. Army, got blown up in Iraq a few years back.’ Adams dismissed him with a vague gesture. ‘But the way I see it, soldier boy knows he’s bang in the frame – he’s the boyfriend, we always suspect the boyfriend – so he begs his mate to give him an alibi. Inadvertently alibiing Walton who actually killed her.’
Across the cafeteria a woman called out Zigic’s number and he put a hand up. They fell silent as she came over and placed his breakfast on the table in front of him.
‘There’s nothing to tie this bloke Cooper to the murder at all,’ Adams said.
‘Except that he confessed.’
Adams shot him an awkward smile. ‘Except that, yeah.’
‘So why do you think he confessed if he didn’t do it?’ Zigic asked, genuinely curious, and started on his bacon butty.
‘Two options. First one, coercion.’
Zigic swallowed hard, his food moving painfully down his throat. He
