At the back of Ferreira’s mind, a hard voice, the voice of self-preservation, said, ‘So, let her come home to him, it’ll get him off your back.’
She didn’t want to listen to it.
Her job was as often about protecting people from themselves as much as from others. But sometimes you failed in the face of their overwhelming urge towards self-destruction.
There was absolutely nothing she could do to stop Dani coming home.
All she could do, all any of them seemed able to do where Walton was concerned, was wait for him to react in his entirely predictable way and then clean up the mess he’d leave behind.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Zigic spotted Adams’s car parked at the bottom of Station Road where the narrow lane became a farm track, heading into open countryside and Ferry Meadows beyond it. Adams had wanted to come to the house but Zigic told him he had Anna’s family around, insisted they meet here. Now he was regretting it.
It felt so inescapably illicit. Would look deeply suspect to any of the neighbours who might see him ambling down the road, trying to be nonchalant. If he saw himself heading for that swanky black Audi, he’d probably think he was buying coke.
And that would be less dangerous, less stupid than what he was actually up to.
He got into the passenger side, found Adams had left a padded envelope waiting for him on the dashboard, nothing written on it, sealed and taped for extra protection. An unnecessary precaution given that the chain of evidence was not a factor here.
Zigic stared at the envelope, sitting there so innocuously. It was the kind that Anna received little handmade decorative objects from Etsy in. But this one held a sample of DNA on a scrap of fabric from the cardigan of a murdered girl. A scrap that had been safely filed away in police evidence up until this morning.
‘Don’t ask how I got it,’ Adams said. ‘Best you don’t know.’
‘Attempting to give me plausible deniability would be a thoughtful gesture if I wasn’t taking it for an illegal off-site DNA test,’ Zigic said, unable to tear his eyes from it but unwilling to actually take hold of the thing.
There was still a chance to back away.
Adams held out a piece of paper with a mobile number on it. ‘Forty-eight-hour turnaround; it’s as quick as I could get.’
‘You could have given them it yourself,’ Zigic said, reluctantly taking the slip of paper. ‘It’s your contact we’re using.’
Adams smiled, both of them aware of why he was insisting Zigic take it in. Both their hands would be dirtied, no going back, no turning on each other. They would stand or fall together.
He could walk away, he thought. Leave the envelope untouched, nothing to tie him to this, not even a single stray fingerprint. Adams would be pissed off but he’d continue alone and get whatever result or punishment was at the end of the process. If he was right Walton would go down and Ferreira would be safe and everyone would breathe a sigh of relief. If he was wrong no one would be any the wiser.
Zigic thought of Tessa Darby’s mother, bereaved and retraumatised by their visit; Sadie Ryan in hiding after her suicide attempt, her family terrified she would try again. All the victims waiting to see if Lee Walton would come for his revenge.
This was an ugly way of getting justice, he thought bitterly.
Taking a deep breath, he picked up the envelope. It was almost weightless, so light and insubstantial it seemed impossible that it held the potential to end both of their careers and maybe even land them in prison.
There would be no compromised lab to spring them, either.
But he had it in his hand now and as much as his head was pounding and his gut screaming at him to be smart about this, he knew he would be no kind of copper if he didn’t follow through on what they’d started.
‘How much does he want?’
‘She doesn’t need paying,’ Adams said. ‘She owes me a favour.’
Zigic climbed out of the car, unwilling to hear any more of this, and walked back up the lane, fighting the fear that told him to fling the envelope over the hedgerow and into the field opposite his house, let it sit there and rot safely back into the earth. Instead he went upstairs and placed it inside an evidence bag, then tucked it away at the back of his wardrobe, ready to be retrieved later this afternoon when Anna’s family were gone and he could slip out to meet Adams’s contact.
Through the bedroom window he could see Anna sitting next to her mother at the table, Emily in her lap. The three of them were staying safely under the broad canvas umbrella while her father added another layer of sun damage to the leathery finish of his arms and face, standing at the barbecue, turning the sausages the Healeys had brought from their local butcher, who was so much better than the one they used.
Everything about Mr and Mrs Healeys’ life was superior to the one he could provide for his family, even down to the quality of the meat in their sausages. Zigic had tried one, didn’t detect any significant difference and knew the boys would have eaten anything, as long as it was smothered in brown sauce for Stefan and red for Milan.
He watched them chase around the large nut tree in the middle of the garden, smiling at how happy Milan seemed today, like a little boy again, instead of the proto-adult he’d been lately, weighed down with burdens he refused to share. He was laughing and shouting, dodging away from Stefan and getting the broad
