‘So, what do you want from me?’ Baxter asked, settling back in her chair.
‘We’d like to know why Neal confessed?’
‘I think you already know the answer to that, Inspector.’ She propped her elbow on the arm of the chair, rested her chin on it.
‘We assume the confession was a result of confusion and his obsession with Tessa,’ Adams said.
Zigic heard a note of genuine hope in his voice, saw Baxter register it too and immediately disregard his input.
‘From the very beginning Neal told me he didn’t kill Ms Darby,’ Baxter said firmly. ‘And while I don’t always believe my clients when they protest their innocence, I believed Neal implicitly. I wouldn’t have represented him otherwise. At every point in the process he maintained his innocence. During every interview he was put through, his story never changed.’ A new fire entered her eyes. ‘I could see how desperate Riggott was getting. As the weeks passed it became clear to me that he didn’t have any other suspects and that he was under pressure to charge someone. Pressure he clearly wasn’t up to handling.’
Zigic felt the knot of anxiety in his stomach writhe and tighten. He could see Riggott behaving just as she suggested, knew how he would have snapped and raged, that vein pulsing in his forehead as he tried to rally his team, the frustration seething as he took every dressing-down from above and every grilling from the press.
He’d never handled pressure well, not for as long as Zigic had worked under him. Didn’t seem able to feed off it like the best coppers could. Maybe that was why he went up the management structure so quickly; the higher he went the less damage he could do.
‘The penultimate interview Riggott conducted with Neal ran late; it was almost midnight by the time he finished with the boy, and I had to insist on ending it even then because Neal was exhausted and I could see very clearly that Riggott was trying to grind him down to the point where he’d say anything to make it stop.’ She pursed her lips. ‘In all honesty, Neal was not the sharpest young man you’d meet, and there was a sustained attempt to use that weakness against him.’
Zigic thought of how Adams went after Neal Cooper at his home. Using the same tactics Riggott had, playing the game his mentor had taught him.
Baxter took a deep breath.
‘Neal spent the night in custody,’ she said. ‘And when I went in to see him the next morning, he told me he wanted to confess.’
There it was.
The knot in his stomach began to throb, so hard he was sure he could feel it beating against the back of his abdominal muscles.
‘What reason did he give for changing his mind?’ Zigic asked.
‘He said he’d been lying because he was scared of going to prison.’ She drew her knuckles along her jawline, eyes temporarily losing focus. ‘I told him I knew he was innocent but he wouldn’t listen to me; he insisted on going back in and making a full confession.’
‘And there was no way you could stop him?’
She shook her head. ‘When I pressed him he got angry and told me to leave. But I decided the best course of action was to stay and try to get him the best deal I could.’ A grim smile twisted her mouth. ‘The one thing he was very clear about wanting me to do was to make sure he served his sentence in a young offenders’ institution.’
‘Where did he get that idea from?’ Zigic asked.
Baxter opened her hands wide. ‘He hadn’t mentioned prison at all up to that point. He was so convinced his innocence would keep him safe. He had absolute and total trust in the system, Inspector Zigic. He was like a child that way; he thought the police protected good people like him and that they wouldn’t do anything to harm him. DCS Riggott exploited that trust to manipulate Neal into confessing.’
Zigic thought of Riggott going down to the basement once Baxter had left Thorpe Wood Station, being let into Neal Cooper’s cell, let into his soft and vulnerable head. No solicitor to protect him, no recording equipment to capture what precisely Riggott had said.
But Zigic knew him well enough to guess at it.
Keep lying and we’ll send you to a category A prison; confess and we’ll make recommendations of leniency. You’re only sixteen, you can go to a young offenders’ institution; they’re just like college, you’ll be safe there. We’ve got you Neal, the choice now is how much it hurts.
A few minutes later, interview over, back in the car, Adams asked, ‘Do you believe her?’
‘You don’t?’
He squirmed in the driver’s seat. ‘She’s got her own agenda here. I don’t think we should take what she says as gospel.’
Adams had pushed for this, tried to shrug off the weight that would come down on them if Riggott was found to have acted inappropriately. He’d made this happen almost single-handedly, and now the evidence was in front of him, he was scared where it would lead them.
There was a reckoning coming. A conversation none of them would survive completely clean.
‘Baxter isn’t the only person who knows what Riggott did in that cell,’ Zigic said. ‘You want verification? Let’s get it.’
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
They were almost back at the station when DC Wahlia called, his voice coming through the speakerphone fast and tight, sending them down the parkway and onto Oundle Road, heading for an address on the more sedate
