A pair of uniformed officers were already on the scene, trying to separate the women. But Wendy Darby was too determined to be held. Her maternal fury driving her on, trying to shake off a man fifty pounds heavier and five inches taller, sending her feet flying towards Jackie Walton, who was doing more shouting than fighting and letting herself be gently removed to a safe distance.
Zigic was out of the car before it stopped moving, running over and between the two women, into Wendy Darby’s eyeline.
She didn’t see him, trying to twist free of the big hands holding her firm.
‘You know what he is, Jackie!’ she shouted.
‘Wendy, this isn’t helping,’ Zigic said, gently, taking a step towards her.
He could smell the alcohol on her breath, guessed the PC holding her didn’t know who she was or what she was doing here, maybe hadn’t even realised that the Mrs Walton they were dragging her away from was the same one whose son they’d spent thousands of man-hours tracking. He’d smelled gin on Wendy Darby’s breath at 11 a.m. and assumed she was the person in the wrong.
‘How long did you know, Jackie?’ she shouted. ‘How long have you been lying for him?’
‘She’s unhinged,’ Jackie Walton said desperately, addressing the group of police and the neighbours.
‘You were my best friend,’ Wendy choked out. ‘You came to my house and you sat with me, and all the time you knew Lee killed my girl. How could you do that? What is wrong with you?’
Her hair was plastered to her face, her eyes watery and red. She looked like she’d spent every minute since they went to speak to her at the garden centre in a state of pure hell.
Zigic felt the guilt like a knife between his ribs.
Hoped Adams felt it too.
His attention was on Jackie Walton though, and all Zigic could hear was her demanding Wendy be arrested, putting on a more refined accent than she usually used, scandalised and indignant at what was happening. But the tremble was real, as was the way she held her arms clasped around her body.
Her eyes met Zigic’s and she changed tack.
‘You need to take her to hospital,’ she said to him. ‘She’s clearly not in her right mind. I think she needs sedating before she hurts herself.’ She turned to the PC standing beside her. ‘Really, please. I’m worried about her. She needs help.’
‘Expert on psychology are you now?’ Adams asked. ‘Shame you didn’t spot that your son was a serial rapist a bit sooner.’
‘She knew!’ Wendy shouted.
Zigic tried to dip into her eyeline again but her gaze was locked on Adams and Jackie Walton, so intensely focused that she managed to drag herself and the PC a full two steps closer to them, until she was virtually toe to toe with Zigic.
‘She told me years ago she was worried about him,’ Wendy said. ‘Always hanging around his little cousins, disappearing into the garage with them …’
The PC hauled her back again.
‘Shut up!’ Jackie cried.
‘You knew what he was and you did nothing. Not even when it was your own family he was hurting.’
‘This is your fault,’ Jackie Walton said, stabbing a finger at Adams, her attempt at decorum forgotten. ‘You fitted my boy up and now look what I’m having to put up with. This mad bitch coming around reeking of supermarket gin, accusing me of all sorts.’
‘Not all sorts,’ Adams said, leaning towards her. ‘Just one thing – covering for Lee when he killed Tessa.’
Jackie Walton’s face flushed a deep crimson. ‘This is harassment. I’m going to get my lawyer onto you. This is a gross abuse of police power. My Lee was found innocent and you’ve got no right to keep coming after him like this.’
‘Get in touch with your lawyer,’ Adams said. ‘Something tells me Lee’s going to need her again in the very near future.’
She stammered around a reply and backed away, stepping into a flower bed filled with bright orange marigolds, crushing a plant underfoot.
The fight drained from Wendy just as abruptly and Zigic noticed the relief on the PC’s face. He started to walk her towards the patrol car and she let herself be taken and eased into the back with no resistance.
‘I want to press charges,’ Jackie Walton said in a wobbly voice, arms still folded, chin down. ‘She attacked me, she made me feel unsafe.’
‘Yeah?’ Adams asked. ‘Do you really want to come down to Thorpe Wood and make a statement? We can put you in the same interview room where Lee denied raping all of those women you know he actually attacked. Would you enjoy that, Jackie? Seeing where your boy did some of his finest lying?’
Without another word she turned away and retreated inside her house, the front door closing very softly.
Zigic told the PC to take Wendy Darby out of the patrol car and put her in the back of Adams’s instead, thinking the least they could do now was see her home safely and with the dignity she deserved. She moved with the same exhausted compliance and Zigic hoped she felt better for coming here and confronting Jackie Walton, her former best friend.
The thought of her sitting in Wendy’s house, bringing her tea and passing her hankies as she cried for her dead daughter, sitting there knowing there was a possibility her own son was responsible …
How had she done it, he wondered. What feats of denial had Jackie Walton performed over the years to allow herself to keep hugging him and saying, ‘I love you, son’?
As he stooped to get into the car,
