‘Is there anyone I can call for you?’ he asked.
She closed her eyes.
‘If you need anything you can ring me, okay?’ he said, taking out a card and placing it on the table. ‘Any time, Wendy. Just call.’
He wanted her to snap to her feet. Rant and rave at him, show some spark of defiance so he’d know they hadn’t completely destroyed her.
But she didn’t and he left the house, hating himself but hating Adams more because he’d started all of this.
And then in the car, driving back to Thorpe Wood, Adams had finally broken the silence.
‘Look, I don’t like this either, Ziggy. But we’re short on options so we’re going to have to do some things which don’t sit well.’
At the solicitor’s office he’d seemed ready to dump the whole case rather than accept once and for all that Riggott had manipulated Cooper into confessing. That worry had been shelved but Zigic thought he needed reminding that he wasn’t in control of this and that their actions had consequences.
Bring it home to him, right here and now in the station.
‘Colleen, can we have a word, please?’ Zigic asked, as he approached her desk. ‘In my office if you wouldn’t mind.’
He saw Adams cut a quick glance at Murray and her giving him a questioning look in response, but they both followed. She sat down, Adams positioning himself against the defunct filing cabinets.
‘You ready to tell me what you’re playing at, Billy?’ Murray asked him.
‘You know what we’re doing, Col.’
‘Not the details,’ she said. ‘Not the specific case.’
‘Tessa Darby,’ Zigic told her.
A brief ripple of unease crossed her face, before she rearranged herself in her seat, leaning back and smoothing her blouse down.
‘You worked the case,’ Zigic said. ‘Under Riggott.’
She nodded but she was looking at Adams. ‘You’re playing a dangerous game, mate. This why you’ve been keeping me out of the loop?’
‘We were just trying to protect you,’ he said. ‘You and Mel.’
‘Bollocks. You just never wanted someone who’d tell you what a massive mistake you’re making.’ She jabbed her fingertip into the arm of the chair. ‘That case was solid. We got a confession.’
‘Did you know Lee Walton was at the same college as Tessa?’ Zigic asked, seeing from her reaction that she didn’t. ‘And that their mothers were best friends at the time?’
‘Cooper didn’t do it,’ Adams told her.
‘Then why did he bloody confess?’ She threw her arms wide, looked incredulously between them. ‘Christ Almighty, is this what you’ve been doing? I thought you actually had something on Walton.’
‘Cooper’s solicitor believes the confession was coerced,’ Zigic said.
Her eyes darkened and narrowed and she leaned forward in her chair again.
‘No, that never happened.’
‘Come on, Col,’ Adams said, moving into the seat next to her. ‘You know what Riggott was like. You worked closely with him on that case –’
‘Yeah, I did. Which means you’re accusing me of misconduct as well.’
‘No one’s saying that.’ Zigic tried to keep his voice even but he could feel Murray’s annoyance coming across the table, the defensiveness in it that only made him more convinced that the accusation against Riggott was true. ‘But isn’t it possible that the pressure of multiple interviews might have encouraged Cooper to confess?’
‘We all tell them same thing,’ Adams said. ‘It’s standard procedure – confess and you’ll get a lighter sentence. If Riggott said that –’
‘He didn’t say that,’ she snapped. ‘I was in every single one of those interviews and he never said it.’
‘What about the chats that weren’t recorded?’ Zigic asked.
She glared at him.
‘Col, we’re getting close to nailing Walton for Tessa Darby’s murder,’ Adams said, sounding too certain for the evidence they had, but Zigic was sure he believed it, and he could see Murray getting dragged along too, the hard line of her mouth softening, something hopeful coming into her eyes. ‘He’s rattled, right? You know how Walton was, we never managed to put him on the back foot, not once. Not even when we had him in court. But this has got to him. He did it, Col. I’m sure of it.’
‘You can’t build a case on “rattled”,’ she said, retreating in her chair again. ‘Is that all you’ve got? He looks a bit stressed and Cooper’s solicitor saying the confession was bent?’
Zigic didn’t want to tell her. She went way back with Riggott, had been brought in and trained up by him. Plucked out of uniform where her talents had been underused and her potential ignored. Word was they were close outside of work too, though Zigic had never noticed her getting special treatment. The station gossip mill suggested Riggott was the person who picked her up after her divorce laid her flat.
As big as this case was and as emotionally involved as Murray had become with the victims, Zigic felt certain her loyalty to Riggott wouldn’t be swayed.
Surely Adams saw that. ‘We’ve got a DNA sample,’ he said.
Zigic winced.
‘Where from?’ Murray asked, eyes widening. ‘What have you done?’
‘Don’t worry about that,’ Adams said, but she clearly was worried. ‘We’ll have a result tomorrow. And if it comes back as a match for Walton, we’re going to go to Riggott and ask him to reopen the case.’
‘You’re dreaming,’ she said, letting out a humourless laugh. ‘Are you crazy?’
‘We need you to come in on this, Col. You were on the original case; we need you to back us up on Cooper’s confession.’
For ten seconds that felt like five minutes, she didn’t answer and Zigic could hear her breathing becoming shallow and faster, a phone ringing out on the floor and a sudden high peel of laughter from Bloom, which cut through the room like a blade. Murray was going to storm out of here and straight into Riggott’s office.
This was it.
‘Col, please,’ Adams said, a plaintive whine in his voice. ‘We can’t get Walton without you.’
She sucked her bottom lip into her mouth, blew it out again.
‘For
