Cold Revenge (Willis/Carter #6)(17)

When he’d gone Heather went back out onto the lane leading Murphy. She stopped by the bungalow and saw Nicola in the kitchen, standing by the window staring out. Nicola seemed to be just staring at Heather for ages. She wished Ash didn’t have to live next to the bungalow. She wished he didn’t owe such a lot to Douglas. He was trapped. They were both trapped.

Saul watched her go. He had seen them leave in Douglas’s van early that morning. He hadn’t slept well; the lighter evenings were difficult for everyone but for Saul they brought back memories of his wife and daughter and of the joy that spring and summer brought into their lives and how that was all gone now. Now, he preferred the winter months.

He went inside the house and made himself a mug of coffee and went to stand at his sitting-room window. His house was upside down; he’d built it like that to make the most of the views of the surrounding countryside, and he could see for miles. From there he could see Douglas and the others in the bungalow. From his first-floor kitchen window, he saw the farm and Truscott’s house. He saw into the yard, just the top of the stables. He saw the manège where the pony club kids did their best to gallop and throw spuds into buckets. He could see Heather’s house, her garden, the field at the front where the foxes mated at night. He could see her bedroom window. He had listened to Heather’s voice since the first day they brought her home from the hospital and his heart had leapt at her baby cries; he had always loved her. It broke his heart to hear her cry now. It made him die inside to see her lonely at the window. Sound carried through the fields and around the valley; it was amplified. Saul heard the sound of the horses neighing for their food, the sound of Heather’s father chopping wood on a Sunday morning and Saul heard Nicola’s laughter countless times, vibrating in the air. He knew the sound she made as she came. He watched Truscott go into the bungalow when Douglas’s van was gone, and he heard the sound of Truscott’s muted roar.

He watched Elle come out of her van naked and wash herself in the sunshine or the rain. She was all skin and bone and red dreadlocks that she had left to go wild and overtake her so they were too heavy and large for her small head.

And Saul saw Ash and Heather, kissing by the hedge, just inside his field. If he switched off the lights, he could watch them embrace and he was slightly jealous of their love and the way it began and grew. It made him just as sad as it did happy, to watch Heather growing up and becoming a woman.





Chapter 11


Willis knocked on the front door of the flat on the fourth floor of Seven Sisters Tower, a rundown estate in Finsbury Park, built in the 70s. New pale blue-and-white cladding had been put on the outside to give it a better appearance, but inside everything was still as shabby. The lift wasn’t working and the stairs smelt of wee. The local shop they’d passed had been deserted and vandalised. Teenagers were smoking weed and sitting on the swings in the kiddies’ playground.

A television was on inside the flat. A dog barked from one of the other flats as they knocked on the door. A woman answered, her skin showing the ravages of drugs, her eyes dull and her hair scraped back into a ponytail. She had on black leggings and an oversized grey T-shirt. She had a young child on her hip. Willis checked her phone; confirmation that it was Millie’s blood on the bridge had just been received, it had seeped through and settled on the underside.

‘Yes?’ The woman was nervous.

Willis showed her badge. Carter did the same.

‘Yvonne Coombes?’ asked Willis. ‘May we come in for a chat?’

The woman stepped back to allow them to come past her into the flat. The smell of toast was in the air. The place was clean but needed painting, needed some money spent on it. They followed Yvonne into the kitchen, where she sat down with the little girl on her lap. The child looked full of cold, hot-faced, whingeing as she tried to breathe and suck on a bottle of juice at the same time.

‘We’ve come to talk to you about Millie Stephens.’

‘I heard, on the news.’ Yvonne looked pale and numb. She cuddled her child and tried to entice her with a dummy instead of the bottle.

Carter answered, ‘Millie’s body was found in the River Lea yesterday.’

‘Was she murdered, like it said on the news?’

‘Yes, she was, and we need your help to piece together her last moves so that we can find out who did it.’

She turned away from them. ‘I can’t help you, I haven’t seen Millie for months.’

Carter nodded, smiled. ‘Tell us about the last time you did see her.’

‘I bumped into her. I didn’t know she was a street worker.’ She switched the little girl to the other hip to try to settle her.

Carter was waiting with a sympathetic smile on his face. Willis paused in taking notes and looked up at Yvonne.

‘I didn’t know, I swear.’ Yvonne looked from one to the other.

Willis reached into her backpack and took out the photo of Millie and Yvonne outside the pub.

‘That’s you in the picture with Millie, isn’t it? We know you worked the street together sometimes, we have several people who have confirmed it,’ she said as she pushed the photo across to Yvonne.

‘We also know you’ve been through some really tough times and you’re trying to keep your child now and go straight,’ said Carter. ‘It’s Bonny, isn’t it? That’s a lovely name.’ Yvonne nodded.