Cold Revenge (Willis/Carter #6)(23)

He got out his phone to check his calendar.

‘I was on my father-in-law’s roof. When I wasn’t on it, I was drinking inside it – it’s a pub, the Swan in Rickmansworth.’

‘Do you have vehicles that you use besides the van?’ asked Willis.

‘No.’

‘Who else do you keep in contact with from those times?’ she asked him, as he pulled a lighter from his tracksuit bottoms and shielded the flame from the wind as he lit up.

‘I haven’t seen anyone for a while.’ He looked up at Willis and shrugged.

Willis read off the list of Douglas’s disciples.

‘I heard Yvonne’s got a family,’ Gavin said.

‘Remind me where she lives?’ Carter asked.

‘Hackney somewhere, I don’t know where, she never invited me round. Why, are you looking for her?’

‘We’re trying to put together an idea of Millie’s life and any friends she might have had, we think she must have known her attacker.’

‘Yeah, I tried to give her friendly advice but I gave up, all she wanted was money from me.’

‘What advice did you try to give her?’ asked Carter.

‘Oh, you know, clean up, wake up! You’re a long time dead.’

‘What about the other disciples, do you keep in touch?’ asked Carter, watching Gavin Heathcote closely. He was sniffing all through their conversation, and looking around. He shook his head.

‘Cathy Dwyer? Stephen Perry?’ asked Willis, reading off the names again.

‘No, afraid not. Not since the days of the bungalow and Hawthorn Farm.’

‘What do you remember about those times?’ asked Carter.

‘Lots of parties, lots of sex. Just what you need when you’re a young lad, like I was.’

‘And Douglas? What do you remember about him?’

‘No comment,’ he laughed, jokingly, as if it was all a game. ‘I tell you what I do remember is the foot and mouth epidemic. Now that was a real event. That really happened. We’d rock up there with our guns and our mallets and we’d get to work and kill every one of those farmers’ animals and then they’d pay us and we’d move on to the next one. It was a mad time.’

Carter was nodding, but he was also looking at what Willis had written: Gavin Heathcote comes alive when he talks about death and killing. These are great memories for him.

‘Must have been a lot of comradeship between you lads?’ said Carter.

‘Yeah, there was, it would get surreal with us seeing how fast we could bash a lamb’s brains in, seeing who could kill the most, but at the same time we had to be respectful of the farmers – they were hanging themselves, sobbing in the fields. We had to come in there like some crack A-team and kill everything they loved and take their money. I made a shed-load of money that spring and summer. Even after Douglas was arrested, we just kept doing it, everyone knew us by then and they had no one else to call. There was a huge shortage of people to do it. We had false gamekeeper papers, we all had shotgun licences and we had a ball.’

‘Who’s we?’

‘Me and Stephen, Posh Boy, lived in the bungalow with Douglas and Nicola.’

‘I notice you still have the disciples’ tattoos on your wrists?’ said Willis. ‘Why is that?’

‘Because I choose to.’

‘Many people would have had them removed,’ Willis said. ‘It still links you to Jimmy Douglas, doesn’t it?’

‘Maybe I don’t have a problem with that.’ He glared at Willis with a smirk on his face.

‘Even though he’s a convicted rapist serving a life sentence?’ Willis answered.

‘One that’s about to come to an end.’ Gavin smiled. ‘I don’t know what he did or didn’t do. I know he went to prison for rape, but I don’t know whether he did it. Douglas was a friend to me. We had a good laugh. I wish him well and I’m looking forward to seeing him again. Yeah, can’t wait.’ Gavin rubbed his hands together.

‘Gavin meant what he said, didn’t he? He really can’t wait for Douglas to get out,’ said Carter.

‘He hasn’t got any nicer over the years. Douglas is coming out to a hero’s welcome, by the sound of it.’

Carter was negotiating the local traffic headed towards the motorway.

‘Scott Tucker, he interviewed the disciples at the time, it was one of his first cases. I remember he talked to me about it.’

Willis had gone silent, looking at her notebook. Tucker was a friend of Carter’s, based in Devon, who had been Willis’s on-and-off lover for two years.

‘He’s up here at the moment. Did you know?’ Carter asked. Willis shook her head, kept her eyes glued to her tablet. Carter knew when to back off, for a few minutes at least. ‘No way Heathcote would have gone out of his way to bung Millie a few bob and get nothing back, is there?’ he continued as they joined the M25. The roads were busy. The rain had started.

Willis shook her head as she looked at her phone. ‘No, I agree. I’ve got the house-to-house started. Sandford has found nothing else after the eighteenth for Millie. There’s a copy of the Evening Standard paper in her flat.’

‘How long is he going to be in there?’

‘He’s done. The results are in from her phone according to Hector. We’re running a scan for frequent numbers.’