Cold Revenge (Willis/Carter #6)(3)
‘The man who went on trial for the murder of schoolgirl Heather Phillips in 2000?’
‘That’s the one – they never found the body but they found her DNA in his van. He had a band of loyal followers the press dubbed his disciples. Each of them was tattooed with a red chain to bind them and with his motto – ignite the fire. There were seven of them altogether. Millie here was one.’
Chapter 2
Saturday 20 May 2000
Jimmy Douglas sat on the floor of his lounge, and swigged back his bottle of beer as his girlfriend Nicola came in from the garden, floating in in an Indian-print maxi skirt and cropped T-shirt with a Smiley logo.
‘The sun’s at the back now,’ she said as she went through to the kitchen. ‘It’s reached the patio.’ They lived in a bungalow at the edge of a farm. It was the first building on the lane to Hawthorn Farm, just outside Chesham. They’d been there for eighteen months.
Douglas drank his beer and watched her move around the place; she was nervous and excited. It was Saturday and Douglas always took the weekends off. He was away working most of the week, selling his equine products. He had built up a good network across the country and, when he wasn’t doing that, he had a sideline going in drugs: ecstasy and weed mainly. He knew all the farmhands and pick-up points where he could buy it for a good price and sell it for more. Nicola sold a good deal of it from the bungalow when they held parties. Raves were banned now, but they could still hold a ticket-only bash on the eight-and-a-half acres that came with the bungalow. They knew how to keep it discreet and Douglas never kept large amounts at the bungalow.
She came in with another beer, lifted her skirt and straddled Douglas as he sat on the floor. He held on to her voluptuous bottom and slid her further up onto his lap. He untucked her T-shirt and pulled it up over her breasts; she wasn’t wearing a bra. She laughed as he examined her.
‘Has the farmer been over?’
‘Of course.’
Nicola raised her bottle to her lips and looked sideways at Douglas, grinning, the beer dribbling down her chin. She laughed as Douglas leaned forwards to lick her face.
‘Is he in love with you?’
‘Truscott? No way, he’s got his beady little eye on the young ones at the stables. He comes down here to get some relief when it all gets too much for him.’
Douglas laughed and their hips rocked together as he sat back and studied her. She wasn’t the prettiest of women, as her face always looked a little pissed off, her mouth wide and downturned, her nose a little too long and too big, but her eyes were a pretty brown and her neck was long and white, like a swan’s. Douglas loved the way his hand could encircle her whole neck, the way his thumb could press on one side of her trachea and he could watch her almost pass out. He loved the way she was ruled by her senses. Douglas knew he had both the brains and the looks to choose a partner who suited him intellectually but no one would understand his love of pain as she did.
‘Tell me, who is in the yard?’ asked Douglas. ‘Are they up for a night of it?’
‘Millie is, there’s a few of them for definite; I said we will have a barbecue this evening. I said they can bring friends.’ Nicola held her beer bottle to her lips, paused before drinking and rolled her eyes skyward. She was jittery, Douglas could feel it. The thrill of the corruption and conquest made her wet. But what he thought was really clever about Nicola was that she could wrap it all up in a cloak of nurturing maternal concern. Jimmy could charm their pants off, but Nicola could offer to wash them, both with the same aim. Douglas had a couple of girls in mind at the moment, but one was an ongoing project.
He’d watched Heather Phillips since the day they first came to look around the bungalow on Hawthorn Farm with the prospect of renting it, on a late afternoon in autumn. They had pulled over to allow a school minibus to park and unload its passengers. A lone girl had got off, not turning to say goodbye, just muttering her thanks under her breath as the door closed behind her. She glanced up at the waiting car and her eyes met Douglas’s. Douglas watched her and he saw such beauty in her sadness; she was on the cusp of adulthood, she was a flower waiting to open its petals, waiting to be introduced to the world – his world.
Nicola was sitting in the passenger seat, beside him. They’d been together for six months then, still testing one another out, but already they had gone further than Douglas ever dreamt he would. He had found a partner who understood him, who shared his fantasies, who could take them to the next level. She had looked at him and smiled. They knew they wanted the bungalow at Hawthorn Farm even before they saw it and Nicola knew how to seal a deal.
‘Did you say the place comes furnished?’ Douglas had asked. The farmer, Truscott, eyed them suspiciously and looked in danger of deciding they weren’t suitable tenants.
‘The beds can stay but I have others coming to look at the place. It’s going to be twelve hundred a month plus bills. Have you got the money? You doing well for Champion?’ Champion was the name of the premium horse feed supplement company that Douglas worked for.
‘I’m their number-one salesman, Mr Truscott. I make sure I work hard. I can pay the rent, don’t worry. Plus, I can help out on the farm when you need; I can turn my hand to most things. My family owned a farm in Ireland,’ he lied. ‘We had a stud farm.’
Douglas had been brought up by his gran after his mother left him. His gran couldn’t cope with him, his behaviour wasn’t right for such a young boy and she couldn’t handle his darkness. At the age of seven, he lured a five-year-old boy into the woods and tortured him to death. The authorities said it was just a children’s game gone wrong.