Cold Revenge (Willis/Carter #6)(45)

Carter nodded, trying to keep the cynicism from his eyes as Davidson held his gaze. Carter was thinking – foot and mouth began in February the next year. What were you doing up to that point? Taking too bloody long. But Carter knew him from old. He knew what was expected. Davidson was waiting for it. Carter smiled in an ‘unlucky, you were robbed’ way, but inside he was already rekindling his hate of this man who had always given Carter a hard time when Davidson was his boss and never put him up for promotion – Carter was never ‘old school’ enough.

‘How can I help? What do you need from me?’

‘What do you remember about Millie Stephens?’

‘She was a dedicated disciple: easily led, a simple girl.’

‘You know she’s been murdered, her body was washed up on the banks of the River Lea, in the park, and she had stab wounds in her neck. She’s been a street prostitute in Finsbury Park for the last fifteen years.’

‘So, it could be just another prostitute killed by a john, but you wouldn’t be here then, would you?’

‘No, Nicola Stone has also been murdered. Douglas is due out soon and she wasn’t hard to find.’

Davidson made one of those ‘what do you expect?’ faces.

‘Millie was one of their most successful prodigies – vulnerable, impressionable, they did a really good job on ruining her. She was brainwashed. In the end she was as bad as Nicola Stone. I interviewed her many times and all she said was “no comment” with a smile on her face and sometimes she turned her wrists up to me so that I could observe the chain that bound them, the vow of silence that they had all made. She was very close to Heather. All of the disciples were party to some big secret, even before Heather disappeared. They were this gang who had a link representing each one of them tattooed on their wrists to show their bond. In other words, Douglas conned them all into belonging to a cult they didn’t dare leave. With Douglas as the cult leader, they were in it for life. I think they embraced the whole thing, each one of them was evil.’

‘Except some of them were easily corrupted and they were unhappy?’

‘Right.’ Davidson rolled his eyes.

‘The night Heather disappeared, she was there at the party in the evening, she left early, if I recall?’

‘She planned her escape well. After the note was found we made routine inquiries at the farm but mostly we concentrated on sending alerts to other forces. We were looking for sightings at railway stations. It was the note that threw us off, without that we would have had the place turned upside down and we may have found some trace of her earlier. By the time it escalated to a murder inquiry, it was February and the farms were in lockdown with foot-and-mouth. When we found the blood in Douglas’s van I swear none of the disciples looked at all shocked. They sat there, opposite me and just stared and smiled and said “no comment”. They may have been young but they were wise enough. Nicola Stone had a way of nurturing all these young ones. I interviewed Nicola Stone many times and she was “no comment” all the way through with a smirk on her face. She was evil.’

‘She found God in prison.’

‘Well, good luck to the both of them. Where has she been all this time?’

‘Moved from one place to another, and most recently she was in Hackney. That’s where she was murdered. Someone wrote Heather with a question mark on the wall, in Nicola’s blood.’

‘Bloody hell!’

‘We still aren’t a hundred per cent sure it is the same killer but coincidence doesn’t really exist in our job, does it?’

‘If I’m honest, I’m surprised it hasn’t happened before. She became one of the most hated women in the UK. It’s ironic the way they never forgive the women in these cases. But where she was concerned, it was justified.’

Carter looked questioningly at Davidson, wanting to retaliate with a list of accusations of possible missed procedures meaning that they never really uncovered what Nicola Stone was guilty of, but he didn’t. Davidson could walk away, he was the ultimate self-server, and if Carter was going to have any luck in getting anything useful he had to flatter the old bastard.

‘So, it was the mothering element she brought to the party?’ Carter asked. Davidson nodded ruefully, as he opened out his white cloth napkin and shook it to place it neatly on his lap, looking hopeful as the waiter passed with someone else’s food.

‘Exactly.’ He sighed. ‘Let me tell you something about Nicola Stone, she was as bad as Douglas. We know where she was all week, while Douglas was away, she was grooming the youngsters at the yard, ready for him when he came back at the weekend.’

‘But we don’t know what he got up to when he was away, do we?’ questioned Carter. ‘He delivered all over the country and the farmers loved him.’

‘Yes, they bloody loved him!’ Davidson waved his fork in the air.

‘Loved him enough to let him have a lockup somewhere?’

‘Yes, of course we considered that, but we weren’t able to get to the farms during the foot and mouth. And before that Heather was just a runaway for the first six months. I have no regrets about the way I handled the case, and there’s nothing I would have done differently, no stone left unturned.’ He smiled at his joke. ‘Sure, I followed the path that I thought would lead us to a conviction against Douglas. I know what you’re angling for me to say, you want me to say I was wrong. Well, I still don’t believe I was. Douglas was protected and he was loved. None of his disciples would talk. I’ve never met a man who exerted so much power over others.’