Cold Revenge (Willis/Carter #6)(74)
‘Are you flying yet? Can you see all the colours?’
Heather nodded, staring at Nicola’s face and seeing every freckle on her face, every eyelash around her eyes. She reached up to touch her skin. Nicola started laughing.
‘Heather!’ Heather heard her name and turned and realised the whole world had become distorted. She couldn’t make out the small man coming towards her until she realised it was her uncle. She started laughing and couldn’t stop.
‘What time is it, Uncle?’
‘It’s past your bedtime. It’s nearly twelve.’
Heather looked at the room closing in on her, she looked at her hands that had grown large and kept waving in her face and she felt Nicola’s arms around her waist and she tried hard to push her away.
‘What’s wrong with her?’ Truscott was talking, and he looked so funny when he talked that Heather wanted to die laughing but inside her chest, her heart was thumping fast like a trapped moth at a bright window, and something was telling her to run. She ran past them and out onto the lane. It was dark now, the colours from the party were everywhere around her, swirling and moving and distorting beneath her feet as she climbed over the gate into Saul’s field. She tried to run but her legs bent and wobbled and she fell, so she crawled. The field came alive with scampering animals as the grass tried to swallow her beneath her hands and bats whizzed past overhead. She heard people calling her name. She didn’t dare move. Heather crouched like a baby rabbit in the grass. Her chest burned. The ground was pulsating and the grass was pushing up between her fingers and her knees as though she was sinking.
She couldn’t see Murphy but she saw lights on the main road that seemed as far as the horizon now. She knew she had to get through to the other field to get there. The car headlights were shining like two bright eyes. Heather heard her name called again as someone came towards her, wading through the field like a giant. She propelled her body forward and she ran like a darting hare. She saw the grass turn black beneath her feet like the deepest ocean and fish rose to snap at her legs. She ran until she stopped dead. Murphy was standing with a man. The lights from the car were off now. There was just the night and the stars and as she walked towards him Murphy stared at her. The man beckoned her to him. Murphy opened his mouth and sighed the word, ‘Run’.
Chapter 37
The next morning, Carter left before seven to miss traffic. He’d only been home for a few hours. Normally he wouldn’t have bothered, he’d have been like Willis who often slept at her desk. He knew his partner Cabrina was feeling his absence though – the move to Barnet was proving to be a drain on them all. Cabrina spent her time working with her business partner Gemma, putting together their sports and fashion range. Now they had moved out to Barnet she also had a lot more travelling to do every day and she had to make sure she got home in time to pick up Archie from school. He wasn’t settling in too well. He was missing his nursery friends and being disruptive again, the teachers said. He was having tests for behavioural problems and special needs.
He found Willis as he was parking up and walking into Fletcher House. She had come out to get some sunlight and was jogging on the spot.
‘Did you get any sleep?’ asked Carter.
‘Yeah, an hour or two.’
Carter followed Willis back inside the building, which had no reception, just an entry pad that needed a code and then the choice of stairs or the lift.
Cathy Dwyer had agreed to see Willis and Carter in a meeting room at her apartment block at twelve. It was the standard long table, sparsely furnished kind of room with blue décor and a great view of the Thames. Carter and Willis had spent the morning preparing. Hector had compiled a report on the companies Dwyer owned or jointly owned with Perry.
Dwyer had power-dressed in a dark trouser suit and cream silk blouse. She wore a few simple items of jewellery, including an expensive watch. Only the dullness of her eyes gave her tiredness away, the rest was a mask of perfection and calm.
‘Can I order you something to drink?’ she asked.
‘No, we’re fine, thanks.’ Willis had already poured them out some water.
Dwyer sat down. ‘Firstly I need to apologise if I was a little startled by your arrival the other evening and therefore a little curt. I am not normally so, it’s just you caught me at the end of an exhausting evening trying to close a deal.’
‘It’s understandable, it must have been a shock,’ answered Carter, as he drew up a chair and sat opposite Dwyer and next to Willis, who had a small pile of documents on the table in front of her. ‘Did you manage to close your deal?’
‘I hope so, thank you.’
‘And this is the company that you run with Stephen Perry?’
‘I run it, mostly. Stephen and I have been working together for a few years.’
‘Almost since you started out in timeshare?’
‘Yes, that’s right. You’ve been doing your research. We’ve set up a few companies in that time, not all of them successful, but on the whole, we’ve done okay.’
‘You must have, your new venture is with some heavyweights in the business, isn’t it? The colleagues you were meeting two nights ago are big players?’
Dwyer didn’t answer as she sighed and drummed her long black nails on the table.
Carter continued, ‘It seems strange to us that you continue to be friends and business partners with Stephen Perry, in the light of what happened in the Douglas days. Is it because you still feel a special bond with the other disciples?’