Cold Revenge (Willis/Carter #6)(8)

She went into the bathroom and ran the bath. She lay in the steamy water and dipped her head beneath, feeling the warm water tickle her scalp as it closed up over her ears and all other sound was muted. She thought of Ash, and a surge of adrenaline fluttered up into her throat and she almost giggled, then panicked as she lifted her head out of the water and listened to see if anyone heard. She wasn’t allowed to lock the door. Heather kept one eye on it as she ran her fingers across her breasts and touched her erect nipples. Her breasts were sore, the bra had left its imprint around her back. Her fingers slid down between her thighs.

She froze, listening to footsteps outside.

‘Get out of that bath, your mother needs you.’

She finished washing her hair and cleaning the bath and then wrapped a towel around herself and went to her room and stared out of her window, pressing her burning cheek against the glass. From there she could see the farm and the roof of the bungalow and she could look across to the right and see the top of the farrier’s house. She couldn’t quite see Ash’s van but she knew he was there. Heather started to cry silently; she felt such sadness deep inside, knowing her relationship with her parents would only get worse, and she had been thinking it through now for so long. She would leave a note when she ran away and it would tell of the way her father administered his punishments, the way he seemed to enjoy it and the way her mother hid her bruises. But would she ever actually get away?

Heather sensed a burning in her stomach and low down in her pelvis and it ached in her back. The feeling was so unfamiliar that she didn’t know what was happening to her body until she felt the warm tickle of blood running down her legs. She’d been told about this in school: it was her first period. Not knowing what else to do, she stuffed toilet paper into her knickers, dressed, and went downstairs to her mother in the kitchen.

‘I’m bleeding.’

Her mother nodded, walked over and gave her an awkward hug and then released her as her father appeared in the doorway.

‘Our girl’s become a woman,’ she said.

Her father looked at her with a look of despair, shook his head, and turned away.





Chapter 5


It was seven p.m. when Willis and Carter got to Millie Stephens’ address in Finsbury Park. It was the front basement flat of a large Victorian terrace. The road was synonymous with street workers, and even though the police had tried to limit the kerb-crawlers by introducing chicanes in the road to put them off, there were still men patrolling in their cars when Willis and Carter got there.

A female community support officer was standing by the black railings and the steps leading down to the entrance to Flat 1A. The house had been subdivided again and again over the years and now housed four one-bedroomed flats. Sandford, the crime scene manager, was inside.

‘Get suited up and you can come in,’ he said. ‘Step on the plates.’ Transparent stepping plates led from the front door onto cheap stained carpet that someone had made the mistake of buying in the colour fawn and now was multi-ringed with every colour but fawn. The hallway was dark, with no natural light; battery lights were placed around to aid the search. The place smelt of damp and festering rubbish, of neglect.

‘There’s no sign that she died here: no evidence of a struggle,’ Sandford said, as Carter and Willis entered the hallway. ‘The bedroom’s on the left, she used it for clients by the look of it.’ Sandford was in his early fifties now, quiet and methodical, with a soft spot for Willis and her love of all things forensic, but he had little time for Carter who was too brash and cheeky-chappy for his taste. His assistant Dermot, however, shared Carter’s love of football and all things flash.

Dermot stood by the bedroom doorway as Willis went in.

‘Be really careful where you kneel or what you touch,’ he said. ‘There are a lot of needles; she wasn’t the best at clearing up after herself or her friends.’

There were two wardrobes in alcoves, peeling wallpaper on the walls and a pink plastic chandelier hanging from a rose in the centre of the ceiling of lath and plaster, which had once been beautiful, but was now devoid of anything left of value, cornices all gone although with the addition of stains, leaked from the upstairs flat. Willis walked around to the other side of a double bed, where a full ashtray, a pipe and used strips of foil were on the bedside table. A used sex toy was on the unmade bed. She looked at the table and wondered what Millie had been thinking about before she went out to meet her killer? Who was Millie, beyond someone whose life had started out full of promise and ended up here, on the game in Finsbury Park? Willis squatted to look behind the bed and saw a photo about to slip down the back of the bedside table. It was of Millie and another woman sitting outside a pub, looking happy. So, she did have one friend, at least, thought Willis.

She left the bedroom, photo in hand, and came back into the sitting room, which was integrated with a small kitchenette made up of a microwave, two small hobs with one electric ring and a plastic concertina curtain to separate it from the sitting room.

‘The food in the fridge is all from two to three weeks ago,’ said Sandford. ‘There was a receipt for some milk and tobacco on the table over there, dated the eighteenth of September,’ he gestured towards the coffee table which was littered with full ashtrays and drug paraphernalia, ‘along with some older receipts. Dermot’s made a start on boxing up her paperwork, there’re a lot of unpaid bills, including rent demands. We’ve got no phone, but there is a charger for a Nokia.’