Cold Revenge (Willis/Carter #6)(81)

‘What does he want?’

‘He wants to trust, he says. But really he hopes to use me, to have me on his side. He’s collecting information about me so that he can find out where we are in the investigation and maybe what his next move should be to get what he wants. I am sure he sees these new murders as an opportunity to clear his name, or at least he feels confident that he will still be getting out. Something about all this is making him smile. He sees a way of shifting all the blame onto someone else. Whoever is committing these murders is walking straight into Douglas’s trap, except, when I showed him the list of farms next on our list to be looked at, he definitely studied them hard, long and hard. It changed his attitude. He wants us to find this killer now. He didn’t like it when I showed him the farms Chris and I have on the shortlist.’

‘Yeah, well, we’ll have to put it on hold. We have to stop searching farms, someone at the top is taking offence at us going after Douglas. What does he say about his disciples?’

‘He was dismissive of all of them.’

‘Douglas didn’t put chains on people’s wrists to then watch them walk away. What does he say about Heather?’

‘He is irritated one minute that he’s defined by the disappearance of a fifteen-year-old girl, but then he praises her the next, as if she eluded him.’

‘You feel you made progress?’

‘I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure Douglas will feel he did.’

‘Sandford has left a message,’ said Willis as she checked her phone. ‘He’s started excavating the last grave at Lambs Farm.’

‘Okay, good. But if it’s not her, we have to call it quits.’ Willis looked up at the sound of a familiar voice. Tina was talking to someone and it was Tucker.

Willis frowned at Carter.

‘It’s been a long time since I came in here,’ said Tucker. ‘I thought I’d see if the coffee in the café was as bad as I remember.’ He winked at Tina.

‘Cheeky bugger. Go and sit down, I’ll bring it over.’ Tucker walked across to the others.

‘Sorry,’ Carter leaned across the table and whispered. ‘I forgot to tell you Tucker was coming in. I was supposed to meet him upstairs an hour ago.’ Carter looked apologetically at Tucker. ‘Sorry, mate,’ he said, ‘I got caught up with the boss, had a bit of a roasting, Bowie fashion. I meant to call you.’

‘Bowie style? More of a light toasting then?’

‘I’ve been told to leave any more digging up the countryside for a later date,’ said Carter, as Tucker sat next to Willis, across from him. ‘I’ve been told to concentrate on what we have. Seems like people at the top don’t want this to become another Douglas witch hunt until we have absolute certainty of a conviction against him.’

Willis stirred two sugars into her tea. She’d only just started drinking the stuff but it was a step up from cola.

‘We can open up investigations into Tony Poulson and Simone Levin though, can’t we?’ said Willis. ‘Plus, the likelihood of there actually being many more bodies buried around the countryside is pretty high. We can’t just walk away.’

‘Not walking away, handing it over,’ said Carter. ‘Sorry, Eb, no more helicopters for a while. The bodies aren’t going anywhere, Bowie was right about that. They can stay where they are, and be preserved in the ground, until we get the go-ahead to start looking for them. We can’t be running around like headless chickens; we need to focus and find our killer.’

‘What about Douglas, Eb? How’s it going?’ asked Tucker.

‘It’s going okay. He seems to have access to outside information that he shouldn’t have, like my past history.’

‘Really? I suppose that was always on the cards. It’s out there, isn’t it?’ Tucker glanced across at her with a sympathetic shrug. ‘You can handle it.’

She nodded. ‘Yeah, I had to run with it.’ She paused. ‘Did you ever interview Yvonne Coombes in 2000?’

‘Yes. Yvonne said nothing. I mean, she looked like a rabbit in the headlights the whole time.’

‘We’ve had an account from her of the time Tony Poulson was murdered in the bungalow,’ said Carter. ‘She didn’t see it but she saw the body the next morning and she was made to take some of the responsibility for his death.’

‘She didn’t mention all this before.’

‘She was scared of reprisals, still is. Plus it looks like it’s taken her years of chewing over what happened that night to realise she was probably raped, assaulted, by the others in a violent drug-fuelled orgy. She’s been quiet about it all these years but she’s scared now, scared that someone’s coming for revenge on her and the others. We’re moving her to a safe house and she’s going to make a statement about Tony Poulson to us.’

Tucker raised an eyebrow. ‘Really? If I was her I’d stay quiet.’

Carter nodded and sighed. ‘I know, but we have to start somewhere and no one else is coming forward with any information we can use. I won’t allow her to be charged. We won’t have sufficient evidence. I’m not going to make her life worse. But we will move her to a safe place until this killer is caught.’

‘What about Stephen Perry or Cathy Dwyer back in 2001?’ Willis looked sideways at Tucker. ‘Gavin Heathcote? Also did you look into what happened to Ash?’