Cold Revenge (Willis/Carter #6)(84)

‘Nonsense, it’s just that I put him in his place!’ Willis said, embarrassed, and picked up some documents to read.

‘Yeah, right. It’s okay to admit you’re fond of him, you know?’ Tucker laughed.

Willis looked at Carter. ‘I’m okay. I have a ton of work to get through; thanks for the invite though.’

‘And I do too,’ said Chris. ‘Especially now I have to change my approach to this, but thanks for the offer. Nice to have met you, Tucker.’

‘And you, I’m sure we’ll meet again.’ Tucker shook his hand extra hard. ‘That’s if you don’t mind me hanging about?’

Chris winced from the handshake. ‘Not at all.’

After Carter and Tucker left for dinner Willis went back up to tidy her desk and finish writing up her report. She was restless now. Chris hadn’t done much for the last forty minutes. Willis had seen him standing despondently staring at his maps.

‘Hey, Chris, what if I give you a lift home? I need to get out of here for half an hour.’

‘Thank you. I would like that; I’m having a hard job concentrating.’

They drove to King’s Cross and sat outside his building.

‘See you tomorrow then,’ Maxwell said, unclipping his belt. ‘I would invite you up but it’s a bit of a mess.’

‘Don’t worry, I need to get back. But, Chris, I don’t want you to give up hope with this Douglas inquiry. When the time comes, we’ll have done such a lot of groundwork – we’ll be ready to fly with it.’

He nodded, but he looked crushed as she watched him walk away.

Willis was back at her desk when she got a call from Blackman.

‘Zoe, what is it?’

‘Yvonne Coombes? I went around there to pick her up and she’s gone. Her, the baby, both gone.’

Chris Maxwell didn’t stay long in his flat after Willis dropped him, as he was restless and needed to think things over. There were things he had hoped to do that weren’t going to happen now and he had to get his head around what to do about it. But, at one in the morning, he headed back to his flat. It was in what was loosely termed luxury student accommodation. Slightly better than a small noisy room, he had a bigger less noisy room and a passable bathroom. There was an entry phone to get inside the building, free Wi-Fi and a small café bar in the basement. He liked it because people came and went all the time. Every week there were different faces in the hallway, mainly foreigners, coming to the UK for a week or two. Chris had been living there for a month now. He could afford the rent, just about. He only had himself to pay for now, he just had to get himself sorted, tie up the loose ends in his life.

He opened his flat door and slipped quickly inside and took his jacket off. He was sore and aching. He took out some codeine from a packet he had on the bar and swallowed two with a gulp of wine. He switched on his laptop and waited for it to charge up before he signed into Skype and called the number he wanted. He sat, glass in hand, and waited. On the third ring a woman’s voice answered and then her face came into view. She was a woman in her eighties.

‘Hello, Chris, how are you? We’ve been worried.’

‘No need to worry, Gran. I’m fine, just getting on with work.’

‘That’s good.’ She was staring at him intently. ‘I’m glad you’re okay. You look thin. Is that a bandage on your arm?’

‘No, it isn’t, don’t worry about me. How’s Mum doing?’

‘I told her you would call tonight and she wants to talk to you.’

‘Mum?’ Chris smiled into the webcam and he saw his mother’s face appear. She tried to speak but she started crying.

‘Don’t cry, Mum, please. I have things to do here but I’ll be back soon.’

His gran’s face came into view. ‘Don’t worry, Chris, you do what you have to do. It’s been a long time on your mind. I can cope here for another couple of months.’

‘Thank you, Gran.’

His mother irritably pushed his gran aside. ‘My son,’ she said accusingly. ‘My beautiful Ash, come back to me.’





Chapter 41


Carter and Willis had been waiting at their desks all night for news of Yvonne but there was none. Now the phone company had called to say her mobile had been traced and had travelled in the back of a bin lorry on the weekly clean-up. It had now been crushed, along with anyone who might have been in there. Blackman had gone down to take a statement from the refuse collectors and the tip had been notified that everything must halt until they found out if Yvonne had been with her phone inside the lorry.

Hector had spent the night gathering and looking at what CCTV footage he could get hold of at that hour, and he now showed it to Willis and Carter at Willis’s desk. Maxwell wasn’t in yet.

‘Here she is in her parka coat, crossing over Seven Sisters Road on her way into the underground station at Finsbury Park. She has her hood up but from your earlier identification of her, the shoes are the same, as is the bag she’s carrying.’

‘Where has she left Bonny?’

‘We don’t have the CCTV from outside her flat yet. We pick her up here first. She could have left her anywhere on these few roads.’

‘She loves that child more than anything. She left her with a neighbour when she went for her cleaning job, so we should check that again,’ said Willis. ‘I don’t understand why she ran? She must have been so scared. She must have thought that was a safer option than being put into one of our safe houses. We need to get hold of her phone record if we don’t find her in the next few hours.’