Nine Elms (Kate Marshall #1)(79)

Tristan followed her over, and they caught up with the woman as she was about to go through the front gate of a large white house. Kate introduced herself and offered her business card.

“We’re trying to find out about a young girl who went missing. We think she passed through this road.” The woman looked suspiciously between them, trying to work out Kate and Tristan’s relationship. She was very pale with short, dyed black hair, and her huge eyes were rimmed with thick black mascara. “We’re not police,” Kate added. “We work privately, and we need help.”

The woman seemed to soften a little at this. “I clean six houses on this street. I’m here a lot.”

“Do you clean Thursdays? That’s the day she went missing,” said Kate. Tristan took out a photo of Kaisha Smith they’d printed off and showed it to her.

The woman tutted, “I saw about her on the news! You think she was abducted here?”

“It’s a theory we’re working on,” said Kate.

“I saw the news last night. Bloke in a black van—well, they think it was a bloke—killed that girl,” she said, shaking her head.

“Can you remember if you were working . . .” Kate pulled out her phone and scrolled through. “Friday, the seventeenth of September. That was the day Kaisha vanished.”

The woman thought a moment. “When was the August bank holiday?” she asked.

“That was the thirtieth of August,” said Tristan.

“Yes, I was working. It was the week before I was away.”

“Do you work until late?” asked Kate.

“Four, five o’clock,” she said.

“Can you remember if there was a van parked up here at the end of the cul-de-sac late afternoon on that day?” Tristan took out his mobile phone. “It could have been a van like this, from the Southwestern Electrical Company?”

The woman looked at the photo on the screen.

“Not that I remember. The house there has been up for sale for a few months. The old lady who owned it died in there, and they didn’t find her for a couple of weeks . . . Saying that . . . There was one of them security vans parked up here around that time. I remember noticing it there because it was one of those armored vans, you know the ones that pick up cash from banks.”

“Can you remember the date?” asked Kate.

The woman chewed it over, quite literally, moving her mouth, weighing it up. “I can’t be sure. It was around that time. All the days tend to blur into one after a while.”

“Can you remember if the van had a company name on it?”

“It wasn’t Securicor, cos those vans always make me laugh when they reverse and that posh woman’s voice asks you to get out the way . . . ONV or OMG . . . Something like that. It was written in gold letters . . . It began with an O.”

“OMG is often an abbreviation for Oh My God,” said Tristan.

The woman gave him a look, as if he were questioning her intelligence, and she carried on. “It had tinted windows, and I remember thinking, What the hell is that doing there? There’s been nothing going on there, what with the house being empty for so long. Apart from when the bin men reverse their lorry.”

“Did you see anyone inside? Did anyone get out?” asked Kate.

“No.”

“Have the police talked to you?”

At this point the woman narrowed her eyes. “The police? No. I don’t talk to the police unless I have to. They might have talked to the people who lived here, but I don’t know. Lots of them commute to Bristol or even London, with Exeter being close by. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go.”

After she’d gone, Kate and Tristan walked back through the alleyway. It was a stinking, dingy little passage with some litter and broken glass.

“There’s not a lot of dog shit,” said Tristan. “So not a route for dog walkers.”

“It seems like the kind of street where people don’t walk much,” agreed Kate. “What do you think about the van she saw?”

“She was too vague. She can’t remember the exact date or what was written on the side of it.”

“But it would be weird for one of those security vans to stop here. We’re a long way from a bank.”

They came back to where they’d parked the car.

“Where to next?” asked Tristan.

“Butterworth Avenue,” said Kate. “Where we think Layla Gerrard was abducted.”





47

The Fan woke in the darkness, the pain throbbing in his left eye. He scrabbled around next to his bed and pulled open the curtains. He was staying in his country house, tucked away near the North Wessex Downs. The light came flooding through the window, and he winced at the sudden brightness. He got up and went to the bathroom and stared at his reflection in the mirror.

The skin on his face and hands was stained a deep red. The color was more pronounced around his left eye, which was also bruised and swollen from where the bitch had kicked out at him. The gel had seeped through the balaclava and covered his face and the side of his neck.

He liked it when a girl fought back, but he hadn’t expected her to come so close to beating him. He didn’t know how much time had passed when he found himself standing over her lifeless body, her blood flooding out in a widening slick on the concrete.