It was the run-down end of town, where most of the shop fronts were either boarded up or displayed posters for betting shops, and one or two of the street lamps were dead. There was a pub called the Joiners on the corner, and Abi looked longingly toward its dimpled windows, but the thought of standing in there just for the warmth was humiliating; the thought of hoping someone would buy her a drink, even more so. She hadn’t had the heart to tell David that she didn’t have the money to “amuse herself” for the evening and that his cozy date would be condemning her to a night of slightly cold boredom.
Abi walked on past the pub, pretending that she didn’t have an end destination in mind. She turned another corner, heading down an even seedier road, wondering already if anyone would be there. She could see the park at the end of the street, obscured by a chicken wire fence and an ugly steel gate. There were the swings and the rusting roundabout, the looming shadow of the slide, but she couldn’t make out any figures. Sometimes, she reminded herself, when it was cold, they would sit underneath the slide and pass out their goodies.
She was so intent on reaching the park, Abi almost missed the figure coming toward her, a tall stocky man also wearing a hood, his face in shadow. Despite the itch, she felt abruptly afraid, and she kept her head down, wishing she had been paying more attention, wishing that she had thought to cross the road. As he came closer, she caught a whiff of something rotten and feral, and for the briefest second she was sure he was going to shout at her, or grab her—he smelled mad, inhuman.
And then he was past her, and gone, his footfalls thumping rhythmically away down the street. Abi stopped by the mouth of an alley, watching him go. The stench was still with her, making her wrinkle her nose and cough, and she had just started to figure out that perhaps the smell hadn’t been coming from the hooded man at all when a dark shape stepped out of the alley and curled a strong arm around her neck.
CHAPTER17
WHYTEWITCH59, OR PAMELA Whittaker as she was likely known to her Whist buddies, lived in a council flat in Elephant and Castle. As she made her way up the stairwell, Heather checked her phone again, but there were still no missed calls from DI Parker. When she had phoned him that morning his line had gone to voicemail, and she had left a somewhat rambling message about the photo of Fiona Graham, before taking a snap of it on her phone and emailing it to him.
When she reached the second floor, she knocked at flat number 87 and the door opened to reveal a tall woman in her early seventies, much less rat-faced than her profile picture had suggested, although she peered at Heather with faintly anxious eyes. She was wearing a khaki-green knitted cardigan that came down to her knees, the sleeves of which were dotted with flecks of paint. Her hair, which was a solid gun-metal gray, was held away from her eyes with a pink plastic Alice band.
“Miss Evans?”
“Heather, please.” Heather smiled warmly and shifted the strap of her bag to sit more comfortably over her shoulder. “Are you still okay for a chat, Ms. Whittaker?”
Pamela Whittaker waved her in. The flat was cramped, the orange and brown wallpaper peeling away from the walls where it wasn’t covered in picture frames.
“Tea? Coffee?” Pamela Whittaker waved her toward a sofa. The living room was crowded with the usual stuff, chairs and cabinets and coffee tables, all supplemented with easels and rolls of paper, palettes crusted with browns and greens, mugs turned rainbow-like with daubs of paint. On an occasional table near the sofa Heather caught sight of a large framed photo, clearly given pride of place among the general chaos, showing a younger Pamela Whittaker with her arms around a short, curvy woman. Somewhere in among the mess a television screen held it all within its single black eye. “Squash? I have some cordial somewhere here …”
“Tea would be great, thank you.”
Pamela vanished through a narrow doorway, then reappeared almost instantly with two mugs of steaming tea—she must, Heather reasoned, have had the pot brewing already. Pamela seated herself on a chair opposite, sitting forward with her mug clutched between her hands.
“I saw your work online, Ms. Whittaker, and I thought it was great. Very compelling, atmospheric. I’m putting together a story about Fiddler’s Mill, and I thought it would be really interesting to get an artist’s point of view.”
A variety of emotions passed over Pamela’s face, and Heather watched closely, trying to match them up. Pleasure at the praise of her work. Uncertainty, maybe even fear, at the mention of Fiddler’s Mill. And pride at being called an artist. Pamela leaned forward, staring down into her tea.
“Yes well, thank you. I, well, I am entirely self-taught, you see. Parents couldn’t afford to send me to art college, so I did it on the side. It’s been, it’s been my life’s work. Capturing, capturing the true face of nature, you see. The rawness of it.”
Heather nodded seriously, as though she had any idea what she meant by this. She had interviewed a few people when she’d been working at the paper, and the key was heavily loading the front end with flattery—people always liked to talk about themselves. It was the subject they knew best, after all.
“That’s so interesting. You continue to work, I’m glad to see. Do you still largely work with the pastoral landscape?
