As Jasper had said, the only thing they could do was make it clear to the gate-crasher that Millie Vander wouldn’t be the easy mark she thought. And that blackmailers could themselves become very vulnerable to retaliation.

So now, as they approached the Raven’s Rest, they were both roiling with a dangerous mixture of fear and rage.

‘Remember, we’ve got to put the fear of the devil into her,’ Juliet hissed to Jasper as they approached the front door of the respectable former Victorian villa.

‘Don’t you worry,’ Jasper snarled. ‘I’ll be happy to actually throttle the cow!’

Chapter 27

As the twins enquired about their mother’s ‘friend’ and described her to the landlady (apparently having foolishly forgotten her surname,) Geoffrey Thorpe was also on a mission.

He arrived at the police impound yard with an expression of outward calm, but feeling truly sick inside.

The yard, where the police regularly housed stolen and recovered cars and motorbikes, or where lorries and other vehicles had, for various reasons, been taken out of the hands of their owners and searched, was practically deserted.

This didn’t surprise Geoffrey. In fact, he was counting on it. What with most roads still being all but impassable, the impound yard was hardly doing a roaring business. No lorries carrying contraband cigarettes or alcohol were likely to be out and about on their nefarious business these days, when the chances were very high they might get stuck in a snowdrift.

He approached the main wooden double gate, which was firmly closed but thankfully not padlocked, and with a little difficulty managed to get it open far enough to be able to slip through. Even this simple act was hard, given the weight of the snow lying across the entrance, impeding the movement of the doors.

Inside, he could see the impound yard was protected on all sides by ten-feet-high chain-link fencing, and that a small portable cabin, which had probably once been used by the military in the last war, had been bought in and put to use as an ‘office’.

Set in one back corner, the flat felt-top roof was looking a little precarious under its layer of thick snow, and the wooden steps leading up to the front door looked as if they might have begun to sag long before the bad weather had hit.

He glanced at it quickly, but could see no movement behind the two square windows that sat either side of the central door.

A quick look around revealed that the yard was only half-full. A Foden lorry stood closest to him, its massive tyres sunk in accumulated snow, and he walked quickly towards it before slipping behind it out of sight. His heart racing, he glanced around, seeking out the Riley that he knew Terry had been driving the night he was killed.