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.

17

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 gunmetal grey, 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 towards 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 amid 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.