The Winter Foundlings by Kate Rhodes Read Free Book Online Page A

arrived, promising myself never to drink brandy again.
    Burns arrived ten minutes late. I caught sight of him, pacing through the crowd. His wide shoulders strained the seams of his coat, but his clothes looked more expensive, and his thick brown hair was neater than before. He came to a halt by the arrivals board, checking his phone messages. When I tapped him on the shoulder he swung round to face me. I expected him to shake my hand but he leant down and kissed my cheek instead. His stubble left a graze as he pulled away. For an irrational moment I wanted to embrace him, but managed to stop myself, my face hot with embarrassment.
    ‘You didn’t have to collect me, Don.’
    ‘The incident room’s a nightmare. We can talk in the car.’
    I followed Burns through the crowd, and it was clear that his promotion had restored his confidence. Even the discovery of another child’s body on his patch hadn’t removed the spring from his stride. When we reached the car park he headed straight for a brand-new Audi.
    ‘Very swish.’
    He looked embarrassed. ‘The Mondeo finally bit the dust.’
    Despite the upmarket car, Burns still drove like he was piloting a tank through a field of landmines. His Scottish accent came to the fore as he spoke, a sure sign that he was under pressure.
    ‘Go on then,’ I said. ‘Give me an update.’
    He glanced across at me. ‘The press are on us, twenty-four/ seven. The Murder Squad made a pig’s ear of the double murder investigation for Kylie Walsh and Emma Lawrence. Some of the relatives weren’t even interviewed, so we’ve been going back, filling in the gaps. I’ve chucked all my manpower at it since I took over. Uniforms are combing every street in Camden looking for Ella, forty detectives on the case.’
    ‘Why isn’t Alan Nash here? I thought he was overseeing the profiling.’
    Burns grimaced. ‘He says he hasn’t got time for minutiae. Apparently he predicted this would happen in The Kill Principle. He won’t get involved until we start interviewing suspects.’
    ‘Hindsight’s a wonderful thing,’ I muttered. ‘When was Sarah Robinson’s PM?’
    ‘Yesterday. She died of pneumonia. Her feet and hands were so frostbitten she’d have lost fingers and toes if she’d survived. But this time, he didn’t keep her in a freezer. It looks like he dumped her soon after he killed her. She was starved and beaten, but there’s no sign she was raped.’
    ‘That’s a surprise.’
    ‘It’s the only good news so far. Whatever he did to her, she lasted nineteen days.’
    I gazed through the window at the snow heaped on the pavement, pedestrians swaddled in hats and scarves. If Ella Williams was being kept outside, she was unlikely to survive much longer.
    The traffic had stalled and Burns was staring at the hoardings, as though clues were hidden between the brand names and slogans.
    ‘The lab’s trying to work out where he’s keeping them,’ he said. ‘The pathologist found fragments of rust under her nails and in her hair.’
    ‘Meaning what?’
    A muscle ticked in his cheek. ‘She was probably kept in the back of an old lorry or a van.’
    I closed my eyes and tried to imagine Sarah’s last days. The vehicle could have been parked anywhere, while snow fell outside, the cold gradually weakening her screams. There were millions of houses in London with gardens big enough to conceal a van from prying eyes.
    ‘Tell me more about Ella. Does she live with her parents?’
    ‘Just her sister and granddad. Her dad cleared off to Spain the year after she was born, then her mum died of breast cancer two years ago.’
    I gazed at the council estates we were passing on Pancras Way. It sounded like the Williams family had already dealt with too much bad luck, and when Burns pulled up outside Alan Chalmers House, my sympathy deepened. The apartment building had seen better days. It was six storeys high, bricks weathered to a dull brown, right beside the arterial road. The residents