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“I’m happy to answer your questions,” he says. “Any time. But if anyone knows anything about what happened at that house, it’s her. If there was anyone else involved, she’d have known. The daughter. Speak to Romilly Cole.”
* * *
Adam drives without thinking. She’d told him about her father almost as soon as they had met. She’d wanted to be honest, she said. If you can’t deal, that’s fine, but I need you to know. And he’d nodded and let her talk.
About growing up with him in that house, how she’d felt when his brutal crimes had come to life. She told him to read the newspaper coverage, the reports at the time detailing what he’d done, then come back to her if he had any questions. But he’d done more than that. Adam found the original case files, read what DS Shepherd and DCI Langston had found. Transcripts from the trial. Subsequent confessions on tape. After the verdict, Cole admitted his crimes, detailing them, carefully, over weeks in an interview room. Everything seemed in order. Except for one thing. How could she not have known?
He gets to her house, rings the bell; he hears footsteps. Romilly opens the door. She’s wearing a blue denim shirt, open at the neck, a low white vest underneath. Her hair is wavy and loose around her shoulders. For a moment, she smiles, and he is frozen. He doesn’t want to destroy this beautiful image in front of him. But she senses something is wrong, and her expression changes.
“Adam, what is it?” She ushers him into the house, offering him tea, coffee, but he declines them all and tells her to sit down. She lowers herself slowly into her kitchen chair, her eyes locked on him.
He sits opposite her.
“Romilly, I need you to be honest with me.” She stares and her forehead creases into a frown. “Did you know?”
Silence engulfs the room. Adam can hear her breathing, steady, in and out.
“Please,” he says. And silently, he thinks, Please. Just tell me.
“Why are you bringing this up now?” she asks slowly.
“I saw your father this morning.”
He sees her blink, then swallow hard. “And?”
“He says there are more victims.”
“And you believe him?”
“Listen, Romilly. I went there, to your house. Yesterday. I never realized it before, but your bedroom overlooked the garden. How didn’t you notice him out there? He must have carried the women in almost directly below you.” He reaches out to take her hand, but she pulls away. “Please, Romilly. For them. For those women.”
She shakes her head. “Don’t you think I don’t know that? That I don’t think about those women every day. No, Adam. As I told the police at the time, I saw nothing. I knew nothing.” Her face flushes. She starts to cry, tears rolling down her cheeks. “You know this, Adam. You, of all people. I’ve told you everything I know.”
He stares at her. He believes her, he has to. The alternative is unthinkable.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I shouldn’t have asked. But this case, that man. It’s making me crazy. It’s nothing, forget it.” He glances up at the clock. It’s nine PM. Late. “Is … is your boyfriend around?”
“No, he’s gone to stay with a friend for a few days.”
“Now?” Adam asks, disbelieving that the guy would leave his girlfriend alone when things were like this.
“Yes. We …” She sighs. “We had a fight. He needs some space.”
“What did you fight about?”
She laughs, short and sharp. “You, Adam. It’s always about you.”
“Me?”
She smiles and shakes her head sadly. “He can’t understand why I don’t leave this case alone. Why I can’t leave you alone.” She pauses, bites her lip. “He says I’m still in love with you.”
Adam swallows. He clears his throat. “And are you?”
“Do you even need to ask?”
She looks at him. Her eyes meet his, dark hazel brown, almost desperate. She’s looking for a response from him, something, and he wants to. So, so much. But—
“I have to go, Milly.” He stands up quickly; he hears her make a noise. Soft—a mixture of regret and frustration.
