Page 73 of The Devil's Torment

“Good. That’s good. I’m going to get up now and come around to your side of the table and pull out your chair for you. Stay seated for me, but don’t look at him. Maybe take out your phone and look at that instead.”

“Okay.” She does as I instruct, and once her attention is on her phone, I toss some cash on the table and rise to my feet. As I circle around the back of Victoria’s chair, I flick up my gaze. Thanks to her detailed explanation, I locate him immediately. Luckily for me, he’s fixated on his phone, too. I immediately recognize the similarities to the artist drawing, but I agree with Victoria. It’s hard to tell for sure. The best thing to do is to follow him, see where he goes, then decide on a course of action.

“Let’s go.” I touch Victoria’s shoulder, taking her hand as she rises.

Barron opens the door for us, and we walk outside just as Sol pulls up in the car. I press my palm to Victoria’s back as she climbs in, then get in beside her.

“What’s the skinny?” Barron asks as he slams the passenger door closed.

“We could have a match on the drawing,” I say, knowing I won’t need to add any more details for Barron to catch on. “Sol, back up, will you? But make sure I can still see the café.”

“No parking on this street, Mr. DV. We might draw attention from a traffic warden.”

“Noted. I’ll deal if we do.”

“Do you really think it was him?” Victoria asks, a little color flooding back into her cheeks.

“I’m not sure. Like with all artists impressions, it’s difficult to make a direct match. Plus, we don’t know how reliable the witness was, especially given the time he was away. The human memory is pretty fallible.”

“But the nose and the jaw, they looked right.”

I nod. “I agree.”

“What are we going to do?”

“Wait for him to come out, then follow him. If we can’t go by car, we’ll go on foot. I want to see where he ends up.”

Now I have a lead, however tenuous, I’m not about to let it go. It could amount to nothing, but we won’t know unless we follow through.

Another fifteen minutes pass before the man in question emerges from the café. He looks left and right, then jogs across the road, setting off at a brisk pace. Fortunately, he doesn’t duck down any side streets. We follow at a crawl, with Sol doing an excellent job at keeping us far enough away to not draw attention, but close enough to ensure we don’t lose the guy.

“He’s heading for the Q-park,” Barron says, referring to a multi-story car park on the outskirts of town. Sure enough, two minutes later, he ducks through a doorway and into the car park.

“Wait here.” Barron’s out of the car a second later. He disappears through the same door. Two minutes later, my phone rings.

“He’s driving a dark blue Aston Martin, registration JLE 626. He’s heading out the main entrance. I’m thirty seconds away.”

JLE 626. A private number plate, and an Aston, too. Whoever this guy is, he’s wealthy, which means if this is the driver who picked up Elizabeth, what the hell was he doing driving a cab? None of this makes sense.

Barron jumps back in the passenger seat and shortly afterward, the blue Aston appears. The guy turns right out of the car park, and Sol follows, making sure to stay a couple of cars behind him.

We head northwest out of Windsor, passing Slough and Maidenhead before traffic thins out.

“Pull back, Sol,” I say. “I have his number plate. If we lose him, I can easily get his address.”

“Sure thing, Mr. DV.”

Up ahead, the Aston turns into Cookham Village, a classic British hamlet with quaint streets and one-of-a-kind antique shops. At the northernmost point of the high street, the Aston pulls off the road and through a set of gates.

“Drive past, then turn around,” I instruct Sol.

He swings into a side road and reverses course, edging slowly past the place where the Aston turned in. Behind the gates is a two story, L-shaped, brick house. The driveway is graveled with red brick edges, and the Aston is parked in front of a double garage. Christian’s the property expert, but I’d put this place in the ballpark of £3-4 million, meaning the guy isn’t my kind of rich, but he isn’t poor, either.

Therefore, he has no need to moonlight as a taxi driver.

What the fuck is going on here? The signs all point to him having nothing to do with Elizabeth’s death, but I can’t leave here without at least talking to him and trying to get a bead on his whereabouts on the day of the murder.

“Sol, pull over. Barron, you’re with me.”

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