The Snow Killer

by Ross Greenwood

  Although, he still smiled at the memories. When he barged through the door with his shirt sleeves rolled up, all six feet four of him, brandishing his truncheon, with a face that said, ‘Who’s first?’, the colour drained from everyone except the drunkest fighters, and they were no bother. Nowadays, they taught you not to enter that way. If you go in with a weapon and anger, you raise the game. It’s a shame because Zander and he often reminisced about the crazy buzz.

  The upper management all remembered him from those days. His history was well known throughout the county and John now got the impression some of them would never see him as much more than a handy brute.

  ‘Morning, Boss,’ he said.

  DCI Naeem smiled at him. For years, she’d said to use her first name. For him, though, using her title was a sign of the respect he held for her. It was therefore always Boss, or ma’am if any higher ranks than her were about. He passed over the flask of coffee that he’d made before he left the house.

  ‘Creep.’ She grinned, but it had become one of the things she’d brought in. A freezing officer wishing he had a warm drink focused less on an investigation than an officer who’d just had one. Five minutes’ effort with the kettle on a case where a little bit of speed was immaterial became time well spent.

  She poured a large coffee into the lid, took a few sips, and passed it to him.

  ‘I take it you want to run the case for me?’

  ‘Of course,’ Barton replied immediately.

  ‘Your regular team can move their shifts around. DS Zander and DS Strange are a strong core and, with you, our best chance of a quick result. Pull any constables you like to get the legwork done. As usual, we should attempt to solve this fast. The bad news is the victim has no ID on him: no wallet, no cash cards, no money apart from a twenty-pound note, and no mobile phone. There’s no weapon in the immediate vicinity.

  ‘The dog-walking couple who found him compromised the crime scene. They attended a party and afterwards decided to take the pooch for a leak as they’d been out for so long. She’s a nurse and uncovered the snow from the victim’s face and body to help him. As you are about to see, assistance was futile. The heavy snow, which is melting, is also hampering our efforts on footprints. The CSIs are doing their best.’

  ‘Any positives?’

  ‘That John Barton’s on the job.’ She grinned at him. ‘And Mortis is here. You can question him yourself. I know you’ll want the minutiae. You’re in charge now. I’ll go back to the station and set up the incident room. We’ll get the local radio and news involved. I’ll allocate resources and let those who must be obeyed hear the gritty details. Someone will be missing a man in fairly good health.’

  ‘Do I need to suit up?’

  ‘They’re almost finished in the immediate area, but you better had. Follow that path to the body.’

  John smiled at her as she left. He would miss her gentle encouragement. She removed her forensic outfit, revealing a long blue coat, black suit and white shirt. All she’d ever worn since he’d known her. As he pulled a Tyvek suit on, he idly considered how many of each she’d been through over the years until her last comment registered. What did fairly good health mean?

  He strode over to the pathologist. Dr Simon Menteith was famous for his lack of humour over the previous forty years. An immensely bright Scotsman, he had no interest in making friends. His stare could unsettle even the most confident of types. No one knew if he had a family. When Barton first started as a policeman, an older sergeant told him that Menteith wished to be referred to as Mortis. Not Mr Mortis, just Mortis.

  In the early days of the job, your head spins with all the rules and procedures. You’re easy meat for practical jokers. Barton’s first words to him were, ‘Excuse me, Mortis, will you be finished soon?’

  People working with Mortis found him a distant type, and he always started his informal explanation on the stages of death, which sometimes seemed irrelevant: pallor mortis, algor mortis, rigor mortis, livor mortis, putrefaction, decomposition, skeletonisation, fossilisation. Hence the nickname stuck, but nobody actually said it to his face. No one dared.

  Still, he was no fool. Barton had backed away under his glare, but then Mortis looked beyond him at the sergeant and smiled. After ten long seconds, he said, ‘Not bad. You may call me that.’

  Tentatively at first, Barton had. Now they maintained a friendly, efficient relationship. Mortis held a keen interest in all aspects of pathology. He would come out at any hour to inspect a scene, even when there was no urgency. He’d also proved to have a dry wit when you got to really know him.

  ‘Evening, Mortis.’

  The grey-haired man turned around. He stepped to the side with a magician’s flourish and revealed the corpse.

  Barton managed only one word. ‘Jesus.’

  14

  DI Barton

  Mortis didn’t need prompting and brought him up to speed.

  ‘First, algor mortis, which is the second stage of death. It’s been a cold night but not freezing. Upon my arrival, the body had matched the ambient temperature.’

  Barton concentrated as he always had to when Mortis spoke. He knew the rectal thermometer would have been used and, based on the body’s loss of heat through conduction, Mortis would give him an estimated time of death.

  ‘Time of death guess on that is six hours. Tricky with this weather. A covering of snow insulates, but the cold could speed it up. Rigor mortis, though, is established, and therefore six hours will be in my report.’

  Barton listened, but struggled not to focus solely on the throat of the victim, or the lack of one. The man lay on his side a metre away from a caravan-sized metal container, which he assumed was used for storage. The splatter of blood over that would be a new decoration. The snow resembled red slush in patches, with large, darker stains near the body. Perhaps because of how lit up the scene was, it didn’t seem real.

  ‘And then we have the cause of death. Slight damage to the neck.’

  Mortis smiled at Barton, who grimaced. Mortis beckoned over one of the CSI team as he talked. ‘This is Sirena. Crime Scene Manager. Possible reasons could be a vampire, an escaped lion, or an ogre. You’ll note the small footprints in the snow. Sirena and I reckon they’re from a fox.’

  Barton shook his head. ‘It would have to be a bloody big one.’

  ‘Yes,’ Mortis continued. ‘Even urban foxes wouldn’t attack prey of this size. I’ve seen nothing like this in forty years. So, we can assume that this neck savagery happened post-mortem. However, the deceased also has a deep stab wound to the back. Trauma such as that to the spine would have incapacitated the victim. It could have caused death, but if you look here…’

  The jacket had been removed. Mortis crouched down and lifted the back of the man’s T-shirt. ‘There’s blood escape here from this small hole but not as much as you would expect if blood loss from the back wound ended life.’

  The woman, Sirena, removed her mask and took over. ‘It looks to me as if there were quite a few foxes here. We see this sort of thing around bins usually. Even so, I’m still surprised by foxes eating a dead human body. The weather may well have made them ravenous, but it’s hard to imagine one tearing a man’s throat out. There are bird prints here, too. Possibly a crow or something similar. Again, they eat anything dead but wouldn’t kill a human and would probably only go near one if it had been opened up.

  ‘My guess is that whatever was used to stab the back also damaged the throat. Numerous times, I would have thought. That would have caused the spray of blood, too. The victim would have bled out quickly if the carotid or jugular tore in any way. An open neck wound on a deceased person may have been irresistible to a large, hungry fox. If urban foxes forage here, they won’t be as scared of the smell. Don’t you live near here, John?’

  Barton raised an eyebrow at her. He wasn’t sure they’d met before. He supposed she could know about him. She was foreign with olive skin, Greek maybe, but it was tricky to place her ac
cent because her English flowed. She had massive eyes, either that or her glasses magnified them. And on reflection he assumed the latter. Barton remembered the CSI in charge of his first dead body. The man had offered him whisky within a minute of being introduced. He smiled at the memory and hoped this woman also excelled at her job.

  ‘Yes, I do. There are loads of foxes first thing in the morning. An unusual old woman a few houses down from me feeds them. I’ve seen four in the same street at once, so that makes sense. Occasionally, you hear them fighting. Mortis, will you be able to do the post-mortem by the end of today?’

  ‘Yes, I’ve nothing else that’s urgent. I’ll ring you as soon as it’s done. I have a friend who’s interested in blood splatters too, so I can send him a picture of that informally for a quick answer.’

  Barton turned to the CSM. ‘I don’t suppose any more clues have been found in the area? Wallet? Phone? Axe?’

  ‘No, not yet. With the weather last night, they may well be covered. I think this snow will be gone by midday, so we’ll see if anything has been discarded nearby.’

  ‘Okay, thanks.’ Sirena did a mock salute and left them.

  To Mortis, Barton asked, ‘The boss said fairly healthy. Why?’

  ‘The body has track marks up each arm, although only a few are recent. He’s painfully thin as well. Look at the face; death won’t have helped, but he would have been a gaunt individual. And we found a small bag of brown powder on him.’

  Barton knew brown powder was likely to be heroin. You could get white heroin, but it was expensive due to its purity. This guy didn’t seem like a connoisseur. Barton stooped down and took a photo on his phone of the individual’s head. He took a full-length image of him too. The clothes were certainly non-designer, but they weren’t dirty. The shoes, one of which had come off, had been polished recently. He looked about six feet tall with a well-groomed goatee.

  Barton’s instant explanation was an unpaid drug debt leading to punishment of the worst kind. The fox thing was weird though. As his boss had said, identification of the deceased would be the first step, but he couldn’t help feeling unsettled.

  15

  DI Barton

  Sirena, the CSM, was right: most of the snow melted by midday. Barton collared some constables to do another search of the area for anything incriminating, but they found nothing except an enormous pair of white knickers, which broke up the tedium. DS Zander admitted they might be his, but would wait for DNA confirmation before admitting his guilt.

  DS Kelly Strange came on duty at 8:00. She, Zander and a couple of DCs door-knocked the closest houses to no avail. The surrounding area was heavily populated, and they’d need a bigger team if they were to rely on that.

  The press turned up late-morning, luckily after the corpse had been removed. Barton analysed the scene now the body was gone and found it hard to imagine someone had died in this innocuous place.

  DCI Navneet Naeem had called for a meeting at 13:00, so Barton got a lift back in the pool car with Zander and Strange. The boss had given him the heads up that the Chief Super would be sitting in and having a word, and Barton’s hands perspired at the thought.

  Twenty people filled the incident room perfectly. Not only was the Chief Super present but so was the Chief Inspector of Operations. DCI Naeem had the floor. The initial break they hoped for had just happened.

  ‘A woman living in the area called in to say her partner went out and didn’t return last night. DI Barton, I would like you and DS Strange to attend immediately and report back. She’s waiting at home for you. Night shift, you are released. Get plenty of rest, we’ll need you later. The partner hasn’t seen the local news yet about a body being found, so give her the description and, if she’s up to it, take her to identify him. Call me straight after your initial interview.’

  Barton nodded. ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  She continued. ‘Five constables, you know who you are, are ready for the spade work. Murders occur infrequently here, especially in these circumstances. Speed is of the essence. Someone out there will be very nervous. And very guilty. Let’s get to them before they disappear or concoct convincing stories. DI Barton, uniform are prepared to knock down doors if the drugs angle is realised. Chief Superintendent Jones would like a few words. Sir!’

  A short, trim man in an immaculate uniform and shoes strode to the front.

  ‘Thank you, Nav. Fortuitous that my colleague and I are here today. We may need the press to assist in this one, but let’s keep them at arm’s length for the moment until we get the result of the post-mortem and DI Barton’s meeting. There’s nothing that scares the public, or sells papers, more than a brutal homicide. I’ll be interested to see your handling of the case, DI Barton. Please be about your work.’

  He gave Barton an enquiring look and returned to the back of the room.

  ‘Will all necessary resources be made available, sir?’ DCI Naeem asked with a wry grin as she stood once more.

  He smiled back at her and nodded. ‘I am here to provide what’s necessary. Get to it, team. I’m confident of a speedy result on this one.’

  Barton and DS Kelly Strange got into the same car. He watched her manoeuvre smoothly out of the tight underground car park. She was a thin, blonde woman who had already put a few backs up. She arrived three months ago, having been recently promoted and transferred from the Metropolitan Police. Not that she’d given it the billy big balls about working in the capital, but he recognised a cool customer when he met one.

  She had a slightly amused air, but also kept a hint of melancholy behind her smile. When Barton asked her why she transferred, all she said was that there were family reasons. No one else knew much more about her apart from the fact she lived alone.

  Barton didn’t care. She’d proven reliable and conscientious, which beat some of the others in the meeting earlier. When he thought of the dead wood in the department, a lot of them were the time-served coppers nearing the end of their careers. There was banter about the snowflake generation, but he’d found most of the youngsters keen and professional. Ginger joked that when he started, they didn’t wear underwear never mind stab vests, and that he spent his days off cleaning the station windows.

  In fact, someone had caught the man Strange replaced using the Police National Computer (PNC) for personal use, namely checking out his previous girlfriend’s new partner. He’d also been reported for showing his Police ID to gain entry to football matches and concerts. It was sad. The guy had been in the job over two decades and said he did it because of anger over pension changes.

  Barton had overheard a young recruit in the locker room comment that Strange had a cracking arse. That sort of thing used to be widespread. His old Detective Super would request a ‘scribe’ to take notes for him at meetings and deliberately pick the hottest WPC. Barton had poked his head around the corner and given the lad a stern look.

  ‘Do you admire everyone’s arses?’

  ‘No, sir?’

  ‘Do you like mine?’

  ‘Sorry, sir.’

  ‘Would it be okay if I judged you by your posterior?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Would you want to be suspended over making those observations?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Excellent. Carry on.’

  Some reminisced about the wonderful old days, but Barton had worked with alcoholics and misogynists who wouldn’t last five minutes nowadays. Physical arguments occurred back then. He couldn’t remember seeing a fist fight in the office for years. The only issue that he detected was tension between Zander and Strange. They performed well together, but he felt as if he was intruding at times, or as if he’d just missed them arguing at others. Maybe they were shagging. He shrugged. It would probably do them both good.

  16

  The Snow Killer

  It’s midday before I wake. I recall the morning after all those years ago; a fire raged inside me then, too. The memories of last night are fresh, even the smell lingers in my
nostrils. The bright new images stir something in my soul.

  After pulling my creaking legs out of bed, I stare in the full length wardrobe mirror. A nondescript person leans forward and examines himself. I don’t look like a devil, but I’m certainly hellbound. At least I’ll know people when I arrive. My knees groan as I step down the stairs. The lights are off. Flicking the switch, I’m a little surprised not to find bloody footprints on the carpet.

  I can’t quite recall the immediate aftermath. It’s as though my brain short-circuited as the blood sprayed. It still worked though, because I parked my wellington boots at the door, showing I took my time. After my first kill, I scoured the news, but that can wait. In the past, my body trembled with the fear of getting caught. This morning, I know that they’ll capture me at some point. I will tell my story.

  The sunshine through the windows warms my skin. The only snow I see is a pocket of white next to the far fence. That’s good. The evidence is melting before their eyes. I’m not ready to be caught just yet. Let’s find out if the police have improved, although I doubt they’ll solve it without any help.

  I pick my favourite mug out of the cupboard as the first tendrils of guilt embrace me. The smash of the porcelain on the floor doesn’t widen my eyes. It’s the whisper of murderer at the back of my mind. The burning embers inside are instantly doused. It’s worse this time as I know nothing about my victim. He could be a father and husband: a decent man.

  I carefully take down a glass next and swallow the day’s pills in steady succession. Everything is becoming hazy. I clench a feeble fist and place it to my mouth. Why have I killed again? The reason seemed clear before, but not now. Then, I remember, I’m dying. Yesterday, I felt fine, but suddenly I feel a thousand years old. I can’t recall what day it is. Perhaps this is the end. It’s swifter than I imagined but no tragedy.