Dead of Winter Tr

by Lee Weeks

  Carmichael pushed his hair back from his tired eyes. ‘He will survive or not.’ He picked Rusty up and lay him in his basket. He was just about alive. ‘There’s nothing more we can do: I don’t have any antibiotics to give him. I need to go out. Leave him here and go to bed. Upstairs, first door on the right. Bathroom’s the second one. It’s primitive but it’s clean.’ Carmichael was rubbing soot into his face. He smelt like he’d rolled in a dead animal and then slept on a dung heap. Ebony heard him linger in the tack room. Then he was gone.

  In the lounge the fire was dying down. Ebony put another few logs on it and covered Rusty with a clean towel. He didn’t stir.

  She went across to the dresser and picked up the photo of Louise and Sophie and wondered how many times Carmichael had held this photo in the lonely evenings he spent there on his own. Apart from the shelves with their few books, his writing desk was the only other personal addition to the room: neat, plain and functional, like the rest of the house. Sitting on the top of it was an old silver tankard used as a penholder and, the most incongruous thing in the room, his laptop, the newest and the best piece of kit. She went to open it and then stopped herself. Whatever she found on there it would have been left there on purpose, just for her to find. Then he would lose his trust for her. Already she understood that much about him. She looked around: the desk had one long thin drawer under its top. Ebony gave it a little rattle to see if it would open. But it was locked. After a last check on Rusty Ebony opened the door to the upstairs. At the top of the landing there was the guest room on her right and then the bathroom. The bathroom was warm because it was above the Aga in the kitchen. Ebony brushed her teeth and opened cupboards. What little there was, was laid out in military order: toothbrush, paste, floss, antiseptic cream. Every surface was wiped and spotless on the old shelves that looked like they had been put up by someone a hundred years before. Carmichael had never put his stamp on the house: he was just a visitor. When Ebony emerged from the bathroom she opened the door opposite it, across the landing. The room smelt of saddle soap and liniment and a whiff of sheep. The bed was made with military creases. In the corner there was a cloth wardrobe that looked like it had been a temporary measure but never replaced. Now it was on its last legs. He hadn’t spent money on any of it, thought Ebony. If Carmichael had inherited all his wife’s large fortune then he hadn’t spent it on himself. Inside the wardrobe was a shelf stacked with small piles of perfectly folded T-shirts and sweaters. On the top of the wardrobe was a rifle bag.

  She closed the door quietly and went back to the guest bedroom at the top of the stairs. Inside the room it looked like Carmichael had gathered anything feminine from all over the house and put it in there. There were old flowered curtains and peeling rose wallpaper. There was an old fifties dressing table, white, with a cracked, mottled mirror and a matching freestanding wardrobe that must have been someone’s idea of chic at one time. She turned the small brass handle on the wardrobe door and cringed as it squeaked on its hinges. She paused, no sound from anywhere in the house. She was pretty sure Carmichael would hear her if he was back inside. Inside the wardrobe were a few padded hangers hanging empty from the brass rail and on the floor were boxes covered by a tartan blanket. Ebony peeled the blanket aside and carefully prized open one of the two boxes. Inside it was packed neatly with mementos, knick-knacks. She lifted out a photo album that was resting on the top and turned the pages of Carmichael’s former life. It started with Christmas and Sophie standing by a snowman. It was spring by the end of the album. Sophie was running towards the camera; Louise was running after her laughing. The next one, Louise must have taken. It was a strange sight to look at Carmichael laughing in the photo. In the spring photos Louise and Sophie were wearing the same clothes as in the photo downstairs. Must have been his last recorded happy day with them. It must have been some of the last photos they ever took as a family. After she’d made up the bed from a neatly folded pile of bedding left on top of it, she phoned Carter.

  ‘Don’t seem to be any motels round here, Sarge.’

  ‘Yeah . . . knew you’d be alright, Ebb. What is he like then? What do you think of him?’

  ‘You’d like him: he’s straight out of a Call of Duty game.’

  ‘Is he going to be useful to us?’

  She paused; her eyes settled on the photo of Louise and Sophie.

  ‘Useful probably isn’t the right way to put it. He’s living in limbo. His whole past is locked away in boxes. He lives very frugally, as if he’s about to move on any minute. He’s a man in no-man’s land.’

  ‘So he couldn’t add anything to his original statement?’

  ‘He didn’t exactly refuse. He started to tell me what happened when he went into Rose cottage and found them but then his dog got savaged and he’s gone out to try and kill the thing that did it.’

  ‘Shit . . . told you, Ebb, it’s dog-eat-dog out there in the country. Do you think he knows stuff we don’t?’

  ‘I don’t know. He lives like a hermit. He doesn’t have anything in his sitting room except some books on faraway places and sheep-farming. His laptop is his only expensive piece of kit. But it’s the best: the newest on the market. He has no telly, no entertainment except that. All he has is his photo of his wife and child and the internet.’

  ‘We need to know everything he does. I need you to get him on our side, Ebb. You can bet your life when you leave him tomorrow he is going to be working on this twenty-four seven. I need you to gain his trust. Whatever he finds out we want to know.’

  ‘I’m not sure I was the best person to come up here. Why did you think he would trust me? ’

  ‘Because he doesn’t trust easily and neither do you; and both of you have good reason.’

  When Ebony came off the phone to Carter her mobile rang. She looked at the number on the screen and closed her eyes, took a breath.

  ‘Hello, Mum.’

  ‘You didn’t come. I waited for two hours, just sat there, waiting . . .’

  ‘I told you I wouldn’t be able to come for a couple of weeks, Mum. I’m sorry. We have a lot going on at work. Did you get the parcel? Did you have a good birthday?’

  ‘No . . . they wouldn’t give it to me. They accused me of stuff again. I didn’t do it.’ Her voice rose an octave or two as she went into child mode. ‘How can I have a good birthday? My life isn’t worth living. I’d rather be dead. No one loves me. No one cares.’

  Ebony squeezed her eyes shut and her fingers dug into the side of her face without her realizing.

  ‘Don’t worry, Mum. I’ll find out what happened to it. Don’t worry about anything. I’ll sort it and I’ll come and see you as soon as I get another visiting order. I love you, Mum.’ The phone went dead.

  Chapter 14

  Carmichael climbed over the five-bar gate that led into the top field. He jumped silently down the other side, crouched and waited, watching for movement. The last shower of snow lay untouched on the ground. It gave off a light all of its own. Like walking on the surface of a full moon. He was glad to leave the house. He could only think alone. Ebony’s presence in the house disturbed him. Working together to patch up Rusty had felt too close, too intimate for Carmichael. Out of nowhere Ebony had entered his world, bringing with her the past. She smelt of the police station. She had the look that he remembered. She had the hunger to make a difference that he’d felt once.

  He kept to the shelter of the hedge as he made his way up the side of the field. The tracks were clear in the snow; two foxes had come this way. He crouched low and looked towards where they had stopped to assess the situation. And there Carmichael turned and looked back down to his farm. Ebony’s red hire car was a new addition to the familiar scene. He saw the outline of the pheasant hanging there. He knew the foxes would have seen the same. They would have waited and considered their strategy there but not stopped for long – fresh tracks were leading away from the hedge and across the field; here they separated. They had left the pheasant hanging in
pursuit of richer pickings. Carmichael kept on his route around the edge of the field, keeping his profile low. He moved cautiously, with a measured pace. He came to the top corner of the field and looked across. Now, beneath him, he saw the dog fox’s silhouette; its moon shadow in the snow.

  He stood still and watched as the fox began to move and loop around and down the opposite side of the field, making its way back down to its lair. Carmichael stayed very still. He would position himself and wait until it came back into his line of fire. He knew the fox wouldn’t be able to smell him. He was camouflaged with its own scent, excrement from an old den. But the fox would hear him. He had to be ready for one perfect shot. He lifted the rifle to his shoulder. He looked through his night scope and saw the animal’s sinewy shoulders moving athletically, stealthily as it walked sure-footed across the snow and down. Then it stopped. It turned his way. Its eyes flashed in the dark at the same time as the bullet flashed through the air.

  Chapter 15

  Harding took the foetus from its drawer in the mortuary, held it in her hands and placed it in the scales. Three pounds two ounces. Fi was a good weight at thirty-six weeks; the last couple of weeks would have seen her put on a few more pounds. Things didn’t usually affect Harding; she hadn’t a maternal bone in her body, but the waste of life before it had ever had a chance was symbolically terrible somehow. No one ever intended this baby to take its first breath. Jo Harding turned from studying the X-rays and watched Mathew the diener as he delicately laid out the tools for the next autopsy. She loved his hands: they were expert, long-fingered, big but subtle in their touch.

  He looked across at her. ‘I had a call to say that some of the forensic results for Fi are back, Doctor Harding. They’ve been emailed to you.’ Mathew didn’t mind working late. He was softly spoken, soft-mannered. Mathew had had many women in his life. They trusted him. He was their friend and he was quietly confident and knew when to wait and when to listen. Someone like Harding made a welcome change for him. He knew if they continued working late into the night they would have many more nights together. Harding had more energy and enthusiasm than any woman Mathew had ever slept with. She was physical with him. She was angry inside. He would learn a lot from her. He knew he had to enjoy it while it lasted. When she tired of him there would be a new posting for him and a new diener for her.

  She walked back to her desk and checked her emails. She printed the results and snatched them up in one hand, car keys in the other. She turned to Mathew:

  ‘You don’t have to stay.’

  ‘That’s okay. I’ll hang around.’

  ‘Please yourself.’

  Harding went out to the consultants’ car park and pressed the key fob on her red Audi TT. She drove the short distance over to Fletcher House to take the news to Davidson.

  As Carter passed Harding on her way out of Davidson’s office she had a smile on her face that was a mixture of smug and satisfied. He wondered whether he’d find Davidson with his pants round his ankles or hanging from the ceiling . . . he wondered which scenario would do it for Harding. Carter definitely did nothing for her. She either liked boys wet behind the ears and half her age like Mathew her diener or she liked men with power and position: men with a lot to lose, like Davidson. Carter was grateful he was neither. He had enough troubles in his private life. He’d been faithful to Cabrina . . . not an easy thing for him. The thought of moving on, starting again, wasn’t easy either.

  He knocked and Davidson called for him to come in. Davidson looked fired up. He was almost smiling. He motioned for them to take a seat and then he handed Carter a file across the desk. Clipped to the front page was a mug shot of a man with designer stubble over a less than handsome face.

  ‘This is the father of our dead baby . . . His name is Sonny Ferguson. Father was an old East End villain, name of Dexter.’

  ‘Yeah . . . I recognize him. His dad was still around up until a few years ago.’

  ‘Yes. Dexter ruled Soho for twenty years. When Dexter got killed Sonny took over but he isn’t the man his father was, thank God. He hasn’t the brains. Bit by bit he’s lost Dexter’s hold on the drug empire. Now he concentrates on people-trafficking.’

  Davidson waited a few minutes for Carter to finish reading the front page of the file then he pushed another photo across to him. It was a shot of Sonny talking to a slighter, older man outside a club.

  ‘His DNA is on file because he was accused of raping a seventeen-year-old at the beginning of his career. It went to trial but the girl dropped the charges at the last minute. This photo was taken in the last year. It was a surveillance operation by MIT 10 into the use of trafficked women in clip joints in Soho. This is outside Digger Cain’s club on Brewer Street. Digger has a warren of clip joints going in Soho. As soon as we shut one down another three spring up. He was caught on camera then. The Crown Prosecution Service decided there was insufficient evidence to bring a conviction. Digger tidied up his act, on the surface. We know Sonny was providing Digger with trafficked girls as escorts and we believe he still is. Word is Sonny and Digger together provide the UK clip joints with their girls from the Eastern bloc.’

  ‘It would fit for Silvia if she was trafficked, raped,’ said Carter. ‘But Sonny’s twenty-eight; he’s too young to have been around when the Carmichael murders happened. Plus . . . he doesn’t fit the type we are looking for – Chichester.’

  ‘He may not be Chichester.’ replied Davidson.‘But he has questions to answer, not least how the mother of his child came to be buried under the patio.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘In the last year Sonny has been narrowing down his enterprise; mainly because he’s being squeezed hard by the new gangs. Some of them have taken over the clubs north of London. We know he still has business with Digger though; he goes in there most evenings.

  ‘Is the surveillance cell still in operation? Do we have an undercover officer available, sir?’

  ‘No. But maybe we can still use the building opposite. Find out.’ Davidson reclaimed the photos on his desk, placed them together. ‘And find Sonny.’

  Chapter 16

  Carmichael watched Ebony drive away down the lane. He watched the red dot of her car follow the undulations of the land until it disappeared from sight. Then he took out his phone and looked at the screen as he waited for it to respond.

  Ebony pulled over to reset her sat nav to get back to the station. As she did so her phone lit up in her bag. Carmichael looked at his screen. It was asking him for an instruction. Did he want to test the program? Yes he did. Did he want to turn on the microphone? Yes he did. He put the phone to his ear and listened. He heard Ebony talk to herself as she read out the instructions for getting to the airport and keyed them into the sat nav.

  Carmichael pressed ‘finish’ on the screen and he turned away from watching the lane. He took a deep breath of the cold fresh air and briefly closed his eyes to the low winter sun. Then he headed up over the gate to the paddock and walked up towards the top of the hill, from where he could see for miles. Rosie followed him up there. He sat on the trunk of a fallen tree that he planned to clear away in the spring and Rosie jumped up beside him. This was his favourite place on the farm. From here he could see across the magnificent Dales. Here he could lift his face to the sky and know that there was nothing between him and the clouds above. On the starry summer nights, when the heat and the memories would not let him sleep, he’d sat out there alone on his hilltop many times. Thirteen summers, thirteen springs, and now, on this winter’s day, he knew what it had all been for. He knew where he belonged. He said farewell to his farm.

  He walked back inside his house, through to the sitting room and his gun cupboard. He took out his Steyr Scout rifle, laid everything on the kitchen table and took out his cleaning kit. Spreading the lubricating oil on a cloth, he worked it into the metal. He cleaned the barrel with rod and cloth. Afterwards he went upstairs to his bedroom and pulled down the gun bag from the top of his wardrobe. Ins
ide it was a fleecy moisture-proof lining. He brought it back down to the kitchen and packed the rifle inside along with his hunting knife and some basic medical supplies. When he’d finished he went into the sitting room and sat at his writing desk, took out the key from its hiding place in the false bottom on the tankard and unlocked the drawer. Inside was a journal: a woman’s diary. ‘Louise Carmichael’ was written on the front. He didn’t open it. He knew what was written in it. He kept is as a reminder that he had betrayed her. It was still splattered with her blood.

  Chapter 17

  By three in the afternoon Ebony was back at her desk in Fletcher House, with Jeanie working across from her. Carter had swapped his desk and now he sat back to back with her in the ETO. He swivelled his chair around to talk to her.

  ‘Did you know that Carmichael speaks Spanish, Ebb?’ Ebony didn’t even ask what had prompted his question. She had become used to the way Carter’s brain worked by now. He liked to think and talk at the same time, throw the ideas out in the air and see what they sounded like; his thoughts didn’t always follow one another. ‘Why did he move his daughter – do you know?’

  ‘He said he didn’t see it as a crime scene, more personal. He admits he lost control: broke down. But he didn’t move the other women. He also admits the affair, a short-lived thing, and puts it down to being self-destructive.’

  Robbo came into the ETO and walked across. ‘You survived a night in the wild then, Ebb?’ He pulled up a chair between Ebony and Carter. ‘Why didn’t he show up that night, Ebb? What did he say?’

  ‘He got drunk . . . alone.’

  ‘Well . . .’ Robbo chipped in. ‘The killers can’t have known he wouldn’t turn up . . . so Louise and Sophie were never meant to be the target: they were never meant to be there. Chrissie was. She rented the cottage. She chose her guests. What did he say about Chrissie?’