Cold to the Touch

by Cari Hunter

  “Do we know his name?” she asked Kathy.

  “No. The police did a quick check of his pockets before we set off. No wallet or phone, and he was too far gone to speak.”

  Meg used the markings along an endotracheal tube to gauge the size of the wound on his right chest. A troubling suspicion began to take shape as she noted the wound’s ragged edge.

  “Where did you find him?”

  Kathy consulted the paperwork she was completing retrospectively. “Top end of Balan, on Malory.”

  “Shit.” Meg had really wanted to be wrong about this. She ripped off her soiled gloves and hoped that Sanne hadn’t planned on getting a full night’s sleep.

  *

  Sanne had dozed off to the sound of sleet hitting her bedroom window, an incessant beat that sent her into a restless dream. When the phone woke her an hour later, snow was falling, silent flurries of white that were ghosting past the glass and had already covered her car and driveway. Half-dazed, she had to stumble toward the ringtone until she remembered which bookcase she had left her mobile on. Calls at this time of the night were never good news, and she felt a fresh surge of panic on seeing Meg’s name.

  “Meg? Are you okay?”

  “Hey, sorry, did I wake you?”

  “No. Yes. It doesn’t matter.” Sanne sat on the carpet, pre-empting an undignified topple onto it. “What’s wrong?”

  “There’s nothing wrong with me,” Meg reassured her quickly. “We’ve just had a stabbing brought in: male, late thirties, found with multiple wounds on Balan Road. Wounds were deep, nasty, approximately three inches wide, and showed signs of being made with a serrated blade. I thought you might appreciate a heads-up.”

  “Bloody hell.” Still on the floor, Sanne dragged open a drawer and began to grab clothes. She wriggled out of her pyjama bottoms, any remnants of sleep obliterated. “What’s his prognosis?”

  “He died, San. About ten minutes ago. The police are here, but there’s no sign of anyone from your lot.” Meg’s words were running into each other, and she sounded exhausted.

  “Has he been identified?”

  “Not yet. He had nothing with him.”

  Sanne fought the urge to tell Meg to get a hot drink, sit down, and put her feet up. “Tatts? Scars? Anything our computer might get a hit on?” Her keys in one hand and a sweater in the other, she ran into the bathroom with the phone trapped against her shoulder.

  “No. He’s about six foot, short dark hair, clean-shaven, wedding ring. He doesn’t look like your typical Malory scrote, if you know what I mean.”

  The keys clattered into the sink as Sanne lost her grip on them. “Was he wearing any other jewellery?”

  “A crucifix on a chain. No, wait, it was one of those plain crosses without the little Jesus on it.”

  “Fuck,” Sanne whispered. She closed her eyes and heard Meg call to her as if from a great distance. “I think his name is Daniel Horst,” she said.

  Chapter Twelve

  Nelson lived closer to the hospital than Sanne did, and he was waiting for her in the A&E corridor. Her wet boots squeaked on the lino as she ran toward him. It had taken her over an hour to get through the snow on the Snake Pass.

  “Is it him?” she asked. Her phone had registered three missed calls during her journey, each cut off by the weather and the lousy reception in the hills.

  Nelson caught her sleeve, preventing her from heading into Resus.

  “He’s been moved to the Viewing Room, San.” He kept his grip on her, even though she’d stopped. “You were right,” he said quietly. “His wife Adele just identified him.”

  “Damn it. What the fuck is going on with this case, Nelson? Why kill Daniel?”

  “I don’t know, but the boss has spoken to the brass, and they’ve already called a press conference.”

  Farther down the corridor, the door to the Viewing Room opened and Eleanor escorted a woman out. Adele Horst was petite, smartly dressed, and heavily pregnant. Her head bowed low with grief, she allowed Eleanor to guide her to the Relatives’ Room and into the care of a uniformed officer.

  “The baby’s due in four weeks,” Nelson said. “Adele thought Daniel was working late at the shelter. Meanwhile, the people there thought he’d got caught up late on the streets and just gone home afterward. Apparently, he got mugged a few months back, and ever since then he’s emptied his pockets before going onto the estate.”

  “Someone knew who he was. This can’t have been random.” Sanne heard the rise in her voice but could do nothing to temper it.

  Nelson, by contrast, had had time to process everything, and he answered calmly. “I doubt it was random, but most people on Malory probably knew him, which gives us a massive pool of suspects.”

  Hearing the rapid tap of high heels, they turned to meet Eleanor together, subconsciously presenting her with a united front.

  “So much for keeping this under the radar,” she said by way of greeting, and then continued without pause for breath, “SOCO are still at the scene, and we’ve gathered the CCTV from the surrounding area. This one was different again: main road, more public, and a passerby found Horst within minutes.”

  “Escalation or opportunism?” Sanne asked.

  Eleanor threw up her hands. “Your guess is as good as mine. And without a motive, guessing is all we’re fit for. The PM is scheduled for first thing in the morning, which should give us an idea whether the same weapon was used for Culver and Horst. The cynic in me says that Horst got himself involved with something through the Mission, maybe drugs—dealing or supplying—so we’ll need to check his bank records for any irregularities.”

  Sanne nodded, taking everything on board, though her instincts contradicted Eleanor’s. Having met Daniel, she would bet her eye teeth that his finances were spotless. “What about the Mission?” she asked. “Are we still holding off until morning?”

  “No, word has already travelled fast, and we have officers there now with Fred and George. Most of the sober patrons are up and about, and a few of the staff members have come in as well. There are murmurs about a candlelit vigil being arranged before the evening meal. Hopefully, it’ll be well attended, and we can round people up after it.” Eleanor sighed. “Respectfully, of course. If we go barging in, all we’ll do is make people resentful. For now, we have the passerby and Adele Horst to interview, and we need kid gloves on for those as well, which is why I’m assigning them to the two of you.”

  Sanne looked over Eleanor’s shoulder at Meg entering the Relatives’ Room. “Will Mrs. Horst speak at the press conference?”

  “Yes, she’s agreed to make a public appeal first thing in the morning.”

  Silence followed Eleanor’s response, but Sanne suspected they were all thinking the same thing: after the press had paid scant attention to two coldblooded murders, a third had finally given them their perfect photogenic widow.

  *

  The door creaked as it opened. For a second or two, harsh light and the everyday chatter of the A&E flooded into the Viewing Room, shattering the peace and making Sanne blink.

  “I thought I might find you here,” Meg said. She stepped inside and shut the door, restoring the sense of sanctity evoked by low-wattage lamps and by the selection of religious texts carefully arranged on a coffee table.

  “I have to interview his wife,” Sanne said. “It seemed wrong to do that without seeing him first.”

  The police officer in the corridor hadn’t questioned her request to view Daniel Horst’s body, but merely asked her to sign an evidence log. In the section headed Reason, she had scribbled something about “wound comparison,” leaving it borderline illegible. It was the best she could come up with at short notice.

  “You can’t tell, can you?” she said, as Meg came to stand beside her. “You can’t really tell how bad it is.”

  “Did you look?” Meg asked, and winced when Sanne nodded.

  The body lay in a forensic bag, but someone had carefully covered that with a sheet to g
ive an illusion of sleep. Daniel’s face was unmarred and slack, his eyes almost shut. The only thing to ruin the effect was the thick odour of clotted blood.

  “I had to explain to his wife what had happened to him.” Meg’s voice bore an unfamiliar tremor. “And I told her what we, what I’d done, but when she identified him she saw him like this.”

  “How is she?”

  Meg dragged her gaze away from the body. “She’s not good, but she wants to get it over with. You’re probably better staying here and using the Rellies’ Room. She’s had a couple of twinges in the last hour, so I’m going to refer her to Antenatal Assessment once you’re done.”

  “That’s fine. It shouldn’t take long.”

  “I did my best for him, San.” Meg stumbled backward as she spoke, her legs hitting the table and sending a Bible onto the floor. She sat down in its place, her body seeming to fold in on itself. “Why is everything so fucking shit?” she whispered. “‘Your husband’s been stabbed to death and, oh, by the way, I’ve just hacked up his body trying to restart his heart. When’s your first baby due again?’”

  Sanne nudged Meg with her knee and squeezed onto the table, stacking the remaining books to make space. When Meg leaned into her, the smell of herbal shampoo overpowered that of blood. Sanne took hold of Meg’s hand and felt her tense briefly before relaxing again.

  “Would you do anything differently if you had the time over?” Sanne asked.

  “No.” Meg drew the word out and then huffed a small almost laugh. “Maybe I’d go in at the correct rib. I didn’t even count the bloody things, just guessed and cut. I’m sure the coroner will have something to say about it.”

  Sanne smoothed a wet strand of hair away from Meg’s cheek. Meg had obviously showered and changed in preparation for talking to Adele Horst, and limp curls were falling from misplaced clips. “Did you get where you needed to be?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well then, I doubt the coroner will mark you down for being out a rib or two.”

  That prompted a rough chuckle and a kiss on Sanne’s cheek.

  “We should get back to work.” Meg made no move to do anything of the sort.

  “Yes, we should.”

  “Or we could hide in here a while longer.”

  Sanne thought of the pending interview and the sleepless night ahead of her, and she tightened her grip on Meg’s hand. “One more minute,” she said.

  *

  “Some days he’ll go out at five in the morning and I won’t see him again until midnight. He doesn’t wear a watch, so he’ll just lose track. We joke about it, but he’s promised to cut back a little once the baby is born.”

  Adele Horst stopped suddenly, her monologue snapping to an end as if something had sparked out the power. She looked at Sanne, her lips forming a mute “oh.” Like Daniel, she had a habit of touching the cross around her neck when she was upset, and her grip on it now was so tight that it whitened the skin on her knuckles. For twenty minutes she had managed to answer Sanne’s questions, but she had referred to Daniel in the present tense throughout, and Sanne had been dreading the moment she realised this.

  “Oh God,” she whispered. “Oh God, he’s really gone, isn’t he?” She lowered her hands to the bulge of her abdomen as tears dripped off her nose. When Sanne passed her a tissue, she didn’t seem to know what to do with it.

  “Do you want to stop?” Sanne asked.

  Adele shook her head. “Please, carry on. I’ll be okay.”

  Sanne glanced at her notes, saw the word Motive underlined in thick black pen and wished that she wasn’t so rubbish at rock, paper, scissors. Her ineptitude meant that Nelson was currently back at HQ interviewing the passerby while she had to quiz a shell-shocked widow about the finances of her late husband. The smell of instant coffee mingled with Adele’s perfume, exacerbating the headache that was nagging at Sanne’s left temple. Promising herself a dose of paracetamol later, she swallowed half a glass of water and pushed on with her next question. To her surprise, Adele answered it with firm precision.

  “No, absolutely not. He made a pittance at the shelter, and he’s useless with money.” She paused before correcting herself in a pained tone. “He was useless. I took care of all our finances, and his wage went into a joint account. I would know if anything had changed.”

  “What about unusual purchases? Perhaps an item for the baby that he shouldn’t have been able to afford?”

  A slight, wistful smile curved Adele’s lips. “He’s spent seven months making furniture from salvaged wood: a crib, a changing table, cabinets, even toys. I work in corporate law, so my salary covers all our essentials. Daniel’s job was more of a calling. He would never have become involved in anything untoward.”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to cause offence. It’s just that we have to explore every possible avenue.” Sanne felt even worse when Adele nodded her understanding. She turned the page on her notebook to cue her next question and took heart from its being largely blank. “Did he ever mention having problems at the Mission or on the estate? Had anyone threatened him recently?”

  “If there were fights or arguments at the Mission, they tended to be among the clients, with the staff acting as peacemakers,” Adele said. “Daniel was careful what he told me, especially after he got mugged, but he wouldn’t have held back anything serious.”

  “Did the police find out who attacked him?”

  “Two lads from the estate. I think they were twelve years old. They broke his jaw, but he refused to press charges.” She began to cry again, fresh tears following the tracks of old ones, her grief so overwhelming that Sanne could hardly bear to witness it. “He was my whole life. What am I supposed to do now he’s gone?”

  There were endless platitudes that Sanne could have used, all banal, trite, and ultimately meaningless. She didn’t think Adele was the type to take comfort from them.

  “I don’t know. I can’t even imagine,” she said. She tried, though, tried to imagine her life carrying on without Meg, with no chance of ever hearing her voice again or seeing her face, but she couldn’t conceive of that depth of loss. Adele choked on a sob, her entire body shaking with the effort of holding in her misery.

  Sanne quietly noted the end of the interview and clicked off the tape.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The spikes attached to Sanne’s trainers bit into the snow, creating bursts of spindrift as she increased her pace. The stiffness in her muscles eased, replaced by a fluid warmth that made her body hum with energy, and what had seemed like a stupid, impulsive idea mere minutes ago began to make perfect sense.

  After uploading the interview with Adele Horst to the case file, Sanne had managed three hours of sleep, fragmented by nightmares and a long period of staring at a patch of moonlight on her bedroom wall while conflicting hypotheses buzzed around her brain. Rather than count down to her alarm, she had given up and thrown on her winter running gear. It had still been dark when she stepped outside, the sunrise just a smudge of purple bleeding into the black, but a head torch provided plenty of light, and even a short run would be better than staying in bed. As she rounded a corner, the east wind hit her full pelt, forcing freezing air into her lungs and blowing away any remaining sluggishness. She coughed and then laughed, the noise startling a stoat, which hurtled beneath the snow-covered heather.

  “Sorry,” she whispered as she passed its hiding place.

  At the halfway point, she checked her watch, calculating the time she needed to leave for the Mission and factoring in a shower, breakfast, and the hike to the lay-by where she had left her Land Rover. The candlelit vigil wasn’t scheduled until four p.m., but interviews and door-to-door enquiries were to take place throughout the day, and the overtime had been thrown open in order to draft uniforms and additional manpower onto the case. With the media now bandying around terms like “serial killer” and “spree killer”—one step away from tagging the culprit with a sensational nickname—the brass were disinclined to leave a
nything to chance.

  Excitement lengthened Sanne’s stride, and she completed the route at a sprint, switching off her torch as lilac ate into the edges of the darkness and the hills became more distinct. The media fervour held no appeal for her, and her only current ambition was to keep her place on the EDSOP team, but any detective who didn’t get a kick out of being involved in a major manhunt was probably in the wrong job.

  Her rooster squawked as she jogged past the chicken coop.

  “Shut it, you,” she said. “Today is going to be a good day.”

  *

  Emily handed Meg a steaming mug and snuggled next to her on the sofa, tucking a blanket over them both. Meg raised the mug and gave it a dubious sniff. Coffee, cream, and something unidentifiable but spicy lurked in the brew.

  “Old family recipe,” Emily said. “My granny swore by it. I thought it might perk you up enough to go for a walk later.”

  Meg’s first sip burned her mouth, warmed her throat, and curled a pleasant heat into her belly. Her lips and tongue tingled when she spoke. “What the hell have you put in this?”

  Emily laughed. “It’s your basic Irish coffee with a dab of chilli powder. Did I mention that my gran was a bit eccentric?”

  “Well, if ever any proof were needed…” Meg left the sentence hanging and reached for the television remote. On the rolling news channel, Eleanor was guiding Adele Horst into the centre chair of the press conference desk. Information about the murders dominated the banner streaming beneath the picture, and a hotline number flashed up at regular intervals.

  “I can’t believe the police kept this quiet until now,” Emily said. “What on earth were they thinking?”

  Meg had slept badly, and a combination of alcohol and lassitude allowed her to answer without biting Emily’s head off. “It’s not like they had a choice. The press didn’t give a shit about the first two victims. Dead drug addicts don’t sell papers.” She gestured at the screen, where Adele was speaking about her husband with calm dignity. “Dead, clean living, religious types, on the other hand, make ideal front page material.”