A Quiet Death

by Cari Hunter

  Sanne switched off the alarm, gifting herself the remaining two minutes beneath the quilt. Barely daring to breathe, she traced with one fingertip the silver light catching the arc of Meg’s cheekbone and the pale throat where Sanne had so often pressed her lips. She had never really watched Meg sleep before, thinking it a sentimental thing, the preserve of proper couples, but although only four weeks had passed since she and Meg had decided to stop buggering around dating other people and simply date each other instead, it felt like a lifetime. A fear of ruining a friendship that had endured since childhood had kept them commitment-phobic for years, but moving into a relationship had been as easy as slipping on a well-worn pair of gloves.

  Sanne stifled a laugh at her less-than-romantic simile. Despite their lack of experience in the art of wooing, she and Meg had given it a damn good crack, with exchanges of daft gifts, the undertaking of picturesque walks in the snow, and evenings out in local restaurants they’d always meant to try but never got around to. Five days into their fledgling affair, Meg had declared herself sufficiently smitten and had welcomed Sanne home from work wearing nothing but an old shirt and a smile. It was hardly their first time, but they’d compensated for a six-month separation with an enthusiasm that had yet to wane. The subject of living together had never been broached, and their irregular shift patterns gave them plenty of time apart. Whatever they had now, and however it might be defined, it seemed to be working.

  Another check of the clock, and Sanne forced herself to edge out of bed, wincing as her stiff muscles resisted her attempts to sit up. She hobbled into the bathroom with her arms full of running gear, re-emerging minutes later to flick on her head torch, slip out of the front door, and tiptoe over her gravelled drive. Nothing was stirring in the chicken coop until she opened the gate, at which point Git Face the rooster crowed once in preparation and then let out a full-throated salute to the morning and everything in it. Leaving Meg to deal with him, Sanne set off at a sprint, easing down to a steadier pace once her lungs and quads began to burn. Frosty air rushed into her mouth and stung her cheeks. When she glanced up, the summits of the surrounding hills were outlined in moonlight, and Orion’s Belt kept her heading in the right direction.

  At the start of February, as soon as the snow had cleared from the valley, she had set herself a goal of running before work at least three times a week. Meg had told her she was bonkers, and Nelson had given it a month, but she’d relished the return to regular exercise, and she couldn’t wait to get onto some of the higher routes.

  The kitchen light was on when she got back to the house. Before she had a chance to take out her key, Meg opened the door.

  “I throttled the little bastard, and we’re having him for tea.”

  Sanne bent double, trying not to laugh as she panted for breath. “No, you didn’t.”

  “Maybe not, but I was tempted.” Meg rubbed her bleary eyes and surveyed Sanne’s mud-splattered form. “Congratulations on not snapping an ankle.”

  “Thanks. You should come with me one morning.”

  “Mornings are for tea, toast, and bacon,” Meg declared, turning the tap on and reaching for a glass. On odd occasions, Sanne had known her to go swimming, but most of her exercise came from hurrying around an Accident and Emergency department for forty-plus hours a week, and she was probably as fit as Sanne. She passed Sanne the glass and steered her toward the hall. “You shower all that crap off. I’ll stick the kettle on.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Eleanor Stanhope waited for the lift to start moving and then turned to its mirrored wall. A quick adjustment to a hairclip repaired the damage inflicted by the brisk easterly wind, while a dab of lipstick covered a tooth-smeared patch. Having removed her coat and draped it over her arm, she smoothed her jacket and pencil skirt and checked her tights for ladders. It was a daily ritual unwitnessed by anyone in all her years as a detective inspector, and she’d got it timed to a T, standing ready to exit onto the fourth floor mere seconds before the ping signalled the lift’s arrival.

  She stepped out into darkness, the start of her day neatly poised between the departure of the domestic staff and the influx of the EDSOP detectives. Unless she was paged during the night, she aimed to hit the office by six a.m., giving herself an hour’s grace to catch up on her e-mails and eat breakfast before the meetings and briefings and phone calls began in earnest. Her role as head of East Derbyshire Special Ops came with few perks, but at least her office had the luxury of its own kettle. She brewed her first mug of coffee and poured muesli into a bowl, topping it with grated apple and natural yoghurt. As the computer did its usual stutter and stall, she kicked off her shoes beneath the desk and managed to eat half the cereal before the system logged her on. Not that she was in any particular hurry: for the first time since late December, the EDSOP caseload was relatively light, as if the post-Christmas chaos had been so exhausting that the local criminal element was taking a break until the clocks went forward and the longer days created better opportunities for misbehaviour. EDSOP worked major crimes—murders, kidnappings, serious and sexual assaults—and the team of nine detectives had been a man down since a near-fatal attack on its only sergeant. Although Duncan Carlyle had assured Eleanor of his intention to return to work, Occupational Health were dragging their feet, and she had little inclination to expedite matters.

  She prioritised her overnight e-mails as she listened to the voices drifting through from the open-plan office beyond hers. Sanne Jensen and her partner, Nelson Turay, were often the EDSOP early birds, beating the traffic and using the small kitchen to prepare their breakfast. They were arguing about something now, Sanne’s voice laughter-filled but indignant, in contrast to Nelson’s calm baritone. Sanne shouted across to Fred Aspinall for his adjudication and then invited them both to kiss her arse when she ended up on the losing side.

  Eleanor finished her coffee, feeling like a headmistress snooping on unruly charges. She had worked with EDSOP for almost twelve years, and this was the most cohesive team she’d managed, especially with Carlyle away on extended sick leave. After battling through a rough winter, she was hoping for a chance to regroup, perhaps review training needs and see whether she could steer her brightest toward more specialised skills. That reminded her she had to organise further Taser courses, imperative for the team after several recent close calls. Sanne and Nelson were already qualified, along with Mike Hallet and Jay Egerton. Eleanor scanned the list of those remaining and bit the end of her pen when she reached Fred and his partner, George Torren. She’d be amazed if either of them could hit the side of a barn, but as the East Derbyshire diversity policy stated, ageism had no place in the modern police force.

  “God help us all,” she muttered, and added their names to the schedule.

  *

  A glance at the Majors whiteboard told Meg all she needed to know about the previous night’s shift. Of the nine cubicles, five were blocked by patients waiting for beds on the Medical Assessment Unit, and one by a patient who needed transferring to Urology at St. Margaret’s. They had all breached the four-hour “admit or discharge” target, and the computer screens were blazing with red warnings. The breach manager, usually full of vigour and ready to do battle, appeared to be on the verge of tears, her designer jacket removed and her blouse untucked. If she’d carried a handkerchief, she would probably have been waving it.

  “Welcome to another day in paradise.” Liz, the nurse whose shifts often ran alongside Meg’s, flung her arms wide to encompass the carnage. Behind a curtain, someone vomited, and a doctor so fresh-faced he looked shiny rushed toward Resus clutching a sheaf of printouts.

  Meg stared after him. “Please tell me he’s not been researching on Wikipedia again.”

  “He wouldn’t dare,” Liz said. “And Donovan’s in there with him today, so we should be able to avoid another clinical incident.”

  “Terrific.” Meg grimaced at the prospect of the chief consultant pecking her head for fourteen hours. Donovan had forgotten to
mention he would be on duty when he’d phoned and persuaded her to work a long day. She tapped the board with a tongue depressor. “Who’ve we got in Three?”

  “Rubina Begum. Thirty-eight-year-old, pseudo-unconscious with a bit of a temp. Brought in on an amber standby by a crew barely out of nappies.”

  “God love ’em.” Meg’s mood brightened as she snapped on a pair of gloves and collected the ambulance paperwork. “By ’eck, according to this she’s comatose. We’d better fast-bleep Anaesthetics.”

  Liz headed in the opposite direction. “You know sarcasm is the lowest form of wit?” she asked over her shoulder.

  “Yeah, so I’ve been told.” Meg drew back the cubicle’s curtain to find two people sitting beside the bed: a Pakistani man she assumed to be the patient’s husband and a tear-streaked lad of no more than eight. “Morning, all. I’m Dr. Fielding. Is this your wife, sir?”

  The man nodded slowly.

  She turned to the lad. “And your mum?”

  The lad sniffled and wiped his nose on his sleeve. “She won’t wake up,” he said.

  Meg crouched in front of him. “I think she will, and I’m sure she’s going to be fine. What’s your name?”

  “Mohammed.” He straightened, emboldened by her attention. “And I’m seven and a half.”

  “Wow, that’s really old. I bet you’re dead clever.” She looked across to his dad. “Do you speak English, sir?”

  A shake of his head and a reluctant “so-so” gesture told her that she’d correctly identified Mohammed as the translator.

  “I don’t want to miss school,” Mohammed said. Still in his pyjamas and slippers, he kicked against his chair.

  Meg checked her watch, wondering how quickly she could revive, diagnose, and discharge his mum. “In that case, I’d better get cracking, eh?”

  She pushed to her feet and surveyed her patient. A small, overweight woman, Rubina Begum was swaddled beneath two coats, and her eyelashes flickered when Meg lowered the bed’s railing. With the exception of a mild temperature, her observations were normal, and she was no more unconscious than her son.

  “Rubina.” Meg shook her shoulder. “Will you open your eyes for me, please?”

  Rubina screwed them closed instead, prompting a renewed bout of sniffles from Mohammed. Meg had never understood the willingness of some people to inflict distress on their own children, and it never failed to piss her off. Switching tactics, she pressed hard on the bony arc of Rubina’s upper eye socket, maintaining the painful stimulus until Rubina tried to bat her hand away.

  “Okay, that’s encouraging,” Meg said, loosening her grip.

  Seeing his mum’s miraculous recovery, Mohammed clambered onto the bed beside her. She blinked as if roused from a deep sleep and wrapped an arm around him, murmuring in Urdu, which he automatically translated for Meg.

  “She says her back and her belly hurt.”

  Now almost certain that Mohammed would make his first class, Meg rummaged in a drawer and pulled out a plastic sample pot. “Can you ask her to have a wee in this for me?”

  Mohammed giggled and turned pink. “You’re a funny sort of doctor,” he said.

  *

  “I didn’t do nothing. I don’t know why I’m here, and I’m not saying nothing.” Seamus Thompson drew a figurative line beneath his statement by rocking back in his chair and folding his arms. Immediately overbalancing, he thumped his legs down and made a grab for the table.

  “That’s fine, Seamus.” Sanne took her time replacing the lid on her pen. “We’ll go next door and carry on chatting to your brother. Remind me what he had to say about all this, Detective Turay?”

  Nelson flipped to the correct page in his notepad and selected a choice line. “‘Seamus was the one what had the hammer, and he done knocked that bloke’s teeth in even after I told him not to.’”

  Indignation made Seamus’s eyes bulge, and his mouth dropped open to reveal a tongue bar bearing the legend “Male Slut.” Ignoring his solicitor’s attempts to placate him, he pushed at the table, sending his cup of water flying. “Did our Daragh tell you he stamped on the bloke’s hands? Broke all his bones and laughed about it?”

  “No,” Sanne said. “Somewhat surprisingly, he left that bit out.” She ignored the solicitor’s scowl; it wasn’t her fault his client had fallen for such a rudimentary ploy. These days most of the scrotes across the table in Interview One were well versed in the “no comment” drill, but Seamus and Daragh had obviously needed to watch more reality TV before they’d decided to put someone in the ITU for the sake of twenty-one quid and a crap mobile phone.

  “Would you like to make a proper statement?” she asked. “Then we can have you tucked up in your cell by teatime.”

  Seamus wobbled his tongue bar between his teeth, considering the offer. “Do I have to write it?”

  “No,” Sanne said, well aware of his illiteracy. “I’ll guide you through it and write it for you. Your solicitor will check it, and you can sign it.”

  “All right. Where do I start?”

  “At the beginning.”

  That was the only cue he needed. “Well, see, it was all our Daragh’s fault…”

  It took more than two hours to untangle his testimony and wheedle out the pertinent points. As Nelson finally closed the door on Seamus and his solicitor, Sanne rocked her head from side to side, listening to the crunch of her vertebrae.

  “What kind of genetic evil produced two of those?” Nelson asked.

  “I think they’re actually triplets,” Sanne said. “Only, Paddy chooses to use his powers for good.”

  Nelson threw up his hands. “Do they have even a drop of Irish blood in them?”

  “Nope. Apparently, their parents were so fond of Guinness, they named their brood in its honour.”

  “You made that up.”

  “I did not. I have it written down somewhere. Paddy told me the other day while you were in the loo.”

  Nelson’s shoulders dropped as he began to laugh. “That would explain a lot.”

  “Aye.” Sanne gathered her paperwork. “We can get the file off to the CPS first thing. I can’t see them having a prob—”

  A terse knock interrupted her. George pushed his head around the door.

  “Boss wants us all in the briefing room. A hiker’s called in a body up near Stryder Clough. First uniforms on scene have flagged it to us.”

  “Aw, bloody hell,” Nelson said.

  “Yeah.” George held the door for them, his expression unusually grim. “The unis are saying it’s a child.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  The van juddered as the officer behind the wheel pulled out of a curve and misjudged the gradient. He dropped a gear, smoothing the ride, and Sanne eased her grip on the seat in front. All around her, the Peaks were beginning to gain height, their earthy brown slopes newly exposed by the recent thaw. Here and there, snowdrifts remained in shadowed gullies, but the sun shone on clear summits, the night’s fall dispatched within hours. It was a perfect day for hiking, clear and crisp, with a breeze keen enough to keep people moving. Had Sanne not been on shift she would probably have gone up there herself, taking advantage of the weather window after so many weeks of poor visibility and freezing conditions. Some unfortunate sod who’d done just that was now a witness in a murder investigation, however, with his 999 call a jumble of location details stammered between retching. Black Gate Farm, the access point he had managed to identify, sat off a rough track a couple of miles before Sanne’s cottage, and she knew this stretch of the Snake Pass like the back of her hand.

  She began to fasten her coat, and her colleagues followed suit. With Mike Hallet busy in court, and Scotty and Jay out on unrelated door-to-door enquiries, there were six left from EDSOP, along with two uniformed officers to relieve those already at the scene. Eleanor ended a phone call and turned side-on in her seat to address them.

  “The farmer, Ron Stanton, has offered to drive us as far up Stryder Clough as he can manage. He estimat
es a mile and a half hike from the drop-off point to the scene. The chopper is otherwise engaged for at least the next hour, but SOCO are hoping to commandeer it to bring in their kit and personnel. As we’ll be on scene first, we’ll make a start on the preliminaries. I need two of you to stay at the farm to get statements from the hiker and his wife.”

  Fred’s hand shot up so fast that Sanne heard the click of his arthritic shoulder. All of EDSOP kept boots and wet-weather gear in their lockers, a sensible precaution given the semi-rural nature of their patch, but some were far more capable of a strenuous hike than others.

  “I’ve got terrible blisters from last night’s salsa,” he said. “It’s that Martha. She runs me ragged.” He began to untie his laces, preparing to prove his point, but a chorus of dissent, and George slapping his hands, stopped him.

  Eleanor raised her voice above the outcry. “Thank you, Fred. George can stay back to assist.”

  “Next right, mate. Just after the tree line,” Sanne called to the driver. He waved to acknowledge her, spotting the turn in good time and easing the van off the Snake.

  The cluster of stone buildings came into view after a bone-jolting crawl along a track more suited to four-wheel drives. To the frantic accompaniment of barking from the farm dogs in the yard, Sanne released her seat belt, keen to stand on terra firma and breathe something other than diesel fumes. She recognised Ron Stanton as he came over to greet Eleanor. Rarely seen without his flat cap and Barbour jacket, he was something of an institution in the area, a good-humoured man whom everyone wanted on their side in a pub quiz. Although in his early sixties, he was still lithe and fit enough to manage 250 hectares of land, winning prizes for the meat and sausage he supplied to Meg’s local butcher in Rowlee.