“I’d like you to come with me inside. I want to show you something,” Collins replied gently.
He looked at her uncomprehendingly, but too embarrassed to allow her any more insight into his true feelings about this place than she already had, he shuffled out of the car and strode up the stairs to the side door.
They flashed their IDs to the porter and entered an open lobby with a reception on one side and comfortable chairs facing small tables and a TV set on the other one.
Thomas could not think straight anymore. He hoped that she just wanted to pick up her mail and that they would be gone within the next few minutes.
Following her past the elevators through a swinging door, they entered a maze of corridors and labelled office doors. His own room was two floors up, and Thomas was relieved to see that they were walking in the opposite direction.
While trying to keep up with her, his phone beeped twice, and the sound echoed off the confining walls surrounding them. Collins stopped abruptly and turned around, looking nervous herself in the dimly lit corridor.
A smile spread across Thomas’s face as he handed his phone to his colleague. Reading the message, she relaxed as well. “Case closed, isn’t it? A teacher and a mayor. What a loss of Turtleville’s high society.” They laughed.
“Would you still give me a lift home?” Thomas asked, hoping she would forget whatever it was she wanted to show him.
“Certainly. We’re on the road in five.”
Collins turned and continued walking. After a couple of steps, she confidently pushed open a door to her right. Thomas followed her inside.
He knew very well whose office they had just entered. The cold cigarette smoke from decades earlier still clung to the ceiling and carpet. No matter how many times the room had been renovated, the smoky air remained. Even though Sexton had stopped smoking years earlier, Thomas was sure he was still exhaling nicotine with every breath.
“What do you want in here in the middle of the night? We shouldn’t be here at all,” he said uncertainly.
He knew Sexton was like an adoptive father to Collins and had taken her under his wing when she was roaming the streets of Turnden in her teens.
Now, she stood behind the man’s desk, suddenly looking intimidated by Thomas’s height and strength.
“Come on, let’s go home.” He nodded towards the door.
But Collins did not waver. “Last time you were here was at our Christmas party a year ago. I saw you.”
“Yes, it was the last time I set foot in this entire building, and I don’t want to talk about it,” he snapped.
“You have to let go of what happened that night! It ruins your present and your future, and believe me, it’s not worth it! Respect it, but let it go,” she spluttered suddenly.
Thomas walked towards her, leaning his large hands on the heavy oak table. “I told you this before, and I’ll say it one last time: This is absolutely none of your business, and I’m not up to discussing this with you. Neither now nor any other time! Is that clear?” He turned and stormed towards the door.
“You’re just like the mayor. Another night guard! Only you roam your mind at night, searching for unpleasant memories that keep you from peaceful sleep. But actually, you’re even worse. You relive them in your mind! Evening after evening. In fact, with drawing them, you make sure you don’t forget a single detail of what happened. You cling to that night like a baby to a blanket. But when reality hits you and someone really needs your help, you stand there paralysed by shock!”
All the time, Collins had been shouting at his back. He was facing the closed door, one hand on the handle.
Slowly he turned around. His brain was empty of words. He thought there would be blind rage and threatening her with disciplinary action, but all he could say was, “Why do you care?”
“Because I saw you standing in Kate Adams’s backyard last night, frozen to the ground when Sky was running away shouting your name, shouting for your help. You probably didn’t even hear her screams. You stood there motionless, probably telling yourself there was nothing you could do. And then you were running through that park again, past the ship in the playground and you saw a young girl just a couple of years older than Sky clamber up a wall only to be pulled down at the other end. Her throat slashed. It was dark. It was cold. It was a young girl screaming for help. The same setting. Only a year later. I saw it in your face. This time, it was not your body hindering you from helping. You’re fit… athletic. You’d easily outrun a dialysis patient. But this time, your bloody mind nearly proved fatal. Do you remember what finally set you in motion? Because it was not your mind,” Collins said, slowly calming herself down.
He was leaning with his back against the door, answering her question mechanically. “Something cold hit me. Must have been snow coming down from the roof.”
She smiled gently. “Yes, it was indeed snow, but it didn’t come from the roof. I formed a snowball from all the ice and snow I could find on the windowsill and hurled it right into your face. As a wake-up call. And I’m not sorry about it.”
“Snow and ice? That’s why it hurt so badly,” he replied, trying to smile. Slowly, Thomas saw the bigger picture of the situation but was still not sure why they had to discuss that in Sexton’s office at night. “Thank you. I guess I really needed a wake-up call.”
“That’s not what I want to hear, though.”
“What then?” he asked, not really wanting to know.
She opened the bottom drawer of Sexton’s desk and pulled out a grey folder.
“Why can’t you get over it? I mean, that wasn’t your first body, and you’ve seen worse things than that.”
Thomas took a deep breath. He felt the cool of the door at the back of his head and shoulders like ice slowly covering his body from top to bottom. He shivered. He’d mulled over the same question a hundred times.
“I guess it is a mixture of the obligation to help as a police officer that I failed at by a hundred per cent and thus the helplessness and embarrassment that creeps over you. I mean, if a young girl is lucky enough to have a policeman come by in the middle of the night while she is being raped, but nevertheless dies at the hands of her tormentor… there’s just no excuse. And then you realise the reason why this happened. This was totally and utterly my fault; I should have been a lot fitter. I couldn’t run twenty yards without panting, let alone clamber up a children’s climbing wall.”
He looked at Collins sad and broken. “I don’t expect you to understand this… but I am responsible for the death of an innocent and vulnerable person. There was and is nothing I can do about it, and this helplessness is paralysing. And that is the big difference from all the other cases I was called to. When I arrived, the person was already dead. Here the person died when I arrived. What if I hadn’t been there? Maybe he would have raped her, taken some cash, and left her in the shrubbery. That’s bad enough, but at least she would have lived. My half-hearted attempt to save her only made matters worse.”
Collins handed the grey folder she had been holding over to Thomas, who took it reluctantly. But when he realised what it contained, he quickly tried to hand it back. Collins crossed her arms in front of her chest. “Don’t worry, it doesn’t bite.”
“I know everything it says in there. Thanks.”
“You don’t know jack!”
“Excuse me? Why are you so fascinated by this case?”
She ignored the question. “Sexton and I have added a page that you have not read yet. Please do so, and I promise you then we will go home, and I’ll never utter a single word about this case ever again.”
He squinted at her. “What do you mean you’ve added a page? I thought this case was closed. Or have you finally caught her murderer?”
“Read it, and then you will understand the case.”
“Don’t tell me how to understand an investigation!” he hissed, but opened the folder where a neatly typed page with Collins’s signature underneath gazed up at him.
Against his inner resistance, he started reading.
“Where does this information come from?” Thomas looked up, snapping the folder shut.
“I know you have read my record. So, you know how I grew up.” She let her response hang in the air between them.
“Mother a drug addict, father a drunk. Kicked out of various foster homes, lived on the streets and in empty buildings from the age of fifteen, passing time with petty crime and drugs until Sexton took you under his wing,” he replied more coolly than intended.
Collins only nodded laconically. “I still have some connections with former acquaintances, drug dealers, and the like. Mainly to milk them for information. Most of the time, they are so stoned they can’t remember talking to me. Anyway, Sexton asked me to keep my ears open for known or possible rapists in town, and so I did. He was adamant about catching that guy, and we had a rough description of what he looked like from you.”
“So, you’ve found him?”
“Patience. What did you know about the girl?”
“Not much. Nothing really. I was signed off sick, as you might recall, and ever since then, Sexton has avoided the topic.”
“What do you know about her now?” Collins asked, nodding at the folder in his hands.
“She was dressed smartly and expensively. That night, I had assumed she was from a privileged background. To be honest, I believed that until today. But as I’ve just read, she was a prostitute and a drug dealer. I assume you unearthed this?” Thomas did not wait for her to answer his question. “I’m still not sure what game we’re playing here, but I seriously hope you’re not trying to tell me that because she was a whore her death doesn’t matter.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Nobody deserves to die. I’m showing you all this because I want you to understand the motive. It was not a random attack. From what I’ve learnt — and we have proof of this — the girl dealt with crystal meth, but to make as much money as possible, she mixed other stuff into it, thinning it out. The girlfriend of the guy who attacked her died from unclean crystal meth sold to her by that girl. She was not the first drug victim, and the attack that night had not been the first on this drug-dealer girl. A couple of days earlier, the same man had already tried to push her in front of an oncoming train. She saw him in the reflecting glass of an opposite window and ducked away. We’ve got proof from a surveillance camera. Even if you had saved her that night, he would have tried it a third and a fourth time. Sir, this was not your fault. She would have been killed one way or another. Her friends asked her to seek help from the police, but she refused, said she could take care of herself. She was brought to a welfare institution but ran away after her second night. Of course, she didn’t deserve to die, but her death was not your fault.”
Collins stood only a foot apart from him, looking up into his deep brown eyes, pleading.
“Why are you bothered this much about my wellbeing?” Thomas asked.
“I know everybody thinks I’m an arrogant cow with a heart of stone who has only made it to DS because Sexton always gets his way. Just as everybody thinks you’re a smart-alec bighead, by the way. But I’ve learnt not to judge a book by its cover. I think you’re a unique detective inspector, and I don’t want you to break under this case. It’s not worth it. It’s your talent wasted. There are people out there who really need your help, and you have to be ready when they ask for it.”
Thomas swallowed hard. “Was the killer caught?”
“Kind of. He was found dead after an overdose.”
“It can be a sad and tough life out there.”
“Only if you refuse help.”
Slowly and silently, Collins made another step forward. They looked at each other for a long time until she finally rested her head against his chest. Thomas closed his huge arms around her slender body.
“You look fairly okay now. I didn’t even recognise you on Monday morning,” she said quietly.
“Yes, I noticed that. Thank you for filling me in. I know what you want to hear now, but allow me another night to digest the unfolding events. There is one thing, though, that I can promise you… no more drawings. At least not about that case. And besides, I never thought you had a heart of stone. I mean, the arrogant cow bit, yes, but…”
He felt her giggling body shake slightly against his chest.
“Still, there is one thing I don’t fully understand… why did you put so much effort into this one case? Certainly not because I haven’t slept properly in God knows how many nights.”
Silence filled the room, and when Thomas was no longer expecting an answer, Collins whispered blandly, “She was my sister.”
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Acknowledgments
When I started writing Snow Light, it was merely meant to be a Christmas present for my mother, an avid crime fiction reader turned into a tireless proofreader. I have never dreamed of Snow Light being published and made available for a wider audience than family and close friends.
I would like to thank Betsy Reavley and the brilliant team of Bloodhound Books for enabling me to publish Snow Light as well as my fellow authors for their warm welcome to the gang and their kind advice.
Thank you to Dr. med Teresa Schreckenbach for happily sharing your medical knowledge about bodies, wounds and scars over coffee and cake.
Sincere thanks to Heidi Moldenhauer, a first reader of the manuscript, and your continuous interest in the progress of the book. Your input was invaluable. Thanks for pointing out the correct travel time between towns.
Thank you to Monika Faber for believing a German native could write an English book.
Diolch yn fawr to my best Welsh friend and mentor Martin Jones without you, I wouldn’t be the person I am today.
Thanks to the Ore Mountains my precious home. I am honoured to have been born and raised in this lovely spot of land where nature is beautifully different in each season. I hope I have managed to capture our history, unique cultural traditions and friendly people.
In your forests I draw strength and peace. You inspire me anew every day.
Above all I would like to thank my parents for their never ending love and support not just throughout the creation of this book but throughout my entire life.
Snow Light Page 31