Cold as Ice
Authors: Lee Weeks
Lee Weeks was born in Devon. She left school at seventeen and, armed with a notebook and very little cash, spent seven years working her way around Europe and South East Asia. She
returned to settle in London, marry and raise two children. She has worked as an English teacher and personal fitness trainer. Her books have been
Sunday Times
bestsellers. She now lives
in Devon.
A
LSO BY
L
EE
W
EEKS
Dead of Winter
First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2013
A CBS COMPANY
Copyright © Lee Weeks, 2013
This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.
No reproduction without permission.
® and © 1997 Simon & Schuster Inc. All rights reserved.
The right of Lee Weeks to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
Simon & Schuster UK Ltd
1st Floor
222 Gray’s Inn Road
London WC1X 8HB
Simon & Schuster Australia, Sydney
Simon & Schuster India, New Delhi
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
B Format ISBN 978-1-84983-860-3
Trade Paperback ISBN 978-1-84983-859-7
Ebook ISBN 978-1-84983-861-0
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to
actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Typeset by M Rules
Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
To the staff and volunteers of the
Devon Rape Crisis Service.
Chapter 1
It was the first week in December and for three weeks the temperatures in the UK had plummeted so low that now the Regent’s Canal had completely frozen over. The gloomy
silence was fractured by the boom and bellow of a massive building works programme going on in King’s Cross. Most days the sky played battlefield to giant industrial cranes but today
visibility was limited to just twenty feet; it was just far enough to see across the canal, where it narrowed towards the gates then dropped eight feet and widened into a basin. The water
hadn’t been flowing for two weeks and the canal boats were stuck, moored in ice.
A group of six lads walked down towards the frozen canal. Mouse, nicknamed a year ago when he was the smallest member of the gang, before he grew into a lanky skulker, dragged his feet, kicking
the loose stones as he sloped along the towpath, hands deep in the pockets of his black hoody. He was nervous today. A lot was expected of him.
Leon, the leader of the boys, moved back along the ranks until he came level with Mouse. Mouse lifted his chin in the direction of the new boy. ‘I don’t see you asking him to do
it?’
‘That’s cos he needs to wait his turn.’
The others sniggered and Mouse gathered phlegm and rolled it round his tongue before he spat the globule onto the path.
‘Anyways—’ Leon moved closer and walked alongside Mouse – ‘he don’t know how it works with the old man on the till. He don’t know how to distract
him.’
Mouse’s eyes were furtive beneath the rim of his hoody. He shook his head. ‘No, man, he knows me; he won’t let me in the shop.’
‘He will.’ Leon put his arm around Mouse’s shoulder. The other boys turned and grinned at one another.
He shrugged Leon off. ‘I’m telling you he won’t. I tried to buy something for my mum last week. He wouldn’t even let me do that.’
‘You scared of the old man?’
Mouse tried a laugh but it came out shrill and false in the frozen air.
‘You need to stay calm. Stay cool.’ Leon sucked in the air through the gap between his big front teeth. ‘Be happy; don’t worry.’ As he talked he leant his weight on
Mouse and they stepped closer to the canal’s edge. One of the boys picked up a stone from the towpath and threw it across the frozen water.
‘Oi! Stop that!’ The man stood at the other side of the canal and stared at them. Another stone skimmed over the top of the ice, leaving a frosted trail. ‘What the bloody hell
do you think you’re doing?’ he shouted again.
‘What’s it to you, old man?’ Laughter rang out amongst the obscenities as one of the lads prised up a loose slab from the side of the towpath and launched it across the
ice.
‘I work here, that’s what. It’s dangerous. Now bugger off home.’
Mouse joined in the whistling and the jeering across the canal. When he turned his attention back to his mates he found them standing in his way, corralling him in; his back to the canal. A
play-fight ensued between him and Leon. Mouse struggled to slip his wiry frame from Leon’s firm grip and finished being tipped backwards towards the ice, dangling. He tried to laugh as he
clung tight to Leon, who seemed about to haul him in but instead dropped him. Mouse bounced on his back and then slid across the surface. His friends whooped with delight as they watched him
struggle to get to his knees, fall and slip sideways. He tried again, still managing to see the funny side of his predicament, inwardly so grateful that the ice had held his weight, but now all he
wanted was to get off it fast. He steadied himself, turned over onto his knees and placed two hands down on the frozen surface and then stopped laughing. He scrambled to move away from that spot.
His hands began to stick to the ice. His face was just an inch from the surface and his eyes slowly focused on the scene beneath his hands. He was winded, he couldn’t scream; he
couldn’t talk. He heard the sound of his friends laughing. He tried to make out the shape he was looking at: the first thing he saw was the grinning mouth, the next her eyes, swollen lids
opening just wide enough to stare back at him. There between his hands, inches from his face a woman stared up at him through the frozen surface of the canal.
Mouse’s scream was lost in the wail and boom coming from the building site nearby.
By midday, the day was as light as it was going to get. Freezing fog shrouded the canal above St Pancras Lock. It wrapped around Detective Inspector Dan Carter’s
thick-set frame like a wet blanket. He tucked his stripy cashmere scarf into his overcoat and pulled the collar up around his neck.
From where Carter was standing he could see the naked legs of a young woman’s body. Her swollen white limbs had a blackish hue.
He looked up as Detective Constable Ebony Willis came striding back along the towpath towards him, tucking her notebook back inside her jacket as she did so. He thought how she didn’t seem
to notice the cold, didn’t feel it like he did. Today the cold and damp in the air sank into his bones; he just couldn’t get warm. Ebony didn’t even have gloves on. She was
wearing her self-imposed uniform of black trousers and a fitted black quilted jacket. Her afro hair was scraped into a ballooning ponytail at the back of her neck.
He waited until she reached him. ‘What’s the score?’ he asked, keeping his voice low and banging his leather-gloved hands together to counteract the cold.
‘Basically – he says she wouldn’t have gone far in this canal.’
Carter looked past her to the man in the dark overcoat walking away.
‘Is he the lock keeper?’
‘No, he’s the man who was here when the boys were messing about and fell onto the ice. But he knows all about the Regent’s Canal – he works in the Canal Museum just down
the road. He said that different types of locks allow for different water levels and movement between sections of canal.’
Carter swivelled on his heels to look around him and get his bearings. ‘Plenty of ways to get down here, especially with all the development that’s going on. There’s two acres
of Camley Park on the other side of the canal for a start. Did he mention if there was any CCTV?’
‘The nearest is two hundred metres away, Guv.’
Carter stepped closer to the side of the canal and knelt to pick up a piece of the broken ice.
‘Got to be two inches thick.’ He turned it over in his hand. ‘We’ll need to wait for the ice to thaw before we can get the divers in to search.’
‘Yes, Guv – forecast isn’t good. No more snow for a few days but then it’s coming back.’
Carter’s thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of journalists on the bridge that spanned the canal up to their right. He could just about make them out: dark shadows moving through the
fog. He heard them clanking their equipment as they hurried down as far as they were allowed onto the towpath. They stopped fifty metres away from where Carter and Ebony stood; just near where
their car was parked. Next they heard an officer on the edge of the crime scene talking to them, directing them to where they could stand. Carter scowled.
‘They didn’t take long to find out.’
‘No, Guv. The canal man said the lad who fell on the ice took pictures on his phone; his friends wouldn’t help him out till he put it on Instagram.’
‘Little bastards. Where is he now?’
‘In a cell; he’s given his statement already. Now he’s waiting for someone to be free to tell him he can leave.’
‘Good. Make him sweat for a few hours.’ He shook his head, trying to shake off a headache. He’d spent the evening reminiscing with an old friend and a bottle of JD and now he
was beginning to feel the hangover start. He rubbed his face and sighed. ‘What’s the matter with people? Should have respect for another human being. Now we’ve got the frigging
newspapers before we’ve even had a chance to assess the situation, let alone inform the family.’
Carter pulled back the entrance to the crime scene tent and stooped as he stepped inside; Willis followed. The smell hit Carter so hard that he was in danger of throwing up. He instinctively
drew his scarf up over his nose.