Dead of Winter Tr (11 page)

‘How did Louise react?’

‘She considered leaving me, I know. She knew I was sorry. I wasn’t sure whether things would ever be the same between us or that she could ever forgive me.’

‘When you arrived that day at Rose Cottage and you saw what had happened. When you looked at the bodies . . .’

He bowed his head. ‘Jesus . . .’

‘I’m sorry . . .’

‘Don’t be.’ He looked up and smiled sadly. ‘You have a job to do.’

‘Can I ask you why you moved the bodies?’

‘I moved Sophie . . .’

‘You didn’t move the others at all?’

He shook his head as he swallowed the last of his whisky and wiped his burning mouth. He stared into the fire as he talked. ‘I got to the cottage and knew something was wrong even before I
had parked the car. The curtains in the lounge were closed. The door was open. I saw Chrissie first. I walked into the kitchen and found Louise: butchered.’ He looked into the fire and
coughed to clear his throat and his head before going on. ‘I looked around and I called Sophie’s name. Then I ran upstairs and found the baby, Adam, first; he was asleep, doped, but
alive, and I had a few seconds’ hope that I would find my daughter . . .’ He swallowed, shook his head. ‘They cut her throat.’ He stared at the fire. His voice dropped until
it was barely audible over the hiss and crackle of the burning wood. ‘I know I shouldn’t have touched the crime scene but this wasn’t a crime scene; this was everything in the
world I cared about and it had gone. These were my angels. I carried her down to lie next to her mother.’ He turned to look at Ebony and shook his head to clear it. ‘I don’t know
why they did it but no matter what anyone says, if you ask me, it was premeditated, it was planned. There was a reason why my family died. Now we know that’s true because they’re back
and killing again.’ The firelight reflected in his eyes. ‘I’ve waited a long time for this day to come.’

As he stared at Ebony she saw the eyes of a troubled mind that was never going to find peace. She’d seen it all her life. It was the look of someone not destined ever to live a normal life
and be happy. The eyes were full of demons and nightmares. Ebony had seen eyes like that before, in the tortured souls that looked at her when she went to visit her mother. Broadmoor was full of
them. Her mother was one. Rusty barked; Ebony jumped. He stood alert on the sofa and tilted his head to listen to some noise from outside. Carmichael held up his hand to silence him.
‘
Stay.’

‘What is it?’ Ebony whispered.

Rusty jumped down from the sofa. Carmichael put his foot out to stop him but Rusty jumped over it. ‘Rusty . . . COME!’ Carmichael picked up his rifle as he ran after the dog, but
Rusty was already out of the door.

Ebony threw her coat on and ran towards the barn and the dreadful sound: the lambs like babies with their high-pitched cries and the deeper distressed bleating of their mothers trying to protect
them.

The barn door was open. Inside the sheep were stampeding round their pens and the bodies of the killed lambs were littered in the straw. She stopped in the doorway. Carmichael’s face was
murderous as he turned towards her, rifle in his hand. He swung away from her at the sound of snarling and yelping coming from the rear of the barn. He started running towards the sound, calling
Rusty’s name as the sound of a dog’s growling turned to squeals of pain. The squealing stopped and an eerie silence fell in the barn as Carmichael searched the pens. The sheep
scattered. He found what he was looking for. Rusty’s body looked as if someone had tried to skin it. Carmichael placed his hands beneath him and lifted Rusty out of the blood-covered straw.
He carried him into the house.

The dog fox stopped on the brow of the hill and looked back down at the farmhouse. He saw the big man carrying the dying dog. The dog’s warm blood was on his mouth. Its flesh was in his
teeth. He saw the pheasant that Carmichael had set to trap him, still hanging there, swinging now. Above him his mate stood guard, in her mouth the body of a newborn lamb.

Carmichael laid Rusty on the kitchen table.

‘Look after him while I fetch the medical kit.’

He came back with an armful of neatly folded towels, old but clean, and a medical chest.

‘What can I do?’ Ebony asked.

Carmichael took out his knife and cut into the material so he could tear them into pressure bandages. ‘Lie him on the towels. I’ll be back in a minute.’

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.

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.

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.