Dead of Winter Tr (40 page)

‘I’ll go and get help, Jeanie.’

‘No, Ebb. Don’t leave me alone here. I don’t want to die alone.’

Ebony took out her phone and phoned Robbo:

‘Ring the reception here. Tell them to get a paramedic out to the back of the hospital fast. Jeanie’s been stabbed.’

Carmichael followed the ambulance as it swerved erratically and turned off at an exit. The police helicopter was circling. He knew they would have spotted him. He knew he only
had to see this through. He followed from the end of the lane as the ambulance drove up towards an intersection and took a left turn as it continued to climb up over the brow of the hill.
Carmichael could see a few small planes to his left, a flattened field, a landing strip. He watched the ambulance park haphazardly and saw Nicola get out and run towards a small six-seater aircraft
whose pilot was waiting. Carmichael drove his bike onto the runway and stopped between Nicola and the plane. For a few seconds his heart stopped.

‘Linda?’

Nikki de Lange stood watching him walk towards her. His rifle in his hands.

Davidson and Harding stood alone in his office. Harding was still on the phone to her ex-husband. On the other end of the phone Simon was feeling a growing nausea in his
stomach. She had it on loudspeaker for Davidson to hear.

‘I thought it was a miraculous thing, but you have to understand: I was the surgeon standing there with a woman with her chest open, waiting for a donor heart. I wanted to have a happy
ending for this scenario. When Martingale said he had another heart I was relieved, I didn’t really give a shit where it came from. I wanted my patient to survive. We waited another hour and
the heart arrived. It was healthy. The blood supply to the new heart was good. We performed the transplant and I left.’

Carmichael walked towards Nikki. She didn’t move. She stood waiting for him. When he reached her she took his hand and placed it on her chest.

‘You knew when we met . . . when we made love . . . our hearts recognized one another.’ She smiled sadly. ‘You can’t kill me; the heart that beats for you inside this
breast is your wife’s. I’m dying. She’s coming home to you. Let me go.’

Carter saw the smoke billowing out of the ground floor of Martingale’s house way before he reached it.

Carter ran back to his car and pulled out the fire extinguisher
from under the back seat. ‘Call the fire brigade,’ he shouted to the officer in the surveillance car as he passed him and ran towards Martingale’s front door. He kicked it open as
he opened the valve on the fire extinguisher and aimed the jet of foam into the hallway. Flames ripped along the ceiling as he made his way into the living room on the left. He looked towards the
middle of the room where there was a solid ball of flame with a human being sitting in the middle of it.

‘Hold on, Jeanie.’

Jeanie let go of Ebony’s hand as the trolley pushed through the operating theatre doors and Ebony stood and watched them swing. Noel came running in, recognized Ebony and handed her
Christa, who was making her mind up whether to cry as she stared at Ebony in confusion . . . Ebony smiled nervously at Christa and took out her phone to call Carter.

‘How’s Jeanie?’

‘She’s gone in to be operated on now. Nicola got away from here. I don’t know whether she made it.’

‘She got away. Carmichael could have shot her, apparently, but he didn’t. He chose to let her go. I don’t know why. She’s unlikely to get far. They’ll arrest her
when the plane touches down in Berlin, hopefully.’

‘Is Martingale in custody?’

‘Killed himself . . . couldn’t face it. He set fire to himself.’

‘Jesus.’

‘Why do you sound like you’re running?’

‘I’m bouncing a baby and trying to keep Christa from realizing she doesn’t know me and bursting into tears. Noel’s just run in to be with Jeanie.’

‘Ebb . . . left holding the baby.’

‘Don’t think it suits me, Sarge.’

‘Yeah, can’t see me having a big family either. I’ll be a Saturday dad, I suppose. See you back here when you can.’

‘Noel shouldn’t be long, Sarge.’

Christa started to wail.

‘What did you do?’

‘I made the mistake of looking at her.’

Carter laughed. He sat in the police car outside Martingale’s house, watching the fire crews finish damping it down. He switched on the engine and drove to a home improvement store on the
way back from Hampstead.

He rang the doorbell and waited for Cabrina’s father to come to the door.

‘Hello, Theo. Okay?’

Theo nodded. He looked at Dan like he had come to ask his daughter out on a first date.

‘I want Cabrina to come home.’

Theo nodded. ‘And for Christ’s sake take that damn buggy blocking up my hallway.’

‘Will she come . . . do you think?’

‘Maybe . . .
Cabrina
?’ He turned and called down the hallway. ‘You have a visitor.’

She didn’t hurry towards him; she took her time; she wasn’t smiling. Oh God . . . it had all been for nothing. He should feel a fool but he was beyond that now. In fact Carter felt
like a teenager again when he saw her. He had a terrible urge to cry. When she reached him she put her hands either side of his face and looked really hard into his eyes: he’d forgotten how
hers made him melt.
Any minute she’s going to say it
, ‘
Just go . . . Sorry
,’ thought Carter.

‘What took you so long?’

‘Pink or blue?’ He held up the paint pots.

‘Purple.’

Bridget heard the bike coming as she finished chopping wood. She watched Carmichael park it in the barn and go inside the house. He found the young girl Anna feeding one of the
lambs with a bottle of milk in the kitchen. Rusty got out of his basket to come over and say hello. Carmichael bent down to pet him.

‘You made it then? Good boy.’

‘And you made it then?’ Bridget came into the house. ‘Are you staying?’ He nodded. ‘Then Anna can sleep with me in the spare room. No problem,’ Bridget said
and smiled. He nodded again. ‘You need a rest,’ she said and left him in the lounge.

Carmichael unzipped his bag, took out the photo of Louise and Sophie and phoned Ebony.

Ebony was waiting in arrivals at the airport. Tina had phoned her and asked her to pick her up. She saw her walking towards her.

‘Where have you been, Teen? The canteen said you were sick and then asked for holiday leave? What’s happening?’

‘I went to Poland. I was supposed to be having some work done but you know, when it came to it, I thought,
fuck it.
Men either like me as I am or fuck them. Besides, I was
frightened I wouldn’t make it back in time to buy stuff in for Christmas and I knew if I left it to you we’d be eating beans on toast.’

Ebony stepped aside to take Carmichael’s call.

‘Hello, Carmichael. You back at the farm?’

‘Yes. Did you have an officer injured?’

‘Yes, Jeanie. She’s alright; she’ll make it.’ Ebony listened to Carmichael. He sounded distant: calm, spent. She spoke: ‘I don’t know how things will go but I
want to say thank you to you.’

‘Yeah?’

‘You cleared your name.’

‘The kid okay?’

‘Yes . . . being brought back to consciousness. Thank you for what you did . . . what you didn’t do.’

‘I couldn’t kill her.’

‘Yeah . . . I heard. I couldn’t have either. Her life expectancy is not good. A sample of her hair shows that she’s on a large dose of anti-rejection drugs. Martingale had a
heart condition. He was a carrier for it. It doesn’t always get passed on. Nikki must have had it. He must have sought out the perfect match. As it happened, Chrissie had inherited the heart
condition too. And as her other organs began to fail, they came for Adam . . .’ She heard him breathing. She knew where he would be standing. By the side of the fire, looking at the photo of
Louise and Sophie. ‘They found Justin de Lange: following the trail of Mr Hart. His fingerprints matched the set on Tanya and the print left by Sophie’s bed.’

‘Hope you didn’t get there too soon. Was he still alive?’

‘He had a pulse. I don’t know how. He was covered in rats. They cut him down but he was dead before he got to hospital. You know that I need you to hand yourself in.’

‘I know. I’ll be there in the next day or so. Just have to tidy things up here.’

‘I understand.’

Carmichael put the phone down and took out Louise’s journal from his bag. It was still stained with blood. He had recovered the journal from the floor of the bedroom she had shared with
Sophie at Rose Cottage. He had read most of it. He had read to the point where she said she knew he had had an affair. He had never been able to read beyond that. Today he stood at the window
overlooking the yard and opened the next page.

Carmichael went outside and knelt to examine the latest in the fox’s kills: a newborn lamb dragged from its mother’s teat.

Bridget stood next to it.

‘Another dead one . . .’

‘It must be the vixen; since I killed her mate, she has to be the provider. I’ll see to it.’

Carmichael picked up the rifle and walked through the yard. Tor snorted into the air as he passed. He nuzzled into Anna’s hand as she brushed his coat and slipped him a Polo mint. He took
it so gently it made Carmichael smile and shake his head; the number of times that horse had bitten him.

He climbed over the gate and turned back to see Bridget watching him. She was standing in the first rays of sunshine. She had buckets of feed in her hand, steaming in the morning air. She had
taken off her hat. He paused as he climbed the gate and she stopped where she was. He had never realized how beautiful she was until that moment. She blushed and turned away smiling.

He jumped down the other side of the gate and walked upwards across the field, the grass yellow beneath the melted snow. It would return before long, this was just a little promise of spring but
it was still a long way off. Everything would happen in due course.

He tracked his familiar route, keeping to the outside of the field and heading up towards his favourite place. He knew the fox would favour the far side, sheltered from the blasting wind. There
the vixen would have made her home.

Silently he kept downwind of the place where he knew the fox had made a den. He steadied the gun and stood and listened. The first birdsong in weeks made him want to cry. The sun dazzled him for
a moment. The breeze, still cold, brought the sound of something else. Carmichael crouched low and inched forward. Ten feet away he saw the cubs playing in the sunshine; beside them their mother
lay on her side, resting from her feed and feeling her bones warm with the sun. Carmichael looked back down towards the farm. He heard Anna’s laughter ringing up to his ears and he smiled to
himself. He didn’t realize he was crying. He closed his eyes for a second as he steadied his aim and placed the end of the barrel into his mouth.

Bridget put her hand on Tor’s neck to calm him as the sound of gunshot rang through the air. Anna stopped laughing. Bridget buried her face in Tor’s neck.

Carmichael opened his eyes and looked towards the fallen tree trunk on the mount; blinded temporarily by the low winter sun he saw the figures running towards him and heard the laughter as clear
as church bells. He got to his knees and opened his arms as he looked up into Louise’s face and scooped Sophie into his arms.

My thanks and gratitude go to all the people who have helped me in writing this book: Ian Hemmings; Detective Sergeant Nick Moore; Neil Rickard; Pauline Selley; Crime Analyst
Catherine Ash; the staff at Visage; Frank Pearman; Clare and Peter Selley; Graham and Sue Burton; David and Charlotte Laquiere; Viv Steer; Detective Inspector Dave Willis (retired); the officers in
Murder Investigation Team 11 ( MIT11); the real Callum Carmichael and Ebony Willis for allowing me to use their names; my agent Darley Anderson and the team; my new publishing team at Simon &
Schuster; finally my friends, family and ‘the boys’!