Dead of Winter Tr (7 page)

He opened the crime scene log and drew a diagram of the master bedroom and where he’d found the scrap of plastic. He rang his wife.

‘No, definitely won’t be home tonight, love. I’ll try and make it tomorrow for a few hours. Sorry . . . happy birthday, love . . . yes . . . I’ll be thinking of you. Kiss
the kids for me and you too of course. Love you.’

Ebony sat beside Harding as she threw the Audi sports car around the unfamiliar roads on the drive out of London towards the Sussex countryside. The snow grew sparser on the
roads as they neared the coast. Some of the fields had a hint of patchy green.

‘Thank you for coming, Doctor.’

‘It’s not a problem. We’ll run through the case notes and crime scene diagrams when we get there. I’ll be interested to see any similarities with Blackdown Barn that come
to mind. Did you speak to the owners of Rose Cottage when you got the key?’

‘Yes. I met Mr Dalson, the owner, at the Tube station. He was on his way to work. He told me they inherited the cottage from an aunt. When they inherited it, it came with a list of people
who regularly hired it for set times in the year. Chrissie Newton had come the year before for the first time. She was lucky, one of the regulars dropped out and she took their May 15th to the 21st
slot.’

‘What’s happened to it now?’

‘No one’s booked it since. He told me that they had only visited the cottage a handful of times since it happened. They just haven’t decided what to do with it. They’ve
thought about selling it but want to keep it in the family. I think he was hoping if they waited long enough they wouldn’t remember what happened there. Did you come to the cottage at the
time, Doctor?’

‘Yes.’

Ebony watched the town quickly disappear and the countryside take over. They were headed on the Hastings Road towards Camber. Camber was a broad sandy beach popular with people coming from the
city. Ebony had been there once before on an outing from one of the children’s homes she stayed in. Two and a half hours crowded into a hot minibus and then let loose for a fabulous day of
sand and sea and freedom. She and Micky had spent the day jumping the waves and building sand castles. She would always remember the smell of the sea as they got nearer to it and the excitement she
felt. She could smell it now.

‘Did you know Carmichael, Doctor?’

‘Not well.’

‘Did you like him?’

Harding lifted her hands from the steering wheel in a shrug gesture: ‘I had no thoughts either way.’

‘What about his wife?’

‘I met Louise once, that’s all. Carmichael was lucky to get her. She was beautiful, bright. She was an heiress from some major margarine company. Although the money didn’t come
till she was thirty. She wasn’t born with a silver spoon. But she could have picked anyone.’

‘You think she made a mistake?’

‘I think she had her work cut out. Carmichael wasn’t a man without a past.’

They drove down the secluded lane off Lydd Road, close to the long stretch of sandy beach. The cottage was the last one on the left. A man was working in the garden. He stopped what he was
doing, pinning a rose back against the stone front of the house and waited as Harding parked up outside. Ebony got out of the car and took out her warrant card to show him.

‘We won’t disturb you – we just want to take a look inside.’

‘No problem.’ He smiled. ‘I just look after the outside. You have keys?’ Ebony nodded.

He was a posh gardener type with wild unruly hair and a cheeky smile. Harding went back to the car for her bag.

‘Have you been looking after this garden for a long time?’

‘About thirteen years. I look after the gardens of all the holiday cottages on this lane.’

‘So you know the history of this place? Were you around when the incident happened here?’

He nodded. ‘Sort of . . . I had just started working but I was actually on holiday that week. I came back to it.’

‘What’s happened to the property since then?’

He shook his head. ‘Nothing really. After it happened I rebuilt this wall to the left of the gate. It got knocked by one of the vehicles. Apart from that, nothing’s changed. Except
no one comes here now.’

Ebony opened up the file she was carrying and turned the pages. ‘Doesn’t mention the wall being knocked down in the report.’

He shrugged, shook his head. ‘Someone knocked down the corner of the gatepost. I presumed it was when they were reversing, trying get round – it’s a tight spot.’

‘So you rebuilt this section?’ Ebony pointed to the pillar and the edge of the stone wall.

‘Tidied it up more than rebuilt.’

She bent down to get a better look. ‘Where was it knocked down, the middle?’

‘No . . . at the top.’

‘Can I have a number for you, in case I need to ask you any questions?’

‘Sure . . .’ He smiled. He went to his Land Rover, which was parked up the lane at another house, and brought her back a card.

‘Sorry it’s a bit muddy.’ He grinned as he tried to wipe the thumbprint from the surface with the cuff of his jacket. ‘I did tell someone at the time about the wall . . .
but they didn’t seem that interested.’

‘Thanks . . .’ Ebony took the card. She looked up from reading his card: Marty Readman, landscape gardener, to see him staring at her. She looked away fast as she felt the heat come
to her face. She wished she didn’t find it difficult to talk to good-looking men. Harding was waiting for her. As Ebony unlocked the door and opened it the low winter sun flooded inside and
set the dust spinning. They stood in the doorway. Ahead of them were the stairs to the upstairs floor. To the right were the living rooms.

‘When you came here that morning, Doctor, what was it like?’

‘I was on my way back from Brighton when I got a call asking if I could cover for a colleague who was on duty but sick. It was a sunny day. It had been a glorious weekend. It was on my way
home so I agreed. When I got here the officers who answered the 999 call from Carmichael were gone; two from the Brighton murder squad were already here.’

‘Why did they hand it over to the MET to deal with? Why didn’t it stay with the Brighton squad?’

‘Because he was a serving MET officer, I suppose. Davidson made the decision he wanted to do the best he could for Carmichael. That turned out to be an impossible task. I didn’t
question it at the time. Of course . . .’ She turned to look at Ebony in the gloomy hallway. ‘That was the first mistake.’

Ebony opened her file. ‘Here in this hallway there were bloody smears on the wall and Louise’s handprints all the way down it. It says in the report that the blood on the wall was
Sophie’s. She must have seen her daughter killed, at least wounded, before she was dragged down these stairs.’

They walked into the first room on the right.

‘Chrissie Newton was in here.’ Harding pulled away the rug that covered the stone floor in the lounge. ‘This is the spot.’ A fat brown spider scuttled away towards the
hearth.

Ebony held the picture of Christine Newton in her hand.

‘Was the woman from Blackdown Barn, Silvia . . . was she opened up like that?’

‘Yes.’

Ebony walked across to the window and pulled back the curtain. The gardener had gone ‘They found an open bottle of wine, half a glass poured out. It was left over here beside this window;
there was a small table here at the time. Maybe she was watching someone arrive when she drank it, never finished it.’

Ebony followed Harding as she walked along the hallway and down two steps to the stone-floored kitchen. ‘And Louise Carmichael was in here. Over there by the back door. Sophie was laid out
beside her.’

Ebony stood in the kitchen by a small table. ‘Sophie had collected pebbles. They were found a bucket in here on the kitchen floor. They must have spent the day on the beach. Then come back
here, given Sophie and Adam their tea: they found the washed-up plates, kids’ knives and forks on the draining board.’

They walked back past the lounge and Ebony led the way up the stairs. Shadows of the dead ivy outside the landing window flitted across the old plaster walls.

‘All the bodies were on the ground floor. I never came up here. I had no need,’ said Harding.

At the top of the stairwell they came to a small bathroom with an old enamel bath.

‘It says in the report that the water was left in the bath, just six inches. There were toys in there. So Louise must have been bathing Sophie when it started.’

‘Louise?’

‘Coming, Chrissie,’ Louise called down from the bathroom. ‘Just giving Sophie a bath.’

Chrissie stood at the bottom of the stairs:

‘I’ve started on the wine . . .’ she giggled. ‘Do you want me to bring you a glass up there?’

Louise leaned her head back towards the door. She was on her knees beside the bath, her hands in the water. ‘You did well to hang on . . .’ She smiled as she filled up one
plastic beaker with water and tipped it into another; Sophie was concentrating so hard not to spill the water that her tongue stuck out the way her dad’s did sometimes, when he
didn’t realize he was doing it. ‘You carry on . . . I’ll wait, thanks. I’ll read to Sophie and get her settled and then I’ll be right down. Are you sure you
don’t mind us staying for another night? Callum must have got held up at work. I am sorry.’

Louise swished the water back and forth through her fingers. She listened and heard Chrissie sigh. She smiled at Sophie.

‘I know that Callum and I have been through a lot. I know that sometimes it all gets too much for him.’

Louise made the face that always made Sophie laugh. It was a gorgeous laugh that tilted Sophie’s head backwards and came from the middle of her body: pure joy.

‘What are you going to say to him if he does turn up?’ Chrissie called up from the foot of the stairs.

‘I don’t know.’

‘He cheated on you, Louise. You can’t just ignore it.’

‘I’m not ignoring it . . . I’ve thought about it for so many nights since I found out. I’ve tried so hard to make sense of it.’

‘What is there to make sense of . . .? He’s a lying, cheating bastard. He slept with another woman. You’re more forgiving than I could ever be, Louise. I like Callum but
I know I could never forgive him. I’d leave him if I was you.’

‘I can’t. Whatever he’s done . . . I know that he loves me and he loves Sophie. And I know that he’s sorry.’

‘Anyway, it’s your business and don’t be silly, it’s no problem to put you up for another night; I’m glad of the company. Someone’s
arrived.’

Chrissie turned at the sound of a vehicle turning in outside. The cottage was at the end of a lane. No one needed to come down that far unless they were coming specifically to the
cottage.

‘Maybe that’s Callum now.’

She carried her glass of wine into the lounge and drew back the curtain to look outside.

Ebony walked into the first bedroom on the left. The rooms were dark, the walls bare. Harding came to stand beside her. Ebony looked at the crime scene plan of the upstairs.

‘This is the room where baby Adam was found alive.’

‘He’d been taken to hospital by the time I arrived.’

They went into the next room. The bed had gone. Only faded paintings of country gardens and bluebells in the spring remained on the walls.

‘Louise and Sophie slept in here. Louise may have had time to put her to bed, but she didn’t have time to go back into the bathroom and empty the bath, tidy it up.’

‘There was no trace of anaesthetics in Sophie’s bloods,’ said Harding. ‘All the others were anaesthetised before being killed.’

‘She would never have got her to sleep naturally if she was frightened.’ Ebony shivered; the cottage was colder inside than it was outside. ‘If she knew there was trouble
coming Louise must have hidden it well.’ Ebony looked upwards. ‘It says in the report that Sophie’s blood was across the ceiling. It was a quick death then, an execution. Maybe to
shut her up.’ She glanced across at Harding at the same time as she flicked through the notes from the scene.

‘So Louise witnessed her daughter’s death, or at least the start of it, and then she was dragged downstairs and raped.’

‘Yes,’ said Harding. ‘Louise’s body was naked when it was found downstairs. Her knickers and shorts were found in the lounge. The rest of her clothes were missing. She
had multiple bruises on her arms and legs, groin area, consistent with rape.’

Ebony stood on the landing and looked down the stairs. ‘She was dragged downstairs and then she saw her friend being horrifically and slowly murdered and waited three hours to be killed in
the same way herself.’

Harding joined her at the top of the stairs. ‘Pressure marks and nylon fibre imbedded in the wrists and ankles of both women. They were rendered inactive, also given large amounts of
sedation, which could have been used to keep them quiet while being tortured. Someone spent hours on these women.’

‘You knew Carmichael. Do you reckon he could have done that?’ asked Ebony.

‘Yes,’ answered Harding. ‘He could have. He was trained to murder when he was with the SBS. He could have done it in his sleep. Carmichael had secrets, Ebony. Things emerged
about him after the murders.’

Ebony stopped on the first step of the stairs and turned back to Harding.

‘It turned out he’d had an affair six months before the murders.’

‘Who with?’

‘A civilian woman who worked in MIT 11.’

‘Where is she now?’

‘Emigrated shortly after it happened. She hasn’t been back. I checked that out earlier on today. She had a cast iron alibi at the time; she was at the bedside of her mother who was
dying of cancer.’

‘Did it shock you to find out he had an affair, Doctor?’

‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘Why would it? You know how it is. The teams spend days locked together in the same place. They don’t get home even to sleep. They have a hard
time holding down relationships outside the Force. He was an attractive-looking guy. He wasn’t my type – typical army type: quiet, brooding but he was the kind that if you saw him often
enough, worked with him, then maybe he could get under your skin.’