Lee Weeks - Dead of Winter

‘You should have seen her around the bodies. .’ Carter smiled. ‘She practically climbed in beside them to interview them.’

Robbo sat back in his chair, shook his head. ‘You’d think seeing your mum stab someone forty-seven times would put you off bodies for life.’

The sky was steely grey and the further north Ebony drove the thicker the snow fell. She wasn’t a confident driver. She’d only taken her test when she wanted to join the Force and she didn’t own a car. The hire car was new: a poppy red Renault Clio. It smelt much too clean and chemical-y and the unfamiliarity did little to reassure her that she was capable of driving in conditions that no amount of driving lessons could have prepared her for. It was already nearly dark at only two in the afternoon. Ebony looked at the sat nav for encouragement. It hadn’t talked to her for ages, not since it sent her on several turnoffs and then abandoned her on what looked like a road that no one had used for a hundred years. The hedges rose to block her view of anything but the winding lane in front.

She needed a pee. She slowed right down at the entrance to a field then she got out and waded through the snow, knee deep in places. Crouching behind the hedge, she dropped her trousers and peed into the snow. The icy wind started her teeth chattering. She wasn’t happy. She was a London girl, not meant to go more country than Kew Gardens. This was proper countryside. She cursed Carter. He had known it would be like this, miles from anywhere and anyone. She pulled up her pants and walked back to the car.

Just as she put the car into gear and began pulling away, a woman appeared at her window. She had eyebrow and nose piercings. She wore layers on layers, and wellington boots. Her henna-red hair fell in snow-flecked plaits from beneath a bobble hat.

‘Hi. .’ Ebony wound down her window. ‘I’m looking for a farm owned by a man called Callum Carmichael?’

The woman stared at Ebony for a few seconds, checking her out, before walking around the front of the car and opening the passenger door. She got in as if she had been waiting for a taxi, and Ebony was it.

‘Go straight. .’ She took out a packet of tobacco and started rolling a cigarette. ‘You a friend?’

‘Of Carmichael’s? Not really, just need to see him about something. You? Sorry. . you can’t smoke in here. .’

‘I’m not going to. I help him sometimes.’ Ebony looked sideways at the woman. She was a ‘once wild’ teenager. She was pretty but neglected. She smelt of patchouli oil and bonfires. She was beginning to defrost, her plaits were now steaming. ‘I help him with the lambing.’

‘Is it lambing time now? It’s the winter.’

‘Carmichael produces lambs early. Saves buying foreign. People like to eat lamb for Easter. Got to be fattened in time. Not me. I never eat ’em. I know ’em all by name. Be like eating one of my own family.’

‘What about him, Carmichael? Does he know them all by name?’

‘He does but he pretends not to; it’s easier to kill them that way.’

Carmichael stopped chopping wood to listen. Rusty, his Jack Russell terrier, had begun the low growl that signalled the approach of visitors. Carmichael put down his axe and came out of the log store. He wiped his brow on his shirtsleeve as he watched the car lights coming up the lane from half a mile away. He held his hand up for Rusty to be quiet. He glanced across at his rifle resting on the inside of the woodshed door.

Ebony turned the car into the yard, narrowly missing the wheelbarrow full of steaming horse manure, and came to a stop outside the stables. Rusty ran over, barking excitedly. Carmichael watched Bridget, his farm hand, and a young woman get out of the car; he made no attempt to call Rusty away. Ebony wasn’t fazed. She lived in an area where pitbulls came out at night. She reached down to pet him. His barking turned into excited whines, his tail wagged. Bridget walked across the yard, head down, and merely glanced Carmichael’s way as she said:

‘Police. . found her taking a piss in the lower field.’

‘Inspector Callum Carmichael?’ Ebony pretended she hadn’t heard.

Carmichael didn’t answer. He picked up the handles of the wheelbarrow and wheeled it across to the far end of the courtyard so that he could tip out its contents on to the dung heap.

‘I need a few words please, sir.’

He put down the wheelbarrow and looked at her. ‘ID?’

Ebony pulled out her warrant card and held it up for him to see. He appeared to look at her face rather than the card yet her name still seemed to register.

‘DC Ebony Willis?’

‘Yes. .’ Ebony replied.

He finished filling hay nets and tied them inside the horse’s stall then he picked up his rifle from the woodshed and walked past her.

‘Follow me.’

Ebony had her eye on the gun. It was very like the rifles they used in the Police Force, with a shorter barrel and only a metre in length. But it was definitely made for hunting: it had a powerful looking scope attached. Judging by his eyesight and the way he’d read her warrant card, Ebony thought that he could probably hit her running at a mile away with or without a scope.

She followed him into the house. The farmhouse was Spartan, austere. It was certainly never going to make it onto the top of a biscuit tin.

‘I won’t take up much of your time, Mr Carmichael, and then I’ll be on my way.’ They walked through the tack room, up a step and into a stone-floored scullery. Carmichael propped the rifle next to him as he sat on a stool and pulled off his boots. He said nothing as he washed his hands in the sink.

He looked at her as he dried them on a towel above the sink.

‘Relax. . If I wanted to kill you I’d have done it by now.’ She watched him with the same intense look she always had, but he didn’t know her. He took it to be anxiety. ‘Besides. .’ He hung the towel on a hook to the right of the sink. ‘There’s no way you’ll be going anywhere tonight. The lane is almost impassable already; surprised you made it. In half an hour it will be sheet ice. In that car — you’ll be lucky to get ten metres.’ He wiped the mud and debris from the gun barrel with an oiled cloth. ‘It will be more trouble to drag you out of a ditch than it will be to put you up for a night.’

He unclipped his hunting knife and placed it on the shelf. Walking up the few steps and into the kitchen he indicated that she should follow.

‘You hungry?’ He went across to the Aga and pulled the pot of stew from the hotplate. ‘Sit down. Make yourself useful. .’ He set the loaf of bread and a knife in front of her on the scrubbed table top.

Ebony sat down and took the opportunity to look around the kitchen while Carmichael was busy. It looked like no one had decorated for a hundred years. It was clean and functional. It hadn’t made it to the rustic chic pages of a magazine: no hanging copper pans or bunches of dried herbs. No unread recipe books. Carmichael walked past her carrying the logs he’d been chopping. She heard him stacking them beyond the kitchen. When he returned he took two bowls from an oak dresser and spooned in some stew. He opened two bottles of beer and placed one in front of her. Then he sat down opposite.

He didn’t hide his scrutiny. Ebony wished she had a napkin, kitchen roll, anything; she’d splashed her chin and had wiped it lots of times but her hand still felt wet.

‘You’re very young.’ He paused while breaking his bread open. ‘How long have you been a detective?’

‘Four years. I’ve been in the Force six altogether.’ She looked at Carmichael’s face just a few feet away across the table from her. She was re-reading his file in her head: the keenest marksman in the Metropolitan Police Force. His photo taken with the rest of the firearms team. His smile proud, his gaze steadfast. Thirteen years looked like twenty. He was weatherworn, bearded, sunburnt from the wind and the rain. Special Forces before the police: SBS. He had once taken out four members of the top Iraqi military. He had sat in one spot for a week and waited to kill one man.