Lee Weeks: Dead of Winter

Ebony went into the en suite bathroom.

‘What’s it like in there?’ Carter called out. He knelt on the floor to measure the indentations where the bed had been.

‘It doesn’t feel like a woman’s bathroom, Sarge,’ she answered, standing in the white-tiled room. ‘It’s not pretty, just white: ultra clean.’ Ebony’s voice echoed. ‘And it doesn’t smell so much of perfume, more of mothballs, old-fashioned. The same smell as the bedroom.’ She stood looking around at the glass shelves on the walls. ‘Someone had a lot of things they needed to keep in here, off the floor — keep clean.’

Carter came to stand in the doorway. ‘Yeah. . too clean. . too sterile. What was that bloke’s name? The one who didn’t like germs?’

‘Howard Hughes?’

‘That’s it. . maybe someone’s a Howard Hughes type. Everything has to be bleached and kept up away from contamination. I’m going to end up like him if I don’t watch it. . already see the signs of it. Cabrina says it’s like living in a show home.’ He winked at Ebony. He could see by her face she didn’t know how to take him. He wondered if she ever opened up to anyone. ‘Let’s go and see if the SOCOs have finished downstairs.’

At the bottom of the stairs Sandford was packing his drill away. He glanced at them as they came level.

‘I’ll finish up here and get my initial report to you in a few hours,’ he said to Carter with a nod towards Ebony. ‘Don’t want to be long from here. There’s a lot of work still to be done.’

‘Good man,’ Carter answered.

Ebony noticed that Carter talked differently to people with posh accents. She wasn’t quite sure whether he was taking the piss or just feeling awkward. ‘We won’t be long either. We’ll finish looking around here and then we need to get back for the autopsies. Forensics might have got something by then.’

Sandford slammed his toolbox shut. ‘Maybe.’

They left Sandford to it and walked down the corridor that ran almost the length of the house. On one side was a formal dining room and a study, on the other a snug room and a second lounge. At the end of the corridor a large kitchen opened out and led to a conservatory on the left. A utility room was at the back and to the right of the kitchen, a Dutch airer hung empty from the ceiling above them, and a washing machine sat with its door open and a plastic basket on top, a strange reminder that there was normal life in Blackdown Barn. Through the utility room a cellar door was open.

Carter flicked on a switch that illuminated the stone stairs and they made their way down. The smell of damp hit Ebony as she descended. The cold chilled to the bone. Carter stopped at the bottom, a large bare space, pitch black in its corners beneath low rafters and in hidden alcoves. He gave a small two-footed jump. ‘New, solid floor. I can smell sweat, rubber in the air. Maybe they had a gym down here, Ebb.’

‘Could be, Sarge.’

‘That’s what happens when you quit smoking, Ebb. You start smelling everything. I can smell a bacon sandwich being cooked half a mile away. I’ve already put on a few pounds. . muscle, of course. .’ He turned to wink at her but she wasn’t looking or listening to him: she’d walked on down to where the cellar narrowed. A door opened to her right. Inside was a room just big enough for a single bed and a chair. It reminded her of a place she had stayed with her mother once, reminded her of so many places. It had the same smell of damp. The corners of the rooms where mould collected. It was colourless. It was bare. She had spent a lot of her childhood sitting on a bed like that, trying hard to do her homework, her world constantly shifting beneath her feet, moving on, getting better.

‘Sarge?’

‘What is it, Ebb?’ Carter appeared beside her in the room. ‘Fuck. . this is definitely the economy accommodation.’ He looked at the bed. ‘Forensics will be taking all this as soon as the transport gets here. Christ. . how many people lived in this house, Ebb?’ Ebony didn’t answer — she was busy putting on latex gloves. ‘What are you doing?’ Carter watched her.

She knelt on the floor and stretched her right arm underneath the bed until her shoulder was wedged against the frame; she ran her hand along the bottom of the springs.

‘This bed wouldn’t take the weight of a pregnant woman.’ She moved her arm down the bed, sweeping the underside as she went. Ebony had spent so much of her childhood in bedsits and emergency housing that she tried to leave something for the next child wherever she went. Sometimes it was a smiley face sticker, stuck to the leg of the bed. Other times it was a cheap toy, the kind you get free in cereal packets. Other kids left her things.

When she drew her hand back, she was holding a piece of red cloth.

‘What is it, a piece of clothing?’ It uncurled in her hand. In its corner was a fleck of white and the beginnings of a golden embroidered circle.

‘Not sure. It was tied on to the springs.’

They heard the sound of the SOCOs making their way down with the exhibit removal team. Ebony dropped it into a plastic bag and put it in her pocket.

‘Let’s go, Ebb. We’ll leave them to it.’

On the way back to Carter’s car, still wearing her gloves, she took out the piece of cloth from her pocket and looked at it again. As she pulled it flat she saw the beginning of spokes inside the golden circle.

‘What football team do you support, Sarge?’

‘Tottenham, why?’

‘Who’s your biggest rival?’ He looked across at her. She stretched the cloth tight and held it up to show him. At the edge of it was the start of a golden gun barrel. ‘I think someone was an Arsenal supporter.’

They arrived back at Fletcher House with twenty minutes to spare before the meeting at eight. Fletcher House was just behind Archway Tube station. An innocuous-looking building from the outside; it appeared to be like any other office block except that there was no reception area and visitors had to make it past the bombproof security and the SOCOs vans in the car park. Across London there were two other buildings like Fletcher House; together they split London into three large policing districts to cope with major incidents and served the whole of the Metropolitan Police District. Each of the buildings was home to four Major Incident Teams, MITs. Ebony and Carter were part of the Murder Squad in MIT 17. The rest of the MIT called the Murder Squad ‘The Dark Side’. They both worked in the largest room, the Enquiry Team Office (ETO). It was where the bulk of the work was done by the team: six long desks with officers sitting opposite one another.

‘I hear you had a busy night?’

Ebony’s station was diagonally opposite Jeanie the Family Liaison Officer. She was rated as the best FLO there was on any of the murder squads. She was good at making families talk, gaining their confidence; at the same time she got the best for them. She had gone through a lot of training to specialize but it was clear to all that she had found her niche. Jeanie was on the phone when Ebony sat down. She was ‘on hold’.

Ebony nodded. ‘Get the feeling it won’t be the last busy one. It’s a big area to search.’

‘Yeah, I saw the boys getting excited about all the equipment they had to order. Boys’ toys: diggers, thermal imaging, the works.’ Ebony smiled. ‘I hear you were partnered with Dan Carter. How was it?’

‘It was good.’

Jeanie lowered her voice, held her hand over the mouthpiece of the phone. ‘Great guy, fantastic detective, nightmare as a boyfriend. Believe me: seriously high maintenance. I take my hat off to Cabrina for making him move up the ladder of commitment. A kid is something I could never in a million years imagine Dan having. . Sticky fingers all over the silk sheets? No way.’