Lee Weeks - Cold as Ice

‘Can you lift it for me please?’

Foster lifted the bedding right back, folded it into a neat pile. He folded the mattress back. Then he prised up the corner of the box enough to get his hand beneath. He paused, turned towards Carter and, at that minute, Carter was deciding his options. He had already taken a step nearer the door and had made a note of anything he might use as a weapon. He knew he was faster than Foster but was he stronger?

‘I need a hand.’ Foster nodded towards the foot of the bed. ‘Here.’ He handed him a wrench. Carter slid the end beneath the top of the box and together they lifted it. Carter stood back and looked at Foster. Foster nodded.

‘Go ahead, open it.’

Carter knocked on the lid and then slid it across. Beneath it, lying in the bottom, was a shroud and an urn.

‘Marion.’ Foster looked at Carter. ‘I have left instructions that I want our ashes to be joined and scattered at Margate. That was where we used to take Danielle for day trips. Happy times.’

‘Why do you live out here?’

‘I can’t bear to sleep alone in the house.’

‘People get ill, Gerald. There is no blame attached to cancer. People cope with it in different ways and families manage it as best they can. Danielle wouldn’t have wanted Marion to get ill. She couldn’t have given her cancer as you suggest. There’s no justice with cancer – and no blame.’

‘I know. I know. I’m not a fool. I didn’t cope with it as well as I could have done. When I think of those teenage years with Danielle I just see my wife getting sicker and my life spiralling out of control. It all seemed to go so wrong. All the plans, all the hope we had for the future came to nothing and the one person I loved in my life is gone. Danielle took all my energy that I should have given to my wife in her dying years.’

Carter reached out and patted Gerald Foster’s shoulder.

‘You did your best.’

He turned to Carter. ‘Maybe. I wish we’d never adopted her. I wish we’d just had each other and not hankered after a child so much. But… I hope you find her. I hope she does make a good life for herself and the little boy.’

Harding was sitting at her office desk in one of a suite of rooms in the basement of the Whittington Hospital, which housed the mortuary and post mortem room as well as her laboratory. She looked across at Mark, who was fishing a brain out of formaldehyde ready for slicing into centimetre-wide slices, and wondered if tonight was the night she should make her move.

She phoned Robbo. It was very late – he could have gone home a few hours ago, but instead he had stayed to work on the case.

‘Results are through on examination of the ulcerated sites and necrosis on Pauline Murphy’s body. I’ll be over in a minute. I can’t get hold of Carter – his phone is switched off. I’ll come across and see Chief Inspector Bowie instead but I’ll send you the results first – they’re interesting. You may want to get researching.’

Harding got out of her protective work clothes and pulled on her fur-trimmed floor-length coat as she picked up her car keys.

‘I’m going across to talk to Chief Inspector Bowie. Will you be okay working late tonight?’

Mark looked up from his work and nodded.

‘You driving?’ he asked. ‘It’s really icy out there.’

‘I am driving, yes. I refuse to allow a bit of ice to stop me; plus I thought I’d pick up a couple of bottles of something for later, just in case we get thirsty.’ She waited for him to look up again from his work. He didn’t.

Harding parked outside Fletcher House and punched in her passcode at the door. She took the lift up to MIT 17 and arrived at Bowie’s office at the same time as Carter.

‘Doctor?’ Carter waited until Robbo and Harding were settled and ready to speak.

‘As you know we took samples from the ulcerated sites. Results are back.’

‘Yes?’ Bowie was looking as rough as he always did, thought Carter.

‘They’re caused by spider bites. Those were the needle-like wounds. They were spider’s fangs.’

‘Ordinary spiders?’ asked Bowie.

‘No, they’re not ordinary in this country. We have spiders that can bite but…’

She turned to look at Robbo, whose enthusiasm was unleashed.

‘Doctor Harding asked me to look into the types of spider that would be a match for the venom. There are a couple of possibilities, none of them native to this country. We do have spiders that can bite – even the house spider can nip you if cornered – but none of ours would be able to cause infection like this.’

‘We have now identified different sized fang bites on the victims,’ said Harding. ‘Hawk has more than one type of poisonous spider.’

Robbo started a slideshow of spiders on his laptop.

‘What happens when you’re bitten?’ Bowie asked as the images flashed up.

‘Within a couple of hours it starts to itch and swell,’ answered Harding. ‘And within a few days, left untreated, the ulcers form and start eating away at the flesh. There is no cure for that.’

Robbo clicked on images of bite wounds. There was a sharp intake of breath from Carter. ‘Christ.’

‘The wounds have been recorded at twenty-five centimetres in diameter,’ Harding stated. ‘Bacteria creeps in and then infection from these bites is common. Limb amputations are the only answer as gangrene sets in.’

‘There’s no cure?’ asked Carter. He stared at the photos of the wounds and his face paled.

‘There’s anti-venom.’

‘What about the antibiotics you found in her blood?’ asked Bowie. ‘If he knows a lot about these spiders he knows that he can’t cure the ulcerated sites with antibiotics. So he plans to kill them slowly, giving them small amounts of antibiotics just to prolong the agony. Is that what it looks like, Doctor?’

Harding nodded.

‘The antibiotics would only have prolonged life but not enough to halt the necrosis or prevent renal failure. All of the victims were about to go into kidney failure. Their organs were in a dire state from the poison in their systems.’

‘We’ll contact pet shops in North London and start asking for customer lists.’

‘There’s an exotic pet shop near me. I’ll go and ask some questions,’ said Carter.

Robbo closed his laptop. ‘It would be worth ordering in some anti-venom just in case we have the pleasure of meeting the man and his pets.’

Harding got back to the Whittington and found Mark still working. She had a bottle of wine in her hand and another in her bag.

‘Thought we could do we a little R&R?’ She planted the wine on the table and threw her coat over the back of the chair.

Mark looked worried. ‘Just realized I haven’t sent the debris from Emily Styles’ hair off for analysis.’

Harding’s expression instantly changed to one of annoyance.

‘Did you sift it?’ she said brusquely.

‘Yes.’

‘Where is it?’

‘Still in the fridge waiting to be sent to the lab.’

A flash of anger crossed Harding’s face. ‘You better call them now and you can get it across to them yourself.’

‘Yes, Doctor.’ Harding walked through to the specimen store, a room off the post mortem room, and opened the fridge. Inside were labelled bags and plastic pots and trays. She found the set of specimens belonging to Emily Styles and pulled out the packet labelled hair residue. She took it back to her desk and tipped the contents into a clean tray.

‘What are you looking for?’ asked Mark as he came to stand behind her.

She was momentarily distracted by the nearness of his body. His leg was against hers as he watched what she was doing.

‘We may as well do the first part of the analysis ourselves to save time. I want to dry it off. We know so much more about our man now. I want to make sure we didn’t miss anything. I’ll just keep it thirty minutes then you can go.’ She turned to see if he was okay with that and found him so close that she couldn’t breathe. She turned back to the desk and began picking through the debris with tweezers.