Lee Weeks - Cold as Ice

‘Just going downstairs – mind the till for me, Barb,’ she said as she passed.

‘Okay, no probs.’

She turned to Carter: ‘Would you like to see a big snake?’

‘Love to.’

She led the way through the door and down the stairs that turned sharply around to the left. Downstairs they walked into a small hot room with a massive tank running the length of it. Inside was a snake that fitted it.

‘Jesus! How big is that thing?’

‘ That is Lulu and she’s about sixteen feet.’

‘How much does she weigh?’

‘About nine stone.’

Carter walked over to the tank and came level with the curled snake.

‘She’s a python,’ said Silky. ‘I’ve had her for ten years but she’s just too big for me to have at my house now.’

He shook his head, impressed. ‘Yeah – I bet. Do you handle her?’

‘Sure, I get her out most days. Except when she’s hungry – like most women she gets bad-tempered then.’

‘And how often does she get hungry?’

‘Once a month.’

‘Then what? Half a dozen rabbits?’

‘Just one.’

‘If she eats that then she won’t eat again?’

‘Not for a month.’

‘She won’t bother to kill?’

‘No. I mean I still wouldn’t handle her alone. Once she coiled around your neck, you wouldn’t be able to get her off. She might not even be looking to eat you, just to defend herself or to feel stable, just to get a hold on something.’

‘Could she eat you?’

‘Lulu?’ Carter nodded. ‘I’d be too big for her but she could eat a baby, a small child. In the wild they have been known to eat people. They can grow to fifty feet and can weigh one hundred and thirty-five kilos.’

‘Would she eat another snake?’

‘No. But a decapitated snake can bite itself. A snake’s body can go on moving for hours.’

‘Jesus – that’s evil.’

She laughed. It was beginning to feel uncomfortably warm and small in the room. They seemed to be standing awfully close. He looked at his watch.

‘Thanks so much for your help – if I can have that list now.’

‘Yeah, sure.’ She led the way back up the stairs and stopped halfway. She caught Carter staring at her bum. ‘Do you want to give me your number? I can ring you if I think of anything else you ought to know about spiders or snakes. Maybe you could buy me a drink sometime and I’d let you pick my brains?’ He followed her back to the counter.

‘I’d love to but police business, rules and all that – you understand.’

She cocked her head to one side and smiled. ‘I understand. She’s a lucky woman.’

Carter drove to the office and took the lift up to MIT 17.

He had the mailing list of pet owners in his hand. He went straight to Robbo’s office and handed it to James.

‘Check out everyone on this list and see if Hawk could be one of them please, James.’

‘Will do.’

Robbo stopped working and waited for Carter to report back about what he’d found.

He shook his head.

‘It seems anyone can own a spider that bites or a snake that can strangle. If you wanted to breed your own food for it, you need never go near a pet shop or a vet’s, I suppose.’

Robbo nodded. ‘James has been contacting all the vets in North London. We’ve found three people with registered snakes and we’ve sent officers round to check them out . Meanwhile I’ve been looking at the CCTV footage of the roads around Tracy’s home; looking for the van driver.’

Jeanie walked in at that moment.

‘May I?’ she asked as she picked up Robbo’s fresh cafetière from on top of the cupboard.

‘Yes. Help yourself, pour me one.’

‘I’ll do it.’ Carter said. He walked across to Jeanie and put his hand on her arm. ‘You okay after yesterday?’

She smiled. ‘I’m fine, honest.’ Carter could see she wasn’t. ‘Okay, I’m a bit shaken but I’ll be all right. What’s worrying me is what if it was Hawk who tried to run us over, and what if he knew it was me – a police officer. Then he tried to kill me, personally. He knew who I was.’ Robbo rocked in his chair. He looked across at Jeanie and Carter.

‘Yes – if it was Hawk then we know he knows who is on our team.’

‘But does that mean he knows Ebony?’ Jeanie asked.

Robbo shook his head.

‘He can’t know about her. He knew about you from the press conference. He knows about me because he’s looked into crime analysts in the MIT teams and maybe he takes a lucky guess.’

‘Maybe he’s very smart,’ said Jeanie.

She sat in Pam’s empty chair and watched Robbo scan through grainy black and white images of a night shot of the local shops near Tracy’s home.

‘I went to see Steve Collins about returning to the family home to provide extra security for Tracy and Jackson,’ said Jeanie. ‘It was the weirdest meeting with him. He’s not interested in moving home. He wants nothing to do with any of it. I’d say Steve is preparing to do a runner.’ She joined them at Robbo’s desk and pulled up a chair. ‘I’d like to give him the benefit of the doubt but I’d say he’s a player. Tracy told me he has a history of bad debts. I wonder what it would take for him to jump ship. This might be the excuse he’s been waiting for.’

‘He works for a storage company, right?’ Robbo asked.

‘Yes, area manager – Tracy says.’

Robbo started typing: ‘Let’s have a quick look at what the company say about him.’ He clicked on the relevant division and scrolled the list of employees. ‘Surprise, surprise, he’s not on the list of current employees. Let’s try twelve months ago… Yes. There he is – Stephen Collins. I don’t know why but he lost his job and he hasn’t told his wife.’

‘Could he have known something?’ asked Carter.

‘He could have been watching the house in the build-up to Danielle going missing,’ said Jeanie. She was trying to think back to what Tracy had said about Steve. ‘He’s pretending to go somewhere to work because she irons his shirts, has his suit dry-cleaned. Tracy thinks her husband is finally making good from having fucked up and smashed her dreams of owning her own beauty salon. They already lost their home because of his bad debts.’

‘He hasn’t wanted to put yet another nail in the coffin of their relationship maybe.’ Carter shrugged.

‘What’s that?’ Jeanie pointed to the CCTV footage.

‘It’s just over a week ago,’ answered Robbo.

Jeanie watched the screen as a young, slim female figure in a fur-trimmed coat came into view. She was pushing a buggy. Jeanie pulled her chair close to the screen.

‘That’s Danielle,’ she said. ‘Freeze it for me, zoom in. Yes, that’s Danielle, I’m sure. We’ll need to look at the footage more closely but it looks like the photos I’ve seen. There’s Jackson.’ She touched the screen. ‘Look! You can see Scruffy’s tail. It’s definitely them.’

‘What’s she doing?’ Carter moved in close to Jeanie as he stared at the screen.

Jeanie turned to Robbo. ‘What day is this?’

‘It’s the day Danielle disappeared,’ he answered. ‘Hours after this was taken she was abducted from her flat.’

Carter looked at them both and back to the screen. ‘She came to Tracy’s house that day?’

‘Tracy didn’t mention it. She definitely didn’t know. Can we follow her route, Robbo?

They watched Danielle cross the road by the shops and turn down Tracy’s road.

‘There’s no way that she’s going anywhere else,’ said Robbo.

‘So why would Danielle visit Tracy a day before she was due to meet up with her anyway?’ Carter sat back from the screen to think.