Lee Weeks: Cold as Ice

It was the first week in December and for three weeks the temperatures in the UK had plummeted so low that now the Regent’s Canal had completely frozen over. The gloomy silence was fractured by the boom and bellow of a massive building works programme going on in King’s Cross. Most days the sky played battlefield to giant industrial cranes but today visibility was limited to just twenty feet; it was just far enough to see across the canal, where it narrowed towards the gates then dropped eight feet and widened into a basin. The water hadn’t been flowing for two weeks and the canal boats were stuck, moored in ice.

A group of six lads walked down towards the frozen canal. Mouse, nicknamed a year ago when he was the smallest member of the gang, before he grew into a lanky skulker, dragged his feet, kicking the loose stones as he sloped along the towpath, hands deep in the pockets of his black hoody. He was nervous today. A lot was expected of him.

Leon, the leader of the boys, moved back along the ranks until he came level with Mouse. Mouse lifted his chin in the direction of the new boy. ‘I don’t see you asking him to do it?’

‘That’s cos he needs to wait his turn.’

The others sniggered and Mouse gathered phlegm and rolled it round his tongue before he spat the globule onto the path.

‘Anyways—’ Leon moved closer and walked alongside Mouse – ‘he don’t know how it works with the old man on the till. He don’t know how to distract him.’

Mouse’s eyes were furtive beneath the rim of his hoody. He shook his head. ‘No, man, he knows me; he won’t let me in the shop.’

‘He will.’ Leon put his arm around Mouse’s shoulder. The other boys turned and grinned at one another.

He shrugged Leon off. ‘I’m telling you he won’t. I tried to buy something for my mum last week. He wouldn’t even let me do that.’

‘You scared of the old man?’

Mouse tried a laugh but it came out shrill and false in the frozen air.

‘You need to stay calm. Stay cool.’ Leon sucked in the air through the gap between his big front teeth. ‘Be happy; don’t worry.’ As he talked he leant his weight on Mouse and they stepped closer to the canal’s edge. One of the boys picked up a stone from the towpath and threw it across the frozen water.

‘Oi! Stop that!’ The man stood at the other side of the canal and stared at them. Another stone skimmed over the top of the ice, leaving a frosted trail. ‘What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing?’ he shouted again.

‘What’s it to you, old man?’ Laughter rang out amongst the obscenities as one of the lads prised up a loose slab from the side of the towpath and launched it across the ice.

‘I work here, that’s what. It’s dangerous. Now bugger off home.’

Mouse joined in the whistling and the jeering across the canal. When he turned his attention back to his mates he found them standing in his way, corralling him in; his back to the canal. A play-fight ensued between him and Leon. Mouse struggled to slip his wiry frame from Leon’s firm grip and finished being tipped backwards towards the ice, dangling. He tried to laugh as he clung tight to Leon, who seemed about to haul him in but instead dropped him. Mouse bounced on his back and then slid across the surface. His friends whooped with delight as they watched him struggle to get to his knees, fall and slip sideways. He tried again, still managing to see the funny side of his predicament, inwardly so grateful that the ice had held his weight, but now all he wanted was to get off it fast. He steadied himself, turned over onto his knees and placed two hands down on the frozen surface and then stopped laughing. He scrambled to move away from that spot. His hands began to stick to the ice. His face was just an inch from the surface and his eyes slowly focused on the scene beneath his hands. He was winded, he couldn’t scream; he couldn’t talk. He heard the sound of his friends laughing. He tried to make out the shape he was looking at: the first thing he saw was the grinning mouth, the next her eyes, swollen lids opening just wide enough to stare back at him. There between his hands, inches from his face a woman stared up at him through the frozen surface of the canal.

Mouse’s scream was lost in the wail and boom coming from the building site nearby.

By midday, the day was as light as it was going to get. Freezing fog shrouded the canal above St Pancras Lock. It wrapped around Detective Inspector Dan Carter’s thick-set frame like a wet blanket. He tucked his stripy cashmere scarf into his overcoat and pulled the collar up around his neck.

From where Carter was standing he could see the naked legs of a young woman’s body. Her swollen white limbs had a blackish hue.

He looked up as Detective Constable Ebony Willis came striding back along the towpath towards him, tucking her notebook back inside her jacket as she did so. He thought how she didn’t seem to notice the cold, didn’t feel it like he did. Today the cold and damp in the air sank into his bones; he just couldn’t get warm. Ebony didn’t even have gloves on. She was wearing her self-imposed uniform of black trousers and a fitted black quilted jacket. Her afro hair was scraped into a ballooning ponytail at the back of her neck.

He waited until she reached him. ‘What’s the score?’ he asked, keeping his voice low and banging his leather-gloved hands together to counteract the cold.

‘Basically – he says she wouldn’t have gone far in this canal.’

Carter looked past her to the man in the dark overcoat walking away.

‘Is he the lock keeper?’

‘No, he’s the man who was here when the boys were messing about and fell onto the ice. But he knows all about the Regent’s Canal – he works in the Canal Museum just down the road. He said that different types of locks allow for different water levels and movement between sections of canal.’

Carter swivelled on his heels to look around him and get his bearings. ‘Plenty of ways to get down here, especially with all the development that’s going on. There’s two acres of Camley Park on the other side of the canal for a start. Did he mention if there was any CCTV?’

‘The nearest is two hundred metres away, Guv.’

Carter stepped closer to the side of the canal and knelt to pick up a piece of the broken ice.

‘Got to be two inches thick.’ He turned it over in his hand. ‘We’ll need to wait for the ice to thaw before we can get the divers in to search.’

‘Yes, Guv – forecast isn’t good. No more snow for a few days but then it’s coming back.’

Carter’s thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of journalists on the bridge that spanned the canal up to their right. He could just about make them out: dark shadows moving through the fog. He heard them clanking their equipment as they hurried down as far as they were allowed onto the towpath. They stopped fifty metres away from where Carter and Ebony stood; just near where their car was parked. Next they heard an officer on the edge of the crime scene talking to them, directing them to where they could stand. Carter scowled.

‘They didn’t take long to find out.’

‘No, Guv. The canal man said the lad who fell on the ice took pictures on his phone; his friends wouldn’t help him out till he put it on Instagram.’

‘Little bastards. Where is he now?’