Michael Fowler - Cold Death

“You’re the first.” Hunter paused gathering his thoughts. “You said you used to go out with her?” he pointing towards the photograph Dr. Woolfe was still holding.

“We were at Sheffield Uni together. I was in my last year when she came. I took her round on her first student’s rag week, that’s how we met.”

“When was this?”

“Year before I started my training — two thousand and six.”

“Do you know how old she was then?”

He thought for a moment. “I’m twenty-three now so I would have been twenty-one back then,” he appeared to be talking to himself. “She would have been eighteen — nineteen.” He paused and then blurted out. “We went out for a short time — well until we had all that bother.” He gulped again.

Hunter directed a quick glance at Grace. She was looking engrossed.

“Bother?” Hunter enquired.

“Yeah from her cousins.”

“You’ve got me hooked doc, tell us more.”

“Call me Chris please. Where do you want me to start?”

“From where you think best. I’ll stop you if I need to ask a question.”

“Well as I say we met on rag week. She was with a couple of girls and she joined our group to go round town. We got chatting — she was doing her first year medicine and she wanted to know what to expect. We just hit it off you know and she’d come round to my place from time to time to borrow some notes and chat. After a couple of months I asked her to go out for a meal and she agreed. Things just worked out for us from there. I was in students accommodation and she was in halls of residence and one night after we’d been to the cinema I asked her if she wanted to stay at mine. After that night she’d stay on a regular basis. Sometimes even at weekends when she should have gone home. That’s when the trouble started.”

“What trouble?”

“Let me just give you some background. Samia’s parents are Pakistani but she was English. She told me they owned a shop in Hoyland and lived in the flat upstairs. She had her heart set on being a doctor but she said that they continually badgered her to go to Pakistan for an arranged marriage to her cousin. Apparently the only way they allowed her to come to University was because she promised she would go to Pakistan to meet the cousin during the summer break. She told me she was dreading this because she had never been to Pakistan in her life and didn’t want to marry any cousin. She’d seen a photograph of him and he was a lot older than her — in his thirties I think she said, and she didn’t fancy him. She wanted the freedom to chose who she married. I heard her a few times on her mobile having a row with her father over this.”

“What about the trouble?”

“That was about a year ago now. I had just finished uni and had started my medical training. She had moved in with me into a newer flat. She hadn’t told her parents because she was so scared, though she had told them she was seeing me. They had another blazing row. She told me they were threatening to disown her and that she was bringing shame on the family and that she should marry the cousin in Pakistan. I know it upset her a great deal. She tried to speak with her mother a few times but she would hang up on her. Then one night we had just come out of this bar and this car pulls up. Two Asian guys get out and just set about me, gave me a right hiding. They tried to drag Samia into the car but there were quite a few people about that we knew, thank God and they intervened and phoned the police. The two guys took off before the cops arrived. Samia told me they were relatives; she’d seen them before at her house. She didn’t like them. She said one of them had been in trouble with the police. She persuaded me not to make a complaint and that she’d sort it. She guessed it was because her parents had found out about us sharing a flat.”

“So you never made a complaint?”

“I wanted to. My face was in a right mess. I couldn’t work for a couple of days and I got a rollicking from my consultant for turning up to work all bruised. Said I didn’t set the right image for a doctor.”

“Was that the end of it?”

“Christ, no. There was a couple more. One night we came home and the flat was trashed, and I mean trashed. Everything was in pieces and they had cut up all of Samia’s clothes.”

“Did you report that?”

“I did that time. I had to for the insurance. We told the police about Samia’s relatives but there were no witnesses and they didn’t find any evidence to connect them, so that was that. The final straw came when I was on lates one day. I finished my shift about midnight and I was just walking across the hospital car park when the same two guys waylaid me. They’d wrecked my car. And they told me in no uncertain terms I had to finish with Samia or I would end up at the bottom of a lake. Those were their exact words.”

Stirling, Scotland:

DCI Dawn Leggate had finally got home at midnight. It had been another long day. She took a quick shower, checked her answer machine; there were no messages, and fell into bed.

The alarm woke her at six-thirty am and despite having only had five and a half hours sleep, it had been undisturbed and she felt remarkably refreshed. It was strange, she thought to herself, as she brushed her teeth, but she always felt like this when a big investigation was running. It had to be the adrenaline rush she mused.

She made herself coffee, placed bread from the freezer into the toaster and then dialled Alex McBride’s mobile.

She could tell from his voice that she had woke him up. She apologised as he told her it had been two am before he’d finally got to his own bed and offered to ring him later but he responded by telling her he needed to be up himself to brief his own team.

“Likewise, that’s why I’m ringing you so early,” she replied. As soon as it had come out she could have bit her lip. Her retort had come out all wrong. She hoped he wouldn’t take her response as being a dig — that he was still in bed and she wasn’t — especially that now they were managing a joint investigation together.

She needn’t have worried. He gave her an update of the Belshill murder; she scribbled notes into her police daily journal, her concentration only momentarily distracted when the toast popped out. Then prior to hanging up she thanked him and felt the need to apologise once again for waking him up. Before she rang off DI McBride promised to send over a DS and a DC from his team to join her own morning briefing.

She hit the end call button and then dialled the HOLMES supervisor at Stirling and was brought up to date as to the status of the Killin murder enquiry. She made more notes. It was seven-thirty am when she hit the road.

* * * * *

Entering the office Dawn could see that several new incident whiteboards had been set up. The Glasgow city centre and Belshill murder had a board each and they had been abutted onto their Killin enquiry. These all contained very important components of the investigation and from experience she knew that thorough updates on those charts kept them all in touch with the case. More than anything it helped get a feel for things and could point them in the direction of the perpetrator.

She realised they must have been erected the previous day whilst she and DS John Reed had been at the Belshill murder scene liaising with DI Alex McBride.

Looking at their contents and recollecting the notes she had transcribed in her journal a half an hour ago she knew that the morning’s briefing was going to be very intense.

She checked the three timelines — the handwriting was wonderfully neat; she couldn’t help but think that was a rarity amongst police officers.

Also attached were photographs of the victims, gruesome Scenes of Crime shots plus crime scene locations and maps of each of the surrounding areas. Her eyes darted from log to log. Except for a few things from the Belshill scene everything was here.