Christopher Fowler - White Corridor

“What did you spot?” asked May, puzzled.

“A bit of a long shot. She’d put on weight recently, so I thought we might be able to see if the lividity of the body would point to her wearing a chain that had grown a little tight. With the cessation of circulation, the blood settled gravitationally, but at that point she was still wearing the chain, so it left a white line around the back of her neck, see?” He showed May a photograph of a blotched red neck with a pale thread traversing it. “The next assumption we might dare to make is that the chain could identify either her or Mills. Perhaps it was engraved with an inscription. He really doesn’t want to be linked to her. The constable on Renfield’s beat would have searched her and the surrounding doorway for regular forms of ID. Someone should check with him to make sure he didn’t remove anything. My guess is the boy holds all the keys to her identity.”

Longbright was beginning to wonder if Owen Mills was only dumb in the sense that he was refusing to talk. He lounged in his chair, legs crossed at the ankles, and stared in silent insolence at the detective sergeant. With time of the essence, it was too risky to merely wait him out. There was enough evidence to hold him for trespass on government property, but not much else. Mills’s pockets were empty; he might have taken the chain and disposed of it.

As the silence in the room stretched into its seventeenth minute, Longbright discreetly checked the time and tried to think of a way to break the deadlock. “Okay,” she said finally. “Owen, I’m not going to ask anything more about your presence at Bayham Street. We’re not getting very far, are we? I’ll let you go home for now.”

Mills’s deadpan expression glitched with a trace of satisfaction, and he swung lazily to his feet.

“Wait-show me your left hand.”

Reluctantly, the boy opened his fist and raised it. There, a tiny blue curlicue stained his palm.

“What is that?” Longbright held his wrist and examined the mark. A fragment of mirror lettering revealed the familiar spikes of Finch’s strange handwriting.

“You had his notes after all. You crumpled them up with your sweaty palm and transferred the still-wet ink from his fountain pen.”

Longbright rose and walked behind Mills, gently teasing her fingers down the collar of his sweatshirt.

“Hey!” Mills attempted to squirm away, but the DS was too quick for him. She extracted the cheap gold chain from under his shirt and hauled him back to the chair.

“I think you’d better sit down and tell us what you did with the papers you took,” she said, permitting herself a smile. “Then you can explain why you stole jewellery from a dead girl.”

“I spy with my little eye, something beginning with S.” Bryant looked out through the frosted windscreen with cheery wide eyes. His white fringe was standing on end, an effect of the lowering temperature. He looked like Jack Frost’s grandfather.

“I’m not even going to dignify that with an answer.” May sighed.

“Can’t we call them again?”

“You said yourself that they need to stand on their own feet. We won’t always be around, you know.”

“I certainly won’t be around for much longer if you continue to ration the heater.” He tapped ineffectually at the radio. “The bulldozers should have been here by now. All they keep saying is that the driving winds are keeping rescuers at bay.”

“This isn’t the only road blocked. Presumably it’s affecting every major route for miles around, and there’s more snow on the way. We’re going to be here overnight, so we should try to get some sleep.”

The props in the back of the van were wrapped in old blankets, bubble wrap and plastic bags to protect their edges. Keeping warm would be easy enough, but Bryant worried how the passengers in other vehicles were faring. He knew they should really go and check, but stepping outside now would place them both in danger. Neither man was equipped to face subzero temperatures.

They put the heater back on, and were dozing in its desiccating warmth when the fist at their window made them both start. All John May could see was a pair of alarmed brown eyes peering through the furry tunnel of a green snow hood. He rolled down the glass.

“Thank God,” said the man, “nobody else will open their windows-there’s been a terrible-‘

“Wait,” May shouted, “I can’t hear you. Go around the back.” He climbed out of the van and plodded around it, cracking ice from the frozen rear door handle. The man in the green parka clambered up and shook down his hood. He was young, Chinese, frightened. If he noticed that he had been seated next to a gigantic gold-painted statue of Ganesh the Elephant God, he chose not to comment. “I’m in the Honda Civic back there. My engine stalled and the heater died,” he explained. “I needed to keep warm but didn’t have any other clothes in the car with me. There was a truck behind me-I could vaguely see the driver in my rearview mirror-so I thought I’d ask him if I could sit in his cabin. The truck’s side windows were covered in snow and I couldn’t see in, so I tried the driver’s door. I’m sorry-‘ The man fought down a wave of panic. ”I need to call the police-my mobile has no battery left, I just needed to tell someone-’

“It’s all right, you’ve found yourself a pair of police officers,” said May.

“He’s dead, lying across the seat; someone’s cut a hole in his throat. It must have only just happened, because blood is still pouring out. I tried to stop it, but didn’t know what to do.” He held up a crimson left hand.

“Was he alone? Did you see a passenger?”

“No, but the door was swinging open. It hadn’t been properly closed. I must have only just missed him.”

“It’s probably a good thing that you did. You’d better stay here while I go and look.”

“I’m coming with you,” Bryant called from his base deep within the passenger seat.

“It’s freezing out there, Arthur. You’re better off staying in here.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. My blood is so thin I’m virtually reptilian. I haven’t felt anything in my extremities since I landed on my arse in the Princess Diana Memorial Fountain. Besides, you need my help. You’re not as steady on your pins as you once were.”

“I resent that,” muttered May. “Come on then, just for a minute, but do your coat up properly.”

With the wind trying to whip the handle from his grasp, May had trouble closing the van door until their witness reached out to help him pull it shut. The detectives padded back along the column of stranded cars to the grocery truck, but any footprints that might have been left around it had already been obliterated by the gale. The snow coated their ears and eyes in feathered clumps. The mere act of breathing stung their noses and throats. The sky, the hills, the wind itself was white. The moorlands had been transformed into a blanched ice-desert, the trees bent low in frozen peninsulas of frost. May needed gloves and proper boots. His leather town shoes had become soaked in seconds. As he fumbled with the driver’s door, he realised he had already lost all sensation in his hands.

“Oh, let me do it,” said Bryant. “There.” The door came open in a spray of crystal shards.

The driver’s body was splayed across the seat on its back with one arm draped across a distended stomach, the mouth agape, as in the throes of a nightmare. The interior of the cabin had been darkened by snow building up across the windscreen, but there was enough light to reveal the hole beneath the driver’s chin. In the freezing exposure of the cabin, blood had quickly coagulated and darkened across the upholstery.