Dead of Winter (27 page)

Fenwick’s car was four-wheel drive and he was glad, even though municipal gritters had readied the main roads for the forecast snowstorm. As he steered through the college gates the first snowflakes started to fall in a gentle patter on his windscreen.

He parked his car in the visitors’ car park some distance from the building where Lulu Bullock had rooms. As he stepped out he pulled his coat collar tight against a biting wind that was whipping the fresh fall of snow into needles that stung any exposed skin. He stuffed his free hand into a pocket and concentrated on not falling over.

He was curious to know what Lulu Bullock had found among Issie’s papers. As soon as he had them he told himself that he would leave. The front door was unlocked and he walked in, looking around for someone to whom he could announce his arrival. The place was empty. Feeling like an intruder, he made his way up the stairs.

On the second floor he walked past the staffroom and found the back stairs he remembered. They rose steeply into a gloomy space for which he couldn’t find a switch. As he climbed he considered Lulu’s way of life; on top of work in an isolated flat that must
surely be lonely once school was over, almost spooky. He felt his way up the stairs, his fingers brushing the wall as he climbed away from the light. The small hairs on the back of his neck rose and he became aware of a presence on the stairs above. She was dressed in a long black fur coat with leather boots tight to the knee.

‘I was just going to check the art block,’ she explained. ‘I hadn’t expected you to come so soon.’

‘Do you need to go to the block now or can it wait?’

‘I’ll go later; come on up.’

He hesitated, wondering whether it would be better to talk in the staffroom below.

‘I have coffee brewing and you’re shivering; it will warm you up.’

She turned and started to climb. As the stair turned, a light came on suddenly, illuminating her profile and the shimmer of her long hair.

‘Is there any news about Issie?’ she asked. ‘On the radio they just mentioned that the man who’d been killed near here was involved in Issie’s abduction. Is that true?’

Fenwick carried on climbing the stairs. Norman and Bernstein had decided to go live with news of Dan Mariner’s death and connect it to Issie’s abduction. He didn’t agree with their decision. If Mariner heard he might become desperate and harm Issie. To risk the publicity they must have run out of other ideas but there was no way he was going to confirm or deny anything to Miss Bullock.

‘I’m afraid I can’t comment.’

‘Oh, I see; am I a suspect now?’ She turned and smiled but Fenwick didn’t respond.

He was regretting his impulse to come to the school. What had made him do it?

‘I only need a few minutes of your time. I’m sure you must be busy.’

‘Hardly! Everyone is at the carol service. The girls who are not Christians are allowed to spend a couple of hours in town while it’s on but for teachers there’s no such tolerance, which I object to. As I
am resolutely agnostic I refuse to go. Over the years various heads have tried to enforce my attendance but each one has eventually realised the futility of their efforts. So there’s only me and the caretakers here.’

‘Oh.’ He felt foolish. ‘You should be more careful with your security then. I was able to walk straight in.’

‘Everywhere is locked up. I’d just released the front door from my flat – I can do that – so that it wouldn’t close and lock me out while I was in the art block. They’ll be back by seven provided the weather doesn’t get any worse.’

They had reached the landing from which the final set of stairs went up to her flat. Instead of continuing to climb, Lulu Bullock moved back one step.

‘Aren’t
you
worried sick about Issie, Superintendent?’

‘Of course I am.’

When Lulu opened her front door a blanket of warm air enveloped Fenwick, infused with spices of some kind, tangy and rich at the same time. In the small hall he struggled to take off his scarf and coat.

‘Here, let me help you.’

Lulu reached her arms behind his back and removed his coat in one smooth movement.

‘It might be a good idea to take off your jacket as well; it’s warm in here.’

He felt it taken from him.

‘Go and sit by the fire; I’ll get coffee.’

There was a fierce blaze in the glass-fronted fireplace. He watched the flames billow as the wind roared its way down the chimney. He could hear it screeching around the chimney as gusts surged over the school roofs. Instead of sitting down he looked properly at the paintings that covered the walls. Many of them were signed with dedications to her but the most accomplished of them bore no name. They were abstracts, mainly in waves of aquamarine or with deep, hypnotic green swirls that made him think of enchanted forests without end.

Looking at them increased his sense of displacement so he turned to the bookshelves as he had done on his first visit. This time, though, he dared to look at the sculptures. There were about a dozen of them: mostly bronzes but also a few in dark green marble. They glinted in the lamplight, throwing back reflections of the flames in their depths.

‘Do you like them?’

She was behind him and when he turned he knew that she had been watching him.

‘Very much; who did them?’

‘I did; they’re part of a series I’ve been working on. When it’s finished I hope to exhibit. I only do small pieces these days because I don’t have the space or money to work on larger ones any more.’

‘Wouldn’t the school help you?’

‘Probably; but actually I like the excuse – working in miniature is new to me. It brings its own challenges and intensity.’

She passed him a large mug and their fingers brushed as he took it. He felt a rush of electricity as he had the first time that he had seen her but stronger. Lulu smiled at him and he saw the fine lines of her face that disappeared in repose. Her hair was silver in the firelight, loosely caught back in a tortoiseshell clasp. It gleamed and he had to suppress an urge to reach out and stroke it as if she were some luxurious cat; just to hear her purr.

‘Try your coffee.’

How long had he been standing there like some dumbstruck teenager? He suddenly felt extremely hot, as if his face and ears were on fire, and took a sip of coffee. It was very good. An expert, he could taste Arabica beans freshly ground, and something else that was new to him.

‘A hint of cinnamon, that’s all,’ she said, reading his thoughts, ‘just enough to be different without spoiling the taste. Sometimes I use star aniseed but you don’t strike me as the liquorish type.’

It made him uncomfortable that the coffee had been brewed with him in mind, as if the whole episode was anything but spontaneous. Lulu laughed. It was more like a man’s chuckle; infectious.

Lulu placed her coffee on a small table and took a step towards him. He took a quick breath and stepped back. Just as he thought he was going to be forced to do something to create more distance between them there was a loud crash from above their heads that made them both jump. It was followed by a deafening grating as if a convict were dragging a ball and chain across the roof.

‘What the devil …?’ He looked at her enquiringly.

‘I’ve no idea; I’ve never heard anything like that before.’

The noise continued, became a scraping and then there was a metallic twang before something smashed against the window so loudly it made Lulu scream.

Fenwick pushed past her. One of the small panes of glass was cracked but otherwise the window was intact. Outside, a tangle of metal was swinging in the wind, threatening to curve back and finish its work.

‘It’s an old aerial; the wind has torn it loose. Do you have something I can cut the cable with? Otherwise you’re going to lose your window.’

She was back in seconds with a pair of sharp secateurs.

‘Hold the curtains out of the way; I’m going to open the window.’

As soon as he loosed the latch the wind jerked the frame from his grasp and swung it back hard against the outside wall.

‘Damn!’

He had no choice but to lean out and try to catch the aerial. Snow and ice particles flew into his face, half blinding him. It took him several attempts to reach the swinging mess of wire tubing and he was losing all sense of feeling in his arm by the time he finally grasped it with his left hand. The freezing metal immediately burnt his fingers but he had the presence of mind not to try and pull away. With his right hand he reached to cut the cable before trying to pull the aerial towards him. It was cumbersomely heavy. With great difficulty he managed at last to angle it inside. His left hand was by now welded to the metal and he still needed to close the damned window.

Dropping the secateurs he reached out with his right hand to
try and find the edge of the window frame and pull it closed. As he did so he became aware of Lulu hanging on to his belt as he leant out further and further. At last he could feel the lower edge of the window frame and he pulled hard against the force of the wind. It was no good. The frame was flat to the wall, held there by the strength of the gale. He was just about to give up when Lulu passed him a cast iron toasting fork with curled prongs. Without speaking he gripped it firmly and managed to put enough of the tines under the frame to lever it away from the wall but he didn’t have a free hand to pull it in the rest of the way as his left was still stuck to the aerial.

Without being asked Lulu reached past him, head and shoulders out of the window, and grabbed the side of the frame with both hands. Together they managed to pull it closed and as soon as it was shut she locked it. They rested their heads against the glass for a moment, breathing deeply, before looking at each other with relief.

‘That was fun,’ he said, noticing his sodden shirt in surprise. His left hand was starting to hurt like hell. The metal had thawed out but as he prised his fingers away he could see dark-red burns on three fingers and a bloody graze on his palm where a sharp edge had ripped away skin as he had pulled it into the room.

‘Let me look at that.’ She took his injured hand in both of hers and turned it over, palm up. ‘That must be painful; it needs to be cleaned and dressed properly. Come with me.’

He followed her into a small bathroom dominated by an
old-fashioned
, three-quarter-size claw-foot bath. Lulu found ointment, gauze and plasters as well as a spray of some sort.

‘Iodine,’ she said. ‘It will hurt but it’s better for the burns than a cream. Put your hand over the sink and I’ll see to the fingers first.’

The spray attacked his injured flesh like stings from a swarm of wasps and he bit his lip.

‘Brave boy.’ She patted his arm. ‘I think we should leave those burns open rather than cover them up. The skin is blistered but not broken and they’ll heal faster that way. I’ll try and make you a
sort of gauze glove as you have to drive back, but as soon as you get home, take it off and just keep your hand clean, dry and open to the air. As for the cut on your palm, it’s nasty. You’ve lost quite a bit of skin. That needs proper attention, maybe even a trip to casualty.’

‘I haven’t got time for that.’

‘In which case, I have a dressing that I can put on but it will make it tricky for you to use your hand as you won’t be able to bend it fully.’

He watched as she cleaned the wound and applied the dressing. She had small, neat fingers that didn’t hesitate as she covered his palm in a strange, plastic-coated plaster.

‘Were you ever a nurse?’

‘No; just a first-aider.’

‘Well, I feel in good hands.’ Fenwick immediately regretted his words. ‘Let’s look at the window and see if you need to do something about that broken pane.’

They decided that it needed taping up, which she did quickly and effectively. She caught him staring as she did it.

‘I’m good with my hands, always have been.’

‘So is sculpture your favourite form of art?’

‘Oh yes, though my style has changed a lot over the years. When I was Issie’s age until my thirties I was into a sort of pagan, art nouveau style: naturalistic, heavy in symbolism. But now I take a pared-down, more abstract approach.’ She smiled at him, pleased that he was interested. He noticed the lilac of her eyes, so deep as to be almost purple.

His breathing felt strange; his throat was too tight, his tie an encumbrance. He took another sip of coffee but it had gone cold and he grimaced.

‘Let me pour you a fresh one.’

‘No thanks; once I’ve looked at Issie’s papers I’ll be on my way.’

She handed him a beige folio tied with ribbon so that it resembled a solicitor’s brief, which he struggled to undo.

‘Here, let me.’ She unpicked the knot and opened the file for him.

As he read, Fenwick’s assessment of Issie as a disturbed young woman was confirmed. The trouble was it would be hard to prove whether anything had really happened to her or if the writings were some sort of teenage fantasy. They referred, usually obliquely, to ‘torments’. Even making a case that these were physical rather than psychological would be a challenge.

At the back of the folio were a series of sketches for the paintings she had been working on, etched in black and red charcoal. One showed the face of the girl being raped on the stone altar. It was clearly a self-portrait. Next to it was a scrawled
NO!
In another there was an intricately worked detail of the gold pendant, which would be good enough to help them match it to Rodney Saxby’s should they ever have sufficient evidence to charge him. Unfortunately, though, there wasn’t enough here for him to begin to make a case.

‘Not enough?’ Lulu asked, reading his mind.

‘If we had other evidence, then possibly. I’ll take them with me anyway,’ he noted her expression, ‘and make copies.’

‘But on their own they are insufficient?’

‘Probably.’

Without speaking she stood up and left the room. When she returned she was carrying a crumpled, thin, supermarket plastic bag.

‘I found this too. It was stuffed at the bottom of her bag of brushes and pens.’