Dead of Winter (36 page)

‘Have you told the Saxbys about here?’ Fenwick asked as soon as Bazza had gone.

Bernstein shuddered.

‘I’m meeting Norman at the Hall in an hour so I’d better check on the latest at the scene.’

Fenwick wished her luck before returning with his unfinished
half to the warmth of the pub. He enjoyed the tingle as feeling returned to his ears. Their seats had been taken but there was a table for two free in the far corner and he squeezed into it, keeping his coat on against the draught from the window. He had almost finished his beer when his mobile rang. It was Nightingale.

‘Hello?’

‘Andrew, I’m sorry to call but I need to see you.’

She sounded strange. If he didn’t know her better he would say she was drunk.

‘I see; what’s going on?’

‘Nothing’s going on, Andrew; I just need to see you, now, this evening. I can’t explain, not over the phone, but it’s important.’

‘You’ve found something out about the case?’

Her sigh was definitely emotional.

‘Look, where are you? I’ll come to you if it’s more convenient.’

‘I’m at the Map and Compass in Dragon’s Green, it’s just outside—’

‘I know where it is. I’m less than seven miles away. I’m coming right away.’

‘Well …’ He glanced at his watch. It was gone six o’clock and it was starting to snow, but before he could say anything the call disconnected.

She saw him as soon as she walked in, oblivious to the turned heads and stares as always. Pushing through to the bar, Nightingale bought herself a drink, a Scotch and water to Fenwick’s surprise. When she sat down in front of him it was obvious that she had been crying. For a slow minute they sat opposite each other in silence, tucked into the corner like illicit lovers. Eventually Nightingale swallowed her drink in one and sighed.

‘I’ve made an amazing discovery, Andrew,’ she said, her words slurring slightly. ‘I found my mother.’

Now he was really worried; her mother and father had died in a car accident years before.

‘I know what you’re thinking; my mum died, well you’re wrong. My father’s wife, Mary, died. At the time I thought she was my
mother but I found out the truth while I was staying at Mill Farm. I was swapped with Mary’s real baby daughter when she died almost immediately after birth. Please, Andrew,’ she held up a hand, ‘let me finish this, it’s important.

‘My father knew; he was my real father, by the way. I was his daughter by the lover he had right up until he was married. He and a friend conspired to swap me and my dead half-sister so that my birth mother thought I had been stillborn.’

‘If true that’s despicable.’

‘Yes it is and yes it was. She had to deal with all the pain of losing a child.’

Fenwick nodded as the first stirrings of unease uncurled inside him. Why should that mention of a dead baby trigger a recent memory? He observed Nightingale with growing disquiet as she told him the rest of her story, including finding her half-sister’s grave and discovering the identity of her real – as yet unnamed – mother.

‘I couldn’t bring myself to search for her. There was all the trauma at the farm … when Smith … when you saved my life,’ she looked at Fenwick properly for the first time, her eyes shiny with unshed tears, ‘but the real reason was that I was too scared to risk being rejected. Then yesterday I met her by chance, on a stage in front of hundreds of schoolgirls.’

‘At St Anne’s?’ Fenwick’s breathing constricted as he realised what he was dreading.

‘No, in Dorking,’ he exhaled in relief, ‘but she is a teacher at St Anne’s. You might have interviewed her, Lulu Bullock?’

He thought he was going to be sick.

‘Yes, I believe I did.’

‘After I told her the truth and she finally believed me she was wonderful.’ Nightingale beamed at him as a tear trickled unnoticed down her cheek. ‘We talked for hours. She’s really kind and so wise. So I decided to tell her about us.’

‘What about us? You mentioned my name?’

‘No, as it happens, I didn’t, only that I have been in love with
the same man for seven years and that he didn’t seem to want to acknowledge my feelings for him and the possibility that he had feelings for me.’

She looked at him expectantly but Fenwick was giving his glass his undivided attention.

‘I can’t deal with this now, Nightingale. I don’t have time for … you, us, oh I don’t know!’

‘I expected you to say that. I told Lulu how you would react but she advised me to tell you anyway.’ She pushed her empty glass away.

He could feel the intensity of her gaze burning the top of his head.

‘Andrew, I have my pride. It’s hard for me to come here and tell you that I’m still in love with you. Why did I risk that? Because I think somewhere inside that impervious hide of yours is a decent, kind man who deserves a second chance at love.

‘I know I sound like a soppy woman’s magazine but I can’t think how to tell you in a more sophisticated way. You are incomplete on your own, Andrew, and I think you know it. Your children certainly do and at least they would approve.’ She hesitated and shook her head. ‘I didn’t mean to say that. This shouldn’t be a decision you make based on anything but your own feelings.’

Fenwick didn’t have any words. He was angry with her for daring to come and confront him and disappointed at her lack of professionalism. And she seemed drunk; how was she going to drive home? He was damned if he was going to give her a lift.

‘I need to get going.’ He pushed his empty glass away.

‘Of course you do. Don’t let me keep you!’

She waited, her eyes drilling into him. He could see her hand lying next to the empty glass, inches away, and yet he was frozen, with indecision, anger, fear, even embarrassment. Thoughts of Lulu flicked across his synapses … Nightingale’s mother! He really was going to be sick. Perhaps that first beer had been off. If Nightingale ever found out about the night he had spent at St Anne’s would she believe that nothing had happened? And Lulu, he still hadn’t
called her, hadn’t known how to deal with the confusion of his feelings towards her, the way she attracted and repelled him in equal measure. He took a deep breath, struggling to find words that wouldn’t form.

Nightingale stood up suddenly, knocking her chair so that it banged the wall. She tugged on her overcoat and picked up her handbag. Without another word she was gone.

He raised his eyes to study the space where she had been sitting. The cushions still bore the imprint of her weight. On one of them was a glossy black hair that had escaped the untidy ponytail he had noted without realising. The growing noise in the pub continued but he felt empty, surrounded by silence. The lump in his throat was threatening to choke him. He should leave and go home.

Five minutes later he was sitting in the same position when his phone rang.

‘Yes?’

It was Bernstein.

‘Issie’s a clever girl, isn’t she? She wrote a message – possibly in her own blood – on the floor under the sleeping bag where Mariner wouldn’t have seen it.’

Fenwick was instantly alert and focused.

‘What did she say?’

‘“Issie alive 13th”,
and then she’s added
“17th”.’

‘Clever girl. Has Bazza got that list of places?’

‘He’s already on it. Are you going to risk coming back to Guildford? I should warn you that Norman will be there.’

‘No, there’s nothing I’ll be able to do except make things more complicated so I might as well go home, but you will let me know if anything happens?’

‘Of course; I’ll call you as soon as we have anything new.’

He was finally accepted as a partner; had he been in a better mood he would have smiled.

Issie realised that she had been left untied since Steve had carried her to the bedroom unconscious from his beating the previous afternoon. She had been aware of him looking in on her from time to time. At some point he had given her a cup of sweet tea that made her feel sick and some aspirins. She had swallowed them and then wondered whether there were enough left for her to kill herself. The pain was intense, particularly in her head and down her right side, which had taken the brunt of his kicking as she had turned her back into a huddle against him.

She had no idea what time it was, only that it was going dark again and that Steve had slipped into bed beside her at some point when she had been asleep. Now she was wide awake. She listened carefully to his muffled snores and the grunts that he made when he was in his heaviest sleep. His left arm was outside the bedclothes. Very carefully she eased herself up so that she could see the watch face. It had a digital luminous dial and read 20.52. Beneath it was the date: 21.12.

Tears filled her eyes without warning. It was the anniversary of her dad’s death. He had been dead five years and would have been forty-eight on Christmas Day. Issie wept silently, utterly forlorn. Her poor mum, suffering the anniversary on her own, worrying about
where she was. And here she was wondering how to kill herself. She wiped her eyes angrily on the sheet. This would not do!

She was behaving like a helpless victim. Her dad would have been shocked; her grandfather furious. She had always been the tough one, a survivor, not some sex slave to this pathetic creature. She hit Steve on his arm, filled with a sudden murderous intent. He stirred in his sleep and opened one eye. She froze.

‘Go back to sleep, baby,’ she crooned. He could snap her spine in a few blows if he chose.

As Steve’s snores resumed Issie laid her head back down carefully, biting her lip as stars crackled in front of her eyes. He could have killed her. She had been stupid to think that a pathetic little knife would protect her from one of his rages. They didn’t happen often but she had learnt that the frequency grew when he felt frustrated. How much food and drink were left from her nana’s supplies? And fuel? Did they have enough logs and oil in the tank to keep the place warm?

It dawned on Issie that, even as she stayed at the farm, the risk of being killed or badly injured by Mariner increased every day. It wasn’t a place of refuge; it would be her tomb. The idea made her realise that she no longer wanted to die. With the acknowledgement came a decision that she would not!

She was on home territory, had known the surrounding countryside since she was born, walking the footpaths that
criss-crossed
the Downs with her grandfather since she was able to toddle beside him. If there was a break in the weather she would find a way to walk away from here – provided she was strong enough.

Issie felt the sharpness of her hip bones, the ache deep in her right pelvis and along her side. She counted her ribs, circled her wrists and was shocked at how thin they had become. No way could she manage the walk she needed to do in this condition. Food and exercise were essential.

She slipped out of bed, careful to put a pillow beside him so that he didn’t feel the void she left. In the bathroom she closed the door, put on the light and studied her face.

‘Oh my God,’ she breathed, unable to comprehend that the image
staring back at her through a half-closed right eye was her own. Her jaw was yellow; her right eye blackened. One side of her neck was covered with bruises from his fingers; she hadn’t remembered him strangling her and shuddered. Her right shoulder had dark-red contusions as if from being beaten with a stick; her breasts were covered in sooty marks that must have been impressions from his fingers as he had squeezed her.

Issie turned and looked down her side. As she had feared, the worst bruising was over her right hip and buttock, which had taken the brunt of the beating. There were painkillers in the cabinet and she swallowed two more, noting that there were only four left. She couldn’t have killed herself that way anyway! The thought brought an ironic twist to her lips.

Tomorrow she would start to think about escape. The sanctuary of her grandmother’s home was a trap and she needed to get away as soon as she could. Her physical condition, the weather and isolation of the cottage were serious hurdles but Issie was not daunted. Her beloved grandfather, Pappy, had drummed into her the six Ps of backwoods’ man survival: ‘perfect planning prevents painfully poor performance’, though she had long ago learnt that ‘painfully’ was a euphemistic replacement to save a child’s sensitivities.

She would need to stretch and exercise carefully if she was to recuperate enough to make her walk to freedom. The cuts, though painful and ugly to look at, were irrelevant. Rebuilding her fitness and stamina was what mattered, and quickly, before Steve’s fantasy world collapsed.

As she tiptoed back and hovered outside the bedroom doorway, Steve coughed in his sleep in the way he sometimes did before waking up. Issie dropped to all fours, muffled a yelp of pain and crawled back to bed, easing herself beneath the covers as he shook his head, rose up slightly and mumbled her name. She stroked his arm reassuringly and he rolled back into sleep. Sometime after ten o’clock she joined him.

There is a common assumption fuelled by TV crime dramas that DNA analysis takes no time at all but that is not true. Although the test itself can be completed in a matter of hours, unless a request is flagged as urgent it can take weeks as the analyst works through the backlog of submitted samples in strict ‘first come first served’ order. In the case of the T-shirt Fenwick had Tate send off they had asked not only for the semen to be analysed but also for tests to be run to try and confirm that the article had belonged to Issie.

Even though Tate had flagged the sample he submitted as potentially linked to two important cases, given that Issie’s abductor was known Fenwick had not expected priority treatment. So he was surprised to see a message from Detective Sergeant Tate when he switched his mobile on Friday morning. He called back at once.

‘The results are through, sir! It is definitely Issie’s shirt, or rather she had definitely worn it, and you’ll never guess who the semen samples match to.’

‘That’s why I’m calling, Constable.’

‘Yes of course; sorry, sir. Well they come from Rodney Saxby. It’s what you suspected from the beginning when you found those paintings, sir: Issie has been abused.’

Fenwick remembered Octavia Henry’s scorn at the idea Issie would have run off with a lover because she hated the idea of sex. He shut his eyes and could see vividly the sketches Issie had made in preparation for the painting, where the face of the girl being abused had not yet been obscured. They had been self-portraits.

‘… has gone to arrest him.’

‘Sorry, who has?’

‘Sergeant Holland, sir.’

He should have been concentrating on following up on the addresses where Issie might have gone with Mariner.

‘Why him?’

‘Excuse me, sir, but I wouldn’t know that.’

Of course he wouldn’t. Fenwick thanked Tate for his help and congratulated him on securing the results so quickly. As soon as he rang off his mother tapped on the door of his study and asked if he was going to join them on a shopping expedition into Harlden.

‘I won’t thanks.’

‘We can wait if you need to make another call, Andrew. That’s nae bother.’

‘No,’ Fenwick shook his head, ‘you go without me.’

‘Well, will you at least come and join us for lunch? You did say you were off now until after Christmas, didn’t you?’

‘Yes, yes. I’ll see what I can do. Just let me know where you’ll be going.’

As soon as she had left he rang Bernstein.

‘Deidre, it’s Andrew. Look, I was wondering …’

‘Whether you can join the interview with that bastard Rodney Saxby? Sorry, Andrew, I’ve already suggested it to the Conqueror and he’s against it. Thinks you’ll use it as an excuse to interfere in Goldilocks. Can’t think where he got that idea from!’

‘But he’s put Bazza on it and he should be concentrating on checking possible places where Mariner might be hiding with Issie.’

‘I’m aware of what he should be doing, Andrew, and I don’t need you making matters worse. Look, try and back off a bit, can you? We’re still processing the scene in Dragon’s Green and
I have a team working through every possible address linked to Issie. It’s unlikely that Rodney Saxby’s assault is connected to her abduction …’

‘Other than driving her into the arms of an unstable, insecure predator! If Saxby junior hadn’t assaulted her there’s no way she would have been so vulnerable.’

‘Possibly.’ He heard Bernstein sigh and knew he was testing her patience.

‘At least let me tell you my theory.’

‘Go on, then, you’ll do so whether I like it or not.’

‘Thanks; in my first interview with Jane Saxby she told me about a sailing holiday somewhere in the Greek islands. Issie ran away following an argument with her stepfather after Saxby junior joined them on the yacht.’

‘Yes, I remember. You have a habit of doing very detailed notes, Andrew. And I have a habit of reading every statement.’

‘I’m sure you do. In that same interview you’ll find reference to the fact that Rodney Saxby was the one who found Issie on Cephalonia and brought her back. Her mother said that afterwards she retreated completely into herself and was in a terrible mood. What if that was when Saxby assaulted her? Semen on a T-shirt suggests oral sex or masturbation rather than rape. He might have forced Issie into either.’

‘Surely she would have accused him immediately she saw her mother?’

‘You know what abuse can do to adult/child relationships and she would have been insecure because of her mother’s new relationship. Perhaps Rodney Saxby said he would tell them it was consensual, that she was a slut. Or maybe he threatened to hurt her mother. Who knows? We need to find Issie to understand why she kept quiet about something so odious.’

‘Meanwhile, we’ll bring Rodney-boy in and see if we can’t crack him. I’m good at interrogation, Andrew. It’s one of my strong points, trust me.’

‘And the hunt for Issie?’

‘Goes on! With full and utter dedication. You’re not the only one consumed with guilt, goddamit.’

There was a catch in her voice.

‘I’m sorry, Deidre, that was shitty of me. I know there couldn’t be a better officer dedicated to finding Issie.’

‘Except for you, perhaps,’ Her voice was broken. ‘I’d have you back in an instant, y’know. You are bloody brilliant and I don’t have any issue admitting that. Both breakthroughs have come from your work and yes, that does make me feel inadequate but I can get over that because I don’t suffer from penis-envy, despite what my detractors might think.’

He didn’t know how to respond.

‘So; we’ll bring Saxby junior in,’ she coughed and continued more strongly, ‘interview the bastard to breaking point, while continuing to devote hundreds of man hours a day to finding Issie with relentless determination worthy of you.’

‘I know; as I said, I didn’t mean to imply anything else.’

‘Noted; and don’t worry as soon as anything breaks you’ll be the first to know.’

‘First? Before the Conqueror?’

‘Yes.’

After he finished the call Fenwick made himself a coffee and rang a number he had on autodial.

‘Holland.’

‘Bazza, it’s Andrew Fenwick. I realise you’re on your way to arrest Rodney Saxby but if you could just give me a quick update on where you’ve got to checking known locations for Issie.’

‘It’s well on track, sir. We’re looking into every address Issie might have known, focusing on the South East.’

‘How many are there?’

‘More than forty. To speed things up we are asking local forces to help with the visits and searches.’

He itched to tell him not to rely on anyone but their own team but he knew such advice would be as unwelcome as it was impractical given the condition of the roads. Bernstein and Bazza
were making a trade-off between speed and absolute reliability. In her position he would probably have done the same thing.

‘Thank you. Good luck with Saxby.’

‘Have to find him first, sir. He wasn’t at home just now when we called. His housekeeper says he’s at his club. That’s where I’m heading now.’

Fenwick finished his coffee, deeply frustrated not to be directly involved. His home phone rang and he answered it on the first ring.

‘It’s your mother, Andrew. We’re going out to the Dog and Bacon for lunch as there’s a play area for the children there they’ve kept clear of snow. Will ye be joining us? It’s such a lovely day after all the weather we’ve had.’

Fenwick glanced outside. He hadn’t noticed but it was a beautiful morning, with a Wedgewood-blue sky. In the emptiness of his kitchen he shrugged. Why not? There wasn’t anything else for him to do.