Dead of Winter (40 page)

He woke to the smell of cooking bacon and faint noises from the kitchen. It evoked an amazingly satisfying and contented feeling that lasted until reality returned. He pushed it away, eyes shut tight against the day. For once he had slept well and woken naturally and he willed the moment of contentment to last.

‘Breakfast in ten minutes!’

There were worse summons to the day.

The forecast was for sunshine and continued bitter cold. Fenwick showered quickly and dressed warmly with vest, brushed-cotton shirt and jumper, long johns and thick cord trousers. He might have been preparing to help Chris with his snowman as his son undoubtedly hoped but his motives were unclear, even to himself.

‘It’s on the table!’ His mother’s voice took him back thirty years.

It didn’t do to be late but he was last to arrive. Even Bess was there, looking rumpled.

‘For what we are about to receive may the Lord make us truly thankful, amen.’ There was a ripple of ‘amens’ around the table and then the clatter of knives and forks as five hungry people tucked into a cooked breakfast.

‘So will you be coming to church with us? Andrew?’

‘Church?’

‘It’s Sunday, Daddy; Christmas Eve,’ Chris reminded him with a smile embellished by tomato ketchup.

‘I may have to do a little work, I’m afraid.’

‘Today?’ Bess looked at him appalled.

‘It’s only a maybe,’ he prevaricated.

‘Well that’s something, at least,’ his mother remarked and raised an eyebrow.

Alice, bless her, concentrated on dunking toast in her fried egg.

‘What time is the service?’

‘Ten o’clock but we’ll be leaving early as it will be hard to park if we’re late. The church is bound to be full. So we’ll need to leave in an hour. You’ll be taking us, son, to save Alice that miserable drive.’

He retreated to his study while they cleared the breakfast things away and logged on to view the newspapers online. For some reason he decided to look at the
Sunday Enquirer
, not a paper he normally bothered to read.

‘FAILURE!’

The headline screamed above a full-width picture of Issie. Fenwick tasted egg at the back of his throat and swallowed hard. Saxby was wreaking his revenge against the investigation as he had promised. He opened the next page, holding his breath, to see an unflattering picture of Bernstein with CC Norman. The tone of the reporting was overwhelmingly critical. Despite himself, he felt some relief that he wasn’t criticised. In fact, the one passing mention of his name was in the only positive paragraph in the full-page piece.

There was no way Norman would ever forgive him, let alone allow him back on the case. He might as well accept it and move on. Except that, of course, that was impossible with Issie still missing. There would be no peace in his life until she was found. With a shudder he realised that she might never be and that he would have to live with that. How?

‘Come on, Andrew,’ his mother’s voice penetrated the closed door, ‘time for church!’

Peter Wilson felt terrible. On Tuesday afternoon he’d taken to his bed with flu and only now did he feel well enough to try and get dressed. His wife hadn’t been around to look after him as she was staying with her mother for a week in lieu of the old bat coming for Christmas. She hadn’t been in the least sympathetic to his moans and coughs down the phone as he complained that he was ill, no really, not just a cold but with a proper temperature, aches, everything. In response she had directed him to paracetamol in the medicine cabinet and told him to drink plenty of fluids. Five miserable days later he had lost half a stone and his tongue felt like dried out chamois leather.

He was in glazing: repairing and replacing, the latter being the most lucrative. Fortunately business was pretty quiet this close to Christmas so he had been able to postpone the few appointments he had until January but he was worried about his car. The Land Rover was parked over the road by the garage as his cottage didn’t have a parking space. When the snow had returned on Wednesday he had been even more concerned for it, left for days now in freezing temperatures.

Peter had rung Wilf, his mate who ran the petrol station, to ask him to check on his car but he was off sick himself and there was only the Gormless Kid on duty. As well to ask a snowman as that boy; if he had anything between his ears it had melted long ago.

So Peter was worried and maybe he was starting to feel just a little bit better. For the first time in days he was peckish but the fridge was on hunger strike. What he really fancied was a toasted bacon butty, with brown sauce, and perhaps a fried egg. At eight o’clock, after a brief chat on the phone with the missus who clearly thought he was well enough to fend for himself, Peter had a shower, found some warm clothes in the airing cupboard and made himself a cup of tea with long-life milk. He hated the processed flavour but it was better than nothing. His knees felt wobbly and his head was inclined to spin if he moved too quickly but he had good shoes, a proper fleece-lined coat, and it was only a couple of minutes across the road to the garage and their well-stocked cold cabinet.

Outside the air froze his tonsils.

‘Bloody Norah!’

He wrapped his scarf around his face and held on to the fence as he eased his way down the path and out of the gate. The road had been gritted but there was a pile of snow over a foot deep at the kerb that he had to clamber through in order to cross, repeating the exercise on the other side.

‘If I fall over and die it’ll be on your head, Mary,’ he muttered as he slid his way towards the petrol station with its twenty-four-hour promise of service.

As he skidded to a halt in front of the window he saw the Gormless Kid behind the till chatting to some overweight teen who should have been at home exercising or helping her mum.

‘Hello, Mr Wilson,’ the GK boomed as he entered, the bell announcing his arrival. ‘Did you see the storm last week? Me and Avril was saying it was like being in the Arctic – so cold, and the wind … it was terrible, wasn’t it, Avril?’

Avril’s indifference to conversation with anyone outside her generation was world class.

Peter grunted in reply and headed for the refrigerated cabinet. There they were, the beauties: smoked back rashers still within their sell-by date, butter and some eggs. All he needed now was fresh milk, bread, some tomatoes and maybe a Mars bar for later. He carried the pile to the checkout and waited while Avril decided to move her bulk to one side.

‘Nine pounds and ten pence, thanks, Mr Wilson.’ The GK placed the breakfast collection into a plastic bag with care as Peter found a note and coin.

‘Don’t suppose you noticed if my car is all right, did you?’

The GK looked at him dumbly.

‘My car, the one I always leave in the car park?’

An expression close to guilt flickered across the GK’s face; Avril frowned.

‘He’s not a bleeding parking attendant, y’know.’

‘I know, I know.’ Peter’s head was starting to ache. All he wanted
was to get back home. Thoughts of breakfast had been replaced with an aching tiredness behind his eyes, but still, he was here and if he didn’t check on the car he would only worry about it later.

‘Only, I’ve been ill with the flu. Would you mind, I mean …’

‘Sorry, Mr Wilson, I can’t leave the till, not allowed to.’

Peter turned towards Avril who regarded him with twelve stone of contempt.

‘No way; I’m delicate, I am.’

He searched her face for irony, found only belligerent sincerity and suppressed a shudder.

‘OK, it was only an idea. Hang on to this lot, would you?’ He contemplated suggesting they should check on him if he wasn’t back in five minutes but took another look at her face and thought better of it.

He stepped out of the side door that led to the parking lot. It wasn’t that big and he knew where he had left his car: two rows to the left under the hedge where it would have some protection from the weather. The surface of the car park hadn’t been gritted and Peter had to concentrate to keep his balance. The first row was empty; the second had a trailer parked across two bays and a Ford, thick with snow beside it. His Land Rover should have been just beyond that.

Except that it wasn’t. The space where he had left it was empty apart from three inches of pristine snow, as were the spaces to the right and left. There was no car to be seen.

‘I don’t believe it, who’d pinch a ten-year-old Land Rover?’

Peter plodded closer, stopped on the edge of the space where he was sure he had left his car and turned a full circle. No; the car had gone. In fact, other than the trailer and Mondeo the lot was deserted. Peter groaned and trudged back to the garage.

‘My car’s gone.’

‘It’s not his fault!’

‘I know, all I’m saying is it’s gone. Can you call the police? I need to report it, otherwise the insurance is invalid.’

In the end he called himself, the GK and Avril having decided that
it was none of their business and not interesting enough to text their friends about. Peter went home while he waited for the police to arrive. Fortified by a strong cup of tea with a tot of rum in it, hunger took over again and he had a fry-up while he waited, which was just as well as it took almost an hour for the lazy buggers to bother to turn up. What he didn’t realise was that if Surrey constabulary hadn’t put a notice out asking for all reported vehicle thefts to be treated with priority in case they were linked to Isabelle Mattias’s disappearance he could have been waiting until after Christmas.

Peter led the lanky constable into the front room and made some fresh tea out of habit; his wife was always nice to visitors and he had been with her long enough to wear away some of his misanthropy.

‘So you’re sure it’s gone, absolutely sure?’

‘Course I am, otherwise I wouldn’t have called you.’

‘No way you could have parked it elsewhere?’

‘No.’ Peter bit his tongue.

‘And you parked it over there?’ The constable gestured with his notebook towards the garage opposite. He looked bored and keen to be gone.

‘Yes, always in the same space.’

‘So it couldn’t be somewhere else, maybe round the corner or behind other cars?’

Peter sighed, loudly.

‘No, like I said, it wasn’t where I left it and apart from Walter’s old trailer and a Ford Mondeo the car park is empty.’

‘Ford Mondeo?’ There was a flicker of interest in the lad’s eyes for the first time.

‘No, my car’s a Land Rover.’

‘Four-wheel drive, I expect.’

To Peter’s surprise the constable actually wrote something in his book.

‘Yes, and in good nick.’ He decided not to mention the rust, thinking of the insurance.

‘Can you show me exactly where it was parked, sir?’

‘What, go outside again? I’ve not been well, you know.’

‘If you could just point me in the right direction, then?’

Peter pulled back the lace curtain and watched the policeman cross the road.

‘Well that’s more than I expected.’ He was almost impressed.

After forty minutes waiting for him to return Peter cleared the tea things away and found his Mars bar. The sound of a siren disturbed him and he jumped up in time to see an unmarked car skid into the side of the road beside the garage, lights flashing. Ten minutes later another one appeared together with a white van.

‘All this for my car?’ Peter scratched his head; something wasn’t quite right.

There was a knock at his door and when he opened it he stepped back in surprise as three people crowded on his step.

‘Mr …’ A woman about his wife’s age paused in the act of remembering his name.

‘Wilson,’ he said. ‘It was only a Land Rover, you know; not that I don’t miss it, of course, and I’ll have to claim for another.’

‘Might we come in, Mr Wilson? My name is Superintendent Bernstein, Surrey Constabulary.’ She was inside the hall before he could ask her to remove her shoes.

‘We’ll only take a few minutes of your time, sir. Can you tell me when you last saw your car?’

‘I parked it like normal on Monday evening.’

‘You’re sure it was Monday?’

‘Positive. My wife left for her mother’s on Tuesday morning and I started to feel rough right after. I haven’t been out of the house since until today.’

‘Thank you.’ She finished writing a brief note in her book and snapped it shut. ‘That fits,’ she said to the man who had come in with her. ‘Cobb, you start things off at the garage, I’ve got a call to make.’

She headed off without saying goodbye and the others trailed after her. Peter looked at the wet grit on the carpet and went to find the vacuum cleaner.

Fenwick was sitting on his own at the back of the coffee shop, a copy of the
Sunday Enquirer
in front of him. They had arrived ridiculously early at the church and he had refused to wait inside when he could be enjoying a proper espresso. He had thirty minutes before he should join them, which meant he could fit in a dash of Christmas shopping if he forewent another espresso.

He descended on the first department store he came across like a locust and bought all but his mother’s present before moving to the shop next door, where he was queuing at the checkout when his mobile rang.

‘Fenwick, it’s Deidre. We’ve located the Mondeo.’

Fenwick almost dropped his purchase but the helpful young lady on the till caught it and scanned the code.

‘Where?’ He rummaged in his wallet for his credit card, phone jammed beneath his jaw.

‘On the A27 west of Lewes.’

‘Lewes! What on earth was he doing there? Never mind, tell me what you have so far.’

He punched in his pin and mouthed thank you to the assistant.

‘It is definitely Mariner’s car and he could now be driving a Land Rover that has just been reported missing. He might have swapped cars anytime between last Monday and Wednesday, when we had the very heavy snow. There were no tracks or footprints other than the owner’s around the Mondeo. Unfortunately the CCTV tapes are reused every forty-eight hours so although we’re checking them we don’t anticipate much.