Dead of Winter (42 page)

There were no shadows to guide her, only the biting wind that had previously been in her face, hitting the left side more than the right. Using it as the only means of navigation she set out. After a few minutes she realised she was going up hill; was that right? Hadn’t the track been descending before she fell? But if she turned around how could she be certain she was going in the correct direction? She was on the South Downs Way after all, famous for its undulating meander. No, it was better to keep going.

It was hard to see the path and the fence posts no longer stood out clearly from the snow. Had she lost so much time freeing herself and changing? Surely not, it was just the bad weather closing in. She had no watch because she hadn’t dared take Steve’s in case he woke up. Thinking of him made her feel uneasy.

The wind was really moaning now, a melancholy howl like a lost dog seeking company. It buffeted her hood and isolated her from all other sound so that it was some time before she heard
the rattling. Looking up into the gloom Issie could see a shape on the path ahead and her stomach flipped. Had he come to get her? She almost turned and ran but what was the point? Instead she stood her ground and waited. The shape didn’t come any nearer so she walked forward cautiously until she could see the outline of a stunted beech – not any beech tree but the one she had passed before.

‘No! NO! That’s not fair!’ Issie wiped angry tears from her cheeks before they could freeze.

She set her mouth in a thin line and turned one hundred and eighty degrees. Even allowing for an hour of wasted time if couldn’t be later than two o’clock. Despite the growing dark, she had less than a mile and a quarter to go. She
would
do this.

The snow was falling as thick as a curtain as she walked and slipped back down the hill, staying near the fence posts to avoid the snare of barbed wire. The drifts were deeper but it was preferable to falling over again. Issie tried singing another carol but her heart wasn’t in it so she started counting her paces silently, muttering a satisfied
yes!
every time she passed another one hundred. There was a sudden extreme gust of wind that blew off the hood of her Barbour, forcing her to stop and refasten the soaking cord. She looked up at the sky as she did so, tilting her head right back.

Above her black clouds were spreading like an angry bruise from the north-east, tracking fast and low, carrying yet more snow. This wasn’t meant to happen until tomorrow! The weatherman had said light snow showers with the
threat
of blizzard conditions in the north. He had been explicit:
‘If you have to travel get it out of the way,’
he’d said,
‘and make sure you have plenty of provisions in your store cupboard!’

That was why she had made her plans for today; there was meant to be a break in the weather but they had been wrong. This must be the predicted blizzard; the worst of the winter so far, arriving twenty-four hours early. Why had she trusted the Met Office? She would have to speed up. Alfriston might be less than an
hour away but so was the worst of the storm by the look of it and when that arrived she might be forced to seek shelter. The thought made her shiver despite the sweat of exertion and fear on her back.

Woodsmoke. Andy Parker was dozing on the sofa in front of the fire dreaming of woodsmoke. Except that his fire was electric and his cold – which was flu, really, whatever the wife said – meant that he couldn’t smell anything, but still the memory of woodsmoke woke him.

‘Feeling better?’ His wife looked up from the present she was wrapping far more elaborately than was necessary.

‘Ndoh, feel awful,’ and he coughed wetly to prove it.

‘You could have another Lemsip if you want; it’s been more than four hours.’

‘I dink a whisky and ginger would be bedder.’

‘It’s too early for Grandma’s remedy!’

‘Whad dime is id?’ he asked looking at the gloom outside.

‘Two o’clock.’

‘Oh?’ He looked at her in confusion.

‘It’s the blizzard, it’s arrived early; that’s why it’s so dark. Have a Lemsip now and you could still have a whisky later.’

But he wasn’t listening. As he settled back on the cushions he felt a deep unease and guilt for no apparent reason. He closed his eyes and within a minute was asleep again.

The really heavy snow started as Fenwick arrived at the mobile incident unit that blocked access to the garage car park. The satnav told him they were on the A27 east of Beddingham, which was as well as there was no view of anything from within the car. Tate had been smart enough to find a four-wheel-drive vehicle and had navigated the stationary traffic and icy conditions, siren blaring, with consummate skill.

Bernstein had decided to keep a core team on site as they had no idea in which direction Mariner had gone and roads in and out of Lewes were bound to be congested. As the van was bitterly cold most of the team were in the garage itself, squeezed into the storeroom at the back. When he opened the door he saw Bazza Holland hunched over his phone, his nose an inch from the screen.

‘You’ll wreck your eyesight, Baz,’ he said as he poured some coffee from a thermos and picked up a fruit biscuit. They hadn’t stopped for lunch.

‘Look at this,’ Bazza was too excited to worry about formality, ‘here; I think it’s the Land Rover. It’s just been sent over from traffic surveillance. The image is timed at sixteen-o-two last Tuesday on the A27 three miles to the east of Beddingham.’

‘Which is where exactly?’

‘Here.’ Bernstein stood up and pulled out one of several 1:50,000 scale Ordnance Survey maps that were stacked on a box of digestive biscuits.

Fenwick could feel the sour taste of adrenalin on his tongue.

‘Where does he go after that?’

‘Don’t know, sir,’ Bazza flinched at the look he received, ‘that’s the only sighting so far …’ he hesitated, ‘and in the bad weather we can’t be absolutely sure it’s the same Land Rover. The number plate is partially obscured.’

‘Have someone enhance the image urgently,’ he instructed.

‘Already happening,’ Bernstein remarked with surprising calm. ‘Good that you’re here.’

He looked at her in silent apology and she responded with a one-sided smile. Bazza seemed gobsmacked at his boss’s apparent calm.

‘That’s the first and only sighting we have of him so far,’ she continued. ‘All footage from the time the Land Rover was last parked is being scrutinised within a radius of twenty-five miles.’

Fenwick took a swallow of coffee, frowning.

‘Let’s assume that the sighting is of him – what was he doing there? It’s past the turning for Newhaven and the ferries, so what’s out there?’

‘There’s no connection here with Mariner; we’ve triple-checked.’

‘And the addresses you told me know about, Bazza? Wasn’t the grandmother’s house around here somewhere?’

‘It’s on the Downs, just about …’ Bernstein pointed a yellow-tipped finger at the map. ‘Here: on the hills outside Alfriston. The location has been checked twice, the second time this week but they promised to go out again today.’

Fenwick frowned in concentration at the map.

‘It’s not that far from the possible sighting.’ Unnoticed behind them Bazza picked up his mobile and turned away to make a call. ‘Exactly.’

Fenwick’s thumbs tingled.

He studied the map again and put a black cross on the location of the farm, sipping lukewarm coffee.

‘Sir!’ Bazza sounded excited. ‘I’ve just spoken to the Highways Authority. To reach the grandmother’s place he would have followed the A27 as far as Alciston but that road was closed on Tuesday because a fallen tree had smashed an electricity substation. The other route is via Alfriston, and then on minor roads across to the farm. They were doubtful a vehicle could have made it but in a Land Rover – well they said it might have been possible.’

Fenwick’s throat went dry.

‘You said the farm was “checked” Deidre, not searched.’

‘Did I?’ Bernstein was reaching for the report.

‘Was it searched or wasn’t it? We need to know!’

He heard Bernstein’s intake of breath and cursed his impatience. She would point out that he was a meddling micromanager who should remember he was an unofficial guest. Instead, ‘You’re right, it just says “checked”; there’s nothing about a search.’

‘If the roads have been in bad condition and they thought he was driving the Mondeo …’ Bazza ventured.

‘I’ll get the status confirmed immediately,’ Bernstein said quietly.

Fenwick turned back to the map, keeping his face turned away, his thoughts to himself.

‘Andy, Andy! Wake up! It’s HQ; they say it’s urgent, about that missing girl.’ His wife looked scared.

Andy tried to focus, shook his head and picked up the receiver. ‘Dyeah?’ He was poorly. ‘Whad? … I send in my report …’course I did … Search? Well nod exactly. It wasn’t necessary. The road was blocked with snow so thick it was obvious no one was there … yes, I know it’s been falling all week but the house was pitch-black, no lights, nothing … well if you pud it like thad but no car could’ve reached the place, I had to shovel my way through … Unusual? No, it would’ve been in my report wouldn’t id … wouldn’t id, sir. Nod again, nod tonight; I’m on leave, and anyway, I’m very sick.
Be careful, sir, or I’ll have the federation on this, I will—’ The call ended abruptly.

‘Everything all right, love?’ She was white as a ghost.

‘Just work,’ Andy shrugged and turned his gaze to the artificial flicker of the fire.

‘I’ll get you some Grandma’s remedy, shall I?’ She kissed the top of his head and padded to the kitchen.

Anything unusual? Woodsmoke … Oh shit! Woodsmoke. Andy picked up the receiver as if it was red hot then put it down again and stared at it. His wife’s voice reached him from the kitchen.

‘They said that poor girl might be around here, that’s why I had to wake you, otherwise they wouldn’t have troubled us. Poor little thing; I worry about her. Do you think she might still be alive, love? I do hope so.’

Andy didn’t reply, just stared at the phone and bit his fingernails.

Just after two o’clock the sky went black. There was a lull in the wind and the countryside sank into muffled silence. Huddled inside his cashmere overcoat Fenwick sniffed the air and shivered.

‘We should press on.’

‘To where?’ Tate frowned and tugged his scarf up higher.

He would have been quite happy to wait with the others at the garage but his boss had given in to an urgent need for action and insisted on leaving ten minutes before, much to the amusement of Bernstein and Bazza, who had shaken their heads at him in sympathy. More fool him for attaching himself to an obsessive.

There was a map open in front of the windscreen. Tate’s gloved finger hovered over it.

‘We’re here; the Mondeo was found two miles back there.’

‘And the grandmother’s house is where exactly?’

Tate peered at the large-scale map.

‘Around about here.’

‘We might as well go straight there. If he’s gone somewhere else then it will show up on camera and Bernstein will call us, but this way we can double-check ourselves faster than HQ will be able to despatch someone.’

Tate bit his lip, put the car into gear and pulled out of the lay-by. He was unnerved by Fenwick’s mood. The superintendent was always quiet but the current aura of – what exactly? – not detachment, more absence, was unnerving. Half a mile back he had insisted Tate stop the car and had stepped out into the frigid afternoon. Tate had assumed it was for a call of nature and politely looked away but Fenwick just stood there, glaring at the sky and sniffing like a damned bloodhound. Then he had come back into the car as if nothing had happened and they drove on until the next demand to stop.

‘What makes you think they went to the grandmother’s, sir?’

‘Nothing; they could very well not be there. Mariner might have found another empty house at random, probably did as it worked last time, but if I’m right about Issie …’ He stopped talking and gazed out of the window.

‘Two days ago the local force checked it out and confirmed the house was empty, sir.’

Fenwick rubbed the fogged glass with his gloved hand.

‘Why else would he be in the area? Issie knows this place. Her mother says she stayed with her grandparents given the slightest opportunity.’

‘You think Mariner would listen to Issie?’ Tate subconsciously shook his head as he pressed ‘Go’ on the satnav and watched the route being calculated.

‘They’ve been together for nineteen days. I think she’ll have worked out how to manage him.’

Tate hoped that his involuntary snort of disbelief was covered by his cough.

‘We must hurry.’ Fenwick finally deigned to snap his seat belt shut and the pinging alarm died. ‘There’s heavy snow coming.’

‘They said on the radio the blizzard would arrive overnight.’

‘Well, they’re wrong; can’t you smell it?’

Fenwick glared at the sergeant who maintained a diplomatic silence. They were forced to travel slowly even though the roads were virtually empty and they had four-wheel drive. Every now and then the front or back wheels would lose their grip, but Tate
managed the car confidently and they progressed without incident.

Fenwick’s mobile rang making them both jump.

‘Yes? … Hello, Bazza … You what?’ Fenwick leant forward suddenly, his free hand braced against the dashboard, listening intently. ‘And you’ve already told the chief constable? Good. Well Tate and I are already on our way there. We’re probably half an hour ahead of you. It’s essential that a search team is despatched at once … good.’

Fenwick broke the call, muttering to himself. Tate opened his mouth but his boss raised a hand, silencing him.

‘Let me think.’ He was trying his phone. ‘It’s hard to get a signal out here.’

‘I can use my radio.’

Fenwick shook his head. The last thing he wanted was to be on the record. No one knew he was here except Bernstein and Bazza.

‘I, er … it sounded as if Bazza had news.’

‘He did. The materials recovered from the last house Issie and Mariner stayed at are still being processed at the laboratory. In the rubbish they found a paper bag with a single word daubed on it in tomato sauce; “NANA”.’ Fenwick looked at Tate triumphantly.

‘Maybe Issie was lonely and missing her grandmother,’ Tate suggested and winced in the face of Fenwick’s scowl. ‘But of course the most important thing is that she’s still alive.’

‘Indeed,’ Fenwick sounded mollified. ‘The thing is how am I going to explain to Norman that I’m involved in Goldilocks?’

Tate was surprised that Fenwick should be confiding in him.

He screwed up his face in thought, but then had to return his concentration to a particularly difficult corner. Once he had navigated it he said, ‘There’s no obvious reason, sir, but maybe I could have received a tip about one of Flash Harry’s undiscovered victims that led us there.’

‘You would do that for me?’ Fenwick was staring at him.

Tate squirmed in discomfort and remained silent.

‘That’s very decent of you, Tate, but it’s tenuous and I’m not going to let you.’ Fenwick stared out at the blank, white landscape.
‘I’m simply going to have to admit that I decided to use my day off to help Bernstein.’

‘Even though you are off the case, sir?’

‘Even though I am off the case.’ Fenwick gave a twisted smile. ‘And stop calling me “sir”. We’ve worked together long enough – it’s Andrew. What’s your first name, by the way?’

‘Jeremy, sir … Andrew.’

‘Good.’

Tate said nothing more. They both knew that Fenwick had stepped so far over the line that he would be facing disciplinary action if … when … CC Norman found out. Yet the superintendent didn’t seem to care. He was more worried about the weather and reaching the grandmother’s farm than his career. It wasn’t his place to judge, he decided. Belatedly he realised that Fenwick had dragged him into a mess that could also have implications for his own career.

‘I’ll tell Norman that I ordered you to keep silent and just do what I told you, Jeremy,’ Fenwick said as if reading his mind. ‘For now let’s keep focused on getting to this damned village. How much further?’

‘In about a mile we turn right.’

Fenwick nodded and went back to staring out of the window.

As they neared the turning Tate eased to the crown of the road, feeling compacted snow beneath the tyres.

‘What’s that?’

The side road had a red triangle in the middle with bollards to either side.

‘It says “road closed”, sir. I’ll go and check to see what’s going on.’ Tate parked the car by the left verge with hazard warning lights on and clambered out.

He was back quickly.

‘A fallen tree has brought down the power line. It’s lying across the road and there’s a hazard warning from the electricity company saying “danger of death”. We shouldn’t risk it.’

He saw Fenwick start to button his coat.

‘Hang on a sec, sir. According to the map there is another way
to the farm. If we continue about a mile on this road we should be able to turn right and still get there. In fact there are two options: either we can go via Berwick or on to Alfriston.’

‘Let’s go, then.’

The road to Berwick was also closed but a few yards further on the turning to Alfriston was clear and the surface seemed to have been gritted. As they started down the hill to the village a heavy swirl of snow battered the windscreen. By the time they reached the village limits Tate had turned on the windscreen wipers. As he did so, Fenwick’s mobile rang.

‘There’s a signal here. Pull over for a moment so I can take this.’

Tate turned into a car park on the left just before the village proper.

‘Fenwick.’

‘It’s Deidre, Andrew. Where are you?’

‘Just entering Alfriston.’

‘On the way to the grandmother’s house?’

‘Yes; the route via Alciston is still blocked. Why?’

‘You’re not going to like this,’ she warned. ‘Some stupid bugger has screwed up big time and deserves to be fired, except of course he won’t be because he’ll claim stress and go sick.’

Fenwick’s good hand clenched into a fist.

‘Just tell me.’

‘A lazy sod of a flat-footed constable has just admitted that he didn’t actually check physically inside the grandmother’s house. He says he had to struggle through more than a mile of undisturbed snow just to reach the gate and that the track beyond showed no signs of a vehicle having travelled down it. He had a good look around, saw solid snow more than a foot deep and the house dark without signs of life.’

‘Stupid bugger! We’ve had so much snow what he saw meant nothing.’

‘Exactly; but Shit-for-Brains insists he went far enough down the track to check the place out. As there were no lights and no other signs of life he concluded no one was there, turned around and reported it empty.’

Fenwick uttered an obscenity that shocked even Tate and hit the dashboard with his fist.

‘When was this?’

‘Two days ago.’

‘And we think Mariner stole the car on Tuesday the nineteenth. So if they went straight to the grandmother’s they would have been there. There are power lines down so the place could well have been dark because of no electricity. What made him admit his mistake now?’

‘His wife. Apparently she confronted him and it all came out.’

‘You know what this means.’

‘Yup, we’ve gone from hunch to probable in the last half-hour. I’m on my way to you now with some of the team from the garage. Lewes has already despatched a Local Support Team. So with the eight of them, us four and you two we’ll have fourteen officers to deploy in no time. Pretty stupid of Mariner to choose somewhere so close to Lewes. Fancy hiding out on Sussex HQ’s home patch!

‘The ambulance service has been notified and should be with us by the time we enter the farm. If there’s any chance that you and Tate can get some visuals before we arrive – without being seen, natch, then that will be a big help.’

‘Will do. The mobile signal is irregular around here so you may need to reach us by radio.’

‘Shouldn’t be a problem.’

‘It would help if you could remember in your notes for today that you detailed Tate to be here so that when you radio him there’s good reason.’

There was an awkward pause as she realised the mess Fenwick was in.

‘Of course. See you soon.’ She hung up.

‘Thank you, si … Andrew.’

‘Don’t mention it. Just get me down this hill into the village in one piece.’