1.

It was the dead time, the empty days between Christmas and New Year. It was the middle of the night, just when it was about to decide to become a morning instead. In short: it was Vivian’s favourite time. She had volunteered - just like she did every year - to work right through the holidays. She wasn’t a Christmas person. By the time her colleagues broke up on Christmas Eve, she was glad to see the back of them with their Christmas cards and Secret Santas. They were an overexcitable lot. Some of them had been frothing about Christmas since Halloween. Vivian had learned years ago not to get her expectations up. The others would always come back in January and it would be ‘How was your Christmas?’ and the response would invariably be, ‘Oh, you know: quiet.” All that anticipation for nothing. Unless something dreadful happened like an accident, a death or a birth. Only then would that year be ‘a Christmas to remember’.

It was all the same to Vivian. She was pleased there was a hint of the Grinch to her nature and more than a scruple of Scrooge. For a few glorious days every year she had the mortuary to herself. It wasn’t a place for mince pies and mistletoe, although she allowed Geoffrey his paper crown from the interdepartmental crackers. Poor soul; he’d been through enough, whoever he was, to end up wired together on a stand, the resident skeleton and butt of many a joke.

Vivian pulled up the file for the most recent admission. Another poor soul suddenly called to his maker in the festive season. Cause of death: unknown. Well, that’s what I’m here for, Vivian grinned, relishing the mystery. She padded through to the Fridge in her flat slippers. Quite young too... she did a spot of mental arithmetic on the poor soul’s date of birth. Thirty-four! Poor soul. Thirty-four was no age at all. And three years younger than the woman who was going to cut him open to find out what had finished him off.

She set out the instruments she would need, placing them within easy reach on a stainless steel trolley.

The young man - the dead young man - the dead young man in his early thirties - was laid out on a table of the same stainless steel. A gutter ran around the table’s edge to catch any runoff. Everything was cold and clean and easy to keep that way. And that was exactly how Vivian liked her world to be.

She tucked her hair up under a cotton cap and fixed a rectangular mask over the lower half of her face. Last on were the Perspex safety goggles; some of these stiffs could give you a nasty squirt in the eye. You’d be surprised.

A quick buzz of the surgical saw will get through your sternum, my lad, and then it’s in with the chest-spreader and allez-oop! Your heart laid bare for me the only way I want it. I’ll soon get to the bottom of this, my lad; don’t you worry about that. You just lie there and keep your eyes closed. I can handle things from here.

She reached for the saw and thumbed the switch. The circular blade growled and whirred into action, buzzing away like angry bees revving tiny motorbikes. She lowered the spinning teeth towards the dead man’s chest.

A cold hand seized Vivian’s wrist, forcing the saw away. Startled, Vivian lost control. The blade chewed hungrily at her neck, a hyperactive puppy relentless to give its affection. Vivian staggered from the table, her arms flailing. She upset the trolley, sending instruments clattering to the floor. They will need sterilising again, she thought wildly. The saw insisted on giving her its love bite, chomping through her trachea and taking a chunk from her jugular. Vivian’s blood sprayed in a wide arc across the room. Some of it was deflected by the ceiling to rain on the body on the table.

The man, apparently not as dead as Vivian had been led to believe, sat up. He surveyed the carnage all around him. There was blood all over him. There was blood everywhere. And there was a dead woman in surgical scrubs on the floor with an instrument protruding from what was left of her throat like a cocktail stick through a maraschino cherry.

Shit, thought the man. Shit. Oh, shit.

***

Detective Inspector David Brough was in a bad mood. His boyfriend had turned up at Brough’s parents’ Warwickshire home without warning, without invitation. Ma and Pa Brough were in bed, luckily, and it was Brough who answered the intercom from the front gates.

“Oh, come on, David.” Detective Constable Jason Pattimore pleaded into the microphone mesh. “I’ve come all this way.”

“I didn’t ask you to!”

“Oh, don’t be like this! You’ve been missing me something rotten and you know it. Let me in and I’ll show you how much I’ve been missing you.”

“I’m sorry; that’s not going to happen.”

Pattimore swore. Brough panicked, rushing to cover the speaker in case the profanity woke his parents.

“Go home.”

“No, I won’t. That flat’s empty without you. And have you seen how much it’s pissing down with snow? Filthy night!”

“Snow doesn’t piss down,” Brough rasped, mindful of his parents’ bedroom at the top of the stairs.

“Spunking down, then,” said Pattimore. “The point I’m making is I miss you. I missed you all over Christmas and now I’m here and you won’t let me in. I’m freezing my bollocks off out here.”

“Go to a B and B,” Brough advised. “There’s one half a mile down the road. The walk will warm you up.”

“Fuck that. I’ll sleep in the car and if I do freeze my bollocks off, well, they’ll be on your head.”

The line went silent. Brough thought Pattimore had gone. He pressed the button a couple of times.

“Jay?” he asked. “Jason? If you’re there, go to the B and B and - and - I’ll join you in half an hour.”

There was more silence. Brough strained to hear, placing his ear next to the speaker.

“You fucking beauty!” Pattimore bellowed. Brough recoiled from the intercom and crashed into the hall table.

The landing light came on. Seconds later, Chief Constable Peter Brough (retired) was waddling down the stairs in dressing gown and slippers, aiming an ornamental blunderbuss at his only son.

“Who goes there?” he barked.

“It’s me, Dad.”

“For fuck’s sake, David.” The old man tucked his gun under his arm. “What are you doing, footling around in the dark? Anyone would think we didn’t feed you. Get to bed.”

He stomped back up to his room. Brough peeled himself off the hallway floor. Moving like a rather balletic ninja, he lifted a hat, coat and scarf from the hooks along the wall. He slipped his bare feet into two mismatched wellington boots and crept through the kitchen and out via the back door.

Christ. Jason had been right about the snow. It was absolutely ejaculating down. Brough huddled into the coat - one of his father’s - threw the scarf around his neck - his mother’s - and tottered away from the house like a duck with birth defects - the wellies each belonged to a different parent’s left foot.

He scaled the wrought iron gates. He could see the curves of Pattimore’s tyre prints straightening off and leading away. In the direction of the B and B.

Good lad!

Brough clapped his hands together.

And fell off the gate.

He landed with a muffled crump in a drift of snow.

Fuck. Ouch. Fuck. Shit.

He got up and hobbled down the road, following the flattened lines of his boyfriend’s tracks.

A hot bath or shower - shared, of course - would be the first order of business. And then they would make up for the time they had lost, the Christmas they didn’t spend together.

Brough slipped. He left one of the wellies in the road and half-hopped, half-shuffled the rest of the way.

***

“Are you feeling better, Mel?” The knuckles of Detective Sergeant Melanie Miller’s horny-handed (and horny in general) boyfriend rapped on the bathroom door. He pressed his ear to the wood but any response Miller may have uttered was drowned out by the flushing of the toilet.

The door opened with a sudden jerk catching Jerry off balance.

“Oh, there you are, Mel,” he observed, somewhat redundantly.

Miller, pale of face and tight of lip, pushed past him. She slumped her way to the bedroom seeking the comfort of the duvet. Jerry followed.

“I can fetch you a glass of water,” he indicated the path back to the bathroom with his thumb. Miller shook her head and began to cry. Jerry rushed to her and perched on the edge of the bed. “Oh, don’t cry, love.” He wondered whether to put his arms around her or pat her on the head. He wasn’t very good at dealing with people. Not living ones anyway. He was the groundskeeper of Dedley’s main cemetery and most of the people he encountered were spark out in wooden boxes or looking lost or crying their eyes out. But if they were crying their eyes out in the cemetery, at least you could make an educated guess why. And now here was Mel, his girlfriend, crying her eyes out and there was not so much as a whiff of a dead body.

“I’m sorry,” she managed to get out between blubs.

“There’s no need to be sorry,” said Jerry. Then his eyes widened. “Is there?”

“I’ve ruined Christmas!” Miller was wracked with sobs.

“Don’t be silly. I got just what I wanted, didn’t I?”

“A money box shaped like a pint glass?”

“No! Well, yes. To spend it with you - that’s what I wanted and that’s what I got.”

“And me with my head down the bog. And you on mop-and-bucket duty. Bet that wasn’t in your letter to Santa.”

“My correspondence with that worthy gentleman is between me and him.” He handed her a box of tissues. “I’m not complaining. Do you hear me complaining? Well, you won’t. Because I’m not. Complaining.”

“You’re very sweet.” Miller gave him a wet-eyed smile.

“Won prizes for it.” He stood. “I’ll get you that water. Replace some of your fluids.”

“Jerry?”

“Yes, love?” He paused in the doorway.

“I am sorry. We were meant to be spending Christmas in bed, not in the bathroom.”

“And I’ve said don’t be sorry. Do you know, if you hold a girl’s hair off her face while she pukes her ring up, you’re hers for keeps?”

“That’s romantic.”

“Won prizes for that and all.” He headed for the bathroom but Miller overtook him, with an urgent shove out of her way. She slammed the door behind her. Jerry hovered on the landing, trying not to listen to the sounds of Miller puking her ring up but remaining within earshot in case she needed him.

***

Brough unhooked Pattimore’s arm from around his neck and slid off the bed, trying to disturb the duvet and his sleeping boyfriend as little as possible. He tiptoed to the en suite and ran the shower. The grey light of morning was seeping through the blinds. Outside, the windowsills were lagged with an inch of fresh snow. It was bright enough in the bathroom to manage without switching a light on.

Brough flushed the toilet. Right away the noisy extractor fan started up.

“Jesus fuck,” grumbled Pattimore. There was a muffled thud as the pillow he threw bounced off the bathroom door. Brough peered out.

“You could always join me,” he offered, more than a little hopeful of a repeat performance of their earlier showdown. But Pattimore was no more than a lump under the bedclothes, trying very hard to get back to sleep.

Brough showered alone, his mood worsening with every sluicing off of soap. He hitched a towel around his waist and, making as much din as possible, banged his way across the room to put the kettle on. He rattled a teaspoon around an empty cup.

“Fuck off!” groaned the lump under the duvet.

“Did you want tea?” said Brough, raising his voice over the asthmatic rumbling of the kettle. “I’m making tea!”

“Tea would be lovely.” Pattimore roared back. “Just shut the fuck up about it.”

A few minutes later they were both sitting up in bed, nursing steaming cups and saucers.

“No biscuits?” Pattimore sent the dresser a wistful glance.

“You gorged on them all last night, remember.”

“We were both engorged, I seem to remember.”

“Hah!”

They sipped the tea.

“David...”

“Jason...”

They chuckled. It was a favourite in-joke. But then Pattimore turned serious.

“Davey, why wouldn’t you let me in last night? Into the house, I mean, before you make any rude remarks.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Answer the question!”

“I don’t know...” Brough took a longer sip to buy himself some time. “I feel - it feels - wrong - No, not wrong... Awkward. It’s not my house; it’s not our place.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning what it says.”

“Meaning you’re still not comfortable with your parents knowing about me.”

Brough put his cup and saucer on the bedside table. He put his arm around the sulking Pattimore and tried to explain. “There are some things - some people - that don’t mix. I don’t like people to be out of context. It’s like running into your dentist at the supermarket and you suspect he’s peeking in your trolley and disapproving of the sugary food and red wine you’re stockpiling.”

Pattimore thought about it.

“No,” he said. “It’s not like that at all. You’re ashamed of me; that’s what this is.”

“I am not!” Brough tried to make appeasement by nuzzling his nose into Pattimore’s neck, but Jason stiffened at his touch - and not in the way he would have liked.

“Then you’re ashamed of yourself!” Pattimore wriggled free, put his cup and saucer on the floor and headed for the en suite, muttering.

Brough got dressed and went down to breakfast without him. The host’s cheery greeting was met with a frosty look to match the weather conditions.

“Just toast,” said Brough, tight-lipped. “Apricot jam.”

He drummed his fingers on the chequered tablecloth and took in his surroundings. The dining room was all a bit twee, he decided, but a damn sight better than anything Dedley had to offer. He shuddered as a memory surfaced of the Ash Tree, the B&B that had been at the centre of his first case when he’d arrived in the West Midlands. No, you wouldn’t want to stay there, even though there had been no murders for ages.

He had cause to shudder again when he heard a familiar voice in the reception, chatting merrily to the host.

“He’s here all right.” Brough could imagine the man trying to roll his raisins-in-a-biscuit eyes. “Go through. Coffee?”

“Smashing,” said Brough’s father, entering the dining room. “Oh, get out from under that table, you silly bugger - and I use the term with all due affection and respect.”

Peter Brough chuckled and sat at his son’s table, enjoying the red face and embarrassed expression as his son emerged like a glove puppet.

“Dropped a spoon,” Brough said, weakly, knowing his father wouldn’t believe it for a second. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“I could ask you the same thing, my boy.” Peter Brough pulled off his thick gloves, just as the B&B proprietor sashayed in with a cafetière and a coffee cup. Father and son sat in silence while the coffee was poured. Brough squirmed under his father’s amused scrutiny.

“How did you find me?”

Peter Brough tapped the side of his nose. “The instincts of a policeman. You never lose them. Plus you left me a trail that wasn’t exactly difficult to follow. You don’t have to be Chingachook or Natty Bumpo to follow footprints in the snow - especially when your tracks were punctuated by your mother’s wellington boots.”

“One of them was yours,” Brough sneered, suddenly a teenager again, scorning any and every fault he could find in his father.

“Be that as it may,” Peter Brough warmed his hands around the cup, “my original question still stands.”

“Hello, Petey!” Pattimore crashed in, his hair still wet. Brough paled visibly. Pattimore took the seat next to him and pecked him on the cheek.

“Give over!” Brough inched his chair away.

“Was he always such a miserable bastard, Petey?”

“Do you know, I believe he was!” Brough’s father and boyfriend shared a hearty chuckle at Brough’s expense. Their amusement increased when they saw how much he was squirming.

“Gay’s not the word!”

“Dad!”

“Oh, come off it, David. Your mother was upset to find your bed hadn’t been slept in. She’d made you up a lovely tray. Thought you two lovebirds might enjoy breakfast in bed.”

Brough’s jaw dropped.

“Aww!” Pattimore reached across the table and squeezed Peter’s hand. “That would have been nice. Wouldn’t it, Davey?”

Brough looked at each of them in turn with horror and disgust in his eyes. “Why don’t you two just get a room?”

They laughed at him again.

“You can apologise to your mother later,” Peter Brough stood up. “I’ll take the wellies back to the house. You two have had a message.”

“Oh?” said Pattimore.

“Is it Serious?” said Brough.

Peter Brough pulled his gloves on and buttoned his coat. He looked his son in the eye. “I’m afraid so,” he said.