Chapter Thirteen

He slammed the door of his car with greater force than necessary. The sound of it was followed by a weaker echo of Austin closing the door on his Nissan. Snow was falling lightly but steadily and had done so in Leigh Woods for hours.

Austin called across. ‘Did you hear on the news this morning? It’s the coldest weather and earliest snowfall this far south since—’

McLusky cut him off. ‘Three out of ten, seven out of six, spare me statistics, Jane, whenever possible. I can’t wrap my head round it and I always get the feeling I’m being lied to somehow. No offence. Let’s just call it bloody freezing.’

‘It’s four below up here.’

‘How do you know?’

‘My car tells me.’

McLusky looked peevishly at the other vehicles already assembled in the winter landscape. Two police transport vans, patrol cars and several others. ‘Your car? Perhaps your clever car can tell us how we’re going to find a body up here under five inches of snow?’

‘I know, it’s mad.’

Yes, it was mad. McLusky had discussed it with DSI Denkhaus earlier. It was bad enough trying to find a live avalanche victim under fresh snow; there, you had something to work with. Resistance under the snow could be detected with rods, and new technologies were being developed all the time. But a frozen body in frozen ground would feel to the prodding stick of a police officer much like the surrounding area. Hard. All depended on how much of it had been disturbed by animal activity. Naturally, not ‘mad’ but ‘challenging’ was the official line.

‘We’ll have to try, at least,’ McLusky added. ‘Or as Denkhaus put it more precisely, be seen to try.’

Ahead of them a sergeant was giving instructions and a pep talk to sixeteen officers who would attempt a frozen fingertip search of the area most likely to contain the handless body. ‘It’s pure guesswork, of course,’ the sergeant said, ‘but it makes sense to start around the area where the hand was found. Then again, a fox could have carried his prize several hundred yards at a gallop, especially if he was being chased by a bloody dog.’ The officers formed into one long line, starkly black and yellow against the snow. At a quiet command from the sergeant, they set off. Each carried a rod with which to probe the ground for anything unusual. To McLusky they looked like a platoon of blind men.

‘At least it’s not foggy any more,’ he conceded.

‘I do wish they’d twigged that the hand had a different owner earlier, before all this stuff came down.’ Austin kicked with his heavy police boots at the snow. ‘Much as I like the look of it. I’ve missed snow, you know, living down here in the south.’

‘I’m happy for you. Pity we can’t just wait until the stuff melts and the ground’s no longer frozen. Makes no difference to Mr Hands, I’m sure.’ But it couldn’t be done. Especially not with part of a body found, foul play almost certain and without a suspect in custody. Every day they lost put more distance between the murder and its perpetrator, perhaps even literally.

Soon a flock of press photographers and reporters descended. ‘Like carrion birds,’ McLusky observed when the search team stopped for a rest. Everyone had long run out of hand jokes, especially after the sergeant warned them that DSI Denkhaus would personally slaughter anyone who let himself be photographed laughing while looking for a dead body. Officers were drinking tea and hot soup from flasks, eating sandwiches, or discreetly smoking behind trees, out of sight of the camera lenses trained on them. McLusky didn’t join them, knowing that the presence of a CID officer would probably ruin their break, cramp their style. Instead he walked for a bit down the track until he could no longer hear any voices and there smoked a solitary cigarette, cupping the glowing end of it with his hands for the illusion of warmth it offered. The search had been postponed from yesterday until this morning, and they had been here for two hours now. His feet were numb, his ears so cold it hurt to touch them. The search team had managed to cover a large area already, now trampled by their heavy boots, a shambles compared with the untouched, snow-blanketed surroundings. Murder somehow managed to turn everything ugly, though to McLusky the scene before him also had its own special aesthetic: police officers, their liveried cars and uniforms, the purposefulness of it, the exclusivity of it, set apart from civilian life.

With the break over, the line was re-forming just as the dog handler arrived in his van. ‘How do you expect the dog to find anything if you systematically trample all over the search area?’ he asked the sergeant.

McLusky answered for him. ‘You’re right, and I raised it with our super. I was told there was no dog available and to start the search anyway in case we got a heavy snowfall. That could have been the end of searching for a while.’

‘Well can you at least call them back now? There’s no point me letting him out while there’s a crowd of people staggering about.’

The sergeant took a deep belligerent breath. He did not appreciate having his line of officers described as a crowd of staggering people.

McLusky forestalled any exchange. ‘Sergeant? Rest your men, let them run the engines, warm up in the vans.’ When the sergeant had stomped off, he turned to the dog handler. ‘Are we hoping for a miracle?’

‘If the body is under that mess, then you are. But the dog’ll love it. Harry hasn’t seen snow before. He thinks it’s great stuff.’

‘Yeah? DS Austin thinks so too.’

Harry turned out to be a young German shepherd who was visibly excited at being out in the snow. McLusky watched with Austin from inside the Nissan as the handler let him run in what looked like confused patterns all over the area, holding him on a long retractable lead and calling out short commands from time to time.

McLusky squeaked his finger through the condensation on the passenger window. ‘I’m not sure this is best use of manpower. Nineteen police officers sitting in cars watching one man and his dog.’

‘And I’m not even sure I want him to find anything … oh, there we go.’ The dog was indicating and its handler squatted down, scraping at the snow. He waved, and McLusky and Austin quit the shelter of the car and crunched across.

‘Training shoe.’ The handler pointed at part of a black and white trainer he had exposed.

‘Anyone in it?’ McLusky asked.

The handler gave him a look under raised eyebrows, then squeezed the shoe. ‘No one at home.’

When it had been freed from the snow, it turned out to be one of a pair, tied together by the laces. Size four. ‘A kid lost it. Nothing to do with Mr Hands,’ McLusky decided. ‘Carry on.’

Once more they closed the car doors against the cold. The two vans containing the dozen or so uniformed officers were steaming up with condensation and boredom and McLusky was wondering about how much daylight was left when the dog indicated again by digging excitedly, just to the right of the previously searched area. This time the handler moved the dog away and waited for them a few yards from the indicated site. ‘I’d say that was your missing body. Or part of it. Arm, I think, clothed.’

‘You stay here,’ McLusky said, and keeping to the existing footprints approached the patch that the dog handler had cleared. Among the dirtied snow and earth he could make out a pale checked shirt with the bony outline of an elbow underneath, frozen solid. He brushed lightly at the surrounding snow, but uncovered nothing but mouldering leaves. ‘Good work, Harry.’ To Austin he said: ‘You know what to do.’ Then he turned and walked back in his own footprints.

‘Another body, DI McLusky?’ Warren popped up from behind a tree into his path.

He trudged around her and on towards the cluster of police vehicles. ‘Get out of here, Warren, back into your pen with the rest of your lot.’

Warren was keeping pace with him. ‘The morgue is filling up nicely this week. What with you coming up here to dig up bodies every so often, pensioners dying of hypothermia and junkies popping their clogs all over town.’

He walked on, ignoring her. No comment was what Denkhaus wanted him to say. He could think of a few sentences he would like to add to that, but swallowed them down.

He stopped by his car. ‘Keep walking, Warren.’

She did. ‘It’s Phil,’ she called back without turning around. ‘How many times?’

‘Can you tell yet whether he was killed at the same time as the first victim?’ McLusky, standing under the tent next to the pathologist, stuck his hands deep into his pockets to keep them warm. He’d had to take his leather gloves off to put the latex ones on, and they did nothing to stop his fingers from going numb. An icy wind was blowing up here and the tent flapped and snapped. They watched two crime-scene technicians uncover the body with infinite care and patience. Time spent now would save time later. Or so they were constantly told.

‘After such a cursory examination of the body, I’m inclined not to comment.’ Coulthart looked up to see if the inspector felt like protesting, but McLusky seemed unmoved. ‘It looks to me like he was killed more recently,’ he conceded. ‘Taking into account that the the ground hasn’t frozen all that deep down yet, and this one was lying a good eight inches below the surface, I’d say he died around two weeks ago. Not someone you recognize?’

This time McLusky did react. ‘His own mother wouldn’t recognize him, and you know it, Doc.’

‘At least this time his face hasn’t been eaten away. But it took a hammering.’ Half of the body had now been freed. It was clothed in a pale blue checked shirt and pale blue jeans; both were darkly stained with dirt and blood in many places. The wrists were again tied with thick wire in front of the body, and most of the hands, which had been closest to the surface, had been gnawed away. The face was almost black and the features distorted. The nose was flattened and burst. The eyes had disappeared under broken tissue. The mouth was half open, the shredded lips shrunken back from the gum tissue. All front teeth were either chipped or broken off completely.

‘Okay then … After your cursory examination of the body, would you agree we might be looking for the same perpetrators?’

This brought forth a rare smile from Coulthart. ‘I’d put money on it. Probably not my own money, but yes, I’d have to agree. It looks like the same type of wire was used, too. However, one or two immediate differences between this killing and the previous one I can point out right now. This man is obviously much older. In his fifties, I’d say. And this chap wasn’t gagged.’

‘He wasn’t?’ McLusky took a step to the door flap of the tent and lifted it. Snow was falling thinly but steadily. ‘Not that you can see it now, but we’re closer to the road and houses here than the other site was. If he was killed here and these injuries were inflicted without him being gagged, then someone would have heard him scream.’

‘One would assume so,’ Coulthart agreed. ‘I didn’t say he was killed here, of course.’

McLusky turned to the SOCOs, who were still gradually uncovering the body. ‘Have a go at the other end. Show me his legs.’

The technicians shifted their attention without comment to the lower part of the body, uncovering the legs, which were not twisted, like those of the previous victim. McLusky squatted down to get a closer look. One foot was shod in a good-quality brown shoe; the other was shoeless, covered in a grey sock. The ankles were wound tightly with the same type of thick wire that secured the wrists.

‘This one wasn’t standing in a hole,’ one of the technicians said.

McLusky looked at the SOCO, but didn’t recognize him under all that protective gear. ‘No. At least not here he wasn’t. Okay, gentlemen,’ he said, straightening up. ‘I look forward to reading your reports. Preferably somewhere warm and cosy.’

Coulthart stood up too. ‘Yes, I heard rumours that the heating at Albany Road station was less than adequate for this type of weather.’

‘I couldn’t have put it better myself. If you run out of space at the morgue, you can send the bodies straight to us. Albany Road is the biggest refrigerator in town. When’s the autopsy?’

‘Can’t say yet, we’re very busy. I shall send you my usual invitation.’

Outside, it looked as though a film director had decided to reshoot the body-discovered-in-the-woods scene, only this time with snow, which was coming down more heavily now. Generators were powering arc lights, set up against the approaching dark. Crows had appeared on a nearby tree, from where they watched the comings and goings. The officers of the original search team had nearly all been replaced by a fresh lot, and SOCOs and a forensics team had swelled the numbers at the locus. A photographer documented every move inside the tent, and as usual, a force cameraman with a shoulder-held HD camera filmed the entire operation.

A tea urn had made a welcome appearance, dispensing a virtually tasteless but nearly hot liquid from the back of a van. Austin stirred sugar and whitener into his polystyrene cup, then held it away from his body while he sneezed loud enough to startle a few crows into flight. He caught up with McLusky, who was standing near his car, a burning cigarette in his mouth, his hands buried deep in his jacket pockets. ‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’ Austin asked.

McLusky watched the crows return and settle on the same tree. ‘I hope not, for your sake, Jane.’

Austin turned away to sneeze again, then went back to sipping his tea.

‘Please don’t tell me you’re getting a cold. Go on, don’t be mysterious, what are you thinking?’

‘I was thinking, perhaps we shouldn’t have sent the dog handler away so soon.’

McLusky held up his hands, catching thick snowflakes on his palms. ‘I know. But another few hours of this and it all becomes academic. I’m with you. I’m glad it’s snowing again. We’ve got all the bodies we can cope with.’

Right away it had felt like a mistake. A mistake to meet at the Nova Scotia for a start. Yet it had seemed natural when they had arranged the meeting. They’d often had a drink here when they’d first gone out together, and even after they got married, even though there were far more interesting pubs in town. In summer they’d take their drinks outside and sit by the moorings, look at the boats. Paul had entertained dreams of buying a boat one day, of going sailing on a grand journey, though taking a rented dinghy out on Chew Valley Lake was as far as he had got with it. She’d told him she got seasick, but it had made no difference to his dreams. That should probably have rung a warning bell straight away, but of course you don’t start analysing until much later.

She watched him now as he queued at the bar to get another round of drinks. His clothes were suspiciously neat. He’d never dressed like that after they got married; it was strictly courtship behaviour with him. Once he felt safely married, it had been jeans and favourite sweaters that looked like he’d already sailed around the world in them, and she’d soon given up nagging him about it. So this was courtship again. Not that she had learnt much about his new girlfriend yet; she was great and they got on really well, which was hardly an in-depth profile of someone you intended to spend the rest of your natural with. So far all Paul had done was reminisce about their own shared past, and like an idiot she had fallen right in with it.

‘Cheers, Kats.’ He put a fresh pint of lager in front of her and immediately launched into another episode of their life together. ‘Do you remember when we took Ian down here and he met that drunk Canadian girl outside …’ It was difficult to recall their rows clearly now, with him so close in front of her, radiating goodwill and aftershave and looking no older at all, as fresh as the day she threw him out, in fact. His eyes were as green, his teeth as regular and white, his hair as thick and wavy as she had tried to forget. And he still made her laugh; it was one of his best features, the ability to be effortlessly funny, whether he was drunk or sober. She couldn’t help giggling about his story now, even while the grown-up part of her, the one that didn’t answer to Kats, chided her to get it over with. They stopped laughing and lifted their pints together. Paul’s eyes sparkled with good humour and alcohol. He put down his glass, moved forward a little and let his hand rest close to hers on the table.

She withdrew her hand and leant back on her chair. ‘So are you engaged to Carrie now?’

‘Well, no, not officially. Not at all, really. After all, we’re still married, Kats.’

‘I’m aware of it. But you’ve set a date?’

The pub seemed unnaturally quiet, as though Paul had ordered silence for his next sentence to hit home. ‘We don’t have to go through with it, you know. We could give it another try, Kats. No, no, wait, I don’t mean moving back together. Not straight away, obviously, but we could try … seeing each other? We could give it another go, couldn’t we?’

She picked up her pint and slowly drained it, her preferred way of counting to ten.

‘Let me get you another one,’ Paul offered.

‘No. It’s my round.’

She had to wait her turn at the bar, giving her time to calm herself. It wasn’t often you were offered the choice between married life and divorce in between pints. Married life, perhaps even children … The end of microwaved moussaka for sure. ‘Same again,’ she said to the barman, relying on the man’s memory, since she had no idea what kind of beer Paul was drinking at the moment. Did she really want to find out? Was it possible to go back? How much future was there in travelling backwards?

When she set the drinks down, Paul looked at her with a soft, sincere smile, then opened his mouth to speak, but she cut him off. ‘Did you get me here under false pretences? All that marrying Candy stuff?’

‘Carrie. No. No, of course not. We did talk about getting married.’

‘On the phone you made it sound like it was imminent. I thought perhaps you’d got her pregnant or something.’

‘No. No, it’s not like that.’

‘What is it like? I’m mystified.’ She also felt nervy and raw and poured more drink on it.

‘I simply had more time to think about us since I called you. And seeing you again just made me realize how much I miss being with you.’

‘So you came here bearing divorce papers but after a couple of pints and a chat decided it isn’t Cathy you want, it’s me.’

‘You make it sound like it’s something that’s just occurred to me, but it isn’t. I thought about it a lot.’

‘Between girlfriends?’

Paul looked hurt. ‘There’s only been Carrie.’

‘And you’re prepared to dump her to give us a second chance?’

‘I am. Yes, I would,’ he said sincerely.

‘And if I turn you down now, you’re going to carry on as normal. It’s always good to have a spare, I suppose. Give me those papers.’

Reluctantly he pulled the thick envelope from an inside pocket of his jacket and laid it in front of her.

She slid the papers out and flicked through. ‘Sign at the bottom and initial the rest, right? I’m glad I thought of bringing my favourite pen.’ She signed and with a flourish handed back the papers in their envelope. As she stood up and swung her jacket from the back of her chair, Paul got up too. ‘No, you stay and finish your drink. Carrie is a lucky girl. Tell her I said so.’

Outside she zipped her jacket up and pulled tight her scarf. She took a deep sniff of the clean wintry air. Snow was falling thickly and audibly around her. The city sounds from across the water were muffled by it. Ice was beginning to form between the boats and snow was settling on it. The boats themselves sat motionless under thick white blankets, making her dream of spring. She needed to find a new pub. It was too early to go home. Far too early.