by Lee Weeks
Lee Weeks was born in Devon. She left school at seventeen and, armed with a notebook and very little cash, spent seven years working her way around Europe and South East Asia. She returned to settle in London, marry and raise two children. She has worked as an English teacher and personal fitness trainer. Her books have been Sunday Times bestsellers. She now lives in Devon.
ALSO BY LEE WEEKS
Dead of Winter
First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2013
A CBS COMPANY
Copyright © Lee Weeks, 2013
This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.
No reproduction without permission.
® and © 1997 Simon & Schuster Inc. All rights reserved.
The right of Lee Weeks to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
Simon & Schuster UK Ltd
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
B Format ISBN 978-1-84983-860-3
Trade Paperback ISBN 978-1-84983-859-7
Ebook ISBN 978-1-84983-861-0
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Typeset by M Rules
Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
To the staff and volunteers of the
Devon Rape Crisis Service.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Christmas Day
Chapter 1
It was the first week in December and for three weeks the temperatures in the UK had plummeted so low that now the Regent’s Canal had completely frozen over. The gloomy silence was fractured by the boom and bellow of a massive building works programme going on in King’s Cross. Most days the sky played battlefield to giant industrial cranes but today visibility was limited to just twenty feet; it was just far enough to see across the canal, where it narrowed towards the gates then dropped eight feet and widened into a basin. The water hadn’t been flowing for two weeks and the canal boats were stuck, moored in ice.
A group of six lads walked down towards the frozen canal. Mouse, nicknamed a year ago when he was the smallest member of the gang, before he grew into a lanky skulker, dragged his feet, kicking the loose stones as he sloped along the towpath, hands deep in the pockets of his black hoody. He was nervous today. A lot was expected of him.
Leon, the leader of the boys, moved back along the ranks until he came level with Mouse. Mouse lifted his chin in the direction of the new boy. ‘I don’t see you asking him to do it?’
‘That’s cos he needs to wait his turn.’
The others sniggered and Mouse gathered phlegm and rolled it round his tongue before he spat the globule onto the path.
‘Anyways—’ Leon moved closer and walked alongside Mouse – ‘he don’t know how it works with the old man on the till. He don’t know how to distract him.’
Mouse’s eyes were furtive beneath the rim of his hoody. He shook his head. ‘No, man, he knows me; he won’t let me in the shop.’
‘He will.’ Leon put his arm around Mouse’s shoulder. The other boys turned and grinned at one another.
He shrugged Leon off. ‘I’m telling you he won’t. I tried to buy something for my mum last week. He wouldn’t even let me do that.’
‘You scared of the old man?’
Mouse tried a laugh but it came out shrill and false in the frozen air.
‘You need to stay calm. Stay cool.’ Leon sucked in the air through the gap between his big front teeth. ‘Be happy; don’t worry.’ As he talked he leant his weight on Mouse and they stepped closer to the canal’s edge. One of the boys picked up a stone from the towpath and threw it across the frozen water.
‘Oi! Stop that!’ The man stood at the other side of the canal and stared at them. Another stone skimmed over the top of the ice, leaving a frosted trail. ‘What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing?’ he shouted again.
‘What’s it to you, old man?’ Laughter rang out amongst the obscenities as one of the lads prised up a loose slab from the side of the towpath and launched it across the ice.
‘I work here, that’s what. It’s dangerous. Now bugger off home.’
Mouse joined in the whistling and the jeering across the canal. When he turned his attention back to his mates he found them standing in his way, corralling him in; his back to the canal. A play-fight ensued between him and Leon. Mouse struggled to slip his wiry frame from Leon’s firm grip and finished being tipped backwards towards the ice, dangling. He tried to laugh as he clung tight to Leon, who seemed about to haul him in but instead dropped him. Mouse bounced on his back and then slid across the surface. His friends whooped with delight as they watched him struggle to get to his knees, fall and slip sideways. He tried again, still managing to see the funny side of his predicament, inwardly so grateful that the ice had held his weight, but now all he wanted was to get off it fast. He steadied himself, turned over onto his knees and placed two hands down on the frozen surface and then stopped laughing. He scrambled to move away from that spot. His hands began to stick to the ice. His face was just an inch from the surface and his eyes slowly focused on the scene beneath his hands. He was winded, he couldn’t scream; he couldn’t talk. He heard the sound of his friends laughing. He tried to make out the shape he was looking at: the first thing he saw was the grinning mouth, the next her eyes, swollen lids opening just wide enough to stare back at him. There between his hands, inches from his face a woman stared up at him through the frozen surface of the canal.
Mouse’s scream was lost in the wail and boom coming from the building site nearby.
Chapter 2
By midday, the day was as light as it was going to get. Freezing fog shrouded the canal above St Pancras Lock. It wrapped around Detective Inspector Dan Carter’s thick-set frame like a wet blanket. He tucked his stripy cashmere scarf into his overcoat and pulled the collar up around his neck.
&
nbsp; From where Carter was standing he could see the naked legs of a young woman’s body. Her swollen white limbs had a blackish hue.
He looked up as Detective Constable Ebony Willis came striding back along the towpath towards him, tucking her notebook back inside her jacket as she did so. He thought how she didn’t seem to notice the cold, didn’t feel it like he did. Today the cold and damp in the air sank into his bones; he just couldn’t get warm. Ebony didn’t even have gloves on. She was wearing her self-imposed uniform of black trousers and a fitted black quilted jacket. Her afro hair was scraped into a ballooning ponytail at the back of her neck.
He waited until she reached him. ‘What’s the score?’ he asked, keeping his voice low and banging his leather-gloved hands together to counteract the cold.
‘Basically – he says she wouldn’t have gone far in this canal.’
Carter looked past her to the man in the dark overcoat walking away.
‘Is he the lock keeper?’
‘No, he’s the man who was here when the boys were messing about and fell onto the ice. But he knows all about the Regent’s Canal – he works in the Canal Museum just down the road. He said that different types of locks allow for different water levels and movement between sections of canal.’
Carter swivelled on his heels to look around him and get his bearings. ‘Plenty of ways to get down here, especially with all the development that’s going on. There’s two acres of Camley Park on the other side of the canal for a start. Did he mention if there was any CCTV?’
‘The nearest is two hundred metres away, Guv.’
Carter stepped closer to the side of the canal and knelt to pick up a piece of the broken ice.
‘Got to be two inches thick.’ He turned it over in his hand. ‘We’ll need to wait for the ice to thaw before we can get the divers in to search.’
‘Yes, Guv – forecast isn’t good. No more snow for a few days but then it’s coming back.’
Carter’s thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of journalists on the bridge that spanned the canal up to their right. He could just about make them out: dark shadows moving through the fog. He heard them clanking their equipment as they hurried down as far as they were allowed onto the towpath. They stopped fifty metres away from where Carter and Ebony stood; just near where their car was parked. Next they heard an officer on the edge of the crime scene talking to them, directing them to where they could stand. Carter scowled.
‘They didn’t take long to find out.’
‘No, Guv. The canal man said the lad who fell on the ice took pictures on his phone; his friends wouldn’t help him out till he put it on Instagram.’
‘Little bastards. Where is he now?’
‘In a cell; he’s given his statement already. Now he’s waiting for someone to be free to tell him he can leave.’
‘Good. Make him sweat for a few hours.’ He shook his head, trying to shake off a headache. He’d spent the evening reminiscing with an old friend and a bottle of JD and now he was beginning to feel the hangover start. He rubbed his face and sighed. ‘What’s the matter with people? Should have respect for another human being. Now we’ve got the frigging newspapers before we’ve even had a chance to assess the situation, let alone inform the family.’
Carter pulled back the entrance to the crime scene tent and stooped as he stepped inside; Willis followed. The smell hit Carter so hard that he was in danger of throwing up. He instinctively drew his scarf up over his nose.
‘Doctor Harding?’
A blonde-haired woman in a white forensic suit was kneeling beside the remains of the woman, which were bloated and blackened by the water. The woman’s head was inside a polythene bag. She had wounds as big as teacups that had eaten into her body.
Doctor Harding looked up and nodded. She didn’t smile. She wasn’t one for automatic gestures of politeness. ‘Willis . . .’ She handed Ebony a pair of gloves. ‘Help me with the body.’ A police photographer moved around and between them in the small tent as he took pictures of the body.
Carter spoke from behind his scarf. ‘How old do you put her, Doc?’
‘Mid-twenties.’
‘Any birthmarks, operation scars? Anything that might help us to identify her?’
‘There’s a tattoo running up the outside of her left ankle.’ Harding turned the victim’s left leg over. ‘I think it’s something written in Norse. I saw something like it once before, on a bald-headed man. That time it turned out to be an ancient proverb meaning: A cleaved head no longer plots.’
‘Yeah,’ said Carter. ‘I remember that guy – had it around his crown, didn’t he? Drug dealer from Croydon, came up to deal with the Turks on Caledonian Road. It proved to be a perfect guideline for someone to cut the top of his head off like a boiled egg. Let’s see if our mermaid shows up anywhere on the system.’
‘Yes, Guv,’ said the photographer.
‘Whoever she was, she’s definitely undernourished,’ said Harding.
‘How long’s she been in the water?’ asked Carter.
‘A few months, at least. She went in when the water was warmer. Decomposition started but then slowed right down.’
Carter hovered nearer and looked directly down over the body at the plastic bag covering her head. ‘Her face looks like something from a waxworks horror museum,’ he observed. He moved closer. ‘It looks like it’s made of cheese.’
The photographer stood where Carter had been to take his shots of the head. Carter pulled back.
Harding nodded. ‘It’s called adipocere – the absence of oxygen and plenty of moisture inside the bag have caused the fats from her face and her brain matter to fuse, turning her face into soap.’
‘Prostitute maybe?’ asked Carter. ‘A client went too far: got carried away with the bag, and killed her by accident then dumped her here?’
‘Pretty risky getting undressed in the middle of King’s Cross,’ Harding answered as she turned the woman’s head towards Ebony and searched for the best place to begin cutting open the bag.
‘People enjoy taking risks,’ Carter disagreed. ‘Might have been a warm summer evening. Maybe this was an experimental sex session gone wrong – he asphyxiates her and then dumps her body straight into the water.’
Harding decided on an entry place for her scalpel and Ebony held the plastic out, away from the woman’s face, whilst the doctor slit down the centre of the bag and peeled it back gently. She finished cutting the bag through. Ebony moved the clumped strands of dark auburn hair away from the woman’s face and neck for Harding to get a better look. She splayed them out, medusa-like.
‘Except . . .’ She turned the head to one side – ‘she wasn’t asphyxiated; she was strangled and the bag was an afterthought. Someone used huge force too; they crushed her windpipe, and broke the vertebrae in her neck, snapping her spinal column – usual injuries we see in someone who’s hanged themselves, but there are no rope lesions. But there’s a necklace, protected by the plastic,’ Harding added as she worked a chain loose that was embedded in the flesh of the neck and eased it free. Turning it till she found the clasp, she pulled two rings around with it, threaded onto the chain. The photographer leant over the body whilst Ebony rested the rings on her open palm so that they could be photographed. Harding undid the chain and handed it to Ebony to bag up. Ebony showed Carter the rings as she did so.
‘Two very different types, aren’t they?’ he said.
‘Of rings, Guv? Yes, I think one is an antique, maybe worth something. Think the other one is cheap.’
‘Anything else on her?’ asked Carter.
‘Not that I can see,’ answered Harding.
‘She look British to you?’ asked Carter. ‘What about the hair? Red hair is very popular with Eastern European women. We have a lot of those living in London.’
‘Yeah, but this wasn’t dyed,’ answered Harding. ‘Celtic, maybe.’
Ebony was still kneeling beside the body, studying the woman’s face. Carter stood back and w
atched. He was marvelling how Ebony could get that close to the smell and not seem to notice it.
‘What is it, Ebb?’
‘She’s got make-up on.’
Harding rubbed the woman’s cheek with a swab of cotton wool and looked at the resulting red stain on it.
‘You’re right. Must have been industrial-strength to survive this.’
‘There are remnants of blue eye-shadow,’ said Ebony. ‘She’s even got some sort of black eyelashes painted above her eyes. It’s as if she were going to a party.’
‘Dressed as what? A pantomime dame?’
Harding looked down the length of the woman’s body. ‘She’s had a tough life, whoever she is. The fish have capitalized on the decayed flesh.’ She stopped at the largest of the wounds on the woman’s thigh. ‘But all this tissue destruction wasn’t done in the water.’
‘Could you walk around with that kind of open wound?’ asked Willis.
Harding shook her head in response. ‘Can’t see how.’ She parted the frayed flesh and opened the edges of one of the wounds on the woman’s left thigh; the bone was visible.
‘What can have caused so many different sites of infection, and so deep?’ Carter asked as he took photos of the injuries with his phone. Willis helped Harding to turn the body on its side.
‘I think these wounds started as ulcers.’ Harding turned the victim’s arms at the elbows to take a look. ‘No obvious needle marks but these large open wounds might have started with skin-popping – injecting contaminated heroin under the skin.’
‘If she’s got that kind of drug abuse history we might find her fingerprints on file or she might be known at the needle exchange. We’ll check it out.’ Carter said as he moved back from the body. Ebony continued her fascinated examination of the woman’s face. Harding stood to allow the photographer better access.
‘Can you do the post mortem examination today?’ Carter had seen enough. He felt the need to get out of the confines of the tent. He wanted to breathe in something other than the putrid flesh of a body that had been at the bottom of the canal for months. Carter knew Willis would be happy to stay another hour or two. She came alive around the dead.
