The Ice Killer
A Di Barton Investigation
ROSS GREENWOOD
‘Only the dead know the truth.’
Leonid Andreyev
Contents
Double Jeopardy
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
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Epilogue
Author’s note
More from Ross Greenwood
About the Author
About Boldwood Books
Double Jeopardy
The double jeopardy rule is an important protection for individuals against the abuse of state power. It prevents police and prosecutors from repeatedly investigating and prosecuting the same person for the same crime, without good reason. The rule demands the authorities get their case right on the first occasion as it will be the only chance they get, and then accept the court’s verdict. Equally, when a person is found not guilty in court, they know that the result is final. Being the subject of a criminal charge can be a difficult and distressing experience and has substantial consequences for the accused – who may be innocent.
1
The Ice Killer
It’s Valentine’s Day. A day I love and hate in equal measure. A rising sense of panic begins in the weeks beforehand, which forces me to make poor choices. The fear of missing out deafens the voice of reason. Who wants to be at home alone on that night when everybody else is out having fun?
Christmas without a partner I can handle. I always visit my mother’s house then, although it will only be Mum and me this year. My annoying sister, Lucy, said she would only come up on Boxing Day now as the children are at university and want to do their own thing. It’s a shame they won’t be with us, because it’s a time for family. And, if I’m honest with myself, I like the fact that their energy distracts me from thinking about my own failings.
Valentine’s Day is different. It’s a time for couples; for love and magic and the start of something wonderful. Glossy magazines tell you to snag a man, have kids, be happy, but as time passes I wonder whether I’m pursuing the impossible. Do these perfect men exist? If they do, then is it me? I admit that, while I enter relationships with enthusiasm, especially leading up to Valentine’s Day, it soon wanes to inertia.
I believe my obsession with 14th February stems from school. In my final junior year, when us kids were about eleven years old, we had a new fresh-faced supply teacher. She wasn’t like any teacher we’d had before. Young and smartly dressed, with full make-up and high heels, she resembled a famous actress to us impressionable children.
Her idea was to have a postbox where we could put our secret cards. I suppose, if you were naïve, it might have seemed like a marvellous idea. She enthused about great romances – Romeo and Juliet, Caesar and Cleopatra. I absorbed every word. Us girls talked of little else. We tried to pretend we weren’t watching when the boys posted their red envelopes, even though I had decided not to get my hopes up. Kids ignored me, or, worse, noticed me and deliberately kept their distance.
When the big day came, Miss Diamond took the box to the front of the class and opened it with great fanfare. I could barely breathe. It was by far the worst moment of my life, and there was some serious competition. She read the first name out.
‘Scarlett Starr.’
A tiny piece of me died, despite knowing it was irrational. Scarlett was the dream girl in school. She was all the things you could imagine: swimming team captain, the girl with the longest hair, the brightest smile, and so confident, despite living in a children’s home. Even at that age, I could see her life would be different from mine. I was never sure if I thought her name was beautiful or crap. Regardless, the girls basked in her shadow. That was the year the lads realised they wanted to be in that spot, too. Ironically, it’s her house that I’m driving to now.
Back then, Scarlett was on the table of four opposite me. The teacher skipped over and placed the big red envelope on her desk with an indulgent smile. Scarlett beamed as if someone had presented her with an award for a lifetime’s commitment to charity. Miss Diamond picked the next one out and grinned. It was covered in small gold love hearts.
‘Danny Stanton.’
The rugged striker from the football team received his card without interest. A wasted effort, I thought. I think he plays football in Spain now. We met first at playschool, and I don’t think we ever said more than hello to each other over the following decade. The next card came out.
‘Scarlett Starr.’
And the others followed a similar pattern.
‘Scarlett Starr.’
‘Danny Stanton.’
‘Jim Jones.’ Danny’s best friend. Now works as a paediatrician.
‘Scarlett Starr.’
‘Amy Wicklow.’ Later became a runway model and died in a Paris apartment from a heroin overdose.
‘Carl Quantrill.’
That was my card. Even then, I knew not to aim high. I was a five-out-of-ten, maybe a six if I tamed my black hair, and I was bright enough to know that Danny Stanton wouldn’t have been able to pick me out in a line-up of llamas. At that moment, my expression resembled one.
Carl Quantrill was the mysterious guy at school with slightly too long greasy hair, which covered his eyes. He only respon
ded to his surname as he thought it was cooler than Carl. A suggestion of body odour added to his allure. He drawled and mumbled. I’d had a few conversations with him but often failed to catch what he’d said. I’d be too nervous to ask for clarification and so would smile instead. He would be my first, but that was many years later.
I was crazy about him. I’d worn away Damon Albarn’s face on my Blur poster with kissing practice. As Carl opened the card that day, flames threatened to burst from my cheeks. All I’d written was, ‘To my Valentine’. He couldn’t have known I sent it, yet he immediately turned around and stared my way. He ripped the card to pieces and threw it in the air. The girls gasped, most of them, anyway, while the boys cheered.
Miss Diamond’s mouth opened and closed. She should have stopped there and then but something made her plough on; each new name another dagger driven into my unloved heart.
‘Sally Dawning.’ My best friend, sitting next to me.
‘Scarlett Starr.’
‘Danny Stanton.’
‘Jim Jones.’
And so on, with escalating cheers and boos echoing around the room. But the last letter was for me. ‘Ellen Toole.’
I couldn’t believe my good fortune, even though it was the smallest one by far. I turned to Sally, whose pudgy fingers were pressing her card to the desk as if it might float away. She smiled at me with genuine happiness. I suspected mine was from Sally, because I’d secretly sent hers. The room stilled while I opened my flimsy envelope with trembling fingers. The card had a single white rose on the cover, and I looked inside.
There was only one word in capitals. UGLY.
2
The Ice Killer
I am not ugly, but neither am I beautiful. If someone described me, the word they would probably use is tall, even though I’m only five feet nine. It’s because I have slim, toned arms and legs but no bottom or breasts to speak of. Quantrill once said I had the arse of an old man, which I’ve tried hard to forget. Strong teeth and thick hair can’t make up for my normal aloof expression, which Scarlett calls my resting witch face.
I park outside Scarlett’s house in the lovely, peaceful village of Stilton and wait for the electronic gates to open. It must be nice to live here. Imagine being able to come and go as you please without speaking to anyone if you don’t want to. Although Scarlett says the isolation drives her mad.
It’s hard to say if we’re friends. If you looked the word up in a dictionary, it wouldn’t be a close match to what we have. That said, we attended the same senior school as well, and she was never outwardly unfriendly like some of her group. I never really fitted into any specific clique, and certainly not hers. I preferred the company of a rag-tag bunch who stayed together because we didn’t suit anyone else. I’m not in touch with any of them now. It’s as if, when school finished, we fled from each other in the hope of something better.
Scarlett and I flitted in and out of each other’s lives over the years. We bumped into each other in a nightclub a few years after sixth form finished and occasionally went out together or met for coffee. The acquaintance would gradually peter out, then we’d pick up months down the line. I suspect we don’t particularly like each other, but I have few other options.
I used to keep a diary for events such as tonight. I began doing this after my first Valentine’s date twenty years ago. I recall filling it in and thinking how we’d be able to look back at it and smile when we were married and retired. It was date four when I realised how crazy that was. This evening will be my twelfth Valentine’s date. I hope he doesn’t bring twelve red roses, although that might be a sign.
I’ve slept with more people than twelve, though. I made some mistakes when I was younger so will never know the true figure. Besides, if you give your body away for next to nothing, counting seems pointless. How many is a lot nowadays, anyway? With Tinder and Bumble, and the rest of those dating websites, women don’t need to be lonely any time of the year, as long as they aren’t too fussy.
Valentine’s night, though, is special. It’s not a night for blind dates. I’m ever the optimist, even though Scarlett got me a card this week saying ‘The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.’ Is that mean of her, or is it her way of managing my expectations?
I wonder sometimes if she keeps me around so she has someone to remind her of when she was the best and had it all. She has no other friends now, either. We both sacrificed all of our female relationships at the altar of men. Even fat Sally, who stuck by me despite my desperate behaviour, eventually escaped. Sally and I had resigned from our jobs and booked tickets to India, then Australia, when we were twenty-five years old. Girls together and to hell with love. She hadn’t even had sex by that point. Well, other than a vague, flimsy tale from a party into which I never probed too deeply.
Shortly before our flight, I got back together with my previous boyfriend, despite his violent behaviour, and let her down. I think he was around number twenty of those I remember. To her credit, she went on her own.
She picked up a terrible stomach bug in Delhi, which she struggled to shake off for the following three months, but still made it to Sydney. An Aussie property developer trod on her foot during the New Year’s Eve fireworks show and couldn’t believe nobody had snapped up this funny, slim, pretty, innocent girl. We used to be friends on Facebook, but it was tough to watch her smiling, young family grow up, so I blocked her.
A few months after she’d gone, when the hospital had discharged me and the courts had imprisoned him, the only job I could get was in a call centre. I’ve been in one ever since. My ex was inside for seven months, then he was deported, whereas my chosen career seems an open ended sentence with no light at the end of the tunnel.
One of the perils of call centre work is that you are regularly made redundant. Five years ago, I started another mind numbing role and Scarlett was on the same induction training course. Her beauty was fading, and she’d actually been left at the altar. Life was breaking her.
We were about thirty then, and amongst the oldest there by a decade. Yet again, I found myself out of the in-crowd. It was worse for Scarlett, because she knew what it felt like to belong.
A damaged Scarlett was a much nicer person. I helped build her back up, and at least we both had a friend again. Obviously, Scarlett did to me what I’d probably have done to her given the chance, and she settled down with the next rich guy she found. The surprise pregnancy forced his hand, and I got to wear an amazing dress on her big day. She kept her surname, so she must have liked it, although Tim’s surname is Ovett, which doesn’t go well at all with Scarlett. The best man became number thirty something. He was lovely, but didn’t last the course.
Sadly, Scarlett and Tim suffered a cot death at six months, which they never mention. Tim’s wealth means Scarlett doesn’t need to earn, but she came back to work anyway, saying being alone was dangerous for her health.
I check my watch. It’s seven o’clock on a Wednesday night, and I drum my fingers on the steering wheel until the gate finally opens. I shouldn’t think like this, but I’m sure she makes me wait so I can admire her big house all lit up. I park next to her husband’s white Audi A5 Coupé. He keeps it so clean you need sunglasses to stare at it. Tim and his car are a match made in heaven. But he and Scarlett are a union from hell. She is too pretty for him, and he has too much money for her.
It’s him who greets me. He kisses me on both cheeks; as ever, he’s overly keen to see me, lingers too long and presses too hard. He caught me coming out of the bathroom at their annual barbecue last year with the immortal line, ‘I’ve always worried about you.’ I told him that his flies were undone and slipped by as he checked them.
Scarlett is behind him, wearing designer jeans and a fitted shirt. Hers are air kisses with a hint of Chardonnay. She smells like a million dollars with immaculate, smooth skin. He has his pyjamas on. The I’m-living-the-perfect-life lie is laughable, but she has no other hand t
o play.
‘Come in out of the cold. Right, upstairs. I’ve got a few options for you.’
‘Thanks, Scarlett. You didn’t have to bother. I could have thrown an outfit together.’
‘Power up, Ellen! It’s been how many years since you had a decent date on Valentine’s? You need to pull out all the stops.’
She guides me past their eleven year old man-child, Dwayne. Now, that is a shit name. He’s a boy from a Greek holiday fling that Tim had long before he met Scarlett. To his credit, Tim took the boy in when he was a toddler and his mother wanted to return to her job as a holiday rep. Dwayne gives me the finger with a cheeky expression. He’s a lively lad.
The Ice Killer (The DI Barton Series) Page 1
