Frozen Grave

Chapter 2

The dog lingered in the doorway, snarling before it turned and followed its master. Willis ran outside – both man and dog were gone. Carter was jogging towards her.

‘I thought I saw him but it turned out it wasn’t him. Where were you?’ he said as he got within earshot and stopped to catch his breath. He looked at Willis’s expression. ‘Are you okay? What happened here?’

‘The suspect was hiding in here with his dog,’ answered Willis.

‘What happened?’

‘Nothing – he ran. He looks like he’s been glassed or bottled.’

They heard a police siren, then four officers came running their way.

Carter met them.

‘Two of you get back in the car and see if you can find a white male with a dog. Willis?’ He turned to her to finish the description.

‘Twenty-five to thirty-five. Grey woolly hat. Dark blue jacket, combat trousers. He is bleeding on his face. His dog is sandy-coloured – a cross-breed, bull mastiff, bulldog type. It will attack.’

‘The other two of you get some crime-scene tape and cordon this area off. Get the keys from the council,’ said Carter. ‘I want all of these garages searched. I want SOCOs here. We’re looking for a match with the scene at 22 Parade Street. That lad must have left his blood somewhere. Willis?’

‘Guv?’

‘We’ll leave them to it and head over to Brockley.’

As they drove south of the River Thames, they were snagged in a morning queue of traffic. Carter tapped his thumbs on the leather steering wheel as he watched the traffic inch forward. He looked across at Willis.

‘Oy!’

He shifted in his seat so he could turn more towards her as the traffic was stationary.

‘I wish you’d shut up – you’re driving me mad with your constant chatter.’

She shook her head apologetically. ‘Just thinking it through.’

‘Think and talk. Tell me what we’ve got here.’

Willis took out her notebook.

Carter put the car into first gear, eased a few feet further into the traffic jam, then started the conversation:

‘The woman… Olivia Grantham… goes in there, dressed for sex. She goes in there and she can’t get out.’

‘Yeah – the men get carried away; fights break out and she gets killed; then they get scared and do a runner,’ said Willis.

‘Where did they go then?’ asked Carter, not waiting for an answer as he continued: ‘We need to get officers going into every hostel, every empty building where they sleep; we’ll start with those within a mile radius and then we’ll widen the net if we have to. I need all the off-licences in the area contacted, to go through their tills and see who paid for that brand of half-bottles of vodka we found in there. Who are the heroin and crack dealers in the area? Also, I want officers all over that estate. Someone must have seen something.’

‘I think we should post extra officers on the surrounding streets too, guv,’ said Willis as she made notes. ‘The people who sleep there are bound to try and come back.’

‘Exactly. We will. We’ll round them up. Bring them in, fingerprints, DNA samples.’

‘We might find some evidence in the lock-up, guv.’

‘Ring Sandford now and tell him what we found.’

Willis got off the phone to Sandford.

‘He’ll get over there as soon as he is able. He says to wear suits when we go into Olivia Grantham’s flat. He’s going to want to go in there next.’

Carter laughed. ‘Tell him to get his head out of his arse and do his job – we’ll do ours – pompous git.’ Carter went back to drumming his thumb on the wheel.

The caretaker answered his buzzer at the entrance to the mock-Georgian block of smart flats where Olivia Grantham lived. He was expecting them and handed them the keys to her apartment.

‘Do you know if Miss Grantham had a car, sir?’ Carter asked. The caretaker was a retired Met officer now living rent-free in exchange for handyman duties.

‘Yes. She had a white Fiat 500.’

‘Where is it parked?’

‘She had a car-parking space around the back of the building – but the car’s not there now. She left in it yesterday evening and didn’t return.’

‘Did you see her leave?’

‘Yes. I talked to her.’

‘What time was that?’ Willis wrote in her notebook as Carter asked the questions.

‘About six. I was saying goodbye to my friend here at the door when she came by us.’

‘What did she say to you?’

‘She complained about her tap dripping in her kitchen. She asked me to fix it.’

‘Did she say she would be gone long?’

‘She said she was going out for at least an hour. I said I would mend it for her while she was out.’

‘Was she a friendly sort of person? You didn’t mind helping her on a Sunday evening?’

He shrugged. ‘I didn’t mind. She didn’t ask for much. She was quiet. She worked hard.’

‘Any boyfriend on the scene?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘And can you tell me what she was wearing when you saw her last?’

‘She was wearing a blue coat.’

‘How did she look to you?’

‘She looked like she was going on a date. She had perfume on. Make-up: red lipstick, nails. She’d made a big effort for someone.’

They took the stairs up to the second floor and changed into forensic suits before going in. As they opened the door they heard the sound of a radio playing.

Carter walked on into the lounge straight in front of them. The curtains were closed; he switched on the light. Everywhere had magnolia walls, cream carpet. There were insipid abstract paintings of orange and purple swirls on the walls. He turned off the radio.

‘Can’t see any couples photos,’ Carter said as he walked around. ‘It looks like a rented apartment – no clutter, no mess.’ Willis lingered in the hallway, writing up what she saw and drawing a diagram of the flat. ‘This place is corporate, chic,’ continued Carter. ‘It looks like the type of place anyone could move into tomorrow – especially me. Reminds me of my flat before Cabrina arrived and then finished off her offensive with a smelly baby.’

Willis glanced at him. ‘Making of you, guv.’

‘Ha!’ He grinned. ‘You could be right – jury’s out on that one.’ He walked through the lounge, looking at Olivia’s choice of gadgets. ‘Great Bose sound system. Blu-ray, 3D television. She definitely had money.’

The hallway carried round to the right and Carter opened the door to a neat and tidy kitchen with spotless surfaces and shiny taps that had the smell of having recently been cleaned.

Willis scanned the cupboards. ‘Cereals in here mostly.’

He opened the fridge door. ‘Looks like Olivia drank in but ate out a lot. There are several bottles of wine but little else.’

They moved back out into the wide hallway and into the first of the two rooms.

‘It’s like a hotel bedroom.’

Carter ran his hand across the silk bedspread as he walked round to the far side of the bed and opened the wardrobe; he pulled out an inner drawer.

‘Impressive.’ He stood back to show Willis the neat racks of hanging clothes and the lingerie in the drawer that went from dark to light, left to right. ‘Colour-coded, even her underwear.’ He looked back to the bed and closed the drawer. ‘Which side do you think she sleeps?’ he asked.

‘Left side.’

‘I see the way you’re thinking but not everyone would want to attack an intruder. Most people would want to be furthest away from the threat and have more chance of running.’ Willis didn’t answer. ‘But you’re right – so would I. Anything on your side?’ Carter asked as he pulled open a drawer beside the bed that had tea lights inside, a pink vibrator and a packet of variously sized condoms. ‘She sleeps this side,’ he said. ‘She was a runner then, not a fighter.’

Willis ducked down and pulled out a small case from beneath the bed. She opened the lid and took out a hooded ball gag.

Carter came round and knelt down beside her.

‘Welcome to Olivia’s toy box,’ he said. ‘Welcome to her secret world.’ He stood with a harness in his hands. ‘Tell you one thing we need to know – we need to know how Dr Harding knew her. Because, like I said’ – Carter was distracted reading instructions and turning the harness around to try to work out how it was fastened – ‘Harding doesn’t have female friends.’ He gave up and put it back in the box. ‘We’ll leave these for Sandford. This will be right up his street. If Harding met her outside work then they had something in common. The only hobby I know that Harding has outside work is having sex with people she shouldn’t. If this woman doesn’t have a husband to interest Harding – she must have something else.’

After he left Hannover Estate, Mason’s feet didn’t stop running until he reached the arches beneath the railway bridge in Shadwell where he had made a home tucked in beside the road and the fencing that bordered the car park. In the day, cars parked there but from six it was empty. Mason crawled into his makeshift cardboard tent and pulled his sleeping bag up over his legs. His heart was pounding; his lungs burning.

Sandy stayed on sentry duty until she sensed that there was no more danger, then she looked around for water and found a puddle.

Mason’s breathing slowed as Sandy came to lie beside him and the warmth from the dog soothed him, her heartbeat calmed him; the sound of her breathing made him feel safe. He closed his eyes and sank back onto the blue cashmere coat that still smelt of the woman.