Dead of Winter

Chapter 49

Carter showed his warrant card. ‘Sorry, sir. . you can’t go down there.’ A police officer stopped their car as Ebony and Carter turned off the main road and tried to head up the lane leading to Blackdown Barn. They were at a roadblock. ‘We have heavy machinery coming back and forth; this is the only access.’

‘No problem. We’ll park on the main road and walk up.’ Carter reversed back onto the road and parked up as close to the hedge as he could get. It was three in the afternoon.

As they walked up towards the house they heard the rumble of machinery and the muted rat-a-tat of a jack-hammer breaking up concrete. An officer watched them approach. Carter recognized him. ‘Alright, Jacko? How long have you been here?’ Carter asked as they drew level.

‘Since five this morning, Sarge. Just another couple of hours.’

‘Bet you’ll be glad. . chills to the fucking bones, this cold. Anything happen today?’

‘Thermal imaging and dogs, Sarge.’

‘Find anything?’

‘Not yet.’

‘They gone?’

‘Yes, Sarge.’

‘Thank Christ for that; can’t stand those handlers.’ He grinned. ‘You want a cup of tea?’

‘Please. . two sugars.’

They found Sandford inside the house. He had a sample bag with the contents of a drain in it. He held up the mash of scum and hair.

‘From the drain in the shower at the far end. My guess is it is more of the same. . the woman from Sonny’s. Her hair is everywhere.’ Carter took the bag from him and then passed it to Ebony. ‘She’s blonde and losing a lot of hair.’

‘How far have they got with the digging?’ There was a welcome lull in the noise of digging coming from below them.

‘They’re concentrating on the house, starting on the garden in a couple of days; then the surrounding countryside.’

‘Can we take another look around?’ Carter had to shout over the noise of the jackhammer downstairs again.

‘Be my guest.’

They walked into the kitchen. Carter started opening up the cupboards.

‘Fascinating what people have in their kitchens, don’t you think, Ebb? You like cooking?’

‘Not really, Sarge.’ Ebony opened the fridge door and the smell of bleach bounced off the shelves. ‘Maybe it’s the pregnant woman who liked to cook.’

‘Trust me, pregnant women like to eat but they don’t like to cook. Cabrina gets nauseous at so many things. She might eat a family-size pizza but she sure as hell wouldn’t want to cook it. So maybe that’s his first mistake, Ebb: he’s left behind a little bit of his personality in this cupboard. . If it was my cupboard it would be filled with Italian seasoning: basil, parsley, oregano. You know, Ebb, she’s still not talking to me.’ Ebb straightened up from peering under a wall unit and looked at him. She didn’t know what to say. He didn’t expect an answer. He talked as he searched through the rest of the cupboards.

‘The thing is, we’ve been together for five years. We get on really well. Of course when she got pregnant. . it was a shock. You know, I didn’t know whether I was pleased or not. . but I tried to be. I couldn’t help thinking. . no more holidays, no more long lie-ins. The place will stink of nappies and Cabrina will be tired and get fat like her mum.’ He looked up to see Ebb flash him an accusing look. ‘Yeah. . yeah. . shallow, I know. But I’m being truthful with you, Ebb; mate to mate. I wouldn’t say that out loud to Cabrina.’ Carter opened a large walk-in larder. He carried on talking as he disappeared from view. ‘Was a shock. . I guess. But I went along with it. We started to plan, think how it would work.’ He emerged from the larder and waited to catch her eye. ‘It was when she said we’d never get a buggy up the stairs to the flat and we’d have to move a bit further out to get a good school that I think I must have shown it on my face.’ Carter stopped to see if the extractor above the cooker worked. It did. ‘Whatever it was, I didn’t handle it well. She didn’t give me chance to think about it, adjust. I came back from work and she’d gone. No contact for a week. It’s doing my head in. Now she’s staying with her parents and they got plenty of room for the baby and the buggy. Now I feel like I have no idea what I can do to say: yeah. . I’m scared but I’ll give it a go. Because. . to be honest with you, Ebb. . people keep saying bide your time or get on with your life. . but. . the more I do that, the more I feel her slip away and yep. . to be honest with you. . it’s a tough call seeing the future without Cabrina in it.’

‘And the baby?’

‘Yes. . one hundred per cent, Ebb. . and the baby. Cabrina is the baby to me. . Whatever Cabrina wants is all that matters to me. I’m just like every other bloke. I can’t decide when it’s time to settle down; I need a woman to decide that for me. So. . I surrender. . I accept and then she’s like. . fuck you. . too late.’

‘Give her time, Sarge. .’

Carter sighed, nodded. ‘Okay, let’s leave it to Sandford; he’ll have this place dismantled. If there’s anything left in here he’ll find it. I want to have another look out the back.’

The digger was standing idle. It was a sharp and clear sky above, but no longer bright blue — it was slipping into a cold dusk. All the patio slabs were up, neatly stacked at the far side of the garden. Carter called out to one of the men drinking tea, ‘Officer on the gate: two sugars.’ He got a nod by way of reply. ‘Ebb?’ Ebony was staring at the machinery. The digger was like one she’d made from a kit once, free in a packet of cornflakes; it had spokes on the wheels and the wheels actually turned. ‘Ebb. . you ready?’

They walked round, following the outside wall; an original wall: each stone laid by hand when the barn was first built two hundred years earlier. Spiders had made funnel webs between the cracks, their webs now frozen like fine lace.

Ebony watched Carter as he looked at his feet, pressing the ground with his expensive boots encased in polythene, feeling his way. She looked skyward. The light couldn’t make it through the tangled canopy of branches. The air was trapped with the smell of rotting leaves and past bonfires. At the end of the garden a newer wall marked the boundary between that property and the next and the trees gave way to a cleared area where two composters stood, their open ends on the flattened ground.

Ebony lifted the lid on each one in turn; both were half full. Carter looked in and recoiled.

‘Fuck. .’

Hundreds of fat worms were stretching their ribbed bodies over the rotting matter.

Ebony dipped her gloved hand in one of the bins and pulled out a handful of rich brown crumbly compost and let it sift through her fingers. Carter stared at her as if she were mad.

‘Not sure what it’s supposed to look like, Sarge.’

‘It should have all sorts of lumps of rotting stuff, vegetation, kitchen waste, that sort of thing in there.’

She moved it round with her hand. ‘Can’t see any vegetables or kitchen peelings in it, Sarge; it’s very fine.’

Carter looked back to the garden. ‘That’s a lot of compost produced from just leaves. Anything else in there?’ She shook her head.

He called back down the garden and two officers arrived.

‘Can you get something to slide beneath these bins? I want to empty them. I think this is shop-bought compost.’

Ten minutes later their contents were laid out on a plastic sheet and Ebony was gently scraping away the last of the rotting leaves and compost from beneath where the bins had stood.

‘Sarge?’ She moved the fragments of bone towards him. In the centre was a child’s tooth.