Dead of Winter (2 page)

Issie eased her body away from the ground, ignoring the agony of pins and needles, and rolled uncomfortably onto her back. Staring up into the pitch dark of the root system inches from her face, she smiled.

‘I won,’ she murmured. At that moment it was all that mattered.

By the following morning she was cold, wet, starving hungry and in quite a lot of discomfort from her various injuries, the cut on her eyebrow being the worst, but the memory of victory over her own fear and compulsion to give in was strong. She realised now, of course, that she would have been missed. Her parents would be worried sick. The thought made her guilty but not enough to outweigh the enormous sense of achievement for having survived the chase and the night alone. As Issie stowed everything neatly in her backpack, she knew that she was a different person from the girl who had turned a simple game of hide-and-seek into a life-threatening chase. She hoped her parents would have the sense to realise this; she was not returning as a child.

Nightingale stretched her toes towards the flames of the wood-burning stove in her top-floor flat, an Edwardian conversion that she had bought for a knock-down price with a mortgage at such a low rate she still couldn’t believe it. Her brother thought she was mad to trade in her previous flat, modern and efficient, for something where she had already had to replace half the sash windows and fix leaky bathroom plumbing.

His aversion to ‘old with character’ was understandable since he had inherited their parents’ house, which she knew he secretly wanted to sell but didn’t dare because it had been in the family since 1879. It had never been maintained properly and now consumed so much money in upkeep that her brother said he might as well dedicate his whole salary to it. Hence his warning: buy new, avoid a money pit, enjoy life without the unnecessary delights of poisonous lead pipes, quaint imperial measures and the impossibility of ever keeping the place clean or warm. Every time she tried in vain to stop the draughts Nightingale recalled his warnings, but with a smile.

The warmth of real fire on the soles of her feet, the moulding of vine leaves and clusters of improbable grapes in the light rose above her and the original parquet floor all argued against his logic. Nightingale
grinned again and took a sip of good Bordeaux, another indulgence when she should be sensible, but ahead of her were the first days off she had enjoyed in weeks. Outside the weather was miserable, with sleet driven by gale-force winds. She sighed deeply with contentment.

The night deserved a good bottle of wine and going out for a meal did not appeal. So she had decided to slice a fresh, crusty granary loaf, defrost some of her home-made chicken soup and open one of the wines she kept for special occasions, rationalising that it would still cost less than dinner in her local restaurant. The soup was simmering gently as wind gusted around the chimneys, rattling slates that she knew were loose but tonight she didn’t care; she was in her own world. Nightingale picked up her book and found the page where she had paused to enjoy the moment.

When the phone rang she let it go through to the machine.

‘Ma’am, Inspector Nightingale, if you’re home could you pick up, please? This is Sergeant Wicklow in Operations. We need you here urgently. There’s been an incident that requires your attention.’
The tone of voice changed and became personal. Wicklow had looked out for her since she had joined the force as a graduate trainee.
‘Sorry, Louise, I know it’s the first day you’ve had off in a month but this one needs you. If you’re not here soon they’ll call in Blite and I don’t think …’
There was a pause as he remembered all calls were taped.
‘If you could come in, ma’am?’

‘I’m here, George, what is it?’

‘Another rape; a nasty one – I know they’re all nasty,’ he rushed on, perhaps remembering Nightingale’s suspicion that half the blokes on the force considered rape a minor crime, that it was only sex after all.

Wicklow was right; it was better she dealt with this than that Neanderthal Blite. Since the cutbacks, more and more sex crimes were being passed to regular CID instead of to the overwhelmed specialist Sexual Assault Investigation Unit. At least she had been trained, whereas he … Nightingale suppressed a shudder and turned the heat off under her soup.

‘OK, George, but can you send a car? I don’t want to risk driving
in this.’ She didn’t mention the wine; if anything she did tonight led them to catch a rapist the fact that she had had a drink would inevitably be used by the defence, however irrelevant. Sussex Constabulary was trying to put a line under drinking while working, an uphill struggle in her opinion – which she kept to herself – but while the effort lasted she needed to treat it with respect.

‘It’ll be about fifteen minutes, given the weather.’

‘No problem.’

In fact quite the opposite; just enough time to enjoy her supper and finish her glass of wine.

Nightingale knew that she had not been asked for by name. The new superintendent, Alison Whitby, had replaced Quinlan four months previously. She was in her early forties, ran marathons and had won the Sussex women’s pistol competition four years in a row. What’s more she was married with eight-year-old twins. To say that Nightingale found her intimidating would be to miss the point. Her frame of reference now included a more senior woman who combined professional and family life with demanding sports that she mastered to county level. And now approaching thirty, Nightingale was no longer the wunderkind.

Whitby wouldn’t expect her to interrupt her time off. It was George Wicklow who was looking out for her. His dislike of Blite was unshakeable, not just because the man was an arrogant bigot who would climb on anybody’s back on his way to the top, but because he had virtually forced one of their colleagues into retirement on shaky medical grounds. Wicklow missed Bob Cooper almost as much as Nightingale did. Harlden CID wasn’t the same without his rotund, dependable presence.

Nightingale stopped off at the station to pick up the incident report and find out who was on the team. The CID room was full despite the hour. Monday night was sometimes busy, particularly in the run-up to Christmas as people relaxed their inhibitions and softened the slow drag of work or unemployment in the manner of their choosing. As December neared, an increasing number of otherwise upright citizens would indulge in serious drinking and
opportune sex. The human cost of inebriated abandon kept police forces across the country busier than any other single cause.

Nightingale had a small cubicle in the corner of the CID room that she could call her own. When she had first become an inspector she had moved into a tiny office, but Whitby didn’t believe in offices. She liked open-plan, glass walls and free-flowing communication. So most offices had been replaced by cubicles. The careful use of computer screens, files and reference books meant some privacy despite the attempt at transparency. Nightingale suspected that Whitby saw how the old ways lingered but so far had chosen to ignore the problem. A step at a time appeared to be her motto.

Nightingale wasn’t the worst offender. One side panel was clear of visual impediments, though two others were conveniently covered. She hated the idea of people being able to stare at her back and look over her shoulder.

‘Nightingale! What you doing here?’ Jimmy MacDonald, inevitably Big Mac to his mates because of his American football physique, waved a lazy greeting from his desk.

‘Called in for this rape, Mac.’

‘But you’ve worked a straight twenty; you won’t impress Miss Whiplash by collapsing from exhaustion.’

‘Well I don’t have your pin-up looks to help me, do I?’ Nightingale smiled the sharpness out of her words. ‘You know anything about this one; where the assault happened and who was attending officer?’

‘It’s your lucky day! The Milky Bar Kid was first on scene. I think he even managed to avoid puking this time, though the poor girl’s a bit of a mess.’

Constable Roy Rogers (yes, really; some parents can be cruel) had only just made it through the recruitment medical and had lost weight since. He was a pale, acne-cursed scarecrow of a lad who had wanted to be a policeman since childhood, which he appeared not long to have left behind. There was a running bet that he didn’t yet shave. To the old hands in the station house he was a gift. Nightingale had come across him before when he had attended an attempted murder. She
found him a decent, thorough boy with a lot of compassion for the victim – probably more than would be good for him.

‘Good,’ she said, ignoring Big Mac’s raised eyebrows, ‘he’ll have preserved the scene until SOCO arrived and will have been gentle with the victim. Where is she?’

‘West Sussex General, still in A&E last we heard. Milky’s with her. You going over yourself or would you like me to do it?’

Nightingale looked at his two hundred and ten pound, six foot three frame, walnut skin and permanent sarcastic smile and decided he might not be the best officer, even though he was technically as qualified as she was.

‘I’ll do this one.’

‘Can I come along?’ He saw her look of surprise. ‘I might learn something.’

What was he up to?

‘You’re on call.’

‘I’ve got my mobile and anyway, you need a good driver.’

Nightingale opened her mouth to protest but he pre-empted her, adding in a whisper, ‘Mouthwash is a dead giveaway.’

Thirty minutes later Nightingale tried to control her anger as she waited in the corridor for the forensic technician to finish. The girl in the room behind her was little more than a child and knowledge of how she must have suffered filled her with hatred towards the attacker, mixing with the dread that this might be the latest in a series of increasingly vicious attacks.

The incidents had started in May, always taking place between Guildford and Harlden. The first crimes had been sufficiently different for the police not to connect them: an aggressive flasher; someone trying to molest teenage girls in a shopping centre; an assault outside a nightclub; so it went on. Then an enterprising trainee detective had gathered and compared descriptions of the attackers and remarked to their mentor, who happened to be Nightingale, on the physical similarity of the perpetrators.

When a heavily built, thirty-ish, dark-haired, blue-eyed man between five-ten and six foot had leapt out on a girl walking
through Harlden Park from a youth club to her home, alarm bells had rung. CID nicknamed the attacker Flash Harry after his first attack. Nightingale avoided the term.

As the incidents escalated she had taken a personal interest and was given the lead to investigate. The assaults continued, one roughly every month, with the perpetrator evading capture. Her small team had been through every file, re-interviewed victims and witnesses and organised reconstructions but they had learnt little. It appeared that the attacker wasn’t so much clever as lucky. He wore gloves and a baseball cap that concealed most of his face.

Nightingale had feared the escalation meant that they would soon be dealing with something very serious. To her bitter regret, she had just been proved right.

The unnamed girl had been found at the bottom of a short flight of steps behind Bedford Row to the east side of Harlden at
seven-thirty
. She was unconscious and had been raped. In A&E she had been X-rayed, the registrar refusing to let the police forensic specialist near her until they could be sure there was no brain injury.

‘All yours, ma’am.’ The forensic technician grimaced.

‘Thanks, Sally. How seriously did he hurt her?’

‘It was non-consensual for sure; there’s bruising and tearing to the vaginal wall and scratches and bruises on her thighs. The doctor said the concussion is due to a blow to the back of her head consistent with her having fallen. She was lying at the bottom of a flight of steps when she was discovered and I found cement fragments in her hair so perhaps he didn’t hit her.’

Nightingale looked at the unconscious girl and tried to guess her age; fifteen, sixteen at most. She looked underfed and her hair and fingernails were filthy. Maybe she was a runaway. There weren’t many street children in Harlden, partly because since Superintendent Whitby’s arrival, police patrols had teamed up with social services and some local charities to deal with every minor they found living rough in order to find them temporary accommodation and, when necessary, counselling. Unfortunately Harlden’s position halfway between London and Brighton where
homelessness was endemic meant that they were dealing with the spill-over from a chronic problem.

She knew what running away from home felt like; she had slept rough many times before a WPC had talked sense into her on a night that had changed her life. Would she be able to do the same for this girl? She doubted it. Counselling wasn’t her strong point. The only remotely personal side she allowed herself to show at work these days was a protective sarcasm that was starting to persuade her male colleagues to drop the teasing and give her some room. It had earned her the reputation of being tough but remote; an ice queen. She told herself she didn’t care.

‘When do you expect her to regain consciousness?’ Nightingale asked a nurse who came to check on the girl, and then dropped her voice in response to the critical finger he raised to his lips. ‘It’s important.’

‘She’s badly concussed. It could take up to twenty-four hours.’

‘She didn’t say anything when she was brought in?’

‘She was out cold.’

She said goodnight to Milky, who was stationed by the girl’s bed, before heading into the freezing night, collecting Big Mac on the way. He had done little but chat up one of the nurses since arriving. At least that explained his interest. Outside the air misted with a thick, chilling drizzle that seemed to freeze the stale fumes in the air. Jimmy drove her home before heading back to the station. He didn’t mention the nurse so neither did she.

Nightingale ran a bath, added lavender oil and soaked while enjoying another glass of the Saint-Estèphe. It was midnight when she slipped into bed, hearing the wind attack the slates around the chimney with increasing fury as the weather deteriorated. She expected the sound of it would keep her awake but was asleep within minutes.