2
Detective Sergeant Diane Fry knew she was going to die buried under an avalanche one day an avalanche of pointless paperwork. It would be a tragic accident, resulting from the collapse of a single unstable box file under the weight of witness statements piled on top of it. The landslide would carry away her desk and swivel chair and smash them against the wall of the CID room like matchsticks. It would take days for the rescue teams to locate her body. When they did, she would be crushed beyond recognition, her bones flattened in the same way that the reports on her desk were even now pressing down on her brain.
The piles of paper reminded her of something. She turned her head and looked out of the window, squinting to see past the condensation that streaked the panes. Oh yes. Snow. Outside, the stuff was piled as high and as white as the paperwork. She couldn't decide which was worse.
Then she felt the touch of warm air. It came from the noisy fan heater that she'd stolen from the scenes of crime department that morning before the SOCOs arrived for work. The paperwork was just about preferable. At least it meant she could stay in the warmth for a while. Only masochists and obsessives chose to wander the streets of Edendale on a morning like this. Ben Cooper, for example. No doubt Cooper was somewhere out there even now, conducting a one-man crusade to clean up crime, despite the icicles hanging off his ears.
Soon, scenes of crime officers would be scouring the building for their missing heater. Eventually, she would have to give it up, unless she could find somewhere to hide it when she heard them coming. You could always tell when the SOCOs were coming by the sound of their grumbling. But the heater was the only source of warmth in the room. Fry put a hand to the radiator on the wall. It was warm, but only faintly. It felt like a body that hadn't quite cooled but had already gone into rigor mortis. No need to call in the pathologist for a verdict on that one. Dead for two hours, at least.
She sniffed. A whiff of sausages and tomato sauce trickled down the room and settled on a burglary file that lay open on her desk. It was the sort of smell that was responsible for turning the walls that strange shade of green and for killing the flies whose bodies had lain grilling for months inside the covers of the fluorescent lights.
'Gavin,' she said.
'Mmm?'
'Where are you?'
'Mmm-mmph-mm.'
'I know you're there somewhere I can smell you.'
A head appeared above a desk. It had sandy hair, a pink face, and dabs of tomato sauce on its lower lip. DC Gavin Murfin was the current bane of Diane Fry's life less temperamental than Cooper, but far more prone to dripping curry sauce on the floor of her car. Murfin was overweight, too, and a man in his forties really ought to think about what he was doing to his heart.
'I was having some breakfast, like,' he said.
'Can't you do it in the canteen, Gavin?'
'No.'
Fry sighed. 'Oh, I forgot '
'We don't have a canteen any more. We have to make our own arrangements. It says so on all the noticeboards. Twenty-two years I've been stationed here, and now they take the canteen away.'
'So where did you get the sausage bap?'
'The baker's on West Street,' said Murfin. 'You should have said if you wanted one.'
'Not likely. Do you realize how much cholesterol there is in that thing? Enough to turn your arteries solid. In another five minutes, you'll be dead.'
'Aye, with a bit of luck.'
The smell of fried meat was doing strange things to Fry's stomach. It was clenching and twitching in revulsion, as if food were something alien and disgusting to it.
'There's garlic in that sausage, too,' she said.
'Yes, it's their special.'
Detective Inspector Paul Hitchens opened the door and seemed to be about to speak to Fry. He paused, came in, and looked around. He sniffed.
'Tomato sauce? Garlic sausage?'
'Mmm,' said Murfin, wiping his mouth with a sheet from a message pad. 'Breakfast, sir.'
'Mind you don't drop any on those files, that's all, Gavin. Last time you did that, the CPS thought we were sending them real bloodstains, just to make a point that we had sweated blood over the case.'
Fry looked at Murfin. He was smiling. He was happy. She'd noticed that food did that for some people. Also DI Hitchens was looking a little less smartly dressed these days, a little heavier around the waist. It was four or five months since Hitchens had set up home with his girlfriend, the nurse. It was depressingly predictable how soon a man let himself go once he got a whiff of domestic life.
'I only wanted to tell you Ben Cooper has called in,' said the DI.
'Oh, don't tell me,' said Fry. 'He's joining the sick brigade.' She looked at the empty desks in front of her. With leave, courses, abstractions and sickness, the CID office was starting to look like the home stand at Edendale Football Club. 'What is it with Ben? Foot and Mouth? Bubonic plague?'
'No. To be honest, I don't remember Ben ever having a day off sick in his life.'
'He can't get into work because of the snow, then. Well, it's his own fault for living in the back of beyond.'
'That's why he bought that four-wheel drive jeep thing,' said Hitchens. 'It gets him through where other people get stuck, he says.'
'So what's the problem?' said Fry impatiently.
'No problem. He's made an arrest on the way in.'
'What?'
'He collared one of the double assault suspects. Apparently, Cooper came into town early and called in for the morning bulletins on the way. He was intending to stop for a coffee and found Kemp in the Starlight Cafe, so he made the arrest. Good work, eh? That's the way to start the day.'
'That's Ben, all right,' said Murfin. 'Never off duty, that lad. He can't even forget the job when he's having breakfast. Personally, it'd give me indigestion.'
'It isn't being conscientious that gives you indigestion, Gavin,' said Fry.
'Watch it. You'll upset Oliver.'
Oliver was the rubber lobster that sat on Murfin's desk. At a push of a button, it sang extracts from old pop songs with a vaguely nautical theme. 'Sailing', 'Octopus's Garden', 'Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay'. One day, Fry was going to make it into lobster paste and feed it to Murfin in a sandwich.
'Look at that weather,' said Hitchens. 'Just what we need.'
Fry stared out of the window again. The wind was blowing little flurries of snow off the neighbouring roofs. They hit the panes with wet splatters, then slid down the glass, smearing the grime on the outside. She couldn't remember it ever snowing back home in Birmingham, not really. At least, it never seemed to have stuck when it landed. It certainly hadn't built up in knee-high drifts. Maybe it had been something to do with the heat rising from the great sprawl of dual carriageways and high-rise flats she'd worked in, the comforting warmth of civilization. Her previous service in the West Midlands was a memory that she almost cherished now, whenever she looked out at the primitive arctic waste she'd condemned herself to. She'd left Birmingham without a farewell to her colleagues. She might as well have said: 'I'm going out now. I may be some time.'
'Well, there's one thing to be said in its favour,' said DI Hitchens. 'At least the snow will keep the crime rate down.'
And somewhere under the mountains of paper, Diane Fry's telephone rang.
Inside Grace Lukasz's bungalow on the outskirts of Edendale, the central heating was turned up full in every room. Ever since the accident, Grace had been unable to bear the cold. Now, even in summer, she insisted on keeping the windows and doors closed, in case there was a draught. These days, her immobility meant that she felt the chill more than most, and she couldn't tolerate discomfort. She saw no reason why she should.
This morning Grace had been up and about early, as usual. She'd gone immediately to adjust the thermostat in the cupboard in the hallway, and had spent her time gazing with some satisfaction at the outside world beyond her windows, where her neighbours in Woodland Crescent were turning white with cold as they scraped the ice from their cars or slid and stumbled on the slippery pavements. Once, a woman from across the road had fallen flat on her back on her driveway, her handbag and her shopping flying everywhere. It had made Grace laugh, for a while.
But now the stuffy heat in the bungalow caused her husband to frown and turn pink in the face the moment he arrived home from his night duty at the hospital, and it had spoiled Grace's mood. Peter stamped his feet on the mat and threw his overcoat on the stand. Grace wanted to ask him her question straight away, right there by the door, but he wouldn't meet her eye, and he brushed past her chair to get to the lounge door. With sharp tugs of her wrists, she backed and turned in the hallway, her left-hand wheel leaving one more scuff mark on the skirting board. Peter had left the door open for her from habit and she followed right behind him, glaring at his back, angry with him for walking away from her. He should know, after all this time, how much it infuriated her.
'Did you phone the police?' she said, more sharply now than she'd intended to speak to him.
'No, I didn't.'
Grace glowered at her husband. But she said nothing, making the effort to keep her thoughts to herself. She knew him well enough to see that no purpose would be served by pressing him too hard. He would only say she was nagging him, and he would set his face in the opposite direction, just to demonstrate that he was his own man, that he couldn't be bullied by his wife. Sometimes he could be so stubborn. He was like an obstinate old dog that had to be coaxed with a bone.
'Well, I don't suppose it would make any difference,' she said.
'No.'
Grace watched him wander off towards the sofa, tugging his tie loose. Within a few minutes he would have the TV remote control in his hand and his mind would be distracted by some inane quiz show. Peter always claimed that he needed to turn off his mind when he got home from a night at the hospital, that his brain was exhausted by the stress of his work. But it was never acknowledged that she might need to turn off from the things that had plagued her mind all day. No matter what she did, there was far too much time for brooding. She'd been used to looking forward to Peter's return home as something to occupy her mind, but these days it never seemed to work.