Dead Cold: An Absolutely Gripping Crime Mystery Thriller

Part I

1

Murder makes it so interesting. It’s like getting a wrapped present: you never know what’s inside. Sometimes it’s bad, but sometimes you get exactly what you want. Murder is the same. The bad ones are the bloated bodies pulled from lakes, or rotten, stinking corpses found in the woods, and I collect those as you might collect festive socks. But every now and then the other kind comes along. Merry Christmas to me. A fresh kill amongst the masses.

The scene was picture-perfect when she arrived, bathed in the swirling palette of twilight, like a movie shot. The residents of this bland street were at windows, in gardens, on the street, some dressed for work, others in pyjamas. Added to the mass of bodies were uniformed police officers protecting an inner cordon around the front gate and garden of the death house. Every face she saw was loaded with shock, or fear. It was beautiful. Perfect.

Murder usually happens elsewhere in the world, not on normal people’s doorsteps, and it happens to faceless nobodies they’ve never met. People don’t want murder in their faces. It terrifies them, the stark reality of it, knowing it can happen anywhere, not only on TV. When I arrive at a murder scene, they watch me with awe, because I am a superhero who tackles the terrifying reality of murder head-on. I do not hide away from killers. I hunt them down.

The street was clogged with emergency vehicles and barred at both ends by police cars. No forensics vehicles here yet, and none of her team’s cars. Good: the limelight was hers for the time being. One of the police cars slid back to give her access and police tape strung across the street slid up and over her windscreen as she rolled into the cordon. Gawkers looked away from the death house to watch her approach, aware that someone important had arrived.

She checked her appearance in the sun visor’s mirror, wiping away a tint of remaining lipstick she’d missed when removing her makeup before she drove here. Myriad eyes were on her as she stepped out of the vehicle, her exit nimble, graceful, and today the door didn’t whack her shoulder as it shut.

Typically, she would stand here a few seconds to soak up the moment, but not this morning. Memories of last night put shame and guilt in her heart. At a dinner party, one of her sister’s obnoxious friends had been drunk and had asked her: how can you deal with death all the time? Doesn’t it rot your soul? Annoyed by the assumption, and loose-tongued by alcohol, she’d launched into a spiel that had embarrassed everyone: Murder makes it so interesting…

‘Are you the with the investigating team?’ said a fifty-something uniformed officer who approached. He reminded her of Dan, although he was at least fifteen years older than her husband. She immediately didn’t like him for this childish reason. She tapped her ID, on a lanyard hanging down between her breasts.

‘Detective Inspector Lizzie Miller, MIT 2 out of Woodseats,’ she said, even though he had read her ID. It sounded good to say aloud, especially to uniforms. ‘But I go by Liz. You were the responding officer? Where’s the Review Team?’

He looked her up and down, then back at her ID. ‘No team sent, Ms Miller. Just me and my partner, Ramble. He’s inside the house still. I called it in. Definitely murder.’

When a Major Inquiry Team got the call about a body, they sent a couple of detectives – a Review Team – ahead to appraise the scene, to make sure hardcore murder investigators’ time wasn’t wasted. If the diagnosis is accident or natural causes, local CID detectives got the case. Only on a cry of foul play did MIT’s wheels kick into gear.

Here, though, the Review Team had been bypassed. On the word of a bobby. Strange.

She again looked at the cars on the street. Bates might have used a different vehicle… but hers was the only civilian one within the cordon. ‘No other detectives have arrived? You’ve not heard from a DCI Bates? The senior investigating officer?’

‘Not yet, ma’am. Nor the scene-of-crime people. You’re the first. I’m Hitchfield.’

Her chief inspector was usually the first officer on scene once they’d had confirmation they were dealing with a murder. If he was late, something was wrong. Her mobile was in the car, but she made a firm decision right then not to go fetch it.

‘What time did you arrive, Hitchfield?’

‘Six thirteen, ma’am.’

‘What time did you call it in as definitely murder?’

‘Six eighteen.’

Thirty-four minutes ago. DCI Bates had called her twenty-seven minutes ago. Bates lived a little closer to the scene, about fifteen minutes’ drive as opposed to her twenty, but perhaps he’d gone early-morning fishing again. Quite conceivable that distance and traffic meant he was still en route.

‘What happened to get you sent here, Hitchfield?’

‘There was a 999 call from someone claiming to be a neighbour, who said we should check out 88 Pond Street because the owners might be in trouble. I was told to respond here and check the occupants were okay. They’re not.’

Hitchfield gave a sly point at an old woman standing in the wooden porch of the semi attached to the death house, arms folded as if she knew she was important and was awaiting attention.

‘When we arrived, the old lady approached and told me that at about three thirty in the morning she heard a noise out back of the houses. She went to her back-bedroom window and saw a black shape in the neighbours’ garden. But that was all she’d said. Anything further she would only give to a detective. She was specific. Detective only. Maybe she thinks Inspector Morse is coming down.’

On another day, buoyed by the perfect scene, she might have laughed at his joke. But Bates’s absence was worrying her. ‘Is the old lady the one who made the 999 call, because of this intruder she saw?’

‘I asked. But she’ll only talk to detectives. I didn’t push.’

‘Just so I’m clear. The call to police came at somewhere around 6am, but the witness over there says she saw an intruder at three thirty?’

‘I know: why the gap? But she won’t talk to me.’

‘And then you went inside?’

‘Yes.’ Hitchfield and his partner, Ramble, who was still in the house, had knocked on the locked front and back doors, but gotten no answer. They’d peered in the kitchen window, but seen nothing out of place. Back at the front of the property, unable to see inside and fearing a threat to life, they’d booted in the door. And found two people dead in the kitchen, a man and a woman. Ramble was still inside, guarding the front door in case anyone got past Hitchfield.

While he relayed this tale, Liz scanned the street. Two rows of semi-detached two-storey buildings, set behind neat lawns and driveways, with bay windows and front doors shielded by tiny porches. Somewhere between middle and lower class, given the mix of commercial and trade vehicles. A fair bunch of for-sale signs about, which she always thought was a bad signal.

Hitchfield finished by declaring he’d cordoned off the house, blocked the road and called it in. All the right procedures: she decided she liked this guy now, despite the resemblance to her husband.

Liz walked over to the neighbour’s garden hedge. The old lady approached. She had the sort of face that, many years ago, would have turned heads. ‘You a detective? I only want to tell detectives. Not these woodentops.’

There was a term Liz hadn’t heard for ages. ‘I’m a detective. Inspector Liz Miller. Do not talk to anyone but me, okay? Others will come, but I want you to deal only with me, okay?’

The old lady nodded. ‘Are the Lawlers dead?’

Liz ignored the question. ‘I’ll come for your statement soon. Talk only to me, please.’ She headed back to Hitchfield.

He said, ‘I heard her say the name Lawler. Some of these gawkers shouted it. I checked the electoral register on my mobile and Mark and Vicky Lawler live here. No kids. The old lady says they were away on holiday and weren’t due back until later today. Must have come back early. Maybe a burglar thought they’d still be out.’

Unwilling to be drawn into theory with a uniform, and eager to see the crime scene, she approached the driveway gate of the death house. The gate was manned by another officer and a third stood at the front door. The crime tape across the gate and front door made her again think of this murder scene as a present to her. A brick box, with goodies inside. If they’d known what drove her, the police might well have tied the tape in a bow across the front porch.

Both officers lifted the tape to allow her through, as if she were royalty. She couldn’t help a glance back at the growing crowd, to see what they made of this. Hitchfield was right behind her. In the porch, which was barely big enough for them both, they dragged on plastic shoe covers and latex gloves and stepped inside. Liz had a full-body protective suit in her car, but something about Bates’s absence urged her to get inside the house quickly… before it was too late.

The other officer, Ramble, was standing in the hallway, reading notes and letters pinned on a corkboard behind the front door. Hitchfield shut the door behind them. Ramble promised he’d been careful where he stepped and had touched nothing. He looked her up and down, head to toe and back again, but tried to hide his inspection.

A short wooden-floored hallway led to a closed door at the end, with other doors in the walls. Beside the front door was a portrait of a man and a woman in marriage gear, standing by a white vintage car, a church in the background. She recognised the church as the one she’d passed on her way here, located at the edge of the estate. An inset showed a close-up of the happy couple’s faces. They were a handsome pair, early thirties in the photograph. Grinning, loving life. Not anymore.

The portrait hung above a small table scattered with mail. Without touching the letters, Liz leaned close and saw the addressees were Mark and Victoria Lawler. Sadly, one of the letters was from a life insurance company. It reminded her she needed to remove a beneficiary from her own policy.

The tranquil nature of the scene evaporated close to the kitchen door. Here, red smears in the rough shape of feet, heading away from the kitchen. Good old-fashioned bloody shoeprints.

2

The bloody shoeprints ended partway down the hall, as if whoever had made them had taken flight like Superman.

She also saw blood on the left wall, right where the prints ended. A smear in a sort of sideways, ragged love-heart shape, surrounded by spatter. Closer, she realised the heart shape was a pair of shoe impressions, with the heels overlapped and the front of the outsoles leaning away from each other. She was reminded of childhood white winters, smacking her footwear against a wall to clean them. Here, though, someone had tried to dislodge excess blood, not snow.

While taking close-up photographs of the smears with her camera phone, she spotted something white stuck in the blood. She used a pair of tweezers to remove it. It appeared to be a tiny fragment of paper. There was no blood on it except where it had stuck to the wall.

This enriched her hypothesis that the scrap had been caught in the tread of a shoe, only one side exposed, and had dislodged when the sole was slammed against the wall. She dropped the miniscule piece into a small evidence bag.

Neither policeman asked what she’d found, nor questioned why she hadn’t left it for the forensic scientists. She knew why: more disturbing things lay in the kitchen.

As she approached the kitchen, it was slowly revealed to her beyond the doorway. First, a long worktop with sink, cooker, microwave and a window into the back garden. Then, further left, she saw a tall fridge-freezer standing in the middle of the room, in front of the washing machine and angled towards her. Brand new, given the blue tape sealing the doors closed and an energy efficiency label on the front.

Blood spatter was across virtually the whole floor, but a trail of it thickened as it disappeared behind the freezer. Bloody footprints led towards and past her, out into the hallway.

‘No one come in.’ Avoiding the bigger spatters of blood, she stepped towards the freezer, so she could see the space in the wall units where the item would sit. And what was there instead.

Two bodies. Dressed and sitting side by side, jammed between the dishwasher and washing machine. Their smashed heads were tilted back, which emphasised great rents below their chins where their throats used to be. Their faces were more gone than not. Vented blood had soaked and crusted their clothing, painted the floor beneath them, and coated the sides of the white goods. Only a future homebuyer with no knowledge would ever again see this place as tranquil, if morbid curiosity didn’t force the council to erase the entire building from existence.

Liz stared at the bodies and tried to dampen her relief. Not a case of murder-suicide, as she’d feared. Murder-suicide meant a killer already known and already out of the game. All that remained was to learn the why, which only really helped the victims’ families. Here, though, she had a whodunnit. There was a killer to hunt. It could only have been sweeter if the bodies had been outside, allowing the crowd to watch her work.

Liz retraced her own steps back into the hallway as she heard at least two cars arrive. But none of the new vehicles had had the throaty growl of her boss’s faulty exhaust.

She knew she was about to lose this gift of a case.

3

The host of new vehicles included an ambulance. The paramedics jumped out, but Liz gave them a wave that said they could slow down. Realising they weren’t vital here, the two men got back in their vehicle to wait.

Two forensics vans. Six people already at the back, donning white plastic suits. They looked and she gave a nod in greeting.

An unmarked car. Two detectives. One, a black female about fifty years of age. The officer with her was much younger and was the sort of handsome DC the TV liked to slot next to grizzled old inspectors for eye candy. And she recognised him: Ralph Hooper, a mouthy little sod who’d worked at another station of hers several years back. Hooper did nothing as she approached, but the black lady raised her warrant card. Detective Sergeant Sienna Todd. She looked puzzled. But Liz had no confusion. DCI Bates still wasn’t here.

‘I guess I’m off the case,’ Liz said.

Todd’s puzzlement vanished. ‘Oh, you were called first? I did wonder why they gave a Sheffield case to Barnsley. It must be down to your SIO.’

Barnsley was MIT 3. South Yorkshire had four Major Investigation Teams, one for each district. MIT 2 covered Sheffield, and this was Crookes, Sheffield, so it should have been Liz’s case. But Barnsley’s MIT 3 had been sent. Why? And why so soon after Liz had gotten the call to attend from her boss, DCI Alan Bates? Something to do with Bates, as the woman had said. And not because he was bloody running late.

‘I must have missed a call. My phone is in the car.’

‘Then you’d better be on your way,’ Hooper told her. His attitude surprised his colleague. Liz wanted to warn him to watch his mouth in front of a superior officer, but instead ignored him.

‘Oh, okay. So, have you been inside?’ DS Todd asked.

‘I have. There’s two uniformed responders in there right now. The old one’s got friends in high places, I suspect. I think he called this in as murder and his word was accepted, so no Review Team was sent. But it was a good call. Two bodies. A lot of blood.’

Liz pointed at the old lady neighbour, still standing on her doorstep with folded arms, waiting for her turn. ‘The lady next door said she saw someone around the back early in the morning. She must have called it in, yet there’s a gap between when she saw an intruder in the backyard and when the call was made.’

‘Okay, thank you, we’ll get to her,’ Todd said.

Liz jabbed a thumb at the growing crowd behind the crime tape. ‘When nosey neighbours see massive police and forensics activity centred on a house, they expect the people living there to exit in handcuffs or body bags. Either the Lawlers were another Fred and Rose West, or they lie dead. What some of these people are going to do is hop on their phones to get answers and spread the gossip. You need to get liaison officers over to the parents now, before they learn the news through Facebook.’

Todd nodded. ‘We know what to do. Thank you.’

Hooper wasn’t as sweet: ‘Our SIO is usually unflappable, but he’ll get angry if you’re still here when he arrives.’

Liz wanted to laugh right in his face. ‘Where is he?’

In answer, another car arrived and was passed through the cordon. A man in a tracksuit under a leather jacket got out. DCI Liam Bennet, she knew. Head of Barnsley’s MIT 3. The four top MIT dogs often had meetings together, but, as a DI, she’d never met him. He was a tall guy with tight muscles and a flat-top. Handsome. Early forties, she guessed. He could play a TV detective for sure. The only giveaway he actually was a police officer was the ID lanyard around his neck and a portable fingerprint scanner in his hand.

The crowd was watching and their scrutiny seemed to unnerve him a little, although he turned to the eager faces and took a photo with his phone. He ignored shouted questions and approached the trio of detectives.

Liz saw the same puzzled expression the two other detectives had given her, so she didn’t wait for the question. ‘My phone was in the car.’ She saw understanding cross his face. He put out his hand to shake, which she did. And he gave the ID round her neck only a brief glance.

‘Better go call your super, DI Miller.’

She didn’t move. ‘Did this one get shifted to MIT 3 because something’s happened to DCI Bates? No one has told me anything.’

‘Your superintendent will. You should call him.’

‘Will do. I should mention that the old lady over there at number 86 said she won’t talk to anyone but me. She gave no reason why. I didn’t influence her. I’ll be around for a few minutes if you need me to chat to her.’

‘We don’t,’ Hooper said.

Liz rushed to her car, found her phone and, as predicted, it displayed a missed call from her super. Two, in fact. Unable to get an answer, he’d followed with a text.

BATES INJURED IN CAR CRASH EN ROUTE. HE’S OKAY. BARNSLEY’S GOT THIS ONE. HEAD ON BACK.

With the lead detective of Sheffield’s murder squad out through injury, the head of her station, Superintendent Roy Allenberg, would have informed his own boss, the District Commander for Sheffield. The commander would have kicked the case to his colleague in Barnsley, who had then sent his own detective team. Nothing she could do about this. They were all South Yorkshire police and no argument about jurisdiction would help.

She didn’t want to call her super back yet. Instead, she removed the plastic evidence bag from