Eyes of the Wicked Page 4

  “No, I don’t.” As far as she was concerned, she’d simply been doing her job when she’d caught the Snow Killer and Battle had no doubt simply been doing his in Derbyshire. The raising of certain detectives to celebrity status rankled her because every one of those detectives was supported by a team who put in hours of work that made catching the killer possible. No arrest was the result of a detective acting alone but rather the end result of hours and hours of teamwork.

  “Come on,” she said to Matt. “We might as well go home and see what tomorrow brings.”

  They left the hospital and went outside, where the cold wind was whipping snow across the car park.

  “Oh, shit!” Dani said.

  Matt looked at her quizzically. “Guv?”

  “My car is in Tollby,” she said. “I came here in the ambulance.”

  “No problem,” he said. “I’ll give you a lift.”

  “Thanks, Matt.” She got into the passenger side of his Kodiaq and waited while he brushed snow off the windscreen before getting in behind the wheel.

  The drive to Tollby was slow and tedious, thanks to the weather. The view beyond the windows was nothing more than flurries of snow that made the world beyond the car looked like a TV screen that wasn’t tuned in properly.

  Dani took the opportunity to lean her head against the window and close her eyes, but she couldn’t sleep. Her mind was whirring. Would Holloway make sure her team stayed involved in the Abigail Newton case?

  She doubted it. She’d learned from past experience that it wasn’t a good idea to rely on Holloway for anything. He didn’t like her for some reason and seemed to like her even less after the conclusion of the Snow Killer case and the media attention that followed it.

  She reckoned that Holloway--a social climber--didn’t share her views on celebrity and would have liked to grab the limelight regarding the Snow Killer. But the reporters had focused on Dani and that had probably made him jealous of her, even though she hadn’t wanted the attention.

  If she went to his office tomorrow and told him she wanted to stay on the Newton case, he’d probably say no just to spite her. Maybe she should use reverse psychology and tell him she definitely didn’t want to be involved in the case. Then he’d probably make sure she was.

  “Here we are,” Matt said at last. “Tollby.”

  “Thanks, Matt.” She opened the car door and got out into the wind and snow. “Go home and get some sleep. We may have a busy day tomorrow searching those moors.”

  “I will,” he said. “Night, Guv.”

  She trudged through the deepening snow to her own car and started the engine, letting the vehicle warm up while she brushed snow off the windscreen and windows. When that was done, she got in and carefully drove the short distance to her cottage.

  Barney and Jack were waiting by the front door and shuffled around her, tails banging against the floor when she got inside.

  Dani fed them and ruffled the fur on the backs of their necks before opening the back door and taking them out to the garden. She didn’t have to take them out; the dogs had access to the large garden whenever they needed it via a dog door that had been built into the cottage’s rear wall. But after what she’d seen today—namely the fear in Abigail Newton’s eyes—Dani needed to spend time with the animals and watch them play in the snow.

  The world could be a terrible place and her line of work meant she only saw its dark side. She needed to be reminded that there was light as well. Watching Barney and Jack romp in the garden, shaking snow off their faces and play fighting, lifted her spirits. She threw snowballs for them to chase and laughed when they shook the snow off their fur and covered her with it.

  Eventually, she went back inside the cottage, had a quick shower, and headed to the bedroom. She left the light off and slipped into her pyjamas in the dark before climbing wearily into bed.

  She closed her eyes and tried to get to sleep.

  After a few minutes, she heard the tick tick of the dogs’ claws on the wooden floor as they came into the room and settled down next to the bed.

  Dani fell asleep listening to the snow falling against the window, wondering what secrets it was burying out on the moors.

  Chapter Five

  Andy Clifton didn’t appreciate the fact that his wife was nudging his shoulder, trying to wake him up. Had she forgotten he was off work for Christmas? He intended to sleep in for as long as he liked and had told her as much last night when they went to bed.

  “Andy,” she whispered. “I heard a noise.”

  He half-opened his eyes and groaned inwardly when he saw that it was still pitch black outside. What time was it? His bleary eyes had trouble seeing the alarm clock on his bedside table. Then the illuminated hands came into focus. 6:30. Way too early to be getting up when he was on holiday.

  “What noise?” he grumbled.

  “Outside. In the barn.”

  The barn. Why did Sheila insist on calling it that? They’d agreed that now it was being done up for the tourist trade, they were going to call it The Annexe. That would be much more appealing to potential guests than The Barn, even if the latter title was more accurate.

  They’d bought Brambleberry Farm and the land attached to it on the edge of the North Yorkshire Moors National Park last year, using money Andy had made as a trader in London. The barn, which was situated almost a quarter of a mile from the house—so Andy had no idea how Sheila could possible hear a noise that far away—had been just that; an old cow shed that was now defunct since Brambleberry Farm had ceased to be a working farm some years ago.

  They’d brought in builders to convert the building into a living accommodation for tourists. Sheila planned to cook breakfast for the guests in the rustic kitchen downstairs. It wasn’t Andy’s cup of tea—he preferred the city and spent almost all of his time there, staying in a flat in Chelsea during the week and only returning here on weekends and holidays.

  So he was eager to let Sheila run a little business here. It was what she wanted and would keep her content.

  “Andy!” she said.

  He’d drifted off. “What?”

  “I think someone’s in the barn.”

  “It’s probably a fox.” He pulled the duvet over his head, hoping it would indicate to her that he wanted no more disturbances.

  “No, I heard hammering.”

  “Hammering? You must be dreaming.”

  “I’m not.”

  “I thought the builders were done until after Christmas.”

  “They are. And they wouldn’t come this early anyway. Please go and check.”

  He sighed. He wasn’t going to get any peace until he did as she asked, that much was certain. “All right.” He regretfully pushed the duvet off his body, feeling cold air on his feet. “Bloody hell, it’s freezing!”

  “The heating hasn’t come on yet,” she explained.

  He padded across the cold wooden floor to his chest of drawers and dressed as quickly as he could in a pair of Tom Ford jeans and a John Smedley jumper. He might be in the middle of nowhere but that didn’t mean he was going to wear any old tat.

  Sheila was sitting up in bed, looking at the window with concern in her eyes. “I can’t hear anything now.”

  He nodded sagely. “You probably didn’t hear anything before either. You’re used to hearing building sounds coming from the barn so now you’re dreaming about them.”

  She pursed her lips, seemingly considering if what he was saying could be true. “All right, perhaps it was just a dream. Come back to bed.”

  “No, no,” he said. He was up and dressed now and he was going to be a martyr to it. “I’ll check the barn for your peace of mind. Even though it looks like there’s five feet of snow out there.”

  “Andy, don’t be ridiculous. I’m sorry I said anything now. Just forget about it.”

  “No, my love,” he said as he put on an extra pair of socks. “I’m going out there. You won’t be able to rest until you know there’s no phantom b
uilder hammering in the barn.”

  He left the room and went downstairs to the kitchen. His Le Chameau boots and Moncler hooded jacket, which he’d bought in Harrods, were waiting by the back door.

  Sheila came downstairs, wrapping her robe tightly around herself against the cold.

  “Should I take some kind of weapon with me?” he asked as he laced up the boots.

  “Look, I’m sorry I woke you up. You’re like a grumpy bear. You don’t have to go out there.”

  “But I do,” he said, putting his coat on and zipping it up. “Anything for you, dear.”

  She shot him a look that told him she’d had enough of his sarcasm.

  Andy retrieved an orange Moncler wool-cashmere hat from the jacket pocket and pulled it tightly over his head. After adding a pair of Bogner gloves to his ensemble, he felt he was stylish enough to brave the winter weather.

  He opened the back door and turned to Sheila. “If I don’t come back, always know that I loved you.”

  She sighed. “I wish I’d never said anything now.”

  Chuckling to himself, he closed the door behind him and trudged through the snow towards the distant building. There was no way Sheila had heard a noise from that far away. A bloody mariachi band could be playing in there and the sound wouldn’t reach the house.

  He looked back at the house. Sheila’s worried face was framed in the kitchen window, watching him. After this fiasco, she’d never wake him up early when he was on holiday again. He’d just say, “Remember the time you thought you heard a hammering noise in the barn?” and roll over and go back to sleep. It might even be worth this short trudge through the snow if it meant he’d get uninterrupted mornings from now on.

  The barn—The Annexe, he reminded himself—stood alone in the snow, a dark shape against the expanse of the moors behind it. Andy wished he’d brought a torch; it was bloody dark out here. He wasn’t sure if the builders had fitted the lights yet. Sheila had probably told him at some point, but he couldn’t remember having a conversation about it. He sometimes tuned out when she enthused about her little project. His mind was filled with more important things like stocks, shares, and bonds.

  By the time he reached The Annexe’s door, he was out of breath. Walking through deep snow was no joke. He leaned against the building’s stone wall for a moment and sucked in the cold winter air.

  The door to The Annexe wasn’t locked. The building was empty so there was nothing worth stealing in there. Andy opened it and recoiled when a blast of fetid air hit him in the face.

  It smelled like an animal had died somewhere in there. He supposed that was possible if the builders had left the door open while they were working and a fox or a badger or something had sneaked inside, only to get trapped in there when the builders shut the place up for the Christmas holiday.

  He stepped inside and felt along the wall, searching for the light switch in the dark. The smell was really bad. Once he hit the lights, he was going to have to find whatever creature had met its end here.

  His fingers contacted with the switch and he flicked it on.

  The lights sparked into life, flooding the barn with light. Andy’s eyes were drawn to something handing on the opposite wall, something that didn’t belong. When he realised what it was, he turned and stumbled out of the door, retching sour vomit onto the snow.

  He tried to run to the house, but his boots slipped, and he sprawled headlong to the ground. The snow clung to his face, chilling his teeth and caking his eyelids.

  Scrambling to his feet, he ran as fast as he could, refusing to think about what he’d just seen.

  The lights of the house seemed so distant suddenly. Andy cast a frightened gaze at the darkness around him. If the person who had done…that—he risked a glance back at the barn—was still around…

  He couldn’t think like that, must not scare himself to death.

  He saw Sheila’s face in the kitchen window, and he shouted to her. “Call the police!” The wind snatched his voice away and carried his words into the darkness.

  His wife was watching him run towards the house with a frown on her face, probably wondering why he was slipping and sliding like a maniac.

  “Call the police!” he shouted again.

  She shook her head and held a hand to her ear, indicating that she couldn’t hear him.

  “Open the door,” he gasped but there was no way she could hear him. He was too breathless. “Open the door so you can hear me.”

  She may not have heard his breathless pleading but now that he was getting closer to the house, Sheila went to the back door and opened it.

  Andy wanted to shout to her, but he was too out of breath. He could barely breathe.

  He reached the door and tumbled inside, lying on the kitchen floor while he tried to catch his breath.

  Sheila leaned over him. “Andy, what is it? What’s wrong?”

  When he finally managed to speak, his words were breathless and frightened.

  “Call the police,” he gasped. “Call the police.”

  Chapter Six

  Dani got to Brambleberry Farm at 9:45 and found at least half a dozen police cars and a Forensics van parked in front of the farmhouse. She parked next to the Forensics van and climbed out of her car to be greeted by Matt Flowers.

  “Why did it take them so long to call us?” she asked by way of a greeting. She’d only received the call an hour ago but had been informed that a body had been discovered here at around 6:30 a.m.

  “When the occupants of the farmhouse phoned the police, they just said there was a woman in their barn. According to the operator, they weren’t very coherent. So a couple of uniforms were dispatched to see what the problem was. Took them a while to get here because of the snow on the roads. When they found the body in the barn, we were called.”

  The body in the barn, Dani thought. It sounded like the title of an Agatha Christie story. But from what she’d been told, this was more gruesome than any Poirot or Marple novel.

  “Who lives here?” she asked, pointing at the house as she and Matt walked around it, following a path of churned up snow left by the police personnel who’d got here before her.

  Matt consulted his notebook. “Andy and Sheila Clifton. They were having the barn converted into a guesthouse.”

  They rounded the house and now Dani could see the barn in question. It stood alone, some distance from the house. “What were they doing in the barn at 6:30?”

  “Sheila thought she heard hammering and Andy went out to investigate. The hammering makes perfect sense when you see the state of the body, guv.”

  She’d been told it wasn’t pretty but hadn’t been given any details.

  The snow had stopped falling so she supposed she should be grateful for small mercies, but she couldn’t help thinking that here she was in the wintertime about to see another dead woman. The snow had brought with it more than bad memories; it had brought tragedy and death, as it always did.

  A number stood around the barn, including a number of SOCOs who were coming out and putting their white Tyvek suits into evidence bags. The suits would be checked for trace evidence later, along with everything else that had been removed from the barn.

  Some of the SOCOs were already heading back to the vehicles, including Ray Rickman, the head of Scenes of Crimes.

  Dani waved to him. “Ray, anything to tell me?”

  He shook his head. “Not until we analyse everything. We’ve collected what we can from the body and the room. The fact that the building is surrounded by snow means that’s about all we can get. And because the snow was still falling, there aren’t any footprints.” He paused and then added, “Judging by the way the body’s been posed, your best bet to catch this one is probably a psychologist.”

  “Let me know as soon as you have those test results,” she said.

  He nodded. “I will.” He led his team back to the van.

  Dani wanted to ask Matt exactly how gruesome the sight about to greet her was goin
g to be but to do so would be a sign of weakness and she had to look no matter what.

  Two uniforms flanked the barn door. They nodded to Dani as she walked past them and into the building.

  The smell—a mixture of death and the various chemicals used by the SOCOs—was familiar to her. The sight of the naked woman nailed to the wall took her aback for a moment.

  The woman looked to be in her late thirties. She had long black hair which partially covered her face. Her body was marked with dozens of wounds that looked like they’d been caused by a knife. The red marks crisscrossed each other on the woman’s torso, legs and arms.

  She had been nailed by her wrists to a wooden beam that ran through the wall. The builders had probably left it exposed as a quaint feature but now it was the method by which the dead woman was suspended above the floor. Her arms and body formed a “Y” shape.

  “She wasn’t killed here,” Dani said. “There isn’t enough blood on the floor beneath her body. She was killed somewhere else and then left here like this.”

  Why? she asked herself. Why would the killer do this? The woman had been crucified. Was the killer making some statement about her?

  Now she knew why Rickman had suggested a psychologist.

  “Do we know who she is?” she asked Matt.

  He shook his head. “Not yet, guv.”

  A Jane Doe crucified in a barn in the middle of nowhere. It didn’t make any sense at the moment. She had to trust that with time and investigation, answers would be found.

  Her phone rang. As soon as she answered, Holloway’s voice boomed in her ear. “Summers, where are you?”

  “I’m at Brambleberry Farm, sir.”

  “I want to see you in my office right away.”

  She resisted letting out a frustrated sigh. “That will be a bit difficult, sir. I’m miles away.”

  “Well get here as soon as you can.” He hung up.

  As she put the phone back into her coat pocket, Dani let out the sigh she’d been holding in.

  “Problem?” Matt asked.