Dead Of Winter (Willis/Carter #1)(17)

‘What are you going to say to him if he does turn up?’ Chrissie called up from the foot of the stairs.

‘I don’t know.’

‘He cheated on you, Louise. You can’t just ignore it.’

‘I’m not ignoring it . . . I’ve thought about it for so many nights since I found out. I’ve tried so hard to make sense of it.’

‘What is there to make sense of . . .? He’s a lying, cheating bastard. He slept with another woman. You’re more forgiving than I could ever be, Louise. I like Callum but I know I could never forgive him. I’d leave him if I was you.’

‘I can’t. Whatever he’s done . . . I know that he loves me and he loves Sophie. And I know that he’s sorry.’

‘Anyway, it’s your business and don’t be silly, it’s no problem to put you up for another night; I’m glad of the company. Someone’s arrived.’

Chrissie turned at the sound of a vehicle turning in outside. The cottage was at the end of a lane. No one needed to come down that far unless they were coming specifically to the cottage.

‘Maybe that’s Callum now.’

She carried her glass of wine into the lounge and drew back the curtain to look outside.

Ebony walked into the first bedroom on the left. The rooms were dark, the walls bare. Harding came to stand beside her. Ebony looked at the crime scene plan of the upstairs.

‘This is the room where baby Adam was found alive.’

‘He’d been taken to hospital by the time I arrived.’

They went into the next room. The bed had gone. Only faded paintings of country gardens and bluebells in the spring remained on the walls.

‘Louise and Sophie slept in here. Louise may have had time to put her to bed, but she didn’t have time to go back into the bathroom and empty the bath, tidy it up.’

‘There was no trace of anaesthetics in Sophie’s bloods,’ said Harding. ‘All the others were anaesthetised before being killed.’

‘She would never have got her to sleep naturally if she was frightened.’ Ebony shivered; the cottage was colder inside than it was outside. ‘If she knew there was trouble coming Louise must have hidden it well.’ Ebony looked upwards. ‘It says in the report that Sophie’s blood was across the ceiling. It was a quick death then, an execution. Maybe to shut her up.’ She glanced across at Harding at the same time as she flicked through the notes from the scene.

‘So Louise witnessed her daughter’s death, or at least the start of it, and then she was dragged downstairs and raped.’

‘Yes,’ said Harding. ‘Louise’s body was naked when it was found downstairs. Her knickers and shorts were found in the lounge. The rest of her clothes were missing. She had multiple bruises on her arms and legs, groin area, consistent with rape.’

Ebony stood on the landing and looked down the stairs. ‘She was dragged downstairs and then she saw her friend being horrifically and slowly murdered and waited three hours to be killed in the same way herself.’

Harding joined her at the top of the stairs. ‘Pressure marks and nylon fibre imbedded in the wrists and ankles of both women. They were rendered inactive, also given large amounts of sedation, which could have been used to keep them quiet while being tortured. Someone spent hours on these women.’

‘You knew Carmichael. Do you reckon he could have done that?’ asked Ebony.

‘Yes,’ answered Harding. ‘He could have. He was trained to murder when he was with the SBS. He could have done it in his sleep. Carmichael had secrets, Ebony. Things emerged about him after the murders.’

Ebony stopped on the first step of the stairs and turned back to Harding.

‘It turned out he’d had an affair six months before the murders.’

‘Who with?’

‘A civilian woman who worked in MIT 11.’

‘Where is she now?’

‘Emigrated shortly after it happened. She hasn’t been back. I checked that out earlier on today. She had a cast iron alibi at the time; she was at the bedside of her mother who was dying of cancer.’

‘Did it shock you to find out he had an affair, Doctor?’

‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘Why would it? You know how it is. The teams spend days locked together in the same place. They don’t get home even to sleep. They have a hard time holding down relationships outside the Force. He was an attractive-looking guy. He wasn’t my type – typical army type: quiet, brooding but he was the kind that if you saw him often enough, worked with him, then maybe he could get under your skin.’

Harding passed Ebony and started to walk back down the stairs. Ebony went to follow but stopped at the landing window two steps down from the bathroom. It overlooked the garden and then in the distance the sea stretched glittering on the horizon. She told herself Carmichael would have stopped at the same point and seen the same horizon. He would have stood here with the blood of his family on his hands. His daughter’s body in his arms. And she knew . . . if he didn’t kill them then he would have stood here, his heart breaking, and sworn vengeance.

‘But why?’ she asked Harding. ‘What would he have wanted or gained?’

‘Money? Who knows. Madness doesn’t need a reason or a profit.’

‘Do you think this case was handled differently because Carmichael was a policeman, Doctor?’