Dead Of Winter (Willis/Carter #1)(26)

‘She considered leaving me, I know. She knew I was sorry. I wasn’t sure whether things would ever be the same between us or that she could ever forgive me.’

‘When you arrived that day at Rose Cottage and you saw what had happened. When you looked at the bodies . . .’

He bowed his head. ‘Jesus . . .’

‘I’m sorry . . .’

‘Don’t be.’ He looked up and smiled sadly. ‘You have a job to do.’

‘Can I ask you why you moved the bodies?’

‘I moved Sophie . . .’

‘You didn’t move the others at all?’

He shook his head as he swallowed the last of his whisky and wiped his burning mouth. He stared into the fire as he talked. ‘I got to the cottage and knew something was wrong even before I had parked the car. The curtains in the lounge were closed. The door was open. I saw Chrissie first. I walked into the kitchen and found Louise: butchered.’ He looked into the fire and coughed to clear his throat and his head before going on. ‘I looked around and I called Sophie’s name. Then I ran upstairs and found the baby, Adam, first; he was asleep, doped, but alive, and I had a few seconds’ hope that I would find my daughter . . .’ He swallowed, shook his head. ‘They cut her throat.’ He stared at the fire. His voice dropped until it was barely audible over the hiss and crackle of the burning wood. ‘I know I shouldn’t have touched the crime scene but this wasn’t a crime scene; this was everything in the world I cared about and it had gone. These were my angels. I carried her down to lie next to her mother.’ He turned to look at Ebony and shook his head to clear it. ‘I don’t know why they did it but no matter what anyone says, if you ask me, it was premeditated, it was planned. There was a reason why my family died. Now we know that’s true because they’re back and killing again.’ The firelight reflected in his eyes. ‘I’ve waited a long time for this day to come.’

As he stared at Ebony she saw the eyes of a troubled mind that was never going to find peace. She’d seen it all her life. It was the look of someone not destined ever to live a normal life and be happy. The eyes were full of demons and nightmares. Ebony had seen eyes like that before, in the tortured souls that looked at her when she went to visit her mother. Broadmoor was full of them. Her mother was one. Rusty barked; Ebony jumped. He stood alert on the sofa and tilted his head to listen to some noise from outside. Carmichael held up his hand to silence him. ‘Stay.’

‘What is it?’ Ebony whispered.

Rusty jumped down from the sofa. Carmichael put his foot out to stop him but Rusty jumped over it. ‘Rusty . . . COME!’ Carmichael picked up his rifle as he ran after the dog, but Rusty was already out of the door.

Ebony threw her coat on and ran towards the barn and the dreadful sound: the lambs like babies with their high-pitched cries and the deeper distressed bleating of their mothers trying to protect them.

The barn door was open. Inside the sheep were stampeding round their pens and the bodies of the killed lambs were littered in the straw. She stopped in the doorway. Carmichael’s face was murderous as he turned towards her, rifle in his hand. He swung away from her at the sound of snarling and yelping coming from the rear of the barn. He started running towards the sound, calling Rusty’s name as the sound of a dog’s growling turned to squeals of pain. The squealing stopped and an eerie silence fell in the barn as Carmichael searched the pens. The sheep scattered. He found what he was looking for. Rusty’s body looked as if someone had tried to skin it. Carmichael placed his hands beneath him and lifted Rusty out of the blood-covered straw. He carried him into the house.

The dog fox stopped on the brow of the hill and looked back down at the farmhouse. He saw the big man carrying the dying dog. The dog’s warm blood was on his mouth. Its flesh was in his teeth. He saw the pheasant that Carmichael had set to trap him, still hanging there, swinging now. Above him his mate stood guard, in her mouth the body of a newborn lamb.





Chapter 13


Carmichael laid Rusty on the kitchen table.

‘Look after him while I fetch the medical kit.’

He came back with an armful of neatly folded towels, old but clean, and a medical chest.

‘What can I do?’ Ebony asked.

Carmichael took out his knife and cut into the material so he could tear them into pressure bandages. ‘Lie him on the towels. I’ll be back in a minute.’

Carmichael disappeared. Ebony lifted up Rusty’s limp body, wet with blood, his flesh exposed, ripped over his flank and back. The fox had tried to tear him apart. Carmichael returned with a bowl of warm salted water and for the next two hours they worked together to sew Rusty up.



Carmichael pushed his hair back from his tired eyes. ‘He will survive or not.’ He picked Rusty up and lay him in his basket. He was just about alive. ‘There’s nothing more we can do: I don’t have any antibiotics to give him. I need to go out. Leave him here and go to bed. Upstairs, first door on the right. Bathroom’s the second one. It’s primitive but it’s clean.’ Carmichael was rubbing soot into his face. He smelt like he’d rolled in a dead animal and then slept on a dung heap. Ebony heard him linger in the tack room. Then he was gone.

In the lounge the fire was dying down. Ebony put another few logs on it and covered Rusty with a clean towel. He didn’t stir.