Dead Of Winter (Willis/Carter #1)(51)

An hour later Nikki de Lange was walking along an underground corridor; she looked up at the pipes above her head. The building above her creaked and hummed with the noise of trolleys and moving beds and nurses’ feet. She stopped at a room on the right and unlocked the door.

‘Hello, did you miss me? Have you been a good boy?’ She stopped just inside the door to cover her hands and arms with antibacterial gel and then walked across to the bed. The room had the smell of lavender. She sprayed it in a room mist. It helped him sleep. It helped him to stay asleep, just like her voice: calming, constant. It told his brain that he needn’t worry; he mustn’t fight it. Three weeks he had been in an induced coma. Nikki walked over to the bed and checked his chart. She flicked a switch controlling the drips into the boy’s neck and wrist and pressed buttons on the monitor at the head of the bed. The boy did not stir. The noise from the ventilator: the bellows breathing was a comforting sound. She bent down to check the catheter bag hooked to the underside of the bed then she peeled back the sheet and gently washed and dried around the electrodes that were stuck to his chest. She cleaned around the entry sites into his body: the neck, the wrist, into his mouth, his nose, his groin. She massaged the muscles in his legs. She looked at his face and sighed. He no longer looked like the boy he was. The drugs had bloated his face and the corrugated ventilating tube going into his mouth had distorted it.

She walked across to the chair, picked up his Arsenal shirt and folded it neatly.





Chapter 32


‘Arsenal shirt,’ said Carter to Ebony as she got back to her desk. ‘Large boy’s. This season. They changed fabric, changed manufacturers this year. Whoever he is he loves his football enough to pay over fifty quid for a shirt.’

‘Could it be Silvia’s?’

‘No, the DNA doesn’t match.’

Carter looked at her face as she sat down. ‘What is it?’ She was just about to tell Carter that she’d seen Carmichael when Robbo burst through the door of the ETO.

‘We got a phone call . . . anonymous tip-off about a body in the Thames. First officer at the scene said he recognized the body . . . it’s Sonny.’

The water was the same colour as the sky – steely grey. In contrast the bright red Ferrari being hoisted by a crane hung like a firework in the winter sky.

Ebony had invested in a sky-blue beanie hat which she pulled down over her ears. As they turned the corner the icy fog lay like a shroud over the water. Divers were getting changed after having fished Sonny’s waterlogged body out of the Thames.

‘Nice motor. Pity it didn’t float,’ said Carter.

Harding looked up from where she knelt on a piece of plastic sheeting next to the body. She looked pale with cold. She had the hangover from hell. She and Mathew had worked late and the inevitable had happened, and when she woke up and saw his face on the pillow she had hated herself marginally more than him.

Carter squatted beside her. ‘Yeah, this is definitely Sonny. This might answer why we couldn’t find him.’ He opened Sonny’s jacket and pulled out a wallet. He passed a driving licence to Ebony. ‘Run this through Robbo, Ebb, and give him the make and licence plate of car . . . see if he can come up with an address for the little mermaid here.’ He turned to Harding. ‘He doesn’t look the suicidal type. Were his keys in the car, do we know?’

‘They weren’t.’

‘Wasn’t robbery . . . plenty of money still in his wallet.’ Carter closed it up again and tucked it back into Sonny’s pocket. ‘How long’s he been in the water, Doc?’

‘About twenty-four hours max.’

‘It’s a dumb question, I know, but was he dead before he drowned?’

He helped her turn the body on its side then roll him onto his front as she lifted his jacket at the back and looked for signs of injury. ‘No obvious bullet or stab wounds.’ Carter helped her roll Sonny onto his back again and she turned his head to look at one side and the other. ‘It looks like he might have had a head injury going into the water. There’s bruising on the side of his head here. Could have banged his head in a panic trying to get out as the car filled up. The bruise hadn’t time to spread: it’s intense. It definitely occurred minutes before death and not hours. There’s a line of four dark circles decreasing in size. Looks a lot like a—’

‘Fist,’ said Carter. ‘So someone banged him unconscious with a hit to the head.’ Carter pointed to the pits and scrapes of missing flesh in Sonny’s face. ‘How did he get these other injuries, Doc?’

‘I would guess when the current dragged through the car. The windows were open. The water would have carried debris with it. The rest we can put down to the local river-life having a few meals on his face.’

The forensic photographer was done. He stood to one side viewing his work on his camera. He nodded to Harding. ‘Got what we need. You can move the body now.’

‘Sarge?’ Ebony had finished talking to Robbo. ‘Car’s traced to Sonny’s mother’s address. They’re sending someone round there now.’

Harding stood, peeled off her gloves. ‘Okay. That’s it for me. I’ll start the autopsy as soon as I get back to the hospital.’ She began walking back up towards her car.

‘Doctor?’ Ebony ran to catch her up. ‘Could we meet up again soon? I need your help with Rose Cottage.’