Dead Of Winter (Willis/Carter #1)(77)

They walked round, following the outside wall; an original wall: each stone laid by hand when the barn was first built two hundred years earlier. Spiders had made funnel webs between the cracks, their webs now frozen like fine lace.

Ebony watched Carter as he looked at his feet, pressing the ground with his expensive boots encased in polythene, feeling his way. She looked skyward. The light couldn’t make it through the tangled canopy of branches. The air was trapped with the smell of rotting leaves and past bonfires. At the end of the garden a newer wall marked the boundary between that property and the next and the trees gave way to a cleared area where two composters stood, their open ends on the flattened ground.

Ebony lifted the lid on each one in turn; both were half full. Carter looked in and recoiled.

‘Fuck . . .’

Hundreds of fat worms were stretching their ribbed bodies over the rotting matter.

Ebony dipped her gloved hand in one of the bins and pulled out a handful of rich brown crumbly compost and let it sift through her fingers. Carter stared at her as if she were mad.

‘Not sure what it’s supposed to look like, Sarge.’

‘It should have all sorts of lumps of rotting stuff, vegetation, kitchen waste, that sort of thing in there.’

She moved it round with her hand. ‘Can’t see any vegetables or kitchen peelings in it, Sarge; it’s very fine.’

Carter looked back to the garden. ‘That’s a lot of compost produced from just leaves. Anything else in there?’ She shook her head.

He called back down the garden and two officers arrived.

‘Can you get something to slide beneath these bins? I want to empty them. I think this is shop-bought compost.’

Ten minutes later their contents were laid out on a plastic sheet and Ebony was gently scraping away the last of the rotting leaves and compost from beneath where the bins had stood.

‘Sarge?’ She moved the fragments of bone towards him. In the centre was a child’s tooth.





Chapter 50


‘Unlike the previous victims, an attempt had been made to dispose of the body by burning it.’

Davidson sat at Carter’s old desk and bowed his head in thought, as if he had a heavy weight on the back of his head. Occasionally he seemed to realize what he was doing and sat upright, but slowly gravity pulled him back down.

‘She was a young girl of around ten years old . . .’ Harding was addressing the meeting. ‘She was found by DC Willis and DS Carter in a fire pit hidden beneath a compost bin.’

Jeanie looked across and smiled at Ebony proudly. It was eight in the morning in the ETO. The room was packed to hear about the latest development.

Harding continued: ‘The temperature in the pit was not high enough to have much impact on the skeleton but the flesh has gone. The bones are mainly yellowed and some splintering has occurred. We will still be able to extract mitochondrial DNA. We’re waiting on results. I can’t give you cause of death but it’s not strangulation. The small bones at the top of her spinal column were still intact. No obvious injuries except she broke her arm in the six months prior to her death. There is a metal pin in the humerus bone usually put in to help align it whilst healing.’

Robbo spoke: ‘We think we have a match to a missing person: eleven-year-old Shannon Mannings was last seen on the Friday before the Easter weekend on March twenty-sixth 2010. She disappeared from a children’s home in Wales. Hospital records show that Shannon had her arm broken on a home visit courtesy of her stepfather. We have requested mitochondrial DNA from her mother.

‘Because of her home-life Shannon was sent to the children’s home, which is in a rural location. We do know that she was a problem child with a history of self-destructive behaviour; sexualized young by her mother she was sexually active and undergoing counselling for it.’

Davidson stood and took over: ‘We should be able to find out if she had been groomed by anyone before she disappeared. Carter . . . you and DC Willis will head up to interview the manager of the home and see if we can find out any more.’

‘Jesus . . . why Shannon Mannings? There must have been lots of kids they could kill for their organs? Why didn’t they find an easier target?’ asked Carter.

‘Because Shannon was an exact match for someone,’ answered Harding.

‘Pre-ordered?’ Davidson looked at her. ‘You’re saying that they have a shopping list, these people? They don’t just kill: they kill to order?’ Harding nodded.

‘I agree,’ said Robbo. ‘She was for a specific client: tissue type, blood, age type, all of it was pre-ordered. But the person she was meant for wasn’t ready. Shannon was a walking organ bank. She was kept in Blackdown Barn until they were ready for her.’

‘Maybe that person also stayed at Blackdown Barn,’ said Carter. ‘They could have recovered there after the operation. Maybe that’s why Chichester chose an expensive property. If it was just to hold the victims it wouldn’t have mattered what the place looked like as long as it was secure. If it was to impress clients it would.’

‘Is that possible?’ Davidson looked at Harding. His face was clouded with confusion. ‘Really? A bespoke organ stealing team?’

‘I think it is,’ said Harding.

Davidson shook his head in disbelief. ‘I can’t grasp it.’