Frozen Grave (Willis/Carter #3)(6)

Carter came round and knelt down beside her.

‘Welcome to Olivia’s toy box,’ he said. ‘Welcome to her secret world.’ He stood with a harness in his hands. ‘Tell you one thing we need to know – we need to know how Dr Harding knew her. Because, like I said’ – Carter was distracted reading instructions and turning the harness around to try to work out how it was fastened – ‘Harding doesn’t have female friends.’ He gave up and put it back in the box. ‘We’ll leave these for Sandford. This will be right up his street. If Harding met her outside work then they had something in common. The only hobby I know that Harding has outside work is having sex with people she shouldn’t. If this woman doesn’t have a husband to interest Harding – she must have something else.’

After he left Hannover Estate, Mason’s feet didn’t stop running until he reached the arches beneath the railway bridge in Shadwell where he had made a home tucked in beside the road and the fencing that bordered the car park. In the day, cars parked there but from six it was empty. Mason crawled into his makeshift cardboard tent and pulled his sleeping bag up over his legs. His heart was pounding; his lungs burning.

Sandy stayed on sentry duty until she sensed that there was no more danger, then she looked around for water and found a puddle.

Mason’s breathing slowed as Sandy came to lie beside him and the warmth from the dog soothed him, her heartbeat calmed him; the sound of her breathing made him feel safe. He closed his eyes and sank back onto the blue cashmere coat that still smelt of the woman.





Chapter 3


It was late morning when Carter and Willis arrived back at the office, both loaded down with boxes of Olivia Grantham’s paperwork taken from her flat. They parked in the car park alongside SOCO vans and squad cars and took the lift up to the third floor. They were part of MIT 17 – the murder squad – which was one of three Major Investigation Teams in Fletcher House. Fletcher House was a concrete three-storey building adjoining Archway Police Station, separated by just a door on level one. All the officers serving in Archway Police Station referred to the MIT teams as ‘the Dark Side’.

They carried the boxes down to the crime analyst Robbo’s office. It was the crime analyst’s job to work out the sequence of events, analyse statements, pull everything together and highlight any gaps in intelligence. It was his job to work out how it all fitted or didn’t. He worked in there with Pam, his ‘work wife’, and there was usually at least one other researcher working alongside them – at the moment it was Hector, a young detective constable who was recovering from a knee operation and on desk duty.

Hector looked up as Carter and Willis entered the room. The door to Robbo’s office was always propped open. Robbo had a desk from where he could look through the glass partition and right down the corridor but it was tucked back against the wall. Behind his chair was a large whiteboard, where he made notes on the case he was working on and pinned up photos and diagrams, location maps. Olivia Grantham’s name was written at the top of the board with photos of Parade Street and stills from the crime scene.

Pam looked up and smiled at Carter.

Carter winked at her. ‘All right, Pam? Have a nice holiday? Is that an all-over tan?’

Pam blushed. ‘It was. It’s fading already.’

‘Has the family been notified?’ Willis asked Robbo as she placed her boxes from Olivia Grantham’s flat on Hector’s desk.

‘Yes, we found a relative,’ he answered. ‘She has family in Yorkshire. Her dad is coming down late tonight and he’ll identify the body tomorrow morning.’

‘We need to get the post-mortem done before then,’ Carter said as he watched whilst Hector shifted the boxes on his desk. ‘Is Dr Kahn doing it?’

‘Yes,’ replied Robbo. ‘Dr Harding is handling the arrangements. She said it’s scheduled for this afternoon at two. Do you want to attend?’

‘Yeah, we have to; personally speaking, want has nothing to do with it. The top box is her bank statements,’ added Carter, as he placed his boxes beside the others.

‘She’s not the paperless type then,’ Hector said as he removed the top from the box and looked at the reams of statements.

Robbo came round to look at the boxes and their contents. ‘Solicitor, remember. Make a spreadsheet of her spending in the last six months, work backwards, Hector,’ said Robbo as he held out his hands for Hector to hand a box over to him. ‘Give one to me – I’ll make sure it’s in order for you.’

‘What have you found out about her, Pam?’ asked Carter.

Pam changed her reading glasses and skimmed down the research she’d done as she read out the bullet points from the page in front of her:

‘Age forty. Originally from Yorkshire. Only child. Solicitor in family law. Never married. I talked to work colleagues this morning. There doesn’t seem to be much of a social scene at her workplace. They didn’t know of any friends outside work. She was on Linkedin, so I’m tracing her contacts there. I’m still building up a picture of her but so far she seems a private person.’

‘Any boyfriend on the scene?’

‘Her work colleagues didn’t think so. She never brought anyone along to any company events.’

‘Okay, well, we need to keep digging.’