Frozen Grave (Willis/Carter #3)(86)

‘Griff, I’m not good with dogs; what should I know if one attacks me?’

‘It will lunge, teeth bared. You kind of know it’s going to do it. Before it attacks, don’t make eye contact, don’t wave your arms around. Stay still. Don’t front it, turn to the side so that it doesn’t think you’re aggressive – a threat. Don’t scream unless it starts biting you and then scream as loud as you can to get help. Throw anything at it to give it something to chew on besides you – a bag, shoe, book, anything, then get away, walk. Don’t run, it will see you as prey.’

‘What if that doesn’t work?’

‘When the dog bites, it is trying to bring you down. Stay on your feet. If it bites your arm or leg, don’t move. If you move then the dog bite tears into your flesh, causing maximum damage. If it gets you onto the floor and starts biting you then roll into a ball and make fists with your hands and protect your neck, your head, face. Wait until it loses interest in you then walk away.’

‘What if it doesn’t? How will it try and kill me?’

‘Rip out your throat. Anyway, how are the kids? How are you? Fancy a drink some time?’

‘I’ll let you know – thanks for the advice.’

She parked up, got out of the car, and walked across to the tower block. On the sixteenth floor, she listened hard at Balik’s grandfather’s flat. She could hear the sound of the dog moving. It was walking up and down behind the door, pacing back and forth. She knocked. The dog went ballistic; it hurled itself at the door.

‘Mr Balik, can you hear me?’ There was no reply.

Inside the flat, Mr Balik was dead. His throat had been ripped out but not before he had been bitten one hundred and seventy-three times.





Chapter 48


‘We came here expecting to talk to Lisa about her connection to a murder in London and another in Exeter,’ Carter said to the crime-scene manager, Jesse Arnold, who was standing with them at the cliff edge. A tent had been erected around the point where Lisa fell.

‘We didn’t treat it as suspicious at first. We get suicides all the time on this stretch of the coastline, but we had a report of a driver seeing what looked like a scuffle and he saw the woman being lifted over the fence here. One of the officers recognized her from the gym he goes to. When you contacted us about your enquiry, we knew it was her.’

‘Who was the driver?’

‘A local man, name of Mendrik-Sutton. We have his statement.’

‘What made him come forward?’

‘He drove past here this morning and saw the police activity – he thought he should come forward.’

‘Can we talk to him?’

‘Yes. He works from home – a web designer.’

Tucker parked his car and walked across to them. He had driven straight up from Exeter.

They looked over the railings. Beneath them were three SOCOs. The body was shielded from view by a makeshift screen to either side and suspended across the front. ‘The doctor said she had probably died from a broken neck. She’d been dead about twelve hours when she was found at eight this morning.’

‘Who found her?’

‘A man walking his dogs. We don’t know what injuries are on the body yet but there are signs of a struggle here at the cliff edge. Several sets of footprints here at the edge and leading to this spot. The grass is so wet there are some slide marks here and over there, where the area has been ringed for casts to be taken.’

Carter and Willis walked across to take a look. Willis squatted at the edge of the disturbed patch of grass.

‘It’s going to be difficult to get a clean print. Looks like someone’s been stamping on this ground.’

‘Our best bet is what’s on her body. It hasn’t rained overnight. We might be lucky. We haven’t been able to get her off the cage; it’s going to take a crane.’

The officer in charge looked up at them.

‘We’re going to be able to get her down soon. If you want to take a look at her from this angle you’d better hurry up.’

‘Coming,’ Carter said.

Tucker led the way back down the road and down some steps that led to the walkway beneath the cliffs.

Lisa Tompkins’s body was caught on the metal cage. There was a scattering of stones on the path beneath it.

‘Anything fall with her?’

‘We haven’t found anything so far. We might dislodge something when we move her,’ the officer said.

They watched as the recovery of the body began. It was extracted from the cage and lowered to the walkway beneath.

Willis stooped forward to take a better look at the body as she donned protective gloves. It was frozen solid in a twisted position.

‘She has wounds where she was impaled on the cage,’ Willis said as she stretched the fabric on Lisa’s running top and jagged puncture wounds became visible. The T-shirt beneath was saturated and crisp with blood. ‘And she lost a lot of blood.’

‘She didn’t die from a broken neck?’

Willis stood, shook her head, as the rain started. Large icy drops settled in her hair.

‘She was alive long enough to bleed out.’

‘Mr Mendrik-Sutton?’

A slim, tall man, wearing thick black trendy glasses and dressed in a T-shirt and expensive jeans, opened his front door to the three detectives.