The Dead Of Winter Read online

  They both heard the back door open at the same time. The house was in perfect darkness so their daughter must have thought she would creep in and up to her room without detection. She was wrong.

  “Where the hell have you been?” It was her father’s voice Shannon heard first.

  She looked up and saw them both standing in the hallway. Christ almighty, she thought, they were in the same room together and hadn’t threatened to kill each other. “What are you two doing still up?” She smiled awkwardly thinking it was easier to get around her sober father than her drunken mother.

  “Your mother’s just home from another one of her nights on the town. Right now, though, I’m more concerned with what you’re still doing up. More to the point, what are you doing out of this house without permission?” He moved towards her, dismissing the presence of his wife who was still trying to get herself together enough to look like a responsible parent.

  “I was studying with Casey. Where else would I be?” Her face looked guilty.

  Not that it mattered because Paul had little trust in any of the women in his family. She was her mother’s girl. He only loved her more because half his blood ran through her and he had no intention of allowing her to turn into the witch he had married. “I’ll ask Casey’s mother tomorrow.”

  Shannon’s face twisted in anger. “Oh, for fucks sake.”

  Paul quickly retaliated because he wasn’t in the mood. He leaned forward and wagged his finger at her. “Don’t you use that language at me, Shannon. You’re 15 years of age. That means you do not get out of this house without telling me or your mother. Show some respect for once in your life.”

  Laura stepped forward, sensing her husband’s anger and finding an opportunity to score a point. “Oh, you don’t mind if she speaks to me like that because I’m only her mother, you hypocrite.”

  Shannon pushed through the centre of them because she knew this would erupt into one of their endless fights any minute now. She stormed up the stairs and could hear that she was already a forgotten subject as their fight became about the two people they really cared most about; themselves. She locked herself in her bedroom and pulled her mobile phone from her pocket. No missed calls and no text messages. Shannon opened the contact details for Casey Miller and typed a quick text message;

  ‘If my dad asks, I was with you all night.’

  FOUR

  Wallace heard the crunch of his shoes against the hard snow as he moved round the exterior of the house. He was puzzled when Dan had said the child had been fine half an hour before when he went in to check on him. If that were true, there would be some indication of another person entering and leaving the house. The snow was too thick for anybody to get in and out without leaving footprints.

  Light streamed from the kitchen window as he approached the back door. Irving had went the other way and had no more luck than Wallace did in finding a footprint. His heart sank though as he got to the back door and saw there was only a light dust of snow up the centre of the garden. Somebody had obviously raked it into the two lofty piles that created a pathway to the back of the garden. It would have been difficult to find anything let alone a footprint.

  Irving shone the light from his mobile phone down to the foot of the back door. There was a steel griddle that allowed people to stamp their feet before entering the house. “You see anything?”

  Wallace shook his head and then eyed the trail to the wooden fence at the back of the garden. He moved up three stairs, careful not to disturb any potential evidence and determined not to slide back down them. “I’m just going to the back gate. Whoever took that kid had to get in and out. Thanks to whoever raked the snow away, we’ve got no chance of finding anything here.”

  Irving snorted. “Well, snow isn’t a deterrent. If it were, people would be praying for it to come all year.”

  “I know, but I’m still annoyed about it.” Wallace always got frustrated when he didn’t have a lead. He’d get so frustrated he would start to pick fault and become unreasonable with those around him. Then he’d get frustrated with himself for becoming so frustrated. He reached for the steel bolt on the back gate, but it was already unlocked. He pulled the gate open and tutted to himself. The back lane was adorned with different sized footprints as well as the pawprints of four legged, canine friends. Finding a distinctive, or unaccounted for, footprint in that would be like trying to find grains of sand in the Indian Ocean.

  Irving had walked towards the back door, leaving Wallace to stare blankly up the lane. He switched the torch on at the back of his mobile phone and held it towards the door handle. There were no signs of forced entry. If somebody had gotten in and out this way, it was because they either had access or the door hadn’t been locked. He leaned forward and caught sight of something glimmering at his feet. He looked around for Wallace but saw that he had disappeared into the lane. He reached down and wiped some of the snow dust from its grooves. He didn’t know how he hadn’t noticed it sooner because it stood out like a bleeding thumb. He suddenly realised what it was.

  Wallace walked slowly along the back lane. Each house had its own lock-up at the back. It was entirely plausible that whoever had taken the baby could be hiding out in one of them. At the next house, he reached for the bolt but could see immediately it had been locked shut. As far as the dark would allow his eyes to see, the doors were all locked on the outside. Would a kidnapper stay so close to home? Then he heard Irving’s voice.

  “Kev, come and have a look at this.”

  FIVE

  Every time she listened to her parents argue, Shannon felt five-years-old again. She would have been much happier if they’d just divorce and then she wouldn’t have to endure her father’s unfeeling cruelty and her mother’s rabid histrionics. She suspected they stayed together because beneath the vitriol and lingering anger, they actually quite liked each other. It was just a hunch. Why else would they have stayed married for so many years?

  For as long as she could remember, Shannon had been sucked into a vacuum of anger that her parents seemed to be happily entangled in. She had seen love in other houses. It had only confused her. Before she was old enough to know better, she wondered if love was what she saw. When she’d asked her mother about it, Laura had sniped that all families fight and any that didn’t weren’t doing it right. Shannon had often wondered if that could be true. Were the Miller’s faking their happiness? Could the Bradley’s really be as close knit as they appeared? Surely nobody could keep that kind of falsehood alive for so long?

  As she flipped the screen of her laptop up, Shannon listened for the shouting to stop. Soon her father would disappear to bed and her mother would drink herself further into a stupor. Everybody would be happy then. She thought of when she was younger and Laura would come into her room. Shannon didn’t know her mother drank too much and she didn’t think of it as comfort. She would giggle when Laura pretended that the smell from her breath was perfume. Shannon didn’t like it much. It didn’t happen anymore.

  The login screen came to life as Shannon stared out of the window. She could see into the Wilson’s lounge. Joanne Wilson was standing near the window and waving her arms. Shannon could also see that Mary Bradley was standing by hers. They made for quite a contrasting image. Joanne looked angry and distressed and was animatedly screaming at somebody who remained concealed by the wall. Mary simply stared blankly into the world as if she were a beautiful mannequin. Shannon snatched up her phone and began to film them.

  She heard her father pass her bedroom door and storm into his own room. Her mother must have stayed downstairs. At least the row wouldn’t continue into their bedroom. What the hell did they really fight about, she had often wondered? Their fight was never new. It was the same old thing. They didn’t have money worries. They didn’t care much for Shannon, despite what her father would say. As far as she could gather, their constant fighting was all centred around their own dislike for each other. It would be amusing if it weren’t so pathetic.
r />   Shannon punched her password into the laptop and navigated around her desktop. Then she remembered the images she had snapped earlier in the evening. She grabbed the phone and plugged it in. She got excited as a new folder sprung open. She could see every thumbnail from the new collection. They were all dated today and were all taken from the same angle. If she flicked through them, they would play out like an animated video. She didn’t have a particular desire to do that right now.

  The photos Shannon really wanted to see were buried inside a folder labelled ‘homework’. Her parents knew she wasn’t the most studious, so they would never dream of looking in that folder. She suspected they didn’t even know her password for the laptop. That was how little they appeared to care. She clicked on the folder labelled ‘Drowned World’ and waited for the scores of photos to load. She felt a whimper of excitement as she prepared to add to her extensive album.

  The first image filled the screen. Shannon smirked. She had somebody’s whole life wrapped up in her collection. She clicked through them quickly, smiling at visual memories that didn’t really belong to her. It made her feel giddy. She began to drag the new collection from earlier in the evening into the folder. It would take her total collection to over 1,000. Many of the pictures featured both houses from across the street. She hadn’t quite mastered the zoom lens on her latest mobile phone, so she would edit them on the laptop instead. She was only interested in her subject, not everything around it. She fiendishly set about cropping them as if she physically held the scissors around her knuckles.

  As Shannon was about to crop the thirteenth picture, she suddenly noticed something that didn’t look quite right. At first, she thought it was a blemish on the image but, as she zoomed in closer, she saw somebody was in the frame. He was standing between the Bradley and the Wilson house. She leaned closer to the screen and saw he was leaning over a plastic bin. It took her a moment to recognise him and to realise he was staring right at her. He’d seen her taking the photos. That didn’t concern her though. What concerned her most was what the hell he was doing there when he hadn’t lived in the neighbourhood for over two years.

  SIX

  Even in the white, dead of night it hadn’t taken long for the blue flashing lights to grab the attention of Golf Road. After all, this wasn’t any run of the mill street. The people here were affluent with well-paying jobs and closets full of secrets that their amiable smiles hid far too well. The plastered-on smiles of the women and the charming asides of the men all too often concealed the horrors that really went on behind their sturdy closed doors.

  The arrival of marked police cars outside the Wilson’s house at such a late hour created a bit of a stir because the last time more than one police car had been on the street was more than two years ago, when Charlie Smith had slaughtered Moira Burns. Such a heinous crime had left a stain on the community for too long a time. The estate agent had finally managed to sell the house on and it had given the people on the street a sense of closure.

  An hour after he had discovered the button on the ground, PC Irving banged on Mary Bradley’s door. A few uniformed officers were now knocking on the other doors in the neighbourhood. As most people were keen to learn what the disturbance was about, nobody seemed that disgruntled by the late-night intrusion. Mary Bradley wouldn’t sleep anyway so she invited the policeman in without delay.

  It wasn’t the first time Irving had been in this house. He had vivid memories of when Moira Burns had been killed and he’d been one of the investigating officers. At least the interior of the house had been markedly improved.

  “What can I do for you?” She wasn’t in any way alarmed by his arrival. She had seen him going next door earlier on and she was in no doubt something bad had occurred. She didn’t want to imagine what.

  “You know the family next door?”

  Mary didn’t know them too well. She had only moved back here recently as she had grown up on this street and wanted to raise her girls here. Buying this house had been a dream for her but it had left her broke. “Not too well,” she explained. “I’m originally from this neck of the woods but I moved away. Anybody who has moved in since is a virtual stranger to me. They seem nice though. My daughter Samantha has been there with her friend a few times. Has something happened?

  “Yes, Samantha. She would be what age?”

  Mary gawked at him as he jumped on the mention of her daughter. “Erm, 15. Why is that relevant to why you’re next door?”

  “That’s what we’re trying to establish Miss…?” He was small with broad shoulders and a soft voice. Not what she typically imagined a police officer to be.

  “It’s Mrs,” she answered flatly. “Mrs Mary Bradley.”

  “Mrs Bradley, do you recognise this?” He held up a small plastic bag containing a yellow button and saw an instant flash of recognition.

  Mary gasped. “Yes, it looks like one of the buttons from Samantha’s raincoat. Where did you find it?” She escorted him into the lounge and stood by the living room window. She saw his sullen face and suspected that whatever had gone on next door might affect her daughter. “Spit it out, officer. It’s late at night. If my daughter is in trouble, then I want to know what it is.”

  “Is Samantha here?” He sat down on the sofa and tried not to make eye contact too often. He put the bag containing the button back in his pocket.

  It seemed an odd question to Mary. “Of course she is. Both my girls are upstairs. Can I ask what this is about? Why do you have a button from my daughter’s coat?”

  PC Irving stood and gestured for her to sit. “Archie Wilson was taken from his cot tonight. At this point we’re knocking on all the doors in the neighbourhood just in case somebody saw something. We found this button outside so we’re just making enquiries.”

  Mary’s face tightened. “Oh no. That’s awful. Samantha won’t have anything to do with it though. As I said, she’s babysat with her friend a few times so it’s perfectly possible the button fell off when she was there.”

  Irving nodded his head in agreement and then returned to his previous trail of thought. “What are they like? The Wilson’s I mean?”

  The question irritated Mary. She didn’t know them well enough to pass comment. “I don’t know. I’ve spoken to them less than half a dozen times Officer.” She felt as if he were trying to catch her out in some way. She had already explained to him that she didn’t know them.

  “Then that makes you the perfect observer. Everybody else we speak to on this street will be blinded by friendship or tainted by neighbourhood rivalry. You can say it as you see it.”

  Mary raised her eyebrows until lines formed on her forehead. She was completely thrown. She was essentially being asked to pass judgement on people she didn’t know. “Well, okay, she seems very nice. She’s asked me over a couple of times but I haven’t found the time. She dotes on the baby and seems to be glowing as a new mum. I’m not so sure about Dan. He’s a little overly friendly.” Mary didn’t know how else to verbalise it.

  “Overly friendly? As in inappropriate?” PC Irving was eyeing Mary’s unusual wall art. He stopped at a portrait of a woman’s face that was half shrouded in blood with a black tear falling down the revealed side. “I like this one.”

  “Thank you. That’s one of my own.” She paused, giving his previous question some serious thought. She suddenly felt uncomfortable trying to answer the question. “I wouldn’t say inappropriate. I can’t make a judgement like that about somebody I don’t know. It was just an observation.”

  “I know it's late, but could I just have a word with Samantha? Just to clear this up. She might have caught her coat when leaving their house and not noticed, but we just want to clear it up to eliminate her.”

  Mary looked angry then. She didn’t want her girls disturbed but how could she refuse? A little boy was missing and she was sure she would want the neighbours to co-operate if it was one of her kids.

  “Okay,” she gave him a single glance as she disappeare
d up the stairs.

  PC Irving continued to look at the paintings on the wall. It was the darkest thing he had seen hanging in somebody’s lounge. Yet they were utterly beautiful. He was disturbed from his thoughts by the arrival of a teenage girl. She tucked her chin into her pyjamas but, as she stepped into the room, he saw that she looked too young to be Samantha.

  Mary Bradley then appeared behind her daughter, her face as white as the snow on the streets she grabbed for the frame of the door.

  “My daughter, Samantha. She’s not in her room officer. I can’t find her.”

  SEVEN

  The police had been coming and going for well over two hours and Joanne was becoming irater by the minute. Her best friend Laura had called but Joanne hadn’t managed to stay on the phone without breaking down. She had watched as Dan, whose fuse understandably shortened with each passing minute, answered the same questions in four different ways. His answers got vaguer each time and she wanted to shake him. To tell him to look alive or, at least, remotely interested. She looked at the man she had married and for one brief second she barely recognised him.

  The liaison officer from Women and Children’s Services arrived. She introduced herself as Myra Rooney and announced she would do all she could to make it as easy as possible on them. They didn’t have to speak to anybody outside the house. Myra would do all their mediation for them. They would need somebody solid to see them through the next few hours and that person would be her. She watched as Joanne continued to bite her finger nails until they were ragged. She also avoided telling them how crucial the next few hours. Missing children often turned up safe. There was no reason to believe that Archie would be any different.

  A male officer, whose name had escaped Joanne, was on his third cup of tea. It was only the anger at the intrusion that kept her from completely falling apart. As long as she was angry, she could still function. Once that dissolved, she worried she would fall into a slump and never come back up for air.