Frozen Grave Read online

  Lee Weeks was born in Devon. She left school at seventeen and, armed with a notebook and very little cash, spent seven years working her way around Europe and South East Asia. She returned to settle in London, marry and raise two children. She has worked as an English teacher and personal fitness trainer. Her books have been Sunday Times bestsellers. She now lives in Devon.

  ALSO BY LEE WEEKS

  Dead of Winter

  Cold as Ice

  First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2014

  A CBS COMPANY

  Copyright © Lee Weeks 2014

  This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.

  No reproduction without permission.

  ® and © 1997 Simon & Schuster Inc. All rights reserved.

  The right of Lee Weeks to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  Simon & Schuster UK Ltd

  1st Floor

  222 Gray’s Inn Road

  London WC1X 8HB

  www.simonandschuster.co.uk

  Simon & Schuster Australia, Sydney

  Simon & Schuster India, New Delhi

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  PB ISBN: 978-1-47113-360-2

  EBOOK ISBN: 978-1-47113-361-9

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Typeset by M Rules

  Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

  For Ginny and Robert, with love and thanks

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Prologue

  The January gloom that made everything grey also made Olivia’s white Fiat shine luminescent on the deserted street in Woolwich. Her bright red lipstick was vivid in the gloom. She reread the message on her phone:

  I’ll be waiting for you.

  Her mouth was so dry that she found it hard to swallow; the ends of her fingers tingled as she slipped her hand beneath her coat and felt her warm bare skin between the lace and silk; she shivered.

  She got out of her car and pulled her coat tightly around her. Her heels echoed on the cobbles as she crossed the road. Stopping outside number 22, Olivia placed her bright red nails on the peeling paintwork and pushed the door open just a little. She looked back at her car. She had only to run across the road and jump in and she would be safe. She turned back to number 22 and loosened her coat; her flesh glowed in the darkness as she stepped inside.

  Chapter 1

  DC Willis got out of the passenger side of the black BMW and looked down the street past the SOCO van.

  ‘Who found her?’ DI Carter asked her whilst putting on his coat. He pulled up his collar as the cold hit him.

  ‘Anonymous caller, guv,’ Willis answered, studying the row of derelict buildings that had once been large commercial properties, some still with a shop face, but now boarded up and covered in graffiti. Across the street from them a 1990s tower block marked the start of the sprawling Hannover council estate. On the other side of Parade Street was a smart new row of red-brick terraces in a Victorian style.

  ‘Accent?’ Carter tied his Armani scarf loosely around his neck.

  ‘English. Male. Well-spoken.’

  Parade Street was cordoned off at both ends, with police officers stopping anyone entering. No one had tried while they’d been standing there the last three hours because no one lived on the condemned street except rough sleepers.

  As Carter swivelled round to get his bearings, the pathologist’s car drew up and parked up behind them. Dr Jo Harding switched off the engine but stayed where she was, talking on her phone.

  ‘Were there any cars on this street when you arrived, Officer Gardner?’ Carter asked the officer standing outside number 22 with the crime-scene logbook in her hand.

  ‘Three, sir, and they have been traced to their owners. One was abandoned, one belonged to a couple on a night out who left it and got a cab home and the other is owned by a woman who lives on the next street.’

  ‘She chooses to park it here overnight?’

  ‘She’s new to the area. She’s waiting for a resident’s permit, sir.’

  Carter looked up and down the street. He was searching his memory banks. He turned to Willis.

  ‘Do you recognize this place?’ Willis shook her head. ‘Must be before your time then. I reckon it was five years ago when these buildings first started being pulled down and we had a murder here. Polish immigrants, one was kicked to death over a row about drink. You’d think they would have done something with these buildings by now.’ Willis zipped up her jacket. Carter was still surveying the outside of the building. He looked up and his eyes filled with the deep blue of the cold winter sky. ‘Council ran out of money maybe.’ He turned back to PC Gardner. ‘Have all the buildings on the street been searched?’

  ‘Not yet, sir.’

  A tall, white-suited figure emerged from number 22, taking the mask from his face as he did so. He came round to the back of the SOCO van and opened the doors.

  ‘Sandford?’ Carter said by way of greeting to the crime-scene manager. Sandford looked at him but didn’t answer; he nodded at Willis. He liked her. He wasn’t so keen on Carter. Carter had a laddish brashness, a chunky bit of gold around his wrist and wax products in his black hair. That, so far as Sandford was concerned, constituted what people termed ‘chavvy’.

  ‘Are you getting déjà vu here?’ Carter asked. ‘Must have been five years ago at least.’ Luckily, Carter never minded or noticed Sandford’s low opinion of him.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is it the same sort of thing this time?’

  Sandford looked down at his forensic suit and his soiled knees. ‘Same filth, it’s come right through the suit, difference is – it’s a woman this time.’

  Dr Harding got out of her car, took out her bag from the boot and joined them.

  Sandford began pulling out packets
of forensic suits from the back of the van and handing them out.

  ‘Carter – extra-small?’

  ‘Yeah, funny.’ He passed the suit on to Dr Harding. Willis was an inch taller than him at five ten. ‘What about the rest of this street?’

  ‘I want my team to go through this one first. This whole street is used by rough sleepers – we need to start where we have a chance of finding something.’

  ‘Is it okay for us to go in?’ asked Carter.

  ‘Only as far as the inner entrance and be careful what you step on and what you step in.’

  Harding took the overshoes from Sandford and sighed impatiently.

  ‘Sooner we get in, sooner we get her out,’ she said, zipping up her suit.

  Willis took off her black quilted jacket and put it in the back of Carter’s car.

  Carter waited until she’d thrown hers down then he folded his overcoat and put it neatly on the top along with his scarf. He eased the elastic hood of the forensic suit over his hair and straightened out the suit so that it fitted better. Sandford looked down at Carter’s expensive shiny shoes and then reached in and pulled out two more pairs of overshoes.

  ‘You’ll thank me for these.’

  He shut the doors on the back of the van and picked up his Croc box containing an assortment of variously sized evidence bags. ‘Follow me.’

  Dermot, the scenes of crime officer, stood to greet them as they stepped inside.

  ‘That’s far enough,’ Sandford said, leaving the detectives at the entrance as he crossed carefully on stepping plates to the far side of the room. There were battery-powered LED lights in the corners. The only other light was filtering in past boarded-up windows and through the open entrance.

  Carter switched on his head lamp and pulled up his mask against the smell of human waste mixed with cigarettes, alcohol and dog shit.

  ‘Christ – what a place to end up. You wouldn’t want an animal to die in this, let alone live,’ he said, looking around.

  ‘I reckon this is home to about twenty people,’ Dermot said, shining his torch into the far left-hand corner of the room. ‘And it looks like they left here in a rush,’ he said as his torch beam lit a mound of broken glass. ‘Besides all the empties, I found half a bottle of Smirnoff over there and three of these – used recently.’ Dermot held up a crack pipe in his hand.

  ‘Party time,’ said Carter.

  Willis stepped round to stand beside him and get a better view as she shone her torch into the room. The woman’s body was lying on the far side near the back wall; the pale skin of her flank glowed in the dim light. Above everything else, all the obvious smells of dirt and defecation, Willis could smell the unmistakable sweet overtones of clotting blood.

  ‘I need more light on her,’ Harding said as she stepped across on the plates and squatted down beside the body.

  Sandford picked up one of the LED lights and brought it nearer.

  ‘Rigor mortis is fully established,’ said Harding. Sandford knelt beside her, to help roll and hold the body on its side.

  The corpse sighed.

  ‘Lividity is established too. She died here.’ Sandford rolled the body back. ‘Extensive bruising around the pelvic area and the hips, top of the thighs. Evidence of sexual assault, rape. Lacerations,’ said Harding. ‘There are also large areas of bruising around the shoulders, ribs and collarbone. Consistent with pressure being applied,’ she continued.

  ‘So she was held down and raped,’ said Carter.

  ‘There are multiple footwear marks around the body,’ Sandford said as he angled the light for Harding.

  ‘Which would explain the hasty exit,’ said Carter. ‘Everyone in here was involved in this in some way.’ He looked around. ‘Maybe she came in here with someone. Maybe this wasn’t her usual place to sleep and she drifted onto someone else’s turf. She pissed someone off.’

  Carter was watching Dermot as he moved a mattress and propped it up against the wall then knelt to examine it.

  ‘Someone’s been bottled by the look of it. There is fresh blood on the mattress – still wet.’

  ‘No evidence of wounds consistent with being bottled,’ said Harding. ‘It looks like someone tried to strangle her though.’ She moved to one side so that the detectives could see the ligature around the woman’s neck.

  Dermot stood and held something in the air for them to see.

  ‘Expensive knickers.’

  He walked across and passed them to Carter.

  Carter looked at the label. ‘La Perla. Very posh.’

  ‘There’s also one half of a pair of stockings attached to a suspender belt,’ Dermot said, taking the knickers back from Carter and putting them into a crime-scene bag. He handed the stocking across. ‘Just one so far.’

  ‘The other one is round her neck,’ said Willis, who was squatting level with the body and leaning into the room to get a better look.

  ‘This is expensive lingerie,’ Carter said, holding the stocking. ‘This outfit must have cost a hundred quid – probably two. La Perla is expensive, isn’t it, Doctor?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Carter knew there was no point in him asking Willis. Dermot walked back across the plates and resumed his examination of the mattress.

  ‘Do we know the cause of death, Doctor?’ asked Willis.

  Harding turned the woman’s head away from her.

  ‘There is a crush wound to the skull, a lot of blood lost here, and possible brain injury.’ She shone the light onto the woman’s face. ‘But there are so many other poss—’ She paused mid-sentence. She moved the light closer. Her voice quietened: ‘We’ll have to get someone else to perform the post-mortem.’

  ‘What’s the problem, Doc?’ Carter moved towards the body, stepping on the first plate.

  Dermot stopped working and stood upright.

  ‘I know her.’

  ‘You sure?’ asked Carter.

  ‘Yes . . . of course I’m sure – I wouldn’t say it otherwise. I don’t know her well but I’ve met her a few times. Her name is Olivia Grantham. Early forties. She lives in Brockley, south-east London. She works for a solicitors’ firm in London Bridge, near the Shard.’

  ‘Any idea what it’s called, the place she works at?’

  ‘Spencer and Something. As far as I remember, she’s a junior partner.’ Harding started to pack away her kit.

  Sandford and Dermot were poised, listening to the outcome of the conversation.

  ‘When was the last time you saw her, Doctor?’ Carter asked.

  ‘Not sure, about six months ago, probably.’

  ‘Could she be sleeping rough here, Doctor?’ asked Willis.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ snapped Harding. ‘You don’t go downhill that fast. The last time I saw her, she was drinking cocktails and hoovering a line of coke.’

  ‘How exactly did you know her?’ Carter asked, interested now that Harding had painted a scene and accidentally painted herself into it.

  ‘Through friends. Social events. That kind of thing.’ Harding stood, ready to leave. ‘I’ll organize for someone to do the post-mortem for me and I’ll let you know what time it’s happening.’ She turned to Sandford. ‘When you’re ready for her to be moved, phone me and I’ll send someone down to collect her.’

  As Harding passed him, Carter turned and followed. By the time he got outside, she was already half out of her forensic suit.

  ‘You all right, Doc? It’s not easy when it’s someone you know.’

  Harding didn’t look at him. She opened the boot of her car and deposited her bag inside.

  ‘I told you, I didn’t know her well. Merely a social acquaintance.’ She glanced his way as she got into her car.

  ‘But still . . .’

  She held his gaze. ‘But still, nothing, Inspector. Don’t read into it.’

  Carter hovered by the door. ‘Do you know what street she lived in?’

  ‘No.’

  She slammed the door.

  Carter was
watching her drive away as Willis came out of the building and joined him.

  ‘What was that all about?’ he said, peeling off his suit. ‘She was even more abrupt than usual. She couldn’t wait to get away, could she?’

  ‘She had to, guv – difficult position to be in. I guess she must have felt really bad seeing her friend like that.’

  ‘Yeah, right . . . she doesn’t have any friends.’ Carter looked around as he made a mental map of the area. ‘The nearest station is Woolwich Arsenal,’ he said. ‘And that’s a good eight, ten minutes’ walk, especially in heels. She’d got to have been wearing heels with that outfit. I think she would have got here by car – she drove or took a taxi. We need to find out all the local taxi firms; see if there’s any CCTV as well.’

  ‘Yes, guv.’

  He took out his phone to make a call to the crime analyst back at the office.

  ‘Robbo? We have a possible name for the victim: it’s Olivia Grantham, early forties. Dr Harding recognized her. She thinks she works in a solicitors’ office at London Bridge – Spencer and Something. See if you can find it and an address in Brockley for her. There was a fight here; someone got bottled; check the A&E departments as well. Do you know what, Robbo? This place is the same derelict buildings where we had that Polish man kicked to death a few years ago. That’s progress for you.’

  He ended the call and looked back towards the entrance of number 22. ‘What a place to end up in: “Shit Central”,’ he said as he discarded his suit and handed Willis a bag for hers. ‘Got to hand it to Sandford and that lot in there – it’s a shit job but someone’s got to do it.’ He smiled a little at his quip. Willis didn’t react but took the bag from him as she stared down the street.

  ‘Don’t get it, guv. Who comes to a place like this on a Sunday evening dressed in expensive lingerie?’

  ‘I agree – I don’t know many women who wear stockings unless it’s to add spice to the bedroom. This is certainly not a romantic setting to slip into your La Perla. If Harding is right about her, then Olivia Grantham didn’t need to slum it.’

  ‘I’ve seen some women in the changing room at the gym wearing them,’ Willis said. ‘Coming straight from work, I suppose.’

  ‘Really?’ His eyes glazed over for a few seconds.

  ‘Okay, well maybe some women wear them for work as well, but I think the majority of women put them on especially. But not especially to come into a shithole like this. Plus, it was sleeting last night. Not the kind of night to walk around in your underwear.’