Catching the Ice Queen Read online

  She was flicking back in her notebook to try and find something she vaguely remembered an MMA bloke saying that afternoon when a cup of coffee was pushed silently onto the desk in front of her. Looking up, she saw DCC Lara Black standing beside her. The woman lifted her own cup and asked: ‘Mind if I join you?’

  ‘Um, no, of course not, ma’am.’ She replied automatically, frowning down at her papers rather than meeting that piercing blue gaze. Why the sudden interest? She thought, ironically. Heaven forbid somebody see us actually talking and think that you might want to touch me with a twenty foot pole.

  Lara appeared unruffled by Robin’s scowl, and sat down gracefully on a nearby chair. Despite herself Robin felt her eyes drinking in every detail of the slender figure as she took a sip from her coffee, her white throat moving slowly to swallow it. Christ, does she do everything like she’s on film?

  ‘So, update me on your investigation.’

  Concentrate, double oh Robin. ‘Ok, well, you know the situation. Based on the assailant’s behaviour – well, his confidence, really – it occurred to me that he might be an experienced fighter of some kind. I’ve spent this yesterday and today interviewing the owners of various boxing gyms, dojos, cage fighting venues, and other unsavoury places to see if any of them would admit to knowing the guy.’

  Lara Black nodded. ‘Good thinking.’ Robin could almost be sure that those wide lips had quirked into a tiny smile of approval. Stop thinking about her lips, she thought desperately. ‘Any luck?’

  ‘Maybe.’ She turned back to her notes. ‘One of the teachers at an MMA place out by the ring road said something that’s been niggling away at me.’ She found the page. ‘Here it is. I showed him some CCTV from the Forbes Gallery and he said ‘could have been a contender.’ At the time I thought he was just quoting Rocky, but now I wonder whether he meant it quite literally.’

  DCC Black’s beautiful eyes narrowed as she caught at the idea. ‘You mean, he recognised the assailant as a prize fighter, a professional boxer?’

  ‘Or semi-professional, or whatever. I just need to find someone who knows about the local boxing scene…’ Robin’s mind spun. Beside her, the tall woman sat quietly as if unwilling to break the spell of her concentration. ‘Yes, got it.’ She smiled in triumph and her blood sang as she got an answering smile back. ‘We’ve got to go down to the cells.’

  Mac Mackenzie looked up from the racing pages as the two women approached his desk. It was still unusually quiet in the holding area, and it looked like he’d been whiling away his shift picking runners for the next local steeplechase.

  ‘Er – help you, ladies?’ he asked, nervously.

  ‘Mac,’ Robin was trying to dampen her excitement. This would probably come to nothing. ‘You know boxing, right?’

  ‘Yeah, a bit.’

  ‘OK. Do you remember any local fighter over the past, say, five years who was particularly known for his knockouts? He would have been tall, white, and left handed.’

  Mac’s face took on a dreamy quality as he wracked his sporting memory banks. ‘A knockout, left-handed…’ His pale face flushed and he grinned. ‘Danny Penny.’

  Robin bit her lip in triumph. Forcing herself to be casual she said: ‘Was he a champion or what?’

  ‘He would have been a champion, no doubt about it. Everyone thought he was destined for the big time, but he was fu-‘ he glanced at Lara Black in alarm, then went on: ‘er, messed up, and he had a terrible temper. I think he beat up his manager or something and went down for a three stretch. Why?’

  ‘Yes!’ Robin shouted with elation, making the other two jump. ‘We’ve got him!’

  It took four constables and a police dog to subdue Penny in the end, the ex-fighter living up to his reputation as a violent and angry man. As he was being wrestled out of the police van and into holding, Robin was already logging into evidence the wallets, keys, and watches that she’d found in his dismal bedsit. She felt wonderful, knowing that she’d taken a dead-end case and turned it into a win. I am good at this police stuff, she crowed to herself, her previous doubts melting away like snow in the sunshine. Now they have to let me back on the murder investigation.

  She strode back down the corridor towards the interview rooms, the questions she was going to ask Penny already clear in her mind. To her surprise she saw DI Chatterjee and his Sergeant, Mandie Foster, standing beside Mac’s desk. The DI shot her a cool look and turned back to say something to the other two. A horrible feeling seeped into Robin’s stomach as Foster broke away and approached her.

  ‘Ah, Sullivan, great. Are those the notes?’ Her tone was even, but she could see the glint of malicious amusement in the woman’s beady eyes. ‘Thanks. We’ll take it from here.’ For a wild second she imagined refusing to hand over her work, demanding to be the interviewing officer, insisting that she and she alone had solved this case. But then reality breathed its cold breath on her and she felt her pride and excitement wither and die. Without a word, she passed her the file, then turned and walked away.

  She went back to her desk and added to the case file in the most dispassionate and professional manner. All around her she could hear congratulations being called out to the two more senior officers, and she felt sick with rage. When she’d finally finished, the crowd were in the process of decamping to The Star of Mumbai round the corner, so she sat and read pointless emails from HR until they’d gone and the room had quietened. Only then did Robin let her head slump into her hands.

  She’d sat like that for several minutes, not thinking, trying to fight down the urge to scream and shout and throw things, when a cool hand squeezed her shoulder. For once, she didn’t look back up at the beautiful Lara Black, not trusting herself not to cry.

  ‘Well done, Robin,’ said her soft, sad voice. And then the hand moved and she was gone, walking calmly back to her own office. Robin sighed, picked up her coat, and went home.

  Chapter 7

  If she’d ever doubted the veracity of the expression that no good deed ever goes unpunished, then Robin didn’t now. Hot on the heels of her triumph in the Museum Mugger case she found herself being handed the most hopeless collection of dead-ends and half-arsed investigations that anyone could find shoved to the bottom of their ‘to do’ piles. Turning her disappointment and anger into a cold fury, Robin resolutely worked through them all.

  There was the flasher in Wellington Park whom she caught after three days pretending to walk a fake baby in a pram; then the kids spraying tags on the war memorial were rounded up when she found one of them had idiotically left his school bag behind; and the series of thefts from the local allotment association she tracked – not to the prime suspect, a newly enrolled Polish builder – but to the club secretary, a highly respectable woman with a blue rinse. She might have felt excited at this clear up rate had she not recognised that the cases had been poorly handled from the start, with key evidence lost or witnesses left un-interviewed. It’s like finishing everyone’s homework, she thought as she hauled into the station a serial shoplifter who was managing to simultaneously struggle, scream, and screech obscenities all without seeming to draw breath.

  The wrestling woman had drawn a small crowd by the time Robin managed to push her as far as Mac’s desk.

  ‘Yer fucking bitch! I’ll kill yer! I’ll kill yer fucking kids! Yer let me go!’

  ‘Sarge, this is Kathryn Headley, arrested on a charge of…’ she stopped to grapple with the tall figure, who’d tried to make a break for the door, ‘…theft from a shop or…’

  ‘It’s a lie! It’s a fucking lie! I never! I never nicked a thing! She planted it all!’

  A snigger rippled through the watching officers and Robin grit her teeth. God forbid somebody might actually give me a hand! But clearly the entertainment was too good for audience participation. Raising her voice, she pressed on desperately.

  ‘…place of business. She’s forty two and no presenting injuries or apparent illnesses to be aware of.’ Suddenly the woman fell s
ilent. Robin looked round at her in surprise.

  ‘I’m gonna puke,’ she said, and did – all down the front of Robin’s blouse.

  A huge gale of laughter erupted from the loitering coppers. The woman grinned around, pleased at the attention.

  ‘I knew that kebab was dodgy,’ she added, getting a ripple of applause for this punchline.

  ‘Davis! Hannity!’ Mac shouted, trying to hide his grin. ‘Get her into cell three, and get her a bucket.’

  Robin stood and just stared down at the huge stinking patch of sick that covered her entire chest and which was dripping into a puddle at her feet. Very distinctly she heard an unknown voice at the back of the crowd say: ‘What a waste of perfectly good vomit.’

  The screams of laughter followed her down the corridor and into the Ladies. Desperately she ripped off her jacket and shirt, throwing them onto the floor in disgust. The cracked mirror showed her chest glistening, the yellow filth seeping into her one good bra and probably ruining it forever. She twisted on the taps, grabbed a handful of paper towels, and started frantically scrubbing.

  Her skin was red raw when the door banged again and a t-shirt landed over her shoulder. Surprised, she looked round and found Lara Black standing behind her, her own face pink as if mortally embarrassed.

  ‘I, er, brought you a t-shirt,’ she said unnecessarily. ‘It’s my gym one, but it’s clean. I think it will fit you.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Robin blinked at this unexpected thoughtfulness. ‘That’s – thanks.’

  Now the desperate urge to scrub herself clean had subsided she found she had to swallow down some hot, humiliated tears. She sniffed, and pulled the soft grey shirt over her head. Turning quickly to thank Lara again she found the woman standing as if turned to stone, a strange and distant look on her face as she stared at Robin’s body. She glanced down at herself, and found the small shirt stretched revealingly over her breasts. Without a word the DCC fled the room.

  Robin stood still, her face flaming. Am I that revolting? Or did she think I was going to put a move on her or something? She turned and looked at herself in the mirrors over the sinks. She thought she was an attractive woman (and she’d had enough girlfriends over the years to recognise that other women thought this too) but the weasel voice in her head was saying but you have been letting yourself go lately, you’ve been eating crap and working late and you haven’t been out on your bike for weeks. When had she last had a haircut? And even before the rainbow yawn these clothes had looked like they’d been dragged out of the laundry basket for another airing before being washed. Furious with herself for even caring she shoved her ruined jacket and blouse into the bin and stormed to her car.

  As she roared off down the road she stabbed the Bluetooth button on her phone and rang in sick, thinking angrily that she felt bloody sick. Let somebody else sort out her cases for a change, they were certainly quick enough to take any credit for them. Driving through the tail-end of the school run she got back home in record time, finding that – in her first bit of luck that day - Sue was out at Derek’s. Sighing, Robin trudged up to her room in blessed silence.

  After a long, hot shower she felt a bit more human. Wrapped in a towel she gathered up her ruined clothes and decided that she’d rather bin the lot than try to get them clean again. Instead she pulled on a sports bra and then a shirt and jeans, and sat down on the floor by her mirrored wardrobe to dry her hair. Under the noise she wondered what the hell she was doing, sitting on the carpet like a teenager in this small, cheap room.

  With her hair pulled back into a pony tail she opened the wardrobe doors and examined its contents critically. She’d bought most of these suits when she’d first gone plain clothes, and they looked dull and worn to her eyes. She couldn’t stand the sight of them now. With sudden energy she held each item up to herself hypercritically before deciding whether it stayed or went.

  At the end of a furious hour she had two full bin bags for Oxfam and a much-depleted selection of jackets, shirts and trousers. This is good, she thought, less for me to pack when I move out. And that was another thing. She’d come to the city expecting to really make progress with her career, get on the housing ladder, maybe even find somebody to spend more than a few weeks with. But none of that had happened. Instead, here she was at the grand old age of 32, packing up her few belongings and looking for another flat share whilst she was relegated to a standing joke at work. ‘You know what you’re doing, hmm?’ DCC Black’s caustic words from the funeral came unbidden into her head. Perhaps police work just wasn’t for her. Jason wanted her to chuck it all in and join him in Australia to help him run his restaurant, and maybe she ought to give that a try. She was good with people, had a head for figures, and after three years as a beat constable could certainly handle any trouble from drunken patrons. And the idea of swopping the windy, overcast British south coast for the blue skies and white beaches of Oz didn’t hurt, either.

  ‘Yes, maybe this is a good thing,’ she said to herself firmly. She picked up her phone and texted Jason to arrange a Face Time to discuss his proposal and saw that one of her mates had messaged to see if she was coming to their regular club night.

  ‘Yes, see you at ten’ she texted back and headed off to get ready.

  She knew she’d really nailed her outfit when Katie and Mickey stared at her and both said ‘Wow!’

  ‘What’s the occasion?’ asked Katie, ‘you’re making me feel under-dressed.’

  Robin felt pleased that some people, at least, appreciated what she looked like. She carefully swept back her hair without disarranging the long curls she’d painstakingly put into it, and smoothed the skirt of her little black dress. ‘No special reason,’ she replied, ‘it’s just been shit at work and I feel like having some fun.’

  The two other girls exchanged a glance. ‘You’ll certainly get some of that,’ said Mickey. And she was right. Robin sailed into the club like a rock star, and everyone turned and gawped. She’d pre-loaded on vodka before coming out and at the sight of all the appreciative glances coming her way felt her confidence soar. This is more like it, she said to herself, catching the eye of a gorgeous woman with a mane of afro hair. The woman smiled, and swayed over.

  ‘Can I get you a drink?’ she yelled into Robin’s ear over the noise of the music.

  ‘Yes, please!’

  About an hour later they were dancing – something frenetic and jumpy, full of sexual energy – when Robin felt a hand on her shoulder and found Mickey yelling something at her.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Somebody’s looking for you!’ she shouted, and pointed across the room. Robin turned and saw a tall blonde woman, dressed to the nines in something long and shimmering. Her heart somersaulted in her chest, but then she realised it was Sylvie Dean. Sylvie smiled and cut through the dancers until she reached Robin’s side. She slipped a long arm around her waist and grinned at the outrage on her dance-partner’s face.

  ‘Why, hello,’ she said, ‘fancy a threesome?’ The other woman shot Robin an angry look and stamped away. Sylvie laughed. ‘Something I said? Never mind, I prefer having you all to myself.’

  Robin hadn’t drunk enough vodka not to be alarmed at the tightness with which the blonde gripped her, or the lustful look in her eye.

  ‘Miss Dean, let me go.’

  ‘Why?’ She looked at Robin full in the face, and for a split second her resolve wavered. Sylvie was a really gorgeous woman, and her eyes were like two grey stars, their irises stroked through with dark gold. ‘You’re beautiful, I’m beautiful, and we are going to have fantastic sex together. Where’s the harm?’

  Robin blinked and twisted out of her grip. ‘You know where the harm is,’ she said.

  ‘Afraid your girlfriend won’t like it? Well, screw her. Or perhaps, you’re not screwing her anymore which is why you’re in this nightclub on the pull, hmm?’

  ‘She’s not my girlfriend.’ Despite herself Robin blushed. Sylvie saw this with interest.

  ‘But yo
u’d like her to be, right?’ She smiled the slow smile of the predator. ‘I can pretend to be her, if you like. We look quite similar, don’t we?’ She stroked Robin’s face. ‘But I bet I’m more fun.’

  The heat and the booze and the closeness of the pure electricity that was Sylvie Dean began to make Robin’s head spin. What on earth had she been thinking? And how was she going to get herself out of this? Sylvie’s hypnotic gaze seemed to draw her in, closer and closer, and Robin saw those dark pink lips open ready to kiss her, and then suddenly the woman was leaning away, listening to a man whispering in her ear.

  ‘Oh that’s a bore,’ she said, smiling back at Robin and disentangling herself. ‘We’ll have to pick this up another time.’ She leaned in and whispered in her ear. ‘Gives me a chance to get hold of a police uniform, for that bit of role-play we were talking about. Hmm?’ The last syllable became a purr, and she planted a scented kiss on Robin’s cheek before whirling away.

  Half an hour later Robin was jumping into a taxi, desperate to get herself as far away from the club as she could. Mickey and Katie had been dying to know who the gorgeous blonde had been but she had made hasty excuses and rushed off. She’d been paranoid that Sylvie was going to be waiting outside to cause more trouble, but fortunately she’d been nowhere in sight, and as soon as the cab was pulling away from the pavement Robin reached for her phone and dialled her boss.

  ‘Sullivan? What’s happened?’ His voice was even grumpier than usual, although she was relieved that it didn’t sound like she’d woken him up. With horrible embarrassment she explained that ‘whilst out dancing’ she’d been approached by their murder suspect. A silence followed. Eventually DCI Goode said: ‘Christ. Well, you did right by getting away and by phoning me.’

  Robin went dizzy with relief. ‘Shall I come into the office to make a full report, sir?’ she asked.