Snowed In.

This is part 4 of ‘Murder and Mince Pies’, if you need to catch up before reading: click here.

The next afternoon begins to remind Emmeline of the time she was snowed in as a child. Her school had closed for the day as most students and teachers were unable to get there through the thick snow that blanketed the world, hiding the shapes of the earth beneath. She’d looked through the window dreaming of the world beyond, of jumping in the untouched snow that coated their garden and making snow angels. Her dad hadn’t let her go outside though, banning his child from venturing into the icy cold outside for fear that she’d catch a cold.

She hands Patrick his coffee and sips hers, leaning on the kitchen counter and thinking of all the places that she could escape to. Whenever her dad was at home he’d told her bedtime stories of all the places he’d been: the blazing heat of his Spanish offices and the ice cold beauty of those in Russia. He’d painted a picture of beautiful little harbours and ancient winding streets in Italy. Those moments had built a craving within her to visit these places and she thought perhaps she’d take the next flight and work her way through the list in her heart from there.

“Have a seat Em.” Patrick doesn’t look up as he speaks, but maintains his perch on the edge of the sofa facing away from her. Emmeline doesn’t move. Her mind flicks back to Patrick’s face when he examined the bauble, and the emotion that flickered in his eyes too briefly to identify when he’d pulled the car over. “Emmeline?”

“I just think I’d better get off soon, probably not the time to be chilling out with a coffee Pat.” He turns around now and looks at her, this time the emotion stays on his face for long enough to recognise danger.

“Sit down.” Instinctively, she crosses the room and drops onto the other end of the sofa,, wringing her hands on the Mickey Mouse mug she’s holding. Patrick’s face returns its usual concrete lack of emotion and then he smiles at her. She is reminded of a dog baring its teeth. “Ok, here’s the plan. We’ll go to your Aunt’s in Spain, she’s got a big place right, we’ll stay there…”

“How d’you…”

“Or in fact, we could go to mine. I’ve got a holiday cottage over there, it’d be perfect. Why don’t you get some sleep, we’ll leave in the morning.”

“I was hoping you’d stay here and solve this case, clear my name…”

“I can’t leave you Emmeline, silly! I’ll be with you every step of the way. We’ll drive over and catch the ferry. Get to bed, we leave at 5am.” His eyes are glittering with something, perhaps the thrill of being in control. She isn’t sure, but something about his expression forces her from her chair and into her bedroom with uneasy steps. It doesn’t stop her slipping the little file of letters out of the drawer, and snatching the bauble from the sofa on her way out.

 

Sledging.

This is part 2 of ‘Murder and Mince Pies’, if you need to catch up before reading: click here.

When she was younger, Emmeline Fontane would go sledging on the first day of the Christmas holidays. After her dad died her older brother took her for a couple of years, but once he went to university she was left to watch the snow falling from the warmth of the living room with her mother.One day, she was watching her neighbours skating along the ice with their dad when one of them fell and he cracked his head on the ground. Crimson blood snaked out across the white, claiming territory on the pure ground. A little while later, an ambulance arrived. She never found out what happened to the boy, but she remembers that feeling of helplessness. All she could do was stand and watch and hope…

She feels that now. As her partner takes the note from her hands and reads it in disbelief, she can only stand and watch and hope,  as the evidence condemns her as a suspect on her own crime-scene. It is as though she is watching from outside of her body, unable to move or speak. Her partner makes a call and speaks to their boss, explaining the situation, she still doesn’t move. Life is a game of ‘stuck in the mud’ and no one is tagging her free.

The only reason she’d been working Christmas eve was to make some extra cash to pay for her new furniture. She’d got rid of the old stuff a couple of weeks ago and had been looking forward to eating dinner on a seat that didn’t wobble tonight. That isn’t even the problem though, despite it suddenly seeming important, the problem is that with the money she’ spent on the furniture, there’s no way she can afford bail. Her partner’s face swims into vision, but it’s like she’s looking at him through a kaleidoscope. She squints her eyes and bites her lip, concentrating on the movement of his thin lips as he speaks.

“Em, did you know the victim? I’m sorry, you know I have to ask.” Emmeline fights at the fog that’s clouding her mind and forces her mouth into the shape of a response.

“No.”

“You know what it looks like Em, like blackmail gone wrong. Like someone didn’t want to pay any more and came here to sort things out. Maybe it wasn’t intentional, maybe the meeting went awry. I don’t know, but you need to speak to me now…anything could help but it’s not the time to freeze up.”

“I’ve never seen that face before. I didn’t know her Patrick I swear.”

“And you don’t know anyone who’d want to set you up then? Anybody who holds a grudge for something, might be linked in with this woman somehow?”

“I’m a cop…. there’s plenty of people holding grudges who’d be happy to kill to satisfy them Pat. But I don’t know who they’d be, I can’t even think right now. I’m going home.”

“I’m afraid I can’t let you do that yet. You know the drill. You have to go to the station, I’ll drive you down.”

In the back of Patrick’s car, Emmeline focuses on her breathing for a moment, calming herself enough to think with some semblance of clarity. She needs to find a way out now. She flicks through the crime scene in her mind: blunt object to the back of the head, seductively dressed – date? Missing fingernail and ripped dress – struggle. Broken chair – murder weapon… broken chair.

“Patty, you know this wasn’t me.”

“I do, but they don’t Em. You need to trust us to fix this for you.”

“Someone’s setting me up Patrick and you need to help me right now, ’cause if I go in there I’m not coming back out.”

“What’re you on about…Crap Emmeline, did you actually do it?”

“Of course not! But my DNA may end up on the murder weapon.”

Patrick pulls the car over at the side of the road in a manner which would have failed him his driving test. The brakes squeal in protest as he yanks on the handbrake and turns around to face her.

“What the hell Emmeline?”

Late Call.

“No mum, I won’t forget the Christmas Pudding… yes I have the recipe, I make it every year!” Emmeline rolls her eyes from the safety of her end of the phone as her mother relays the recipe anyway. “No mum I haven’t forgotten about Grampy’s nut allergy, I’m making him a mini-pud all to himself…of course without any nuts, I’m not about to murder an 83 year old man!” She shakes her head and stifles a giggle as her mother rants about the importance of not letting Gramp’s pud come into contact with any nuts.

After another ten minutes and three ‘goodbye’s, Emmeline finally hangs up and drops the phone on the sofa beside her. A stunted Christmas tree sits in the corner, decorated scantily with a draping of white fairy lights and a few silver baubles. Silver has always been her Christmas colour, for her mum it was always red, but silver reminds her of the snow that has long since stopped falling. She remembers when she was a kid and snow was everywhere, her dad used to dig them a path out of the house and take them sledging in the holidays. When she looks outside now, all she sees is rain falling steadily from the sky and coating everything in its dreary greyness.

She pops open a bottle of beer and grabs a parcel from the kitchen side, sliding a knife under the sellotape to open it without ripping the paper. A note falls onto the side. She pulls a cardboard box from the package and puts her ear to it before prising it open. Inside is a tiny bauble decoupaged with pictures of her family.She places it on the black marble surface and picks up the note. It’s written on one of those ‘Letter to Santa’ notecards she’s seen her niece with around Christmas, in a sloping green ink. But where her niece would have written a list of all the gifts she’d like, this note simply says: Merry Christmas. Ho. Ho. Ho.

She is startled by the blaring chime of her phone ringing and slides it right to answer.

“Fontane…Five minutes”

Four minutes and thirty-two seconds later, she arrives at a little flat on Fawley Place. The blinking blue lights of police cars cast beams of danger into the night sky, and a few police-men are cordoning off the area. Her partner approaches, handing her a file and directing her inside.

“The victim’s Rosie Clifford, 27 years old, worked for the beauty salon down the road…Belladonna, know it? Anyway, her friend Leo found her ten minutes ago, they were supposed to be going on a night out and he’d come to pick her up. He’s dressed to the nines and she was too, so it looks like that checks out. They reckon she died within the last couple of hours, cause was a blow to the back of the head… blunt object. Possibly this chair leg seeing as it’s covered in blood. Nice, take that to evidence will you, dust it for prints. What’re you thinking?”

He’d been gesturing around the room to various items and people, as well as the seductively dressed corpse on the floor; but now he stops and looks at Emmeline directly. She absorbs the scene, the chair he’d mentioned is broken, deformed and balancing precariously on three legs. There’d been a struggle.  She bends down and looks closely at the body. Her hair had been curled before it had matted with the blood and what had clearly been some sort of fight. Nine manicured acrylic nails sit undamaged on her dainty fingers, but her left thumbnail is absent. One shoulder is torn off from the dress.

“Any sign of break in?”

“No, so she probably knew her…”

“Detective Fontane” The kid who’d taken the chair’s missing limb off to evidence returns holding an envelope. His hand shakes a little as he holds it out to Emmeline. “This is addressed to you.” She slips on a silicon glove from her pocket and takes the envelope, sliding a finger beneath the seal to open it without tearing the evidence. It is a plain piece of notepaper with a single line of black typed font in the centre.

EMMELINE FONTANE.

I KNOW WHAT YOU’VE DONE AND THERE’S NO GOING BACK. I WILL GET YOU FOR THIS.