Snow Wasted

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTERS

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  BY THE SAME AUTHOR

  COPYRIGHT

  Chapter One

  Saturday 18 August, 2.45 a.m.

  B6 Episkopi Garrison Outer Perimeter Road

  Western Sovereign Base Area

  Cyprus

  Lieutenant Andrew Morrison was known to his colleagues and superiors as an example of how an officer ought to be. He epitomized the finest qualities of what the British Army expected from their ranks. The manner in which he behaved and the way that he conducted himself disclosed his military heritage to all that he met. His father had been a major general in his elder years and had encouraged, even pushed, his son to follow in his footsteps. It was inevitable really, having been a military brat his entire life, moving from one overseas base to another every few years, that Andrew too would end up in the armed service. It was in his blood, his blood and his genetics.

  The qualities for which he was known and of which his colleagues spoke and praised him had therefore developed more from instinct than from any kind of great dedication to his chosen career. Given a choice, Andrew would have liked to have joined the rest of society outside of the closed ranks of the military and had secretly harboured a passion for astronomy. As a child, he had had few friends, and those that he had grown close to were soon replaced by new, unfamiliar faces as he and his family were relocated to yet another temporary home, following the dictated movements of his father’s job.

  Andrew had learned the skills of keeping himself to himself, relying on his own company rather than that of friends, and had passed his pre-teen years forming a sense of familiarity by looking to the night skies. Of all the constellations, his favourite had always been the Big Dipper. He had read extensively on this constellation, the largest, brightest and best known to many cultures. Pinyin to the Chinese, Chum Sao to the Vietnamese and, as a Greek-Cypriot acquaintance had recently told him, Megali Arktos to the Greeks. The acquaintance had laughed at Andrew as he had tried to form the words in English. Megali, he had learned, meant big or large and Arktos meant bear.

  Aged twenty-four now, Andrew realized that his chance to study astronomy and attend university had passed him by. He had recently been promoted in rank from second lieutenant to lieutenant, much to his father’s delight. He was still classified as an officer of the first order according to NATO rankings but, resigned as he was to the path his life had taken, could foresee a time in the not too-distant future that he would make the next grade up on the military ladder. He planned to make the grade of captain, an officer of the second division, by the time he was thirty. As much as he found himself resenting his father for forcing upon him the life he now lived, he also found that he wanted to make him proud of his achievements. My life could be much worse, he reasoned to himself. He knew he’d made some bad choices since he arrived in Cyprus but hoped that he’d finally put them behind him tonight.

  He realized, whilst deep in thoughts about his future, and indeed his past, that the night air held itself at a steady 32 degrees Celsius. The weather forecast had been correct, not that one really needed a forecast in the summer months. The road he was driving down was little more than a dusty track, but he knew it well from his childhood when his father had been posted in Cyprus and preferred to drive the B6 old road connecting the vicinity rather than the new A1 motorway that joined all of the Republic of Cyprus’ main cities.

  The sound of crickets in the undergrowth came loud and uninterrupted through the window of the Mitsubishi jeep and the Big Bear shone brightly from high above. Even with the windows open, the air hit his face hot and humid. Andrew had waited four years for a transfer from his last posting in Northern Ireland to realize his dream posting in Cyprus. His commanding officer had told him that four years was nothing, that thousands of other soldiers applied for a posting to Cyprus and that the average waiting time was six years. He had wondered, though never asked, whether his father had influenced his relatively quick move.

  He had close to three years remaining in his current tour of service and planned to avail himself of every opportunity possible. He especially wanted to work with the United Nations in Nicosia, the island’s capital where the international peacekeeping force maintained a difficult and fraught stand-off between the island’s legitimate Greek-Cypriot government in the south and the illegal Turkish occupation in the north covering some 36 per cent of the island’s total area.

  He had been out this evening with some comrades and had visited an English bar in Limassol, a thriving business and tourist city on the island’s southern peninsula. Ordinarily restrained when it came to alcohol, Andrew knew that he had drunk far too much this evening and really shouldn’t be driving. He knew too that he would struggle with a hang-over and find it hard to wake up for Saturday’s 7 a.m. start. Sticking to the B6 rather than the main highway meant that he was less likely to come across police patrol cars of either the Sovereign Base Area or the local Greek-Cypriot police force.

  He had therefore taken a longer route than necessary, and had passed through villages such as Ypsonas, Kolossi and Erimi, small picturesque enclaves of both the local population and, in recent years, a high number of British ex-pats and retired servicemen. The relationship between the British bases and the government of the Republic of Cyprus had been somewhat strained for several years. The Republic’s election of a communist president in 2008 had reignited the debate that had been ongoing since the early 1960s when Cyprus had won independence from British control.

  Political tensions and sensibilities had come to a climax in early 2013 with a nationwide financial meltdown and a new conservative president, who had tried to sell the idea of a unified European Union to the electorate; which had backfired when the European Union had attempted to levy a tax on individual saving accounts, a move that had angered thousands and resulted in closer ties with Russia. The tensions were palpable and daily riots had started to erode the financial gains of tourism.

  The British showed no signs of giving up the ninety-six square miles that constituted its Sovereign Base Area, and the Greek-Cypriot government showed few signs of ceasing from campaigning for the return of the land the bases covered to its rightful owner: the Republic itself. Andrew had been warned by his commanding officer, as were all new arrivals to the island, to stay out of trouble and not to enrage the local population. There had been the high-profile and unsolved murder the year before Andrew arrived of a young British soldier. The British administration had sought witnesses from the local community; the local community had been unforthcoming. Blame had been speculative at best, evidence scarce, with both communities seeking to assign culpability to the other.

  The diesel-fuelled engine of the bases’ owned Mitsubishi chugged slowly and deeply as Andrew changed gears, switching to four-wheel drive mode as the road became less steady and the white chalk terrain gave way on either side to the ocean far below. He figured that he had about two metres of safe space either side of him and that within fifteen minutes he would come upon the main entrance to the base. He could see the lights from the garrison in the distance, flickering in the ghostly haze of the previous day’s scorching sunshine, which had
climbed to 44 degrees.

  His right foot pushed hard at the accelerator, forcing fuel through the engine as the vehicle struggled to climb a small, rocky hill. As the jeep made it over the top of the incline, Andrew slowed his speed. He cleared his eyes with his hands as he looked towards the lights emanating from the base, sure that he had seen another light, less bright, coming from a distance of about twenty metres away. He looked harder. There it was again. He stopped the jeep at the top of the slope, braking so as to avoid a rough and unpleasant descent down the other side. He dimmed the headlights and looked again. The light flashed alone from the path that lay ahead. Andrew opened the driver’s door and stepped out. The light came closer from the hill and he could see now that it was accompanied by the silhouette of a person. He called out, loudly.

  ‘Hello, who are you?’

  His own words echoed momentarily.

  No answer.

  The crickets continued their night-time chorus. The sound of summer. The light moved slowly up the rocky path, now no more than ten metres from where Andrew stood at the side of the jeep. He started to feel slightly uneasy as the silhouette came closer. He could hear a deep, laboured breathing and light footsteps against the dusty track. As the figure came into the dimmed headlights of the jeep, Andrew breathed a sigh of relief as he saw that the person was simply an old lady, stooped in stature, dressed in traditional black mourning robes and carrying a small lantern. Andrew didn’t know the Greek language and hoped that the old lady approaching him would be able to speak English. The old lady stopped a distance of a metre from where he stood and raised the lantern to her chest.

  Unable to see her face, Andrew moved in closer and saw that she was wearing a large, dark hood. For the first time since he had breathed his sigh of relief, it struck him how odd it was for an elderly lady to be out alone in the middle of this terrain at three in the morning.

  ‘Are you OK?’ he asked.

  The old lady looked at him and spoke with a low voice; her English was patchy and she sounded gruff as she formulated her words, pausing between each.

  ‘I think I am lost. Can you help me?’ she asked, her face still obscured by the dark of the night and her dark hood.

  Andrew thought that he could make out the features of tanned and wrinkled skin as he tried to look at her face more closely. Her eyes didn’t seem to meet his and held an odd position either side of where her nose would have been visible in the daylight.

  ‘Where do you live?’ he replied, feeling somewhat unsettled by this late-night encounter.

  He shook his head gently to try to wake himself from this surreal experience and clear the clouds of alcohol and humidity from his mind. The old lady lifted her lantern and indicated a location back down the rocky hill he had just climbed. Andrew looked in the direction she had suggested. He saw nothing. His recall told him that Erimi was the closest village and that was a good twenty minutes’ drive from where he and the old lady stood now. How the hell did she get out here alone? The thought came to his mind as he realized that something was wrong about this situation. He quickly reasoned that he had had a long and heavy night and that the sooner he helped the old lady, the sooner he would be able to get back to the base and, more importantly, his bed.

  ‘Do you live in Erimi?’ His voice pressed through the darkness.

  The old lady nodded and again shook her lantern in that direction. Andrew moved to the back passenger door of the jeep and opened it, indicating with an open-arm gesture for the old lady to climb in. She moved slowly and Andrew thought he heard a metallic noise coming from under her black-as-the-night robes. She whispered what sounded like ‘thank you’ as she climbed into the back of the jeep.

  Andrew got back in the driver’s seat and, keen for this experience to come to an end, started the engine of the jeep and hit reverse. The jeep trudged slowly back down the hill, moving at no more than 10 mph, the sound of the diesel engine running heavy and amplified against the silence from the inside of the vehicle. As the jeep reached the bottom of the hill, Andrew moved his glance from the rear-view mirror he had used to navigate his way back down the hill and got ready to change gear again. He thought that he caught a glimpse of the old lady moving her hands into her gown as he stole the last seconds of his glance into the mirror. He let out a deep scream of shock and panic as the old lady lunged from the back seat and whacked him hard across the head with a foot length of metallic pole.

  As Andrew slumped over into the passenger seat to his left, he felt a deep pit of bile and vomit coming up from his stomach. His vision hazy, he saw the old lady coming at him again with a noose of rope. The pain of the assault left him immobilized, his legs awkwardly limp between the two front seats, his head lodged between the passenger seat and left-side door. Unable to move and with his consciousness fading, Andrew saw the old lady reach to her face and pull at the sides of her cheeks. Her face appeared to fall away as Andrew realized in those terrifying seconds that this was no old lady at all. A young male of no more than his own age now looked down at Andrew with the wrinkled mask of an old woman held in his left hand.

  With what sounded like an Eastern European accent, the man said ‘This is what happens when you don’t do what you’re told. You should have been a good boy, Andrew; you’ve pissed off the wrong people this time. We’re gonna fuck you and all your mates over this time.’

  He was yanking Andrew’s head and forcing the rope noose around his neck, pulling tighter every half a second. He couldn’t answer the man and it was then that Andrew felt his ears filling with blood and noticed his vision disappearing completely. As his consciousness left him, Lieutenant Andrew Morrison had the strange thought that the face of the young man now emblazoned indelibly into his mind was one that he recognized from earlier in the night. In the last moments of his life, he also realized exactly what his killer had been talking about.

  Chapter Two

  Monday 20 August, 8 a.m.

  Grain Wharf, Salford Quays

  Greater Manchester

  Dr Karen Laos moved through her apartment steadily, a large cup of filter coffee in her right hand and a book grasped in her left, heading to her sizeable bedroom veranda overlooking Mariner’s Canal. She had taken today off work. She had left her workplace, the Manchester inner-city mortuary, in the capable hands of her equally qualified colleague, Dr Ferguson. She knew he would be ably assisted today by her own understudy, Maxwell, who had now entered the trainee programme for mortuary assistants. She had watched his development as an assistant over the past few years and had personally recommended him to the city’s forensic pathology training programme. Back in her own days as a student, things were very different, of course. She had entered the profession by studying medicine, the standard route back in the 1970s.

  By virtue of Maxwell’s accumulated hours of experience working with Dr Laos, he had been accepted on an apprenticeship and hoped to become a pathologist in his own right one day. Although not academically gifted, his practical common sense and kind manner had matured in the years he had worked with Dr Laos. She had been pleased to recommend him personally for professional training.

  It wasn’t often that Dr Laos afforded herself the time or opportunity for relaxation, as any of her friends or colleagues would confirm. She had, however, found herself changing somewhat over the past year. Rather than spending all day, every day over the desk of her office at the mortuary, she now dedicated one evening a week for social activities. She had even dated again over the past twelve months. So, it didn’t work out with Detective Inspector James Roberts, she reasoned quietly. Still, she had learned a great deal from him about how to separate work from her personal life and she considered him to be a close friend. With this in mind, she had also taken up reading, for enjoyment’s sake, not purely for academic and educational purposes, as had always been the case previously.

  Dr Laos made herself comfortable in a summer chair on her veranda and was grateful that the weather was, today at least, warm and sunny. Ma
nchester was usually a very wet city, so she felt her timing for a day of annual leave was perfect. Instinctively, she checked her cell-phone for messages and emails. As the lead forensic pathologist at the mortuary, she was essentially on call twenty-four hours a day. Learning to delegate had been a difficult yet ultimately rewarding experience for her. She sipped on her coffee, one of only a very few regular vices she allowed herself to enjoy.

  Despite having checked her cell-phone, she really hoped that today it would remain quiet, as she had by now started and stopped the same novel six times due to constant interruption. She was reading a work of fiction, a story of love lost and ultimately reclaimed. It hadn’t been her choice of reading material, but one of her colleagues had suggested that she give it a go and lose herself in the story as it evolved. If I can learn to date, I can learn to enjoy a fiction, she had said, when agreeing to give this book a try.

  Try as she did, however, Karen Laos found herself reading and again rereading the same paragraph time and time again as she sat with the sun shining on her face. Her mind was elsewhere: back in the damn office. There hadn’t been any particularly disturbing cases recently in the mortuary that would explain why she couldn’t disconnect herself from work, other than run-of-the-mill deaths by natural causes, frequent car accident victims – a cause of death she felt particularly touchy about – and the usual number of inner-city suicides to which she had become accustomed. Therefore, Karen assumed that she just wasn’t particularly enthralled by the book she was reading.

  She closed it yet again, and sipped on her coffee. Just as she was deciding whether or not to return to her book, the sound of her cell-phone ringing made the choice for her. The name flashing across the screen was that of her regional boss for forensic pathology, Professor Michael Ogilvy. It wasn’t often that he called Karen directly; she dealt with the day-to-day running of the city forensic team; he dealt with the overall management of the county and regional aspects of the pathology service. Other than meeting for clinical supervision and the occasional conference, they rarely spoke. He trusted Karen’s work implicitly and she knew that he wouldn’t be calling unless it were for something important. Especially on my day off.