Free Snow Kills by Rc Bridgestock

x’
    ‘Don’t be late tonight then! Love you x’ Jen replied.
     
    Dylan’s desk phone rang. He was so deep in thought, it made him jump. ‘Dylan,’ he snapped.
    ‘Yes sir, Sgt Simon Clegg, I’m with the search and rescue team and I thought I’d let you know that we’ve found a lady’s fur jacket on the outskirts of the woods above the old Cragg quarry, about three miles as the crow flies from where the young lady left her car.’
    ‘Is the jacket still in situ?’ asked Dylan with a furrowed brow.
    ‘For now sir. My officers are continuing to search around it, and I’ve arranged for SOCO to come and photograph.’
    ‘Good. I’ll get my all-weather gear and be with you in about twenty minutes. I have your location.’
    A thought crossed his mind. Scenes of Crimes Officers would very soon be renamed Crime Scene Investigators in West Yorkshire, he had read. How American was that going to sound when officers were telling him CSI were on their way?
     
    The day was one of sailing clouds and splashes of sunlight. The main road was still littered with the odd abandoned vehicle, haphazardly parked. As Dylan turned into the entrance of the unmade road leading to the quarry, he slowed. The snow was too compacted to hold his wheels. The car lurched, wallowed, skidded and stuck. The back wheels spun on the ice. A few yards beyond the clearing, the track died away and the rough terrain beyond would have been impossible to negotiate over the moorland in his vehicle, even in good weather. Dylan knew he would never get as close as the search and rescue vehicles. This was a solitary place to separate a man from bricks and mortar, he thought as he got out of his vehicle. Pulling on his wellingtons from the boot of his car, he considered his walk down the uneven man-made footpath. The sun intermittently broke through the fast moving cirrostratus cloud cover to form black shadows on the ground. The wind picked up as he marched across the stark moorland. He took his gloves out of his pockets and put them on. The path snaked its way downwards amid thickening bracken, heather and a tangle of old laurels, covered in more places than not with thick, solid, packed snow mounds. He slipped and stumbled along the way, and where the snow was light, dead wood crackled under his feet.
     
    The wind was in his hair and billowing out his coat and he fought to pull it tightly around him. The quarry itself was screened by banks and trees. Dylan walked toward the police Land Rover and soon he could make out steep, sloping layers with benches in the rock faces that looked like giant flat steps in the quarry. Dylan strode out with purpose towards a group of officers, putting his hands in his pockets and screwing up his face as the wind sprayed snow at him on the breeze. A chill ran down his spine. He remembered only too well the difficulties they had had in the past getting down to the waters. He could see a large overgrown hole excavated into the rock. The colours within the steep layers were incredibly stark, grey, pink, red, yellow and black. As he neared, he passed a few old, rusty remnants of machinery, diggers, scrapers and transporting dumper trucks that had been left there to rot. The murky waters now in sight were estimated to be about ten foot deep, if his sources were correct. It had been thought an ideal place to hide a body back in the summer of 2003 when the tired, disillusioned police officers had discarded their wet gear here to dry out on the overgrown rhododendron bushes. The suggestion was then that a car dealer’s body had been dumped there after an alleged contract killing. Nothing was ever found; now would it have to be searched again – but with success this time? Only time would tell.
     
    Dylan approached Sgt Clegg, who was looking intently at what turned out to be a mass of snow covered fern that had piled itself like a small tent, around the trunk of a fir. In this sheltered place the air was like deep water. He