The Ice House (13 page)

With a grimace, Jonathan opened the French windows and stepped out on to the terrace. "I'm going to take the dogs for a walk. I think I'll try and find Lizzie. See you later." He put his fingers to his lips and gave a piercing whistle before setting off down the garden.

Just then the telephone rang. Phoebe picked it up and listened for a moment. "No comment," she said, replacing the receiver. A few seconds later it began to ring again.

Benson and Hedges cavorted around him, waggling their bottoms and barking, as if a walk was a rarity. He struck out towards the woodland between the Grange and Grange Farm, flinging a stick every now and then to please the scampering dogs. His direction took him past the ice house and he watched with distaste as they made a beeline for it, only to whine and scratch with frustration outside the sealed door. He went on, pausing regularly to turn and scan the way he had come, whistling to the dogs to keep up.

When he reached the two-hundred-year-old oak, standing majestically in its clearing in the middle of the wood, he took off his jacket and sat down, relaxing his back into a natural concave in the wrinkled bark. He remained there for half an hour, listening, watching, until he was satisfied that the only witnesses to what he was about to do were dogs and wild creatures.

He stood up, removed the envelope from inside his folded jacket and popped it through a narrow slit into a hollow in the oak's great trunk where a branch had died and been discarded in infancy. Only Jane, who had swarmed with him through the leafy panoply when they were children, knew the secrets of the hidey-hole.

He whistled up the straying dogs and went back to the house.

"Can I talk to you, darling?"

Elizabeth, halfway up the stairs to her bedroom, looked reluctantly at her mother. "I suppose so." She had just got back from the Lodge and was tired and irritable. Molly's unspoken distress over the police search had upset her.

"We'll leave it if it's riot a good time."

Elizabeth came slowly down the stairs. "What's the matter?"

"Everything." Diana gave a hollow laugh. "What isn't the matter? I could answer that more easily."

Elizabeth followed her into their sitting-room. It was a room like Anne's, but with a very different character, less startling, more conventional, with a gold carpet and classic floral prints in tones of russet and gold at the windows and on the chairs. A dwindling sun fingered the colours with a mellow glow.

"Tell me," said Elizabeth as she watched Jonathan cross the terrace with Benson and Hedges and disappear through Phoebe's French windows.

Diana told her and, as the shadows lengthened, Elizabeth 's distress grew.

Inspector Walsh glanced at his watch and, with an inward sigh, shouldered open the door of Interview Room Number Two. It was nine fifteen. He looked sourly from Anne to her solicitor.

Bill Stanley was a great bear of a man with ungroomed ginger hair sprouting everywhere, even on his knuckles, and an air of shabbiness. From his card he was with a top London firm, no doubt earning a packet, so the black pinstriped suit, crumpled and frayed at the cuffs, was presumably some sort of statement-equality with the huddled masses, perhaps-although why he chose to wear it over a yellowed string vest, Walsh couldn't imagine. He made a mental note to check up on him. In thirty years of rubbing shoulders with the legal profession, he had never seen the like of B.R. Stanley, LLB. The card was probably a forgery.

"You can go home now, Miss Cattrell. There's a car waiting for you."

She gathered her bits and pieces together and stuffed them carelessly into her handbag. "And my other things?" she asked him.

"They will be returned to you tomorrow."

Bill unfolded himself from his chair, stretched his huge hands to the ceiling and yawned. "I can take you home, if you'd prefer it, Anne."

"No, it's late. You get back to Polly and the children."

He straightened his shoulders and the snap as the bones locked into place was loud in the small room. "This is going to cost you an arm and a leg, my girl-it's goodbye to fifty quid every time I draw breath, remember-so what do you say? Shall we sue? I'm game." He beamed. "We're embarrassed for choice really. Harassment, abuse of police powers, damage to your professional reputation, loss of self-esteem, loss of earnings. I always enjoy litigation cases when I've had a chance to see both teams in action."

Her eyes gleamed. "Would I win?"

"Good lord, yes. I've hit the opposition for six off far stickier wickets."

Walsh, who had found Bill's wisecracks increasingly irritating, spluttered angrily. "The law is not a joke, Mr. Stanley. I regret any inconvenience Miss Cattrell may have suffered, but in the circumstances I don't see that we could have acted any differently. It was her choice to have you present while she answered questions and, frankly, had it not taken you three hours to get here, this could all have been dealt with very much more quickly."

"Couldn't make it any sooner, old man," said Bill, poking a finger through his string vest and scratching his bear-hairy chest. "My day for child-minding. Can't abandon the brood to their own devices. They'd slaughter each other the minute I was out of the house. Mind you, you might have a point. Don't relish accusations of sloppiness floating around in open court." He gave Anne's shoulder a friendly squeeze with his great paw. "I'll give you a discount. It's less fun but probably more sensible."

Walsh gobbled furiously. "I've a damn good mind to charge you both with wasting police time."

Laughter shook the solicitor's huge frame as he opened the door for Anne and ushered her out. "No, no, Inspector. I do the charging. Indecent, isn't it? I win whichever way you look at it." He escorted her to the front door where a police car was waiting, took her face in his hands and bent to whisper in her ear. "That little farce is going to cost you fifty smackers to one of the AIDS charities, plus an explanation."

She patted his cheek. "I needed someone to hold my hand," she told him.

He grunted his amusement. "Bollocks! I'd have been angry if I hadn't wanted to find out what the hell was going on and if I hadn't been waiting for a chance to meet that bastard Walsh." The smile faded from his voice. "Give me a ring tomorrow and I'll come down and talk to the three of you. Murder is a dangerous game. Anne, even for the spectators. It's too easy to get dragged in. Phoebe knows that better than anyone." He put his hand on her bottom and propelled her towards the car. "Give her my love, and Diana too." He waved goodbye, then walked to his own car and set off back to London and his weekly night-shift in a shelter for the homeless.

Andy McLoughlin lingered in his car on the other side of the road. It was parked in the twilight zone between two pools of orange lamplight and he had seen without being seen. His hands shook on the steering wheel. God, he needed a drink. Had she kissed him? It was difficult to be sure. Did it matter anyway? It was their easy understanding, the way their bodies had leant against each other in uncomplicated friendship that had rocked him. He didn't want her loved. He eased himself out of the car and went inside in search of Walsh. "How did it go?"

The Inspector was standing at his office window, glowering into the night. "Did you see them? They've just gone."

"No."

"Damned solicitor took three hours to get here, arrived sporting a filthy string vest and looking like the hairy man of Borneo. Matter of fact, I'm highly doubtful about his credentials." He took out his pipe. "You were quite right, Andy. It was beef blood. We were being had. Why?"

McLoughlin lowered himself into a chair. "A diversion. To draw you away from the rest of the house."

Walsh walked back to his desk and sat down. "Possibly. In that case it didn't work. There wasn't a stone left unturned by the time we'd finished." There was a long silence before he tapped his pipe on a sheaf of letters in front of him. "Jones found this little lot in Mrs. Goode's studio." He pushed the papers towards McLoughlin and waited while the Sergeant skimmed through them. "Interesting, don't you think?"

"Did Jonesy question her about them?"

"Tried to. She said it was none of his business, that she'd got her fingers burnt and preferred to forget it, certainly had no intention of answering questions on the matter." He fingered tobacco into the bowl of the pipe. "When he told her he would have to take the letters, she lost her temper and tried to snatch them back." There was a twinkle of amusement in his eye as he lit the tobacco and sucked in warm smoke. "Two PCs had to restrain her while he removed them to his car."

"And I thought she was the least volatile of the three. What about Mrs. Maybury?"

"Good as gold. She took herself off to the greenhouse and spent most of the afternoon rooting Pelargonium cuttings while we turned her house inside out and found nothing." Noises of succulent contentment puttered from his mouth. "I've detailed a couple of lads to tout those shoes round the menders. It's a long shot but someone might remember re-heeling them. I don't care what Mrs. Thompson says-let's face it, she's so damn cuckoo she wouldn't recognise her own reflection if it didn't have a halo round it-those shoes are the missing Daniel's. Size eight and brown. Too much of a coincidence."

McLoughlin forced his pricking eyes to stay open as he re-read the top letter. It was undated and very brief. "Monday. My dear Diana, Of course I regret what's happened, but my hands are tied. If it will help I can come out on Thursday to discuss the position with you. Yours ever, Daniel." The address was Larkfield, East Deller, and scored across the page in angry writing was: "Meeting confirmed." The previous letter, a carbon copy of a demand from Diana for an up-to-date statement of Daniel Thompson's business, was dated Friday, 20th May.

"So when did he go missing?"

"Thursday, twenty-fifth of May," said Walsh with satisfaction, "the very day he had arranged an appointment with Mrs. Goode."

"So why didn't you bring her in with Miss Cattrell?"

"I can only cope with one at a time, lad. She'll keep another twelve hours. At the moment I'm rather more interested in why Miss Cattrell went to such extraordinary lengths to get herself brought in for questioning. Any ideas?"

McLoughlin looked at the floor and shook his head.

Anne was dog-tired. Her body had been pumping adrenaline for several hours, exciting her brain, racing her heart, keeping her at a peak of almost intolerable stimulation. Her reaction when she sank into the back of the warm police car was immediate and total. She fell asleep, upright at first but ending in a flat ungainly sprawl along the length of the seat when the driver took a bend too fast. Thus, the photographers outside the unlit gates of Streech Grange missed the picture they had been waiting for: Murder Enquiry-Journalist In Questioning Drama. They had seen too many police cars come and go to be interested in one without a passenger. Fred, sitting doggedly on an old deckchair at the padlocked gates, was not so easily fooled. He let the car in, satisfied himself with a momentary flash of his torch that it contained Anne, then with a sigh of relief resumed his seat. His clutch was safely in the nest. When the police car had gone he could retire to bed.

Barely awake, Anne let herself in through the front door and staggered sleepily across the carpet. Outside, with a new passenger in the shape of PC Williams, now relieved from guard duty, the police car grated away across the gravel. Anne leaned against the wall for a moment to collect her scattered wits. Behind Phoebe's door, she heard the warning bark of the dogs. The next moment, Jane Maybury precipitated herself into the hall and flung herself on her godmother. Together, they collapsed in a heap on the floor where Anne lay, eyes closed, and trembling.

"My God," said Jane, turning to her mother who had appeared in the doorway behind her, "there's something wrong with her. Jon!" she shrilled with alarm. "Come quick. Anne's ill."

"I'm not ill," said the shaking body, opening its eyes. "I'm laughing." She sat up. "God, I am
knackered
. Get off me, you great dollop," she said, giving the girl a kiss, "and get me a brandy. I'm suffering severe post-interrogation trauma."

Phoebe hauled her to her feet and marched her into the drawing-room while Jane fetched a brandy. Anne folded happily on to the sofa and beamed about her. "What's the matter? You all look as if you've been sucking lemons."

Diana pulled a face. "We've been worried sick, you idiot."

"You should have more faith," said Anne sternly, accepting the brandy from Jane. "And how's my goddaughter?" She examined the girl circumspectly while she warmed her glass.

Jane smiled. "I'm fine." She was still too thin but Anne was pleased to see that her face had filled out and lost some of its tension.

"You look it," she agreed.

Phoebe turned to Jonathan. "Shall we have that celebration we promised ourselves?"

"Sure thing. I'll raid the cellar. What does anyone fancy? Chateau Lafite '78 or those last bottles of the '75 Champagne? Anne, you choose."

"The Lafite. Champagne on top of brandy will make me puke."

He looked questioningly at his mother. "Shall I drive down and get Fred and Molly to join us? It hasn't been much fun for them either."

Phoebe nodded. "Good idea." She held out a hand to Elizabeth who was sitting slightly apart on the tapestry stool. "You go too, Lizzie darling. Molly can say no to all of us, and does regularly, but she won't refuse you." She looked pointedly at Jonathan.

"Come on," he said. "You, too, Jane." They went out.

Phoebe walked over to the mantelpiece. "I wish David had never used the cellar for storing his wretched imports."

Anne sniffed her brandy. "Why? I bless his memory for it regularly."

"Exactly," agreed Phoebe dryly, "so do I. It's very upsetting." She glanced at Diana. "Lizzie's worried about something. Is it Molly and Fred?"

"No. I'm afraid it's me."

"Why?"

Diana attempted a laugh which didn't work. "Because I told her I'd be the next one in the police mincing machine." She swung to face Anne. "Why did they take you in?"

"They found the safe and it had some incriminating evidence in it." Anne chuckled into her brandy. "A bloody carving-knife, wrapped in a bloody rag." She stirred her glass in her hands, warming it. "It was straight out of Enid Blyton, but they all got very excited and I refused to answer any more questions till Bill arrived."

"You're mad," said Phoebe decidedly. "What on earth were you up to?"

Mischief lit Anne's dark eyes. "To tell you the truth, I didn't think they'd find the safe, and if it hadn't been for the Sergeant, they wouldn't have done." She shrugged. "Hell, you know me. I always put in an insurance policy, just in case."

Diana groaned. "You
are
mad. I do wish you'd take this whole thing a bit more seriously. God knows what they're thinking now. What was it you didn't want them to find?"

"Nothing too desperate," said Anne easily. "The odd document or two which probably oughtn't to be in my possession."

"Well," said Phoebe, "I can't understand why you aren't still at the Police Station undergoing a grilling. That's more than Walsh ever had on me and he never let up for a minute."

Anne sipped her brandy and looked from one to the other with laughter spilling out of her eyes. "You didn't have my trump card. Bill did his stuff brilliantly. You should have seen him. Walsh damn nearly popped a blood vessel when he finally turned up. He was wearing his string vest." She dabbed at her eyes and examined Diana's face through damp lashes. It was still very strained.

"It's a game with you, isn't it?" said Diana accusingly. "I wouldn't mind so much, if I didn't think it was me they'll come down on. You are a fool, you know."

Anne shook her head. "What can they possibly have on you?"

Diana sighed. "Nothing really, except that I've made a prize arsehole of myself." She smiled unhappily at the two women. "I hoped you'd never find out. It makes me look such an idiot."

"It
must
be bad then," said Anne lightly.

Phoebe squatted on her haunches with her back to the fireplace. "It can't be worse than Anne's toy-boy, can it?" She looked at her friend and giggled. "Do you remember him? He still had adolescent acne. You thought he was the bee's knees for about a week.*

Anne, whose earlier hysteria was still perilously close to the surface, snorted stinging brandy through her nose. She gasped with pain and laughter. "You mean Wayne Gibbons? A temporary aberration, I assure you. It was his whole-hearted commitment to the cause that attracted me."

"Yes, but what cause? You looked worn out when he finally left."

Anne mopped her running eyes. "You know he's on a study course in Russia now? I had a letter from him not so long ago. It dwelt in extreme and tedious length on the subject of his constipation. I gather he hadn't had any green vegetables since Christmas." She shuddered. "God knows what it's done to his acne." She turned to Diana with a grin. "It can't be worse than Phoebe's wrestling match by the village pond with that ridiculous Dilys Barnes woman-the one whose daughter fornicates in our bushes. No question about that. Phoebe really looked a fool."

In spite of herself, Diana laughed. "Yes, that was funny." She looked at Phoebe's smiling face. "You should never have tackled her in a sarong."

"How was I to know she was going to start a fight?" Phoebe protested. "Also, it wasn't actually Mrs. Barnes who pulled it off. It was Hedges. He got over-excited and did a runner with the damn thing between his teeth."

Anne was shaking with tension-releasing laughter. "It was the way you came stomping up the drive in your wellies, purple in the face, boobs bouncing all over the shop and with only a pair of knickers on. God, it was funny. I wish I'd seen the fight. And what were you doing wearing wellies with a sarong, anyway?"

Phoebe's eyes sparkled. "It was hot, hence the sarong, and I wanted some pondweed from the village pond, hence the wellies. Absurd woman. She ran away screaming. I think she thought I'd taken the dress off myself in order to rape her." She patted Diana's knee. "If you've made a laughing-stock of yourself, it's hardly the end of the world."

"Laughing-stock's right," said Diana. "Oh, hell! I'm never going to live it down. It's too bloody embarrassing. I wouldn't mind so much if I wasn't supposed to have good judgement in these things."

Anne and Phoebe exchanged puzzled glances. "Tell us," prompted Phoebe.

Diana put her head between her hands. "I was persuaded into parting with ten thousand quid," she muttered. "Half my savings straight down the drain, apart from anything else."

Anne whistled sympathetically. "That's rough. No chance of getting it back?"

"None. He's done a bunk." She chewed her bottom lip. "From the way they piled into my correspondence, I suspect the police think they've found him in our ice house."

"Oh lord!" said Phoebe with feeling. "No wonder Lizzie's worried. Who is this man?"

"Daniel Thompson. He got my name from that design consultant in Winchester, the one who helped me with the Council offices. He's an engineer, lives in East Deller. Have you come across him?"

Phoebe shook her head. "You should have gone to the police yourself," she said. "It sounds to me as though you've been conned by this creep."

"No," said Diana tiredly, staring at her hands, "it wasn't a con. I invested in a business he was running, all very legitimate and above board, but the bloody thing's gone bust and my money with it. Looking back, I must have been mad but it seemed like such a good idea at the time. It could have revolutionised interior design if it'd taken off."

"Why on earth didn't you talk to us about it?"

"I would have done but it came up during that week in January when you were both away and I was holding the fort here. Another backer pulled out at the last minute and I had twenty-four hours to make up my mind. By the time you got back I'd rather forgotten about it, then things started to turn sour and I decided to keep mum. I wouldn't be telling you now if the police hadn't found out about it."

"What business was it?"

Diana groaned. "You'll laugh."

"No, we won't."

She gave them a ferocious glare. "I'll throttle you if you do."

"We won't."

"See-through radiators," she said.

The watcher in the garden was masturbating in an ecstasy of voyeuristic thrill. How many times had he spied on these cunts, preyed on them, seen them nude. Once he had creepy-crawled the house. His hand moved in mounting frenzy until, with convulsive shudders, he climaxed into his handkerchief. He held the sodden cloth to his face to muffle his giggles.

"I'm off to bed," said Anne, putting her glass on a tray with the exaggerated care of the tipsy. "Apart from anything else, I'm pissed. I happily volunteer to wash up in the morning, but tonight I'm off games. I'd break the lot," she explained owlishly.

"Have you eaten anything this evening, Miss Cattrell?" scolded Molly.

"Not a thing."

Molly muttered angrily. "I'll have words with that Inspector in the morning. What a way to treat people."

Anne paused on her way to the door. "They brought me a corned beef sandwich," she said, scrupulously fair. "I didn't fancy it. There's something about corned beef." She thought for a moment. "It's the texture. Moist but crumbly. Reminds me of dog shit." With a wave, she departed.

Diana, who was watching Molly's face, held her glass in front of her mouth to hide her smile. Even after eight years of Anne's careless bombardment, Molly's sensibilities were still so easily shocked.

Anne drank a pint of water in the kitchen, took a banana from the fruit bowl and wandered, eating it, through the hall and down the corridor. She switched on the lights in her sitting-room and collapsed gratefully into an armchair, tossing the banana skin into the waste-paper basket… She sat for some time, her weary brain in neutral, while the water slowly diluted the effects of the alcohol. After half an hour she began to feel better.

What a day! She had been shitting bricks at the Police Station, wondering if Jon had picked up her hint, and she thought now that she had probably panicked unnecessarily. Could McLoughlin be that sharp? Surely not. The room had been searched by experts-two, three years ago- when Special Branch suspected her of having a leaked MOD document in her possession. They had found the safe but not the secret cache behind it. She rubbed her eyes. Jon had whispered to her that he'd put the envelope somewhere outside where it would never be found. If that were true, she was tempted to let it stay there, wherever "there" was. She hadn't asked for details. She ran hot and cold every time she thought of the contents of that envelope. God, she was a fool, but, at the time, a photographic record of that terrible brick tomb had made sense. She beat her fist against her head. Supposing Jon had opened it? But he hadn't, she told herself firmly. She could tell by the look in his eyes that he hadn't. But if he had? She thrust the thought away angrily.

McLoughlin held a fretful fascination for her. She kept going back to him, worrying at him, like a tongue against a loosening tooth. That business in front of the mantelpiece? Was it all a blind to cover his interest in the safe? She had looked into his face and seen only a deep, deep hurt, but an expression was only an expression, after all. She rubbed her eyes again. If only, she thought, if only, if only-There was a scream inside her, a scream that was as vast and as silent as the vast silence of space. Was her life always to be a series of
if onlys
?

There was a sharp tap on her French window.

She was so startled she flung her arm out and knocked her wrist on the occasional table beside her. She swung round, massaging the bruise, eyes straining into the night's blackness. A face was pressed against the window, eyes shielded from the bright glare of her lamps by a cupped hand. Fear flooded her mouth with sickly bile and the remembered stench of urine swamped her nostrils.

"Did I frighten you?" asked McLoughlin, easing open the unlocked window when she didn't get up.

"You gave me a shock."

"I'm sorry."
Some shock
, he thought.

"Why didn't you come to the front door?" Even her lips were bloodless.

"I didn't want to disturb Mrs. Maybury." He closed the glass doors behind him. "The light's on in her bedroom. She'd have to have come downstairs to let me in."