Minette Walters - The Ice House

"You didn't like him?"

Paddy accepted another cigarette. "He was a shit-the kind who enjoys putting people down-but he kept me supplied with fairly decent plonk, plus he was one of my best customers. Bought all his beer from me and drank in here most nights." He took a deep inhalation of smoke. "Nobody regretted his disappearance, except me. He left owing me over a hundred quid. I wouldn't have minded so much if I hadn't just settled my wine account with his blasted company."

"You say 'he left.' You don't think he was murdered?"

"I've no views on it. Left, murdered, same result. It doubled our trade overnight. With all the media coverage, Streech became quite famous. The ghouls dropped in here for local colour before setting off up to the hill to gawp through the Grange gates." He saw a look of distaste on the Constable's face and shrugged. "I'm a businessman. The same thing'll happen this time which is why the wife's gone to the Cash and Carry. Take my word for it, there'll be a horde of pressmen in here tonight. I pity those wretched women. They'll not be able to set foot outside their gates without being hounded."

"How well do you know them?"

A guarded expression came over the big man's face. "Well enough."

"Do you know anything about their lesbian activities?"

Paddy Clarke chuckled. "Who's been winding you up?" he asked.

"Several people have mentioned it," said Robinson mildly. "There's no truth in it then?"

"They've got minds like sewers," said Paddy with disgust. "Three women, living together, keeping themselves to themselves, minding their own business and tongues start to wag." He gave his derogatory snort again. "Two of them have kids. That hardly ties in with lesbianism."

"Anne Cattrell hasn't any and she admitted being a lesbian to a colleague of mine."

Paddy gave such a shout of laughter that he choked on the smoke.from his cigarette. "For your information," he said with watering eyes, "Anne could give Fiona Richmond lessons on sex. 'Struth, man, she's had more lovers than you've had hot dinners. What's your colleague like? A pompous jerk, I'll bet. Anne would enjoy taking the piss out of someone like that." DS Robinson refused to be drawn on the subject of Andy McLoughlin. "How come no one's mentioned this? Surely the people here would find promiscuity as titillating as lesbianism."

"Because she's discreet, for crying out loud. Do you crap on your doorstep? Anyway, there's no one in this dump she'd give houseroom to." He spoke scathingly. "She prefers her men with brain as well as brawn."

"How do you know all this, Mr. Clarke?" Paddy glared at him.

"Never mind how I know. Confidential, you said, and confidential it is. I'm setting the record straight. There's enough bullshit been talked about those women to fill a midden. You'll be telling me next they run a witches' coven. That's another favourite, with poor Fred cast in the role of satanic stallion because of his prison record."

"Confidentially, sir," said Robinson after a brief hesitation while he contemplated Fred Phillips in the role of satanic stallion, "I've heard from a number of sources that you might know something about several used condoms we've found near the ice house at the Grange."

Clarke, he thought, looked positively murderous. "What sources?"

"A number," said Robinson firmly, "but I'm not going to divulge them, just as I won't divulge anything you say to me without your permission. We're in the dark, sir. We need information."

"To hell with information," said Paddy aggressively, thrusting his face close to Robinson's. "I'm a publican, not a bloody policeman. You're the one who's being paid. You do your own dirty work."

Ten years on the force had given Nick Robinson a certain wiliness. He tucked his pen into his jacket and got off the barstool. "That's your privilege, sir, but as things stand at the moment the finger's pointing at Mrs. Maybury and her friends. They seem to be the only ones with enough knowledge of the grounds to have hidden the body in the ice house. I'll guarantee that if we don't get more information, the three of them will be charged with conspiracy."

There was a long silence while the publican stared at the policeman. Robinson felt he ought to disapprove of Clarke-if Amy Ledbetter was right, the man was a highly sexed stud-but instead he found himself liking him. Whatever his sexual morality, the man looked you in the eye when he spoke to you.

"God damn it!" said Paddy suddenly, slamming a massive fist on to the bar. "Sit down, man. I'll get you a beer, but if you ever breathe a word of this to my wife I'll string you up by your balls."

McLoughlin was waiting at the entrance to the ice house when Walsh arrived with the plastic bag containing the shoes. "I was told you wanted to see me, sir."

Walsh removed his jacket and lowered himself on to the sun-baked ground, folding the jacket neatly beside him. "Sit down, Andy. I'm after a few quiet words away from the house. This whole damned thing's getting more complicated by the minute and I don't want any flapping ears around." He studied the Sergeant's drawn face with sudden irritability. "What's the matter with you?" he snapped. "You look terrible."

McLoughlin transferred his wallet and loose change from his rear trouser pockets and sat down at a short distance from his boss. "Nothing," he said, trying without success to find a comfortable position for his legs. He regarded the other man through half-closed lids. He could never decide whether he liked or disliked Walsh. The Inspector, for all his irascibility, could surprise with a kindness. But not today.

He looked across at Walsh and saw only an insignificant, skinny man, playing tough because the system allowed it. He was tempted to make the Inspector a free gift of his assault on Anne Cattrell that morning just to see his reaction. Would he bark? Or would he bite? Bark, McLoughlin thought with amused contempt. Walsh was no more able to face an unpleasantness than the next man. It would be different, of course, when she put in her written complaint. Then, the machinery of justice would roll and action would be as mechanical as it was inevitable. His certainty that this would happen lifted rather than depressed him. The cut would be clean and final, so much cleaner and so much more final than if he administered it himself. He even felt a stirring of anger against the woman that she hadn't delivered the blow already.

Walsh finished summarising the pathologist's report. "Well?" he demanded.

The shutter clicked maddeningly in McLoughlin's brain. He stared at Walsh with vacant eyes for a moment, then shook his head. "You say he's exploring the possibility of mutilation. He's not sure yet?"

Walsh snarled sarcastically. "Won't commit himself. Claims he hasn't enough experience of eaten bodies. But it's a damned odd rat that chews selectively on the only two fingers Maybury had missing."

"You'll have to tie Webster down on that," McLoughlin pointed out thoughtfully. "It makes a hell of a difference to the case if there was no mutilation." Dreadful black-and-white footage of Mussolini's corpse, strung by its feet from a lamppost after an angry mob had emasculated it, floated into his mind. Violent, angry, hating faces, jeering their revenge. "A hell of a difference," he said quietly.

"Why?"

"It's less likely to be Maybury."

"You're as bad as Webster," growled Walsh. "Jumping to bloody conclusions. Let me tell you, Andy, that body is more likely to be Maybury's than anyone else's. It is a statistical improbability that this house should be the centre of two unconnected police investigations in ten years, and it is a statistical probability , as I've said all along, that his wife murdered him."

"Even she couldn't murder him twice, sir. If she did it ten years ago, then it wasn't him in the ice house. If it was him in the ice house, then, by God, she's had a raw deal."