Minette Walters - The Ice House

"She brought it on herself," said Walsh coldly.

"Maybe, but you've let Maybury grow into an obsession with you, and you can't expect the rest of us to chase red herrings just to prove a point"

Walsh poked around amongst the folds of his jacket for his pipe. He stuffed it in thoughtful silence. "I've got this gut feeling, Andy," he said at last, holding his lighter flame to the tobacco and puffing. "The moment I saw that mess yesterday, I knew. Found you, you bastard, I said to myself." He looked up and caught McLoughlin's eye. "OK, OK, lad, I'm not a fool. I'm not about to tie you all down because of my gut feeling, but the fact remains that the blasted body is unidentifiable. And why? Because someone, somewhere, doesn't want it identified, that's why. Who took the clothes? Where are the dentures? Why no fingerprints? Oh, it's been mutilated all right, and it was as likely to be mutilated because it was Maybury as because it wasn't."

"So where do we go from here? Missing persons?"

"Checked. Our area, anyway. We'll go further afield if necessary, but on the evidence so far a local connection seems probable. We've one likely candidate. A Daniel Thompson from East Deller. The description matches very closely and he went missing around the time Webster thinks our man was killed." He nodded to the shoes in the plastic bag. "When he disappeared, he was wearing brown lace-ups. Jones found these in the woods adjoining the farm."

McLoughlin whistled through his teeth. "If they're his, is there anyone who can identify them?"

"A wife." Walsh watched McLoughlin push himself awkwardly to his feet. "Not so fast," he snapped petulantly. "Let's hear how you got on. You spoke to Miss Cattrell? Learn anything?"

McLoughlin plucked at the grass beside him. "The Phillipses' real name is Jefferson. They were sentenced to five years each for the murder of their lodger Ian Donaghue who buggered and killed their son. He was an only child, twelve years old, born when Mrs. Jefferson was forty. Miss Cattrell arranged their employment here." He looked up. "They're a possibility, sir. What they've done once, they might do again."

"Different MO. As far as I remember, they made no secret of Donaghue's execution, even carried out a mock trial in front of his girlfriend and hanged him when he confessed. She was a star witness in their defence, wasn't she? It doesn't square with this murder."

"Maybe," said McLoughlin, "but they've proved they're capable of murdering for revenge and they're pretty attached to Mrs. Maybury. We can't ignore it."

"Have you questioned them yet?"

McLoughlin winced. "Up to a point. I had her in after Miss Cattrell. It was like trying to prise information out of an oyster. She's a cantankerous old biddy." He pulled his notebook out of his shirt pocket and riffled through the pages. "She let slip one thing which struck me as interesting. I asked her if she was happy here. She said: 'The only difference between a fortress and a prison is that in a fortress the doors are locked on the inside.' "

"What's interesting about that?"

"Would you describe your house as a fortress?"

"She's senile." Walsh waved him on impatiently. "Any more?"

"Diana Goode has a daughter, Elizabeth, who spends odd weekends here. Aged nineteen, has a flat in London which was given her by her father, works as a croupier in one of the big West End casinos. She's a bit wild, or that's the impression her mother gave."

Walsh grunted.

"Phoebe Maybury has a licensed shotgun," McLoughlin continued, reading down his notes. "She's responsible for the spent cartridges. According to Fred, there's a colony of feral cats in and around Grange Farm which use his kitchen garden as their private bog. Mrs. Maybury scares them off with a blast from the shotgun but Fred claims she's rather lost interest lately, says it's like trying to hold back the tide."

"Anyone know anything about the condoms?"

McLoughlin raised a sardonic eyebrow. "No," he said with feeling. "But they all found it very amusing, at my expense. Fred said he's raked up quite a few in the past. I questioned him again about finding the body. His story's the same, no discrepancies." He ran through the sequence for Walsh's benefit.

When Fred arrived at the ice house, the door was completely obscured by the brambles. He returned to his shed to fetch a torch and a scythe, and trampled the brambles so thoroughly because he had intended to take a wheelbarrow in to remove the bricks and had wanted a clear path. The door had been half-open when he finally came to it. There had been no indication that anyone had been that way recently. After he had found the body, he had paused long enough to swing the door to as far as it would go, then he had taken to his heels.

"Did you press him hard?" Walsh asked.

"I went over it with him three or four times, but he's like his wife. He's single-minded and he doesn't volunteer information. That's the story and he's sticking to it. If he did flatten the brambles after he found the body, he's not going to admit to it."

"What's your guess, Andy?"

"I"m with you, sir. I'd say it's odds on he found plenty of evidence to show there'd been traffic that way and did his utmost to obliterate it after he found the body." McLoughlin glanced at the mass of torn vegetation on either side of the doorway. "He did a good job, too. There's no way of knowing now how many people went in there or when."

Elizabeth and Jonathan found their mothers and Anne drinking coffee in the drawing-room. Benson and Hedges roused themselves from the carpet to greet the newcomers, sniffing hands, rubbing delightedly against legs, rolling over in an ecstasy of joyful welcome. By contrast the three women were positively diffident. Phoebe held out a hand to her son. Diana patted the seat beside her in tentative invitation. Anne nodded.

Phoebe spoke first. "Hello, darling. Journey down all right?"

Jonathan perched on the arm of her chair and bent down to peck her cheek. "Fine. Lizzie persuaded her boss to give her the night off and met me at the hospital. I've skipped an afternoon's lectures. We were on the M3 by midday. We haven't eaten yet," he added as an afterthought.

Diana stood up. "I'll get you something."

"Not yet," said Elizabeth, catching her hand and pulling her on to the sofa again. "A few minutes won't make any difference. Tell us what's been happening. We had a quick word with Molly in the kitchen but she didn't exactly lavish us with detail. Do the police know whose body it is? Have they said anything about how it was done?" She blurted the questions, insensitive to feelings, eyes overbright.

Her questions were greeted with surprised silence: In twenty-four hours, the women had unconsciously adjusted themselves to a climate of suspicion. A question must be thought about; answers carefully considered.

Predictably, it was Anne who broke the silence. "It's really quite frightening, isn't it? Your judgement becomes impaired." She flicked ash into the fireplace. "Imagine what it must be like in a police state. You wouldn't dare trust anybody."

Diana threw her a grateful glance. "You tell them. I'm not trained for this sort of thing. My forte is amusing anecdotes with a punchline. When this is over, I'll polish it up, exaggerate the more titillating bits and give everyone something to laugh about over dinner." She shook her head. "But not now. At the moment, it's not very funny."

"Oh, I don't know," said Phoebe surprisingly. "I had a good laugh this morning when Molly caught Sergeant McLoughlin in the downstairs cupboard. She chased him out with a broom. The poor man looked absolutely terrified. Apparently he was trying to find the bog."

Elizabeth giggled nervously. "What's he like?"

"Confused," said Anne dryly, catching the points of her shirt collar and holding them together. "Now, Lizzie, what was it you asked? Do they know whose body it is? No. Have they said anything about how it was done? No." She leant forward and held up her fingers to tick off points. "The situation, as far as we know it, is this." Slowly and lucidly she ran through the details of the finding of the body, its removal, the police examination of the ice house and grounds and their subsequent questioning. "The next step, I think, will be a search warrant." She turned to Phoebe. "It would be logical. They'll want to go through the house with a fine-tooth comb."