Minette Walters - The Ice House

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?"