Minette Walters - The Ice House

"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."