Minette Walters - The Ice House

There was nothing to stop him going home now. By rights, he was off-duty. Instead, he turned his car in the direction of Bywater Farm and one Eddie Staines. So far, Mrs. Ledbetter's information had paid dividends. No harm in giving her another whirl.

The farmer pointed him to the cow-sheds where Eddie was cleaning up after the evening's milking. He found Eddie leaning on a rake and carelessly chatting up an apple-cheeked girl who giggled inanely at everything he said. They fell silent as Nick Robinson approached and looked at him curiously.

"Mr. Staines?" he asked, producing his warrant card. "Can I have a word?"

Eddie winked at the girl. "Sure," he said. "Would bollocks do?"

The girl shrieked her mirth. "Ooh, Eddie! You are funny!"

"Preferably in private," continued Robinson, making a mental note of Eddie's riposte for his own future use.

"Buzz off, Suzie. I'll see you later in the pub."

She went reluctantly, scuffing her boots through the muck in the yard, looking over her shoulder in the hopes of being invited back. For Eddie, it was clearly a case of out of sight out of mind. "What do you want?" he asked, raking soiled straw into a heap while he spoke. He was wearing a sleeveless tee-shirt which gave full expression to the muscles of his shoulders.

"You've heard about the murder at the Grange?"

"Who hasn't?" said Staines, uninterestedly.

"I'd like to ask you a few questions about it."

Staines leant on his rake and eyed the detective. "Listen, mate, I've already told your lot all I know and that's nothing. I'm a farmhand, a salt-of-the-earth prole. The likes of me don't mix with the people at the Grange."

"No one said you did."

"Then what's the point of asking me questions?"

"We're interested in anyone who's been into the grounds in the last couple of months."

Staines resumed his raking. "Not guilty."

"That's not what I've heard."

The young man's eyes narrowed. "Oh, yeah? Who's been blabbing?"

"It's common knowledge you take your girlfriends up there."

"You trying to pin something on me?"

"No, but there's a chance you may have seen or heard something that could help us." He offered the man a cigarette.

Eddie accepted a light. He appeared to be thinking deeply for several minutes. "Happen I did then," he said surprisingly.

"Go on."

"Seems you've been asking my sister questions about a woman crying one night. Seems you've been back a couple of times."

"The farm cottages on the East Deller road?"

"That's right. Maggie Trewin's my sister, lives in number two. Her man works up at Grange Farm. She tells me you want to know which night this-woman"-he put a derisory emphasis on the word-"was crying."

Robinson nodded.

"Well, now," said Staines, blowing perfect smoke rings into the air above his head, "I can probably tell you, but I'd want a guarantee my brother-in-law'll never know where you got it from. No court appearances, nothing like that. He'd skin me alive if he knew I'd been up there and he'd not give up till he found out who I was with." He shook his head morosely. It's more'n my life's worth." His brother-in-law's young sister was the apple of his eye.

"I can't guarantee no court appearances," said Robinson. "If the prosecution serves a writ on you, you'll have to attend. But it may never happen. The woman may have no bearing on the case."

"You reckon?" Staines snorted. "More'n I do."

"I could take you in for questioning," said Robinson mildly.

"Wouldn't get you nowhere. I won't say nothing till I'm certain Bob Trewin won't find out. He'd kill me, no mistake." He flexed his muscles and returned to his raking.

Nick Robinson wrote his name and the address of the Police Station on a page of his notebook. He tore it out and handed it to Staines. "Write down what happened and when, and send it to me unsigned," he suggested. "I'll treat it as an anonymous tip-off. That way no one will know where it came from."

"You'll know."

"If you don't," Robinson warned, "I'll come back and next time I'll bring the Inspector. He won't take no for an answer."

"I'll think on it."

"You do that." He started to leave. "I suppose you weren't up there three nights ago?"

Staines hefted a lump of dung to the top of his straw pile. "You suppose right."

"One of the women was attacked."

"Oh, yeah?"

"You hadn't heard?"

Staines shrugged. "Maybe." He cast a sideways glance at the detective. "One of her girlfriends did it, bound to be. Bitches fight like the devil when they're roused."

"So you didn't hear or see anything that night?"

Eddie turned his back to attack the farthest corner of the shed. "Like I just said, I wasn't there."

Now, why don't I believe you, Robinson wondered, as he picked his way with distaste through the cow dung in the yard. The apple-cheeked girl giggled as he passed her by the gate then, like a moth to the flame, she dashed back to the cow-sheds and the arms of her philanderer.

Walsh was still nursing a bloody nose when McLoughlin got back to the Station. It had long since stopped bleeding but he persisted in holding his blood-stained handkerchief to it. McLoughlin, who hadn't overheard that part of Phoebe's and Jonathan's conversation, looked at him in surprise.

"What happened?" he asked.

"Mrs. Goode hit me, so I arrested her for assault," said Walsh maliciously. "That soon wiped the smile off her face."

McLoughlin sat down. "Is she still here?"

"No, dammit. Mrs. Maybury persuaded her to apologise and I let her go with a caution. Bloody women," he said. He stuffed the handkerchief into his pocket. "We've had a result on the shoes. Young Gavin Williams turned up an old cobbler in East Deller who does it for pin money."

McLoughlin whistled. "And?"

"Daniel Thompson's for sure. The old boy keeps records, bless him. Writes a description of the shoes-in this case, made a special note of the different coloured laces-what needs to be done, name of owner and the dates they come in and go out. Thompson collected them a week before he went missing." Walsh fingered his nose tenderly. "The timescale's perfect. It's not looking good for Mrs. Goode." He chuckled at his witticism. "If we can find just one person who saw him going into the Grange-" He let the thought hang in the air while he took out his pipe and started to clean it with cheerful industry. "How do you fancy Miss Cattrell for that part? She went through the little pantomime with her solicitor to steer us away from her friend, then panicked her friend by letting on how much she knew." He tapped the pipe against his head. "Goodbye Miss Cattrell."

"No chance," said McLoughlin decidedly, watching the pipe-cleaner turn black with tar. "I dropped into the hospital on my way here. She's come round. I've sent Brownlow down to sit with her."

"Has she now? Did you speak to her?"

"Briefly, before I was booted out by the Sister. She needs a good sleep, apparently, before she can answer questions."

"Well?" demanded Walsh sharply. "What did she say?"

"Nothing much. The whole thing's a complete blank to her." He examined his nails. "She did say she thought she heard something outside."

Walsh grunted suspiciously. "Suits your case rather neatly, doesn't it?"

McLoughlin shrugged. "You're barking up the wrong tree, sir, and if you hadn't tied my hands I'd have proved it by now."

There was malice in the older man's voice. "Jones has taken his team over the ground twice and they haven't found anything."

"Then let me have a look. I'm wasting my time on the Maybury file. No one I've spoken to so far knew anything about his penchant for little girls. Jane appears to be the only one. It's a dead end, sir."

Walsh dropped the fouled pipe-cleaner into his waste-paper basket and glared at his Sergeant with open dislike. McLoughlin's admission that he had been trying to steal a march rankled with him, all the more because his own grip on the case was so tenuous. He was deeply suspicious of the man in front of him. What did McLoughlin know that he didn't? Had he found the pattern? "You'll stick with that file till you've talked to everyone who knew Maybury," he said angrily. "It's a whole new line of enquiry and I want it thoroughly explored."