Minette Walters - The Ice House

"Why?"

Walsh's brows snapped together. "What do you mean, why?"

"Where will it lead us?"

"To Maybury's murderer."

McLoughlin looked at him with amusement. "She's got the better of you, sir, and there's damned all you can do about it. Raking over dead ashes isn't going to produce a prosecution. He terrorised one child and that was his own daughter, and now he's dead. My guess is he's buried in that garden somewhere, possibly in one of the flowerbeds at the front. She does those herself. Fred is never allowed near them. I think you were right and she hid the body in the ice house till the coast was clear and I doubt very much if, after ten years, there's anything left for us to find. Those dogs of hers are rather partial to human remains."

Walsh plucked at his lips. "I'm keeping an open mind. Webster still hasn't proved to my satisfaction that it wasn't Maybury in the ice house."

McLoughlin gave a derisive snort. "A minute ago you were convinced it was Daniel Thompson. For God's sake, sir, face up to the fact that you've got a closed mind on this whole thing. Result, we're all working with one hand behind our backs." He leaned forward. "There is no pattern, or not the sort you're looking for. You're trying to force unrelated facts to fit and you're making a mess of it."

A panic of indecision gripped Walsh's belly. It was true, he thought. There was too much pressure. Pressure from within him to close the Maybury case once and for all, pressure from the media for eye-catching headlines, pressure from above to find quick solutions. And, always, the unrelenting pressure from below as the new bloods challenged for his job. He eyed McLoughlin covertly as he fingered tobacco into his pipe bowl. He had liked and trusted this devil once, he reminded himself, when the devil was shackled to a tiresome wife and troubled by his inadequacies. "What do you suggest?"

McLoughlin, who had been up for three nights in a row, rubbed his tired eyes vigorously. "A constant watch on Streech Grange. I'd suggest a minimum of two in each shift. Another thorough search of the grounds, but concentrated up near the Lodge. And, finally, let's be done with Maybury and put our energies into pursuing the Thompson angle."

"With Mrs. Goode as chief suspect?"

McLoughlin pondered for a moment or two. "We can't ignore her certainly, but it doesn't feel right."

Walsh touched his sore nose tenderly. "It feels very right to me, lad."

Mrs. Thompson greeted them with her look of long-suffering martyrdom and showed them into the pristine but characterless room. McLoughlin had a sense of going back in time, as if the intervening days hadn't happened and they were about to explore the same conversation in the same way and with the same results. Walsh produced the shoes, no longer in their polythene bag, but with the odd meagre dusting of powder where an attempt had been made to bring up fingerprints and had failed. He put them on a low coffee table for her to look at. "You said these weren't your husband's shoes, Mrs. Thompson," he accused her mildly.

Her hands fluttered to the cross on her bosom. "Did I? But of course they're Daniel's."

Walsh sighed. "Why did you tell us they weren't?"

The awful tears swam into her eyes and drizzled over her cheeks. "The devil whispers in my ear." Her fingers fumbled at her shirt buttons.

"Give me strength," muttered Walsh.

McLoughlin stood up abruptly and walked to a telephone in one corner. "Pull yourself together, Mrs. Thompson," he ordered sharply. "If you don't, I shall call for an ambulance and have you taken into hospital." She shrank into her chair as if he had slapped her.

Walsh frowned angrily at his Sergeant. "Are these the shoes Mr. Thompson was wearing when he disappeared?" he asked the woman gently.

She examined them closely. "No," she said.

"Are you sure? You told us the other day he had only one pair of brown shoes and he was wearing them the day he went."

Her eyelids fluttered uncontrollably. "Did I?" she gasped. "How very odd. I don't believe I was feeling quite well the last time you came. Daniel loved brown shoes. You can have a look in his cupboard if you like. He had pairs and pairs." She waved her hand at the table. "No, these are the ones Daniel gave to the tramp."

Walsh closed his eyes. His threadbare case against Diana was disintegrating. "What tramp?" he demanded.

"We didn't ask his name," she said. "He came to the door, begging. The shoes were on the stairs to go up and Daniel said he could have them."

"When was this?"

She produced the lace handkerchief and touched it to her eyes. "The day before he left. I remember it very clearly. Daniel was a saint, you know. In spite of all his troubles he had time for a poor beggarman."

Walsh took some papers from his briefcase and flicked through them. "You reported your husband missing on the night of the twenty-fifth of May," he said. "So this tramp came on the twenty-fourth."

"He must have done," she said through her tears.

"What time was it?"

She looked helpless. "Oh, I couldn't remember that. Some time during the day."

"Why was your husband at home during the day, Mrs. Thompson?" asked McLoughlin, looking at his diary. "The twenty-fourth was a Wednesday. Shouldn't he have been at work?"

She pouted. "His beastly business," she said viciously. "All his worries came from that. It wasn't his fault, you know. People expected too much of him. He stopped going in towards the end," she admitted lamely.

"Can you give me a description of this tramp?" asked Walsh.

"Oh, yes," she said. "He'll be able to help you, I'm sure. He was wearing a pair of pink trousers and an old brown hat." She thought back. "He was about sixty, I suppose, not much hair and he smelled terribly. He was very drunk." She paused, a thought suddenly occurring to her. "But you must have found him already," she said, "or why would you have the shoes?"

Walsh picked them up and turned them over. "You said your husband had no connection with the women at Streech Grange, yet one of them, Mrs. Goode, invested money in his business."

A shadow crossed her face. "I didn't know."

"Mrs. Goode claims to have met you," Walsh went on.

There was a long silence. "Possibly. I do recall talking to someone of that name three or four months ago in the street. Daniel told me she was a client." A glint sharpened in her eye. "Brassy blonde woman, over-dressed, with a come-hither look."

"Yes," said Walsh who found the description inept but entertaining.

"She rang me," said Mrs. Thompson, pursing her lips in disapproval, "wanting to know where Daniel was. I told her to mind her own business." She pinioned the Inspector with a basilisk's glare. "Did she have something to do with Daniel's disappearance?"

"We've been going through your husband's books," said McLoughlin glibly from his corner. "We noted the discrepancy. It puzzled us."

"I didn't know she was one of them." She held her handkerchief to dry eyes. "Now you tell me she invested money in his company?" The floodgates opened and this time her tears were of real distress. "How could he?" she sobbed. "How could he? Such terrible women."

Walsh looked at McLoughlin and stood up. "We'll be off now, Mrs. Thompson. Thank you for your help."

She tried without success to stem the flood.

"Have you thought about going away at all?" the younger man asked.

She gave a long shuddering sigh. "The Vicar's arranged a holiday," she said. "I'm going to a hotel by the seaside at the end of the week, just for a few days' rest. It won't do any good though, not without Daniel."

McLoughlin looked very thoughtful as he closed the door behind him.

Chief Inspector Walsh ground his teeth with fury as he jerked the clutch on his brand new Rover and promptly stalled. "What are you looking so damned cheerful about? We've just lost our only promising lead."