Minette Walters - The Ice House

"No," she said. "I can't even remember what he looked like. It was so long ago and Mum's burnt all his photos. I couldn't possibly recognise his breathing." She watched him gather his bits and pieces together. "Have I been any good?"

"Good?" On impulse, he reached forward and gave her hands a quick impersonal squeeze. "I'd say your godma's going to be pretty pleased with you, young lady. Forget about fighting battles, you've just scaled your own Mount Everest. And it's all downhill from now on."

Phoebe was sitting on a garden seat beside the front door, chin on hands, staring unseeingly at the flowerbeds which bordered the gravel drive. "May I join you?" he asked her.

She nodded.

They sat in silence for some minutes. "The dividing line between a fortress and a prison is a fine one," he remarked softly. "And ten years is a long time. Do you not think, Mrs. Maybury, that you've served your sentence?"

She sat up straight and gestured bitterly in the direction of Streech Village and beyond. "Ask them," she said. "It was they who put up the barbed wire."

"Was it?"

Instinctively, defensively, she pressed her glasses up her nose. "Of course. It was never my choice to live like this. But what do you do when people turn against you? Beg them to be kind?" She gave a harsh laugh. "I wouldn't do it."

He stared at his hands. "It wasn't your fault," he said quietly. "Jane understands that. He was what he was. Nothing you did or didn't do would have made any difference."

She withdrew into herself and let the silence lengthen. Above them swallows and house martens dipped and darted and a lark swelled its little throat and sang. At long last she took a handkerchief from her sleeve and held it to her eyes. "I don't think I like you very much," she said.

He looked at her. "We all carry our burden of guilt-it's human nature. Listen to anyone newly bereaved or divorced and you'll hear the same story-if only I had done this… if only I tyadn't done that… if only I had been kinder… if only I had realised. Our capacity for self-punishment is enormous. The trick is to know when to stop." He rested a light hand on her shoulder. "You've been punishing yourself for far too long. Can you not see that?"

She turned her face away from him. "I should have known," she said into her handkerchief. "He was hurting her and I should have known."

"How could you have known? You're no different from the rest of us," he told her brutally. "Jane loved you, she wanted to protect you. If you blame yourself, you take away everything she tried to do for you."

There was another long silence while she fought to control her tears. "I'm her mother. There was only me to save her, but when she needed me I never came. I can't bear to think about it." A convulsive tremor rocked the shoulder beneath his hand.

He didn't stop to consider whether it was a good idea but reacted instinctively, drawing her into the fold of his arm and letting her weep. They were not the first tears she had shed, he guessed, but they were the first she had shed for her lost self, that self who had come into an enchanted world, wide-eyed and sure that she could do anything. The triumph of the human condition was to face one small defeat after another and to survive them relatively intact. The tragedy, as for Phoebe, was to face the worst defeat too soon and never to recover. His heart, still bruised and battered, ached for her.

He stopped his car on the bend before the straight stretch of drive and got out. Close, Jane had said, which meant in all probability crouched among the rhododendron bushes along the edge of the way. His searches so far had been disappointing. While he had set a team to scour the ice house for a link with Mrs. Thompson, he himself had gone on hands and knees about the terrace for signs of Anne's attacker. If what he believed had happened, there would have been ample evidence of it. But Walsh was right. Bar some dislodged bricks and a cigarette end which was a brand that neither Fred nor Anne smoked, there was nothing. No weapon-he'd examined every brick and stone minutely for bloodstains; no footprints-the lawn was too hard from lack of rain and the flagstones too clean from Molly's regular sweepings; no blood, not even the tiniest speck, to prove that Anne had been hit outside and not inside. He had begun to wonder if he'd put too much faith in Phoebe's certainty-ten years was a long time and people changed-and she admitted herself it had only happened the once. But if she were wrong or if she were lying? He couldn't bring himself to explore either alternative. Not yet.

He sank to hands and knees again and began to inch along the drive. If there was anything, it wouldn't be easy to find. A team had been over here once without success but then he had told them to concentrate further down, near where he had caught her and where, for one brief moment, he had had the feeling that he and Jane were being watched. He crawled along the left-hand side, knees aching, eyes constantly alert, but after half an hour he had found nothing.

He sat back wearily on his heels and swore at the injustice of it. Just once, he thought, let me be lucky. Just once, let something come my way that I haven't had to work my bloody butt off for.

He moved to the right-hand side of the drive and inched back towards the bend. Predictably, he was almost at the car before he found it. He took a deep breath and thumped his fist on the tarmac, growling and shaking his head from side to side like a mad dog. Had he only started on the right-hand side, he would have found the damn thing over an hour ago and saved himself a lot of trouble.

"You are right, son?" asked a voice.

McLoughlin looked over his shoulder to find Fred staring at him. He grinned self-consciously and stood up. "Fine," he assured him. "I've just found the bastard who did for Miss Cattrell."

"I don't see him," muttered Fred, eyeing McLoughlin doubtfully.

McLoughlin crouched down and parted the bushes, sweeping leaves away from something on the ground. "Look at that. The forensic boys are going to have a field day."

With much panting and heaving Fred squatted beside him. "Well, I'll be blowed," he said, "it's a Paddy Clarke Special."

Nestling in the debris under the rhododendron, beautifully camouflaged, was an old-fashioned stone beer bottle with a dark brown crust clinging to its bottom. MeLoughlin, who had been thinking only in terms of some decent fingerprints and what looked like the imprint of a trainer in the soft damp earth beneath the dense bushes, flicked him a curious glance. "What on earth is a Paddy Clarke Special?"

Fred lumbered unhappily to his feet. "There's no harm in it, not really. It's more of a hobby than a business, though I don't s'pose the tax man would agree. He's got a room at the back of his garage where he makes it. Uses only traditional materials and leaves it to mature till it has the kick of a horse and tastes like nectar. There's not a beer to touch Paddy's Special." He stared glumly at the rhododendron. "You have to drink it on the premises. He sets great store by those bottles, says they breathe flavour in a way glass never does." He looked immensely troubled. "I've never known him let one out of the pub."

"What's he like? The type to beat up women?"

The old man shuffled his feet. "No, never that. He's a good sort. Mind you, the wife's got little time for him on account of he's married and not too particular about his vows, but-hit Miss Cattrell?" He shook his head. "No, he'd not do that. He and she are"-he looked away-"friends, as you might say."

An entry in Anne's diary swam before his eyes. "P. is a mystery. He tells me he screws fifty women a year, and I believe him, yet he remains the most considerate of lovers." "Does he smoke?"

Fred, who had supplied Paddy with many a cigarette over the years, thought the question odd. "Other people's," he said warily. "His wife's a bit of a tyrant, doesn't approve of smoking."