Minette Walters - The Ice House

"Too old. I've done a lot of work on the X-rays and the fusion's more advanced than I thought. I'm sure now we're looking at a sixty-five to seventy-year-old. The bottom line's sixty. Maybury would be what? Fifty-four, fifty-five?"

"Fifty-four."

Webster reached for the folder and removed some photographs. "In the report, I've come down against mutilation but it's only an opinion and I'm prepared to be proved wrong. There are some scratches on the bone that might have been made with a sharp knife, but my own view is it wasn't." He pointed to one of the photographs. "Clearly rat droppings."

McLoughlin nodded. "Anything else?"

"I'm in two minds about how he died. It really depends on whether he was wearing any clothes at the time of his death. Have you sorted that one out yet?"

"No."

"I scraped up a lot of earth from the floor round the body. We've analysed it but, frankly, there's a negligible amount of blood in it."

McLoughlin frowned. "Go on."

"Well, that makes it very difficult for me to say with any certainty how he died. If he was nude and he was stabbed, the ground would have been saturated with blood. If he was fully clothed and stabbed, then the clothes would have soaked up most of the blood. You"ll have to find his clothes."

"Hang on a minute, Doctor. You're saying that if he was nude he couldn't have been stabbed, but if he was clothed he might have been?"

"In essence, that's right. There's an outside chance animals might have licked the floor but you'll never get a prosecution on that."

"Does Chief Inspector Walsh know this?"

Webster peered at him over his glasses. "Why do you ask that?"

McLoughlin rumpled his hair. "He hasn't mentioned it." Or had he? McLoughlin could remember very little of what Walsh had said that first night. "OK. Supposing he was nude. How did he die?"

Webster pursed his lips. "Old age. Cold. From the little that's left, it's impossible to say. I couldn't find any traces of barbiturates or asphyxia, but-" He shrugged and tapped the photographs. "Shoe leather. Find the clothes. They'll tell you more than I can."

McLoughlin put his hands on the desk and hunched his shouiders. "We've been conducting a murder enquiry on the basis that he was stabbed in the belly. Now you're telling me he could have died of natural causes. Have you any idea how many hours I've worked in the last week?"

The pathologist chuckled. "About half as many as I have, at a rough guess. I've pulled out the stops on this one. Good grief, man, we don't get cases like this every day. Most bodies have at least ninety per cent of their constituent parts. In any case, until you produce some intact and unstained clothes to prove me wrong, stabbing still looks the most likely. Old men, wandering around nude in search of an ice house to freeze to death in, are quite outside my experience."

McLoughlin straightened. "Touche. Any more surprises?"

"Just a little bit of fun which I've tacked on to the end of the report, so I don't want you coming back and accusing me of putting ideas into your head." He chuckled. "I had another look in the ice house yesterday. It's been sealed for over a week now and the temperature's dropped considerably. The door's as old as the hills but it still fits perfectly. I was impressed. Obviously an extraordinarily efficient method of storing ice. Very cold and very sterile. Must have kept for months."

"And?"

The doctor turned his attention to some letters in front of him. "I've speculated on what sort of condition he would have been in if the door had remained closed until the gardener found him." He scratched his name in spidery writing on the top letter. "Surprisingly good, I think. I'd like to have seen it. Purely out of scientific interest, of course."

He raised his head. McLoughlin and the report had gone.

Sergeant Bob Rogers, who had switched to the afternoon shift after a two-day break and was now on duty at the desk, looked up as McLoughlin came in through the front doors. "Ah, Andy. The very man." He held up the description of Wally Ferris that had circulated round the country. "This tramp you're looking for."

"Found him. Matter of fact, as soon as I've seen the Inspector, I'm off after him again."

"Good, then you can bring him in. He's on our missing persons' list."

McLoughlin walked slowly across the floor. "You've got Wally Ferris down as a missing person? But he's been on the road for years."

Rogers frowned and turned the list for McLoughlin to look at. "See for yourself. The description here fits the one you put out to a T."

McLoughlin looked at what was written. "Did Walsh see this?"

"Left it with him the first night."

McLoughlin reached for the telephone. "Do me a favour, Bob. The next time you see me too hungover to double-check what that bastard does"-he pointed to his chin-"hit me here."

He slouched in a chair in the Chief Inspector's office and watched the thin, bloodless lips dribble smoke. Imperceptibly, the face had changed. Where respect had once fleshed it with a genial wisdom, contempt had uncovered its malice. Phrases registered here and there-"definitely Maybury"… "young man recognised him"… "in the ice house two weeks"… "tramp must have seen him there"… "you missed it completely"… "writing a report"… "domestic problems can't excuse your negligence"-but the bulk of what was said passed over McLoughlin's head. He stared unblinkingly at Walsh's face and thought about the teeth behind the smile.

Walsh jabbed his pipe stem angrily at his Sergeant. "DS Robinson is out rounding up Wally Ferris now and by God, there are going to be no mistakes this time."

The younger man stirred. "What will you do? Show him a photograph of Maybury and suggest he was the dead man? Wally will agree with you just to get out of here."

"Staines has already made the identification. If Wally confirms it, we're on safe ground."

"How old is Staines?"

"Twenty-fiveish."

"So he was fifteen when he last saw Maybury? And he claims to have recognised him in the dark? You'll never get a prosecution on that."

"It's a good case," said Walsh calmly. "We've motive, means and opportunity, plus a wealth of circumstantial evidence. Mutilation to obscure identity, lamb bones to tempt scavengers to the ice house, the removal of the clothes to hinder investigation, Fred's obliteration of tracks and evidence. With all that and the positive IDs, she'll confess this time, I think."

McLoughlin rubbed his unshaven jaw and yawned. "You're forgetting the forensic evidence. That's not so easy to fabricate. Webster won't lie for you."

Walsh's ferocious brows snapped together. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"You know damn well- sir . The dead man was too old to be Maybury. And what happened to all the blood?"

Walsh eyed him with intense dislike. "Get out of here!" he growled.

There was humour in the dark face. "Are you going to tell her defence barrister to bugger off every time he asks a reasonable question?"

"The blood was on the clothes, presumably destroyed with them," said Walsh tightly. "As to Webster's interpretation of his skull X-rays, it is just that, an interpretation. The discrepancy between his position and mine is six years. I say fifty-four. He says sixty. He's wrong. Now get out."

McLoughlin shrugged and stood up, reaching into his pocket and removing a piece of folded paper. "The missing persons' list," he said, dropping it on to the desk. "I took a photocopy. It's yours. Keep it as a memento."

"I've seen it."

McLoughlin studied the pink scalp through the thinning hair. He remembered liking this man once. But that was before Anne's revelations. "So I gather. Bob Rogers showed it to you the night the body was discovered. The case, for all it ever was a case, should have been over by the morning."