Minette Walters - The Ice House

Peter's face worked unpleasantly. "Bastard!" he hissed.

Paddy let it pass. "People laughed at her, of course. They would. Social climbing's a spectator sport in a place like this, and Dilys was never any good at it." He stroked his chin. "She's a very unintelligent woman. She couldn't grasp the first rule, that class is in inverse proportion to its relevance." His eyes flickered over Peter. "You'll need a translation, lad. The classier you are the less you have to talk about it."

Barnes bunched his fists. "Fuck you, Paddy. Cheap Irish trash, that's all you are." Fleetingly, McLoughlin had the odd impression that the boy was enjoying himself.

A deep laugh rumbled in Paddy's throat. "I'll take it as a compliment, lad. It's a long time since anyone's recognised the Irish in me." He dodged a flying fist. "Jesus Christ!" he said crossly. "You're even more stupid than your mother, despite your fancy education and the puffed-up ideas she's given you." He wagged a finger at Phoebe. "It's your fault, woman. You made a laughingstock of her and, believe me, you don't do that to the Dilys Barneses of this world. She has a poisoned callus on her soul for every slight, true or imagined, that she's suffered, and the biggest and the most venomous is the one you gave her. She's fed her venom to this little creep by the bucketload."

Phoebe looked at him in astonishment. "I hardly know her. She made a scene by the village pond once but I was far too angry to laugh."

"Before David went missing," he prompted. "He did the real damage. He repeated the story in the pub and it was all round the village before you could say Jack Robinson."

Phoebe stared at him blankly and shook her head.

He reached down to scratch the ears of the old Labrador lying at his feet. "When Benson was little more than a puppy? Dilys caught him humping her Pekinese." His eyes twinkled encouragingly. "Harangued you over the telephone for not keeping him under better control."

"Oh, good God!" Phoebe clapped her hands to her face. "Not my Barnes pun. But it was a joke," she protested. "You're not going to tell me she took it personally. I was referring to her Peke. The damn thing was on heat and she let it out, reeking of pheromones."

Paddy's great chuckle boomed about the room, stirring the heightened adrenaline into a responsive froth.

Phoebe's voice shook. "It was all her fault anyway. She would keep calling Benson a dirty dog." Quite unconsciously, she took on the refined tones of Dilys Barnes. " 'Your dirty dog should be ashamed of himself, Mrs. Maybury.' God, it was funny. She couldn't bring herself to say that Benson had rogered her ghastly bitch." She wiped her eyes on her sleeve. "So I said, I was very sorry but, as she knew better than I, you couldn't stop dirty dogs poking into smelly barns." She looked up, caught Diana's eye and laughed out loud. The room quivered.

Eddie Staines, not too bright but with a well-developed sense of humour, grinned broadly. "That's good. Never heard it before. That why they call old man Barnes 'the dirty dog' then? God, struth!" He doubled up as Peter Barnes, without any warning, swung a booted foot and kicked him in the groin. "Ah, Jesus!" He backed away, clutching his balls.

McLoughlin watched this little sally with amused detachment. "And presumably Dilys got lumbered with Smelly?" he said to Paddy.

The big man grinned. "For a month or two, maybe. Far as I recall, Dirty Dog stuck to Tony longer than Smelly Barnes stuck to Dilys, but the damage was done. Takes herself too seriously, you see. When you're eaten up with frustrated ambition, there's no room for humour." His eyes rested on the bitter young face of the boy. "Respectability," he said with heavy irony, "it's a sickness with her. With this one, too. They won't be laughed at."

And that, McLoughlin knew, was as far as Paddy could take him. He had been suspicious enough of Peter Barnes to set him up, but he had no proof that the lad had struck Anne any more than he had proof that Dilys initiated all the slander against Phoebe. "She's far too cunning," he had said that morning. "She's a type. Pathologically jealous. You come across them now and then. They're usually women, invariably inadequate and their spite is always directed against their own sex because that's the sex they're jealous of. They are completely vicious. As often as not, the target is their own daughter."

"So why single out Mrs. Maybury?" McLoughlin had asked.

"Because she was the first lady of Streech and you buggers dropped her in the shit. For ten years, Dilys has been wetting herself because she can look down on Mrs. Maybury of Streech Grange. God knows, she was never going to do it any other way."

"What did she do?"

"Piled shit on shit, of course. People were ready to believe anything after you lot left, and murder was the least of the garbage Dilys fed them."

"What a sewer you live in, Paddy." McLaughlin spoke quietly, his voice level.

The big man surprised him. "If it is, it's Phoebe's fault," he had observed. "She's the focus for it all. Whatever the rights and wrongs, any normal woman would have sold up and moved on. The Grange isn't worth the price she's had to pay for it."

No, McLoughlin thought, Paddy was wrong about that. The Grange was worth whatever Phoebe had to pay, and she would go on paying because it was cheap at the price. The real cost was being borne by the people who loved her. He glanced across at her with a sudden irritation. God damn the woman! People loved her or hated her. The one thing no one seemed to feel was indifference.

"OK," he said abruptly into the silence, "you"-he jerked a finger at Eddie Staines-"are going to listen to a few home truths. You're not the brightest thing on two legs but you have to be brighter than this dickhead here." He scowled at Barnes, then held up a finger. "Number one, Eddie. Mrs. Maybury did not murder her parents. Colonel and Mrs. Gallagher died because their brakes didn't work, and their brakes didn't work because K.C. hadn't serviced the car properly. Had he done so, he would have found the corroded brake hose. Got that?"

"Yeah, but who corroded it?" asked Eddie triumphantly. "That's the question."

"Read the coroner's report," said McLoughlin wearily. "Colonel Gallagher took the car to K.C. because the brakes felt soft. He wrote a note to that effect and the note, in his handwriting, is in the file. K.C. ignored it." He held up a second finger. "Number two. Mr. David Maybury walked out of this house alive ten years ago. No one murdered him. He legged it because he had finally run through all of Mrs. Maybury's money and he didn't fancy working for his living."

"So who's arguing? Saw the bugger myself three months ago. Mind you, he's dead now." Eddie glared at Phoebe. "Hell of a way to get your own back, lady."

McLoughlin held up a third finger. "Number three, Eddie. That man wasn't David Maybury."

He looked sceptical. "Oh, yeah?"

"Oh, yeah. It was K.C. And it's not a matter for debate. It is a matter of proven fact."

There was a long silence. Very slowly, recognition dawned. "Hell, happen it was, too. Knew I knew him. But that Inspector of yours was damn sure it was Maybury."

Paddy snorted. "The only people who are ever damn sure of anything are idiots and politicians. Same difference, some would say."

They could almost follow Eddie's thought processes in the contortions of his face. "Still, I don't see it makes much difference. We're back to square one. If it was K.C. she did in this time, then stands to reason she did her old man in ten years ago. The only proof you thought she didn't was that I thought the old guy was him. You follow me?"

"I follow you," McLoughlin told him. "But the whole thing stinks. Didn't it occur to you that if it was Maybury this time, then you've been beating up on an innocent woman for ten years?"