Minette Walters - The Ice House

It was the element of surprise that held everyone frozen. Like a slow motion sequence they watched him cross the room, release the safety catch on his mother's shotgun, shove the barrel between Barnes's legs and pull the trigger. The explosion left them deaf. Through a dense cloud of dust they saw, rather than heard, the screams that issued from the boy's writhing mouth. They watched the pool of liquid collect on the floor at his feet.

McLoughlin, stunned, tried to intervene, only to find a pair of thick arms clamped around his chest, holding him back. "Jon!" he yelled, his voice muffled by the ringing echoes in his ears. "For God's sake! He's not worth it!"

"Leave him be, sir." It was Fred's voice. "He's waited a long time for this."

Shocked beyond belief, McLoughlin watched Jonathan Maybury drive Peter Barnes against the wall and ram the shotgun into the boy's screaming mouth.

Gap-toothed where the windows yawned, its finery ruffled by birdshot, the old house slumbered on, a silent witness to many worse things in its four-hundred-year history. Within half an hour, three patrol cars had arrived to ferry the culprits to the Station with PC Gavin Williams in firm but reluctant charge. "It's down to you, Sarge," he protested. "You should be taking them in."

"Nn-nn. They're all yours. I've some unfinished business here."

"What do I do about Maybury, Sarge?"

McLoughlin folded his arms and didn't say anything.

"Barnes is bound to mention it."

"Let him."

"Shouldn't we charge Maybury?"

"What with? Accidental discharge of a licenced firearm?"

"You'll never get away with that. Eddie, for one, knows it wasn't an accident."

McLoughlin was amused. "I think you'll find Eddie's somewhat disenchanted with Peter Barnes. Apart from anything else, he doesn't take kindly to being set up as a fall-guy for Barnes's warped sense of humour. He tells me he and his mates were looking the other way when the accident happened."

Williams looked worried. "What do I say?"

"That's up to you, Gavin. I can't help you I'm afraid. When the gun went off, I had my back turned, taking down the names and addresses of the intruders. After that I couldn't see anything for dust."

"Hell, Sarge!"

"I thought you were taking down the names and addresses of all the witnesses to the vandalism. It's standard police procedure in incidents of this sort."

The constable pulled a wry face. "And how do you explain Barnes's confession? I mean if it was just an accident why would he want to stitch himself up? Jesus, Sarge, he was so bloody terrified, he was pissing all over the floor."

McLoughlin clapped him amiably on the shoulder. "Is that right, Gavin? I couldn't see a damn thing because of the dust in my eyes. So don't ask me what loosened his tongue, because I couldn't tell you, unless it was the shock of the gun going off. Explosions react on people in different ways. Left me temporarily blinded but with my ears working overtime. Some sort of compensation effect, I imagine. Couldn't see worth a damn, but I heard every word the little weasel said."

Williams shook his head. "I was in a blue funk. I thought the doctor shot his balls off."

So did I, thought McLoughlin. So did I. And so it seemed had Peter Barnes. Swept back by the violence of Jonathan's assault and numbed by the blast of the shotgun between his legs which had discharged itself harmlessly into Phoebe's drawing-room wall, he had burst into tears of self-pity as Jonathan rammed the barrel against his teeth and threatened to pull the second trigger. "I didn't mean to do it," he babbled. "I was creepy-crawling the house. I didn't mean to do it. I didn't mean to do it," he screamed. "She came back. The silly bitch came back. I had to hit her."

Jonathan's finger whitened on the trigger. "Now tell me about nine years ago."

"Oh, God, help me! Somebody help me!" The front of his trousers was saturated with urine.

"TELL ME!" roared Jonathan, his face white and drawn with rage. "Someone ransacked this house. WHO WAS IT?"

"It was my dad," the boy screamed, sobbing convulsively. "He got drunk with some friends." His eyes widened alarmingly as Jonathan started to squeeze the trigger. "It's not my fault. Mum's always giggling about it. It's not my fault. It was my dad." His eyes rolled into the back of his head and he collapsed on the floor.

Jonathan lowered the gun and looked across at McLoughlin. "We never knew who it was. Mum, Jane and I locked ourselves in the cellar and waited till they'd gone. I have never been so frightened in my life. We could hear them shouting and breaking all the furniture. I thought they were going to kill us." He shook his head and looked down at the twitching boy. "I swore I'd make them pay if I ever found out who they were. They used the house as a toilet and wrote 'Murdering Bitch' all over the walls in tomato ketchup. I was only eleven. I thought it was blood." His jaw tightened.

McLoughlin shook off Fred's bear hug and started to slap the dust out of his clothes. "That was a hell of a close shave, Jon. What happened, for God's sake? Did you trip on some broken glass or something?"

"That's it, Sergeant," said Fred impassively. "I was watching. Could have been quite nasty if young Jon hadn't kept his wits about him."

"Yes, well, do something with the flaming thing before it goes off again." He watched Fred take the gun, break it open and remove the second cartridge. "Oh, for Christ's sake, Barnes, get up and stop belly-aching. You're damn lucky Dr. Maybury had the good sense to keep the barrel down." He hauled him to his feet and snapped on the handcuffs. "You're under arrest. Constable Williams will read you your rights."

The boy was still sobbing. "He tried to kill me."

"There's gratitude for you," said Paddy, shaking plaster from his hair. "Jon nearly blows his own foot off to protect the little scum and all he can do is accuse him." He looked at Jonathan's stricken face, saw the obvious danger signals, and glanced across at Fred with a Gary Lineker finger to eye gesture.

Calmly Fred took the boy's arm and steered him towards the door into the hall. "I suggest we check on the rest of the house, sir. I don't like the idea of Miss Cattrell alone upstairs." He closed the door firmly behind them.

Half an hour, thought McLoughlin, and it seemed more like a year. He smoothed the stubble on his jaw and stared thoughtfully at the young constable. "I can't help you, Gavin. You're a good copper and it's not my place to tell you what to do. You must make your own decision."

The young man glanced through the drawing-room door where Fred was helping Phoebe restore order. "I agreed to do the patrols with you because of him and the old lady really. They're decent folks. Seemed wrong to abandon them to yobbos."

"I agree," said McLoughlin dryly.

He frowned. "If you want my opinion, the Chief Inspector's got some explaining to do on this one. You should hear what Molly has to say about when she and Fred first came here. The house had been totally vandalised. Mrs. Maybury and the two kids were living in one bedroom which Miss Cattrell and the lad, Jonathan, had managed to clean up. According to Molly, Mrs. Maybury and Jane were so shell-shocked by the whole thing they didn't know if they were coming or going. Molly says you could still smell the piss even after three months, and the mould on the tomato ketchup had started to grow inwards, into the walls. It took them weeks to scrub the place clean. What's the Chief got against them, Sarge? Why wouldn't he believe them?"

Because, thought McLoughlin, he couldn't afford to. It was Walsh himself who, all those years ago, had created the climate of hate in which this woman and her two young children could be terrorised. For him, and for whatever reason, Phoebe had always been guilty, and his prolonged and hostile hounding of her had led inevitably to others meting out justice when he failed to prove it himself. "He's a small man, Gavin," was all he said.