Minette Walters - The Ice House

"Well, I don't like it and I'm going to say something. It's not what I joined the Force for. I asked Molly why they didn't call the police in when it happened, and do you know what she said? 'Because madam knew better than to ask help from the enemy.' " He scuffed his foot shyly against the floor. "I'm planning to take Molly and Fred around and about a bit, no fuss, nothing like that, but I'd like them to know we're not all enemies."

McLoughlin smiled down on the bent head. If Williams wanted to wrap up his affection in the guise of community policing, that was fine with him. "I'm told she makes a damn good lardy cake."

"Bloody brilliant!" The young eyes sparkled. "You should try some."

"I will." He pushed the lad towards the front door and the waiting cars. "It won't do Eddie and his mates any harm to spend the night in a police cell, so book 'em and lock ' em up. If Mrs. Maybury wants to press charges in the morning, then we'll fill out all the sheets then. But I don't think she will. She laid the first stone of a bridge this evening."

"And Barnes?"

"Keep him on ice for me. I'll be in first thing tomorrow morning. I'll take his statement myself. And Gavin?"

"Yes?"

"He would have talked anyway. He couldn't have resisted it. He's too arrogant to keep quiet for long. You'll see. Tomorrow, without any pressure from me, he'll give us the whole works."

A weight seemed to drop from the lad's shoulders. "Yeah. Anything else I should do?"

"Bell his parents in a couple of hours, three o'clock, say, tell them we're holding their son, and get them down to the Station. But, whatever you do, don't let them talk to him. Keep them waiting through the dark hours till I get there. Just tell them he's confessed to ten years of persecution. I want them softened up."

Williams looked doubtful. "You'll never get a prosecution after ten years, will you?"

"No." McLoughlin grinned. "But for a few hours, I can sure as hell make them think I will."

Paddy was another who took his leave reluctantly. "You'll have to come out of retreat now," he told Phoebe and Diana. "One way and another the door's been forced. It's a damn good thing too. It's time you made a bit of an effort. Come down to the pub tomorrow. It's as good a place as any to start." He shook hands with McLoughlin. "Jack in the job, Andy, and join me in starting a brewery. It'll need a strong hand at the helm."

"I don't know the first thing about brewing."

"I wouldn"t want you for your brewing skills. That's my province. Organise the business, find me customers, get me whole thing rolling. You'd be good at that. I need someone I can trust."

McLoughlin grinned. "You mean someone Customs and Excise trusts? You're too anarchic for me, Paddy. I'd be a nervous wreck in three months, trying to remember what I was supposed to be hiding."

Paddy gave a roar of laughter and punched him on the shoulder. "Think about it, old son. I enjoy your company." He left.

Jonathan had retreated to an armchair where he sat in embarrassed silence, studiously avoiding everyone's gaze. His anger had long since abated and he was desperately trying to come to terms with what he had done to Peter Barnes. He could find no excuses for his violence. Fred coughed politely. "If there's nothing more I can do, madam," he said to Phoebe, "I'll be heading back to the Lodge. The wife and young Jane will be wondering how we got on." Jane had been sleeping at the Lodge with Molly for the past few nights while Fred patrolled the grounds with McLoughlin and PC Williams.

"Oh, Fred," said Phoebe with genuine contrition, "I'm so sorry. I am so sorry. I never really thought you were one of them. It was the shock. You do believe that, don't you? I'll take you down for your tetanus tomorrow."

Fred looked at his bandaged hand, washed, disinfected, cried over and dressed by Phoebe and Diana amidst a welter of apology. "I think, madam," he said severely, "that if one more word is said on this matter I shall be forced to give in my notice. I can stand a lot of things, but I can't stand fuss. Is that understood? Good. Now, if you will excuse me?"

"I'll drive you," said Phoebe immediately.

"I'd rather the young doctor drove me, if that's all right. There's something I'd like his opinion on."

The door closed behind them.

Phoebe turned away to hide the dampness in her eyes. "God broke the mould after He made Fred and Molly," she said gruffly. "They never deserved any of this and yet they've stuck with us through thick and thin. I've made up my mind, Di," she went on fiercely, "I will brave that wretched pub tomorrow. Someone's got to make the first move and it might as well be me. Fred's been going there for years and no one, apart from Paddy, ever talks to him. I'm damn well going to do something about it."

Diana looked at her friend's, furious face. "What, for instance? Hold your shotgun on them till they agree to talk?"

Phoebe laughed. "No. I am going to let bygones be bygones."

"Well, in that case, I'll come with you." She looked at McLoughlin. "Can we do that? It's all over now, isn't it? The Inspector was very curt over the phone but he seems to have absolved us."

He nodded. "Yes, you're absolved."

"Was it suicide?" asked Phoebe.

"I doubt it. He was a confused old man whose memories of Streech survived all his other memories. I think he made his way back here, looking for somewhere to die."

"But how could he possibly have known where the ice house was?"

"From the pamphlets your husband had printed. If you're touting for tourists, a garage is the obvious place to leave them. On paper, K.C. probably knew this garden better than you did."

"Still. To remember it after all this time."

"But the memory is like that," said Diana. "Old people remember every detail of their childhood but can't remember what they had for breakfast." She shook her head. "I never knew the man but I've always felt very bitter about what happened to Phoebe's parents and the lies he told afterwards. Still"-she shrugged-"to die like that, alone and with nothing. It's very sad. It may sound silly, but I wish he hadn't taken his clothes off. It makes it worse, somehow, as if he were pointing out the futility of living. Naked we're born and naked we die. I have this awful feeling that, for him, everything that happened in between was worthless."

McLoughlin stretched. "I wouldn't get too sentimental about that, if I were you, Mrs. Goode. We've only Wally's word for it that the corpse was nude. I think he's probably a little ashamed of himself. There's a world of difference between taking some unwanted, folded clothes and undressing a corpse to rob it." He looked at his watch. "Anything else?"

"We'd like to thank you," said Phoebe.

"What for?"

"Everything. Jane. Jonathan. Anne. Us."

He nodded and made for the door into the hall. The two women looked at each other.

"You will be coming back, won't you?" said Diana in a rush.

He laughed quietly. "If I have to, I will."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Phoebe chuckled. "I think it means that he wasn't planning on leaving. He can't come back if he's never gone, can he?"

The gun-shot and shouting had dragged Anne from a deep barbiturate-induced sleep to a lighter sleep where dreams enacted themselves in glorious Technicolor. There were no nightmares, just an endless parade of places and faces, some only half-remembered, which fluttered across the screen of her sleeping mind in surrealistic juxtaposition. And, somewhere, irritatingly, McLoughlin was tapping the double-glazing in the windows of a huge citadel and telling her it needed two people to lift it if they weren't to be buried alive.

She sat up with a start and looked at him. Her bedside light was on. "I dreamt that Jon and Lizzie were getting married," she said, isolating the one memory from the cloud of others which vanished forever.