Minette Walters - The Ice House

He pulled up the wicker chair and sat on it. "Given time and room to breathe, perhaps they will."

She thought about that. "You don't miss much, do you?"

"That depends. We've caught your assailant." He stretched out his long legs and gave her all the details. "Paddy wants me to join him in starting a brewery."

She smiled. "Do you like him?"

"He's a bastard."

"But do you like him?"

He nodded. "He's his own man. I like him very much."

"Will you join him?"

"I shouldn't think so. It would be too easy to get addicted to that Special of his." He looked at her through half-closed lids. "Jon's going back to London tomorrow. He asked me to find out if you wanted your love letters returned. He says he can try and fish them out before he goes."

She looked at her hands. "Do you know where he's put them?"

"I gather they're in a fissure in the old oak tree behind the ice house. He's a little worried about whether or not he can retrieve them. He asked me to give him a hand." He studied her face. "Should I, Cattrell?"

"No. Let them stay there." She raised her head to look at him. "When I'm firing on all cylinders again I'll take some cement and stick it into every crack in the oak tree so the damn things never see the light of day again. I had to ask Jon to hide them-he was the only one there when Walsh took me away-but he's the last person in the world I want looking at them. Oh God, I wish they were love letters." She fell silent.

"What are they?"

"Photographs."

"Of David Maybury?" She nodded. "After Phoebe had killed him?" She nodded again.

"One of your famous insurance policies, I suppose."

She sighed. "I never thought we'd get away with it. I kept a record in case the body was found and Phoebe needed a defence." Her face clouded. "I developed them myself. Awful, awful pictures, showing David two weeks after Phoebe killed him, showing Phoebe herself, looking so damn mad you wouldn't believe it was the same woman, showing what the vandals did to the house, showing the tomb I built in the cellar. I never want to see them again."

"Tell me, Anne."

She took a deep breath. "David came back the night after the house had been ransacked. It was inevitable he would turn up some time, but to choose that night-" She shook her head. "Not that he knew, of course. He wouldn't have come back if he'd known. The doors were barred with stacked-up furniture, so he came in through the cellar window. Phoebe was in the kitchen and she heard him stumbling around in the dark downstairs." Her eyes searched his. "You must understand how frightened she was. She thought the drunks had come back to kill her and the children."

"I do understand."

"She picked up the heaviest thing she could find, the wood-chopping axe by the Aga, and when he came through the cellar door she split his head in two."

"Did she recognise him?"

"You mean, did she know it was David when she killed him? I shouldn't think so. It all happened too fast. She certainly recognised him afterwards."

There was a long silence. "You could have brought the police in then," he said at last. "With the evidence of what had happened the night before, she could have pleaded self-defence. She would have got off with no trouble at all."

She stared at her hands. "I would have done if I'd known about it. But Jon didn't phone me for a fortnight." She raised her hands to her eyes to block out the nightmare pictures. "Phoebe has absolutely no recollection of that two-week period. The only thing she had the sense to do before she went into shock was to shove David's body back down the cellar steps and bolt the door. The children have never known about it. Jon only phoned me because for two weeks she had kept them all locked in her bedroom, living on a diet of tinned food that she'd rescued from the larder. He took the key while she was asleep, let himself out of the bedroom and kept ringing my number till I answered." Tears welled in her eyes, spilling over her tired lids, as she remembered. "He was only eleven, hardly more than a baby really, and he said he was doing his best but he thought Jane and Mummy needed a proper person to look after them." She dashed the tears from her eyes. "Oh God, I'm sorry. It just makes me cry every time I think of it. He must have been so frightened. I came straight down." She looked suddenly very tired. "I couldn't possibly go to the police, McLoughlin. She was completely off her head and Jon and Jane would hardly speak. I thought Phoebe had vandalised the house herself after killing David. There was no way of proving which came first. And if I thought that, what the hell conclusion would Walsh have come to? It was a nightmare. All I could think of doing was to put the children before everything else, because that is what Phoebe's father had asked me to do when he set up the trust. And putting them first, I decided, meant keeping their mother out of a prison hospital." She sighed. "So, over a period of days, I bought small quantities of grey stone from DIY shops all over South Hampshire. I had to be able to fit it in Phoebe's car. I didn't dare get anyone to deliver. Then I locked myself in the cellar and bricked that revolting, stinking mess that had once been David behind a fake wall." She gagged on bile. "He's still there. The wall has never been disturbed. Diana went down and checked after Fred found that thing in the ice house. We were so afraid he had somehow got out."

"Does Fred know?"

"No. Only Diana, Phoebe and I."

"And Phoebe knows what she did?"

"Oh, yes. It took a while, but she remembered it all in the end. She wanted to confess about four years ago, but we persuaded her out of it. Jane at fourteen was down to four and a half stone. Diana and I said her peace of mind was more important than Phoebe's." She took another deep breath. "It meant we've never been able to sell the Grange, of course. Sod's Law predicts that whoever buys it will want to rip the guts out of the cellar to put in a Jacuzzi." She smiled faintly. "At times it has been quite unbearable. But when I look at the three of them now, I know it was all worth it." Her damp eyes pleaded for a reassurance she would never put into words.

He took one of her hands. "What can I say, woman? Except that next time I tell you how to run your life, remind me that you know best." He played with her fingers, pulling at them. "I could use your photographs of the house to smash Walsh and Barnes for what they've done to Phoebe."

"No," she said immediately. "No one knows they exist, except you and me. Phoebe and Diana don't know. Let's leave them where they are. I see death too often in my nightmares as it is. Phoebe wouldn't want it, anyway. Walsh was right. She did kill David."

He nodded and looked away. It was a while before he spoke. "My wife came back to me tonight."

She forced herself a smile. "Are you glad?"

"As a matter of fact I am." She tried to extract her hand tactfully from his, but he wouldn't let her.

"Then I'm pleased for you. Will it work this time, do you think?"

"Oh, yes. I'm toying with the idea of leaving the police force. What do you think?"

"It'll make things easier at home. The divorce rate amongst policemen is phenomenal."

"Forget the practicalities. Advise me, for myself."

"I can't," she said. "It's something you will have to decide for yourself. All I can say is that, whatever decision you come to, make sure it's one you can live with." She looked at him shyly. "I was mistaken before, you know. I think you were probably right to go into the police, and I think the police would be the poorer without you."

He nodded. "And you? What will you do now?"

She smiled brightly. "Oh, the usual. Storm a few citadels, seduce a sculptor or two."

He grinned. "Well, before you do that, will you give me a hand in the cellar one night? I think it's time that wall came down, and David Maybury left this house for good. Don't worry. It won't be unpleasant. After nine years there will be very little left and this time we'll get rid of him properly."