Eighteen

WITHIN TWENTY-FOUR hours Anne had made such a rapid recovery that she was suffering severe nicotine withdrawal symptoms and announced her intention of discharging herself. Jonathan told her not to be such a fool. ‘You nearly died. If it hadn’t been for the Sergeant, you probably would have done. Your body needs time to recover and get over the shock.’

‘Damn,’ she said roundly, ‘and I can’t remember a thing about it. No near-death experiences, no free-floating on the ceiling, no tunnels with shining lights at the end. What an absolute bugger. I could have written it all up. That’s what comes of being an atheist.’

Jonathan, who for various reasons had come to view McLoughlin as a bit of a hero, certainly not all to do with coming to Anne’s rescue, took her to task. ‘Have you thanked him?’

She scowled from him to the WPC beside the bed. ‘What for? He was only doing his job.’

‘Saving your life.’

She glowered. ‘Frankly, the way I feel at the moment, it wasn’t worth saving. Life should be effortless, painless and fun. None of those apply here. It’s a gulag, run by sadists.’ She nodded in the direction of the ward. ‘That Sister should be locked up. She laughs every time she sticks the needles into me and trills that she’s doing it for my own good. God, I need a fag. Smuggle some in for me, Jonny. I’ll puff away under the sheets. No one will know.’

He grinned. ‘Until the bed goes up in flames.’

‘There you are, you’re laughing,’ she accused. ‘What’s the matter with everyone? Why do you all find it so hilarious?’

WPC Brownlow, on duty on the other side of the bed, sniggered.

Anne cast a baleful eye upon her. ‘I don’t even know what you’re doing here,’ she snapped. ‘I’ve told you all I can remember, which is absolutely zero.’ She had been unable to talk freely to anyone, which was undoubtedly why the bloody woman had been stationed there, and it was driving her mad.

‘Orders,’ said the WPC calmly. ‘The Inspector wants someone on hand when your memory comes back.’

Anne closed her eyes and thought of all the ways she could murder McLoughlin the minute she got her hands on him again.

He for his part had collated the information on the tramp and relayed his description through the county. He rang a colleague in Southampton and asked him, for a favour, to check round the hostels there.

‘What makes you think he came here?’

‘Logic,’ said McLoughlin. ‘He was heading your way and your Council’s more sympathetic to the homeless than most in this area.’

‘But two months, Andy. He’ll have been on his way weeks ago.’

‘I know. It’s a good description though. Someone might remember him. If we had a name, it’d make things easier. See what you can do.’

‘I’m pretty busy at the moment.’

‘Aren’t we all. Cheers.’ He put an end to the grumbles by the simple expedient of replacing the receiver, abandoned a cup of congealing plastic coffee and left in a hurry before his friend could ring back with a string of excuses. With a light conscience, he set off for the Grange and a chat with Jane Maybury who had announced herself ready to answer questions.

He asked her if she would prefer to have her mother present, but she shook her head and said no, it wasn’t necessary. Phoebe, with a faintly troubled smile, showed them into her drawing-room and closed the door. They sat by the French windows. The girl was very pale, with a skin like creamy alabaster, but McLoughlin guessed this was her natural colouring. She was wearing a pair of faded jeans and a baggy tee-shirt with BRISTOL CITY emblazoned across the chest. He thought how incongruous it looked on the waif-like body.

She read his mind. ‘It’s the triumph of hope over experience,’ she said. ‘I go in for a lot of that.’

He smiled. ‘I suppose everyone does, one way or another. If at first you don’t succeed and all that.’

She settled herself a little nervously. ‘What do you want to ask me?’

‘Just a few things but, first, I want you to understand that I have no desire to distress you. If you find my questions upsetting, please say so and we’ll stop. If at any point you decide you’d rather talk to a policewoman, again just tell me and I’ll arrange it.’

She nodded. ‘I understand.’

He took her back to the night of the assault and quickly ran through her account of watching television and hearing the sound of the breaking glass. ‘Your brother was the first to go downstairs, I think you said.’

‘Yes. He decided it was a burglar and told Lizzie and me to stay where we were until he called for us.’

‘But did you stay?’

‘No. Lizzie insisted on going downstairs after him to get through to Diana’s wing. We didn’t know at that stage which window had been broken. I said I’d check Mum’s rooms and Jon ran through to where you were.’

‘What happened then?’

‘Mum and Diana arrived in the hall at the same time as us. Mum followed Jonathan. I checked this room, Diana checked the library and Lizzie the kitchen. When I got back to the hall, Mum was running downstairs with some blankets and a hot-water bottle and yelling at Diana to call an ambulance. I said, someone ought to warn Fred to open the gate and Mum said, of course, she hadn’t thought of that.’ She spread her hands in her lap. ‘So I took the torch from the hall table and left.’

‘Why you? Why didn’t Mrs Goode’s daughter go?’

She shrugged. ‘It was my idea. Anyway, Lizzie hadn’t come back from the kitchen.’

‘You weren’t frightened? You didn’t think of waiting for her to go with you?’

‘No,’ she said, ‘it never occurred to me.’ She was surprised now that it hadn’t. She thought about it. ‘To be honest, there was nothing to be frightened of. Mum just said Anne was ill. I suppose I thought she’d got an appendix or something. I just kept thinking what a nuisance it was that we had to keep the reporters at bay by locking the gates.’ Her voice rose. ‘And it’s not as if I’ve never been up the drive before on my own. I’ve done it hundreds of times, and in the dark. I sometimes go and chat to Molly when Fred goes to the pub.’

‘Fine,’ he said unemotionally. ‘That’s all very logical.’ He smiled encouragement. ‘You’re a fast runner. I had the devil’s own job to catch you and I was going like a train.’

She unknit her fingers from the tangled bottom of her tee-shirt. ‘I was worried about Anne,’ she admitted. ‘I keep telling her she’s going to drop dead of cancer any minute. I had this ghastly thought that that was exactly what she’d done. So I put a spurt on.’

‘You’re fond of her, aren’t you?’

‘Anne’s good news,’ she said. ‘Live and let live, that’s her motto. She never interferes or criticises, but I suppose it’s easier for her. She doesn’t have children to worry about.’

‘My mother’s a worrier,’ lied McLoughlin, thinking the only thing Mrs McLoughlin Snr ever worried about was whether she was going to be late for Bingo.

Jane put her chin in her hands. ‘Mum’s an absolute darling,’ she confided naively, ‘but she still thinks I need protection. Anne keeps telling her to let me fight my own battles.’ She twisted a lock of the long dark hair round her finger.

He crossed his legs and pushed himself down into the chair, deliberately relaxed. ‘Battles?’ he teased gently. ‘What battles do you have?’

‘Silly things,’ she assured him. ‘Molehills to you, mountains to me. They’d make you laugh.’

‘I shouldn’t think so. You’re just as likely to laugh at some of my battles.’

‘Tell me,’ she demanded.

‘All right.’ He looked at her smiling, trusting face and he thought, pray God there is nothing you can tell me or that smile will never come again. ‘The worst battle I ever had was with my mother when I was about your age,’ he told her. ‘I’d sneaked my girlfriend into my bedroom for a night of passion. Ma walked in on us in the middle.’

‘Golly,’ she breathed. ‘Why didn’t you lock the door?’

‘No key.’

‘How embarrassing,’ said Jane with feeling.

‘Yes, it was,’ he said reminiscently. ‘My girlfriend hopped it and I had to do battle with the old dragon in the nuddy. She gave me two choices: if I swore on oath I’d never do it again, I’d be allowed to stay; if I refused to swear, then she’d boot me out just as I was.’

‘What did you do?’

‘Guess,’ he invited.

‘You left, starkers.’

He pointed his finger at her with thumb cocked. ‘Got it in one.’

She was like a wide-eyed child. ‘But where did you get clothes from? What did you do?’

He grinned. ‘I hid in the bushes until all the lights went out, then I took a ladder from the shed and climbed up to my bedroom. The window was open. It was very easy. I crept back into bed, had a decent night’s kip and scarpered with a suitcase before she got up in the morning.’

‘Do you still see her?’

‘Oh, yes,’ he said, ‘I do my duty Sunday lunches. To tell you the truth, I think she regretted it afterwards. The house became very quiet when I left.’ He was silent for a moment. ‘Your turn now,’ he said.

She giggled. ‘That’s not fair. Your battle was funny, mine are all pathetic. Things like: Will I or will I not eat my mashed potato? Am I working too hard? Shouldn’t I go out and enjoy myself?’

‘And do you?’

‘Go out and enjoy myself?’ He nodded. ‘Not much.’ Her lips twisted cynically and made her look older. ‘Mum’s idea of my enjoying myself is to go out with boys. I don’t find that enjoyable.’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘I don’t like men touching me. Mum hates that.’

‘It’s not surprising,’ he said. ‘She must feel it’s her fault.’

‘Well, it’s not,’ she said dismissively, ‘and I wish she’d realise it. The hardest thing in the world is to cope with someone else’s guilt.’

‘What do you think happened to your father, Jane?’

The question hung in the air between them like a bad smell. She turned away and looked out of the window and he wondered if he had pushed too fast and lost her. He hoped not, as much for her own sake as for the sake of the enquiry.

‘I’ll tell you what happened the night he left,’ she said at last, speaking to the window. ‘I remember it very clearly but even my psychiatrist doesn’t know all of it. There are bits I kept back, bits that at the time didn’t fit the pattern and which I left out.’ She paused for a moment. ‘I hadn’t thought about it for ages until the other night. Since then I’ve thought of nothing else, and I think now that what I left out may be important.’

She spoke slowly and clearly as though, having geared herself to tell the story, she saw no point in making it garbled. She told him how, after her mother had left for work, her father had run her bath. That was the signal, she said, that he intended to have sex with her. It was a routine he had established and which she had learned to accept. She described the entire process without a flicker of emotion and McLoughlin guessed she had rehearsed it many times on the psychiatrist’s couch. She spoke of her father’s approaches and her removal to her bedroom as if she were commentating on a chess game.

‘But he did something different that night,’ she said, turning her dark gaze on the Sergeant.

He found his voice. ‘What was it?’

‘He told me he loved me. He’d never done that before.’

McLoughlin was shocked. So much pain and without a word of love. Yet, after all, what good would kind words have done except make the man a hypocrite? ‘Why do you think that’s important?’ he asked dispassionately.

‘Let me finish the story,’ she suggested, ‘and perhaps it will strike you, too.’ Before raping her this time, he had given her a present, carefully wrapped in tissue paper. ‘He’d never done that before either.’

‘What was it?’

‘A little teddy-bear. I used to collect them. When he had finished,’ she said, dismissing the entire incident in four words, ‘he stroked my hair and said he was sorry. I asked him why because he’d never apologised before, but my mother came in and he never answered.’ She fell silent and stared at her hands.

He waited but she didn’t go on. ‘What happened then?’ he asked after several minutes.

She gave a mirthless laugh. ‘Nothing really. They just looked at each other for what seemed like hours. In the end, he got off the bed and pulled up his trousers.’ Her voice was brittle. ‘It was like one of those awful Whitehall farces. I do remember my mother’s face. It was frozen, like a statue’s. She was very pale except for the bruise on her face where he hit her the day before. She only moved after he’d left the room, then she lay beside me on the bed and hugged me. We stayed like that all night and in the morning he’d gone.’ She shrugged. ‘We’ve never seen him again.’

‘Did she say anything to him?’ he asked.

‘No. She didn’t need to.’

‘Why not?’

‘You know that expression “if looks could kill”.’ He nodded. ‘That was what was frozen on her face.’ She bit her lip. ‘What do you think?’

She caught him off guard. He so nearly said, I think your mother killed him. ‘About what?’ he asked her.

She showed her disappointment. ‘It seems so obvious to me. I hoped it would strike you, too.’ There was a hunger in the thin face, a yearning for something that he didn’t understand.

‘Hang on,’ he said firmly. ‘Give me a minute to think about it. You know the story backwards. This is the first time I’ve heard it, remember.’ He looked at the notes he had been taking and cudgelled his brain to find what she wanted him to find. He had ringed the three things she said her father had never done before: love, present, apology. What was their significance? Why did she think he had done them? Why had he done them? Why would any father tell his daughter he loved her, give her a present and regret his unkindnesses? He looked up and laughed. It was stunningly obvious, after all. ‘He was planning to leave anyway. He was saying goodbye. That’s why he disappeared without trace. He’d arranged it all beforehand.’

She let out a long sigh. ‘Yes, I think so.’

He leaned forward excitedly. ‘But do you know why he would want to disappear?’

‘No. I don’t.’ She sat up straight and pushed the hair back off her face. ‘All I do know, Sergeant, is that it wasn’t my fault.’ A slow smile curved her lips. ‘You can’t imagine how good that makes me feel.’

‘But surely no one’s ever suggested it was?’ The idea appalled him.

‘When I was eight years old, my mother caught me in bed with my father. My father ran away because of it and my mother was labelled a murderess. At the age of ten, my brother’s personality changed. He stopped being a child and took his father’s place. He was sworn to secrecy about what had happened and has never mentioned his father again.’ She played with her fingers. ‘My mother’s guilt has been an irrelevancy beside mine.’ She raised her eyes. ‘What happened the other night was a blessing in disguise. For years I’ve sat with a psychiatrist who has done his level best to intellectualise me out of my feelings of guilt. To a certain extent he succeeded and I pushed it all to the back of my mind. I was the victim, not the culprit. I was manipulated by someone I had been taught to respect. I played the role that was demanded of me because I was too young to understand I had a choice.’ She paused briefly. ‘But the other night, perhaps because I was so frightened, it all came back to me with amazing clarity. For the first time, I realised how the pattern had changed the night he left. For the first time, I didn’t need to consciously justify my innocence, because I saw that the misery and uncertainty of the last ten years would have happened anyway, whether my mother had found us or not.’

‘Have you told her all this?’

‘Not yet. I will after you’ve gone. I wanted someone else to reach the same conclusion I had.’

‘Tell me what happened when you were going to the Lodge,’ he encouraged. ‘You said you heard breathing.’

She compressed her lips in thought. ‘It’s a bit of a blur now,’ she admitted. ‘I was fine till I came to the beginning of the long straight bit leading to the gates. I slowed down as I came round the bend because I was getting a stitch and I heard what sounded like someone letting out a long breath, the sort of sound you make when you’ve been holding your breath for hiccups. It seemed to be very close. I was so frightened, I started to run again. Then I heard running footsteps and someone shouting.’ She looked at him sheepishly. ‘That was you. You scared me out of my wits. Now I’m not sure I heard breathing at all.’

‘OK,’ he said. ‘It’s not important. And when you said you thought it was your father, that was just because you were frightened? There wasn’t anything about the breathing that reminded you of him?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I can’t even remember what he looked like. It was so long ago and Mum’s burnt all his photos. I couldn’t possibly recognise his breathing.’ She watched him gather his bits and pieces together. ‘Have I been any good?’

‘Good?’ On impulse, he reached forward and gave her hands a quick impersonal squeeze. ‘I’d say your godma’s going to be pretty pleased with you, young lady. Forget about fighting battles, you’ve just scaled your own Mount Everest. And it’s all downhill from now on.’

Phoebe was sitting on a garden seat beside the front door, chin in hands, staring unseeingly at the flowerbeds which bordered the gravel drive. ‘May I join you?’ he asked her.

She nodded.

They sat in silence for some minutes. ‘The dividing line between a fortress and a prison is a fine one,’ he remarked softly. ‘And ten years is a long time. Do you not think, Mrs Maybury, that you’ve served your sentence?’

She sat up straight and gestured bitterly in the direction of Streech Village and beyond. ‘Ask them,’ she said. ‘It was they who put up the barbed wire.’

‘Was it?’

Instinctively, defensively, she pressed her glasses up her nose. ‘Of course. It was never my choice to live like this. But what do you do when people turn against you? Beg them to be kind?’ She gave a harsh laugh. ‘I wouldn’t do it.’

He stared at his hands. ‘It wasn’t your fault,’ he said quietly. ‘Jane understands that. He was what he was. Nothing you did or didn’t do would have made any difference.’

She withdrew into herself and let the silence lengthen. Above them swallows and house martins dipped and darted and a lark swelled its little throat and sang. At long last she took a handkerchief from her sleeve and held it to her eyes. ‘I don’t think I like you very much,’ she said.

He looked at her. ‘We all carry our burden of guilt – it’s human nature. Listen to anyone newly bereaved or divorced and you’ll hear the same story – if only I had done this . . . if only I hadn’t done that . . . if only I had been kinder . . . if only I had realised. Our capacity for self-punishment is enormous. The trick is to know when to stop.’ He rested a light hand on her shoulder. ‘You’ve been punishing yourself for far too long. Can you not see that?’

She turned her face away from him. ‘I should have known,’ she said into her handkerchief. ‘He was hurting her and I should have known.’

‘How could you have known? You’re no different from the rest of us,’ he told her brutally. ‘Jane loved you, she wanted to protect you. If you blame yourself, you take away everything she tried to do for you.’

There was another long silence while she fought to control her tears. ‘I’m her mother. There was only me to save her, but when she needed me I never came. I can’t bear to think about it.’ A convulsive tremor rocked the shoulder beneath his hand.

He didn’t stop to consider whether it was a good idea but reacted instinctively, drawing her into the fold of his arm and letting her weep. They were not the first tears she had shed, he guessed, but they were the first she had shed for her lost self, that self who had come into an enchanted world, wide-eyed and sure that she could do anything. The triumph of the human condition was to face one small defeat after another and to survive them relatively intact. The tragedy, as for Phoebe, was to face the worst defeat too soon and never to recover. His heart, still bruised and battered, ached for her.

He stopped his car on the bend before the straight stretch of drive and got out. Close, Jane had said, which meant in all probability crouched among the rhododendron bushes along the edge of the way. His searches so far had been disappointing. While he had set a team to scour the ice house for a link with Mrs Thompson, he himself had gone on hands and knees about the terrace for signs of Anne’s attacker. If what he believed had happened, there would have been ample evidence of it. But Walsh was right. Bar some dislodged bricks and a cigarette end which was a brand that neither Fred nor Anne smoked, there was nothing. No weapon – he’d examined every brick and stone minutely for bloodstains; no footprints – the lawn was too hard from lack of rain and the flagstones too clean from Molly’s regular sweepings; no blood, not even the tiniest speck, to prove that Anne had been hit outside and not inside. He had begun to wonder if he’d put too much faith in Phoebe’s certainty – ten years was a long time and people changed – and she admitted herself it had only happened the once. But if she were wrong or if she were lying? He couldn’t bring himself to explore either alternative. Not yet.

He sank to hands and knees again and began to inch along the drive. If there was anything, it wouldn’t be easy to find. A team had been over here once without success but then he had told them to concentrate further down, near where he had caught her and where, for one brief moment, he had had the feeling that he and Jane were being watched. He crawled along the left-hand side, knees aching, eyes constantly alert, but after half an hour he had found nothing.

He sat back wearily on his heels and swore at the injustice of it. Just once, he thought, let me be lucky. Just once, let something come my way that I haven’t had to work my bloody butt off for.

He moved to the right-hand side of the drive and inched back towards the bend. Predictably, he was almost at the car before he found it. He took a deep breath and thumped his fist on the tarmac, growling and shaking his head from side to side like a mad dog. Had he only started on the right-hand side, he would have found the damn thing over an hour ago and saved himself a lot of trouble.

‘You all right, son?’ asked a voice.

McLoughlin looked over his shoulder to find Fred staring at him. He grinned self-consciously and stood up. ‘Fine,’ he assured him. ‘I’ve just found the bastard who did for Miss Cattrell.’

‘I don’t see him,’ muttered Fred, eyeing McLoughlin doubtfully.

McLoughlin crouched down and parted the bushes, sweeping leaves away from something on the ground. ‘Look at that. The forensic boys are going to have a field day.’

With much panting and heaving Fred squatted beside him. ‘Well, I’ll be blowed,’ he said, ‘it’s a Paddy Clarke Special.’

Nestling in the débris under the rhododendron, beautifully camouflaged, was an old-fashioned stone beer bottle with a dark brown crust clinging to its bottom. McLoughlin, who had been thinking only in terms of some decent fingerprints and what looked like the imprint of a trainer in the soft damp earth beneath the dense bushes, flicked him a curious glance. ‘What on earth is a Paddy Clarke Special?’

Fred lumbered unhappily to his feet. ‘There’s no harm in it, not really. It’s more of a hobby than a business, though I don’t s’pose the tax man would agree. He’s got a room at the back of his garage where he makes it. Uses only traditional materials and leaves it to mature till it has the kick of a horse and tastes like nectar. There’s not a beer to touch Paddy’s Special.’ He stared glumly at the rhododendron. ‘You have to drink it on the premises. He sets great store by those bottles, says they breathe flavour in a way glass never does.’ He looked immensely troubled. ‘I’ve never known him let one out of the pub.’

‘What’s he like? The type to beat up women?’

The old man shuffled his feet. ‘No, never that. He’s a good sort. Mind you, the wife’s got little time for him on account of he’s married and not too particular about his vows, but – hit Miss Cattrell?’ He shook his head. ‘No, he’d not do that. He and she are’ – he looked away – ‘friends, as you might say.’

An entry in Anne’s diary swam before his eyes. ‘P. is a mystery. He tells me he screws fifty women a year, and I believe him, yet he remains the most considerate of lovers.’ ‘Does he smoke?’

Fred, who had supplied Paddy with many a cigarette over the years, thought the question odd. ‘Other people’s,’ he said warily. ‘His wife’s a bit of a tyrant, doesn’t approve of smoking.’

McLoughlin pictured her fireplace awash with cigarette ends. ‘Don’t tell me,’ he said gloomily, ‘let me guess. He looks like Rudolph Valentino, Paul Newman and Laurence Olivier, all rolled into one.’ He opened his car door and reached for his radio.

‘Tut, tut, tut,’ clicked Fred impatiently. ‘He’s a big man, dark, full of life, clever in his way. Always reminds me of the one who plays Magnum.’

Tom Selleck! I hate him, thought McLoughlin.

Sergeant Jones was leaving the Station as McLoughlin came in. ‘You know that tramp you’re after, Andy?’

‘Mm.’

‘Got a sighting from your friend the Vicar in East Deller. Wife claims she gave him a cup of tea.’

‘Any idea of a date?’

‘No, but the Vicar remembers he was writing a sermon at the time and was annoyed by the disturbance, found himself praying to the Good Lord for deliverance from tramps, then had to reprimand himself for his lack of charity.’

McLoughlin chuckled. ‘That sounds like the Vicar all right.’

‘Apparently he always writes his sermons on a Saturday while he’s watching the sport on telly. Any good?’

‘Could be, Nick, could be.’

 

Nineteen

THE PHONE RANG on McLoughlin’s desk the following morning. ‘You’re a jammy bastard, Andy. I’ve got a lead on that tramp of yours,’ said his mate in Southampton. ‘One of the uniformed sergeants recognised the description. Seems he picked up the old boy about a week ago and took him to a new hostel out Shirley way. No guarantee he’s still there but I’ll give you the address. You can check it out for yourself. He’s called Wally Ferris and he’s a regular down here during the summer. Sergeant Jordan’s known him for years.’ McLoughlin wrote down the address, Heaven’s Gate Hostel, and thanked him. ‘You owe me one,’ said the other cheerfully and hung up.

Heaven’s Gate was a large detached Victorian house, probably much sought after in the days before motor cars, but its appeal was diminished now by the busy thoroughfare which mewled and milled about its front door.

Wally Ferris bore no resemblance to the description McLoughlin had circulated, except in age and height. He was clean. Scrubbed rosy cheeks and gleaming pate with frill of washed hair dazzled above a white shirt, black slacks and highly polished shoes. He looked, for all the world, like an elderly schoolboy on his first day in class. They met in the sitting-room and Wally gestured to a chair.

‘Take a pew,’ he invited.

McLoughlin showed his disappointment. ‘No point,’ he said. ‘To be honest, I don’t think you’re the person I’m looking for.’

Wally did a rapid about-turn and beetled for the door. ‘Suits me, son. I’m not comfortable wiv bluebottles and that’s a fact.’

‘Hold on,’ said McLoughlin. ‘At least, let’s establish it.’

Wally turned and glowered at him. ‘Make yer bleeding mind up. I’m only ’ere because the lady of the ’ouse arst me. She’s scratched my back, in a manner o’ speaking, so I’m scratching ’ers. What you after?’

McLoughlin sat down. ‘Take a pew,’ he said, echoing Wally.

‘Gawd, you’re a shilly-shallyer and no mistake. Can’t make yer mind up, can yer.’ He perched on a distant chair.

‘What were you wearing when you came here?’ asked McLoughlin.

‘None of your effing business.’

‘I can ask the lady of the house,’ said McLoughlin.

‘What’s it to you, anyway?’

‘Just answer. The sooner you do, the sooner I’ll leave you in peace.’

Wally sucked his teeth noisily. ‘Green jacket, brown ’at, black shoes, blue jumper and pink trews,’ he reeled off.

‘Did you have them long?’

‘Long enough.’

‘How long?’

‘All different. ’Ad the ’at and jacket near on five years, I’d say.’

‘The trousers?’

‘Twelve monfs or so. Bit on the bright side but a good fit. ’Ere, you’re not finking I nicked ’em, are you? I was give ’em.’ He looked thoroughly indignant.

‘No, no,’ said McLoughlin soothingly. ‘Nothing like that. The truth is, Wally, we’re trying to trace a man who’s disappeared and we think you may be able to help us.’

Wally planted his feet firmly on the ground, one in front of the other beneath his chair, poised to take flight. ‘I don’t know nuffink about nuffink,’ he said with absolute conviction.

McLoughlin raised his hands in a conciliatory gesture. ‘Don’t panic, Wally. As far as we know, there’s no crime involved. The man’s wife asked us to find him. She says you came to the house the day before he disappeared. All we’re wondering is if you remember going there, and if you saw or heard anything that might help us find out why he went.’

Wally’s rheumy eyes looked his suspicion. ‘I go to a lot of ’ouses.’

‘These two gave you a pair of brown shoes.’

Something like relief flickered across the wizened features. ‘If the wife was there, why can’t she tell you why ’er old man went?’ he asked reasonably.

‘She’s become very ill since her husband went,’ said McLoughlin, stretching the truth like a rubber band. ‘She hasn’t been able to tell us much at all.’

‘What’s this chap done?’

‘Nothing, except lose all his money and run away.’

That struck a chord with Wally, ‘Poor bastard. Does ’e want to be found?’

‘I don’t know. What do you think? His wife certainly wants him back.’

Wally considered for several minutes. ‘No one bovvered to come looking for me,’ he said in the end. ‘Sometimes I wished they ’ad ’ave done. They was glad to see the back of me, and that’s the trufe. Go on then. Arst yer questions.’

It took over an hour, but in the end McLoughlin had a clear picture of Wally’s movements during the last week in May, or as clear as the old man could make it, bearing in mind he had been tight most of the time. ‘I was give a fiver,’ he explained. ‘Some old geezer in the middle of Winchester popped it in me ’and. Put the lot on a gee-gee called Vagrant, didn’t I. Came up eleven to one. Ain’t ’ad so much cash for years. Kept me plastered for free weeks ’fore it ran out.’

He had hung around Winchester for most of the three weeks, then, when he was down to his last few quid, he’d made his way along the back roads to Southampton in search of new pickings. ‘I like the villages,’ he said. ‘Reminds me of cycling holidays in my youf.’ He remembered stopping at the pub in Streech. ‘It was pissing down,’ he explained. ‘Landlord was a decent sort, gave me no bovver.’ Paddy’s wife, by contrast, was a fat old cow whom, for unspecified reasons, Wally didn’t take to, but he winked ferociously a couple of times as he mentioned her. At three o’clock, they turned him out into the rain. ‘Ain’t no fun when it’s wet,’ he said lugubriously, ‘so I took meself off to a little shelter I know of and spent the afternoon and night there.’

‘Where?’ asked McLoughlin when the old man fell silent.

‘Never did no ’arm,’ said Wally defensively. ‘No call for anyone to complain.’

‘There haven’t been any complaints,’ said McLoughlin encouragingly. ‘I won’t rat on you, Wally. As far as I’m concerned, if you behave yourself, you can use it as often as you like.’

Wally pursed his lips into a pink rosette. ‘There’s a big ’ouse there. Easy as winking to pop over the wall. Been in the garden a few times, never seen no one.’ He gave McLoughlin a speculative look to see if he was interested. He was. ‘There’s a sort of man-made cave near the woods,’ he went on. ‘Can’t fink what it’s for but it’s got some bricks stacked in it. The door’s ’idden by a big bramble but it’s a doddle to creep in be’ind it. I always take bracken in wiv me to give me a good kip. ’Ere, why you looking like that?’

McLoughlin shook his head. ‘No reason. I’m just interested. Have you any idea what day this was, Wally?’

‘Gawd knows, son.’

‘And you didn’t see anyone when you were in the garden?’

‘Not a soul.’

‘Was this cave in darkness?’

‘Well, there ain’t no electricity, if that’s what you mean, but while it’s light you can see. If the door’s ajar, of course,’ he added.

McLoughlin wondered how to put the next question. ‘And the place was empty except for this stack of bricks you mentioned?’

‘What you getting at?’

‘Nothing. I’m just trying to get a clear picture.’

‘Then yes. It was empty.’

‘And what happened the next morning?’

‘Hung around till lunchtime, didn’t I?’

‘In the cave?’

‘No. In the woods. Nice and peaceful, it was. Then I got to feeling peckish, so I ’opped over the wall and looked about for somefing to eat.’ He had knocked on several doors, without much success.

‘Why didn’t you buy something with your winnings?’ asked McLoughlin, fascinated.

Wally was intensely scornful. ‘Do me a favour,’ he admonished. ‘Why pay for somefink you can get free? It’s booze they won’t give away. Anyway, I ’adn’t much winnings left and that’s a fact.’

He had found a group of houses on the outskirts of Streech where ‘an old bat’ had given him a sandwich. The council houses, McLoughlin thought. ‘Did you try anyone else?’ he asked.

‘Young lass told me to push off. Gawd knows, I sympathised wiv ’er. There was a dozen nippers yelling their ’eads off in ’er front room.’ He abandoned Streech as a dead duck at that point and set off down the road. After about an hour, he came to another village. ‘Don’t recall the name, son, but there was a vicarage. Always good for a touch, they are.’ He had roused the Vicar’s wife and persuaded her out of a cup of tea and some cake. ‘Nice little woman, but she came over sanctimonious. That’s the trouble wiv vicarages. You can always get a bite but you has to take the lecture wiv it. I scarpered sharpish.’ It had begun to rain again. ‘Strange wevver, I can tell yer. ’Ot as blazes most of the time, but every now and then there was a funder storm. You know the sort. Fat rain, I calls it. Flashes of lightning and great claps of funder.’ He had looked around for shelter. ‘Not a blooming fing. Nice little boxes wiv neat garages. No help to me. Then I comes to this bigger house, set back a bit. I fought I’d explore the back, see if there was a shed. I sneaks down the side and lo and be’old there’s just what I’m looking for, nice little shed wiv no one in sight. I opens the door and pops inside.’ He stopped.

‘And?’ prompted McLoughlin.

A cunning gleam had appeared in the old man’s eyes. ‘Seems like I’m giving you a lot of information for nuffink, son. What’s in it for me?’

‘A fiver,’ said McLoughlin, ‘if what you tell me’s worth it.’

‘Ten,’ said Wally. He glanced behind him at the closed door then leaned forward confidentially. ‘To tell you the trufe, son, it’s a bit claustrophobic this place. The lady of the ’ouse does ’er best but there’s no fun. Know what I mean. A tenner’d give me a day out. I’ve been ’ere a week for Gawd’s sake. I’ve ’ad more fun in prison.’

McLoughlin considered the morality of giving Wally the wherewithal to turn his back on Heaven’s Gate and concluded that Wally was on the point of scarpering whatever happened. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks. Ten pounds would give him a start at least. ‘Done,’ he said. ‘What happened when you went into this shed?’

‘Looked around for somefink to sit on, didn’t I, make meself comfortable while I was there. Found this feller ’iding at the back be’ind some boxes. When ’e realised I’d seen ’im, ’e came over all ’oity-toity and ordered me off ’is property. I arst, reasonable like, why I should imagine ’e was the owner when ’e was skulking in the shed same as me. ’E got properly riled and called me a few names. In the middle of it, this woman comes out of the kitchen door to see what the noise is. I explains the situation and she tells me the geezer’s ’er ’usband and ’e’s in the shed looking for a paintbrush.’ Wally pulled a wry face. ‘They must’ve fought I was born yesterday. The paintbrushes was all laid out neat and tidy on a workbench at the side. The geezer was ’iding, no mistake. Anyway, I sees my opportunity. They wants rid of me and they’d pay up to see me go. I got a bottle of whisky, a decent pair of shoes and twenty quid out of it. Tried for more but they turned nasty and I reckoned it was time to skedaddle. This the feller you’re looking for?’

McLoughlin nodded. ‘Sounds like it. Can you describe him?’

Wally’s brow wrinkled. ‘Five tennish, fat, grey ’air. ’E ’ad nancy feet for a man. The shoes they gave me didn’t ’alf pinch.’

‘What did the woman look like?’

‘Mousey little fing, sorrowful eyes, but Gawd she ’ad a temper. Lammed into me and ’er old man somefink rotten for making a noise.’ He looked suddenly thoughtful. ‘Not that we was, mind you. Froughout the ’ole fing, we spoke in whispers.’ He shook his head. ‘Bats the pair of ’em.’

McLoughlin was jubilant. Got you, Mrs T., he thought. ‘Where did you go then?’

A thoughtful expression crossed Wally’s face. ‘There’s a saying, son. A bird in the ’and is worf two in the bush. It had stopped raining but I ’ad this feeling we was in for anover funder storm. I fought to meself I’ve a bottle o’ whisky and nowhere cosy to drink it. If I push on, ’oo’s to say if I’ll find a dry place for the night. So I ’ightailed it back to the cave at the big ’ouse and passed a ’alfway decent night.’ He considered McLoughlin out of the corner of his eyes. ‘The next day, I finks to myself, I’ve a few quid in me pocket and I’ve ’ad nuffink decent to eat for days, so I ’eaded off towards Silverborne. There’s a nice café on the road – ’

‘Did you leave anything behind?’ McLoughlin cut in.

‘Like what?’ asked the old man sharply.

‘Like the shoes?’

‘Dumped ’em in the woods,’ said Wally scornfully. ‘Damn fings gave me corns a right drubbing. That’s where experience comes in. A young bloke would’ve chucked the old pair out before ’e’d properly tried the new. Then ’e’d’ve been in agony till ’e found some more.’

McLoughlin tucked his notebook into his pocket. ‘You’ve been a great help, Wally.’

‘That it?’

McLoughlin nodded.

‘Where’s my tenner?’

McLoughlin took a ten-pound note out of his wallet and stretched it between his fingers. ‘Listen to me, Wally. I’m going to give you ten pounds now as a token of good faith, but I want you to stay here another night because I may want to talk to you again. If you do, I’ll come back tomorrow morning with another ten, making twenty in all.’ He held out the tenner. ‘Is it a deal?’

Wally got up and pounced on the note, secreting it in the depths of his shirt. ‘Are you on the level, son?’

‘I’ll give you an IOU if you like.’

Wally made as if to spit on the carpet, then thought better of it. ‘Be about as much use to me as a mug of water,’ he said. ‘OK, son, it’s a deal. But if you don’t come back first fing, I’m off.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘Don’t you go telling the lady of the ’ouse, mind. I’ve ’ad my fill of good works this week. They don’t know when to leave a bloke alone in this place.’

McLoughlin chuckled. ‘Your secret’s safe with me, Wally.’

‘I spotted the pattern,’ said McLoughlin to Walsh, with a tinge of irony which brought a glitter to the older man’s eyes, ‘when I marked the houses which reported seeing the tramp.’ He pointed to small red crosses on the map in front of them. ‘If you remember, Nick Robinson had two reports. One from a woman in Clementine Cottage who said the tramp passed her house and went into the pub, which meant he was coming from the direction of Winchester. The next from the landlord at the pub who said he stayed until closing time then ambled off in the lee of the wall round the Grange estate, in other words heading towards East Deller.’ He traced his finger along the printed road. ‘The next reports we had of him were PC Williams’s. He said an elderly woman had given the tramp a sandwich and a young woman had turned him away because it was her son’s birthday. They both live on the council estate which is to the west of Streech and on the East Deller road. The date the young woman gave was May twenty-seventh. But when we spoke to Mrs Thompson she told us he’d visited them in East Deller on the twenty-fourth. That would have meant he had doubled back on himself for some reason to come through Streech three days later from the direction of Winchester.’

Walsh gathered together the remnants of his authority and buttoned them about himself with as much dignity as he could muster. ‘I went into all this myself,’ he lied. ‘The fact that we found the shoes at the Grange implies he did just that.’

‘I agree, so we needed another sighting in East Deller, with a date, if possible. Jonesy went out there to see what he could dig up. He had a chat with our friend the Vicar who told Jonesy he was writing a sermon when the tramp called at the vicarage. The Vicar couldn’t give a date but he always writes his sermons on a Saturday. OK, now only two people have offered a definite date, May twenty-fourth, supplied by Mrs Thompson, a Wednesday, and May twenty-seventh, the day of the birthday party, a Saturday. Wally is adamant he went from the council estate in Streech to the vicarage and the Thompsons at East Deller which puts him there on Saturday, May twenty-seventh. So why did Mrs T. lie about the date?’

‘Get on with it,’ ordered Walsh impatiently.

‘Because, in face of her blatant lie, we had proved the shoes were her husband’s and she had to explain why they were no longer in her possession. She opted for the truth this time, or as near the truth as damn it, and invited us to corroborate the story by giving us a description of the tramp. Remember, we never told her where we found the shoes. For all she knew we got them from the tramp himself.’ He collected his thoughts. ‘Now she could be sure, if we had the tramp, that he would say he’d seen her husband. So to give us the actual day of his visit would be tantamount to telling us her husband was alive and well and living in East Deller after she’d reported him missing. Bang would go her alibi. So she advanced the tramp’s visit by three days. It was a gamble but it damn nearly paid off. Wally hasn’t a clue when he went through, and if it wasn’t for the child’s birthday, neither would we. No one else can remember the date.’ He paused for a moment. ‘It’s going to come as a nasty shock when we tell her where Wally dumped the shoes. In her wildest nightmares she couldn’t believe it would be at the scene of her proposed crime.’

Walsh stood up. ‘Poetic justice, I say. But I’d like to know how she persuaded him to lie low and how she got him to the ice house.’

‘Use your charm and she’ll probably tell us,’ said McLoughlin.

 

Twenty

MRS THOMPSON OPENED the door with a smile of welcome. She was dressed to go out in a neat blue suit and white gloves but there was a sad, rather dated air about her as if her fashion sense had expired with the ’50s. Two suitcases stood behind her in the hall. Splashes of rouge on her cheeks and a touch of lipstick gave her face a bogus gaiety but when she saw the gathered policemen her mouth drooped tragically.

‘O-oh.’ She breathed her disappointment. ‘I thought it was the Vicar.’

‘May we come in?’ asked Walsh. Her inadequacies repulsed as effectively as cheap perfume.

‘So many of you,’ she whispered. ‘Has the devil sent you?’

Walsh took her arm and eased her backwards, allowing his men in behind. ‘Shall we go into the sitting-room, Mrs Thompson? No point in standing around on the doorstep.’

She put up a feeble resistance. ‘What is this?’ she beseeched, eyes welling, little heels digging into the hall carpet. ‘Please don’t touch me.’

McLoughlin slipped his hand under her other arm and, together, they whisked her through the sitting-room door and into a chair. While McLoughlin kept her seated with a firm hand on her shoulder, Walsh directed his men to a thorough search of the house and garden. He flashed the warrant under her eyes before tucking it back into his jacket pocket and sitting in the chair opposite her.

‘Well, now, Mrs Thompson,’ he said genially. ‘Off for your little rest by the sea?’

She shook McLoughlin’s hand from her shoulder but remained seated. ‘I’m expecting the Vicar at any moment to take me to the station,’ she announced with dignity. McLoughlin noticed a thinning patch in her hair. He found it oddly embarrassing as if she had taken off part of her clothing and revealed something best kept hidden.

‘Then I suggest we don’t beat around the bush,’ announced Walsh. ‘We wouldn’t want to keep him waiting.’

‘Why are you here? Why are your men searching my house?’

Walsh steepled his fingers in his lap. ‘You remember that tramp you told us about, Mrs Thompson?’ She gave a brief nod. ‘We’ve found him.’

‘Good. Then you’ll know I was telling you the truth about dear Daniel’s generosity.’

‘Indeed, yes. He also happened to mentioned that Mr Thompson gave him a bottle of whisky and twenty pounds.’

The sad eyes lit with pleasure. ‘I told you Daniel was a saint. He would have given the shirt off his back if the man had asked for it.’

McLoughlin took the chair next to Walsh and leaned forward aggressively. ‘The tramp’s name is Wally Ferris. I’ve had a long talk with him. He says you and Mr Thompson wanted rid of him, that’s why you were so generous.’

‘The ingratitude,’ she gasped, her lips parting on a tremor. ‘What did our Lord say? “Give to the poor and you shall have treasure in Heaven.” My poor Daniel has earned his place there by his kindness. The same cannot be said of this tramp.’

‘He also said,’ continued McLoughlin doggedly, ‘that he found your husband hiding in the shed outside.’

She tittered behind her hand like a teenager. ‘Actually,’ she said, looking directly at him, ‘it was the other way round. Daniel found the tramp hiding in the shed. He went out to look for a paintbrush and tripped over a bundle of old clothes behind some boxes at the back. Imagine his surprise when the bundle spoke.’

Her words carried conviction and McLoughlin knew a sudden doubt. Had he relied too heavily on an old man who, by his own admission, lived in an alcoholic haze? ‘Wally claims it was raining while he was in your shed. I’ve checked with the local meteorological office and they have no record of any rainfall on Wednesday, twenty-fourth May. The storms began two days later and lasted on and off for the next three days.’

‘Poor man,’ she murmured. ‘I told Daniel at the time we should have tried to get him to a doctor. He was drunk and very confused. You know, he asked me if I was his sister. He thought I’d come looking for him at last.’

‘But, Mrs Thompson,’ said Walsh, allowing surprise into his voice, ‘if he was as drunk as you say, why did you give him a bottle of whisky? Were you not compounding his already severe problems?’

She cast her eyes to the ceiling. ‘He begged us in tears, Inspector. Who were we to refuse? Judge not and you shall not be judged. If the poor man chooses to kill himself with demon alcohol, I have no right to condemn him.’

‘But you do have the right to speed up the process, I suppose,’ said McLoughlin sarcastically.

‘He’s a sad little man whose only comfort lies in a whisky bottle,’ she said quietly. ‘It would have been cruel to deny him his comfort. We gave him money to spend on food, shoes for his feet and we urged him to seek help for his addiction. There was not much more we could do. My conscience is clear, Sergeant.’

‘Wally claims he came here on Saturday, May twenty-seventh.’ Walsh spoke casually.

She wrinkled her forehead and thought for a moment. ‘But it can’t have been,’ she said with genuine puzzlement. ‘Daniel was here. Didn’t we decide it was the twenty-fourth?’

McLoughlin was fascinated by her performance. It occurred to him that she had expunged the memory of murder from her mind and had convinced herself that the story she told was the real one. If that was so, they were going to have the devil’s own job bringing a prosecution. With only Wally’s testimony, backed by the woman in the council house, they wouldn’t stand a chance. They needed a confession.

‘The date is corroborated by an independent witness,’ he told her.

‘Really?’ she breathed. ‘How extraordinary. I don’t remember seeing anyone with him and we are so secluded here.’ She fingered her cross and gazed at him with reproachful eyes. ‘Who could it be, I wonder?’

Walsh cleared his throat noisily. ‘Would it interest you to know where we found your husband’s shoes, Mrs Thompson?’

‘Not really,’ she assured him. ‘I assume from the things you’ve said that the tramp – Wally – discarded them as useless. I find that hurtful to my dear Daniel’s memory.’

‘You’re very sure he’s dead, aren’t you?’ said McLoughlin.

She produced her lace hankie like a magician and dabbed at the inevitable tears. ‘He would never leave me,’ came the refrain.

‘We found the shoes in the woods at Streech Grange, not far from the ice house,’ said Walsh, watching her closely.

‘Did you?’ she asked politely.

‘Wally spent the night of the twenty-seventh of May in the ice house and abandoned the shoes in the woods the next morning as he left.’

She lowered the handkerchief and looked with curiosity from one to the other. ‘Really,’ she commented. Her expression was one of bafflement. ‘Is that significant?’

‘You do know we’ve found a corpse in Streech Grange ice house, don’t you?’ McLoughlin remarked brutally. ‘It is male, aged between fifty and sixty, broad build, grey hair and five feet ten inches tall. He was murdered two months ago, around the time your husband went missing.’

Her amazement was utter. For several seconds a kaleidoscope of emotions transformed her face. The two men watched closely, but if guilt was there, it was impossible to isolate. To the forefront was surprise. ‘I had no idea,’ she said, ‘no idea at all. No one’s said anything to me. Whose corpse is it?’

McLoughlin turned to Walsh and raised a despairing eyebrow. ‘It’s been in all the newspapers, Mrs Thompson,’ said the Inspector, ‘and on the local television news. You could hardly have missed it. The body has decomposed to such an extent that we have not yet been able to identify it. We have our suspicions, however.’ He studied her pointedly.

She was taking deep breaths as though breathing were difficult. The rouge stood out on her cheeks in bright spots. ‘I don’t have a television,’ she told them. ‘Daniel used to get a paper at work and tell me all the news when he came home.’ She struggled for air. ‘God,’ she said surprisingly, holding a hand to her chest, ‘they’ve all been keeping it from me, protecting me. I had no idea. No one’s said a word.’

‘No idea we’d found the body, or no idea there was a body to find?’ asked McLoughlin.

She digested the implications of this for a moment. ‘No idea there was one, of course,’ she snapped, eyeing him with dislike. She calmed her breathing with a conscious effort and tightened her lips into their customary thin lines. She addressed herself to Walsh. ‘I now understand your interest in Daniel’s shoes,’ she told him. A small tic had started above her lip. ‘You are assuming they are connected in some way with this body you’ve found.’

‘Perhaps,’ he said guardedly.

A gleam of triumph showed in her eyes. ‘Yet this tramp you’ve found has proved they can’t be. You say he spent the night of the twenty-seventh in the – what did you call it?’

‘Ice house.’

‘In the ice house. I assume he wouldn’t have stayed if the dead body had been there, too, so he must have abandoned the shoes before the body ever got there.’ She seemed to relax slightly. ‘I cannot see a connection, merely a bizarre coincidence.’

‘You’re absolutely right,’ agreed Walsh. ‘In that sense, there is no connection.’

‘Then why have you been asking me questions?’

‘The bizarre coincidence led us to the tramp, Mrs Thompson, and to some interesting facts about you and your husband. We can prove he was alive in this house two days after you reported him missing and well outside the time for which you’d provided yourself with an alibi. Mr Thompson has not been seen since, and a week ago we were presented with an unidentifiable body, corresponding to his description and less than four miles away. Frankly, we can make out an excellent case against you for the murder of your husband on or after the twenty-eighth of May.’

The tic came faster. ‘It can’t be Daniel’s body.’

‘Why not?’ demanded McLoughlin.

She was silent, gathering her thoughts.

‘Why not?’ he pressed.

‘Because I had a letter from him about two weeks ago.’ Her shoulders slumped and she started to weep again. ‘It was a beastly letter, telling me how much he hated me and what a bad wife I’d – ’

McLoughlin cut her short. ‘Will you show us the letter, please?’

‘I can’t,’ she sobbed. ‘I burnt it. He’d written such vile things.’

There was a knock on the door and one of the uniformed policemen came in. ‘We’ve been through the house and garden, sir.’ He shook his head at Walsh’s questioning look. ‘Nothing yet. There’s still this room to do and Mrs Thompson’s cases. They’re locked. We’ll need the keys.’

The little woman grabbed her handbag and held it to her middle. ‘I will not give you the keys. You will not search my cases. They contain my underwear.’

‘Fetch me a WPC,’ instructed the Inspector. He leaned towards Mrs Thompson. ‘I’m sorry, but you’ve no choice in the matter. If you prefer it, I will ask the WPC to bring the cases in here and you may watch while she examines the contents.’ He held out his hand. ‘The keys, please.’

‘Oh, very well,’ she said crossly, delving into her handbag and producing two small keys tied together with a white ribbon. ‘Personally, I think the whole thing’s outrageous. I intend to make a strong complaint to the Chief Constable.’

Walsh wasn’t surprised she objected to having her underwear scrutinised. Pieces of filmy black lacework, more at home in a brothel, he would have thought, than in the luggage of this drab, boring woman, were held up for inspection. But a truth he had discovered during his career was that some of the unlikeliest women possessed attractive lingerie. His own wife was a case in point. She had come to bed every night of their married lives in silks or soft satins, with only him to appreciate the effect. And for a long time he had appreciated it and done his best to show it, before years of indignant rejection had taught him that Mrs Walsh did not don her lingerie for his benefit but for some private delight of her own. And he had long since given up trying to discover what that was.

The WPC shook her head as she re-locked the cases. ‘Nothing there, sir.’

‘I did tell you,’ said Mrs Thompson. ‘Heaven knows what you think you’re looking for.’

‘Your handbag, please.’

She relinquished it with a moue of disgust. The constable emptied the contents carefully on to the coffee table, felt the soft leather bag for anything hidden in the lining, then sorted through the various objects. She glanced enquiringly at Walsh. ‘Seems OK, sir.’

He gestured to her to return everything to the bag. ‘Would you rather wait outside while we search this room?’ he asked Mrs Thompson.

She settled herself deeply into her chair, gripping the cushion beneath her as if she expected to be wrestled from it. ‘I would not, Inspector.’

As the search got under way, Walsh returned to the questioning. ‘You say you’ve had a letter from your husband. Why haven’t you mentioned this before?’

She cringed away from him, tucking herself sideways into a tight ball in the chair. ‘Because I have only my pride left. I didn’t want anyone to know how shamefully he’s treated me.’ She dabbed at her dry eyes.

‘What was the postmark?’ asked McLoughlin.

‘London, I think.’

‘Presumably the letter was handwritten,’ he mused. ‘He wouldn’t have access to a typewriter.’

She nodded. ‘It was.’

‘What sort of envelope?’

She thought for a moment. ‘White,’ she told him.

McLoughlin laughed. ‘It won’t wash, you know. You can’t just keep pulling lies out of the hat and expect us to applaud your ingenuity. We’ll check with your postman. In a place like this you’ll have had the same postman for years, it’s probably the chap who runs the little shop-cum-post-office near the church. Your letters will have been a source of great interest to him in the last couple of months. He’s probably scrutinised every one carefully in the hopes of being first with news of the errant Daniel. You won’t persuade us your husband’s still alive by dreaming up letters, Mrs Thompson.’

She glanced beyond him to where the woman constable was going through the sideboard. ‘Ask the postman, Sergeant. You’ll find I’m telling you the truth.’ She spoke with sincerity, but the look in her eyes was as level and calculating as any he’d seen. ‘If only I’d known what was in your mind, I’d have told you about the letter the first time you came.’

McLoughlin stood up and leaned over her, resting his hands on the arms of her chair. ‘Why were you so shocked to hear about the body at the ice house? If you know your husband’s alive, it couldn’t mean anything to you.’

‘This man’s threatening me,’ she snapped at Walsh. ‘I don’t like it.’ She cringed deep into the chair.

‘Back off, Andy.’

‘With pleasure.’ Without warning, he hooked his hand under her arm and stepped back sharply. She popped out of the chair like a champagne cork, then wriggled and spat with ferocity. He clung on to a flailing arm, dodged a swipe from the other and felt warm spittle smear his cheek. ‘The chair, sir,’ he called. ‘She’s hiding something.’

‘Got it.’

McLoughlin took a grip on both her arms, arching his body away to avoid the kicking points of her shoes. ‘Come on, you sods,’ he shouted angrily at the two constables. ‘She’s pulverising me. Who’s got the handcuffs, for God’s sake?’

‘Bastard!’ she screamed. ‘Bloody fucking bastard!’ She rolled another ball of spittle into her mouth and launched it at him. To his immense disgust, it caught his lip and dribbled inside.

The constables, galvanised out of frozen inactivity, snapped on the handcuffs and pushed the woman on to the sofa. She looked at McLoughlin’s vain attempts to get rid of the venom and laughed. ‘Serves you bloody right. I hope you catch something.’

‘Looks like I’ve caught you,’ he said grimly. He turned to Walsh. ‘What is it?’

Walsh handed him a thin envelope. ‘She must have slipped it out of her bag when we were gawping at her blasted knickers.’ He chuckled good-humouredly. ‘Waste of time, dear lady. We’d have found it eventually.’

McLoughlin opened the envelope. Inside were two aeroplane tickets, made out to Mr and Mrs Thompson, for a flight to Marbella that evening. ‘Where’s he been hiding all this time?’ he asked her.

‘Go to hell!’

‘Mrs Thompson! Mrs Thompson!’ exclaimed a shocked voice from the doorway. ‘Some control, I beg you.’

She laughed. ‘Go and play with yourself, you silly little man.’

‘Is she mad?’ asked the horrified Vicar.

‘In a manner of speaking,’ said Inspector Walsh cheerfully.

 

Twenty-One

ANNE LAUGHED AS McLoughlin told the story. Colour had returned to her face and lively enjoyment sparkled in her eyes. The only visible reminder that she’d been attacked was the brilliant red and white spotted scarf that she had tied, bandit-style, over her bandage. Against medical advice, she had discharged herself the day before, maintaining that five days in hospital was the absolute maximum that a sentient drug addict could tolerate. Bowing to the inevitable, Phoebe had brought her home after extracting a promise that she would do precisely as she was told. Anne gave the promise readily. ‘Just lead me to a cigarette,’ she said, ‘and I’ll do anything you say.’

What she didn’t know was that Phoebe had also assumed responsibility for her safety. ‘If she leaves hospital, Mrs Maybury, we won’t be able to protect her,’ Walsh had pointed out, ‘any more than we can protect you. We simply haven’t enough men to patrol Streech Grange. I shall be advising her to stay put in hospital, just as I’ve advised you to move out.’

‘Don’t waste your breath, Inspector,’ Phoebe told him contemptuously. ‘Streech is our home. If we had to rely on you to protect us it wouldn’t be worth living in.’

Walsh shrugged. ‘You’re a very foolish woman, Mrs Maybury.’

Diana, who was in the room with them, was incensed. ‘My God, you really are the pits,’ she snapped. ‘Two days ago you didn’t believe a word Phoebe told you. Now, because Sergeant McLoughlin took the trouble to find some evidence, you tell her she’s a fool for not running away on your bloody say-so. Well, let me tell you this, the only thing that’s changed in the last two days is your mind.’ She stamped her foot in exasperation. ‘Why the hell should we run away today when we didn’t run away yesterday or the day before that? The danger’s the same for God’s sake. And who do you imagine has been protecting us all this time?’

‘Who, Mrs Goode?’

She turned her back on him.

‘We’ve been protecting ourselves of course,’ said Phoebe coolly, ‘and we’ll go on doing it. The dogs are the best safeguard we’ve got.’

Anne was propped on pillows in her favourite armchair, her feet resting on Phoebe’s tapestry stool, an old donkey jacket which passed for a dressing-gown round her shoulders, a pencil stuck behind one ear. She was, McLoughlin thought, completely careless of other people’s opinions. The message was simple: I am what you see; take it or leave it. He wondered if it came from supreme self-confidence or total indifference. Whatever it was, he wished he shared it. For his own part, he still felt the need of others’ approval.

‘So where was Mr Thompson hiding?’ she asked him.

‘She wouldn’t tell us, but it wasn’t very difficult to find him. He turned up like a lamb, for the seven-thirty flight to Marbella.’

‘Skedaddling with the loot?’

McLoughlin nodded. Once caught and identified by Wally as the man in the shed, Daniel Thompson had offered to co-operate. The idea had come to them, he said, when they had found a book in the library describing the life of luxury enjoyed by British embezzlers on the Spanish riviera. Thompson’s engineering business was on the decline and he had complained to his wife about the injustice of having to work his balls off to keep it alive when other men, faced with the same problem, simply absconded with the capital and lived it up in the sun. The answer was simple, announced Mrs T., they too would follow the sun. They had no dependants, she had never liked England, positively loathed East Deller where the community was worthy and stultifying, and she had no intention of spending the next ten years scrimping and saving to keep Daniel’s business from going broke. ‘The most extraordinary thing,’ said Thompson reminiscently, ‘was how easy it was to persuade people to invest in transparent radiators. It just proved to me how much money and how little sense there is floating around in the South.’ He reminded McLoughlin of Arthur Daley.

‘What do you make transparent radiators from?’ he’d asked him curiously.

‘Toughened, heatproof glass,’ said Thompson, ‘the same sort of stuff they use for those saucepans. The idea was to add dyes to the water in the expansion tank and watch them flow through the system.’

‘Mrs Goode said it could have revolutionised interior design.’

The saintly Daniel sighed. ‘That was the terrible irony of it all. I think she may have been right. I opted for the idea because while it was feasible to make the things, it was also absurd enough to make bankruptcy a likely possibility. Imagine my surprise when, without any publicity, it started to take off. By that time, of course, it was too late. To turn the business into a success then would have presented enormous difficulties. On top of which, Maisie – the wife’ – he explained helpfully – ‘had set her heart on the Costa del Sol. Sad, really,’ he mused with a faraway look in his eyes. ‘They might well have made my fortune and we could have retired to the sun anyway.’

‘Why did you bother with the disappearing act? Why not simply pack up, both of you, and go?’

Mr Thompson beamed. ‘Moonlight flits worry people,’ he said, ‘make them suspicious, and we didn’t want the Spanish to take against us. They’re not as easy-going as they used to be. While Maisie remained, everyone merely felt sorry for her for having married so weak and inept a man.’

‘So where have you been for the last two months?’

‘East Deller,’ he said, as if surprised by the question, ‘until two nights ago when I went to a B & B so Maisie could pack up. Your visits were becoming a little too frequent for comfort.’

‘You were hiding in your own house?’

He nodded. ‘It was quite safe. Maisie phoned me at my hotel in London after the police had searched the house and garden the first time. I came home during the night of the twenty-sixth and lay low in the attic. We reckoned that was safer than my being on the loose with my description floating about.’

‘Wally saw you in the shed,’ McLoughlin pointed out.

‘That was a mistake,’ he admitted. ‘We thought the shed would be the best hiding place because it would be easier to escape from if the police turned up unexpectedly. Of course it was also the easiest place for someone to walk into. Not that any normal person walking in would have mattered,’ he said without rancour. ‘Maisie had hidden me behind a stack of old boxes, no way I’d have been seen by a casual visitor.’ He tapped two pudgy forefingers together. ‘But the silly old fool was looking for a place to hide himself. I don’t know who got the worse shock when he pulled the boxes aside, him or me.’

‘The police made two searches,’ McLoughlin said. ‘How did they miss you the second time?’

‘Because we were expecting it. We worked out if the police made a surprise search and found nothing, they’d conclude I really had run away because of my business problems and abandoned Maisie to fend for herself. So Maisie made an anonymous phone call to stimulate another search. It was a nerve-racking two days waiting for it, but we were ready when it came. I simply hopped over the fence at the bottom of the garden and crouched in a bush in our neighbours’ orchard until Maisie gave me the all-clear.’ He smiled amiably. He was, as Diana had described him, built like a tank. The smile split his chubby face into two half moons, the lower half pendulous with double chins. ‘After that we had no more trouble till you turned up with those shoes. Until then my disappearance had been a nine-day wonder.’

McLoughlin acknowledged he was right. ‘You were taking a gamble, though. Neighbours must have been popping in all the time.’

‘Not after Maisie developed her wonderfully outrageous sex mania,’ said Thompson. ‘The women kept coming for a few days out of kindness, but it’s amazing how rapidly embarrassment alienates people. Maisie should have gone on the stage, I’ve always said it. We got the idea of the attic from Anne Frank’s diary,’ he volunteered.

‘And she really didn’t know about the body in the ice house? I find that extraordinary.’

‘It was a damn nuisance,’ said Thompson, showing annoyance for the first time. ‘She couldn’t be seen to change her habits. If she had rented a telly or started buying papers, people might have thought she was taking an interest again. Wrong image, do you see?’

McLoughlin nodded. ‘And no one told her because they were afraid the body was yours.’

Daniel sighed. ‘Hoist with our own petard.’

‘Why did you leave it so long to fly out? You could have gone weeks ago.’

‘We were greedy,’ confessed Thompson. ‘We wanted the money from selling the house. You’re talking over a quarter of a million pounds for a property like that. It was the icing on the gingerbread. The plan was for Maisie to become more and more depressed until the obvious solution was to sell the house and move somewhere smaller which had no memories for her. No one would have questioned it. If the truth be told, they’d have been relieved to see the back of her. Then, with the money safely under our belts, we were off on a ferry to France and from there to sunny Spain.’

‘And you were intending to use your own passports?’

The other man nodded.

‘You’d been reported missing, Mr Thompson. You’d have been stopped.’

‘Oh, I don’t think so, Sergeant,’ he said comfortably. ‘Six months on, brouhaha died down, hundreds of people on day trips, a middle-aged couple with a common name. What would they have against me anyway? My wife could testify I was no longer missing. And it’s not as though there’s a warrant out for my arrest, is there?’ He cocked his head on one side and considered the Sergeant with amusement.

‘No,’ McLoughlin admitted.

‘I was incompetent,’ said Thompson. ‘I admit it freely. But no one person lost very much money through my failure.’ He folded his hands across his plump stomach. ‘My employees have all found other jobs and the Inland Revenue has agreed to honour their National Insurance contributions which I so rashly – how shall I put it? – “borrowed” to keep the business afloat.’ He winked outrageously. ‘I give credit to my number two for that. He’s done all the negotiations on their behalf, or so Maisie tells me. Splendid chap, great organisational flair, full of integrity. He’s sorted out the mess I made and wound up the business. Mind you, he’s said some harsh words to Maisie on the phone, called me an amateurish bungler, but I don’t hold it against him.’ He flicked a speck of dust from his jumper. ‘My investors took a gamble on me which was sadly misplaced, but they have cheerfully cut their losses and moved on to more lucrative ventures. I’m delighted. It saddened me to have failed them.’

‘Hang on,’ said McLoughlin sharply. ‘You didn’t fail them, Mr Thompson. You embezzled their money.’

‘Who says so?’

‘You admitted it yourself.’

‘When?’

McLoughlin turned to WPC Brownlow who had been taking shorthand notes. ‘Find that bit where he said he got the idea from British embezzlers living in Spain.’

She flicked back through her notebook. ‘He didn’t actually say he was an embezzler,’ she admitted after a couple of minutes, ‘only that his business was in decline.’

‘Skip on a few pages,’ said McLoughlin. ‘He said it was ridiculously easy to get people to invest in the radiator idea.’

‘It was,’ said Thompson. ‘It was a good idea.’

‘Dammit all,’ exploded McLoughlin. ‘You said it was absurd enough to make bankruptcy likely.’

‘And I was proved right. That’s just what happened.’

‘You didn’t go bankrupt because it wouldn’t work. You salted the money away. You said yourself it could have been a great success.’

Thompson sighed. ‘I’m sure it would have been, too, if I’d had more business sense. My problem, as I’ve tried to explain to you, is incompetence. Are you going to arrest us, Sergeant?’

‘Yes, Mr Thompson, I bloody well am.’

‘On what charge?’

‘Wasting police time, for a kick-off, while I find someone who’s willing to press a more serious charge.’

‘Who?’

‘One of your creditors, Mrs Goode.’

‘I’ll get my solicitor to discuss an out-of-court settlement with her,’ he said comfortably. ‘Much more satisfactory than pursuing me through the courts.’

‘I’ll get your wife on an assault charge.’

‘Poor Maisie. She’s demented, you know.’ He winked with enormous enjoyment. ‘Doesn’t know what she’s doing half the time. A short spell of treatment with a sympathetic doctor will do her far more good than a police prosecution. The Vicar will agree with me on that.’

‘You’re a pair of rogues.’

‘Harsh words, Sergeant. The truth is I’m a coward who couldn’t face the disappointment of those who’d put their trust in me. I ran away and hid. Contemptible, I agree, but hardly criminal.’ His gaze was level and sincere, but his double chins wobbled. Whether from mirth or contrition, McLoughlin couldn’t say.

By the end of his account, Anne was laughing so much it hurt. ‘Did you let them go?’

He grinned sheepishly. ‘It was like trying to hold on to a couple of eels. Every time you thought you’d got a grip, they wriggled out of it. They’re back home now, but due to answer a charge of obstruction in a couple of weeks’ time. Meanwhile, I’ve got on to his number two, who’s hopping mad at being taken for a ride, and told him to go through the books with an accountant and look for straightforward embezzlement.’

‘He won’t find it,’ said Anne, mopping her eyes. ‘Mr Thompson sounds like a real pro. It’ll all be neatly tied up in a villa in Spain by now.’

‘Perhaps.’ McLoughlin stretched his arms above his head, then subsided comfortably into his chair. He had been up all night again and he was tired.

Jane had told Anne that McLoughlin was in the wrong job. Why? Anne had asked. Because he was over-sensitive to other people’s problems. Anne watched him through the smoke from her cigarette. She had none of her god-daughter’s naivety so her appraisal was untinged by sentiment. Lust after him she might, but it in no way affected her objectivity. He was not troubled by over-sensitivity towards others, she concluded, but by over-sensitivity towards himself, a trap, in Anne’s view, that far too many men fell into. To burden oneself with a socially acceptable image was to put oneself in a strait-jacket. She wondered when McLoughlin had last had a good laugh at himself – if ever. Life for him, she thought, was a series of hurdles which had to be taken cleanly. To touch one would represent failure.

‘What are you thinking?’ he asked.

‘I was wondering why men take themselves so seriously.’

‘I didn’t know they did.’

‘I’m trying to think if I’ve ever met one who doesn’t. Your Mr Thompson sounds a likely candidate.’ She waggled her toes on the tapestry stool. ‘A woman’s problems centre round her biological programming. Without her willingness to reproduce and nurture a new generation, the species would die out. Her frustrations come from the species’ unwillingness to recognise the sacrifices she makes for the general good. You don’t get paid by a grateful government for being on duty twenty-four hours a day to raise a family; you don’t get an MBE for training your children to be good citizens; nine times out of ten even your children don’t thank you for your efforts, but chuck in your face that they didn’t ask to be born anyway.’ She tapped the end of her cigarette against the ashtray and chuckled. ‘It’s a dog’s life being a mother. There’s no management structure to speak of, no independent arbitrator, no dismissal procedure for repeated offences and no promotion prospects. Emotional blackmail and sexual harassment are rampant and backhanders commonplace.’ Her eyes gleamed as she leant forward. ‘No man would tolerate it. His self-esteem would suffer.’

McLoughlin cursed himself silently for being a fool. He should have trusted his first impressions and steered clear. She would have to be very special in bed to make it worth his while to sit through feminist claptrap to get her there. After all, he thought, was there really so much difference between her and his absent wife? The complaints were the same, merely more fluent and better articulated from Anne. He vowed to become celibate. He had neither the inclination nor the energy to wage war every time he felt randy. If the price of pleasure was capitulation, he could do without it. He’d had to grovel past his wife’s headaches and stay awake through low-budget late films for Saturday night sex. He was damned if he’d do it for a woman he wasn’t tied to.

He stood up abruptly and unleashed his pent-up rage and disappointment. ‘Let me tell you something, Ms Cattrell. I’m sick to death of hearing women complain about their lot. You’re all so bloody strident about what a grand time men have and how badly we treat you.’ He walked to the fireplace and leaned both hands on the mantelpiece, staring into the unlit fire. ‘Do you think yours is the only sex to suffer from biological programming? The burden on men to perform is infinitely greater. If we weren’t programmed to sow our seed, female disinclination would have wiped out the human race centuries ago. You try persuading a woman to have sex. It costs money, effort, emotional commitment and the trauma of regular rejection. If a man wants to do his bit by society, he has to spend a lifetime in chains flogging his guts out to keep his woman content and well fed so that she first agrees to have his offspring and then looks after them properly when she’s got them.’ He turned to look at her. ‘It’s humiliating and degrading,’ he said with bitterness. ‘My procreative chemistry is no different from a dog’s. Nature compels us both to eject sperm into a fertile female, the difference is that he doesn’t have to justify why he wants to do it whereas I do. Think about that next time you feel like sneering at male self-esteem. It’s fragile in the extreme. You’re damn right I take myself seriously. I bloody well have to. I’ve only my office left where rules of behaviour still apply and where I don’t have to tie myself in knots to achieve the goals set for me.’

She took an apple from the bowl beside her and tossed it to him. ‘You’re doing great, McLoughlin. In a minute you’ll be telling me you’d rather be a woman.’

He looked at her, saw the amused lift of her lips and laughed. ‘I damn nearly did. You’re winding me up.’

‘No,’ she said with a smile, ‘I’m winding you down. Life is pure farce from beginning to end, with a little black comedy thrown in for shade. If it was anything else, mankind would have stuck his collective head in the gas oven years ago. No one could tolerate seventy years of tragedy. When I die – probably of cancer – Jane has promised to put on my tombstone: “Here lies Anne Cattrell who laughed her way through it. The joke was on her but at least she knew it.”’ She tossed another apple into the air and caught it. ‘In a couple of weeks, if you last the pace, you could be as cynical as I am, McLoughlin. You’ll be a happy man, my son.’

He sat down with the apple clenched between his teeth and drew his briefcase towards him. ‘You’re not all cynic,’ he said, speaking round the apple.

She smiled. ‘What makes you say that?’

‘I’ve read your diary.’ He snapped the locks on the briefcase, half-opened it and withdrew the slim volume.

She watched him curiously. ‘Did you enjoy it?’

‘Was I supposed to?’

‘No,’ she said tartly. ‘I didn’t write it for publication.’

‘Good thing too,’ he said frankly. ‘It needs editing to make it readable.’

She glared at him. ‘You would know, I suppose?’ She was incredibly hurt. Her writing, even the writing she did for herself, mattered to her.

‘I can read.’

‘I can hold a paintbrush. That doesn’t make me an expert on art.’ She looked pointedly at her watch. ‘Shouldn’t you be trying to solve a murder? As far as I can see you’re still no nearer finding out who the body belongs to or, for that matter, who hit me on the head.’ She couldn’t give a damn what he thought, he was only a policeman, so why did her stomach feel as if it had just bounced off the floor?

He munched on his apple. ‘P. needs editing out,’ he told her. ‘P. ruins it.’ He flicked the diary into her lap. ‘The carving-knife is still at the Station, awaiting your signature. I rescued this early on to prevent Friar sneaking it out to photocopy the rude bits.’ He was sitting with his back to the windows and his eyes, shadowed, gave nothing away. She couldn’t tell if he was joking.

‘Pity. Friar might have appreciated it.’

‘Tell me about P., Anne.’

She eyed him cautiously. ‘What do you want to know?’

‘Would he have attacked you?’

‘No.’

‘Sure? Perhaps he’s the jealous type. It was one of his Special Brew bottles that was used to hit you, and I’m told he never lets them out of the pub.’

She could deny that P. and Paddy were one – the prospect of McLoughlin meeting the P. he had read about rather appalled her – but that would be coy, and Anne was never coy. ‘I’m positive,’ she said. ‘Have you spoken to him?’

‘Not yet. We only got confirmation of the forensic results this morning.’ The match on Anne’s blood and hair proved the bottle was the weapon, but the other results were disappointing. A smudged set of fingerprints round the neck and an incomplete footprint built up from barely seen depressions in the ground. It wasn’t enough to take them any further.

Anne wished she knew what he was thinking. Was he a harsh judge? Would he ever understand how Paddy, just because he always came back, however irregularly, made Streech bearable? Somehow she doubted it, for, in spite of his strange attraction to her, McLoughlin was a conventional man. The attraction wouldn’t last, she knew that. Sooner or later he would snap back into character and then she would be remembered only as a brief madness. And for Anne, there would be just Paddy, once again, to remind her that the walls of Streech Grange were not totally impenetrable. Tired tears pricked at the back of her eyes. ‘He’s a kind man,’ she said, ‘and he understands everything.’

If McLoughlin understood, he didn’t show it. He left without saying goodbye.

Paddy was hefting empty beer barrels at the rear of the pub. He eyed McLoughlin thoughtfully as he swung another barrel effortlessly atop the pile. ‘Can I help you?’

‘Detective Sergeant McLoughlin, Silverborne Police.’ Imagination had created in McLoughlin’s mind a huge, muscular Adonis with the magnetic attraction of the North Pole and the brain of Einstein. The reality was a big, rather overweight, hairy man in a tatty jumper and seated trousers. The jealous fire dimmed perceptibly in McLoughlin’s belly. He showed Paddy a photograph of the stone beer bottle, taken after its removal from the undergrowth. ‘Do you recognise it?’

Paddy squinted briefly at the picture. ‘Maybe.’

‘I’m told you bottle your Special in it.’

For a moment they scented the air suspiciously like two powerful mongrels poised to defend their territory. Then Paddy chose to back off. He shrugged good-humouredly. ‘OK, yes, it looks like one of mine,’ he said, ‘but it’s a hobby. I’m writing a book on traditional beer-making methods to make damn sure the old ways aren’t forgotten.’ His gaze was level and without guile. ‘I host the odd tasting session where I give it away to the locals to get their opinions.’ He studied the other’s dark face, looking for a reaction. ‘All right, so I may have asked for a donation from time to time towards my costs. That’s not unreasonable, it’s an expensive hobby.’ He found the other’s silence irritating. ‘Dammit, man, haven’t your lot got more important things to exercise your minds at the moment? Who gave it to you anyway? I’ll skin the bastard.’

‘Is it true you never let these bottles out of the pub, Mr Clarke?’ McLoughlin asked coldly.

‘Yes, it’s true, and I’d bloody well like to get my hands on the bugger who took it. Who was it?’

McLoughlin tapped the black stain round the bottom of the monochrome bottle. ‘That’s blood, Mr Clarke, Miss Cattrell’s blood.’

The big man became very still. ‘What the hell is this?’

‘It’s the weapon that was used to beat a woman’s skull in. I thought you might know how it found its way into her garden.’

Paddy opened his mouth to say something, then sank abruptly on to the nearest barrel. ‘Jesus Christ! Those bottles weigh a ton. I heard she was all right, but Jesus!’

‘How did the bottle get into her garden, Mr Clarke?’

Paddy took no notice. ‘Robinson said she’d had a knock on the head. I thought it was concussion. Those bloody wankers keep calling it concussion.’

‘What wankers?’

‘Journalists.’

‘Someone fractured her skull.’

Paddy stared at the ground. ‘Is she all right?’

‘They used one of your bottles to do it.’

‘Goddammit, man, I asked you a question.’ He surged to his feet and stared angrily into McLoughlin’s face. ‘Is she all right?’

‘Yes. But why are you so interested? Did you hit her harder than you meant to?’

Anger flared briefly in Paddy’s face. He glanced towards the kitchen door to make sure it was closed. He lowered his voice. ‘You’re on the wrong track. Anne’s a friend of mine. We go back a long way. She’ll tell you I wouldn’t hurt her.’

‘It was dark. Perhaps you thought it was Mrs Goode or Mrs Maybury.’

‘Don’t be a fool, man. I go back a long way with them, too. Hell, they’re all friends of mine.’

McLoughlin’s mouth dropped open. ‘All three of them?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’re telling me you sleep with all three of them?’

Paddy made damping gestures with his hands. ‘Keep your voice down for God’s sake. Who said anything about sleeping with anybody? It’s damn lonely up there. I keep each one company from time to time, that’s all.’

McLoughlin shook with laughter as the jealous flame spluttered and died. ‘Do they know?’

Paddy sensed the lack of hostility and grinned. ‘I don’t know. It’s not the sort of thing you ask, is it?’ He made a snap judgement. ‘Will your conscience allow you a bottle of Special? We might as well drink it before Customs and Excise get their miserable paws on it. And while we’re enjoying it, I’ll give you a list of all my Special customers. I never let strangers near it, so I know each customer personally. The bastard you’re looking for has to be one of them, and I rather think I know who it is. There’s only one person in this village who’s stupid enough and vindictive enough.’ He led McLoughlin across the yard and into the room behind the garage where the rich smell of fermenting malt tingled in the nose. ‘To tell you the truth, I’ve often toyed with the idea of doing the thing properly and going into full legal production. Maybe this is the push I needed. The wife can take over the pub licence, she’s a far better landlord than I am.’ He took two unopened bottles, removed the clamped rubber stoppers and with immense care poured a deep amber liquid with a foaming white head into two straight-sided glasses. He handed one to McLoughlin. ‘Be advised by me, Sergeant.’ There was a twinkle in his eye. ‘You have all the time in the world, so approach it the way you approach your women. Slowly, lovingly, patiently, and with infinite respect. Because if you don’t, you’ll be flat on the floor within three mouthfuls, wondering what hit you.’

‘Is that your secret?’

‘It is.’

McLoughlin raised his glass. ‘Cheers.’

The letter was waiting on Detective Sergeant Robinson’s desk when he arrived that morning. The handwriting on the envelope was childish and unformed, the postmark local. He ripped it open eagerly and spread the lined paper flat on the desk in front of him. The lines were covered in the same unformed script, a rambling, hard-to-read account of a bizarre happening one night in the middle of May. Eddie Staines, anonymously, had come up trumps.

You been asking about a woman when and so forth. It were a Sunday. Know that becos my girls relijus and took some purswading becos she’d been to comunion. Must of been May 14 as May 12 is my birthday and it was by way of a late pressent. We did it in Grange woods as per normal. We left after 12 and wolked along the wall by the farm. We heard this waleing and weeping on the other side. My girl wanted to beet it but I hopped up for a look. Well you got it rong see. It was a man not a woman and he was rocking about and banging his head. Mad as a hatter if you ask me. I shone the torch on him and said was he all write. He said fuck off so I did. I seen the descripshun of the dead bloke. Sounds write to me. He had long grey hair anyways. Forgot about it till reesently. Thing is I knew him. Couldn’t put a name to him mind just knew his face from sumwere. But it weren’t no one reglar if you follow. Reckon now it was Mayberry. Thats all.

With promotion signs flickering in his eyes, Sergeant Robinson rang through to Walsh. He had a momentary qualm about his promise of anonymity – there was no way he could keep Eddie’s identity secret now – but it was only momentary. When all was said and done, Eddie had not threatened to string him up by his balls.

 

Twenty-Two

MCLOUGHLIN THREW OPEN the glass doors of the Police Station and let the heat from outside billow in behind him like a swelling spinnaker. Paddy’s Special, taken slowly, lovingly and with immense respect, was swirling nicely in his brain. ‘“Now’s the day and now’s the hour,”’ he roared. ‘“See the front of battle lour.” Where’s Monty? I need troops.’

The Desk Sergeant gave a grunt of amusement. There was a certain skinny similarity between Walsh and Montgomery. ‘On manoeuvres.’

‘Hell!’

‘Someone’s identified the body.’

‘And?’

‘David Maybury. The Inspector’s wetting himself.’

Shock waves drove the alcohol from McLoughlin’s brain. Goddammit, he thought, it couldn’t be. He’d come to love those women. The pain of loving them gnawed at his insides like a half-starved rat. ‘Where’s he gone?’

The other shook his head. ‘No idea. Presumably questioning the witness. He and Nick took off like scalded cats about two hours ago.’

‘Well, he’s wrong.’ His voice was harsh. ‘It’s not Maybury. Tell him that if he gets back before I do, will you?’

Not bloody likely, thought the Desk Sergeant, watching the angry young man shoulder open the doors and surge out on to the pavement. If McLoughlin was intent on self-destruction, he had no plans to go with him. He glanced at his watch and saw with relief that his shift was nearly over.

McLoughlin pulled Anne bodily out of her chair and shook her till her teeth rattled. ‘Was it David May-bury?’ he shouted at her. ‘Was it?’ he spat.

She didn’t say anything and, with a groan, he pushed her from him. The donkey jacket slipped from her shoulders, leaving her clad only in a pair of men’s pyjamas that were far too big for her. She looked oddly pathetic, like a child playing at being an adult. ‘I don’t know,’ she said with dignity. ‘The body was unrecognisable, but I shouldn’t think it was David. He’s not likely to have come back here after ten years, assuming he was still alive.’

‘Don’t play games, Anne,’ he said angrily. ‘You saw the body before it rotted. Who was it?’

She shook her head.

‘Someone’s ID’d it. They say it’s David Maybury.’

She licked her lips but didn’t answer.

‘Help me.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Can’t or won’t?’

‘Does it matter?’

‘Yes,’ he said bitterly, ‘it matters to me. I believed in you. I believed in all of you.’

Her face twisted. ‘I’m sorry.’

He gave a savage laugh. ‘You’re sorry? Jesus Christ!’ He gripped her arms again, his long fingers curling into the flesh. ‘Don’t you understand, you little bitch? I trusted you. I’ve put my head on the line for you. Dammit, you owe me.’

There was a long silence. When she spoke, her voice was brittle. ‘Well, hey, McLoughlin, never let it be said that Cattrell doesn’t pay her debts.’ She pulled the cord on her pyjama trousers and let them slither to the floor. ‘Go ahead. Screw me. That’s all you were ever interested in, wasn’t it? A good fuck. Just like your precious boss ten years ago.’

The sands shifted under his feet. He raised his hands to her throat and stroked the soft white flesh of her neck.

‘You didn’t know?’ Her eyes glittered as she put her hands between his wrists and thrust them apart to break his grip. ‘The horny little bastard made Phoebe a proposition – a nice clean line drawn under the investigation in return for a weekly screw. Oh, he wasn’t quite so vulgar. He dressed it up a bit.’ She mimicked Walsh’s voice. ‘She was alone and vulnerable. He wanted to protect her. Her beauty had touched him. She deserved something better after her husband’s brutal treatment.’ Her lip curled in derision. ‘She turned him down and told him where to stick his protection.’ A strident note made her voice unattractive. ‘My God, but she was naive. She never considered for one moment that the man held her future in his hands.’

‘I don’t believe this.’

She walked across to her armchair and took a cigarette from the packet on the arm. ‘Why not?’ she asked coolly, flicking her lighter. ‘What makes you think you have a monopoly on wanting to ball murder suspects?’ Her eyes mocked him. ‘God knows what it is, but there’s something very attractive about us. Perhaps it’s the uncertainty.’

He shook his head. ‘What did you mean when you said he held her future in his hands? You said she was naive.’

‘Oh, for pity’s sake,’ she countered scornfully. ‘Who told the world and his wife that Phoebe killed her husband? Who briefed the press, McLoughlin?’

He looked very thoughtful. ‘She could have sued.’

‘Who?’

‘The newspapers.’

‘She was never libelled. They weren’t so crude as to call her a murderess. They referred to her as “an avid gardener” in one sentence, then in the next revealed that the police were digging up the flowerbeds. And all neatly sign-posted for them by your boss.’

‘Why didn’t she put in a complaint?’ He saw the expression on her face and held up his hands. ‘Don’t say it. Her word against his and he was a Detective Inspector.’ He lapsed into silence. ‘So what happened?’

She drew on her cigarette and raked him with angry eyes. ‘Walsh couldn’t produce the goods because of course David had never been murdered, so the investigation was eventually stopped. It was then the fun started. She found herself on the wrong end of a malicious smear campaign and there wasn’t a soul in this bloody place who would give her the time of day. She was on the verge of a nervous breakdown by the time I moved in. Jonny, at the age of eleven, had started to wet his bed and Jane – ’ She searched his face. ‘It’s going to happen again. That bastard is going to throw Phoebe to the wolves a second time.’ She looked pale beneath the scarlet bandanna.

‘Why didn’t you tell me all this at the beginning?’

‘Would you have believed me?’

‘No.’

‘And now?’

‘Maybe.’ He eyed her for a long time, rubbing his jaw in thoughtful silence. ‘You’re a good journalist, Anne. Couldn’t you have written Phoebe’s side of it and got her off the hook?’

‘You tell me how I can do that without giving Jane as her alibi and I’ll write it. Phoebe would burn at the stake before she let her daughter become a sideshow for ghouls. Me, too, if it comes to that.’ She inhaled deeply. ‘It’s not an alibi anyway. Jane might have fallen asleep.’

He nodded. ‘In that case, why are you so sure he left this house alive?’

She turned away to stub out her cigarette. ‘Why are you so sure?’ She looked back at him. ‘You are, aren’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Because someone claims now it was David in the ice house?’

‘No.’

‘Why then?’

He looked at her for a long moment. ‘Because you chose to bury yourself in Streech Grange. That’s how I know he walked out of here alive.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘You’re a bloody awful liar, Cattrell.’

‘I wish you wouldn’t keep saying that,’ she said crossly, stamping her foot, ‘and I’m freezing.’

‘So, stop waggling your fanny at me and put some clothes on,’ he said reasonably, reaching down for her pyjama trousers and tossing them across to her. He watched while she put them on. ‘It’s a nice fanny, Cattrell,’ he murmured, ‘but I only came for the truth. I got rather more than I bargained for.’

He drove to the forensic laboratories and searched out Dr Webster in his office. ‘I was passing,’ he said. ‘I wondered if you’d had any new ideas on that corpse of ours.’

If Dr Webster found this approach a little unorthodox, he didn’t remark on it. ‘I’ve the full report here,’ he said, tapping a folder on the desk beside him. ‘The typist finished this morning. You can take a copy back with you if you like.’ He chuckled. ‘Mind you, I don’t think it’s going to please George much, but there we are, he will push for instant opinions and they’re not always accurate. Made any progress?’

McLoughlin made a see-saw motion with his hand. ‘Not much. Our most promising lead turned up alive. Now we’re in the dark again.’

‘In that case I doubt that anything I’ve managed to piece together is going to help you much. Give me a description, better still a photograph, and I’ll say yea or nay to whether he’s on my slab. But I can’t tell you who he is. George is on the phone every day, yelling for results, but miracles take time. Fresh bodies are one thing, bits of old shoe leather need patience to sort out.’

‘What about Maybury?’

The pathologist grunted impatiently. ‘You’re all obsessed with that wretched man. Of course it’s not Maybury. And you can tell George I’ve taken a second opinion and it agrees with mine. Facts are facts,’ he grumbled, ‘and in this case they are not open to interpretation.’

McLoughlin breathed deeply through his nose. ‘How do you know?’

‘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 shoulders. ‘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. ‘Touché. 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 county. ‘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 hung over 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.’

Walsh stared at him for a moment, then took the paper and unfolded it. There were the same five names and descriptions, but with ‘Since Traced’ scrawled across Daniel Thompson’s box. The two young women were of no consequence because of their sex, which left the Asian lad, Mohammed Mirahmadi, who was too young, and the semi-senile Keith Chapel, sixty-eight, who had walked out of his warden-run hostel five months before, wearing a green jacket, blue jumper and bright pink slacks. A tight, cold fist gripped at Walsh’s insides. He laid the paper on the desk. ‘The tramp didn’t come into it until the next day,’ he muttered. ‘And how could this old man know about Streech Grange or the ice house?’

McLoughlin stabbed at the box with his finger. ‘Look at his initials,’ he said. ‘Keith Chapel. K.C. I rang the warden of his hostel. The old boy used to ramble on endlessly about a garage he’d owned and what a success it was until a woman spread lies about him and he was forced to sell up. You knew all about it. Dammit, it was you who prompted Mrs Goode to tell the story.’

‘Only by hearsay,’ Walsh muttered. ‘I never met the man. He was gone by the time Maybury disappeared. I thought Casey was a name. Everyone called him Casey. It’s in the file as Casey.’

‘You’re damn right it’s in the file. For a bit of hearsay, you gave it a hell of an airing. Great story, shame about the facts. Was that about the size of it?’

‘It’s not my fault if people thought she killed her parents. We just recorded what they told us.’

‘Like hell you did! You fed it to them first. Jesus, you even hoicked it out for my benefit the other evening. And I believed it.’ He shook his head. ‘What did she do, for pity’s sake? Laugh? Call you a dirty old man? Threaten to tell your wife?’ He waited for a moment. ‘Or couldn’t she hide her revulsion?’

‘You’re suspended,’ Walsh whispered. His hands quivered with a life of their own.

‘What for? Uncovering the truth?’ He slammed his palm on to the missing persons’ list. ‘You bastard! You had the bloody nerve to accuse me of negligence. Those trousers should have registered with you. You heard them described twice in twelve hours. How many men wear pink slacks, for Christ’s sake? You knew a man had been reported missing wearing pink trousers. And it wasn’t difficult to find Wally. If I’d had that information when I spoke to him – ’ He shook his head angrily and reached for his briefcase. ‘There’s Dr Webster’s final report.’ He flung it on to the desk. ‘Judging by the fact that Wally felt K.C.’s clothes were fit to wear, I think we can safely assume they were neither ripped with a knife nor blood-soaked. The poor old chap probably died of cold.’

‘He went missing five months ago,’ muttered the Inspector. ‘Where was he for the first two months?’

‘In a cardboard box in a subway, I should think, just like all the other poor sods this bloody awful society rejects.’

Walsh moved restlessly. ‘And Maybury? You know all the answers. So where’s Maybury?’

‘I don’t know. Living it up in France, I expect. He seems to have had enough contacts out there through his wine business.’

‘She killed him.’

McLoughlin’s eyes narrowed. ‘The bastard ran away when the money dried up and left her and his two small children to carry the can. It was planned, for God’s sake.’ He was silent for a moment. ‘I can’t think of one good reason why he would have wanted to punish them but, if he did, he must have been praying for a shit like you to turn up.’ He walked to the door.

‘What are you going to do?’ The words were barely above a whisper.

McLoughlin didn’t answer.

On his way down the corridor, he bumped into Nick Robinson and Wally Ferris. He gave the old man a friendly punch on the shoulder. ‘You might have left him his underpants, you old rogue.’

Wally shuffled his feet and cast sideways glances at both policemen. ‘You lot gonna charge me then?’

‘What with?’

‘Didn’t do no ’arm, not really. Wet frough I was wiv all that flamin’ rain and ’im sittin’ there quiet as a mouse. To tell you the trufe I didn’t click to ’im bein’ dead, not for a while. Put ’im down as one of my sort, but wiv a screw loose. There’s a lot like that who’ve ’ad too much mefs and too little whisky. ’Ad quite a chat wiv ’im one way and anuvver.’ He pulled a lugubrious face. ‘’E didn’t ’ave no underpants, son, didn’t ’ave nuffink ’cept the ’fings ’e’d folded up and put on the floor beside ’im.’ He gave McLoughlin a sly peep. ‘Didn’t see no ’arm in taking ’em, not when ’e didn’t need ’em and I did. Bloody parky, it was. I put ’em on over me own cloves.’

Nick Robinson, who had had no success in getting Wally to talk, snorted. ‘You’re saying he was sitting there stark naked, dead as a dodo, and you had a chat with him?’

‘It was company,’ muttered Wally defensively, ‘an’ it was a while before I got used to the gloom in the cave. You see some funny fings in my line of business.’

‘Pink elephants mostly, I should think.’ Robinson looked enquiringly at McLoughlin. ‘What’s all this about the clothes?’

‘You’ll find out. What do you reckon he died of, Wally?’

‘Gawd knows. Cold, I should fink. That place is freezin’ wiv ve door closed, an’ ’e’d wedged a brick against it. I ’ad to push pretty ’ard to get it open. It weren’t nuffink nasty. ’E ’ad a smile on ’is face.’

There was a sharp indrawn breath from Robinson. ‘But there was blood, wasn’t there?’

Wally’s old eyes looked shocked. ‘Course there weren’t no blood. I wouldn’t ’ave stayed if there was blood. ’E was in lovely shape. On the white side per’aps but that was natural. It was dark wiv all the rain outside.’ He wrinkled his nose. ‘Whiffed a bit, but I didn’t ’old it against ’im. Dare say I didn’t smell too good meself.’

It was like something out of a Samuel Beckett play, thought McLoughlin. Two old men sitting in semi-darkness, chatting – one nude and dead, the other sodden, and in more ways than one. He didn’t doubt for a minute that Wally had spent the night with K.C., rambling happily about this and that. Wally loved to talk. Was it a horrible shock, he wondered, to find in the sober morning light that he’d been chatting with a corpse? Probably not. Wally, he was sure, had seen many worse things. ‘So did you shut the door again when you left?’

The old man pulled thoughtfully at his lower lip. ‘Sort of.’ He seemed to be weighing the problem in his mind. ‘That’s to say, I did the first time. The first time I shut it. Seemed to me ’e wanted to be left in peace or ’e wouldn’t ’ave wedged a brick against it. Then that geezer in the shed gave me the whisky, an’ I ’ad a few mouffuls, an’ I got to finking about proper burials an’ such. Seemed wrong some’ow to leave ’im wivout a chance of a few good words bein’ said for ’im, wouldn’t want it personally, so I nips back and opens the door. Reckoned ’e’d ’ave more chance of bein’ found wiv ve door open.’

It would be cruel, McLoughlin thought, to tell him that by opening the door he had let in the heat, the dogs, the rats and putrefaction. He hoped Walsh wouldn’t do it.

‘And that,’ Wally finished firmly, ‘is all I knows. Can I go now?’

‘Not likely,’ said Nick Robinson, ‘the Inspector wants a word with you.’ He took a firm grip on Wally’s arm and looked enquiringly at McLoughlin. ‘How about filling me in?’

McLoughlin grinned evilly. ‘Let’s just say, you got your wires crossed, old son.’

 

Twenty-Three

HE FOLDED HIMSELF wearily into his car and sat for some time staring blankly through the windscreen. Some words of Francis Bacon kept repeating themselves in his mind like a memory-jerk mnemonic. ‘Revenge is a kind of wild justice. The more man’s nature runs to it, the more ought law to weed it out.’ He rubbed his gaunt face. He had told Anne he sympathised with personal vengeance but he knew now that wasn’t true. The end result of an ‘eye for an eye’ was a world gone blind. With a sigh, he fired the motor and drew out into the traffic.

He lived in a modern box on a large estate to the north-west of Silverborne where every house was depressingly similar and where individuality expressed itself only in what colour you chose to paint your front door. It had satisfied him once. Before he had seen Streech Grange.

‘Hello, Andy,’ said Kelly. She was standing irresolutely by the kitchen sink, mop in hand, washing the dirty dishes he had left untouched for ten days. He had forgotten how stunning she was and how easily that fabulous body had once been able to turn him on.

‘Hello.’

‘Pleased to see me?’

He shrugged. ‘Sure. Look, you don’t need to do those. I was planning to tackle them over the weekend. I haven’t been around much this week.’

‘I know. I’ve been trying to phone you.’

He went to the fridge and took out a piece of cheese from among the opened tins of furred tomatoes and sliced cling peaches. He held it out to her. ‘Want some?’ She shook her head, so he ate the whole lump before looking at his watch. ‘I’ve a phone call to make, then I’ll grab a quick shower before I go out.’ He waved his arm to encompass the whole house. ‘Take your time and take what you like.’ He smiled without hostility. ‘Except my books and my two boat paintings. You won’t quibble over those, will you? You always said they were only good for gathering dust.’ So much so that they had been relegated, along with him, to the spare room.

He was on his way to the stairs when his conscience smote and he turned round. ‘Look, really, don’t do the washing-up. It’s not necessary. I’d have done it myself if I’d had the time.’ He smiled again. ‘You’ll ruin your nail varnish.’

Her mouth trembled. ‘Jack and me, it didn’t work.’ She flung herself after him and burrowed her sweet-smelling head into his chest. ‘Oh, Andy, I’ve missed you. I want to come home. I want to come home so much.’

An awful lethargy stole over him then, like the lethargy a drowning man must feel in the moment before he gives up. His eyes looked into the middle distance above her head, seeking straws. There were none. He held her for a second or two, then gently disentangled himself. ‘Come home,’ he said. ‘It’s yours as much as mine.’

‘You’re not angry?’

‘Not at all. I’m glad.’

Her wonderful eyes shone like stars. ‘Your mother said you would be.’

Straws, he thought, were useless to drowning men. It was the unquenchable longing for life that kept heads above water. ‘I’ll have that shower, then I’ll be off,’ he said. ‘I’ll fetch the books and the paintings tomorrow, and maybe the records I bought before we were married.’ He glanced through the sitting-room door at the chromium coffee table, the oatmeal carpet, the net curtains, the white formica wall units and the dainty pastel three-piece suite, and he thought, no one has ever lived here. He shook his head. ‘There’s nothing else I want.’

She caught him by the arm. ‘You are angry.’

His dark face cracked into a grin. ‘No. I’m glad. I needed a push. I hate this place. I always have done. It’s so’ – he sought for a word – ‘sterile.’ He looked at her with compassion. ‘Like our marriage.’

She dug her fingers into his arm. ‘I knew you’d bring that up, you bastard. But it’s not my fault. You never wanted kids any more than I did.’

He removed her hands. ‘That wasn’t quite the sterility I was referring to.’

She was bitter. ‘You’ve found someone else.’

He moved to the telephone, took a piece of paper from his pocket and dialled the number written on it. ‘McLoughlin,’ he said into the mouthpiece. ‘We’ve identified the body. That’s it, all over the newspapers tomorrow, so if he’s any sense he’ll lie low. Yes, it’ll have to be tonight. Damn right, I want him. Let’s just say I take what he did personally. So can you swing it?’ He listened for a moment. ‘Just make the point that they’ve got away with murder again. I’ll be with you by ten.’ He looked up and caught Kelly’s eye.

Water had gathered in great droplets round the mascaraed lashes. ‘Where will you go?’

‘I don’t know yet. Maybe Glasgow.’

Tears turned to anger, and her anger lashed out at him as it always had done. ‘You’ve left that bloody job, haven’t you? After all the begging I did for you to leave, you’ve left it because someone else asked you.’

‘No one’s asked me, Kelly, and I haven’t left it, not yet.’

‘But you will.’

‘Maybe.’

‘Who is she?’

He found he wanted to hurt her, so there must be some feeling left. Perhaps there always would be. Seven years, however sterile, had left their mark. ‘She’s my rose,’ he said, ‘my red, red rose.’ And Kelly, who had heard enough of hated Rabbie Burns to last a lifetime, felt a knot of panic tighten round her heart.

Phoebe rocked Diana’s shoulder and prodded her into wakefulness. ‘We’ve got visitors,’ she whispered. ‘I need help.’ Somewhere in the darkness behind her came the low growls of the dogs.

Diana squinted at her out of one eye. ‘Turn the light on,’ she said sleepily.

‘No, I don’t want them to know we’re awake.’ She bundled Diana’s dressing-gown on to her chest. ‘Come on, old girl, get a move on.’

‘Have you called the police?’ Diana sat up and shrugged her arms into the dressing-gown.

‘No point. It’ll be over one way or another long before the police get here.’ Phoebe switched on a small torch and pointed it at the floor. ‘Come on,’ she urged, ‘we haven’t much time.’

Diana pulled on her slippers and padded after her. ‘Why are the dogs here? Why aren’t they outside? And where’s McLoughlin?’

‘He didn’t come tonight.’ She sighed. ‘The one night we needed him, he didn’t turn up.’

‘So what are you planning to do?’

Phoebe lifted her shotgun from where she had propped it outside Diana’s bedroom door. ‘I’m going to use this,’ she said, leading the way downstairs, ‘and I don’t want to shoot the dogs by mistake. It’ll be their turn to have a go if the bastards manage to break in.’

‘Lord, woman,’ muttered Diana, ‘you’re not intending to kill anyone, are you?’

‘Don’t be a fool.’ She crept across the hall and into her drawing-room. ‘I’m going to scare the shit out of the creeps. They didn’t get rid of me last time. They won’t get rid of me now.’ She gestured Diana to one side of the curtains and, switching off the torch, took up a position on the other side. ‘Keep your eyes peeled. If you see anyone on the far side of the terrace, let me know.’

‘I’m going to regret this,’ Diana groaned, twitching the curtain aside and peering into the darkness. ‘I can’t see a bloody thing. How do you know they’re out there?’

‘Benson came in through the cellar window and woke me. I trained him to do it after the first time these yobs had a go at me.’ She patted the old dog’s head. ‘You’re such a good boy, aren’t you. It’s years since I’ve had you patrolling the grounds and you haven’t forgotten.’ The sound of the dog’s tail swishing backwards and forwards across the carpet was loud in the quiet room. Hedges, unborn at the time of David Maybury’s disappearance, crouched by his mistress’s feet, muscles tensed for when his turn came. Phoebe scanned the wide terrace for signs of movement. ‘Your eyes will soon adjust.’

‘There is someone,’ said Diana suddenly. ‘By the right-hand wall. Do you see him?’

‘Yes. There’s another coming round Anne’s wing.’ She gripped her shotgun firmly. ‘Can you unlock the windows without making a noise?’

For a brief moment Diana hesitated, then she shrugged and applied herself carefully to the key. Phoebe, she argued, knew all there was to know about hell. She had been there. She wouldn’t willingly go back a second time. In any case, the adrenaline was racing in her as strongly as it was racing in Phoebe. It was backs-against-the-wall time, she thought, when everyone, even rabbits, showed their teeth. ‘OK,’ she whispered, as the lock clicked quietly open. She peeped past the edge of the curtain again. ‘Oh, lord,’ she breathed, ‘there are dozens of them.’

Black figures crouched along the edge of the terrace like a troop of apes, but to think of them as such was to demean the animals. It is only man, with his single evolutionary advancement of reason, who takes pleasure in other people’s pain. Diana’s mouth went dry. There was something unbelievably chilling in mob hysteria where individual accountability was subordinate to the group.

‘Hardly dozens; five, six at the most. When I say, “Now,” open the door wide.’ Phoebe gave a wild laugh. ‘We’ll put the old adage to the test and wait till we see the whites of their eyes. I’ve always wanted to try it.’

There was confusion in the huddled mass as they seemed to crowd together about the terrace wall, then separate again. ‘What are they doing?’ asked Diana.

‘Pulling bricks off the top by the look of it. Keep your head down if they start throwing them.’

One of the crouching group seemed to be the leader. He used his arms to direct his troop, half to go down one side of the terrace, half to take the other side. ‘Now,’ muttered Phoebe urgently. ‘I don’t want them splitting up.’

Diana twisted the handle and thrust the door open. Phoebe was through it in a second, her tall figure melting into the shadows. She had raised the heavy stock to her shoulder and was about to sight down the barrel when one large hand clamped itself over her mouth and another plucked the gun from her grasp.

‘I wouldn’t if I were you, madam,’ whispered Fred’s soft voice in her ear. He kept his hand firmly over her mouth and used his forearm on her shoulder to force her to her knees. Bent double, he laid the shotgun noiselessly on the flagstones then, urging her upright again, he caught her round the waist as if she were no more than a piece of thistledown, and lifted her through the drawing-room windows. He felt Diana’s presence, rather than saw it. ‘Not a sound,’ he cautioned her in a tight whisper, ‘and close the window, if you please.’

‘But, Fred – ’ she began.

‘Do as I say, Mrs Goode. Do you want madam hurt?’

Thoroughly shaken, Diana did as he said.

Ignoring Phoebe’s biting teeth, Fred hauled her unceremoniously across the room and bundled her into the hall. Diana pursued him. ‘What are you doing?’ she demanded fiercely, buffeting him around his shoulders with bunched fists. ‘Put Phoebe down this minute.’ Benson and Hedges, alarmed by Diana’s tone, threw themselves against Fred’s legs.

‘This door, too, Mrs Goode, if you please.’

She caught a handful of his sparse hair and tugged hard. ‘Let her go,’ she grunted.

With a sigh of pain, he swung round, carrying both women with him, and kicked the door to with his foot. Seconds later the French windows shattered inwards into a thousand pieces. ‘There,’ he said amiably, setting Phoebe carefully on the floor and removing his hand from her mouth. ‘We’re all right now, I think. If you wouldn’t mind, Mrs Goode, that is a little painful. Thank you.’ He fished a handkerchief from his pocket and wrapped it round his bleeding fingers. ‘Good boys,’ he murmured, fondling the dogs’ muzzles, ‘that’s the ticket. I don’t say I’m not annoyed about another window needing new glass, but this time we’ll make sure it’s paid for.’ He opened the door. ‘Would you excuse me, madam? I’d hate to miss the fun.’

Speechlessly, the two women watched his great bulk pad lightly across the broken glass and step out on to the terrace. Beyond, lit by brilliant moonlight, was a scene from Hieronymus Bosch. A grotesque tangle of misshapen figures writhed in hideous and noisy confusion upon the lawn. As Fred, with a bloodcurdling roar, charged across the terrace and launched himself atop the mêlée, Phoebe took in the situation at a glance, whistled up Hedges and pointed to one flying fugitive who had managed to pull himself free. ‘Off you go, boy.’ Hedges, barking his excitement, bounded across the grass, bowled his man over and pranced about him, howling his achievement to the moon. Benson, not to be outdone, waddled on to the terrace, sat comfortably on his haunches and raised his old muzzle in joyous unison.

The row from dogs and flailing bodies was deafening.

‘Men!’ exclaimed Diana in Phoebe’s ear and Phoebe, with adrenaline still running rampant in her bloodstream, burst into tears of laughter.

 

Twenty-Four

THE CONFUSION WAS short-lived. By the time Diana thought of switching on the drawing-room lights, the half dozen vandals had thrown in the towel and were being herded across the terrace by a panting semicircle of McLoughlin, young PC Gavin Williams, out of uniform, Jonathan, Fred and Paddy Clarke.

‘Inside,’ ordered McLoughlin curtly. ‘You’re all nicked.’

Stripped of their menace by the glare of the overhead lamps, they were an unprepossessing bunch of shuffling, sweaty youths with surly faces and evasive eyes. Diana knew them all by sight as lads from the village, but she could put a name to only two of them, Eddie Staines and nineteen-year-old Peter Barnes, son of Dilys and brother to Emma. She looked them over in amazement. ‘What have we ever done to you? I don’t even know who most of you are.’

Barnes was a good-looking young man, tall, athletic, an ex-public school boy, now working in his father’s print business in Silverborne. He sneered at her but didn’t answer. Eddie Staines and the remaining four stared fixedly at the floor.

‘It’s a reasonable enough question,’ said McLoughlin evenly. ‘What have these ladies ever done to you?’

Barnes shifted his gaze. ‘Which ladies?’ he asked insolently. ‘Do you mean the dykes?’

Barnes’s voice, unaccented, interested McLoughlin. The shouts on the lawn had all carried the strangled vowels of the working class. A slight shake of his head kept Diana quiet. ‘I was referring to Mrs Maybury and her friends,’ he said in the same even tone. ‘What have they ever done to you?’ He searched the line of unresponsive faces. ‘All right, for the moment you will be charged with aggravated assault on the owner of Streech Grange.’

‘We never touched her,’ complained Eddie Staines.

‘Shut up,’ said Barnes.

‘Never touched who?’

‘Her. Mrs Maybury.’

‘I didn’t say you did.’

‘What was all that aggravated assault crap?’

‘She’s not the owner of Streech Grange,’ McLoughlin pointed out. ‘Mr Jonathan Maybury and his sister own this property.’

‘Oh.’ Eddie frowned. ‘We thought it was the dyke’s.’

McLoughlin arched an eyebrow. ‘Do you mean Mrs Maybury?’

‘You soft in the head, or what?’

‘That,’ murmured McLoughlin mildly, ‘would appear to be your privilege. Eddie Staines, is it?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Keep your big mouth shut, you ignorant turd,’ Barnes grated through clenched teeth.

A cold gleam lit McLoughlin’s eyes. ‘Well, well, Paddy, you were right. It’s the jumped-up little oik who calls the shots. So what’s his problem?’

‘His mother,’ was Paddy’s laconic reply.

The boy threw him a murderous glance.

Paddy gave an indifferent shrug. ‘I’m sorry for you, lad. If you’d had half your sister’s sense, you’d have got by. You’d have raised two fingers to that stupid bitch with her twisted ambitions, and you’d have kept your sanity. Try asking yourself who Emma’s really screwing when she comes up here and spreads her legs.’ He glanced at McLoughlin. ‘Ever heard the expression, a beggar on horseback? A beggar comes into a bit of money, buys a horse to raise himself up, only to find he can’t ride the damn thing. That’s Dilys Barnes. She came a cropper when she set her sights too high and moved the family into Streech. No harm in that, of course. It’s a free country. But you don’t, if you’ve any sense, treat one end of the village like muck because you think they’re beneath you, while you lick the backsides of the other end and brandish your painfully transparent family tree under their noses. That way, you alienate everybody.’

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 laughing-stock 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 bucket-load.’

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 adrenalin 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.’ McLoughlin 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?’

‘There was her parents – ’ He broke off as his brain caught up with his mouth. ‘Yeah, well, as I say, we’re back to square one now.’

‘Anything but. Mrs Maybury didn’t kill K.C., Eddie. You did.’

‘Cobblers!’

‘He wasn’t murdered. He died of cold, starvation and self-neglect. You were the last person to see him alive. If you’d offered him a hand he wouldn’t be dead now. He needed help, and you didn’t give it to him.’

‘Now listen here, mister. You trying to set me up or something? The Inspector said he was stabbed in the gut.’

Between the Scylla of Barnes and the Charybdis of Walsh, was it any wonder, thought McLoughlin, that Phoebe had retreated into her fortress? Without a twinge of regret, he rode rough-shod over Walsh’s thirty years on the Force. ‘The Inspector greased a few palms and was over-promoted,’ he said bluntly. ‘It happens in the police just as it happens everywhere else. They’ll give him early retirement as a result of this cock-up and get shot of him.’

‘Jesus!’ said Eddie, impressed by so much honesty from a policeman.

‘You cretin,’ muttered Peter Barnes. ‘He’s running bloody rings round you.’

McLoughlin ignored him. ‘Number four, Eddie,’ he went on. ‘When you and the scum you associate with come up here for a spot of queer-bashing, you miss the mark. There are no queers living in Streech Grange. Who told you there were?’

‘It’s common knowledge.’ Eddie looked uncomfortable. ‘The three dykes. The three witches. They’re always called one or the other.’ He darted a quick glance at Peter Barnes. ‘Me, I’m not into queer-bashing.’

‘I see.’ McLoughlin transferred his attention to Barnes. ‘So it’s you who’s not keen on queers.’ He yawned suddenly and rubbed his eyes. ‘What happened? Someone try it on at that school you went to?’ He saw the sudden pinching round the boy’s nostrils and his brooding face cracked into a grin. ‘Don’t tell me you enjoyed it, and now you’re busting a gut to prove you didn’t.’

‘Fucking perverts,’ the boy blurted out. ‘They make me sick.’ He spat at Phoebe. ‘Fucking perverts. They should be locked up.’ A well of loathing seemed to overflow. ‘I hate them.’

Something malignant stirred in the depths of McLoughlin’s dark eyes. He took a lightning step forward and clamped his hand across Barnes’s mouth, digging his fingers and thumb into the soft flesh of the cheeks and forcing the boy up on to the balls of his feet. ‘I find you extremely offensive,’ he said softly. ‘You’re a moronic little psychopath and in my book it’s the likes of you who should be locked up, not the likes of Oscar Wilde. The only contribution you will ever make to society will be a negative one when you pass your prejudices and your miserably inadequate IQ to a succeeding generation.’ He levered Barnes up another inch. ‘In addition it makes me very angry to hear these women referred to as perverts. Do you understand me?’

Barnes tried to speak but the words stuck in his throat. McLoughlin dug his fingers deeper and Barnes nodded vigorously.

‘Good.’ McLoughlin unlocked his fingers and pushed him away with the heel of his hand. He favoured Staines with a friendly smile. ‘I hope you can see where all this is leading, Eddie. You do realise I am giving you the benefit of the doubt. I am assuming you genuinely believed these people were guilty of something.’

Eddie’s good-humoured face puckered in worried concentration. ‘Listen, mister, I just came along to see justice done. I swear to God that’s all I came for.’ He waved a hand at the other youths. ‘That’s all any of us came for. We got the call you were letting her off again. This queer-bashing stuff, that’s Peter’s kick.’ He flicked a shy look at Phoebe and Diana. ‘Jesus, it doesn’t make sense anyway. If you’re not queer, why do you go along with it?’

Diana rolled her eyes to Heaven. ‘Do you know, I’ve often wondered that myself.’ She turned to Phoebe. ‘I’ve forgotten, old thing, why do we go along with it?’

Phoebe’s rich laugh tumbled from her mouth. ‘Don’t be such a fool.’ She looked at Eddie and raised her hands helplessly. ‘We’ve never had a choice. Hardly anyone ever speaks to us. Those who do, know all about us. Those who don’t, assume whatever they want to assume. You have assumed we’re gay.’ Her eyes laughed softly. ‘Bar copulating naked by the village pond with a series of men, I don’t see how we could ever prove we weren’t. In any case, would you have thought any better of us if you’d known we preferred men?’

‘Yeah,’ said Eddie with an appreciative wink. ‘I bloody well would. Mind you,’ he continued thoughtfully, ‘none of this explains what happened to your old man. If the only reason he legged it was because the money’d dried up why didn’t he get you off the hook when he read what was happening to you? It only needed a phone call to the police.’

There was an awkward silence.

‘You talk as if the man had a clear conscience,’ said McLoughlin at last. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the colour drain from Jonathan’s set face. Dammit, he thought. Whichever way you turned, you were always caught between the rock and the hard place. ‘It’s sub judice, Eddie, which is why we’ve never released details. But I can tell you this, the minute the man re-surfaces he will be prosecuted.’ He shrugged. ‘For the moment you’ll just have to take my word that it suits his book if everyone thinks he’s dead. He was a villain. We’ll find him one day.’

Even Paddy looked impressed.

‘Jesus!’ said Eddie again. ‘Je – sus!’ He scrunched his foot on some broken glass. ‘Listen, lady,’ he offered, ‘about these windows.’ He gestured to the youths behind him. ‘We’ll clear up and put some new ones in. It’s only fair.’

‘You can do better than that, Eddie,’ said McLoughlin pleasantly. ‘It’s names we want. Let’s start with who attacked Miss Cattrell?’

Eddie shook his head with genuine regret. ‘I can guess, same as you can, but if it’s proof you need, then I can’t help you. Like I said, queer-bashing doesn’t turn me on.’ He indicated one of his mates. ‘Me and Bob took a couple of birds to the flicks that night. I don’t know about the rest of them.’

A chorus of denials greeted this statement.

‘Not me. I was watching telly with my folks.’

‘Jesus, Eddie, I was round your sister’s place. You bloody know that.’

‘Fuck that. I only heard about it the next morning, same as you.’

Above their heads, McLoughlin caught Paddy’s eye and saw his own disappointment mirrored there. The truth had an unmistakable ring about it. ‘And what about you?’ he asked Peter Barnes, knowing the little bastard would get away with it. ‘Where were you?’

Barnes grinned. ‘I was with my mother all evening until half-past midnight. Then I went to bed. She’ll sign a statement if you ask her nicely.’ He raised his middle finger and jabbed it in the air at Paddy. ‘That’s to you and your beggar crap, shithead.’ He giggled and crooked his arm over his other fist, thrusting the finger skyward. ‘And that’s to your pathetic little setup. What a joke. It was so fucking transparent, a blind man could have seen through it. You think I haven’t creepy-crawled this place, seen the tame fuzz they’ve got watching over them?’ He giggled again.

Alarm bells rang in McLoughlin’s head. What the hell sort of psychopath was this boy? A Charles Manson freak? Je – sus! ‘Creepy-crawled’, he knew, was an expression the Charles Manson Family had used to describe the way they had entered Sharon Tate’s house before they murdered her. ‘So what brought you up here?’ he asked, loosing some handcuffs from his jacket pocket. ‘Gives you a buzz, does it, being arrested?’

‘It sure as hell gives me a buzz to see you cretins screw up. That’s got to be worth a slapped wrist and a fine any day. Hell, it was a bit of high spirits. Dad’ll ante-up for the damage.’

There was a moment of silence before Jonathan’s cool voice spoke from the shattered window. ‘That seems reasonable,’ he said. ‘In return, I’ll ante-up for the damage I’m going to do to you.’

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.

 

Twenty-Five

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 licensed 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 bellyaching. 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.

‘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 the 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 for ever.

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 to 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.’

‘Wouldn’t it be better to leave well alone?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because, Cattrell, if Phoebe isn’t freed of him, you and Diana will be tied to this house for ever.’

She looked into a private darkness beyond him. How little he understood. They would always be tied now. It had been too long. They had lost the confidence to start again.

He gave her fingers a last squeeze and stood up. ‘I’d better make tracks for bed then.’

She nodded, her eyes over-bright. ‘Goodbye, McLoughlin. I wish you luck, I really do.’

He scratched the side of his face. ‘I suppose you couldn’t lend me a pillow? And maybe a toothbrush from the bathroom?’

‘What for?’

‘I’ve got nowhere to sleep, woman. I told you, my wife came back. I’m damned if I’m spending another seven years with someone whose favourite colour is beige. I walked out.’ He watched her smile. ‘I thought I’d shack up with a friend this time.’

‘What sort of friend?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. How about a cynical, selfish intellectual snob, who can’t sustain relationships, doesn’t conform and embarrasses people?’

She laughed quietly. ‘It’s all true.’

‘Of course it is. We’ve a lot in common. It’s not a bad description of me either.’

‘You’d hate living here.’

‘About as much as you do, probably. How does Glasgow sound?’

‘What would we do there?’

‘Explore, Cattrell, explore.’

Her eyes danced. ‘Are you going to take no for an answer, McLoughlin?’

‘No.’

‘Well what the hell are you waiting for then?’

 

Praise for Minette Walters

The Ice House

‘Terrific first novel with a high Rendellesque frisson count’

The Times

The Sculptress

‘A devastatingly effective novel’

Observer

The Scold’s Bridle

‘A gothic puzzle of great intricacy and psychological power’

Sunday Times

The Dark Room

‘A marvellous, dramatically intelligent novel. It shimmers with suspense, ambiguity and a deep unholy joy’

Daily Mail

The Echo

‘It grips like steel . . . Passion, compassion, intelligence and romance are what Walters offers with no quarter for squeamish cowards’

Mail on Sunday

The Breaker

‘Stands head and shoulders above the vast majority of crime novels . . . Existing fans will love The Breaker, new readers will be instant converts’

Daily Express

The Shape of Snakes

‘Breaking all the rules of popular fiction, Minette Walters asks as much of her readers as many literary novelists, and yet she offers them a book as gripping as any thriller’

Times Literary Supplement

Acid Row

‘Humane intelligence enables Walters to twist and turn her plot . . . Acid Row is a breathtaking achievement’

Daily Telegraph

Fox Evil

‘Fox Evil is the work of a writer at the peak of her confidence and supreme ability’

The Times

Disordered Minds

‘A powerful, acute and vivid work from a staggeringly talented writer’

Observer

The Tinder Box

‘If there wasn’t a recognised school of crime writing called Home Counties noir before, there is now. Minette Walters invented it and remains the undisputed Head Girl’

Birmingham Post

The Devil’s Feather

‘One of the most powerful yet nuanced practitioners of the psychological thriller . . . always keeps the narrative momentum cracked up to a fierce degree’

Daily Express

Chickenfeed

‘A marvellous little story, thoroughly intimate with human nastiness’

Evening Standard

The Chameleon’s Shadow

‘No wonder Minette Walters is the country’s bestselling female crime writer. But even this label does not exactly do justice to the scope and breadth of her gripping, terrifying novels . . . The Chameleon’s Shadow is another classic’

Daily Mirror

 

The Ice House

With her debut, The Ice House, Minette Walters won the Crime Writers’ Association John Creasey Award for the best first crime novel of 1992. Rapidly establishing a reputation as one of the most exciting crime novelists writing today, her second novel, The Sculptress, was acclaimed by critics as one of the most compelling and powerful novels of the year and won the Edgar Allan Poe Award for the best crime novel published in America in 1993. In 1994 Minette Walters achieved a unique triple when The Scold’s Bridle was awarded the CWA Gold Dagger for best crime novel of the year. Her following five novels, The Dark Room, The Echo, The Breaker, The Shape of Snakes and Acid Row, were also published to further critical acclaim throughout the world and her ninth novel, Fox Evil, won the 2003 CWA Gold Dagger for Fiction. Her short novel Chickenfeed was written for World Book Day to encourage emergent readers and was voted the 2006 Quick Reads Readers’ Favourite.

Minette Walters lives in Dorset with her husband and two children.

 

By the same author

The Sculptress

The Scold’s Bridle

The Dark Room

The Echo

The Breaker

The Shape of Snakes

Acid Row

Fox Evil

Disordered Minds

The Devil’s Feather

The Chameleon’s Shadow

and

The Tinder Box

Chickenfeed

(Quick Reads)

 

To Alec

 

Revenge is a kind of wild justice, which the more man’s nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out.

Francis Bacon

O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us

To see oursels as others see us!

It wad frae mony a blunder free us

And foolish notion.

Robert Burns, ‘To a Louse’

 

 

Southern Evening Herald – 23rd March

Growing Police Anxiety

Following intensive questioning at airports, docks and ferry terminals in the search for the missing businessman, David Maybury, police have expressed concern for his welfare. ‘It is now ten days since he vanished,’ said Inspector Walsh, the detective in charge of the investigation, ‘and we cannot rule out the possibility of foul play.’ Police efforts are being concentrated on a thorough search of Streech Grange Estate and the surrounding farmland.

There have been numerous reported sightings of the missing man over the past week, but none that could be substantiated. David Maybury, 44, was wearing a charcoal-grey pinstripe suit on the night he vanished. He is 5'10" tall, of average build, with dark hair and eyes.

 

Sun – 15th April

To The Manor Buried

Mrs Phoebe Maybury, 27, beautiful red-haired wife of missing businessman David Maybury, looked on in fury as police dug up her garden in their search for her husband. Mrs Maybury, an avid gardener herself, declared: ‘This house has been in my family for years and the garden is the product of several generations. The police have no business to destroy it.’

Reliable sources say that David Maybury, 44, was in financial difficulties shortly before he disappeared. His wine business, funded by his wife and run from the cellars of their house, was virtually bankrupt. Friends talk of constant rows between the couple. Police are treating his disappearance as murder.

 

Daily Telegraph – 9th August

Police Team Disbanded

Police admitted last night to being baffled over the disappearance of Hampshire man, David Maybury. In spite of a long and thorough investigation, no trace of him has been found, and the team involved in the enquiry has been disbanded. The file will remain open, according to police sources, but there is little confidence in solving the mystery. ‘The public has been very helpful,’ said a police spokesman. ‘We have built a clear picture of what happened the night he vanished, but until we find his body, there’s little more we can do.’

 

 

First published 1992 by Macmillan

First published in paperback 1993 by Pan Books

This edition published 2008 by Pan Books

This electronic edition published 2010 by Pan Books
an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR
Basingstoke and Oxford
Associated companies throughout the world
www.panmacmillan.com

ISBN 978-0-330-52872-6 PDF
ISBN 978-0-330-52871-9 EPUB

Copyright © Minette Walters 1992

The right of Minette Walters to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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