The Ice House

22

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 Maybury?" 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 shouiders. "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. "Touche. 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 country. "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 hungover 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 bloodsoaked. 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."