Frozen in Crime

by Cecilia Peartree

  Chapter 22 Animal Shelter

  The call came in just as Charlie was getting ready for bed. Because the alternative was the floor of the staff kitchen, he elected to sleep in a cell. He had threatened dire consequences if anyone locked him in.

  Sergeant McDonald came down the corridor fast, his heavy tread making him sound like a whole herd of rhinos charging down to a waterhole somewhere in Africa.

  ‘Mr Wilson’s just called,’ he said. ‘You haven’t got your radio on, sir. I was just about to go home.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Charlie, glancing round to see where he had put the radio. There was no sign of it. He hoped Amaryllis hadn’t taken it while he wasn’t looking. It was just the kind of thing she would do. ‘What did he want this time?’

  ‘They’ve found a body.’

  Charlie sank down on the bed and put his hands over his eyes to shut out reality. ‘No,’ he moaned. ‘I don’t believe it. What have those two got against me? How did they know I was just about to fall into bed?’

  ‘Suspected foul play. Ambulance called but he said there’s no sign of life. Looks like our man. He’s wearing the parka Ms Peebles lent him… I’ll be surprised if the ambulance can get through – we’d maybe better alert the duty doctor.’

  Charlie pulled himself together. ‘I’ll go. Better get Keith to come with me. You go home and get some sleep. You’ll be no use to anybody if you’re half-dead on your feet. And when you say your prayers, just ask for an overnight thaw.’

  He pictured Sergeant McDonald on his knees, hands folded, eyes closed, beside a high, old-fashioned bed and he smiled in spite of the gravity of the situation. The dog, which had been snoozing in the corner of Charlie’s chosen cell, opened its eyes suddenly and lifted its head.

  ‘Go back to sleep,’ Charlie told it. Tomorrow would be soon enough for the dog to find out it was orphaned, or whatever the appropriate term was.

  Charlie and Keith, the latter bleary-eyed because he had already fallen asleep at the kitchen table, wrapped up as warmly as they could and went out again. It seemed even colder than before. Was it always colder just before a thaw? That didn’t seem right. But weather could do all sort of strange, unexpected things. A bit like women.

  ‘So what do you think? Will it thaw overnight?’ he said heartily to Keith, mostly to deflect his thoughts from a path he knew would only end in tears.

  Keith Burnett looked at him as if he’d taken leave of his senses.

  ‘No way, sir,’ he said. ‘This lot’s going to freeze over and then we’re in for more snow in a couple of days. It said on the radio.’

  ‘More snow?’ Charlie had been too preoccupied to listen to any weather forecasts, and he was aghast at the idea of this situation continuing indefinitely.

  They slipped and slithered down the slope towards the spot where Amaryllis and Christopher stood guard over a motionless shape that obviously no longer needed guarding.

  ‘We can’t get an ambulance into the town,’ said Charlie. ‘We’re calling out the nearest doctor. But I’m guessing there isn’t any big rush now,’ he added, crouching over the body.

  ‘There’s blood,’ said Amaryllis.

  She seemed unnaturally upset by her standards. She must have seen blood before, and in far worse circumstances than this. At least this body wasn’t crushed and broken like some of the victims of road traffic accidents he’d been unfortunate enough to see over the years. Of course, this one was closer to her home territory than most of the others had been. He stood up slowly and said, ‘It’s him all right.’

  ‘Maybe he slipped on the ice and hit his head on something,’ said Keith Burnett, as if trying to make things seem a bit better.

  ‘Not unless he slipped in such a way that he twisted round and accidentally shot himself in the back of the head,’ said Charlie Smith.

  Keith Burnett took a big step back.

  ‘Is it murder, then?’ he asked quietly.

  ‘Of course it’s murder!’ snapped Charlie, and then felt sorry for raising his voice. He wasn’t really angry with Keith but with himself for failing to protect this man. He had taken him and his dog in off the streets to try and do just that, and he had just made things even worse.

  He looked across at Christopher and Amaryllis. ‘Did you see or hear anything?’

  Christopher shook his head. ‘We’d just come back from a walk round the town. We came down the road and he was lying there. No sign of anybody else around.’

  He wondered why Amaryllis hadn’t spoken for the two of them as she often did. Then he saw that she was trembling and that Christopher had his arm round her shoulders, which could have been the only thing keeping her upright.

  ‘You might as well go indoors,’ he said to them. ‘Your flat’s just along here, isn’t it?’

  Amaryllis nodded, teeth chattering. Of course, she didn’t have her big parka any more. Charlie didn’t think she would want it back now though, even if he had been able to give it to her.

  ‘Be careful,’ he added suddenly. ‘Do you want Keith to go with you?’

  Christopher met Charlie’s eyes. ‘Do you think that’s necessary?’

  ‘Could be,’ said Charlie, trying to sound casual despite a horrible thought that had just crossed his mind. What if the killer had been waiting for Amaryllis here, and had imagined she was the one wearing the big parka? What if, realising his mistake, he had then moved to wait in or near her apartment? It wasn’t worth taking the risk. Normally she would have been the best person to deal with any intruders or masked gunmen in the shadows, but she didn’t look up to that in her present state.

  Reason re-asserted itself. The man had been shot in the back of the head, and there was no sign he had been wearing the hood of the parka up at the time. Anyone who had seen him without it would have realised at once that he wasn’t Amaryllis. You couldn’t mistake that spiky tangle of dark red hair for anyone else’s. Unless she was unknown to the killer, of course.

  He pulled himself together, conscious that the others were all looking at him.

  ‘OK, Keith, go along there with them. Come back once they’re safely shut in. The doctor should be down in a minute. Then we’ll need to get Karen to bring the Land Rover. Give her a call now.’

  He didn’t want to have to wake up Karen, who hadn’t had any more sleep for the past few nights than the rest of them, but she was younger than Sergeant McDonald and would recover faster, even if she was likely to grumble a bit more at the time.

  There were some grim things to do next, and he wished the time had passed in a blur so that he could blot them out of his memory quickly. But it all seemed very real, from the wait for the doctor, through the unpleasant task of loading the body into the police Land Rover and then transporting it to the premises of a local undertaker who hadn’t been best pleased to be woken up either. Rushing to store it like this had made Keith raise his eyebrows, but they couldn’t leave the man out in the snow in case the longed-for thaw should arrive in the middle of the night. It wasn’t done according to standard procedure, but as they had driven a coach and horses through the regulations over the past few days, nobody was about to lose any sleep over it. Apart from anything else, they couldn’t afford to lose any more sleep what with all that had been going on.

  They disturbed the body as little as was humanly possible, but something odd happened as they were leaving the undertaker’s. Karen, who was driving, put her bag down behind the seat and picked something up off the floor. It gleamed gold in the light from the street lamp just outside.

  ‘Look - what’s this, sir? It looks like some sort of bird. With a long tail,’ she added, turning it over in her fingers. ‘It’s very pretty. Where did it come from?’

  Even after recent events, Charlie Smith still had the capacity to be surprised.

  ‘The golden peacock,’ he breathed. ‘Well, who’d have thought it?’