Ice House

by Walters, Minette

  "Damn," said the Chief Inspector with feeling. "Have you got a copy?"

  "Not yet. It was the landlord at the pub who told me about it and he's looking for his copies now. If he finds them, he'll give me a ring."

  "Anything else?"

  "Do me a favour, sir, I've hardly started," said Nick Robinson plaintively. "I asked about strangers. Several people remembered seeing an old tramp hanging around the village about two, three months ago but I couldn't get a definite date on him. He had money because he bought a couple of drinks in the pub."

  "I've a date, sir," Constable Williams interrupted eagerly. "He knocked at two houses on the council estate asking for food and money. The first was an old lady called Mrs. Hogarth who gave him a sandwich; the second was a Mrs. Fowler who sent him off with a flea in his ear because he came in the middle of her son's birthday party. The twenty-seventh of May,'* he finished triumphantly. "I've got a good description, too. He shouldn't be too hard to find. Old brown trilby, green jacket and, this is the clincher, bright pink trousers."

  Walsh was doubtful. "There's probably no connection. Tramps are two a penny round here in the summer. They follow the sun and the scenic routes just like the tourists. Any more?"

  DS Robinson caught a sardonic gleam in McLoughlin's eye which told him what he'd already guessed, that the old man was in another of his moods. God rot his soul, he thought. It was like working with a yo-yo, up one minute, down the next. Any other time and all his efforts of the morning would have earned him a pat on the back. As things stood now, he'd be lucky if he got away with a kick in the pants.

  He returned to his notebook. "I followed a lead I was given and spoke to one of the condom users," he went on. "He comes up here with his girlfriend when it's warm enough, usually around eleven o'clock—"

  "Name," snapped Walsh.

  "Sorry, sir. Promised I wouldn't reveal his name, not unless it became absolutely necessary for a prosecution and, even then, not without his permission." In Sergeant Robinson's view, Paddy Clarke's threat to string him up by the balls had been no idle one. The big man had offered no reasons for his promiscuity but Robinson had guessed them when Mrs. Clarke returned unexpectedly as he was leaving. She was big, meaty and domineering with a brittle smile and hard eyes. A Gorgon who wore the trousers. God knows, Robinson had thought, no one could blame Paddy for wanting something soft, sweet and compliant to cuddle from time to time.

  "Go on," said Walsh.

  "I asked him if he'd seen anything unusual up here in the last six months. Seen, no, he said, but heard, yes. According to him it's normally pretty quiet, the odd owl or nightjar, dogs barking in the distance, that sort of thing." He consulted his notebook. "On two occasions in June, during the first two weeks, he reckons, he and his girlfriend were—and I'm quoting him, sir—'scared shitless by the most god-awful racket you've ever heard. Like souls crying out in hell.' The first time it happened, his girlfriend was so frightened she took to her heels and ran. He followed pretty sharpish and when they reached the road, she told him she'd left her knickers behind."

  A muted snigger rippled round the seated men like a soft breeze through the grass. Even Walsh smiled. "What was it, did they know?"

  "They sussed it the second time. They came up a week later and it happened again but to a much lesser degree. This time, my man hung on to his girl and made her listen. It was cats yowling and spitting, either at each other or something else—he thought he could hear growling as well. He couldn't say where it was coming from, but it was fairly close." He looked at Walsh. "They've been up several times since but it's not happened again."

  McLoughlin stirred himself. "The colony of feral cats at the farm," he said, "fighting over the body. If that's right and the date's accurate it gives us the beginnings of a timescale. Our victim was murdered during or before the first week in June."

  "How sure is your man of his dates?" Walsh asked Robinson.

  "Pretty sure. He's going to check with the girlfriend but he remembers it being during that spell of very hot weather at the beginning of June, said the ground was dry as a bone both times so he didn't need to take anything for them to lie on."

  Walsh made some notes on his pad. "Is that it?"

  "I've had some conflicting reports about the three women up here. Almost everyone agrees they're lesbians and that they try to seduce the village girls into lesbian orgies. But two of them—in my view, sir, the two most sensible—said it was malicious rubbish. One's an old lady in her seventies or eighties who knows them pretty well, the other's my informant. He said that Anne Cattrell's had so many lovers she could give Fiona Richmond lessons on sex." He took a cigarette out and lit it, glancing through the smoke at McLoughlin. "If it's true, sir, it might give us another angle. Crime passionnel, or whatever the Frogs call it. It strikes me she's gone out of her way to make us think she's only interested in women. Why? Could be because she's done away with a jealous lover and doesn't want us to make the connection."

  "Your informant's talking crap," McLoughlin said bluntly. "Everyone knows they're lesbians. Hell, I've heard more old jokes about that than I can remember." Jack Booth had had a fund of them. "It's hardly something new that Miss Cattrell's invented for our benefit. And if it's not true, why do they pretend it is? What on earth do they gain by it?"

  Walsh was stuffing tobacco into his pipe. "Your problem, Andy, is that you generalise too much," he said acidly. "The fact that everyone knows something doesn't make it true. Everyone knew my brother was a tight-fisted bastard until he died and we discovered he'd been paying out two hundred quid a year for fifteen years to educate some black kids in Africa." He nodded approvingly at Robinson. "You may have something, Nick, Personally, I couldn't give a monkey's what their sexual habits are and, from what I've seen of them, they couldn't give a monkey's what people say or think about them. Which is why"—he glared at McLoughlin—"they wouldn't trouble to deny or confirm anything. But," he continued thoughtfully, lighting his pipe, "I am interested in the fact that Anne Cattrell's been shoving lesbianism down our throats since we got here. What's her motive?" He fell silent.

  DS Robinson waited a moment. "Let me have a go at her, sir. A new face, she might open up. No harm in trying."

  "I'll think about it. Has anyone else got anything?"

  A constable raised a hand. "Two people I spoke to reported hearing a woman sobbing one night, sir, but they couldn't remember how long ago." "Two people in the same house?"

  "No, that's why I thought it worth mentioning. Different houses. There's a couple of farm cottages just off the East Deller road, belong to Grange Farm. Both sets of occupants remembered hearing the woman but said they didn't do anything about it because they thought it was a lovers' tiff. Neither cottage could remember exactly when it was."

  "Go and see them again," said Walsh abruptly. "You, too, Williams. Find out if they were watching telly when it happened, what programme was on, were they eating supper? Or if they were in bed, how late it was, were they awake because it was hot, because it was raining? Anything to give us an idea of time and date. If she wasn't sobbing because she'd just killed a man, she might have been sobbing because she'd just seen him killed." He pushed himself awkwardly to his feet, gathering his notebook and jacket as he did so. "McLoughlin, you come with me. We're going to have a chat with Mrs. Thompson. Jones, you and your squad pack up here and get everything back to the Station. You can take an hour's break, then I want you all here for a search of the house. There'll be warrants on my desk," he told Jones. "Bring them with you." He turned to Nick Robinson. "OK, lad, you go and have your quiet little chat about sex with Ms. Cattrell but don't go putting the wind up her. If she did chop our body up, I want to be able to prove it."

  "Leave it to me, sir."

  Walsh smiled his reptilian smile. "Just remember one thing, Nick. In her time she's eaten Special Branch men for breakfast. You represent a small bag of peanuts."

  The door opened after some moments to reveal a drab little woman in a
high-buttoned, long-sleeved black dress. She had sorrowful eyes and a pinched mouth. A gold cross on a long chain lay between her flat breasts and she needed only a coif and an open prayer book to complete the picture of devoted suffering.

  Walsh proffered his identity card. "Mrs. Thompson?" he asked.

  She nodded but didn't bother to look at the card.

  "Chief Inspector Walsh and Sergeant McLoughlin. Could we come in? We'd like to ask you some questions about your husband's disappearance."

  She pinched her lips into an unattractive moue. "But I've told the police all I know," she whimpered, the sorrowful eyes welling with tears. "I don't want to think about it any more."

  Walsh groaned inwardly. His wife would be like this, he thought, if anything happened to him. Inadequate, tearful, irritating. He smiled kindly. "We'll only keep you a minute," he assured her.

  Reluctantly, she pulled the door wide and gestured towards the living-room, though living-room, thought McLoughlin as he entered it, was a misnomer. It was clean to the point of obsession and bare of anything that might display character or individuality, no books, no ornaments, no pictures, not even a television. In his mind's eye, he compared it with the vivid and colourful room that Anne Cattrell lived in. If the two rooms were an outward expression of the inner person, he had no doubt who was the more interesting. Living with Mrs. Thompson would be like living with an empty shell.

  They sat on the sterile chairs. Mrs. Thompson perched on the edge of the sofa, crumpling a lace handkerchief between her fingers, dabbing her eyes with it from time to time. Inspector Walsh took his pipe from his pocket, glanced around the room as if noticing it for the first time, then put the pipe away again. "What size shoes does your husband take?" he asked the little woman.

  Her eyes opened wide and she stared at him as if he'd made an improper suggestion. "I don't understand," she whispered.

  Walsh felt his irritation mounting. If Thompson had done a runner, who could blame him? The woman was ridiculous. "What size shoes does your husband take?" he asked again patiently.

  "Does?" she repeated. "Does? Have you found him then? I've been so sure he was dead." She became quite animated. "He's lost his memory, hasn't he? It's the only explanation. He'd never leave me, you know."

  "No, we haven't found him, Mrs. Thompson," said the Inspector firmly, "but you reported him missing and we are doing our best to trace him for you. It would help if we knew his shoe size. The missing person's report says size eight. Is that correct?"

  "I don't know," she said vacantly. "He always bought his shoes himself." She peeped at him from under her lashes and, rather shockingly, flashed him a coy smile.

  McLoughlin leaned forward. "Could you take me upstairs, Mrs. Thompson, and we'll find out from the pairs he left behind?"

  She shrank into the sofa. "I couldn't possibly," she said. "I don't know you. It was a young policewoman who came before. Where is she? Why isn't she here?"

  Inspector Walsh counted to ten and considered that Daniel Thompson must have been a saint. "How long have you been married?" he asked curiously.

  "Thirty-two years," she whispered. The man was a saint, he thought.

  "Could you pop up and fetch a pair of his shoes?" he suggested. "Sergeant McLoughlin and I will wait down here for you."

  She accepted this without demur and slipped out of the room, shutting the door behind her as if the door would somehow stop them were they really intent on raping her in her bedroom. Walsh raised his eyebrows to heaven. "She needs her head examined."

  McLoughlin replied seriously, "She's ill. Looks to me as if her husband's disappearance has sent her off the rails. Don't you think we ought to get her some help?"

  Walsh pondered. "There was a vicarage a few houses down, wasn't there? We'll stop off on our way back to the Grange."

  They looked up as the door opened again and Mrs. Thompson reappeared with a pair of highly polished black leather shoes clasped against her chest. "Size eight," she said, "and a narrow fitting. I never realised what dainty feet he had. He wasn't a short man, you know."

  Reluctantly, Walsh opened his briefcase and produced the clear plastic bag containing the brown shoes. He placed the shoes, in the bag, on the flat of one hand and held them out for the woman to examine. "Are these your husband's shoes, Mrs. Thompson? Do you remember him having a pair like this?"

  There was no hesitation in her reply. "Certainly not," she said. "My husband wouldn't dream of wearing corespondent shoes."

  "The white patches are where the shoes have got damp, Mrs. Thompson, not white leather. The shoes were uniformly brown once."

  "Oh." She moved closer, then after a few moments, shook her head. "No, I've never seen them before. They're certainly not Daniel's. He had only one pair of brown shoes and he was wearing them the day he"—she gave a little sob—"the day he vanished." She used the sodden scrap of lace to dab at her eyes again. "They were very expensive Italian shoes with pointed toes. Nothing like those. He was very conscientious about his appearance," she finished.

  Walsh put the shoes back in his briefcase. "When you reported your husband missing, Mrs. Thompson, you said he'd had some business worries recently. What exactly did you mean?"

  She shied away from him as if he'd tried to touch her. "He wouldn't leave me," she said again.

  "Of course he wouldn't, Mrs. Thompson, but pressure at work does make some men act irrationally. Perhaps he couldn't cope with his problems and needed time on his own to sort them out. Is that what you meant?"

  Tears poured from the sorrowful eyes in a.flood. She wore her despair like a tatty cardigan, something she had grown used to and was comfortable with in spite of its ugliness. She sank on to the sofa. "His business is bankrupt," she explained. "He owes money all over the place. It's all being sorted out by his assistant but people—creditors—keep ringing me. There's nothing I can do. I've told them he's dead."

  "How do you know?" asked Walsh gently.

  "He wouldn't leave me," she said, "not if he was alive."

  Walsh looked at McLoughlin and nodded towards the door. They stood up. "Thank you for giving us your time, Mrs. Thompson. There's just one thing. Has your husband ever been to Streech Grange or had dealings with the people living there?"

  Her lips thinned to an angry slit. "Is that where those awful women live?" she spat. Walsh nodded. "Daniel would sooner walk into the lion's den"—she fingered her cross—"than be contaminated by their sin." She kissed the cross and started to undo the buttons of her dress.

  "Fair enough," said Walsh with some embarrassment. "We'll let ourselves out."

  Andy McLoughlin paused in the living-room doorway and looked back at her. "We're going to ask the Vicar to pop round and see you, Mrs. Thompson. It might do you good to have a chat with him."

  The Vicar listened to the expression of police concern with ill-disguised panic. "Frankly, Inspector, there's nothing I can do. Believe me, our little community has bent over backwards to assist poor Mrs. Thompson. We've enlisted the aid of her doctor and a social worker, but they're powerless to act unless she herself requests psychiatric help. She's not mad, you see, nor, in the accepted sense, even depressed. In fact, outwardly, she's coping magnificently." He had a pronounced Adam's apple which bobbed up and down as he spoke. "It's only when people visit her, particularly men, that she acts—er—strangely. The doctor's sure it's only a matter of time before she snaps out of it." He wrung his hands. "The truth is neither he nor I like to go there any more. She seems to have developed sex and religious mania. I'll send my wife, though to be honest her last encounter with Mrs. Thompson was less than happy, some accusation about seeing me in church with only my socks and shoes on." The Adam's apple crowded nervously towards his chin. "Poor woman. Such a tragedy for her. Leave it with me, Inspector. I'm sure it's only a matter of time, of coming to terms with Daniel's disappearance. There must be a text to deal with it. Leave it with me."

  Detective Sergeant Robinson rang Anne's doorbell and waited. The door was s
lightly ajar and a voice called: "Come in," from a distance. He went down the corridor to the room at the end. Anne was sitting at her desk, a pencil tucked behind her ear, one booted foot propped on an open drawer and tapping time to "Jumping Jack Flash" playing quietly from her stereo. She looked up and waved him to an empty chair. "I'm Anne Cattrell," she said, taking the pencil from behind her ear and marking a correction on a page of typed paper. "Vaginal Orgasm—Fact or Fiction," had straggled its way towards some sort of climax on five sheets of A4.

  He sat down. "Detective Sergeant Robinson," he introduced himself.

  She smiled. "What can I do for you?"

  Hell, he thought, she's OK—more than OK. With her cap of dark hair and wide-spaced eyes, she reminded him of Audrey Hepburn. From the way McLoughlin had talked the previous evening, he'd been expecting a real dog. "It's not much," he said, "just something that doesn't square."

  "Fire away. Does the music worry you?"

  "No. One of my favourites," he said truthfully. "It's like this, Miss Cattrell, both you and the majority of people in Streech village have made out that you and your friends are lesbians." He paused.

  "Go on."

  "Yet when I mentioned it to Mr. Clarke at the pub this morning, he roared with laughter and said, though not in quite these words, that you were very definitely heterosexual."

  "What were his actual words?" she asked curiously. He noticed the full ashtray on her desk. "Do you mind if I smoke, Miss Cattrell?"

  She offered him one of hers. "Be my guest." She watched him light the cigarette in silence.

  "He said you've had more men that I've had hot dinners," he said in a rush.

  She chuckled. "Yes, that well-worn cliche sounds like Paddy. So, you want to know if I'm a lesbian, and if I'm not why I've given the impression that I am." He could almost hear her mind clicking. "Why would a woman give people reason to despise her unless it's to put them off the track of something else?" She levelled her pencil at him. "You think I've murdered one of my lovers and left him to rot in the ice house." Her hands were as small and delicate as a child's.