Ice House

by Walters, Minette

  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.

  Chapter 21

  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 is 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 te 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 hopefully, "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 kickoff, 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. Comtemptible, 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 oversensitive to other people's problems. Anne watched him through the smoke from her cigarette. She had none of her goddaughter'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 oversensitivity towards others, she concluded, but by oversensitivity 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 straitjacket. 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 fell 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."