5 Frozen in Crime

by Cecilia Peartree

  ‘It’s back in the office,’ said Karen Whitefield, still apparently anxious about his welfare. ‘Are you feeling all right, sir?’

  ‘I’m fine, and I’ll be even more fine if one of you goes and gets me the list instead of standing about staring as if I had two heads,’ said Charlie. ‘And by the way, who was it that told an elderly woman she’d have to wait until the morning before we’d go and look for her equally elderly husband in a snowdrift at the side of the A985?’

  The assembled officers shuffled their feet and muttered. But he wasn’t going to press the point now. Better to follow up this lead while there was still a chance of getting out there this evening. After all, if Christopher Wilson could do it, then surely he could. Even without the company of a best friend who was a retired spy.

  Karen brought him the list and he glanced down it.

  No, he hadn’t been imagining things. There it was, in black and white, listed unobtrusively among Rolex watches (query fake) and diamond pendants: one gold peacock richly decorated with diamonds, emeralds and turquoises, purchased by private sale during the summer from the collection of Lord Murray of Pitkirtlyhill. The jeweller had added a note explaining that the egg was waiting to go to an important client in the Middle East and that he thought it was an antique one made by Fabergé for some Russian aristocrat.

  Charlie had intended to visit Old Pitkirtlyhill House to question Lord Murray about this piece of jewellery. It seemed to him, although he wasn’t an expert in the field, that a Fabergé animal must be equal in worth to quite a number of Rolex watches, and he had a suspicion that it might have been stolen and was being fenced, unintentionally or otherwise, by the jeweller, although that did seem slightly far-fetched in a place like Pitkirtly and in that case the jeweller could just have left it off the list. Perhaps it didn’t really exist at all but was part of some sort of an insurance scam. But he was reasonably sure the thieves had probably just worked out for themselves that the most valuable stuff would be in the safe, so had concentrated their efforts on that.

  He hadn’t really envisaged trekking to see Lord Murray through several feet of snow, but if he was going to have to go out to rescue Amaryllis, Christopher and possibly Dave Douglas too, he might as well justify the trip in terms of more useful police work. He didn’t actually want to go out into the wilds in this weather. On the other hand he couldn’t in all conscience send another officer, perhaps into danger. He frowned.

  ‘I’m going out,’ he said to Karen Whitefield. He felt like adding ‘I may be some time,’ but he wasn’t sure she would get the joke, such as it was.

  ‘Better take somebody with you,’ she said.

  ‘But I don’t –’

  ‘Take Constable Burnett, sir. And make sure you’ve got your mobile and your radio and a torch and some blankets…’

  It could be against the rules to allow a junior officer to mother you, but Charlie found himself quite liking it, more so when she made up some cheese and tomato sandwiches for him in the small kitchen, and gave him a Mars bar from her own personal chocolate stash. Maybe she was feeling guilty for not immediately volunteering to come out with him. But he certainly wasn’t going to allow a woman officer to go out in these conditions. He could hear the wind buffeting the flimsy prefabricated walls of the police station. It had been built in a hurry following a minor crime wave in Pitkirtly. Not long after Amaryllis’s arrival in town, needless to say.

  He was checking out the police Land Rover, which they didn’t often use because the police over at Kincardine were very territorial about it, but which fortunately had been left at the station by some oversight, when Constable Burnett, almost unrecognisable in a parka over which he wore a hi-vis vest, materialized by his side.

  ‘Sir?’ he said. ‘Sergeant Whitefield says you’re going out on your own?’

  His voice held an accusing undertone.

  ‘Don’t tell me she’s made up sandwiches for you too,’ said Charlie, noticing the package in the constable’s hand. ‘Well, you’d better get in, I suppose.’

  ‘Sir? Wouldn’t it be more sensible to wait till morning?’

  ‘We’re an emergency service, constable, not a team of accountants. We could be too late by then. Dave Douglas must be seventy-five if he’s a day. God knows why nobody’s stopped him driving before now. He’s dangerous enough at the best of times, never mind in a blizzard with six inches of solid ice under the wheels. If something’s happened to him, we’re not going to leave him lying overnight to die of hypothermia – we can still get to him in time if we go now.’

  ‘But is there any chance of getting through?’

  ‘There’s always a chance,’ said Charlie, finishing the basic checks and looking to see if there were any thermal blankets in the back seat.

  ‘Do you want me to drive, sir?’ said the constable, sounding terrified.

  Charlie sighed. He didn’t really fancy driving in these conditions, but he didn’t necessarily trust a young tearaway like Keith Burnett either.

  ‘I’ll have first go, Keith,’ he said. ‘When I’m reduced to a gibbering wreck by the sight of whirling snowflakes you can take over.’

  ‘That was very poetic, sir,’ said Keith Burnett, and got into the passenger seat.

  The snowflakes were indeed whirling all round Charlie’s head, and if anything they were whirling faster and thicker than they had been five minutes before. There was an increasing danger of drifting, especially on higher ground. He knew all the stock phrases. The Met Office had already issued a severe weather warning, and the police were advising people not to travel unless their journey was absolutely necessary. He knew without even checking with a higher authority that it was no use expecting a rescue helicopter to take off tonight. They could be Dave Douglas’s only chance, not to mention Amaryllis’s and Christopher’s as well. He set off into the blizzard with a huge weight of responsibility resting on his shoulders.

  The windscreen wipers were only just powerful enough to clear most of the falling snow, and even so there were small drifts building up in the corners. He didn’t look forward to the time when he would have to get out of the Land Rover and sweep them away manually.

  The radio crackled.

  ‘Earth calling Chief Inspector Smith,’ said Sergeant McDonald’s voice, his accent distorted by the transmission into something much stronger than usual.

  ‘Don’t tell me Dave Douglas has turned up?’ said Charlie Smith, steering into a skid as he had learned at police driving school. They landed on the pavement, facing the wrong way. He hoped he had imagined Constable Burnett’s terrified gasp.

  ‘No, sir, I’m afraid not. It’s just to say the Met Office have issued another severe weather warning specifically for the West Fife coast. It’s for gale force winds and driving snow, sir.’

  ‘You must be joking!’

  ‘No, sir. You’ll hear the same on any radio station just now.’

  ‘Hm,’ said Charlie, turning the Land Rover back to face the right way along Sunk Causeway. He might as well go for it and try to get up the hill out of Pitkirtly before it got any worse. Not that it looked as if it could get much worse. On the other hand, surely freshly fallen snow must be that bit easier to drive in than snow that had been compacted down to ice by other traffic. On the other hand again, he reasoned, it would be worse if it blew into drifts all over the place and blocked the roads. Oh well, there was no point in worrying about it. Either they would get through or they wouldn’t.

  ‘Onwards and upwards,’ he said to Keith Burnett as he pointed the Land Rover’s bonnet right at the hill and drove at it like a maniac.

  ‘Or sideways,’ said a small voice beside him as the vehicle lurched drunkenly on to the grass verge.

  Chapter 8 Lord of the manor

  By some miracle they had both survived the crash, and even with all the broken glass around Amaryllis couldn’t see any blood. She had to talk Christopher out of the Range Rover, of course, since he was clinging to his seat with a sort of death
grip.

  ‘Inspector Smith said we should stay in the car,’ he said stubbornly.

  ‘I’m saying we need to get out of it now, and find somewhere better to shelter,’ she told him. She lifted down Christopher’s rucksack and heaved it over her shoulders. She didn’t have her own personal rucksack with her, which she now regretted: it was a lucky charm which she considered to have helped her survive various life-threatening incidents on the borders of unfriendly nations. She supposed she might include the USA in her personal list of these: she wasn’t confident of a welcome there since the Pearson MacPherson fiasco.

  At last she talked him out of the Range Rover.

  ‘The landlord’s going to be a bit annoyed,’ he said, looking at the damage.

  ‘It’s all cosmetic,’ she said casually, starting to lead the way.

  He stopped in his tracks before they had gone twenty metres.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Don’t ask me - I’m just as lost as you are. Maybe even more.’

  ‘What did we bump into just now, anyway?’

  She wished he hadn’t asked her that. ‘Um - a pick-up truck.’

  ‘Dave’s?’

  She nodded, trying to minimise the panic by not putting it into words.

  ‘So - where’s Dave?’

  ‘Not in there, that’s for sure.’

  Christopher stood still for another moment, obviously thinking hard. Or maybe his expression had just frozen in place. This was always a possibility in his case: he reminded Amaryllis of her grandmother, who used to say if she looked cross the wind might change and she would be stuck like that for ever. Only in Christopher’s case it was a permanent air of bewilderment that was programmed into his features.

  ‘Don’t stand there too long, you’ll freeze to the spot,’ she warned him, stamping her feet.

  ‘Can’t we follow his tracks?’

  ‘Covered up. I had a quick look. While you were deciding whether to get out of the car or not.’

  ‘Are there any houses near here? Can you see any lights?’

  ‘No, but we might not see them through the snow.’

  ‘Should we give him a shout in case he’s somewhere around?’

  ‘If you like.’

  They stood and called Dave’s name a few times, but they quickly felt ridiculous.

  ‘We should have borrowed a search and rescue dog,’ said Christopher.

  ‘I don’t know where we’d have found one of those at short notice.’

  The snow was falling hard again, and Amaryllis was seriously worried that they wouldn’t find any shelter. She saw that snow had already accumulated inside the Range Rover, driving in through the shattered windscreen, and of course Dave’s pick-up truck had been completely covered, though it must only have been a matter of hours since he had left it there.

  ‘Come on - there’s a wood over this way. We’ll get a bit of shelter in there as we go along.’

  She didn’t wait for him to come to life, but headed off towards the pine trees she could see just a little further along the track that led off the road they had driven up - she guessed it was a rough forestry track since the snow lay in ridges along it as if covering furrows made by tractor wheels or something similar. She looked over her shoulder a few minutes later and found him trudging along a few metres behind her, head down.

  It was indeed more sheltered under the trees, which were quite densely packed - Amaryllis guessed this was a miniature plantation rather than a natural wood - but to make up for the shelter, there was a constant danger of large clumps of snow falling on them from the heavily loaded branches. She followed what seemed to be a path that led more or less in a straight line. If they had plunged in among the trees they might have been better protected from the wind and the snow, but there was an increased risk of getting lost if they did that, and the dense darkness would make it more dangerous even to walk along.

  After what seemed like a long time, they came to a fence.

  ‘Deer fence,’ said Amaryllis. ‘Hope it’s not electric. It’s a good sign, otherwise.’

  ‘Why? We can’t get through.’

  ‘We could if we had to,’ she said. ‘But let’s walk along it and see if there’s a gate. Have you got the map?’

  In the lee of a particularly bushy pine tree, they unfolded the map and held it between them. It took several attempts to work out where they might be, mainly because it was hard to see which way was up, but once they were reasonably sure, Amaryllis held the torch steady so that they could both see.

  ‘Pitkirtlyhill Wood,’ she said.

  ‘I thought it was bigger than this,’ said Christopher.

  ‘I didn’t think you knew your way around here.’

  ‘No, I don’t, but there was some sort of local saying about things being as big and dense as Pitkirtlyhill Wood.’

  ‘Was there a legend about the king being defeated only if Pitkirtlyhill Wood should come to proud Longannet?’ enquired Amaryllis.

  Christopher glared at her. ‘It’s unlucky to quote Macbeth,’ he said.

  ‘I wasn’t exactly quoting it,’ Amaryllis pointed out. ‘And you’ve just said the name, anyway! All the bad luck will land on you.’

  He sighed in a long-suffering manner. ‘We’ll both be unlucky if we get hypothermia standing out here arguing about Shakespeare, won’t we?’

  ‘Hmm, that’s interesting,’ she said, looking at the map again.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Hang on to that fold a minute… Look. There.’

  Still holding the torch in one hand, she traced a path with her other hand. It led straight to Old Pitkirtlyhill House.

  ‘Maybe we’ll go and visit the lord of the manor,’ she said.

  It took a while to find the gate, since the fence didn’t follow a straight line but seemed to curve round and then back in the middle. At least the exercise should keep hypothermia at bay for a bit longer, Amaryllis reflected. Every time she looked round to check on Christopher, she found he was still trudging along in her footsteps, head down. She thought of Good King Wenceslas but she didn’t think singing it would be very popular. In any case whenever she opened her mouth it got filled with snowflakes and the icy wind snapped at the back of her throat, which wasn’t at all pleasant.

  The gate, when they found it, was large and solid, with metal bars, and spikes on the top. Definitely designed to keep out unwelcome visitors - or even welcome ones, presumably. They gazed at it respectfully for a moment.

  ‘Do you think there’s a bell?’ said Christopher.

  ‘They wouldn’t let us in even if there was,’ said Amaryllis. She took something out of the pocket of her parka. ‘We’ll just have to go through the fence.’

  ‘How are we supposed to -?’ Christopher began, and then he saw what she was doing. She was clipping a hole in the wire of the fence with the wire cutters she presumably always carried around with her.

  ‘How do you know it isn’t electric? And what if they have guard dogs?’

  She laughed. ‘I’ll take both these chances. And actually, I already know it isn’t electric. There we are. Do you want to go first?’

  ‘But how would Dave have got in there?’

  ‘In one of several possible ways. The owner of the house, or his gamekeeper or butler, if he has one, might have been passing in his car and picked him up and offered him a bed for the night. Or the gate happened to be open when Dave came along, and he wandered in, and he’s probably even now sitting by a roaring fire and being offered port and cigars by some old family retainer. Can’t you just picture the scene?’

  ‘No,’ said Christopher. ‘And there’s something weird about the way you can always come up with at least two alternative explanations for everything that happens.’

  ‘It isn’t weird,’ said Amaryllis, wriggling through the hole in the fence. ‘It’s creative.’

  Christopher followed, but she could tell it was against his better judgement.

  ‘We’ll end up getting
arrested,’ he grumbled.

  Funny, she thought, although she would have imagined Mal was the best person to have an adventure with, she was enjoying observing Christopher’s reactions and appreciating his sardonic comments more than she would ever have admitted. Maybe it was because he was so different from her, whereas she had a kind of fellow-feeling for Mal, as if they were long-lost twins or something. She had a suspicion that it might get boring and perhaps even irritating to be with someone so like herself for long periods of time.

  There was what seemed to be a drive under the snow on the other side of the gate. They followed it round in a big curve between more trees. The snow was petering out, and it felt even colder than before. It would have been nice to be sitting by a roaring fire. But maybe when they reached Old Pitkirtlyhill House they would be invited in to sit beside one. Even better if Dave was indeed there. But, despite the positive images she had sketched for Christopher’s benefit, she was starting to think it was unlikely. Could he really have got into the grounds? Did he have the stamina to walk up a long snow-covered drive?

  ‘Phew, I hope Dave hasn’t passed out somewhere if he’s managed to get this far,’ said Christopher, glancing round with an uneasy expression. ‘What if he’s under a pile of snow somewhere and we’ve walked right past him?’

  ‘If he’s under a pile of snow it’s - oh, look at that!’

  They had turned another corner and emerged from the shadow of the trees into an open parkland which made the perfect frame for what looked like a classic Georgian house: good proportions, two rows of big windows, one or two with lights on, a curving flight of steps leading up to rather a grand front door under a portico with pillars. The clouds had blown over, at least temporarily, and the moon now shone on everything, giving them an excellent view of the building but casting an odd blueish light on the banks of snow that had been built up at the sides of the drive.

  Amaryllis didn’t usually waste time admiring scenery - it had often been dangerous to stand still for too long in her past career - but she took a couple of minutes to stare at the house and its setting.