5 Frozen in Crime

by Cecilia Peartree

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Well, you know - maybe he needs the excitement. Maybe he misses the adrenalin rush of being in danger. He could easily have broken into the house - for kicks or because he needed the money.’

  ‘Look! - there’s a deer!’ said Amaryllis, ignoring him and pointing over to the left. He peered into the night. A shadow moved in the distance. It could have been a deer, a fox, a rabbit, a tiger, anything.

  ‘Why did you photograph the maps?’ asked Christopher.

  She shrugged. ‘Because they were there.’

  It wasn’t much of an answer; there must be more to it than that. He resolved to follow it up later – if he remembered, what with Christmas and the weather and everything.

  They plodded back towards the gates. There were two men just outside, standing patiently at the far side as if they were waiting for a bus.

  ‘Oh, great, that’s all we need,’ said Amaryllis crossly.

  As they got closer, Christopher saw that the men were Charlie Smith and the young constable he had had with him at the Queen of Scots. They were swathed in layers of police clothing and looked about twice the size they had done earlier.

  ‘Have you found Dave yet?’ he asked hopefully.

  They shook their heads in unison, the snow on their hats causing a minor blizzard.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ said Amaryllis.

  ‘Oh, we wanted to see Lord Murray. But he isn’t answering his phone,’ said Chief Inspector Smith.

  ‘He isn’t there,’ said Amaryllis. ‘It’s just one of the gamekeeper’s sons. House-sitting.’

  Chapter 11 Long-lost friend

  Amaryllis wasn’t sure why she had let the fictitious explanation of Mal’s presence in the house come so easily to her tongue as she spoke to the policemen. She supposed she had a kind of fellow-feeling with Mal and felt vaguely protective towards him. Not many people allowed themselves to harbour the kind of grand ideas he seemed to have, and she didn’t want that afternoon’s inspiration to turn into humdrum suspicion, even if Christopher seemed to be thinking of it exactly in that way.

  Fortunately Christopher didn’t contradict her, although he did have an anxious expression on his face when she glanced sideways at him.

  ‘Gamekeeper, eh?’ said Charlie Smith, and the junior officer with him wrested a notebook out of his coat pocket and wrote in it, although it must have been a struggle even to keep the pencil in his hand when he was wearing such thick, inflexible gloves.

  ‘What do you want to see Lord Murray for, anyway?’ said Amaryllis. ‘Has he been fiddling his expenses in the House of Lords or something?’

  She thought it was almost certainly drink-driving. These old-style aristocrats thought they could get away with anything.

  Charlie shook his head again, dislodging all the remaining snow off his woolly hat. ‘Ongoing enquiry,’ he said. ‘And we did wonder if Mr Douglas had somehow got inside the house but if you’ve had a look, it seems he hasn’t.’

  They set off back through the trees towards the road. Amaryllis asked herself where Dave could have got to. Was it possible he had made it as far as the main road, flagged down a driver and gone to a garage in the hope they could move his truck that evening? But surely in that case he would have found some way of contacting Jemima by now. What if he had concussed himself when the truck came to a standstill? Maybe he had managed to get out and then stumbled off somewhere in a random direction and ended up in a remote snowdrift where nobody would think of looking for him. The bad feeling she had had about this from the start got worse, in the same way that if you carried something for a while it seemed to get heavier and heavier.

  She glanced round at Christopher, walking alongside her. He gave her a half-smile, but he still looked anxious. But then, as she had observed on many occasions, his default expression was one of worried bewilderment. It was difficult to read anything about the degree of anxiety he felt at this exact moment.

  They were approaching the place where all three vehicles now sat, covered in varying amounts of snow, when they heard the noise of a powerful engine coming towards them. Amaryllis glanced up to see a tractor rumbling round the corner, its bright lights illuminating the scene, its massive wheels making everything else look tiny.

  It came to a standstill in the middle of the road. A figure jumped down from the cab, and went round to the passenger side where it seemed to be helping someone down. Then the two figures walked up to the other vehicles and stood there for a moment, staring.

  Amaryllis started to run, her feet in their reindeer herding boots - she had acquired them on a mission in the north of Russia - sinking into the snow in unexpected places. She hoped she wouldn’t fall head-first into a drift and have to be heaved out by her feet; but the potential embarrassment of that didn’t matter now anyway.

  ‘Dave!’ she called. ‘Dave!’

  She skidded to a halt on an icy patch behind the ruined Range Rover, and waited just for a few seconds to get her breath back, since something odd seemed to have happened to her voice. Then she walked forward and confronted the two men.

  ‘Dave! Where have you been?’ She couldn’t remember the last time she had hugged anyone, but she just walked up to him and flung her arms round his solid mass, or at least, round as far as they would reach. He laughed down at her.

  ‘What’s got into you, lass? What are you out here for, anyway? You’ll catch your death of cold.’

  ‘I’ll catch my death? What about you?’ She stepped away from him. ‘Do you know how worried we’ve all been? Christopher and I came all the way out here to dig you out of a snow-drift! And Charlie Smith and -’

  She had to stop speaking then, because something had got into her throat and choked it up. Probably the cold, she thought.

  Christopher caught up with her and shook Dave by the hand in a masculine demonstration of pleasure and relief.

  ‘What happened here?’ said Dave. ‘Whose is that Range Rover?’

  ‘We borrowed it from the landlord of the Queen of Scots,’ said Amaryllis, glad to have something neutral and unemotional to say.

  ‘I hope when you say borrowed that means he knows you took it,’ said Charlie Smith, coming up behind her. He nodded to Dave. ‘Glad to see you’re all right, Mr Douglas. You’ve had a lot of people worrying about you.’

  ‘I don’t know why,’ said Dave. ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Where did you get the tractor?’ said the young constable, staring at it with what looked very much like envy.

  ‘He came up to the farm and I brought it out,’ said the other man who had been stoically observing the touching reunion scene that played out in front of him. ‘We thought we might be able to tow the truck out, but I’m not sure, with those other things in the way.’

  ‘We can move the police land rover,’ said Charlie. ‘But I don’t know about this one.’ He patted the driver’s door of the Range Rover. A wing-mirror fell off at his feet.

  ‘The landlord’s not going to be too pleased,’ said Dave. ‘Maybe you’ll get barred from the Queen of Scots. For life.’

  He was laughing again.

  ‘Why haven’t you called anybody?’ said Amaryllis. It was impossible to be cross with him, and yet impossible not to be, when you thought about what he had put them all through, especially Jemima.

  ‘I didn’t want to worry them,’ he muttered. ‘And I left my mobile phone at home.’

  ‘Our phone lines are down anyway,’ said the tractor owner. ‘I don’t have a mobile.’

  Amaryllis took out her mobile, found Jemima’s name in her contacts list and handed it over to Dave. ‘Call her now,’ she said.

  Dave walked away a little to make the call, but even from a distance they heard him grovelling. Amaryllis hoped he had bought Jemima something nice for Christmas. Although she suspected it would be enough for Jemima if they just got him home safely.

  ‘Where’s your farm?’ she asked the tractor driver.

  ‘Up th
at way, over to the right,’ he said, gesturing. ‘Your friend only had to come up the road a wee bit and then he saw our lights. Just as well really. He was kind of lost.’

  ‘Just leave him to us now,’ said Charlie Smith. ‘We’ll take everybody home and then we can maybe organise tow-trucks in the morning. Constable Burnett, can you sort out the warning triangles while I get everybody in?’

  Dave came back to the group and silently handed Amaryllis her phone.

  ‘How was she?’ said Christopher.

  ‘All right,’ said Dave. ‘She said to hurry home.’

  Amaryllis guessed that Jemima wouldn’t really believe Dave was OK until he walked in the front door. And then once she had reassured herself, she would give him a lot of grief for leaving his phone on the kitchen table. What was it with men, mobile phones and kitchen tables? She remembered Christopher doing the same not long ago, although of course on that occasion she had been the one who was in trouble.

  Charlie reorganised the back seat of the police Land Rover to make room for them. There were a lot of space blankets, some rope and a big first-aid kit.

  ‘We’ve got soup and sandwiches,’ said Christopher. ‘Anyone want some?’

  Charlie Smith banned them from eating and drinking in the Land Rover - ‘We don’t want anybody thinking we took it out for a picnic’ - but Dave accepted a cup of soup just before they got in.

  ‘Ah, the taste of home,’ he said, an almost ecstatic expression spreading over his face as he slurped it down much too quickly.

  ‘Did you get Jock settled in all right at Rosie’s?’ said Amaryllis.

  ‘Aye, he got his feet under the table in no time,’ said Dave. ‘Cocoa and toast…and that’s just the start of it.’

  He made cocoa and toast sound like the first step towards an orgy, while in Amaryllis’s experience, although comforting, they were almost guaranteed to kill off any sensuous feelings. She thought Dave was being a bit over-protective. Particularly since his niece Rosie was at least fifty if she was a day.

  Charlie Smith, having refused Dave’s demand to put the blue light on, let the young constable drive back to Pitkirtly while he stared morosely into the middle distance. Amaryllis wondered if he would get into trouble for coming up here in a blizzard to rescue someone who didn’t need to be rescued and to interview someone who wasn’t there. But perhaps he was just mulling over the case. She thought about possible reasons for them to want to speak to Lord Murray. There must be a connection with the robbery that had happened earlier that day. Perhaps some of the jewellery had belonged to him and was in the shop for repair or cleaning, or even for sale. She remembered thinking about what a lot of money the house and grounds must suck in just for routine maintenance. The owners probably had to sell off minor assets on a regular basis.

  At last they skidded to a halt outside Jemima’s house, where she and Dave now lived.

  The front door opened almost before the Land Rover had come to a complete standstill. There were two figures on the doorstep. One of them stepped back a couple of paces, presumably so that she didn’t get in the way as Dave lumbered up the short path and took the three steps in one pace, then scooped up Jemima in a bear hug.

  ‘Are you two getting out here, or do you want to be taken right to your own front doors?’ enquired Charlie Smith.

  Amaryllis, averting her gaze from Dave and Jemima’s reunion, clambered down and helped Christopher down. They stood uncertainly on the pavement.

  ‘Come away in!’ called Jemima, temporarily freeing herself from Dave. ‘Maisie Sue’s just made another batch of pancakes, and I’ve got a whole tin of tablet.’

  ‘I can feel my fillings falling out already,’ Christopher muttered.

  ‘Are you coming in for pancakes?’ said Amaryllis through Charlie’s open window.

  ‘Got to get back,’ he said.

  ‘Thanks for the lift.’

  ‘Any time.’

  ‘I don’t think you mean that, Chief Inspector. But I’ll try not to take you up on it anyway.’

  ‘Just don’t get into any trouble over Christmas!’ he shouted after her as she and Christopher made their way up to Jemima’s door.

  Chapter 12 Christmas Day at the police station…

  ‘It’s a pity we didn’t have crackers,’ said Sergeant McDonald, contemplating the Christmas dinner set out on the table in the police station kitchen.

  If he mentions crackers one more time he’ll drive me crackers, Charlie thought to himself as he carried on grimly setting out red and green paper napkins.

  At last the four of them sat down at the table. Charlie had to concede that Sergeant McDonald might have been right about the crackers. It would have been worth it just for the paper hats. There was something about wearing a paper hat that made the most ponderous policeman lighten up a bit.

  ‘We could have virtual crackers,’ said Keith Burnett suddenly.

  The other three stared at him as if he had just landed from an alien spaceship and didn’t know the rules whereby human beings on earth lived their lives.

  ‘Well, I mean we could take it in turns to tell pathetic jokes - the kind that you might find in a cracker. In fact,’ he added, apparently emboldened by the flabbergasted silence, ‘we could each write one on a piece of paper and then swap them round.’

  ‘That’s one of the stupidest ideas I’ve ever heard,’ said Karen Whitefield after careful consideration.

  Keith Burnett blushed.

  ‘No, wait a minute,’ said Sergeant McDonald. ‘The boy’s got something… We could make our own paper hats too.’

  ‘The meal will get cold,’ Charlie snapped, and then softened slightly as he saw Keith start to shrink into himself like a tortoise tucking its head into its shell. ‘We can do the hats and jokes later, ready for when we’re having our Christmas cake. Nothing’s going to happen today, in fact we might as well not be here at all, except to get a chance to catch up on the paperwork for the robbery. We can’t start interviewing witnesses - not on Christmas Day. And the roads in and out of town are all closed now so nobody can go anywhere and get themselves stuck or go through any windscreens.’

  ‘They’ll have forgotten all about the robbery by Boxing Day,’ Sergeant McDonald grumbled, but he sat down at the table and started to help himself to the sprouts. In spite of being frozen and then microwaved, they didn’t look any worse than sprouts always did, reflected Charlie.

  ‘So what was all that about going to speak to Lord Murray?’ said Karen as they finished off their microwaved turkey dinner. The roast potatoes were the weak point, thought Charlie regretfully. They didn’t come out well. They needed a proper oven and proper animal fat - none of this healthy vegetarian oil or whatever it was.

  ‘There was something of his on the list from the jeweller,’ he said. ‘Anyone for pudding? Ice-cream? Or will we start the cake now instead of keeping it until later?’

  Karen looked at him rather censoriously. Did she think he should be focussing on the investigation instead of the catering? She was quite right. But he had felt bad about asking all of them to work on Christmas Day, and he had tried to make up for it as best he could.

  ‘What was it?’ she asked. ‘On the list?’

  ‘A gold peacock. With precious stones. Said to be by Fabergé. We could have biscuits and cheese if you like.’

  ‘I’ll have the pudding,’ said Sergeant McDonald.

  ‘Me too!’ said Keith.

  ‘So,’ said Karen, raising her voice a notch to show she was in a determined mood, ‘what was it doing at the jeweller’s shop, then?’

  ‘He’d sold it to them during the summer,’ said Charlie, getting the pudding under control. He had been sceptical about cooking it in the microwave in the first place but it looked all right. He hoped they wouldn’t all go down with food-poisoning.

  ‘So why bother questioning him, then? It didn’t have anything to do with him any more.’

  ‘Just a hunch, I suppose. It looked to be by far the most valu
able item on the list, if it was really made by Fabergé that is, and I thought Lord Murray might know more about it than anyone else. Its history. Its provenance. Anything.’

  ‘Aren’t we clutching at straws, sir?’ said Karen, taking a slice of cheese and a couple of oatcakes. That wasn’t the right way to finish off a Christmas dinner. But maybe she was watching her figure.

  ‘You’re right, we are,’ said Charlie. He laid down his spoon for a moment and turned to face her so that she would know he was taking this conversation seriously. ‘What we really need to do is to interview all the witnesses and get forensics back to give the shop another going-over. But neither of these things is going to happen today.’

  ‘Is there any news from the hospital?’ said Keith Burnett suddenly.

  ‘Yes, both patients are resting comfortably,’ said Sergeant McDonald. ‘I rang and checked this morning… It’ll be a miserable time for them and their families, though. Why did the robbers have to use guns? We haven’t had anything like that in Pitkirtly since - well, I can’t remember when.’

  ‘We’ve had guns being used,’ Karen pointed out.

  ‘Yes, but not armed robbery,’ said the sergeant, finishing off his pudding and taking a lump of cheese and several cream crackers. ‘The other times guns have been used it’s been in domestic incidents.’

  Charlie supposed you could call the Petrelli affair a domestic incident, but in his opinion that was stretching things a bit. He didn’t feel like arguing about it, though. It wasn’t exactly the right topic to discuss over Christmas dinner.

  ‘That doesn’t make it any better,’ said Karen. She seemed to be in a combative mood today. Maybe she was one of those people who don’t like Christmas. Or maybe it was the opposite: she had been planning a big family occasion and now wasn’t even able to be there. Charlie tried to remember if he knew anything about her circumstances. She wasn’t married, anyway, but that didn’t mean she didn’t have family. Her parents could well be still alive, unlike his own, and expect her to go round and be festive with them.