5 Frozen in Crime

by Cecilia Peartree

  Sergeant McDonald stayed at the police station as part of the hand-over, and Karen Whitefield lived within walking distance of the station so she had been going home every night anyway, and that just left Charlie, Constable Burnett and the officer driving the bus, who seemed determined to demonstrate everything he had ever learned about skid control at police driving school.

  They didn’t talk to each other as they might have done if they hadn’t all been completely exhausted. In fact, as they slipped and slid along the main road Charlie found his eyes closing, despite his churning thoughts and, as the journey progressed, churning stomach. The dog was already asleep, resting its head on his still damp boots. His last waking thought was that he hoped he would have time to dry them out thoroughly, putting newspaper inside them to soak up the last of the moisture, before having to wear them again. Nothing was quite as disheartening as wet feet, in his experience.

  He woke with a start to find the mini-bus had stopped right outside his house and the driver was waiting with exaggerated patience for him to wake up and get off. His head was full of sleep, the inside of his mouth felt as if it had been sandpapered, and he had cramp in one of his legs. The dog, in contrast, bounced into life as soon as it woke up, pulled at the lead as they climbed down from the mini-bus, and started barking at the driver when he gave Charlie a hand with his bag.

  ‘Sleep well.’

  Was it Charlie’s imagination or was there something scornful in the man’s manner? Oh well, why bother? The next time he wouldn’t leave his car at home and get the bus to work just because of a sprinkling of snow. If he’d had his car with him he could have left Pitkirtly before all this kicked off.

  As he walked up his garden path, he shook his head, knowing that he wouldn’t have left once the armed robbery had happened. He couldn’t have abandoned his junior colleagues to deal with that and then the murder. He glanced down at the dog. It didn’t show any signs of grief or post-traumatic stress. But then, life on the streets couldn’t have been a picnic for a dog. He wondered where it had come from originally, since he didn’t think most dogs these days started out by living rough. Did it remember the security of having a roof over its head and two meals a day, come rain or shine? Or did dogs have memories a bit like goldfish?

  As he opened the front door and then took the dog through to the back and let it out in the garden, he realized what these weird thoughts meant. They were a sign of serious sleep deprivation. He needed to catch up, and soon, before he went and did something unbelievably stupid, such as drinking himself into a coma. Although that was tempting in some ways, Charlie didn’t really believe in giving into that kind of impulse, mainly because he was old enough to know how much he would regret it the next day.

  He found an old soup bowl and filled it with water for the dog, found a few sausages in the fridge and cooked them. When they were ready he divided them out, called the dog in from the garden, put the kettle on to make a cup of tea, and sat down in the living-room for a few minutes.

  When he woke up it was dark, but there was an eerie pale light outside in the street. He groaned as he stood up and looked out. It was snowing again. The dog, who had been sitting on his feet again, ran to the back door and whined to go out, then stood by the open door wondering if it really wanted to. Charlie left it to make up its mind, allowing flakes to whirl in and out again randomly, some of them falling on the laminate floor and melting there. He’d better try not to slip on the wet patches. That would be the last straw, spending New Year in hospital. And what would happen to the dog then? It would definitely be on the fast track to nowhere.

  Annoyingly, he was worrying about work. He glanced at his watch. Four o’clock. Had they got anywhere with the golden peacock? Had they dispatched the homeless man’s body safely to the police morgue for the post-mortem, or was it still lying at the undertaker’s in Pitkirtly where he’d arranged to put it? Was there anybody in forensics to do the analyses that would be needed?

  He decided to call in and see how things were going, then changed his mind before he had even picked up the phone. They wouldn’t want to be bothered with phone calls from him when they were in the middle of two enquiries. He wondered how they would get on if they decided to re-interview Amaryllis and Christopher. But there should be no reason to do that unless something new and urgent cropped up in connection with the murder investigation. Anything else could keep until the usual team were back in a few days’ time. Charlie had volunteered to work over New Year as well as Christmas. Both festivals tended to be fairly low-key in Pitkirtly, only of course this year was already looking a bit different. With the snow there wouldn’t be so many people getting drunk and disorderly, and that was just fine by him.

  The flakes whirled faster and faster, and soon there was practically a full-scale blizzard blowing in through the back door. He noticed the dog had gone out, and now there was no sign of it.

  He called, ‘Here, boy!’

  He whistled.

  He remembered the homeless man calling it ‘Buzz’ and reluctantly shouted the name into the snowstorm.

  He considered whether the dog could have got out of the garden somehow. He thought the fence was fairly secure; as a police officer Charlie looked after his fences and gates well, knowing that opportunist crime was rife and many casual burglars would be deterred even by having to open a gate.

  In the end he put on some shoes - not the wet boots, he wasn’t completely insane yet - and went out to look for the dog. He found it curled up in the lee of the garden hut on a piece of plastic sheeting he sometimes used to transport clippings to the tip. Of course, that would be the kind of spot where it was accustomed to sleeping. It looked up at him pathetically.

  ‘No, I’m not giving you any money for drink,’ he said to it. He dragged it bodily into the house and found a blanket for it to sit on, under the radiator in the hall.

  If the snow got worse again, he might not be able to get back into work for days. Charlie Smith smiled to himself and fetched a bottle of whisky and a glass from the kitchen cupboard. No phone calls, no compulsion to help homeless men and their dogs, no more microwave turkey dinners. This was the life.

  It still felt like the middle of the night, although he saw that a grey light had sneaked through the gap in the curtains, when the phone rang, paused and rang again until he groaned, reached over and picked it up. The dog, lying next to him, stretched sleepily. When had he agreed to let the dog sleep on his bed?

  ‘Charlie Smith.’

  ‘Good. We were hoping to catch you,’ said Inspector Farmer’s annoyingly wide-awake voice. ‘There’s something you can do today… It’s about this golden peacock of yours.’

  Chapter 26 The Lord Murray situation

  Visiting Old Pitkirtlyhill House again was quite high on the list of things Christopher didn’t want to do. He hadn’t enjoyed trekking through the snow, and he had been uneasy in Mal’s presence when they had last visited the house. Of course, if Mal was the gamekeeper’s son he might not be around the next time they visited. Maybe gamekeepers had to go out tending deer or whatever they did before hunting them down and killing them, and Mal might have to help his ageing father with this task. Or maybe Mal would have left for Africa to do his world-changing charity work as soon as the roads re-opened.

  And as for this golden peacock - he was still disappointed that it wasn’t an octopus, which would have been a bit quirkier and more unusual. In his opinion peacocks were over-rated, with their squawking and their boring brown female partners, whereas sea creatures came in all sorts of shades of ugliness, and it would have been interesting to see how a craftsman could turn that into something decorative.

  Amaryllis, of course, was so eager to get there that she had wanted to start straight away after speaking to the jeweller.

  ‘But we don’t want to be out there in the dark again,’ Christopher argued. ‘We’d be putting ourselves and others at risk again - just what Charlie Smith doesn’t want us doing.’

  F
or a moment he wondered if he had said the wrong thing and she would want to do the opposite, but after a moment’s pause she smiled and said, ‘Just as well one of is the sensible one, isn’t it? I don’t even know how we’re going to get there yet. I don’t suppose whatshisname at the Queen of Scots will get the Range Rover back for a while.’

  Christopher shuddered. ‘Do you really think he would let us use it again?’

  ‘Of course a team of huskies would still be best,’ said Amaryllis wistfully. ‘It’s such a waste of all this snow not to have a sleigh.’

  He noticed she was whistling ‘Sleigh Ride’ when he left her at the door of her apartment later.

  Now it was the next morning and even Christopher couldn’t think of an excuse to put off the visit to Old Pitkirtlyhill House any longer. Except that he didn’t have to think of an excuse. The snow was back, bigger, whiter and more lethal than ever. He had reluctantly tuned his radio to the local station but only so that he heard the local weather forecast and traffic news. The fact that there wasn’t any traffic news told its own story: there were power lines down, road blockages everywhere, and a party travelling by husky sleigh was lost somewhere at the other side of Dunfermline. He memorized the story so that he could pass it on to Amaryllis at some relevant time.

  Standing in the kitchen and looking out the window at the picturesque snow scene, eating toast and vaguely wondering if they would ever see anything normal like grass or tarmac again, or whether the whole world had turned white for ever as if they were living in a disaster movie, Christopher heard a noise outside his house.

  The door-bell rang. For a moment he considered not opening the door. He had the very strong sense that he would regret doing so.

  It kept on ringing.

  ‘All right, all right, I’m on my way,’ he muttered, stuffing the last bit of toast in his mouth.

  Dave stood on the door-step. He was muffled up to the eyebrows in layers of scarves and he wore a red woolly hat that had slipped down over one ear. There was a Land Rover at the gate, and Jemima and Amaryllis waved to him from it. He wouldn’t have been at all surprised to see Maisie Sue appear round the corner with a smile and a cheery seasonal greeting.

  ‘Where did you get that?’ said Christopher.

  ‘A friend,’ said Dave cryptically. ‘He doesn’t drive it much any more, so he thought I might as well have it until the truck’s fixed.’

  ‘Are you sure you want to bring Jemima along? What if we get stuck out by Pitkirtlyhill House again?’

  ‘It’s only a bit of snow,’ Dave scoffed. He seemed to have conveniently forgotten the events of Christmas Eve.

  ‘Come on, stop arguing, you two! Christopher, get your coat on,’ called Amaryllis from the back seat of the Land Rover.

  Christopher gave in. He couldn’t in all conscience let Dave and Jemima go out there into possible danger while he slumped in front of the fire eating toast, which was what he would prefer to have done. He doubted if he would even have encouraged Amaryllis to make the trip on her own, even although he was cross with her for dragging them all along with her in these weather conditions.

  ‘Why did you let them come?’ he muttered to her as soon as he was in the back seat of the Land Rover. ‘It’s far too dangerous.’

  ‘They insisted on it,’ she whispered back. ‘Jemima said she couldn’t stay in the house another minute, and Dave went and got the Land Rover from his friend. It’ll be fine. If anything goes wrong we’ll get them out of it first, even if we have to make Charlie Smith send a helicopter.’

  ‘I wouldn’t joke about that if I were you.’

  ‘What are you two whispering about?’ said Jemima.

  Typical, thought Christopher, she pretends not to hear what people are saying half the time, but picks up on anything you don’t want her to know.

  ‘Just saying we might need to get the police to send a helicopter to rescue us,’ said Amaryllis. ‘If we get stuck.’

  ‘Oh, that would be exciting,’ said Jemima. ‘Ever since Jock McLean got taken away by helicopter he’s boasted about it. It would be good if we could boast back.’

  ‘No way am I going to let them take me away in one of those things,’ shouted Dave above the roar the engine made as he accelerated up the hill. ‘If people were meant to fly in the sky we’d have been born with wings and a propeller, I always say.’

  Oh well, Christopher told himself as they lurched forward over the snowy ridges, at least we don’t need to have the radio on to entertain us.

  ‘They’ve been out all night clearing the top road,’ said Dave. ‘And gritting it. It said on the wireless this morning. So if we can get that far we’ll be fine.’

  ‘Didn’t they say it was only passable with extreme care?’ said Christopher, leaning forward so that Dave could hear him. He was immediately flung to one side by a great lurch of the car. Fortunately his seat belt saved him from actually damaging himself on the door frame.

  ‘They’re just saying that to stop idiots who can’t drive going out in those conditions,’ said Dave, making a gesture at the driver of a Fiat Panda which was coming towards him. He turned the wheel quickly to bring the Land Rover to its correct side of the road. ‘Like that one. See what I mean? I don’t know why people bother with those wee cars. Waste of space.’

  ‘Now, now, dear,’ said Jemima. ‘Live and let live.’

  She sat bolt upright in the front passenger seat, apparently impervious to both Dave’s driving and the weather conditions. Christopher began to revise his earlier opinion about the wisdom of letting the two of them come on this expedition up to Pitkirtlyhill. He and Amaryllis should just have sent Jemima and Dave there on their own. They were both born survivors, as various previous events had demonstrated.

  There was a snowdrift in the way just before they joined the main road.

  ‘Oh, dear,’ said Christopher. ‘We’ll have to go back.’

  ‘Oh, no we won’t,’ said Amaryllis, fishing a couple of shovels out from behind the seats. ‘Come along, Christopher. Time for some healthy exercise. Keep the engine running whatever you do, Dave.’

  They attacked the snowdrift, Amaryllis using quite a bit more energy than Christopher did. After what seemed like hours, they had cleared a gap that looked just about big enough for the Land Rover to get through. They climbed back in, faces glowing. Even Christopher had to admit the effort had certainly got his circulation going.

  Dave revved the engine and the vehicle lurched forward again and came to a halt. The wheels span for a few moments and then it went forward with a huge bump. Even Jemima had to cling on to the door-handle to stop herself falling. Then they were through and almost at the roundabout on the main road. Christopher groaned inwardly. He had been very optimistic for a short while about being able to give up and retreat to Pitkirtly; now he thought about the side road that led up to the woods, and the trek through the grounds to get to the old house, and his legs started aching just from remembered pain.

  They were turning into the side road, Dave accelerating like mad to start the ascent, when they saw a small van.

  ‘It’s Rosie!’ said Jemima.

  ‘What?’ said Dave, over-steering and ending up on the main road facing in the wrong direction.

  ‘You’ve missed the turning!’ Jemima exclaimed. It was the first time Christopher had ever heard her comment adversely on Dave’s driving or navigational skills. She must be feeling a lot worse than she looked.

  ‘I haven’t missed it, dear,’ said Dave calmly. ‘I just slipped a bit on an icy patch. It’s driving a strange car that does it. If I had my truck… You’re right, it is Rosie.’

  ‘And Jock McLean,’ added Amaryllis, waving at them.

  Rosie had stopped her van and got out to see why they were on the wrong side of the road. Dave wound down his window.

  ‘What are you doing out in this?’ he said.

  ‘Cat litter,’ she said succinctly. ‘Plenty of food but I want to make sure I don’t run out of cat litter o
ver New Year.’

  Dave shook his head. ‘You won’t get as far as a pet shop,’ he said. ‘Look at that sky - it’s going to snow again before the day’s out.’

  They all looked at the sky. Sure enough, the light had gone yellowish and the distinctive dark grey clouds were closing in again.

  ‘Damn,’ said Rosie. ‘Better get on back. What are you doing here anyway?’

  ‘Going to Old Pitkirtlyhill House,’ said Dave. ‘Amaryllis is on a case.’

  ‘What kind of a case?’ enquired Rosie.

  ‘Something to do with Lord Murray,’ said Dave. ‘Anyway, we’d better be getting up there. Are you going up the road again too?’

  ‘I’ll turn round and follow you up,’ said Rosie. ‘Then we can help each other if we get stuck. Do you want a hand with Lord Murray?’

  ‘No, you get on back up to the cattery,’ said Amaryllis hastily, before Dave could rope them in too. Christopher guessed she felt that Jock McLean might prove to be an awkward assistant when it came to dealing with the aristocracy. Although from what he knew of hereditary peers, which wasn’t a huge amount, some of them could probably match Jock for rudeness any time.

  ‘If you need any help, just call,’ said Rosie. ‘The phones are all back on now. We didn’t have any electricity for a day or two but that came back suddenly.’

  Christopher imagined the two of them, Rosie and Jock, huddled together for warmth like orphans of the storm. Then he tried to expunge the mental picture before it did some permanent damage to his brain.

  ‘You’re welcome to carry on up to the cattery when you’ve finished,’ Rosie added. ‘We’ve got plenty of cocoa and mince pies.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’ said Amaryllis, watching Christopher.

  ‘I was just thinking about something,’ said Christopher.