5 Frozen in Crime (10 page)

Turning the corner into Merchantman Wynd where
Amaryllis lived, the following afternoon, Christopher heard joyous, uninhibited
laughter. As he got closer to her apartment building he saw them on the
balcony. There were two of them and they seemed to be fencing in the confined
space.

At first his heart thudded hard as he imagined
someone had broken in and she was in the middle of a genuine, and desperate
fight for survival, and then he realised they were both laughing as they
wielded large chunks of icicle with considerable aplomb. When he was almost
there, something shot past him and buried itself in a small snowdrift at the
side of the path. He stared at it: it was the point of a large icicle, and it
looked as sharp as he imagined the edge of a sword to be.

Amaryllis’s face appeared over the edge of the
balcony, looking down at him.

‘Are you all right?’

‘I’m fine. Sorry to interrupt.’

‘We’ve finished now - first one to lose the point
of their icicle has to get the drinks in at the Queen of Scots.’

He couldn’t help laughing in spite of his irritation.
What was the point of icicles anyway?

A large fair-haired man filled a lot of the space
in Amaryllis’s apartment. He extended a hand to Christopher.

‘I’m Jimbo Watts. Amaryllis and I met in Tibet a
few years ago.’

‘Good,’ said Christopher. The familiar feeling of
inadequacy started to creep over him. ‘What brings you to Pitkirtly?’

‘Well, it’s a funny thing,’ said Jimbo pleasantly.
‘We’ve been assigned to look after coal supplies to Longannet - some sort of
alert going on, I won’t bore you with the details. I meant to pop along and see
Amaryllis before the snow started, but I didn’t get round to it. I’ve been on
duty for three days, non-stop, and today I said to myself, why not borrow some
skis and get on over to Pitkirtly. I thought she’d be going nuts, cooped up in
this weather. But she tells me she’s been doing a bit of detective work on the
side.’

‘Yes, that’s what she does,’ said Christopher,
understanding now why there was a pair of skis downstairs in the lobby of the
building. He was prepared to take an instant dislike to this large
capable-looking man with the sun-tanned face and the air of general competence,
but instead he rather liked the look of him. Maybe it was the sense that the
man had nothing to hide. Or maybe that was an illusion.

He remembered that Mal was supposed to be a friend
of Jimbo’s, and thought about the contrast between the two men. He hoped Jimbo
wouldn’t try and talk Amaryllis into going on an epic quest, but it didn’t seem
likely.

‘You’ve met Mal too, haven’t you?’ said Jimbo. ‘Back
in the family home again. About time he settled down a bit.’

‘Settled down?’ said Christopher. He remembered
telling himself on many occasions to stop asking these obvious questions, but
his self-talk didn’t seem to have worked yet.

‘He’s been all over the place since he left the
army. Seems to think he can carry on sorting things out in the world’s hot
spots. I told him he should scale it down a bit.’

‘That sounds familiar,’ said Christopher with a
sideways glance at Amaryllis.

‘But isn’t it admirable to keep on working on the
bigger picture?’ she asked. ‘It’s all very well doing little bits of good here
and there, but doesn’t somebody have to look at big things that really make a
difference?’

Jimbo shrugged. ‘That’s for people wiser and more
powerful than us. We’re just tiny cogs in the machine - if we don’t do it
right, then the whole machine grinds to a halt.’

‘Yes, that’s all very well if you want to be part
of a machine,’ argued Amaryllis. ‘But not everyone does.’

Jimbo looked puzzled. ‘Anyone who tries to
maintain the peace is a part of the machine in some way. Maybe not a cog. Could
be a motor or a drive-belt. A spark-plug, even?’

‘I think we’ve taken this metaphor as far as we
can,’ said Amaryllis. ‘My knowledge of machines doesn’t really go much deeper.’

Christopher thought she was being falsely modest.
He knew she was quite capable of fixing a car engine if she really wanted to.
He hoped she wasn’t going to go all fluttery and feminine just because of this
large fair-haired soldier with his round innocent blue eyes. Or to become
nostalgic for the privations of Tibet or the adrenalin rush of North Korea.

‘Are you coming round to the pub with us?’ said
Jimbo to Christopher.

‘Maybe,’ said Christopher.

‘He means yes,’ said Amaryllis, laughing. ‘There
isn’t anything else to do here the day after Boxing Day in the snow.’

‘Except playing with icicles, I guess,’ said
Jimbo. ‘Or we could go tobogganing if there’s a slope.’

‘Is there a slope?’ said Amaryllis. ‘This town is all
slope and no level ground. I don’t have a sledge, though. Or even a tin tray.’

‘I might have one in the attic,’ said Christopher,
surprising himself. He had never really taken to sledging after a bad
experience with a tilting sledge and some brambles. But he remembered he and
Caroline having rather a grand wooden sledge, which he didn’t recall throwing
out. Unless she had taken it away with her for the kids.

So it was that after a few drinks at the Queen of
Scots, where the landlord seemed to harbour no hard feelings about his Range
Rover, they all headed back to Christopher’s, excavated the sledge from a pile
of old carpet in the attic and then, as it started to get dark, they went up
the hill in the park. So many people had been up there already that they had
made the slope extremely slippery. Jimbo and Amaryllis seemed to enjoy it, but
Christopher could only cope with one scary run down the hill. The main problem
was that you had to stop or swerve abruptly before running into the fence. He
wasn’t entirely successful in doing either of these things.

Eventually it was too dark for any of them to
carry on. Jimbo said regretfully, ‘I suppose I’d better get on back. It’ll be
my shift soon.’

‘Shouldn’t you have been sleeping in between
shifts?’ said Christopher as they trudged back from the park pulling the sledge
behind them like children - he was quite relieved that Amaryllis hadn’t wanted
to sit on it and be pulled along.

‘Sleeping’s for wimps,’ said Jimbo, and grinned in
almost exactly the same way Amaryllis did when he asked her a silly question.

He only paused long enough to pick up his skis
from the lobby of the apartment building, then he was off.

‘Aren’t you going to put them on?’ said
Christopher.

‘I might as well wait until I get to the top of
the hill,’ he said.

They watched from the end of the cul de sac as he
carried the skis up the road, showing no sign of tiredness or muscle pain,
Christopher noted enviously. Just before he got to the top he stopped to put on
the skis. Another man came along as he did so, slithering down the middle of
the road from one icy patch to the next. He was weaving slightly as if drunk.
He stared at Jimbo, held something out to him and spoke. They were much too far
away to hear what was being said.

Jimbo straightened up after fastening both skis,
and seemed to be replying. Something changed hands between them, or was that an
illusion? The man came on down the road, but as he passed Christopher and
Amaryllis, his step faltered, he gazed at them in apparent terror and he
speeded up, causing him to slip even more often.

Staring after him, Christopher realised the man
was limping badly at one side.

‘Wait a minute,’ he said out loud. ‘I’ve seen him
somewhere before.’

‘Isn’t he that Big Issue salesman who hangs around
outside the wool shop sometimes?’ said Amaryllis, turning to walk back along to
her apartment building.

‘No - I think - wait a minute!’ he said again,
raising his voice. ‘Stop! Come back!’

He set off after the other man at a run, but
within a moment his feet had slid out from under him and he was lying flat on
his back in the middle of the road.

Amaryllis’s face loomed into view above him,
framed by the weird knitted scarf with the long dangly bits that she had
wrapped round her head.

‘Have you broken anything?’ she asked.

‘I don’t think so,’ said Christopher, testing out
each limb in turn as he started to pull himself upright again. She reached a
hand down to help him.

‘Haven’t you had enough playing in the snow for
one day?’ she said.

Amaryllis couldn’t wait to get rid of Christopher.
It took longer than she had expected to persuade him to take the sledge away
with him and not leave it lying around the lobby of her apartment building,
where she knew at least one of her neighbours would complain, claiming they had
fallen over it. It was a miracle that hadn’t happened with the skis. But
perhaps everyone else was away for Christmas, or in hibernation.

She was on the case and her skin bristled with
excitement as she got ready to go out. She considered whether she could fit her
PI vest under her coat and if not, whether she was prepared to look ridiculous
by wearing it on top. In the end she had to leave it at home. She wasn’t really
expecting to get shot at tonight anyway, although she knew from previous
experience that when you didn’t expect it to happen was actually the most
dangerous time.

The black leather jacket she usually wore for this
kind of expedition wasn’t warm enough, so she had to wrap up in her big parka
again, and the woolly scarf Christopher seemed to think was highly amusing. The
parka would slow her down and make her movements less lithe, but on the other
hand there was no point in freezing to death just looking for someone who might
after all turn out to have nothing to do with anything.

She decided to start at the wool-shop, on the
grounds that she had often seen him there, and to work outwards from there in
big circles, concentrating on sheltered spots slightly off the beaten track but
not too far off. Someone like that might spend a bit of time rummaging in bins,
for instance, just as the Tibetan children had done before she introduced
herself properly to them. She wasn’t sure if anyone had slept rough in the lane
behind the former glitzy furniture shop, now a designer florists’, for a while.
The new owners might be even less forgiving about that sort of thing than the
previous lot.

She was proceeding down the High Street, heading
for the wool shop, about halfway down, when she became aware that someone was
watching her.

Because Amaryllis was highly trained in carrying
out and equally in avoiding surveillance of every kind, she didn’t immediately
look round, hoping to catch a dark mysterious stranger popping out from behind
a lamp-post or a wheelie-bin. Instead she carried on down the road past the
wool shop, paused in the shadow of the fish-shop awning, staring at the plastic
lobster in the window with apparent fascination for exactly two minutes, then
she walked on and turned down the lane that led to the harbour, took the first
turning on the right, which she happened to know led into the back garden of
Jan from the wool shop, who wouldn’t mind if she ran across it and climbed the
fence at the far side before sliding into the dark lane that went uphill very
steeply and came out next to the war memorial gardens. From there she returned
to the top of the High Street, from which vantage point she observed a
uniformed police officer and a tall-ish man in plain clothes who might be
Charlie Smith. They were staring down the lane that led to the harbour and
Charlie was saying something to the uniformed officer.

Interesting.

Well, only mildly interesting, if she were to be
honest with herself, which she usually tried to be. She couldn’t think why they
were out and about at all in this weather and at this time in the evening, when
surely their shifts must have finished and they should be on their way home.
Then she remembered Charlie Smith lived out of town, somewhere in Dunfermline,
and was presumably cut off from his home comforts by the snow. So this ramble
down the High Street was just a way of passing the time until he went to bed on
the police station floor or wherever he had found to lay his weary head. She
didn’t think she would be offering him her sofa any time soon.

‘Psst!’ said a low voice from behind the war
memorial.

She turned round.

The Big Issue salesman was trying to attract her
attention. She wouldn’t be offering him her sofa either, but she didn’t like
the idea of anyone sleeping rough in these temperatures.

‘Buy the Big Issue?’ he muttered.

‘Got one already,’ she lied.

‘Want a drink?’ he said.

‘No, thanks. Do you?’

He got a bottle out of his jacket pocket. The
jacket itself had seen better days and didn’t look heavy enough to keep the
cold out. He beckoned to her. There was a small shelter behind him with a bench
in it, and inside she could see a heap of blankets, a bag of chips and a dog,
curled up in a ball but shivering even so.

‘It’s too cold for him to sleep outside here,’ she
said, trying not to make it sound critical. ‘Can’t you find anywhere?’

He shrugged. ‘We’ll live. We have done up to now.’

She supposed he and the dog snuggled up together
to keep warm. It was what she would do.

He suddenly ducked back into the shelter, out of
sight. Turning away, she saw that Charlie Smith - if it was indeed him - and
the uniformed policeman had started to walk up the road towards them. She didn’t
particularly want to speak to them, but she decided it would look suspicious if
she hid from them now, and it might draw their attention to the homeless man,
something she was sure he didn’t want.

She walked towards them as they came up, their
breath swirling in front of them and making pale wraith-like shapes in the icy
air.

‘What are you doing here?’ said Charlie.

‘Just paying my respects at the war memorial,’
said Amaryllis.

‘Funny time to do it,’ he said suspiciously.

‘I was out for a walk - I don’t like being cooped
up.’

‘I know that,’ he said. ‘But weren’t you down past
the fishmonger’s a minute ago? What’s going on?’

‘I’ve been doing some experiments in my secret
lab,’ she said, ‘and I’m on the verge of a breakthrough in teleportation. The
trials are in their final stages.’

‘Cool,’ said the uniformed officer, who was much
younger than Charlie.

‘She’s joking, Keith,’ he said. ‘Don’t believe
anything she says in this mood.’

‘I don’t think you should be casting aspersions on
me in front of a junior officer,’ she said.

‘For goodness’ sake just get on home,’ said
Charlie Smith impatiently. ‘I don’t want to find myself digging you out of a
snowdrift some time tomorrow.’

‘That’s highly unlikely,’ she said.

‘Go on, before I arrest you.’

‘What for? Behaviour likely to cause a rise in
your blood pressure?’ Amaryllis parried. She wished they would get on back to
the police station. She wanted to have a few more words with the homeless man
and these two were seriously getting in the way. ‘Mustn’t keep you,’ she added.
‘Thanks for your concern.’

‘Come along, Keith,’ said Charlie. At least he
knew when he was beaten. They turned and walked off again in the direction of
the police station. She hoped young Keith wasn’t having to sleep on the floor
too.

When they were out of sight, she joined the
homeless man in his shelter. The dog glanced up and wagged its tail. She gave
it a pat. The only food she had about her person was a squashed Nutrigrain bar.

‘Is it OK to give this to your dog?’

‘It doesn’t have chocolate in it, does it?’

‘No, just nutritious wholesome ingredients. And
sugar. It’ll help keep the cold out.’

‘All right then.’

They sat there for a while watching the dog as it
turned the cereal bar into a horrible gooey mess and then licked up every last
crumb of it.

‘You’re not from round here, are you?’ said
Amaryllis. She had noticed a slight Liverpool accent, probably moderated
somewhat by years of travelling - the man, although his skin was greyish with
cold at the moment, had the sun-battered appearance of someone who had spent
some time in a hot climate.

‘Not exactly,’ he said with an attempt at a smile.

‘Have you been sleeping rough for long?’

‘A while.’

She didn’t want it to seem as if she was
interrogating him. She leaned down and patted the dog. It wagged its tail
again. Communicating was simpler if you were a dog.

He volunteered some information. ‘I used to sleep
in one of those houses they’re building down in the field behind the railway
track. But they found me and threw me out.’

‘So have you been sleeping around the town then?’

‘Yes - easier to get a bite to eat if you’re on
the spot.’ He frowned. ‘The past few days there’s been a lot of food thrown out
but it’s not always any good - that bin round the back of the police station,
you can sometimes get a sandwich in there, only it was full of mushy sprouts
last night.’

She reflected on how desperate he would have had
to be in order to go so close to the police station.

‘The supermarket’s a good place to go,’ he said. ‘But
you have to watch in case they get security on to you.’

‘Did you hear the shots down there on Christmas
Eve?’

He looked quite blank for a moment. ‘Shots?’

Amaryllis imagined his voice trembled. Was he
afraid of gunfire? Had he been in the army at one time? She knew some soldiers
had trouble adjusting to civilian life when they came out, and perhaps some of
them ending up sleeping rough at Christmas in places far from home.

‘There was an armed robbery. They shot some people
during the getaway.’

‘That’s bad,’ he said, frowning.

‘Can’t you go to a shelter or something, at least
over Christmas?’

‘There isn’t one around here,’ he said. ‘Even if
there was, they might not take the dog. I can’t leave him out in the cold.’

‘There might be one in Rosyth if you could get
along there.’

‘Not much chance of that in this weather though.’

She stood up, took off the heavy parka and handed
it to him. ‘There’s ten pounds in the pocket. And some change. And if you come
along to the Queen of Scots tomorrow lunchtime I’ll buy you a drink. They don’t
mind dogs.’

She shivered but tried not to show it.

‘Thanks - but I can’t take your coat.’

‘Just take it,’ she said. ‘And don’t forget to buy
something for the dog. See you later.’

He was still sitting there holding the coat as she
set off for home, as fast as she could manage on the icy streets.