5 Frozen in Crime (9 page)

Charlie took Karen Whitefield with him. If he was
going to intrude on people’s Christmasses, he wanted an accomplice alongside
him.

However, most of his interviewees seemed quite
pleased to see him. He guessed they were getting bored being stuck indoors,
unable to go anywhere and suffering from intermittent power and phone line
cuts.

Apart from the jeweller himself, nobody seemed to
have noticed the robbers until they rounded the corner of the supermarket and
started to scatter people before them. That had seemed odd to him at first but
then he realised most people would have been concentrating on keeping
themselves upright in the icy conditions, with little attention left over for
any illegal activities that might be going on in their vicinity.

‘It was getting dark by then too,’ Karen pointed
out. ‘We’ve been on at the council for years to improve the lighting in that
corner - it’s a bit of a black spot. Has been ever since the supermarket was
built. We’ve asked the supermarket people to fit lights on the end of the
building too, but they said it would cost too much and the lights would be
vandalized in no time.’

‘So the two men in balaclavas wouldn’t have been
seen very clearly?’

‘Not really, no. And even the balaclavas wouldn’t
have seemed all that weird, with the weather and everything.’

They walked up the front path that led to another
witness’s door. Standing on the step, Charlie said, ‘You’d almost think the
villains planned it for their own convenience.’

No reply. Where could Christopher Wilson have got
to on a day like this? And was it worthwhile pursuing him at this point?
Charlie knew there were only a few possibilities.

‘Let’s go on to the next one on the list,’ he said
to Karen. ‘We’ll maybe catch up with Mr Wilson later.’

‘He’s probably the best witness we have, sir,’
said Karen.

Annoying, but true. There was Jock McLean as well,
of course, but they knew where he was: he would keep until some of the snow
melted.

After three hours of trudging around town, waiting
on doorsteps and trying to drag information out of people who were bleary-eyed
and in some cases still drunk after their Christmas excesses, they trailed back
to the police station and tried to fit the new information - which, Charlie had
to admit, could have been written on the back of a stamp - into the picture
they were building up of the crime. Keith Burnett and Sergeant McDonald, the
nearest to a Scene of Crime team that could be found in this weather, were
waiting to go out and search the car park for clues, and particularly bullets.
It was a bad day for law enforcement, Charlie mused, when only two of the
officers could leave the station at a time. He hoped Inspector Forrester would
be satisfied when he heard about this.  So much for letting people take
holidays over Christmas. With so much money changing hands in the local shops
and so much excess alcohol being consumed, there was almost bound to be
trouble.

To add insult to injury the jeweller rang up at
lunch-time to nag at them about catching the thieves. Apparently the client
waiting for the golden peacock was very impatient.

‘He’s quite an important man and he isn’t used to
being kept waiting.’

‘It’s not a question of how important he is - we
need to be meticulous in our investigations,’ Charlie explained. ‘It all takes
time - and we’re very short-staffed at the moment. Then there’s the snow…’

He was aware it sounded as if he was running
through every possible excuse short of ‘the dog ate my homework’, but it was
all true. And he knew that having somebody nagging them would just make
everyone more ponderous, more thorough and more risk-averse when it came to
gathering and assessing evidence, but he didn’t mention that. He slammed the
phone down.

‘Have we heard any more from the hospital?’ he
growled at Karen, who happened to be sitting nearby eating her sandwiches.

‘I’ll get on to them this afternoon,’ she said,
peering at a Sudoku puzzle as she munched. He sighed heavily, decided he might
as well have his sandwiches too, and went through to his office to fetch his
lunch-box.

The door-bell rang as he sat down at the table.
They had locked the front door because they weren’t really supposed to be open
on Boxing Day, but it was impossible not to answer the bell. Karen flung down
her puzzle magazine and started to get to her feet, but Charlie was first.

‘It’s OK. I haven’t started mine yet. Stay where
you are.’

Christopher and Amaryllis stood on the door-step.
He hoped they weren’t about to launch into a couple of choruses of ‘We Wish You
a Merry Christmas’.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘I thought you wanted to interview me,’ said
Christopher.

‘What made you think that?’

‘My next-door neighbour. He called me on my mobile
phone to say the police had been round again. I don’t think he meant it to
sound as if I was constantly in trouble, but that was how it came out.’

‘Ah, that would be a Mr Browning,’ Charlie nodded.
He turned his attention to Amaryllis. ‘How about you? Did you sense that we
might want to interview you too? Or have you just come along for the hell of
it?’

‘I’m here to monitor the interview,’ she said
mysteriously.

‘What as? A lawyer? You have to take exams, you
know.’

‘There’s no need to be like that. I’m just a
concerned member of the public. And a private detective.’

‘There isn’t any licence to kill involved, you
know. And I don’t have to let you stay in this interview, so try not to annoy
all of us too much.’

‘Do you want to interview me or not?’ said
Christopher. ‘Only we have to go down to the Cultural Centre after this and
look for bullet-holes.’

‘I don’t want to know that,’ said Charlie. ‘You
might as well come in here first.’

He took them into the staff kitchen. It was warmer
in there and he could offer them a cup of tea without having to carry it down
the corridor to the interview room.

Karen Whitefield sighed heavily and flung her
puzzle magazine aside.

‘You do know they’ve proved that doing puzzles
doesn’t stop your brain deteriorating, don’t you?’ said Amaryllis.

‘So, Mr Wilson, what do you think you can tell us that
we don’t already know about the robbery on Christmas Eve in Pitkirtly town
centre?’ said Charlie, resting his elbows on the table.

‘I don’t know,’ said Christopher. ‘Can’t you think
up a better question than that?’

Charlie wasn’t accustomed to witnesses who started
out by critiquing his questions. He thought about it a bit, then fetched the
notes he had made on the initial interview in the Queen of Scots.

‘Hmm, not much here. So have you remembered
anything about the men in balaclavas apart from the big dark staring eyes?’

‘One of them was limping. Did I say that before?
The other one was carrying something.’ Christopher closed his eyes, as if by
doing that he would be able to picture the scene. ‘A sports bag. It was about the
size for a squash racket or something.’

‘But you didn’t actually see a squash racket?’

‘There wasn’t time. And he didn’t open the bag
anyway. I don’t know if there was a squash racket in there. It could have been
anything. A badminton racket. A tennis racket.’

‘A bit cold for tennis, isn’t it?’

‘I don’t think the type of racket’s important,’
said Christopher impatiently.

Charlie Smith sat back in his chair. Why did he always
arrive so quickly at the point in interviews where he wanted to throw Christopher
Wilson across the room? There was nothing inherently annoying about the man,
unlike his friends Amaryllis Peebles and Jock McLean, whom he suspected of
doing it on purpose. In Christopher’s case, it was just that he had a way of
rambling off at a tangent and leading his interrogator off in the same
direction without apparently intending to do so.

He decided he had better take control of this
interview before it went further astray.

He stared at the original statement, and made a
note about the sports bag.

‘Was there a logo or anything that might help us
identify the bag?’ he said, not very hopefully.

‘Yes!’ said Christopher. ‘It was one of these
sports companies. Adidas, Nike, Sony.’

‘But which one?’ said Charlie, leaving aside the
mention of Sony for the moment.

‘Or was it a football team?’ said Christopher. ‘If
it hadn’t been getting dark I might have taken more notice. I don’t even know
what colour it was.’

Charlie saw Karen staring at him with the kind of
expression that asked why he didn’t lock Christopher up and throw away the key.

‘Which hand was he carrying it in?’ said Charlie
patiently, ignoring her.

‘Left, I think. But he did change to the right
hand just before I dived down below window level. As if it was too heavy to
carry in one hand for very long.’

‘Hmm, interesting,’ said Charlie. Maybe the
robbers had brought a change of clothing with them - the jewellery itself
couldn’t possibly weigh that much. There weren’t any massive sports trophies or
family plate on the list of what had been stolen.

But if they’d brought a change of clothing, then
they might have postponed their getaway and just mingled with the Christmas Eve
crowds in the High Street. Then again, if they’d postponed it for too long,
they might not have got away at all. The idea that they might still be in town,
trapped along with everyone else, was rather scary.

‘Karen, did any of the other witnesses mention a
sports bag?’ Charlie asked, forgetting he shouldn’t be asking this while
Christopher and Amaryllis were still around.

Karen shook her head at him and went out,
presumably to fetch the rest of the notes.

‘Anything else?’ said Charlie.

‘Did they really fire a shot at the window?’ said
Christopher.

‘I can’t comment on that,’ said Charlie with a
wink. Karen came back and silently showed him her interview notes.

‘So nobody else was as observant as you, Mr
Wilson,’ said Charlie. ‘I find that quite hard to believe.’

‘Police harassment!’ called Amaryllis from her
station by the biscuit tin.

‘If you eat all the bourbons I’ll lock you up,’
said Charlie.

‘Well, we can’t stay around here all day
exchanging insults with the likes of you,’ said Amaryllis, slamming the lid
back on the tin.

‘Will you be in town for the next week or so?’ said
Charlie.

‘There’s no way out at the moment anyway,’ said
Christopher.

‘So none of the other witnesses were any better
than Christopher?’ said Amaryllis, peering over Charlie’s shoulder as she
passed his chair. He hurriedly pushed the list of what had been stolen under
the folder.

‘A golden peacock?’ murmured Amaryllis
thoughtfully. ‘Interesting.’

‘Just get out of here before I throw you out! And
don’t come back!’

‘I thought you were never going to say that, sir,’
said Karen Whitefield approvingly as Christopher and Amaryllis left. ‘Well
done.’

‘Are we really going to look for bullet holes?’
asked Christopher as they left the police station.

Amaryllis nodded solemnly. ‘We’ve got to do this
thing properly. It’s obvious that the police need a hand.’

‘What do you mean, we’ve got to do it?’ he said. ‘I
didn’t think I was part of this private detective caper of yours.’

‘It’s not a caper. It’s a small business. If I
looked into it, I might even be able to apply for start-up funding and a free
course on designing a business card.’

‘Hmm.’

He didn’t sound convinced. Amaryllis wasn’t sure
that anyone really wanted her to set up a private detective agency in
Pitkirtly. They might think they wanted that, but they wouldn’t necessarily be
able to cope with the reality of it. She thought what Christopher and Charlie
Smith both wanted was to regulate her activities somehow and stop her making
rash, impulsive decisions that often landed one or both of them in trouble.
That didn’t mean they would accept her right to take on clients and pry into
what people were doing, even if she had the best-designed business card in the
world.

Mulling over ideas for what would constitute the
best business card in the world took her until they arrived at the Cultural
Centre. She decided it would be minimalist, ideally with a one-word slogan on
it that defined the whole enterprise. Porcupine, for instance. Or Gargoyle. Or
investigate, with a small letter ‘i’. If Christopher wondered why she hadn’t
said anything on the way, he didn’t comment on it. But then, his ability not to
make inane comments on anything and everything was one of her favourite things
about him.

‘We’d better start just outside of your office window,’
she said as they stared at the building. ‘If there really was a bullet and it
bounced off, we might be able to find it.’

‘I’ll have to pop inside now we’re here,’ said
Christopher, producing a set of keys. ‘I should have been checking every day
really. Last winter there was some blocked guttering that caused a bit of a
leak, and the old map collection got slightly damaged… Why are you looking at
me like that?’

She realised she had been staring at him with her
mouth wide open.

‘Old maps – of course,’ she said. ‘Thank you,
Christopher. I’d forgotten about that.’

‘I didn’t think I’d mentioned it to anyone,’ he
said, looking uncomfortable as she continued to stare at him.

‘Let’s look inside first,’ she said. ‘Where do you
keep these old maps anyway?’

‘I didn’t know you were interested in maps,’ he
said, giving in and unlocking the doors.  He turned quickly to switch the alarm
off as they entered the foyer.

‘They have their uses,’ she said cryptically. ‘I
have some on my phone actually.’

‘What’s that – an app?’ he asked. She knew he was
only trying to sound as if he knew what an app was. Christopher had never
really trusted modern phone technology. He couldn’t get used to the idea that
you had to switch your mobile phone on for it to work. Or that the word ‘mobile’
was an indication that you were meant to carry it around with you.

‘No, not exactly,’ she said.

‘They’re through in the library. In the corner of
the reference section – next to Cat Care.’

‘Not in alphabetical order then,’ she said,
following him along the corridor.

‘Yes, they are.’

‘Maps – cat care?’

‘Try cartography,’ he said over his shoulder,
switching the lights on.

It was always a surprise to Amaryllis when she saw
Christopher in his native habitat and realised he was competent and
intelligent. She must try and remember that more often.

He led the way to the map section.

‘Old ones this side, current ones just past the
pillar,’ he said. ‘Which is it going to be?’

‘Probably old ones,’ said Amaryllis, thinking of
the maps she had seen spread out on the kitchen table at Old Pitkirtlyhill
House. She pulled her phone out of her bag and looked for the pictures she had
taken.

‘You can’t photograph them,’ said Christopher. ‘Copyright.’

‘Too late,’ she said, showing him the images. She
explained where she had taken them. She didn’t explain why: she wasn’t at all
clear about that herself.

‘I’m looking for more like this,’ she said. ‘I
want to know what it’s all about.’

He peered at the screen again. ‘Hmm. Hard to tell
on this scale. But we could start by assuming they’re local. We’ve got some
replicas of old maps of Pitkirtly and surroundings. And we could always look up
the Pont and Holl maps online. Here. Take these and open them up on the table
while I go and check round the rest of the building.’

After a while he came back with nothing to report.
‘No sign of any bullet marks on this side, anyway. But we can still look around
outside if you want.’

Amaryllis was so engrossed in a replica of a seventeenth
century map that she didn’t take in the sense of his words until later. She
could see Pitkirtly Island but there was very little sign of habitation in the
area currently occupied by Pitkirtly itself. It must have been a tiny hamlet
with only a few dozen inhabitants.

On the next one, which dated from the time of the
Jacobites, she noticed a huge difference.

‘Coal mining,’ said Christopher, looking over her
shoulder. ‘The mines started to open and more people moved in.’

‘I thought that wasn’t until much later.’

‘There were coal seams that ran out under the
Forth that were developed early on. They didn’t have to dig too far down – but
there was always the risk of drowning, of course. The Murray estates would have
owned some of the mines around here. All the landowners did. They owned the
miners too.’

‘What do you mean, owned?’

‘The miners were tied to working for one coal
owner. They didn’t get their freedom until late in the eighteenth century. But
there were advantages in it too. They’d have got somewhere to live. Some of the
coal owners built model villages. And it was better paid than farm labouring.’

‘That doesn’t really explain what’s on Mal’s maps,’
said Amaryllis, frowning. She retrieved one of the images again and magnified
it. ‘Oh, look!  I didn’t notice this before but it mentions Old Pitkirtlyhill.
Seems to be written in pencil – it’s quite faint. Then there’s a kind of road –
or is it a river? It leads from there for a bit, maybe southwards.’ She flung
her phone down. ‘This is a pointless exercise. I don’t even know why I’m doing
it.’

‘No, wait!’ said Christopher. He picked up the
phone and scrutinised the map she had been looking at. ‘There isn’t a river on
the Pitkirtlyhill estate at all – and the road leads off from the other
direction.  It’s shown with a dotted line over at the other side of the
grounds. Maybe that’s a tunnel.’

‘A tunnel? But why would they have – do you think
it’s an old mine tunnel?’

‘Could be… I wonder why Mal should be looking at
it though?’

‘Maybe he’s interested in that kind of stuff. You
know, like you. Can’t resist poking about in the past.’ Afraid her tone had
been unduly dismissive, she added, ‘And he probably knows a bit about it, like
you.’

Christopher grabbed another map from the shelves,
opening it out with care and setting it on the table on top of the others.

‘Here we are – somebody mapped out all the old
mine tunnels years ago, before the last working pit closed. I knew we had this
somewhere… I thought so! Look where the tunnel leads to after it gets out of
the Old Pitkirtlyhill estate.’

He traced the line of the tunnel with his finger.
It led almost directly to the coast near Pitkirtly Island and from there –

‘It’s gone off the edge of the map!’ said
Amaryllis.

‘It’s gone out under the Forth,’ said Christopher.
‘That’s interesting.’

‘Maybe Mal’s planning to re-open the mines,’ said
Amaryllis. She had to admit even to herself that she would find it easier to
think of ten sinister explanations for his interest in old mine tunnels than
one innocent one.

‘Hmm,’ said Christopher, obviously unconvinced.

There was a muffled crash from elsewhere in the
building. Amaryllis jumped.

‘I’d better go and see what that was,’ he said
calmly, picking up his keys from the bookshelves and making his way to the
library door.

Amaryllis wasn’t sure why she felt so twitchy, but
she hastily folded up the maps, jammed them back on to the shelves and followed
him. It wasn’t like her to be wary of staying in a room on her own, even if it
did have dark corners where an intruder could be hiding, and even if someone
had once been murdered in the fire exit corridor. She hoped she wasn’t going
soft in her retirement. Time she got back into the way of acting impulsively
and taking risks. Never mind all this history and cartography. She would be
consulting books on cat care next, at this rate, and then where would she be?

Even after Christopher reported that a pile of
post had fallen from the reception desk and that it had probably been
destabilised by the breeze they had created themselves by opening the front
door, she still couldn’t help looking over her shoulder as they left the
building, wondering if there was anyone lurking behind one of the snowed-in
cars in the car park.