 
### Frozen in Crime

### Cecilia Peartree

### Smashwords Edition

### Copyright Cecilia Peartree 2012

### Smashwords Edition, Licence Notes

### This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

###

### FROZEN IN CRIME

### Chapter 1 White World

Christopher stared out across the car park. A layer of ice had formed where the compacted snow had been polished by car treads and people's feet, and since lunchtime he had already witnessed two minor collisions and seen an ambulance arrive for someone who had fallen on the zebra crossing and couldn't get up. The sky was darkening already, and he suspected it would snow again before nightfall.

Worst of all, he had Jock McLean in his office wittering on about something or other.

'... to the Canary Islands, so she can't get anybody else over Christmas at short notice, and I'm going to go up there and help.'

The word 'help' didn't feature very prominently in Jock's vocabulary - particularly when it came to him helping someone else - so Christopher glanced away from the window, frowning. 'Who's this you're planning to help? And do they know about you?'

Jock sighed, flung himself into Christopher's swivel chair and spun it round. His feet didn't touch the ground. 'I knew you hadn't been listening again. Well, I don't see why I should waste my time talking to you! I'm off to the Queen of Scots. Last time this year.'

'The last time this year? But - the Hogmanay Party?'

The Queen of Scots Hogmanay Party was a legend for miles around. People still talked in hushed tones about the good old days and how the army had once been called in to break up a particularly vicious arm-wrestling contest between the women of Pitkirtly and those of Torryburn.

'Hmph!' Jock commented. 'If you've seen one Hogmanay Party, you've seen them all. Anyway, Rosie's got a few friends coming round. They know how to party in those remote places.'

'Ah,' said Christopher, unsure if Jock had the right end of the stick about rural partying customs. Still, at least he now knew Jock was heading for the cattery, run by Dave's niece Rosie, so he wouldn't have to go right back to the beginning of the story. 'What about Darren? Doesn't he work there any more?'

Jock gave a long-suffering sigh, and swung his feet to and fro. He looked small and hunched in the chair. 'I knew you hadn't been listening. Darren's away to the Canary Islands. He won a prize in a competition. In some cat magazine. He's going off with his mother.'

Christopher still didn't know what to make of this. Was Jock's plan to help at the cattery a way of getting his own back at Darren's mother, Tricia Laidlaw, whom he always thought Jock fancied more than a little, or could it be that he had tired of Tricia and decided to make a play for Rosie instead? Or was he just making a bid for martyrdom by having to work over Christmas?

Where was Amaryllis when he needed her? Jock's romantic life, apart from being an area Christopher preferred not to think about and was wary about entering at all, was far too complicated for anyone who hadn't been a secret agent to understand. Apart from that, Christopher had been hoping she would pop in today as she sometimes did on a Friday, and instead he had got stuck with Jock.

Christopher turned back to look out of the window again. Even then he could see Jock's reflection shining in the glass. There was no escape from him.

Something banged sharply outside. He peered out. There was a commotion near the supermarket at the far side of the car park. People running away, screaming, falling over in a heap. After a moment, two figures in black ran round the end of the building and dodged in and out among the cars. It had started to snow again, and it was hard to see any detail, but they seemed to be heading towards the Cultural Centre. He held his breath.

Yes, they were definitely coming in his direction. He suppressed the urge to dive for cover, and kept watching them.

'What's so interesting out there?' Jock growled, getting down from the chair.

'Just stay where you are,' said Christopher, turning back into the room slightly. Almost at once he had the insane urge to look at the car park again. This time the running figures were much closer. Too close for comfort, in fact. He now saw one of them was limping quite badly, perhaps because of a fall on the ice. More haste, less speed, thought Christopher, nodding to himself.

Suddenly one of them came almost right up to the window and stared in. He was wearing a balaclava but Christopher just caught a glimpse of dark, angry eyes in a pale face, before Jock caught him by the arm and pulled him down to the floor.

'Don't look!' muttered Jock in his ear, and then something slammed against the window and they both jumped.

'It won't break - it's triple-glazed,' said Christopher, and then, 'Oh, my God, the front door! They could get in that way. What if Andrew or Mollie - ?'

'Don't stand up,' said Jock.

They crawled across the office to the door and risked opening it. Out in the corridor, Christopher went from a crouching start into a run as he looked for his staff.

Andrew and Mollie were both in the Folk Museum explaining to a small group of mothers and toddlers how hand-loom weaving worked. It was quiet and calm in there, a relic of a by-gone age in many senses. Christopher didn't waste time telling them the Cultural Centre might be under siege. He sprinted off down the hall to the foyer, dived through the glass doors and pulled the big wooden front door shut and locked it. There had been two men standing just outside. He didn't care whether they were bank robbers, tourists or local people who wanted to come in out of the cold for a bit. Nobody else was getting into the building.

'I didn't know you could move so fast,' said Jock McLean at his elbow.

Faintly from somewhere outside they heard the sound of sirens. Reinforcements had arrived.

Christopher breathed deeply. He couldn't remember having breathed at all since he had met the angry eyes of the man in the balaclava.

'Pity Amaryllis isn't here,' said Jock. 'She would have enjoyed this.'

Christopher knew Amaryllis would have rushed out after the men, probably sparking off another round of shooting from which someone would have emerged dead. He was grateful for her absence, and only hoped she hadn't been caught up in anything out there.

His knees went weak and he staggered over to the reception desk and sat down on it heavily. It gave an ominous creak but withstood his onslaught.

'You've gone a bit pale,' said Jock critically.

'You'd have gone a bit pale too if you'd seen him staring in at you,' said Christopher.

'What was going on out there anyway?' said Jock, taking his pipe out of his pocket and absent-mindedly adding a bit more tobacco to the top of the pile.

'You can't smoke that in here,' said Christopher automatically.

'I know that!' said Jock. 'Thanks to the petty bureaucrats who can't distinguish between filthy cigarettes and traditional healthy pipes, I'm doomed to be cast out wherever I am. It's too cold to stand around outside in this weather – where am I meant to go?'

As usual, the smoking issue had triggered Jock's deepest feelings and exacerbated the terrible burden of martyrdom he carried around with him.

'What was going on anyway?' he added.

'It looked like some sort of a robbery. Over by the supermarket. They ran this way – the one that looked in the window at me was wearing black and had big dark eyes.'

'That must have been really scary,' said Jock. When Christopher glared at him, sensing sarcasm, he put on his injured innocent look.

'It was scary,' said Christopher. 'I think he'd know me again. Then there was that banging on the window – do you think it was a shot?'

'Either that or a snowball,' said Jock darkly. 'I've been having trouble all week with the kids across the road.'

Both men jumped as something large battered on the outside door. Christopher wondered if Jock would ever let him hear the end of it if he took cover under the desk.

'Police! Open up!'

'Thank goodness for that,' sighed Christopher. As he crossed the hall again he wondered how the police had found their way to the Cultural Centre so quickly. He hesitated just before opening the door. What if the robbers were outside pretending to be policemen? What if they rushed him when he opened the door? What if he was the only witness and they needed to silence him?

'Come on, open the door!' yelled a voice from outside. 'We haven't got all day here.'

'That's Karen Whitefield,' said Jock. 'You'd better open up. She hasn't got a lot of patience these days. Since she was made a Sergeant you'd think she was the Queen or somebody.'

He sketched a bow as Karen Whitefield came in, accompanied by a very young police officer.

'We're after armed robbers,' she told them. 'We need to search the premises – a witness told us they'd come this way.'

'I saw them outside the window,' said Christopher, shivering in the draught from the open door. She gave him a critical stare.

'You look a bit pale, Mr Wilson. Are you feeling all right?'

'I'm fine. Look, I don't think they can have got into the building. The fire exit only opens from the inside. We check it every day to make sure it's secure, since the incident in the corridor. This is the only other door.'

'Thanks, we'll just have a quick look for ourselves then,' she said. She and the younger officer hurried towards the library.

'What's going on?' said Andrew, who had emerged from the Folk Museum as they passed.

'Armed robbery at the supermarket,' said Christopher. He was already getting bored with the story, and embarrassed when he recalled his part in it. 'We'd better not let anyone leave yet. Where's Mollie?'

'She went back through to the library just now – she had some people reading the papers in there. She thought it was time to check up on them. In case they started cutting bits out.'

When Karen came back to the foyer Christopher confirmed with her that they mustn't let anyone leave. 'We'll give you a shout when it's all clear,' she promised. 'We don't want anybody else out there until we know they're well out of the way.'

'Have you told Mollie?'

'Yes, we saw her in the library. There are only a couple of people in there at the moment and they look like they'll be quite happy to stay. Thanks for your co-operation.'

'Any time, Karen,' said Jock, nodding to her as she left. She gave him a look. 'Sorry, I'm sure,' he called after her. 'Sergeant Whitefield, I mean... It's a sad day when kids you once told off for writing notes in class get to the point of telling you off,' he added for Christopher's benefit.

After a while some of the mothers and toddlers came through to the foyer and made such a fuss about going to collect other children from school that Christopher had to let them out, even at the risk of getting into trouble with Karen Whitefield. Shortly after that, the young police officer returned to ask them why they were still there and to tell them part of the car park was now cordoned off so he hoped they hadn't left their cars in that area. Two minutes after that, Amaryllis arrived, covered in melting snowflakes and seething with fury because Christopher hadn't called to tell her something was going on.

'I was only at the Queen of Scots,' she said. 'It isn't a million miles from here - I could have got here in minutes.'

'What were you doing at the Queen of Scots?' said Christopher suspiciously. 'It's three o'clock in the afternoon.'

'Nothing,' she said.

'What sort of nothing?'

'For God's sake, Christopher, you sound like my mother!'

Christopher didn't know whether to be annoyed at being compared to some old woman, or intrigued: Amaryllis had never mentioned her mother before, and he and Jock had occasionally speculated about whether she had actually been born of woman in the normal way or cultivated in a test-tube at GCHQ as part of an ill-fated government experiment to breed spies.

'I could have caught these people and had them locked up half an hour ago,' she said. 'Now the police will wait until they're over the border and then have to fill in all sorts of random paperwork to be allowed to chase them.'

'The border?'

'Between us and the rest of Fife. What did you think I meant?'

'I don't know,' said Christopher. 'Sometimes you operate on an international scale.'

'Hm,' she muttered, kicking the desk in front of her. 'Not international enough lately.'

He supposed she was missing her overseas trips, which had certainly dwindled almost to vanishing point in recent months. It seemed to date back to her last visit to America and her dealings with the CIA afterwards. Perhaps someone in one of the intelligence services had blocked her from travelling any more. His heart sank. His instinct told him that Amaryllis would get bored very quickly if she were trapped in Pitkirtly, and he knew from experience that a bored Amaryllis was a dangerous Amaryllis.

'So what were you doing at the Queen of Scots?' asked Jock.

She shrugged. 'Waiting for a friend of a friend. But he didn't turn up.'

Christopher thought about the people scattered on the ground after the shooting started, and hoped Amaryllis's friend's friend wasn't one of them by some dreadful coincidence.

Two scruffy old men came along the corridor followed by Mollie, the librarian. 'I've locked up in there,' she said. 'You should be getting home, Christopher - you're looking a bit pale.'

Amaryllis peered at him. 'I don't know, he's no worse than usual,' she said.

'Oh, thanks,' said Christopher.

She laughed. 'Come on, let's get along to the Queen of Scots before you fade away altogether.'

'Not much chance of that,' said Jock McLean. 'He looks pretty solid to me.'

'Don't you have a bus to catch?' said Christopher.

'No, Dave's running me up there.'

'What, on these roads? In the pick-up truck?'

'No, he's hired a snowmobile and I'm cadging a lift on the back,' said Jock. 'Yes, of course he's taking the pick-up truck. He's delivering Rosie's Christmas presents as well.'

'Today?' said Christopher, looking doubtfully out at the snowflakes that were bigger and closer together than ever, alternately whirling around in impromptu ceilidh dances and driving down at an angle finely calculated to hit you in the face as you walked along.

'First thing tomorrow,' said Jock. 'I've got plenty time for a pint.'

'I've got to finish locking up here,' said Christopher. 'You two go on ahead and I'll meet you in the usual place.'

Andrew was just ushering the rest of the mothers and toddlers out. He and Christopher made sure everyone else had gone. The cleaners wouldn't be in tonight because of the holidays, so Christopher sent Andrew home and spent a few moments on his hands and knees sweeping up debris from the weaving project before locking everything up, setting the alarms and leaving. They had been due to close at five today anyway, and he couldn't imagine very many people having such an urgent wish to use the Cultural Centre that they were prepared to trek through this blizzard to reach it and run the risk of being stranded somewhere on the way, so he felt justified in closing at ten to four.

The landlord of the Queen of Scots had added mulled wine to his repertoire since the snow came, and it was rumoured that favoured customers could get him to make hot chocolate, but he hadn't yet installed a new-fangled coffee machine. Christopher didn't see him as a continental-style barista somehow. And wasn't barista the female version anyway? In which case, what would a man who made coffee be called? A barrister, perhaps, although that job title was already taken.

These random musings had taken him, plodding, to the door of the pub. He stamped his feet just outside to rid them of the caked-on snow. If it carried on like this Dave might not be able to get the pick-up truck to Rosie's, which was some way out of Pitkirtly and, Christopher thought, a good bit higher and more remote. But Dave would have a good try - he didn't like to give up easily, particularly when driving.

He heard laughter as he opened the door. Male laughter.

'What are you having, Christopher?'' asked Jock McLean, pausing as he carried a pint glass and a bottle of wine away from the bar.

But Christopher wasn't listening. There was a man sitting in his usual chair at the table in the corner. And Amaryllis, in her own usual chair, was staring at the stranger, wide-eyed and fascinated. He had never seen that expression on her face before. His heart plummeted.

### Chapter 2 A Stranger in Town

Amaryllis hadn't known what to expect from Jimbo's friend Mal. Yes, she knew he had trekked to the North Pole a couple of years before with a group of army colleagues in aid of something-or-other, and that he had been injured in Afghanistan rescuing hostages some time after that, but she was rather hazy about why he had turned up in Pitkirtly so close to Christmas when most people headed home to be with their nearest and dearest - well, nearest, anyway.

She was pleasantly surprised when he at last arrived at the Queen of Scots. He was tall, good-looking in a kind of military way, with short cropped hair, a slightly weather-beaten face and army-style boots which looked just right with jeans, and he reminded her a bit of an ex-boy-friend who had been in the US Marines. Instead of talking about himself and his exploits all the time, which would have been forgiveable under the circumstances, he showed a flattering interest in her and her life. Only a few moments into their conversation, while Jock McLean was getting the drinks in, he said unexpectedly,

'So tell me, what made you choose Pitkirtly, out of all the places you could have ended up?'

'I like it here,' she said, unwilling to go into her reasons, which were in any case now lost in the mists of time as far as she was concerned.

He smiled, his dark eyes sparkling. 'But it's so small!' he said. 'And quiet. I have a sense that you were meant for more interesting things. Epic events.'

She sighed. 'It would be nice to do something that made a difference, I suppose.'

Amaryllis was conscious from time to time that the activities she had engaged in during her career had sometimes been theoretically all that stood between Britain and Armageddon; however she had always been just a small cog in a very diverse and dispersed set of machinery, and the epic nature of her work had been hidden under a blanket of bureaucracy. But maybe there was still time... Maybe this stranger would show her the way.

Almost as the thought crossed her mind, she glanced up and saw Christopher standing in the doorway gazing at her. She couldn't quite fathom the expression on his face. It wasn't quite censorious, or panic-stricken, but it could have been somewhere in between.

'... sure you've made a difference before!' Mal was saying politely. 'And there's still time for you to go on an epic quest - if you want to, that is.'

She brightened a little. An epic quest - now he was talking!

'Here's your drinks,' said Jock McLean. 'Christopher's here!'

'Yes, I noticed,' said Amaryllis. She glanced quickly from Mal's dark lean face to Christopher's pale roundish one with the permanently bewildered expression, and smiled. The men were at opposite ends of the spectrum, both in terms of their physical attractiveness and, as far as she knew, in their aspirations.

Mal poured out wine for both of them. Jock sat down and leaned back in his chair, surveying the newcomer through shrewd eyes. Amaryllis never knew what he was thinking at the best of times. He seemed even more cryptic today. She hoped he wouldn't come out with something weird that would scare Mal away. She had a feeling it would be good to sit at Mal's feet for a while: to listen and learn.

Christopher came over and slid into the spare chair, setting down a glass of what looked like Old Pictish Brew on the table soundlessly, as if he were trying to be unobtrusive. He didn't usually have to make an effort, perhaps because being unobtrusive came naturally to him, she thought. She introduced him and Mal to each other. Christopher seemed a bit standoffish, but again that was more or less how he usually appeared. He probably wouldn't even comment at this point about the epic quest idea. She knew he liked to mull things over, sometimes for weeks or even months, before saying anything. Mal, on the other hand, must be accustomed to making decisions instantly in the heat of battle, otherwise he wouldn't have survived this long.

'I've always fancied space exploration myself,' Mal said, continuing their previous conversation after the small interruption.

Christopher blinked.

'Oh, me too!' said Amaryllis, although in fact she had never really thought about it.

'Think of it - you'd be a pioneer, helping to work out man's final escape route from earth.'

'Escape route?' said Christopher.

'Yes - we'll have to get out of here one day \- before the sun goes nuclear,' said Mal carelessly, just as if he hadn't been predicting the end of the world.

'Hmm,' said Christopher. 'I don't usually look that far ahead.'

'Large horizons,' said Mal. 'That's what you need.'

Amaryllis wasn't sure exactly what he meant by that, but it did sound like a veiled criticism of people who spent all their lives in the cosy, closed community of Pitkirtly, where the main excitement of the past week had been the official town Christmas tree scandal. Of course, that would now be superseded in the headlines of the local newspaper by the supermarket robbery, if that was really what it had been.

'Of course, you could always start in a small way,' said Mal. 'A wee bit closer to home.'

'Exploration closer to home?' said Christopher.

'It doesn't have to be exploration,' said Mal. 'It could be something else - helping someone. Putting right a wrong. That kind of thing.'

Amaryllis was rather disappointed by these suggestions. They didn't sound very epic.

'Amaryllis does that kind of thing all the time,' commented Jock McLean suddenly. 'Sorting out murders. Solving puzzles.'

'Yes, that's all good,' said Mal.

'So what are you planning to do next?' said Amaryllis. 'You won't be settling in Pitkirtly, will you?'

'What are you doing here, anyway?' said Christopher before Mal had time to reply. It wasn't like him to be so rude. Amaryllis saw him watching the other man, and sighed inwardly. It was a classic male thing. Dog in the manger, even. He just didn't like having this intruder on his patch.

'Oh, family stuff,' said Mal, taking a sip of wine. He smiled blandly at Christopher and then replied to Amaryllis. 'Well, as you know I've retired from the army. I think I've gone just about as far as I can with that. I'm planning to start a charity to help war orphans. Not giving them handouts, you know. Helping them to get on with their lives. Realise their potential.'

Surely even Christopher couldn't be suspicious of this, Amaryllis thought. But she noticed he was still staring at Mal with a frown between his brows. Was it critical or just puzzled? He often seemed bemused by life and people and everything, so perhaps it was just his usual expression after all.

'It would mean a lot of travelling, of course,' Mal continued, looking into her eyes. 'Sometimes under difficult conditions. And there'll be harrowing sights involved. But I like to think it will make a difference.'

He gave a small, self-deprecating smile. She smiled back at him. There was something almost mesmerising about his eyes.

Jock McLean coughed horribly, almost as if he was about to be sick. The moment passed.

The door opened, letting cold air and snowflakes into the bar. Glancing round, Amaryllis saw that Chief Inspector Smith had come in with them.

She registered that he had a uniformed officer with him,

'Well,' said Mal, leaving his glass half-full on the table, 'I'd better go. I see it's still snowing out there. I've got some way to go, and I don't want to be stranded.'

Amaryllis opened her mouth to offer him her spare room, but Christopher got in first.

'That makes sense. The roads are bad enough already. You don't know where you might get stuck.'

Mal got to his feet and grabbed a set of keys from the table. 'Good to meet you guys.'

'Yes,' said Amaryllis, conscious that Christopher and Jock were unlikely to make effusive farewell speeches. 'Good luck with your orphans - um - thing. Project, I mean.'

She got up too and walked with him across to the door, where he turned and said, 'I'll give you a call. Maybe we can meet again the next time I'm in town. Without your personal Rottweilers, though.'

'More like poodles,' she said, smiling.

'Don't be cruel now. I'm sure they have your best interests in mind.'

He patted her on the shoulder quickly and left, nodding politely to Chief Inspector Smith and the other officer as he passed them.

'Can I help you, Chief Inspector Smith?' said Amaryllis. She thought she had better not call him 'Charlie' in front of his junior officer, although it was very tempting to use the opportunity to wind him up. Especially when she was invigorated by speaking to Mal. She suddenly felt as if she had been living the life of a hobbit here in Pitkirtly while the whole Lord of the Rings saga was taking place somewhere else.

'I'm here to speak to your friend Mr Wilson.' As usual he made it sounds as if Christopher and she were master criminals and their friendship was somehow sinister, as if they were gang members in a Pitkirtly criminal underworld.

The two policemen made their way across the room to the table where Christopher and Jock were sitting, and Amaryllis followed, curious to know what questions they planned to ask and to find out all she could about their investigation.

'I understand from Sergeant Whitefield you were in your office at the Cultural Centre when you witnessed a crime being committed?' Charlie Smith began.

'Me too!' said Jock McLean, getting in on the act.

'One at a time, please,' said Mr Smith.

'I witnessed something happening,' admitted Christopher with his usual caution. 'It seemed to involve shooting, panic and people running away. Two men ran towards the office window - I assume they were the robbers, if it was a robbery. I heard a banging on the window, and then I thought of closing the outside doors to stop them getting in. But I expect they were long gone by then anyway.'

'We have another witness who says she thinks they shot at the window and then went round to the door to try and get in,' said Mr Smith. 'When you slammed the doors in their faces they dodged away round the building. But she was over at the other side of the car park. Just getting into her Fiat Panda when she heard the shots and saw people running about. Very sensibly, she just got in the car and sat there watching.'

'You'll be able to tell if they did hit the window, won't you?' said Christopher. He sighed. 'I suppose I'll need your report for the insurance.'

'Can you tell me anything about the two men you saw, please?'

'I didn't see very much. I think they were wearing balaclavas, but one of them glared at me. He had big dark staring eyes, I remember.'

'Big dark staring eyes? Are you sure about that?'

Amaryllis thought Charlie Smith was trying not to laugh. It was such a stereotypical description of an armed robber.

'Yes - I remember worrying he would know me again. He looked angry. I thought he might come after me.'

'He won't, not if we catch up with him,' said Mr Smith grimly. 'There were two seriously injured and a handful of others with various minor injuries outside the supermarket.'

Amaryllis gulped as she realised that his official phrase might represent one or even two people she knew. Christopher put her vague thought into words.

'Can you tell us any more than that?'

'We haven't got an official id on either of them yet,' said Chief Inspector Smith. 'But I can tell you two young women and a middle-aged man were involved in the incident... There were people coming out of the supermarket with their food shopping for Christmas when the robbers came past. But most of the minor injuries were caused by people falling on the ice outside when they started panicking.'

He sounded gruff and cross. Not surprisingly, Amaryllis thought. He didn't really need this hassle so close to Christmas, and in such severe weather conditions too.

She ruthlessly cut off this train of thought, seeing it as sign of softness and sentimentality. It would start with her feeling sorry for Charlie Smith, which was harmless enough in itself, but where would it end? Before long she would be searching the internet for cute kitten videos and then tweeting about them. Since Amaryllis currently used Twitter to keep up with what was happening in some quite serious spheres of interest, this idea made her shudder.

'Why do you think they decided to hit the supermarket in the first place, when it was always going to be full of people?' she said, partly to conceal her reaction.

'Oh, it wasn't the supermarket they went for,' said Charlie Smith. 'It was that little jeweller's shop round the corner.'

'The one with the grandfather clock in the corner that's always two hours slow?' said Jock McLean, sounding incredulous.

'Yes, that's the one,' said Mr Smith.

'I thought it was all fake stuff in there,' said Jock. 'It's all so shiny - it can't possibly be real.'

'It's real all right,' said Mr Smith grimly. 'Worth a bit to people who know what they're after - and this lot did.'

'Selective?' said Amaryllis.

Mr Smith nodded. 'Very.'

He obviously wasn't going to say any more at this point, although Amaryllis knew she would be able to get it all out of him later if she really wanted to. The question was, did she really want to know more about this sordid small-town robbery when there was a world of adventure out there?

'If you remember anything else about the two men, Mr Wilson, please let us know,' said Mr Smith. He didn't sound very hopeful. Of course he had encountered Christopher many times before and must have known how annoyingly vague he could be on occasion.

'Aren't you going to interrogate me too?' said Jock McLean.

'Interrogate? Well, I don't know about that,' said Mr Smith. 'The last time I tried asking you anything you told me a lot of lies.'

'Lies? That's a bit harsh,' said Jock. 'When I took so much trouble not to tell lies in my statement.'

'Well, let's just say I think you might have been a slightly unreliable witness.'

'I'll tell you one thing,' said Jock. 'One of the men had quite a bad limp.'

'Oh, yes,' said Christopher. 'I'd forgotten that. I remember thinking he must have fallen over and hurt his leg. It's easily done - Maisie Sue's got a broken wrist at the moment because she slipped on a patch of ice right outside her house. She was a bit cross that she had to postpone the completion of the Pitkirtly Quilt Project until after New Year.'

The junior police officer made a note, but Amaryllis was willing to bet that it didn't have anything to do with Maisie Sue or with quilting. Christopher really did ramble sometimes. She contrasted him unfavourably with Mal in that respect. But of course, there wouldn't be time on the battlefield for all this vague indecisive waffle.

After Mr Smith and the junior officer had left, she decided to leave too. There didn't seem to be much point in staying on now. If Christopher and Jock wanted to stay there gossiping about Maisie Sue like a couple of old women, she would just leave them to it.

She remembered she and Christopher were planning to spend Christmas Day together. It was too much to hope that he would have a complete personality transplant before then.

### 

### Chapter 3 Cleaning up the mess

Detective Chief Inspector Charles Smith, or 'Charlie' to his friends, family and Amaryllis, was in a state bordering on despair as he left the Queen of Scots and walked round to the car with Constable Burnett, his driver for the afternoon.

A serious crime investigation was all he and his officers needed, just when he had signed off half of them for the holidays and overtime was very unlikely to be agreed even if it had been popular with the officers who were left manning the station over Christmas. What was even more annoying was that he had put forward this very argument to the Superintendent only three weeks ago, when decisions about staffing over the holidays were being made at a higher level, and just before Inspector Forrester had booked a last-minute holiday in Cuba.

Normally the crime rate fell in a spell of cold weather, as most of the casual thieves and habitual burglars went into hibernation. He didn't blame them: they could easily freeze to death hanging around outside houses at night waiting for their chance to break in. There were always one or two, of course, who thought they needed the money to pay for 'Christmas'. He could almost see the quotes suspended in the air above them when they spoke.

Charlie Smith thought people's feelings of entitlement to 'Christmas' were way out of control these days. He blamed the media and the parents. They were the usual scapegoats for almost everything that went wrong in society. But to him the search for scapegoats wasn't nearly as important as actually catching the criminals and locking them up. If they knew there was a good chance they'd be locked up, they might think twice about doing anything bad in the first place. That was what kept him going.

He knew that he and his colleagues were only there to clean up the mess. Theirs wasn't a noble quest for truth, or at least not most of the time. It was a constant struggle to stop these people from interfering with the activities of the more or less silent majority, who were usually law-abiding because it was less trouble to abide by society's rules, not because of any moral conviction that they had to be 'good'.

Charlie Smith was a little on the cynical side. He told himself that he hadn't been born cynical, but circumstances had thrust cynicism upon him.

Quite often when something like this happened around Pitkirtly he found Amaryllis Peebles and Christopher Wilson mixed up in it somehow, and this case was no exception. But even with his previous experience of them, he found it hard to believe either of them, even Amaryllis, would take part in an armed robbery, and particularly one which left wounded people scattered around randomly in an icy car park. In this case he was worried rather than irritated by their involvement. Despite his reassuring words to Christopher, he thought that if the robber imagined the man could identify him, then Christopher could well be in danger. On the other hand, it seemed fairly likely that the robbery had been committed not by local mobsters - who had become very thin on the ground anyway in the aftermath of the Petrelli case - but by a gang from outside, perhaps even from Edinburgh or Glasgow. So they could be long gone by now and with no intention of ever coming back.

'But why choose Pitkirtly?' he mused aloud as they got in the car. 'The pickings here won't be that great compared to somewhere in Edinburgh. Or even Dunfermline.'

'Local connection, sir?' said the younger officer, skidding slightly as he pulled away on the seafront road.

'Hmm,' said Charlie Smith. 'I thought we'd seen off most of the local lot. Unless,' he added, having had an unwelcome idea, 'it's a new lot in town. Just starting up. Inexperienced, so more likely to shoot without thinking it through. Or maybe Liam Johnstone's gone feral.'

'Could be nasty,' said the young officer, increasing the windscreen-wiper speed to try and clear the thickening snow.

'It already is nasty, Constable Burnett.'

Charlie tucked his chin down into his scarf and mused on this all the way back to the police station. Someone had built a snowman in the car park. Well, not actually a snowman. It was evidently meant to be a pig. Very funny, I must say, he reflected, blaming the parents yet again.

'Do you like the pig?' said the desk sergeant, grinning, as they went into the building. 'Took me half the morning to get the head looking right.'

'I don't think it's that funny,' said Charlie. 'Any more news in?'

'They would have called you, sir,' said the desk sergeant. 'Even if you didn't have your mobile on, they would have tried the radio.'

'Sergeant Whitefield back?'

'Not yet, sir.'

Charlie sensed the sergeant wanted to say something else.

'What is it?'

'Nothing, sir. Well, there is something.'

'For God's sake, I'm not that frightening!' said Charlie, raising his voice. Constable Burnett took a step back away from him, and the desk sergeant winced. 'Just tell me,' he added in a subdued tone.

'There's more snow forecast, sir. A blizzard. We could get power lines coming down, and we'll definitely have roads blocked by morning. One or two of us were wondering - but I can see this isn't a good time -'

'What are you talking about, Sergeant McDonald?'

'Should we get in some extra food in case we get stuck here over Christmas? A turkey, trimmings, sprouts, Christmas pudding?'

'Only if we can microwave it all, Sergeant. I doubt very much if any of us will have time to stand over a hot cooker on Christmas morning peeling sprouts. Even if the cooker in the kitchen would cope with it all, which I doubt. I've been asking for a new one for about eighteen months. It's a wonder the gas board haven't condemned that one.'

'And another thing.' Charlie Smith was on a roll now. 'We've got our hands full already with this serious incident in town, and the roads are like ice-rinks. We'll have a spate of RTAs tonight and then we'll have to spend most of the next few days looking for damn-fool drivers who think their journeys are essential and then get stuck in drifts all up and down the main road. If we don't have to get a search and rescue helicopter in I'll be very surprised.'

Constable Burnett muttered something about looking on the bright side, but Charlie decided to ignore it. He did feel better, at least temporarily, after his rant, but he was sorry to see that Sergeant McDonald had now gone into a huff and was banging away on the computer keyboard as if trying to batter it into submission. It didn't do to annoy the desk sergeant. But honestly! Turkey and all the trimmings!

After sitting at his desk reviewing the statements collected so far about the robbery, and having taken some related phone calls, he decided he would have to go out again to have a word with the jeweller. It was thoroughly unpleasant having to put on his wet parka and the heavy shoes he had taken off and placed under the radiator in the hope of drying out the insides a bit. He didn't like having to drag Constable Burnett out again either, but he couldn't go on his own.

An hour later, staggering into the station again from the driving snow, weighed down with shopping bags and followed by a bemused Constable Burnett, he wondered if he had over-reacted. The sergeant glanced at him and said, 'You got some sprouts after all, did you - sir?'

'Frozen ones,' said Charlie. ''Nobody's going to be peeling sprouts on my watch. Life's too short.'

Sergeant McDonald abandoned his post and came through to the kitchen to see Charlie putting the food away. It only just fitted into the fridge. But evidently his efforts weren't unappreciated, for the sergeant said, 'Cup of tea, sir?'

'I could murder a mug of scotch,' muttered the chief inspector. 'But I suppose it'll have to be tea.'

'There's some tablet,' said the sergeant. 'Jemima Stevenson tried to bribe me with it.'

'Did she indeed? And isn't she Mrs Douglas now?'

'Right enough, so she is.'

They were leaning on the reception desk, drinking tea and eating tablet when Karen Whitefield came back with a junior officer.

'Hmph! It's all right for some!' she said, stamping her feet on the door-mat. Huge slices of compacted snow flew across the floor.

'Here! I'd just got that cleaned up!' said Sergeant McDonald. 'It's a health and safety hazard when it gets slippy, you know.'

'Our whole job is a health and safety hazard,' murmured Karen, pushing back the hood of her parka.

'Have a cup of tea,' said the sergeant.

'How are you getting on?' said Charlie.

'No sign of them,' said Karen. 'We think they may have been parked in that road behind the Cultural Centre. There were tyre marks from a Land Rover or something. They'll be covered up now.' She accepted a cup of tea. She peered at the accompanying tablet suspiciously. 'Whose is that?'

'Jemima Stevenson - now Mrs Douglas,' said the sergeant. 'Christmas treat for the boys.'

'OK, then.' Karen took a piece. 'Have you spoken to the jeweller again?' she asked Charlie.

'Yes. He says they made him open the safe and they took everything out of it. He's making a list.'

'Nothing else?'

'Apparently not...' Charlie slumped against the desk again. 'Makes me wonder what was in that safe that made it worth taking a gun along.'

'Guess we'll find out when we get the list,' said Karen. 'Is there any news on the casualties?'

'Two on their way to Edinburgh - if the bridge is open. Others being treated locally.'

'What about interviewing witnesses? We've got a list.' She gestured to the constable beside her. He held out his notebook.

Charlie sighed heavily. 'There'll be hundreds of them. We're never going to manage to get round them all this side of Christmas.'

'We'll never get help from anywhere else either,' said Karen helplessly. 'Not with the weather...'

'We're all doomed,' said the desk sergeant, shaking his head.

'We've taken all the preliminary statements, though,' said the young constable, possibly trying to cheer everyone up. Charlie stared at him critically. He was very young - the kind of officer who made people go on about policemen getting younger - and had a cherubic pink face and blue eyes. It seemed a shame he had to be the only one who remained positive in this situation.

Charlie stood up straight again, squaring his shoulders. It was up to him to take charge and start motivating his tired subordinates, although he knew when they had volunteered to work over Christmas they hadn't expected anything like this. That was the trouble with crime. It always happened at the most inconvenient moments. Of course, in many cases criminals did this deliberately and took advantage of the inconvenience of the moments, such as the chaos caused by Christmas shoppers.

If only they were more considerate...

He coughed.

'We'll start the interviews tomorrow. We'll get as many as we can to come here. Karen, you make a rota just now and start phoning them. Don't stay on late though. We haven't got enough in the overtime budget.' He knew she would be glad of some time at her desk before setting off homewards in the cold. 'Keith, you can fetch them in if they can't make it under their own steam,' he said to Constable Burnett. 'Liaise with Karen. I'll go through the jeweller's list when we have it. Bruce, maybe you can give me a hand tomorrow with that if we don't get too many other customers.'

'There's no knowing about that,' said Sergeant McDonald darkly. 'Christmas seems to bring out the worst in some people.'

'Only one more shopping day to go,' said Charlie. 'And can somebody find out if Liam Johnstone's in town?'

### Chapter 4 One shopping day

In some ways Christopher was glad Christmas Eve fell on a Saturday this year. It gave him the chance to do his shopping in the time-honoured male way, rushing around town a couple of hours before everything closed, spending too much money and buying extra, unsuitable presents for people. He was also glad Caroline and the kids weren't going to attempt the journey over from Edinburgh before Christmas, although he had promised to go over to see them between Christmas and New Year if the weather improved. It was more fun for the kids spending the festive season at home, where they could chill out and play computer games all day if they wanted, and eat what they liked, without having to be nice to their boring old uncle. Caroline had made friends with another single parent down the road and the two families were going to share Christmas dinner. He hadn't heard much about this friend and didn't even know whether it was a man or a woman. Either would be fine, if it meant Caroline wasn't completely dependent on him for adult company. He and his sister hadn't always got on well together, although in the past six months or so they had arrived at some sort of an adult relationship with each other.

By mid-afternoon, when it was starting to get dark, he had almost finished his shopping - he and Amaryllis were to spend Christmas Day with Jemima and Dave, so he didn't need to buy much in the way of festive food. He was more or less happy with the presents he had bought: as he got older, he was more easily satisfied on that score, considering his job done if he had actually got something to give each of the people who were likely to expect a gift from him.

Jan in the wool shop had advised him to get beads and some of the little twiddly things she sold for making jewellery. Apparently Jemima had recently taken up creating necklaces for unsuspecting friends. He wondered if Amaryllis was due to be the lucky recipient of one. He was tempted by a children's knitting kit as a joke present for Amaryllis, who had been trying to learn to knit for some time though with very little success, but he decided he didn't want to risk annoying her on Christmas Day. She had been moody for the past few weeks, but he wasn't sure why. He wondered if it was restlessness. It was quite a while since she had been away on one of her mysterious missions, and he had suspected her of losing her nerve slightly, but of course he would never have dared to suggest this even as a theoretical possibility.

He trekked through the snow to the Queen of Scots to see if she was there. The blizzard of the day before had left the whole town under a layer of fresh snow so thick that it could hardly be called a blanket any more - it was either a duvet or a bundle of loft insulation, he decided as he trudged along on the road, which was slightly less impassable than the pavement, but freezing over fast in the rapidly plummeting temperatures around dusk. He hoped Dave and Jock had got up to the cattery all right this morning. The main roads at least should have been cleared and gritted. Maybe he should give Jemima a ring and see if Dave was back yet. He took out his mobile phone but the battery was dead. Even giving it a good shake didn't revive it, and then he dropped it in a clump of snow and had to dry it off with some new thermal socks he had been planning to give Dave because the bottle of whisky he had bought weeks ago suddenly didn't seem exciting enough.

The Queen of Scots was unnaturally quiet. The landlord stood morosely behind the bar, polishing glasses.

'Marie Celeste, or what?' he said.

'Has Amaryllis been in?'

'Haven't seen her. So she probably hasn't - she wouldn't exactly be able to hide in the milling throng.'

It was unusual for the landlord to be so talkative. He must be desperate. Just to keep him company, Christopher ordered a pint of Old Pictish Brew and sat at the bar instead of going to the usual table.

'Do you know what the main roads are like?' he asked, making conversation.

'Bad,' said the landlord. 'The Forth Road Bridge is closed. The trains have stopped running. You aren't going anywhere for Christmas.'

'No, I'm not, but how did you know?'

'Neither is anybody else. Going anywhere.'

Suddenly Christopher wondered whether the landlord had anywhere to go, or anyone to spend the festive season with. Of course he would be occupied in the pub a lot of the time, but did he have any existence outside it?

He had opened his mouth with the intention of asking some personal question or other that he knew he would at some later stage regret asking, when the phone rang at the end of the bar. The landlord answered it. He listened for a moment and then said to Christopher, 'It's for you.'

'For me?'

'You're Christopher Wilson, aren't you?'

'Yes but -'

'Here you go.'

Christopher, still mildly surprised, put down his pint glass, walked along to the end of the bar and accepted the receiver from the landlord.

'You're there. Good,' said Amaryllis.

'How did you know?'

'Just a wild guess. It was either the Queen of Scots or Jan's wool shop. That's where I saw you last.'

'Have you been following me?'

'No. I just happened to be in the High Street getting last-minute socks for Dave, and I saw you.'

'I got last-minute socks for Dave too!' Then Christopher remembered what had happened to the socks, and fell silent.

'I'm phoning about Dave, actually,' said Amaryllis. 'And why don't you have your mobile on? I thought we talked about that before and you agreed it was pointless having a mobile if you didn't charge it up and keep it switched on.'

'Sorry. What's happened? Is Dave all right?'

'Promise not to panic?'

'For goodness' sake, just tell me what's wrong. Have they had an accident?'

'They got up to the cattery all right. Jock's there now, with Rosie.'

'And?'

'Jemima phoned me and I'm at her house now. Dave hasn't got back yet.'

'OK,' said Christopher, trying not to sound as if he was panicking, but actually feeling as if he had been hit in the stomach by a football. 'What time did he leave Rosie's?'

'They went up about ten o'clock this morning. They got there at twelve and then the weather started to close in again so Dave turned round and started to come straight back.'

'Idiot! He should have stayed up there!'

'But he didn't want to disappoint Jemima,' said Amaryllis. 'It's their first Christmas together.'

'No, it isn't,' said Christopher, knowing he was only quibbling to avoid having to think this through. 'They were together last year - and maybe the year before too.'

'The first one since they were married, though. It means a lot to Jemima.'

'Yes, I know... So he's been on the road for - what, four hours?'

'About that.'

There was a pause. Christopher couldn't think of anything he could say or do that would help in any way. Why had she even bothered ringing him? He was such a waste of space.

'Have you called the police?' he asked at last.

'They said it could easily take him that long to get down from the moors, with the roads the way they are, even if nothing went wrong. They said they can't go and scour the area for him because they don't have the man-power. If he was out overnight then -'

Amaryllis stopped in mid-sentence, her voice trembling slightly. He couldn't remember her ever sounding so upset before, not even when the village hall burned down.

'If he was out overnight, it would be a different story. They'd start a search in the morning.'

'In the morning?' said Christopher incredulously.

'They said he shouldn't have gone out in the first place: there were lots of severe weather warnings in place.'

'Severe weather warnings? Since when did Dave pay any attention to those? He thinks he's indestructible, that's his problem!'

There was a pause at the other end of the line, and Christopher heard someone else speaking faintly in the background, then Amaryllis spoke again.

'Jemima says don't be cross with Dave. He was only trying to help everybody.'

'I'd better come up to Jemima's,' said Christopher. 'Then we can try and work something out. Does Dave have a mobile with him?'

'He's left it on the kitchen table. Ring any bells?'

Christopher finished the call rather abruptly \- he didn't like to be reminded of his failure to get to grips with mobile technology - and decided reluctantly that he would have to abandon the pint of Old Pictish Brew that he had barely started.

'Trouble?' said the landlord casually.

'Looks as if Dave may have got himself stranded,' said Christopher, trying to match the other man's untroubled demeanour.

'That's bad,' said the landlord. 'I wouldn't fancy being out there in this.'

'No, neither would I,' said Christopher. 'But it might come to that.'

'Well, let me know if you need transport,' said the landlord unexpectedly. 'I've got my Range Rover round the back there with chains on the tyres and snow-shoes in the back - but I'm not going anywhere in it for a day or two.'

'Thanks - we might take you up on that.'

Christopher found his eyes were a bit wet as he stepped out into the cold again - of course, it was only the sudden change in temperature that did that. Not that he was at all touched by the landlord's offer.

### Chapter 5 Where's Rudolph when you need him?

Jemima was too quiet

In many situations she would talk too much, rambling away about her latest craft project, or reminiscing about the time her mother saw off a couple of hooligans armed only with a kitchen whisk, but now she sat at the kitchen table with her hands folded neatly in front of her and her eyes looking into the middle distance but only seeing what was inside her head.

Amaryllis had persuaded her to put on an extra cardigan and to drink two cups of tea and nibble at a custard cream biscuit, but she knew there was only one way that things would get any better, and that was for Dave to walk through the door, announcing that he had popped in to see an old friend on the way back from Rosie's and lost track of the time.

'Can you think of anywhere he might have gone?' she asked one more time, knowing the answer would be the same.

'No.' Jemima shook her head, still staring blankly at the kitchen wall. 'The only person he knows out that way is Rosie.'

Amaryllis almost itched to get out there and start searching, but the rational part of her brain told her she couldn't do anything on her own. On the other hand, looking after an old woman in distress was not her forte. She was a woman of action - someone who had actually been considering only the day before whether to give up on her comfortable, soft existence and try to do something that would make a huge difference to humanity.

Now all she wanted to do was to help this one individual. From the sublime to the ridiculous, her more adventurous self sneered. Don't call Jemima ridiculous! snapped back the more sympathetic, caring side of her nature that had come to the forefront since she had lived in Pitkirtly. The adventurous self rolled its eyes. Caring! Give me a break!

It was just as well that Christopher arrived before the two sides of her personality went into a permanent huff with each other.

Christopher took one look at Jemima and said quietly, 'So you haven't heard anything yet?'

'No,' said Amaryllis.

She was absolutely not the kind of woman who expected a man to solve all her problems, from the small, such as how to catch a spider and put it outside where it could run free without causing her to have a heart attack, to the enormous - how to remove herself from the CIA's most wanted list. But she couldn't deny that she was pleased to have Christopher here to share the problem with.

'Hello Jemima,' he said, sitting down at the kitchen table opposite her. 'Got any tablet? I need to soak up the Old Pictish Brew in a hurry if we're going to go and dig Dave out of a snowdrift.'

For some reason this brought Jemima back to reality with a bump. 'That's a silly question, Christopher. What sort of Scot would I be if I didn't have tablet in the house with New Year just round the corner? Just you sit there and I'll get you a cup of tea to go with it. You'll need something hot inside you too if you're away out in all this awful weather.'

Amaryllis still wasn't entirely sure that Jemima was quite herself yet, but this bustling Jemima who was ferreting around in the cupboard for tablet and a new packet of custard creams was a million times better than the one who had sat still as a statue and stared at the wall. What she'd be like if Dave never came back just didn't bear thinking about.

Amaryllis closed her mind to that possibility. But she drew Christopher aside and said to him in an undertone, 'How are we going to find Dave in this weather without any transport?'

'The landlord of the Queen of Scots,' he said succinctly.

'What about him? Has he got a team of highly trained huskies?'

'Should he have?'

'It's the kind of thing he would have,' she countered. 'Or someone in Pitkirtly. Isn't there anyone who does dog racing?'

'Rosie used to have huskies before she gave it up and started the cattery,' said Jemima, who hadn't looked as if she was listening.

'Never mind the huskies,' said Christopher. He glared at Amaryllis. 'They're just a red herring... The landlord of the Queen of Scots has a Range Rover he's offered to lend us.'

Unexpectedly, Jemima started to laugh. 'That old wreck of a thing! You'll never even get it along the sea front, never mind up the hill out of Pitkirtly.'

'How do you know?' said Amaryllis.

'Dave always said it was a wreck,' said Jemima. 'He couldn't understand why the landlord didn't get a pick-up truck like his. It would be much better for getting stuff from the Cash 'n' Carry.'

'The landlord probably doesn't hate Fiat Pandas as much as Dave does,' muttered Amaryllis. She had been going to say that he didn't have a death-wish either, but that didn't seem entirely tactful under the circumstances.

'Why can't Jock and Rosie go and have a look for Dave from their end?' said Christopher.

'Rosie's van was blocked in by a snowdrift the last time I spoke to her,' said Jemima. 'So they don't have any transport.'

The door-bell rang.

Jemima and Amaryllis raced each other to the front door.

'Dashing through the snow, on a one-horse open sleigh,' came a small chorus of out-of-tune voices from the front doorstep. Amaryllis slammed the door in the carol-singers' faces, but Jemima wrenched it open again and gave them a handful of sweets from a jar she kept in the hall.

'My God,' Amaryllis murmured to Christopher. 'I thought that was the police coming to tell us they'd found Dave.'

'It could have been good news,' said Christopher.

'It's never good news when they just come round,' she said. 'They always call first if it is.'

'A one-horse open sleigh would just be handy at the moment,' said Jemima to herself as she came back into the kitchen.

'Right then,' said Amaryllis, putting on her second jumper followed by a parka, a scarf, hat and gloves in quick succession. 'We'd better not leave it any longer if we're going to track him down tonight.'

'Hadn't we?' said Christopher, not quite as keen as she was to wrestle with the landlord's four-wheel drive monster. 'Isn't there another severe weather warning in force?'

'Severe weather warnings are for wimps,' said Amaryllis. 'Has anyone got a map of the moors up behind Pitkirtly?'

Jemima shook her head.

'Yes, I think so,' said Christopher. He had grabbed a piece of tablet and put it in his mouth while she was putting on her layers, so his speech was slightly indistinct. 'We'd better go up to the house first and have a look for it, I suppose.'

'Jemima,' said Amaryllis. 'Just keep making tea. When we get Dave home he'll need it. And the biscuits, so don't eat them all yourself.'

As she said all this, she wondered who they could ask to keep an eye on Jemima. Even if she was a tough old thing, this would be a great ordeal for her.

Then she heard Christopher singing 'White Christmas' to himself under his breath. Of course! Why hadn't she thought of that right away? Maisie Sue would keep Jemima's spirits up if anyone could.

On their way round to Christopher's house they detoured to Maisie Sue's. She was hosting a quilting bee, but when she heard about Dave she said at once, 'Oh my, that's terrible.' She told all her fellow-quilters to leave, and promised to go straight up to Jemima's and make her some pancakes. She was putting the maple syrup jar in a plastic bag as they left.

'Don't tell Charlie Smith where we've gone,' said Amaryllis as an afterthought. 'At least not until we're well on our way - give it a couple of hours. He'll only try and stop us.'

At Christopher's, he found the map quickly in his book-case, and they spread it out on the kitchen table. There seemed to be a lot of nothing in the moors up behind Pitkirtly. Quite a few woods, some farm tracks, a scattering of small farms and isolated cottages. Old mine workings.

'We'd better steer clear of those,' said Christopher with a shudder. She knew he was remembering the time he had come too close for comfort to an old mineshaft.

Amaryllis traced the minor road down from the cattery with her finger. The map showed quite a lot of detail, and she could see some farm tracks leading off the road. Each of them had a little cluster of houses marked along its route. There was a 'High Woods Farm', and 'High Woods Farm Cottages'. She put her finger on a house marked as 'Old Pitkirtlyhill House'.

'What's this?'

Christopher shrugged. 'No idea. Name of a farm? House that's a bit bigger than the rest?'

'Can we get on the internet in less than fifteen minutes on your computer? We'd better look up some of these places, see if they're still inhabited or if they're just old ruins.'

But as they were booting up the computer, the lights flickered a couple of times, and then the computer stopped in the middle of start-up and they had to switch it off and start again, and it proved impossible to get online.

'Snow damage,' said Christopher, nodding sagely. 'I bet the phone lines are down too.'

'What about the Folk Museum? The library?'

'Do we want to waste time looking things up in a library at this point?' he said doubtfully. 'The longer we hang around, the more likely it is Charlie Smith's going to catch up with us.'

'You're right - we need to get out there,' said Amaryllis. For all her reservations about Christopher and his abilities when it came to this kind of situation, she was glad to have someone there with a second opinion when she needed one. She could usually rely on him to be sensible - as long as he didn't go off into that other world he sometimes seemed to retreat to.

'We'd better give the landlord a ring to let him know we're coming for his car,' she added. 'What did happen to your mobile this time?'

'Dropped it in a snowdrift,' he muttered.

'That's very helpful.' She took two mobile phones out of her parka pocket, gave him one and used the other to call the landlord of the Queen of Scots. He sounded resigned to them borrowing his vehicle, and even offered a bottle of brandy as his contribution to the search and rescue effort.

'That's all very well, but where are we going to find a St Bernard at this time of night?' she said, and rang off.

'A St Bernard?' said Christopher.

'It was a joke,' said Amaryllis. 'Hang on to that phone, by the way. It's my old work one so it's got some important numbers in it.'

'Should you have kept it after you retired?' said Christopher.

'Theoretically not,' she said. 'Bring the map. Have you got a spare parka? Spare gloves? Hat?'

She knew she wasn't Christopher's mother, but it was difficult not to worry about him.

'I made a couple of sandwiches and a flask of soup while you were on the phone,' he said unexpectedly. 'It's in this rucksack.'

She was pleasantly surprised. She hadn't expected him to show any initiative.

### Chapter 6 Nightmare drive

Christopher hadn't imagined anything worse than being driven back from North Queensferry by Dave in the pick-up truck, but he soon realised that being in a previously untried Range Rover driven through the snow by Amaryllis was ten times more frightening. She had only recently got her licence back, and she barely adjusted her speed to the road conditions, which were dire on the way up to the main road from Pitkirtly, just passable on the short section of the main road before the cattery turn-off, and almost impossible after that.

As she skidded round the corner into the side road that led up the hill, ending up facing a stone wall, he said, as mildly as he could manage, 'Careful!'

'I'm being careful,' she said. 'It's safer to drive at a normal speed in those conditions. It's slowing down that causes accidents.'

'Hmm,' he said. Not being a driver himself, he didn't want to cast doubt on her expertise, but he wasn't sure how much longer he would be able to sit still in the front seat and refrain from kicking and screaming with terror.

'What if Dave's truck's in a snowdrift up here somewhere? We don't want to risk running into it.'

'But it's steep - I'll have to take a run at it.'

She turned the Range Rover round, away from the wall, and accelerated hard. The wheels sounded as if they were spinning. Christopher resigned himself to walking the rest of the way. There were a few streetlights at the road junction, although they flickered like candle flames in a draught. It was only a matter of time before they stopped functioning altogether. And up the hill where they were heading, it was dark, the only dim illumination coming from the heaps of snow at the sides of the road. He shivered at the idea of getting out and walking any distance. The light of Amaryllis's torch, though powerful, wouldn't help much and there was no knowing how long the batteries would last. But if Dave were stuck in a drift, or if the pick-up truck had broken down or anything, he might be sitting waiting for help - or he might have got out of the truck and be wandering, lost, somewhere in this unnaturally white still landscape. He could wander on to the site of the old mine workings and fall down a hole, or fall and break a bone and lie there becoming more hypothermic by the moment. They just had to find him.

'He's probably got back to Pitkirtly another way by now,' said Amaryllis, knowing, as often happened, what was in his mind.

'Jemima hasn't rung.'

'You've got my phone switched on, haven't you?'

'Yes, of course I have.'

'There's no of course about it. You and mobile technology just don't get on with each other.'

She reversed grimly, halfway across the main road and took another run at the hill. This time it worked. Up to a point. They got stuck twenty metres up the lane and she had to repeat the whole process.

'Funny, isn't it?' she said. 'This is a nice country lane when there isn't any snow. Why can't it just all go away and let things get back to normal?'

'You've got to deal with things as they are, not how you'd like them to be,' said Christopher.

'But why?' she said, her face set into lines he hadn't seen before as she pressed her foot harder on the accelerator.

'Maybe if you didn't try quite so hard -,' he suggested tentatively.

She didn't speak, but he noticed she did ease off the pedal a little, and they inched upwards, gaining ground as painfully as if the snow were an enemy and they were fighting a war. The wheels alternated between spinning and gripping. Christopher felt as if his stomach might be doing the same.

They passed a road end, but there was a snowdrift in the way and they didn't notice it until it was too late to turn in.

'Onwards and upwards,' said Amaryllis through gritted teeth. 'Can you have a look at the map? There's a torch in my bag.'

'What am I looking for?'

'Side roads. Farm tracks. Anywhere an idiot like Dave might have turned off this road.'

'He wouldn't have done that, would he?'

'He might have done, by accident. Or if the truck was about to break down. He might have thought he'd be better off stopping and calling somebody.'

'Only he couldn't call anybody,' Christopher reminded her. 'Not with his mobile on the kitchen table.'

'Let that be a lesson to you,' muttered Amaryllis. 'Not that you need another one.'

Christopher wrestled with the map, unfolding it clumsily with his gloved hands. He didn't dare take off his gloves: it wasn't even warm inside the Range Rover, and he was afraid of frostbite. He found Amaryllis's torch and clicked it on.

'Don't use it for too long,' said Amaryllis. 'We'll need it when we get out and walk.'

So that was really on the cards, was it? Well, at least he knew now. She couldn't have been entirely confident of making the whole journey in the Range Rover after all.

Just as he had found the road on the map, one of the mobile phones rang on the dashboard.

'That'll be Jemima to tell us Dave's home,' said Amaryllis, grinning.

It wasn't Jemima. It was Chief Inspector Smith.

'What the hell do you think you're doing?' he said to Christopher. 'Nobody should be out in these weather conditions. Why didn't you call us right away?'

'I think you'll find one of your officers said you wouldn't do anything until the morning,' said Christopher calmly. 'Someone had to do something.'

'You're a pair of bloody idiots!'

'That's no way to speak to a member of the public,' Amaryllis called across from the driving seat.

'Now I'm going to have to send people out after you - when we've got a serious crime investigation going on. And you're one of the witnesses too. Didn't anybody tell you not to leave town?'

'Not that I can remember,' said Christopher innocently.

'Tell me where you are, and I'll see what I can do.'

Christopher looked at the map again. 'Somewhere just off the - sorry, I can't read the name of the road in this light. I think I'm going to need glasses soon. Just for reading, though. I'm fine with distance.'

He could almost hear Charlie Smith's temperature rising at the other end of the line. 'Let me speak to her,' said the police officer.

'She's driving. We've just turned off the main road. I think it's the A985. It's the turning just after you join the main road from Pitkirtly. We're heading up a hill, past some woods. I think Old Pitkirtlyhill House might be somewhere nearby, but we're not sure what that is.'

'Hmm, interesting,' said Charlie Smith, unexpectedly calming down a bit. 'Maybe I'll come out there myself after you. Don't go any further - pull over to the side of the road or something. Wait. Play cards. Have a sandwich.'

He rang off.

Christopher relayed his instructions to Amaryllis, who shook her head. 'No way. If we pull over we'll definitely get stuck.'

She revved the engine again, hard. The Range Rover stalled.

She managed to get it going again but they had lost momentum, and rolled back some way.

'Try, try, try again,' she muttered, and the car suddenly jumped forward, shot up another section of the hill and crashed straight into something at the side of the road. There was a horrible grinding, screeching noise, and then they lurched over to one side. Christopher was pushed against the passenger door, and then showered with broken glass as the windscreen caved in on top of them.

### Chapter 7 Connections

Charlie Smith had been so incensed with Christopher and Amaryllis - mainly with Amaryllis, because he knew she must have been the ring-leader - that he could see his junior officers watching him anxiously for signs of a stroke or heart attack. At least one of them was likely to be listing the signs and symptoms of each of these in his or her head in case they had to call an ambulance.

But as he finished the phone call he was smiling. 'Where's that list of stuff from the safe in the jeweller's? I need to check something out.'

'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.

'No dogs yet,' muttered Christopher. 'What do we do? Are you going to search the outbuildings?'

'I think we'll just walk up to the front door and announce ourselves,' said Amaryllis. 'Then we'll get some help to search for Dave.'

Christopher still looked doubtful. 'What if they throw us out? Or call the police?'

'Fine,' said Amaryllis. 'We'll go somewhere else.'

She marched on up the steps at the front of the house. She heard Christopher breathing hard behind her.

She faced the front door - actually a double door. There was a big old-fashioned bell to ring, as well as an ornate door-knocker.

'A Christmas Carol,' said Christopher in an undertone.

'What?'

'Marley's Ghost.'

She was half-turned to listen to his explanation when the door opened suddenly.

'Why, hello, Amaryllis,' said Mal. 'This is a surprise. I didn't expect to see you again so soon.'

### Chapter 9 In search of the golden peacock

It was a case of one step forward, two steps back. Or one car's length forward and so on. Charlie Smith was getting a sore neck from holding his head at an unusual angle to peer through the windscreen and at least to get a rough idea of where they were going. He made it up the hill from Pitkirtly to the main road more by luck than judgement, with Keith Burnett not saying very much in the front passenger seat except to ask in a near-whisper as they approached the roundabout, 'Would you like me to drive now, sir?'

'No, it's fine,' said Charlie, narrowing his eyes in the hope it would help him to see more clearly through the blizzard. 'Now then - do we want to go left or right here - what do you think?'

'I thought you knew the way,' said Keith accusingly. 'Sir.'

'Didn't you bring a map?'

'There's usually one in the glove compartment, sir.'

'Well, get it out then, as quick as you like, and tell me whether to go right or left.'

Charlie circled the roundabout while Keith struggled with the map.

'It depends,' said the constable annoyingly, after a few minutes during which the chief inspector realised he no longer knew which direction they had come from in the first place.

'Depends on what?'

'Do we want to be heading towards Rosyth or Kincardine?'

'Neither of those, you idiot. We're looking for a minor road that leads off this one, uphill, possibly ending up at Blairhall or somewhere. For God's sake, it isn't rocket science!'

The radio crackled. Charlie sighed, pulled off the roundabout in a random direction, and brought the Land Rover to a slightly skewed standstill on what had been the grass verge before it was covered by a foot of snow.

'Chief Inspector Smith?' said a familiar and unwelcome voice.

'Yes, that's me,' said Charlie.

'What the hell are you doing, Charlie? Sergeant McDonald tells me you've gone out into the wilds. On a wild-goose chase, too. What were you thinking?'

'Sir - I'm looking for a missing person. And following up a lead on the jewel robbery.'

'Both at the same time?'

'Well - yes, I suppose so, sir.'

'Madness!' said Superintendent Williams. Charlie could almost see his pursed mouth and steely glare. He would be wearing full uniform, of course, even if he happened to be speaking from home or from the pub, and he might be sitting upright at a desk or table, his fingers drumming on it. 'Complete and utter madness! Who is this missing person?'

'It's Mr Douglas, sir. David Douglas. He went off in his pick-up truck -'

'Oh, wait a minute, that David Douglas.' There was a pause. 'Married to Jemima Stevenson - a friend of Amaryllis Peebles. Ah. I see.'

There was no knowing what the superintendent saw. Perhaps a lot more than was there to be seen. Charlie waited.

'Well, carry on, then,' added Superintendent Williams after a moment, in a calmer tone. 'Can't leave him out in this weather... Not at his age. What's this other case? The jewel robbery? What's that got to do with this - expedition?'

'A golden peacock,' said Charlie. 'Query Fabergé. Once belonged to the Murrays of Pitkirtlyhill.'

'Very good,' said the superintendent. 'Carry on. Look after yourselves.'

He disconnected. Charlie looked at Keith Burnett and they both laughed.

'Quest for the golden peacock,' said Keith Burnett. 'It sounds like a movie title.'

The boy was a bit of a dreamer, no doubt about that. Whirling snowflakes - golden peacock.

'Funny, isn't it?' said Charlie, starting the engine again. 'He thinks it's a wild-goose chase until he hears who we're looking for. I suppose he's tangled with either Jemima or Amaryllis once too often.'

'And,' he added, swinging the Land Rover away from the verge and attempting a U-turn which ended up with them on the wrong side of the road at an unusual angle, 'no, I don't think Tangling with Amaryllis would be a good name for a lap-dancing act... And don't ever tell her I said that either.'

By some miracle Keith got the map the right way up and they negotiated the roundabout in a more sensible way this time. Then they found the road they thought they were looking for on the right, although it was steeper than Charlie remembered from the time he had to drive over to Blairhall to return a lost pet snake when he had been a young constable - which now seemed as if it was a lifetime away.

The Land Rover made it up the first part of the hill, and then they saw the turning that Keith said was the way to Old Pitkirtlyhill House on the left. There were pine woods just after that, and Charlie was about to turn off when he noticed something further up the hill. He accelerated sharply just after braking, which made for a bumpy ride. The road was partially blocked by a Range Rover that seemed to have tried to turn over and was now propped up on something else that lay under a snowdrift. It was hard to turn over a Range Rover, Charlie reflected as he came to a slightly slippery stop as near to it as he could. He realised as they approached that the driver had run into the back of the submerged obstacle and tried to take evasive action, which must have caused the catastrophe.

'Wow, that's a bit of a mess,' said Keith Burnett, critically surveying the front windscreen of the Range Rover. Charlie opened the driver's door and looked inside. Well, at least there was nobody in there and he wouldn't have to call an ambulance - yet. There was a lot of snow in the front seats. He shone his torch in. No baggage or anything. But there was something... he reached across and picked up a card from the floor on the passenger side and looked at it. An identification card of the type that acted as an electronic key, admitting members of staff to hidden areas of a building where members of the public weren't allowed to go. It had the pretentious logo of West Fife Council, and the name under that was Christopher Wilson.

'Keith, can you call in the registration for this vehicle and see who it belongs to?' said Charlie. 'I don't think our Mr Wilson is a driver. And Amaryllis doesn't own a car at the moment as far as I know.'

'You don't think they've stolen it, do you sir?' said Keith Burnett, eyes wide.

Charlie sighed. 'No, I think we can safely say they haven't done that. There's almost always some perfectly legal - if not innocent - explanation for the things they get up to.. Wait a minute, let's have a look over here before you call in. There might be another car underneath.'

He had walked forward to investigate what was under the snowdrift, and as he wiped a layer of snow off it with his gloved hand he realised it was also a vehicle. A pick-up truck.

'Will I call this one in too?' said Keith Burnett eagerly.

'No, don't bother,' said Charlie. 'This vehicle has been the subject of more bizarre complaints than all the others in Pitkirtly put together - but there's never enough evidence to bring a case. I know it well. Everything from chasing a cyclist along the sea-front to looming over a Fiat Panda with intent to cause a panic attack. Take a closer look, Keith. You're bound to come across it sooner or later. This is David Douglas's pick-up truck. It's probably too much to hope that it won't be worth salvaging.'

He walked round to the front and added, 'I suppose we'd better make sure he isn't still inside.'

### Chapter 10 Frozen in time

It was as if the house was frozen in time, Christopher thought as they went through the green baize door to the kitchen and, presumably, the servants' quarters. A cold, musty air about the interior and scary-looking family portraits lining the corridor contributed to this impression.

He still wasn't sure how pleased Amaryllis's friend Mal had been to see them. His eyes had flickered over them in a resigned sort of way, and he had been slow to offer hospitality. Of course, he had probably been in the middle of planning some exotic quest when they arrived, and he wouldn't be pleased to have this process interrupted by people on such a prosaic errand.

Christopher wondered uneasily if they should have called Jemima to tell her where they were before going inside. Or even contacted the police to confess they had cut their way through the fence? But he wasn't even sure why he felt vaguely suspicious. Except that Mal's presence here was incongruous, to say the least. Was he an old family retainer? Was his father a family retainer? Did he know the owner from the army or some local organisation? Was he a burglar who had broken in while the family were away for Christmas?

Amaryllis was chatting away to Mal, not apparently sharing any of Christopher's qualms.

'So I don't suppose you've got another orphan of the storm here?' she was saying. 'Only his wife's getting quite anxious about him, and we should let her know if -'

'There's nobody here except me - and now you,' said Mal, cutting her off in mid-sentence. He sounded brusquer and more bad-tempered than he had been back at the Queen of Scots. But Amaryllis persisted.

'We wondered about searching the grounds for Dave as well, in case he's lying somewhere unable to get up. But of course, that was when we thought there might be a whole party of people here to help. I suppose we'll have to leave it to the police and hope they come along soon.'

'The police know you're here?' said Mal.

'Not exactly,' said Amaryllis. 'But they know we're out looking for Dave.'

Christopher wondered if there was some reason why Mal didn't want the police up here. He had got out of the Queen of Scots quite quickly that afternoon too, when Mr Smith had come in with the constable. He began to try and picture Mal with a balaclava over his head. Would his eyes look bigger and darker in those circumstances? He had noticed Mal had a limp too. Some heroic war injury, Christopher caught himself thinking with a trace of disdain which embarrassed him even although he knew the others couldn't read his thoughts. Well, Mal couldn't anyway. He had always been unsure about whether Amaryllis could.

They went through another door and arrived in a massive kitchen with a small range-type cooker at one end, and lots of old pots and pans hanging from the ceiling and from hooks. Apart from the cooker, which was an Aga or Rayburn or some other trendy brand, the whole place seemed to have been left as it was since Victorian times. A massive old kitchen table was almost completely covered with scruffy-looking maps or plans.

'I'll put the kettle on,' said Mal, sounding a bit more hospitable. 'You must be frozen solid. At least you can get warmed up before you go out in the cold again.'

So he was planning to get rid of them as soon as he reasonably could? Christopher's unease increased. It seemed as if the man must have something to hide: most likely the fact that he had no right to be here. Of course, neither did the two of them, but they did have an innocent explanation, even if they had cut a hole in the fence which definitely counted as trespass or criminal damage or something.

'Nice neat hole in the fence, by the way,' said Mal as he crossed to the sink to fill the kettle. 'I always admire people who damage things neatly.'

'How do you know about that?' said Christopher, staring at him.

He laughed. 'Ask your friend here.'

Amaryllis frowned. 'Alarms? Cameras? Both?'

'I happened to be watching the screens as you came along. I was curious to see what you'd do... I'd have done the same. Biscuit?'

He had reached into a cupboard and brought out an ancient-looking tin decorated with some sort of royal wedding picture. Did the fact that he could go straight to the biscuit tin mean he was less likely to be a burglar? Christopher wasn't sure. Mal could have checked out the cupboards before they arrived. In the intervals between watching the security screens and doing whatever else he was doing.

There were ordinary-looking mugs with stripes, and a non-matching plate for the biscuits. The coffee was instant. Unless this really was the servants' quarters, the owner of this big house didn't live in the lap of luxury. But then, just keeping up this kind of place must take a lot of resources. There probably wasn't any money left over for interior design, coffee machines or fine china.

As Mal measured out the coffee, poured on the hot water and got milk out of the fridge, Christopher noticed Amaryllis studying the maps on the table. Apparently absent-mindedly, she got out her phone and took some pictures of them before Mal turned round again. Smartphones must be a godsend to spies, Christopher mused. They didn't even make much of a sound when they took photographs.

'I'll get these out of the way,' said Mal a moment later, folding them together quickly and moving them to one end of the table to make room for the mugs and the biscuit tin.

Christopher sipped at his coffee, although it was too hot to drink. He had an almost irresistible urge to jump up and get out of the place as soon as he could, but without arousing suspicion on Mal's part, of course. Amaryllis, on the other hand, seemed completely relaxed. She made idle conversation about the house.

'So, are all the rooms habitable?'

'What do you think? It isn't a ruin. People have fought very hard over the centuries to keep it standing.'

'How many rooms altogether?'

'Oh, I don't know. I've lost count. There are fifteen bedrooms, for a start. Then there are reception rooms downstairs - some of them are parlours, some are small sitting-rooms. A dining-room big enough to hold a banquet, of course. A small ball-room...'

'Is it open to the public at all?' said Amaryllis casually.

Christopher decided her questions weren't idle at all, but were definitely leading somewhere. Was she trying to establish whether Mal belonged here or not? He certainly seemed to know his way around, unless he was making up all his answers, which was always a possibility.

'Not really,' said Mal. 'The owner likes his privacy. But the gardens are famous for their snowdrops, so they open a few times in early spring. Mid-January, February, that kind of time.'

Christopher desperately wanted to ask Mal what he was doing in the house, but he was slightly wary of this former soldier with his grand plans and his inspiring past. He could probably kill with one blow, and there was no telling which side Amaryllis might be on in a fight. Well, he hoped she would rally round to protect him, of course, but he was conscious of a lingering doubt about that in some remote corner of his mind.

'Another biscuit?' said Mal, waving the tin in front of Christopher with a smile that was either warm and friendly or devious and sinister, depending on how you looked at it.

'And what about the rest of the grounds?' Amaryllis enquired. 'Is there a swimming-pool? Or a croquet lawn? A deer park?'

Mal laughed and held up his hand to stop her. 'Enough! Yes, there's a small deer park. Stables, round the back. No swimming-pool - did you seriously expect one in this climate?'

There was a pause in which Christopher drank the rest of his coffee very quickly, and hoped Amaryllis would do the same so that they could leave.

'Any more questions?' said Mal. 'More coffee? Or do you want to get on your way?'

'Is there a reasonable mobile signal up here?' said Amaryllis. 'We'll need to phone someone for help with the car.'

'It should be ok,' said Mal.

He showed no sign of wanting to keep them there, and he seemed to be trying not to give the impression of hustling them out the door, but Christopher sensed that he did want rid of them. Of course, if he was a burglar - and that was still possible if he had hurriedly memorized the number of bedrooms and the list of outdoor amenities - he must be waiting to leave too, with his swag. There should be some way of challenging him about that without either committing a major social faux pas or running into danger, but Christopher couldn't immediately think of it.

'We'd better get on, then,' said Amaryllis. 'If you do see Dave anywhere about - he's big and elderly, but don't tell him I said that - please could you let the police know? In Pitkirtly?'

'I certainly could,' said Mal. 'But I doubt if he'd be able to get on to the estate. Not without wire cutters.'

He smiled as if to indicate that there were no hard feelings, and showed them out.

After they had gone down the front steps, taking their time because there was a layer of ice everywhere, Christopher breathed out at last.

'What was he doing there?'

'He seemed very much at home,' said Amaryllis in a neutral tone.

'You don't sound too sure of that.'

'I'm reserving judgement,' she said.

'Do you want to break in round at the back? See if you can find out any more?'

'Don't be silly. He isn't up to anything. If we'd asked, we would probably have found he's the gamekeeper's son and he's house-sitting for the laird or something. What else could it be, with his history?'

'What, his history of swanning around Afghanistan with a rifle, you mean?' said Christopher.

'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 that 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 valuable 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.

A faint feeling of melancholy washed over him. They should have had a drink with their meal. That would have made them all feel better. But he hadn't had the nerve to flout the regulations to that extent, quite apart from the risks if one of them had to go out urgently on a case.

'Aren't there usually lots of domestic quarrels and scenes over Christmas?' said Keith. He had a knack of asking questions that were difficult to answer.

'Most people can stand the first half of the day,' said Sergeant McDonald placidly. 'It's when they wake up from their after-dinner nap that it gets tricky. They've had all their presents, and there's nothing more left to look forward to.'

'We'd better not let ourselves nod off, then,' said Charlie.

Once they had cleared away the dinner plates, he set Keith to work making paper hats and tearing up bits of scrap paper to write cracker jokes on. He planned to have another look at the jewel robbery case, bringing all the notes and lists and immediate witness statements together on his desk to see if he could discern some sort of a pattern that would lead him into the robbers' minds.

He hoped he could concentrate on it. He had a horrible feeling that he had created a monster when he authorised Keith Burnett to pursue the cracker theme. It would be his own fault if the young constable suddenly appeared at his elbow asking why elephants paint the soles of their feet yellow.

### Chapter 13 Restless in Pitkirtly

Amaryllis was very fond of Jemima and Dave, but she really didn't want to spend Christmas with them. She had a feeling of impending doom even about the few hours on Christmas Day when she and Christopher were due to go round to Jemima's house for tea and cake. She spent the morning wishing she could go down with some acute but not life-threatening illness that would mean hibernating for a few days and then resuming what passed for her social life just before the Queen of Scots Hogmanay party. If she and Christopher were even welcome at the Queen of Scots again after wrecking the landlord's Range Rover.

She expressed this last point to Christopher as they made their way over to Jemima's.

'It's all right,' he said. 'I've let him know the worst and promised to get it back to him in a reasonable state before the middle of the week. If the weather doesn't get any worse, that is. Otherwise I've offered to lend him Dave's truck if he needs transport.'

'Very organised,' said Amaryllis. She hoped he didn't sense any criticism in her tone. It would have been more fun to wind the landlord up a bit, have a shouting match with him and then produce the Range Rover at the eleventh hour. She sighed.

'Still feeling restless?' he said.

'Restless isn't the right word,' she said, frowning. 'Dissatisfied, maybe.'

'Dissatisfaction's all right,' he said. 'That's what makes people do something to improve things.'

'I suppose so.'

'You could always use this time to work out what to do about it,' he said. 'Do some brainstorming, mind-mapping, maybe a SWOT analysis...'

She glanced sideways at him. 'Have you been on one of these management training courses again?'

'Not for a while,' he said defensively. 'OK, well, two weeks ago.'

'Where would we be if the hobbits had waited to do a SWOT analysis before they set off on their journey?' she said.

'That's fiction, Amaryllis! Fantasy fiction, at that. For goodness' sake don't try and emulate it.'

'I know it's fiction, you idiot! I was joking!'

They stood glaring at each other, and Amaryllis suddenly realised they had reached Jemima's doorstep. The door opened and Jemima looked at them quizzically.

'Merry Christmas,' she said.

Of course it was nice and homely being at Jemima and Dave's for a few hours, sitting by a coal fire, eating great big chunks of home-made cake and drinking several too many cups of tea. Jemima offered sherry instead at one point, but they all turned it down in favour of tea, having sampled Jemima's sherry before. The wind was getting up again and the lights kept flickering. Dave wanted to watch something on television, but the picture was terrible, and when Jemima tried the phone it wasn't working at all.

'I hear you want to go on an epic quest,' said Jemima to Amaryllis.

'Where on earth did you get that idea?' said Amaryllis. 'I might go somewhere exciting for a holiday. Thailand - Indonesia - Korea.'

'Haven't you been to all these places before?' said Christopher.

'That was work,' said Amaryllis. 'It was quite different.'

Yes, she thought, different in the sense that she had infiltrated a drugs ring that was helping to fund terrorism in Indonesia, she had followed a CIA agent into North Korea to see if he would lead her to the head of the secret government propaganda organisation, and she had waited in Thailand for the signal that would send her to rendezvous with a double agent in Beijing.

'Would you not find it boring just having a holiday though?' said Dave.

'That's a good question,' said Amaryllis. 'Maybe I should be looking at some sort of extreme sport.'

She saw Christopher's expression of panic, and smiled to herself. But winding him up wasn't really enough to amuse her for the whole day. She decided to browse online for extreme sporting opportunities when she got home. But somehow, sitting in the apartment on her own with the lights flickering and the internet only available in short bursts, she lost interest.

She opened the doors to the balcony and stood there for a while, feeling the freezing wind in her face and admiring the array of icicles that had formed on the overhang of the roof. One of them in particular caught her attention: it must have been at least 75 centimetres long with a diameter of around 10 centimetres. It would make a good weapon in an emergency, she mused. But hadn't that idea been used in a famous murder mystery novel? That was the problem: everything she thought of had either been done before or wasn't even necessary. In some ways she wished she had been young during the war, when she could have joined SOE and parachuted into occupied France, stolen the Enigma machine and got back in time to help invent the atomic bomb. Well, possibly not the last part. But she could have done something that would have made an obvious difference at the time. The things she had done during her career might have made a difference, but it was usually quite a small difference that took a while to have any effect.

Was she really trying to think of a way of achieving some sort of immortality? Or was she just missing the adrenalin rush of being in danger and finding a way of surviving? In the latter case, extreme sports would be the answer, but unless she practised a lot and became good enough to represent the nation in some international event, then the first part of it wouldn't work at all. Even if she did win a gold medal at the Olympics, she knew it would soon be forgotten, and wouldn't be all that important in the scheme of things.

She considered Mal's big charity project. How did he feel about being a civilian after serving in combat and trekking through the Arctic under a military umbrella, so to speak? Would the charity thing be enough to satisfy him?

At last, becoming tired of thinking on a large scale, her mind wandered back to the jewel robbery in Pitkirtly. It seemed like a simple enough crime. Get some forensic evidence, fingerprints, DNA, whatever, and it would more or less solve itself. The police should manage it all right without her help. She wondered vaguely why Charlie Smith had wanted to speak to Lord Murray of Pitkirtlyhill. He hadn't told them anything, of course, but maybe there was some connection with the robbery, since all the officers currently on duty were probably involved in the case. Would they be at work on Christmas Day? She pictured them all sitting round a small electric heater in the police canteen after a sketchy cold lunch of turkey sandwiches washed down by cranberry juice in lieu of wine. For the first time in her life she felt sorry for the police. They got all the hard work to do without the adrenalin or the trips to far-flung places she and others like her had experienced.

Amaryllis suddenly realised that she was still standing on the balcony and her feet were extremely cold. Knowing the weather was too bad even for her to go for one of her moonlight treks, she had taken off her Goretex walking shoes and big woolly socks when she got home. Bad enough having to wear them to avoid frostbite when she went out; there was no need to let her feet get all sticky in them in the flat, where she liked to prowl around in bare feet. She closed the doors, regretfully, and switched on a small electric heater.

Almost as if it had just been waiting for her to need electricity, the power supply chose that moment to give out altogether. It looked as though the latest wave of gales had finally brought the lines down. She remembered reading stories the previous winter about people waiting for weeks to get their power re-connected. Now she would find out what it was like. This really wasn't the kind of epic she wanted to be involved in. The quest for power, although it might make a good title for a fantasy epic novel or even a whole trilogy, wasn't going to be much fun to live through.

She wrapped her cold feet in a towel, fumbling in the dark to find one, put on the fleecy pyjamas she had been hoarding since she decided to come and live on the east coast of Scotland, added a jumper over them and went to bed.

About half an hour later, still in the dark, she got out of bed again and found her way to the wardrobe. She needed an extra layer.

She shone her torch on to the clothes rail, looking for the old towelling robe she usually kept for visitors, but something else caught her eye, and she pulled it out and studied it thoughtfully. It was the pink bullet-proof vest someone had once given her. She turned it over so that she could see the back, although she already knew very well what the lettering said: Danger, PI at work.

Maybe the police would need her help yet again before long. Maybe she should try and find real paying clients, and turn this game into a business. It wouldn't be world-shaking, but it would be something useful and enjoyable for her to do, in the absence of a wizard coming by with some bizarre story about a ring.

She put on the vest over everything else, found some long socks in a drawer and got back into bed. She couldn't make a mind map by torchlight, but at least she could set her brain to work on it so that she would be ready to write it all down in the morning.

Adding the vest made all the difference.

### Chapter 14 Extreme knitting

Christopher was worried enough to call round at Amaryllis's apartment at eight on Boxing Day. It would have been still pitch dark at that time, except that the snow made seem it a bit lighter. He wasn't sure of the scientific explanation for this but the extra light helped if you were getting up and going out while the rest of the world slept.

He trudged through the snow. At least the gales had died down again. It had been annoying having to go to bed early because there was nothing to do once the electricity went off, and he was pleased to find the power supply suddenly working again today. It must have been some temporary blip, not the lines coming down as he had imagined. He remembered reading about people having to wait days or even weeks to have their power restored. What did they do without the ability to boil a kettle and make a cup of tea?

The blinds were up at Amaryllis's sitting-room windows, which led to the balcony, and when he rang the bell downstairs she answered almost at once, sounding bright and breezy. Whatever had been bothering her on Christmas Day, she must have got over it very fast. He even felt a tiny trace of resentment about having got up so early to rush round and see her.

'Good that we've got the power back,' he said as she took his coat. Then he glanced round the room, normally a white minimalist haven with little furniture and no clutter, and his eyes widened.

There were big sheets of paper all over the floor, the glass-topped table, the big white sofa. They were covered in diagrams and lists drawn with marker pens in various colours. On the sofa some multi-coloured knitting formed a second layer of chaos, flung down as if randomly.

He didn't intend to pry into whatever she had been writing, but he caught sight of his own name halfway down one of the sheets. He glanced up to the top and saw the word 'Weaknesses' written there in big letters. He wasn't sure what to make of this.

'It's a SWOT analysis,' she said.

'So I'm a weakness, am I'?'

'Not exactly. I've put you down as a strength too.' She held up another piece of paper. 'It's because sometimes when I bounce ideas off you, you come up with a really helpful point, like Dr Watson - and sometimes you use delaying tactics to try and stop me following up a clue.'

'No, I don't!'

'You do, if you think it might be dangerous.'

'Well, maybe. But that could be a strength as well,' he argued. In spite of the bickering and the fact that he hadn't needed to get up early after all, he was relieved to see her like this. She still seemed restless, but she had turned the energy from this restlessness into something that could be useful.

'Is the knitting part of it?' he said mildly.

She laughed. 'Believe it or not, I like to do a bit of knitting when I'm thinking about things. It helps me to focus.'

He stared at the tangle of wools. 'But you don't actually focus on the knitting.'

'Don't make fun of it - you might end up with a woolly hat next Christmas. Or a pair of socks. I haven't worked out which it is yet.'

'But isn't there a pattern?'

She laughed, as if patterns were for wimps. 'The shape develops organically from the wool. Like a sculpture emerging from a piece of stone.'

'So what's all this about anyway?'

She let the 'Strengths' list flop back to the ground, and picked up another piece of paper from the table. The diagrams on it crawled around all over the place, and the text straggled round them like ivy round an old window-frame.

'It's a mind-map.'

Christopher examined the drawing. He wasn't sure what it said about the state of Amaryllis's mind. It would have provided fuel for all sorts of psychological research projects.

'I was thinking about your epic quest,' he said, at a loss for a positive comment about the mind-map.

'Don't worry, I've scaled back my ambitions a bit, you'll be pleased to hear.'

'Yes, but that doesn't mean they're any less important,' said Christopher. 'I was thinking of this thing about the butterfly –'

'The butterfly that flaps its wings and brings the world to an end?'

'Yes, sort of. The fact that even if you think of what you're doing to help people here as small and insignificant, it could affect the whole course of human history.'

'Yes, whatever. So what do you think? Will it be a viable business?'

'I don't know.' Christopher was slightly baffled, not unusually. 'What sort of business is it?'

'My PI business, of course. So much crime has happened around here, I think the police need some competition to spur them into solving it.'

'I thought you usually provided that already. Does this have something to do with the bullet-proof vest Tricia Laidlaw gave you?'

'Yes – I found it at the back of the wardrobe. When the electricity went off,' she said, as if it explained everything. 'I'm going to start with the robbery.'

'But don't you need a client to be able to call it a business?' he said. 'Otherwise it's just you nosing around as you always do.'

She gave him a look.

'That's why you're on the Weaknesses list, Christopher.' She turned over the Opportunities sheet which, he noticed, didn't have his name on it anywhere, and started to write on the back. 'Now that you're here, I might as well ask you about what the robbery looked like from where you were standing.'

'At my office window,' he said. 'Are you just going to ask people all the things the police have already asked them?'

'Probably, but I'll listen to the answers a bit more thoroughly. So, tell me, Mr Wilson, what exactly did you see?'

He sighed, sat down at the glass-topped table since there wasn't a more comfortable space available anywhere, and said, 'Will I get a cup of coffee if I tell you?'

She agreed to his terms, and he ran through his recollection of what he had seen from his office window on Christmas Eve. Faithful to her methodology, she listened closely. At the end she sat back and said, 'What about Jock McLean? I wonder if he saw the same as you.'

'He didn't see as much,' said Christopher. 'He was hiding on the floor.'

'Hmm. I'd better give him a call at the cattery if I can get through. By the time he gets back he'll have forgotten all about it.'

'Can I have a coffee now?'

'Just one more thing – you were looking out the window before you heard anything, weren't you? Can you remember what you saw then?'

'Some idiots falling over on the ice. An ambulance coming to pick somebody up. That's about all. Why?'

'I was just thinking if the two robbers ran towards the Cultural Centre as part of their getaway, they might have arrived from that direction in the first place. Do you know if there's cctv anywhere around there?'

He shook his head. 'We looked into it but there were some human rights and privacy issues so we decided against it.'

'What about strange cars parked in that road behind the Cultural Centre? Did you notice anything?'

He shrugged, feeling guilty now: he realised he didn't really pay much attention to cars in general, but obviously that wasn't a very helpful attitude. In fact he didn't consider himself all that observant at all. Amaryllis could do with having an assistant who was good at all the detail. Not that he thought of himself as her assistant, of course. In the light of his appearance on the 'Weaknesses' list he was perhaps more of an anti-assistant, only nobody had bothered to invent a word for that.

'A bit like anti-matter,' he muttered.

'I think it's time for coffee,' she said. He watched her as she put the kettle on and searched through the cupboards for food. Her dark red hair was standing on end today, which was a good sign. Now that he thought about it, her hair had been decidedly limp for the past little while, although he had imagined it was because she had been wearing a woolly hat in the extremely cold conditions. Or maybe all her joie de vivre had been swept away by the freezing north-easterly wind that some said came straight from the Arctic Circle.

'Do you think the town's cut off now?' she said, bringing the coffee. 'Will we run out of fresh food and have to beg tins off people who've stored them since the end of the war?'

'Jemima probably has some of those,' said Christopher. 'We'd better keep on the right side of her.'

She glanced down at the piece of paper again. 'Does anyone know yet whether these robbers actually fired at your office window? Did Charlie Smith say anything?'

He shivered. Being shot at wasn't a comfortable thought, even although he had been standing behind triple-glazing at the time.

'If they did fire, I wonder why,' said Amaryllis thoughtfully. 'Are you sure they saw you?'

'One of them was staring straight at me,' said Christopher. 'Maybe he fired because he thought I'd recognised him, and wanted to make sure I didn't tell anybody.'

'Better watch your back if that's what it was,' said Amaryllis. He sort of wished she hadn't said that. He shivered again.

'But surely they'll have gone somewhere else by now?' he said.

'Yes, I expect so.'

The expression on her face didn't give him much confidence. What if they came after him? They could find out easily enough who he was, and he couldn't keep away from the Cultural Centre indefinitely. It would be child's play to track him down there. But would they want to return to the scene of their crime?

'I wouldn't worry about it,' said Amaryllis. 'There's no reason for them to come back - if they got all they wanted the first time.'

'But how do we know if they did?'

'We don't. But we can try and find out what they did get. Charlie Smith will have a list. We'll get it all out of him. Custard cream?'

'You've been seeing too much of Jemima,' said Christopher, accepting a biscuit. 'It'll be tablet next,' he added darkly, 'and then where will we be?'

### Chapter 15 Intruding on Christmas

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.'

### Chapter 16 Bullet Holes and Tunnels

'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.

### Chapter 17 Fencing with Icicles

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.

### Chapter 18 Sleuthing

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.

### Chapter 19 Arrest

'She's up to something,' said Charlie to Keith Burnett as soon as they left Amaryllis at the war memorial gardens.

'She was just standing there,' said Keith. 'Sir.'

'She's never just standing,' said Charlie. 'Why did she suddenly vanish down that lane and then turn up again at the top of the street?'

'Maybe she saw us watching her,' suggested Keith.

'She's playing games with us again,' said Charlie gloomily. 'Just when I thought she'd grown out of it.'

'But what for, sir?' said Keith.

They were still debating this when they arrived back at the police station. Oh the joys, thought Charlie, taking his coat off again, and sitting down to unfasten his boots, which he needed to put under the radiator if he had any chance of being able to wear them again the following day. Maybe there would be a thaw in the night and the snow would disappear as if by magic, and he could get home and sleep in a proper bed. Inspector Forrester would be back from Cuba in a few days' time, too. Then he would move on from this whole bleak mid-winter thing and get it into perspective. At the moment everything that happened seemed unreal and out of this world, with different rules applying and the focus on survival.

He was disappointed to find the next morning when he looked out the window after very little sleep, that the snow was still there. It hadn't got any worse, and in a few random places it even looked a little less white. But on closer examination one of the random places was where the police Land Rover seemed to have developed an oil leak, and another was where Sergeant McDonald liked to empty out the tea-leaves from the pot.

Perhaps if Sergeant McDonald kept doing that he could melt enough snow to clear the roads, but it might take a while.

They had no excuse for keeping the police station closed to visitors today, since despite the weather they knew it would be a normal working day in Pitkirtly. Theoretically the previous day should have been normal too, but the people of the town weren't daft, and like the local wildlife they knew instinctively when it was time to hibernate. There had been very little new crime because of this, apart from a domestic disturbance which had turned out to centre on someone having to eat sprouts for the fourth time in three days. Sergeant McDonald had cautioned the teenager who had thrown his plate out of the window and smashed someone's garden gnome, and then everyone had gone back to sleep.

They still had to deal with the ongoing armed robbery investigation, of course. Fortunately the news from the hospital was good, so it hadn't yet turned into a murder case. Charlie Smith was very pleased by that. It increased his chances of seeing his little house in Dunfermline again before New Year, although that outcome wasn't by any means certain yet.

He was about to send Karen Whitefield out with Keith for a while interviewing witnesses - his boots were still steaming gently under the radiator, and he was reluctant to put them on yet - when Sergeant McDonald came into his office.

'We've had a complaint,' he said, smug in the knowledge that he wouldn't be the one who had to go out in the snow and check it out, since he was needed on the front desk now that the place was open again.

'Oh, yes?' said Charlie.

'You know that man who's been hanging around? The one with the dog. Mrs Petrelli's been in about him.'

'And?' said Charlie. He wished the sergeant didn't need so much prompting. He made such a meal of everything.

'He was at the restaurant again last night. Hassling people for money. When he got some he came in for a poke of chips. She said the smell was putting the other customers off.'

'For heaven's sake,' said Charlie. 'Does she think we've got nothing better to do than -?'

'Yes, whatever, sir. She wants us to warn him off, move him on somewhere else. Isn't there some sort of shelter in Rosyth?'

'We can't send him along there in this weather. He'd freeze to death before he got past Pitkirtly Island. Even if he made it that far. There's a big drift down on that lower causeway.'

'If the buses started running...,'said the sergeant doubtfully.

'Don't hold your breath, sergeant,' said Charlie. He heaved a sigh. It looked as if Karen and Keith weren't going to be the only ones trekking through the snow. 'Where was he last seen?'

'Up by the war memorial gardens, sir.'

'Aha!' said Charlie. 'The plot thickens.'

'Sir?'

'Amaryllis Peebles was hanging about there last night too. I knew she was up to something.'

'Do you want me to send Keith out?'

'No, I want him and Karen to carry on interviewing the witnesses in the armed robbery case. We've only got about halfway down the list. I'll go and look for this dosser of yours.'

'Should you be going on your own, sir?'

'There isn't anybody else. I'll be all right. If he turns nasty I'll radio in. But they're usually harmless enough, whatever Mrs Petrelli thinks.'

There was no sign of anyone sleeping rough in the shelter behind the war memorial; the lingering smell of chips couldn't necessarily be attributed to the homeless man. Charlie stopped and considered where to look next. He thought some of the householders in the old fishermen's cottages behind the High Street tended to leave their garden huts unlocked, despite warnings from the police about the dangers of this. Maybe this man had found shelter somewhere there. But there must be around fifteen huts in all, and he didn't fancy spending time searching them all.

He would have walked down to the new houses behind the railway line, only he had a feeling they were all now either occupied or just about to be occupied as soon as the economy stuttered back into life. Where else was there? He hoped to goodness Amaryllis hadn't felt sorry for the man and taken him home with her. It was just the kind of weird thing she would do - and indeed had done in the past. Should he go and have a word with her, or would she just talk him round in circles as she usually did?

While he hesitated, stamping his feet to keep the circulation going, he glimpsed a man with a dog crossing the road further down the High Street, near the wool shop.

He strode off downhill, feeling his feet slip sideways occasionally but always managing to stay upright.

By the time he reached the wool shop he had lost sight of the man again. Jemima and Dave Douglas were coming out of the shop, Jemima clutching a bag in her woolly-gloved hand. Dave had his arm round Jemima's waist, which must have helped to keep them both on their feet.

'Morning, Mr Smith,' said Dave with a beam. He didn't appear to have suffered any ill-effects from his adventure on Christmas Eve.

'Thanks for going out to look for David, Mr Smith,' said Jemima. 'I wasn't looking forward to Christmas on my own.'

'No problem, Mrs Douglas. What have you got there?' asked Charlie politely. Even if those two were friends of Amaryllis's, he could still treat them like normal members of the public, as long as Dave wasn't getting into silly scrapes, that was.

'Oh, just some beads,' said Jemima. 'I'm making a beaded case for David's phone, to remind him to take it with him the next time.'

'I sincerely hope there won't be a next time,' said Charlie. 'Good idea, though. How do you learn to do something like that?'

'I just look for instructions online,' said Jemima. 'There are a few Pinterest boards where people pin them, and then I'm in a Facebook group that specialises in craft techniques. We've all tried quilling and tatting and we're going to have a go at stamping next week. Of course,' she added modestly, 'I've tried that out myself in my scrapbook, but I'm hoping to get a few tips about how to make it work better with special inks.'

Charlie's brain started to glaze over, and even Dave had the beginnings of a hunted look.

'I mustn't keep you standing around in the cold,' he said.

'It's all right, we're going to the café now for a cup of tea,' she said. 'We wouldn't usually go in the café but we've been stuck in the house and it's nice to get out for a while.'

'I know how you feel,' said Charlie.

'Would you like to join us, Mr Smith?' said Dave. 'You look as if you could do with something yourself.'

'No, I don't think so, thanks,' Charlie started to say, and then he glanced down towards the café, which was further on down the street, and saw a man and a dog going in the door. 'Or maybe I will.'

It was dim and warm inside the café, a perfect spot to hibernate or to sit out a major blizzard, and Charlie caught himself half-hoping for more snow so that he could justify remaining there and not having to return to the police station, which he had started to think of as his prison.

He stood there staring round. The man and the dog had sat down at a small table, where the man was studying a menu, but to judge by the expression on the face of the waitress as she approached them, they wouldn't be there for very long. Charlie doubted very much if the café owners welcomed dogs, even the quiet kind, worn down by life, who lay peacefully under the table and waited for the next bad thing to happen.

'Are you going to sit down, Mr Smith?' said Jemima. 'They do a special offer in the mornings - a pot of tea and a scone for one pound fifty. You get jam as well.'

Charlie sat down, but immediately jumped to his feet again when he heard a man's voice raised above the general murmur of conversations about jam and debates about the merits of different kinds of tea.

'He's as clean as anyone here - cleaner, if anything. He isn't doing any harm. Can't you just leave him be?'

Then, predictably, the waitress said something about health regulations and it being more than her job was worth...Charlie wasn't one for riding a coach and horses through regulations, but even he felt indignant on behalf of the dog. The man scraped his chair back noisily, put on the large parka he had hung on the back of his chair, said 'Come on, Buzz, we're not wanted here,' and pushed the café door so hard that the open and closed sign rattled on its hook as he left.

Charlie went after them, pursued by faint cries from Jemima about butter and margarine.

The man set off down the High Street at a fair speed, considering the conditions, then he seemed to become aware of Charlie's footsteps behind him and walked even faster. Now he was dragging the reluctant dog along, its paws sliding on the ice.

'Wait a minute!' called Charlie. 'I just want a word with you -'

His strides were longer than the other man's and he didn't have a reluctant dog to slow him down either. He caught up with them down near the supermarket, which was busy for a week-day, having not long re-opened. He clamped his hand on the man's shoulder.

'Police,' he said. 'I need to speak to you - nothing to worry about.'

The man glanced at him, a scornful expression spreading over his face. 'Oh, yes?'

Charlie had been planning to take the man and dog up to the police station to have a chat, but now he rapidly decided he wouldn't get any sensible answers if he did so. Better to talk on neutral territory.

'Come on, we'll go round to the Queen of Scots. They don't mind dogs, as far as I know.'

He looked at his watch. 'They're usually just about open at this time. Come on, we can get a coffee in there if you don't want a drink.'

They trudged on round the corner and towards the Queen of Scots. Charlie hoped nobody he knew would be in there at this time of day. But with Jock McLean away, Christopher and Amaryllis were a bit less likely to be there.

'Nice parka,' he commented idly. 'I suppose that keeps the cold out a bit.'

'Has she complained? She gave it to me - I didn't take it.'

'Um - nobody's complained. Except Mrs Petrelli at the restaurant. She doesn't like you hanging around.'

He was sorry this topic had cropped up before they even got to the pub.

'It wasn't her,' muttered the man. He huddled into the parka a bit more, pulling the collar up almost to his ears. He could do with some warmer gloves, thought Charlie, and definitely a hat too. Not that he was about to donate his, which in any case belonged to the West Fife police force.

They ordered coffee at the Queen of Scots, and the landlord didn't say anything about the dog, which stretched out on the floor by the radiator as if it had been doing it for years.

'So what do you want?' said the man.

'This complaint from Mrs Petrelli makes things a bit awkward - it means we can't just ignore you sleeping rough around town. Have you really got nowhere you could go?'

'Somebody said there's a place in Rosyth,' said the man. 'Only that's a bit out of reach at the moment.'

'Do you know anybody here in Pitkirtly?'

The man looked suddenly evasive. 'Not exactly.'

'What made you come here then?'

'Dunno. It seemed like a nice place. I was on my way somewhere else when the snowstorm started. Somewhere nearby.'

'Where was that?'

The man slurped his coffee. 'Thanks for the coffee. I'd better be going now.'

On a hunch, Charlie said suddenly, 'Did you see the armed robbery that took place on Christmas Eve? Round the corner, at the jeweller's shop near the supermarket?'

'You can't pin that on me,' said the man. Oddly, he seemed over-confident, as if he knew something Charlie and the police didn't know.

'Would you like to help us with our enquiries?' Charlie had a brainwave. 'Until the roads re-open, that is?'

'What are you talking about?'

'I'm talking three meals a day and a roof over your head. You won't get a better offer.'

'What about the dog? I'm not going anywhere without him.'

'OK, and the dog.'

Charlie had plenty of time to wonder if he was doing the right thing as they trekked back up through the town. It had seemed sensible enough in the Queen of Scots - as did many far-fetched ideas - but in the cold bright light of day he started to get an uneasy feeling about it. Still, the snow might be gone any day now. Then he could turn out the man and his dog on to the streets again with a clear conscience.

He popped into the pet shop on the way, and bought a misshapen dog chew that they were selling at a reduced price.

'Merry Christmas,' he said, presenting it to the dog.

### Chapter 20 Invasion of Alcatraz

Christopher was surprised to see Chief Inspector Smith walking up the road with the homeless man and the dog. Amaryllis had told him about giving away her big parka - he chose to interpret this gesture as a sign that she was becoming more human, something she hotly denied - so he wasn't too taken aback by seeing the man wearing it. He found the scene outside the pet shop rather puzzling, however. Surely the Christmas spirit hadn't entered into Charlie Smith too?

Because he had nothing much to do with the Cultural Centre closed for the holidays, he followed Mr Smith and the homeless man up to the police station and observed that they all went in together, including the dog. He knew this was the kind of thing Amaryllis would have done, which made him worry they were spending too much time together because of the wintry weather. Oh, well, when the thaw came they could get out from under each other's feet.

He imagined she would have followed up by mounting an attack on the police station to break the man out, since she was so friendly with him, but Christopher couldn't bring himself even to attempt this.

He told himself not to tell her about this latest development, but as usual this resolve didn't last long. They met Jemima and Dave in the Golden Peach for dinner that evening, and because nothing much seemed to have happened, what with Christmas and the snow, which they were fed up talking about, the topic of homelessness came up. Amaryllis confessed to having given the man her parka, and was duly scoffed at by Dave, although everyone present knew he was such a big softie that if he had encountered the man he would have incurred Jemima's wrath by inviting him home for tea.

'It's the animals I feel sorry for,' said Jemima cryptically.

'The animals?' said Amaryllis.

'He's got a dog, hasn't he? I saw them snuggled up together in the doorway of the wool shop - the day before the snow came.'

All life in Pitkirtly, Christopher reflected, was now divided into the era before the snow and the time of the snow: he supposed this must be what it would be like if there were a major catastrophe that affected everyone on earth. An Ice Age - not that this was in the same category, of course. It just felt like it some nights, when you couldn't get warm in bed or when the lights went out.

'Why do you feel sorry for them?' said Amaryllis. 'Dogs were made to follow people around doing what they do. The homeless man's dog is just doing the same.'

'But what if something happens to the man?' said Jemima. 'Aren't homeless people more likely to die than normal people are?'

''Everybody's likely to die,' said Dave blithely, crunching prawn crackers.

'You know what I mean,' said Jemima. 'He could even die of hypothermia - here in our town. Under our noses. And we haven't done anything to stop that happening.'

'Charlie Smith has,' said Christopher without thinking.

They all stared at him.

'What's Charlie done?' said Amaryllis. 'He hasn't deported him to Rosyth, has he?'

Christopher laughed. 'He's taken them to the police station. The man and the dog.'

Amaryllis frowned. 'He's arrested them?'

'Not that I know of,' said Christopher. 'But I saw them all going in there together earlier - about lunch-time.'

'I don't like the sound of that,' said Amaryllis. 'We'd better find out what's going on.'

'When you say we'd better find out, do you mean -?' asked Christopher, hoping she didn't.

'We can pop round to the police station when we've finished in here,' said Amaryllis.

Christopher immediately made up his mind to order dessert followed by coffee followed by liqueurs. The fact that he had once tried a Golden Peach dessert and felt as if he had eaten a foam-filled pillow was neither here nor there. He just wanted to put off the moment when Amaryllis made an idiot of both of them at the police station, not for the first time either.

'Are you sure you should interfere, dear?' said Jemima.

'I don't want them harassing him,' said Amaryllis.

'Have you ever known Charlie Smith harass anybody?' said Christopher. He knew anything he said was only going to be a token protest. He knew, and he knew Amaryllis knew, that he would feel bound to accompany her and share in the embarrassment.

'There's always a first time,' said Amaryllis darkly.

'You're right there,' said Dave, digging into the egg fried rice again. 'My motto is, never entirely trust the police.'

Jemima glared at him. 'You might have told me that before we got married! I've always tried to live within the law.'

'Ah, but the police and the law aren't always on the same side,' said Dave. 'Does anybody want more Singapore noodles?'

Christopher dragged the meal out for as long as he could, which was until Dave said with a chortle, 'Trying to put off your trip to the police station, then?' and he realised he had made it much too obvious.

'You didn't really want that extra cup of coffee, did you?' said Amaryllis to him as they left the restaurant.

'Yes,' he said stubbornly. 'In this weather you need more hot drinks than usual - it's a scientific fact.'

Jemima and Dave headed off home, while Amaryllis turned her steps in the direction of the police station, and Christopher followed her. Being there with her was preferable to the alternative, which was having to go round there later to bail her out after she had been arrested for causing a disturbance or worse.

The front door was closed, of course, but Amaryllis ignored the fact that it was well past the time when the police station could reasonably be expected to be open for customers, and leaned on the bell. After a while someone spoke on the intercom.

'It's Amaryllis Peebles,' she announced. 'I have to see my client.'

'He's not your client,' murmured Christopher.

'How do you know?' she said, and added, into the intercom, 'Chief Inspector Smith knows about it.'

One more strangled phrase came out of the speaker, and after a few minutes' pause the door swung open. Sergeant McDonald appeared, a chunk of bread in one hand and a glass of what might have been Ribena but which looked suspiciously like red wine in the other.

'We're closed,' he said. 'We've been on shift continuously for four days, and we can't be catering to people who choose to make demands in the middle of the night.'

Before Amaryllis could enter into a debate with him on the subject, he was pushed aside unceremoniously by Charlie Smith, who had a tomato ketchup bottle in one hand.

'We're just about to have our meal,' he said. 'But you can come in for five minutes. Five,' he repeated, holding up his free hand with all the fingers spread out, just to make sure they understood.

Christopher suspected he had only decided to let them in because his fish supper was getting cold and he knew how long Amaryllis could spin out an argument.

Mr Smith ushered them into what must be the staff kitchen. There were fish suppers all round, and a bottle of red wine in the middle.

'We've been stuck in here for days,' said Sergeant McDonald defensively, seeing where Christopher's gaze lingered. 'We've had to eat frozen sprouts. And microwaved Christmas pudding.'

'Not in the same dish, I hope,' said Amaryllis. 'Can I see my client now?'

Mr Smith gave her a look. He and Sergeant McDonald sat down at the table with Karen Whitefield and a uniformed constable.

'I seriously doubt that he's your client,' he observed, scooping fish and a share of the chips on to his plate and deluging the whole lot with tomato ketchup. 'Unless it's the dog that's the client, and the man is just a kind of optional extra.'

'Have you arrested him?' said Amaryllis.

Chief Inspector Smith gave a hollow laugh. 'Can you just imagine the fuss if I arrested a dog over Christmas? Quickest way to start a Twitter campaign, or what?'

'Not the dog, the man,' said Amaryllis.

'OK, tell you what,' said Mr Smith, in the interval between shoveling chips into his mouth and taking a large swig of red wine. 'If you can tell me his name, I'll accept he's your client. Otherwise I'm going to have to send you on your way.'

'Tell you his name? What is this, an audition for Rumpelstiltskin?' said Amaryllis.

The police officers all laughed. Christopher wished he could teleport out of here. Surely something would happen that would stop this charade.

Just as the thought crossed his mind, he heard a blood-curdling sound. It was a kind of howling sound, and it came from further down the corridor, beyond the kitchen. As it rose and fell, he saw that the officers at the table had apparently gone into suspended animation: Mr Smith with his mouth open ready to receive a forkful of chips, Karen Whitefield with a glass halfway to her mouth, Sergeant McDonald in the middle of munching a large piece of bread and the young constable in the act of retrieving a bit more fish from the parcel in the middle of the table.

As often happened, Amaryllis was first off the mark, wrenching open the kitchen door and haring off down the corridor before any of the others had moved. Christopher followed at a pace he considered sensible. He felt only a small pang of guilt at letting her confront the situation first. He knew that she was the one best qualified to cope with anything from slipped stitches to mass murder.

### Chapter 21 Breakout

The dog continued to howl as Amaryllis ran towards it.

She hadn't been along this way before on any of her previous visits to the police station, but she thought it led to a small number of police cells where suspects could be kept for short spells before being transferred as required to the prison at Auchterderran. It wasn't exactly standard procedure for a dog to be kept in one of the cells, but she assumed it had come in with the homeless man and Charlie Smith had allowed them to stay together. He wasn't unsympathetic by the standards of his profession.

She knew which cell it was from the way the door swung open, partially blocking the corridor. She wasn't sure what she expected to find in there, but seeing the dog on its own was one of the better options she had imagined. It stopped howling at once and came towards her, wagging its tail.

'Good dog,' she said.

Christopher appeared, a little short of breath. She would have to instigate a fitness programme for him, otherwise he wouldn't live long enough to enjoy the gold-plated pension he was no doubt entitled to as the employee of a public body.

'What's happened?' he said. 'Where's the homeless man?'

'Gone,' she said.

Charlie Smith came along the corridor, followed by the young police constable.

'He's gone,' she told them, to avoid the tedium of hearing them repeat Christopher's question.

'Search the building!' snapped Mr Smith. 'Keith, take this end and the back yard, I'll do the other end and the car park. He won't be far away.'

'When did you last see him?' said Amaryllis.

'About fifteen minutes ago - I brought his fish and chips along. And something for the dog,' added Charlie over his shoulder as he set off back down the corridor, opening doors and slamming them again as he went. 'You two get back to the kitchen!' he called.

The constable went the other way and they heard him slamming doors too.

'I wonder if there's another way,' said Amaryllis thoughtfully. 'Windows? A hatch in the ceiling? An air duct?'

'This isn't Mission Impossible,' said Christopher. 'That man wasn't all that agile, not with his bad leg. He's probably walked out through a door that's been left open. You can see they've got slacker because of Christmas and the weather - someone's forgotten to lock up properly.'

'I'm sure you're right,' she admitted, and then loped off after Charlie Smith, who had now disappeared round a corner. She paused halfway along the corridor and tested a window. It swung open at a light push.

'This is it,' she said. When Christopher caught up with her again she was staring over the windowsill. There was a straggly hedge just outside but its snow-encrusted branches were broken and bent in the middle. 'Someone pushed through there.'

She was climbing over the sill when the constable came back. 'Nothing that way,' he started to say, and then, 'Don't do that, you'll disturb the evidence. Come back here.'

Amaryllis submitted, not very gracefully, to being dragged back into the building. After everyone had studied the spot where apparently the man had escaped, they all went round to the outside of the building to look at it from the other side. Amaryllis fidgeted and fumed meanwhile. Her usual procedure wasn't to examine evidence in meticulous detail while the people she was pursuing got further and further away. But then, she told herself, she didn't usually have to make a case stand up in court. She tried to be patient but eventually she couldn't stand it any longer.

'We'll get going, then,' she announced to the assembled police officers as they retired indoors to look for a camera to take some emergency scene of crime photographs. 'It's past Christopher's bed-time and I need to get him home, otherwise he'll turn into a pumpkin.'

Christopher blushed. Charlie Smith glanced round and said, 'I hope you're not going to go on the rampage round town looking for this man.'

'Yes, I know that would be a very silly thing to do and I'd be endangering the lives of myself and others,' she said.

'You're right, it would be. But that doesn't mean you need to do it... I don't suppose you feel like taking the dog home with you,' he added,

'No, I don't. I know what dogs are like - they wreck everything they go near. I'm more of a cat person.'

'Mr Wilson?'

'I'm allergic,' said Christopher. Amaryllis stared at him in surprise. She had never heard this before, so either Christopher had thought very quickly for once or there were things she didn't yet know about him. Both possibilities were equally unsettling.

Charlie sighed. He didn't look as if he believed Christopher either. 'Off you go, then,' he said. 'Don't let me keep you.'

As soon as they were outside the police station, gasping as the freezing night air hit them again, Christopher said, 'We're not going to go looking for him, are we?'

'You heard what Chief Inspector Smith said, didn't you?' she countered.

Christopher sighed in his turn. 'Where will we start?'

She wasn't sure she liked the idea that she had become predictable, but on the other hand, it would save a lot of time if Christopher didn't bother to argue with her except when he felt really strongly about something. Evidently he wasn't going to dig his heels in over this. Contrarily, she wondered what he would do if she just went on home to bed.

She discarded this idea before it was even fully-formed. Life was too short to follow up on every possibility as if you wanted to live in an infinite number of universes at once. But where had that mind-boggling thought come from? Had her brain been adversely affected by the extreme cold? Or had she been spending too much time with Christopher, something she knew from experience could be dangerous in all sorts of ways.

'Would you like to live in infinite universes?' she asked him as they turned along towards the High Street again.

'He won't have come back here, will he?'

'Who knows?'

'Infinity's always frightened the wits out of me. I'd rather not think about it, if you don't mind.'

'We'll try the shelter behind the war memorial first. Then the garden huts further down, then maybe that old workman's place in the railway yard - you know.'

'You don't want to go there in the dark, do you?' said Christopher incredulously.

'Not really. I'm just thinking of places where he might be able to shelter for the night.'

'I think they may have demolished it anyway,' he said.

The homeless man, borrower of Amaryllis's parka and former dog owner, wasn't in any of the places they looked. Christopher was correct in his surmise about the workman's hut in the railway yard, so they didn't even have to go too near the place which had such bad memories for both of them. On the way back up the road they searched the yard behind the shop where the Happiness Club had once had its headquarters, the giant wheelie-bins behind the Golden Peach and the rather upmarket shed where they had once hidden with Jock McLean and Darren Laidlaw.

'I give up,' said Amaryllis. She felt dispirited, which wasn't like her. She had somehow imagined she had a connection with the homeless man. Even if only via the loan of the parka.

'I wonder why he didn't take the dog with him,' said Christopher.

'You're right. It's a bit odd.'

'I suppose he couldn't get it out the window.'

'But how did he know he was going to escape through the window?'

'Maybe he'd seen it wasn't shut properly earlier,' suggested Christopher.

'He could have lifted the dog over the windowsill,' said Amaryllis, frowning. 'It wasn't that high up, and the dog's quite thin. It probably doesn't weigh much.'

'Oh well,' said Christopher, yawning. 'Better get a good night's sleep. I expect it'll all seem clearer in the morning.'

There was the standard wrangle over whether he walked her home or not, and in the end she was so tired she just agreed to it.

'But you can't come in for toast,' she said. 'I haven't got any bread. I need to go to the - oh my God!'

By this time they had turned down the road that led to Merchantman Wynd, where Amaryllis's apartment was. She stared ahead with wide eyes and broke into a run, or the nearest approximation to a run she could manage in the snow.

There was a dark shape in the snow in the road just by the entrance to the Wynd. As she got closer, she knew it was exactly what she had feared it was. A man's body. A man wearing a thick parka.

She fell on her knees beside him and searched for a pulse.

'Will I call an ambulance?' said Christopher, suddenly at her side. He pulled out the phone she had lent him, dropped it in the snow, retrieved it with clumsy gloved fingers and stared at the little screen as if wondering what it was. She knew she was taking in these details to get her mind off the fact that she couldn't find any sign of life.

'Police as well,' she said.

Christopher must have charged up the phone for once, she told herself. And even brought it with him. Wonders would never cease. She wondered whether to start resuscitation. The man was cold, but it might be that his temperature had dropped to the sort of hibernating level where he could be revived. Then she saw the blood spots on the snow.

### Chapter 22 Animal Shelter

The call came in just as Charlie was getting ready for bed. Because the alternative was the floor of the staff kitchen, he elected to sleep in a cell. He had threatened dire consequences if anyone locked him in.

Sergeant McDonald came down the corridor fast, his heavy tread making him sound like a whole herd of rhinos charging down to a waterhole somewhere in Africa.

'Mr Wilson's just called,' he said. 'You haven't got your radio on, sir. I was just about to go home.'

'Sorry,' said Charlie, glancing round to see where he had put the radio. There was no sign of it. He hoped Amaryllis hadn't taken it while he wasn't looking. It was just the kind of thing she would do. 'What did he want this time?'

'They've found a body.'

Charlie sank down on the bed and put his hands over his eyes to shut out reality. 'No,' he moaned. 'I don't believe it. What have those two got against me? How did they know I was just about to fall into bed?'

'Suspected foul play. Ambulance called but he said there's no sign of life. Looks like our man. He's wearing the parka Ms Peebles lent him... I'll be surprised if the ambulance can get through – we'd maybe better alert the duty doctor.'

Charlie pulled himself together. 'I'll go. Better get Keith to come with me. You go home and get some sleep. You'll be no use to anybody if you're half-dead on your feet. And when you say your prayers, just ask for an overnight thaw.'

He pictured Sergeant McDonald on his knees, hands folded, eyes closed, beside a high, old-fashioned bed and he smiled in spite of the gravity of the situation. The dog, which had been snoozing in the corner of Charlie's chosen cell, opened its eyes suddenly and lifted its head.

'Go back to sleep,' Charlie told it. Tomorrow would be soon enough for the dog to find out it was orphaned, or whatever the appropriate term was.

Charlie and Keith, the latter bleary-eyed because he had already fallen asleep at the kitchen table, wrapped up as warmly as they could and went out again. It seemed even colder than before. Was it always colder just before a thaw? That didn't seem right. But weather could do all sort of strange, unexpected things. A bit like women.

'So what do you think? Will it thaw overnight?' he said heartily to Keith, mostly to deflect his thoughts from a path he knew would only end in tears.

Keith Burnett looked at him as if he'd taken leave of his senses.

'No way, sir,' he said. 'This lot's going to freeze over and then we're in for more snow in a couple of days. It said on the radio.'

'More snow?' Charlie had been too preoccupied to listen to any weather forecasts, and he was aghast at the idea of this situation continuing indefinitely.

They slipped and slithered down the slope towards the spot where Amaryllis and Christopher stood guard over a motionless shape that obviously no longer needed guarding.

'We can't get an ambulance into the town,' said Charlie. 'We're calling out the nearest doctor. But I'm guessing there isn't any big rush now,' he added, crouching over the body.

'There's blood,' said Amaryllis.

She seemed unnaturally upset by her standards. She must have seen blood before, and in far worse circumstances than this. At least this body wasn't crushed and broken like some of the victims of road traffic accidents he'd been unfortunate enough to see over the years. Of course, this one was closer to her home territory than most of the others had been. He stood up slowly and said, 'It's him all right.'

'Maybe he slipped on the ice and hit his head on something,' said Keith Burnett, as if trying to make things seem a bit better.

'Not unless he slipped in such a way that he twisted round and accidentally shot himself in the back of the head,' said Charlie Smith.

Keith Burnett took a big step back.

'Is it murder, then?' he asked quietly.

'Of course it's murder!' snapped Charlie, and then felt sorry for raising his voice. He wasn't really angry with Keith but with himself for failing to protect this man. He had taken him and his dog in off the streets to try and do just that, and he had just made things even worse.

He looked across at Christopher and Amaryllis. 'Did you see or hear anything?'

Christopher shook his head. 'We'd just come back from a walk round the town. We came down the road and he was lying there. No sign of anybody else around.'

He wondered why Amaryllis hadn't spoken for the two of them as she often did. Then he saw that she was trembling and that Christopher had his arm round her shoulders, which could have been the only thing keeping her upright.

'You might as well go indoors,' he said to them. 'Your flat's just along here, isn't it?'

Amaryllis nodded, teeth chattering. Of course, she didn't have her big parka any more. Charlie didn't think she would want it back now though, even if he had been able to give it to her.

'Be careful,' he added suddenly. 'Do you want Keith to go with you?'

Christopher met Charlie's eyes. 'Do you think that's necessary?'

'Could be,' said Charlie, trying to sound casual despite a horrible thought that had just crossed his mind. What if the killer had been waiting for Amaryllis here, and had imagined she was the one wearing the big parka? What if, realising his mistake, he had then moved to wait in or near her apartment? It wasn't worth taking the risk. Normally she would have been the best person to deal with any intruders or masked gunmen in the shadows, but she didn't look up to that in her present state.

Reason re-asserted itself. The man had been shot in the back of the head, and there was no sign he had been wearing the hood of the parka up at the time. Anyone who had seen him without it would have realised at once that he wasn't Amaryllis. You couldn't mistake that spiky tangle of dark red hair for anyone else's. Unless she was unknown to the killer, of course.

He pulled himself together, conscious that the others were all looking at him.

'OK, Keith, go along there with them. Come back once they're safely shut in. The doctor should be down in a minute. Then we'll need to get Karen to bring the Land Rover. Give her a call now.'

He didn't want to have to wake up Karen, who hadn't had any more sleep for the past few nights than the rest of them, but she was younger than Sergeant McDonald and would recover faster, even if she was likely to grumble a bit more at the time.

There were some grim things to do next, and he wished the time had passed in a blur so that he could blot them out of his memory quickly. But it all seemed very real, from the wait for the doctor, through the unpleasant task of loading the body into the police Land Rover and then transporting it to the premises of a local undertaker who hadn't been best pleased to be woken up either. Rushing to store it like this had made Keith raise his eyebrows, but they couldn't leave the man out in the snow in case the longed-for thaw should arrive in the middle of the night. It wasn't done according to standard procedure, but as they had driven a coach and horses through the regulations over the past few days, nobody was about to lose any sleep over it. Apart from anything else, they couldn't afford to lose any more sleep what with all that had been going on.

They disturbed the body as little as was humanly possible, but something odd happened as they were leaving the undertaker's. Karen, who was driving, put her bag down behind the seat and picked something up off the floor. It gleamed gold in the light from the street lamp just outside.

'Look - what's this, sir? It looks like some sort of bird. With a long tail,' she added, turning it over in her fingers. 'It's very pretty. Where did it come from?'

Even after recent events, Charlie Smith still had the capacity to be surprised.

'The golden peacock,' he breathed. 'Well, who'd have thought it?'

### Chapter 23 Breakthrough

Amaryllis's spare room was stark, but comfortable. Christopher had slept well when he eventually got to bed, which was long after his usual time. The process had involved making cocoa and lots of toast for Amaryllis, who didn't seem to want to sleep, and then eating most of the toast himself. In the morning one of his first thoughts was to hope she hadn't now run out of bread, because he was looking forward to making toast for breakfast in her space-age kitchen.

He spent a few moments lying in bed and reproaching himself for feeling so up-beat after the experience of the previous night. Maybe he'd been spending too much time with Amaryllis lately and had become blasé about violence and death; on the other hand she herself had seemed to be unusually upset by what they had seen. Was it because she had imagined she might be in danger? He didn't think so. That kind of thing usually brought out the best in her.

'How many slices?' called Amaryllis through the half-open door.

'Two would be fine, if you can spare them,' said Christopher. He wasn't sure if she had minded him staying overnight. He usually managed to leave and go home to spend the night in his own bed, even in times of serious crisis, but on this occasion, with a mad gunman possibly wandering around outside and with both of them so exhausted that they would probably have slept through the Texas chain-saw massacre, it had seemed like the only possible option.

'Are you OK?' he asked as he eventually wandered through to the kitchen, trying to flatten his hair down with his hands so that he didn't look as if he'd had a major fright.

'Fine,' said Amaryllis, sounding surprised. She presented him with a cup of coffee from her complicated machine and took a jar of marmalade out of the cupboard. She sat down at the table opposite him. She certainly didn't look any different from usual, her startlingly blue eyes watching him with amusement as they always did, her dark red hair apparently bristling with its own energy. Even the way she sat there was energetic; she twitched and tapped her feet, ready to spring into action at any moment.

He groaned inwardly, and then realized he had actually groaned out loud too.

'Are you all right?' said Amaryllis. 'Didn't you sleep?'

'There could have been a maniac with a gun wandering around nearby and he might be after you – why shouldn't I sleep?' he said. 'Actually, I did sleep all right. I'm just wondering what you've got planned for today.'

'Are you sure I've got something planned? Don't I sometimes surprise you with my spontaneity?'

'I wouldn't say surprise is the right word,' he said.

'What is the right word, then?'

He considered this, sipping his coffee. 'Terrify?'

'Ha ha. Well, I'm planning to go round to the police station to offer a witness statement of my own free will, if you must know. You'd better come too - we're both in this together.'

'OK, that sounds reasonable,' said Christopher. 'And I suppose you're going to risk arrest by snooping around inside the police station to try and find out more?'

'It isn't a big risk,' said Amaryllis confidently. 'They've got bigger fish to fry than me. And Charlie knows I'm on their side.'

'Hmm,' said Christopher. 'So we're snooping for clues. Keeping our eyes peeled and all that.'

'We aren't the Famous Five,' said Amaryllis primly. 'Apart from the fact that there are only two of us and we don't have a dog. We're going to see if we can pick up any chatter while we're being good citizens and sharing our valuable information with the police.'

Christopher thought about this. 'We could be the Famous Five if Jock came back and we roped in Jemima and Dave,' he pointed out after spreading marmalade on his toast.

'But we still wouldn't have a dog,' said Amaryllis. 'Unless we -'

'Unless we what?'

'Oh, nothing.'

Christopher knew she was at her least trustworthy when she said the word 'nothing' in this context. His heart sank. She was going to offer to adopt the homeless man's homeless dog, and then regret doing so the first time she had to take it for a long walk in the rain, or when it savaged some harmless child or poodle. There would be tears before bedtime.

As it turned out, things didn't unfold in that way at all.

Charlie Smith, looking somewhat more grey and lined than usual, opened the door to them personally at the police station. He had a piece of toast in his hand and the dog at his heels. He explained as he ushered them through to an interview room that he had sent Sergeant McDonald home to get a good night's sleep, and that the sergeant hadn't surfaced yet. Constable Burnett would take their statements. He didn't mention the dog.

Even young Constable Burnett looked greyish.

'Are you feeling all right?' Christopher enquired politely.

'I'm grand,' he said, obviously exaggerating wildly. 'Now, it's irregular for both of you to give me your statements together, so who wants to go first? Who actually discovered the body?'

'I was first on the scene,' said Amaryllis. 'But only by minutes. We were together the whole time.'

Constable Burnett sighed. 'OK, then, we'll just do this all in a oner. I'll sort it out later. Don't tell the chief.'

They ran through what had happened. It didn't take long, and Christopher felt guilty that they hadn't noticed a dark figure running away from the scene, or found some amazing clue that had melted away before the police got there. The young policeman went through it all twice and there was still nothing, even when he started to ask what ground they had covered before deciding to go down to Amaryllis's apartment.

It wasn't long before Amaryllis got bored with being interviewed and decided to turn the tables.

'So does Mr Smith have any theories?'

'Theories?'

'About why somebody should shoot a homeless man in the back of the head? Was it the same person who helped him to escape?'

'Um,' said Constable Burnett. Obviously he hadn't been in the police force long enough to know that he would have to be downright rude to Amaryllis to stop her. Anything less, and she would persist until he gave in. It was no use warning him, Christopher thought, he would just have to work it out for himself.

Amaryllis rephrased her questions. 'Does he have any suspects? Any good lines of enquiry?'

'Come on, Ms Peebles,' said Chief Inspector Smith, coming into the interview room with the dog hot on his heels. 'You know I can't tell you any of that. And neither can any of my officers.'

'I'm just a concerned member of the public,' said Amaryllis. 'I only want to help - but I need to know a few more facts if you want me to do that.'

'Not only do I not want you to help,' said Mr Smith, 'but if the roads were open, I would strongly advise you to go and stay in another town for a few days, until we clear this up. For your own safety, of course.'

The words 'and to get you out from under my feet' hung in the air, unspoken.

The dog barked suddenly. It was on the alert, listening. A moment later, Sergeant McDonald popped his head round the door of the room.

'They've ploughed the road right into town, from the top. The guy from the Council's just been in to tell us. He's off to do the other side now. We should be able to get cars in and out this morning.'

'Thanks, Sergeant,' said Mr Smith, and looked at Amaryllis.

'I haven't got a car,' she said, 'and I bet it'll be a while before the bus comes round this way.'

'Hmph,' said Mr Smith. 'I suppose I'd better go and have a word with the people out there. Don't go anywhere.'

Christopher knew this was all she needed to make her go and break out through the window the homeless man had escaped from. But, although she wriggled a bit as if her body was urging her to get out, she stayed where she was. Evidently she still imagined she could get more information out of Constable Burnett.

After Mr Smith and the dog had left, and Sergeant McDonald had lumbered away in their wake, she started again.

'So will you have to hand the case over to someone else now, Constable Burnett?'

'Probably,' he said. 'For a while, anyway. We all need to go home and get some sleep. We should be able to get a couple of officers in from Rosyth to cover for us for a few days. Now that we've worked over Christmas and everything.'

'Have you had to sleep in the police station?'

'Me and the chief inspector have. In the cells.'

Constable Burnett's expression showed that he didn't think much of this arrangement.

'Next-door to the homeless man?'

'Not exactly next-door.'

'I hope he didn't snore. Or talk in his sleep,' said Amaryllis, perhaps hoping the opposite of what she said.

The constable laughed, with an undertone of unease as if he didn't know where this was going.

'Was he a kind of guest in here?' said Amaryllis. 'You didn't lock him in, did you? Did you search him when he first came in?'

The constable shook his head. 'No reason to search him. It was a pity we didn't, considering -'

He stopped in mid-sentence. Amaryllis pounced.

'Considering what? Did they find something at the crime scene? A gun?'

Constable Burnett laughed. 'Of course not. It was a silly bit of costume jewellery. Karen found it in the car.'

'What kind of jewellery?' asked Amaryllis. She used the voice that was supposed to fool people into thinking she didn't care much about getting an answer, but Christopher could see the hair at the back of her neck quivering with excitement.

'What kind of jewellery? Oh - um -,' said the constable. He blushed suddenly. 'I think it was a gold - octopus. Or maybe a shark?'

'Interesting,' said Amaryllis, and got to her feet. 'We'd better be going now. Come along, Christopher.'

'But Mr Smith said we weren't to go anywhere,' Christopher protested.

'Since when did we ever bother about what Charlie Smith said? Let's get going. No time to lose.'

'Are you planning to leave town?' said Constable Burnett. 'Make sure you sign your statements before you do - I'll have them ready by this afternoon. Or maybe tomorrow. Just pop back in.'

His words followed them down the corridor - none of the doors were locked - and out through to the reception area, where Mr Smith and Sergeant McDonald were in conversation with a man in a hi-vis jacket with 'West Fife Council' written on the back. The dog was circling round restlessly behind the little group.

'Hey, you two, we haven't finished with you yet!' said Mr Smith as they passed. But Christopher thought it was a half-hearted attempt to stop them. Charlie Smith had burnt himself out.

### Chapter 24 Octopus or shark?

'He needs to go home and sleep for a week,' said Amaryllis once they were safely outside. The Council snow-plough sat in the middle of the road. 'I wonder why it's taken them so long to get round to us.'

'They may have forgotten about Pitkirtly,' suggested Christopher. 'We're a bit off the beaten track here.'

Amaryllis remembered thinking much the same thing when she had first arrived in town. Now - well, it wasn't exactly the centre of the universe, even now. But she liked living here, and she felt at home, while accepting that nobody was truly at home in Pitkirtly until at least four generations of their family had lived there.

'Come on, this way,' she said, heading for the High Street.

'What now?' groaned Christopher. Evidently he thought he deserved to go home and sleep for a week too. We'll see about that, thought Amaryllis, who liked to keep him on his toes.

'We might as well go and have a word with the jeweller, now we're so close by,' she said.

'We're not that close by. And we'll have to come up the hill again to get home.'

Not for the first time Christopher reminded her of a whiny toddler. Only he was too big to lift up and physically move to where you wanted him to be. And much too big to wheel around in a baby buggy, even one of the ones built like tanks that took up the entire pavement and got in the way on the bus.

'But once you get home, you'll just fall asleep on the sofa with the 24 hour news channel on. Then you'll grumble for the rest of the week about not knowing what's going on in the world.'

She couldn't resist harking back to a time when Christopher had fallen asleep every time the words 'Eurozone crisis' were mentioned on the news, and then couldn't understand why people were rioting in Greece the next time he paid attention. It wouldn't have been so bad if he could have just let it go and not worried about it, but he was also the kind of person who prided himself on keeping up with current events. He insisted it was part of his job, which it wasn't.

'I don't grumble,' he said with misplaced confidence in his sunny disposition.

By this time they were halfway down the High Street and she knew he had already forgotten what they were arguing about. She smiled to herself. Maybe he could help convince the jeweller that they were on the level and not scoping the place out for another robbery. Christopher had such a transparently honest face that people tended to believe him. She knew they didn't always feel the same way about her, quite rightly in many cases.

'What are we going to say to the jeweller?' he asked. 'And how will he know we're not casing the joint?'

'I don't know if people say that any more,' she said.

After they had trekked all the way down the High Street they found the jeweller's was closed.

Christopher leaned against the wall next to the shop.

'That was a waste of time,' he complained.

'I thought he might have re-opened by now,' said Amaryllis. 'Oh, well. It's nearly lunch-time. Last one to the Queen of Scots is an overweight cissy?'

'You know that's always me,' he said, not moving. 'What did you want to ask him about, anyway?'

'I just wonder if this gold octopus or shark Constable Burnett mentioned was stolen in the robbery.'

'That's a bit of a leap, isn't it?'

'Most brilliant brainwaves are,' said Amaryllis. 'And he was so embarrassed about telling us that, he must think it's important.'

'I don't know,' said Christopher. 'He seemed a bit unsure about it. As if maybe he realised he wasn't meant to tell us and changed his story halfway through.'

Amaryllis was sceptical about this theory, and they bickered about it all the way round to the Queen of Scots.

'Ah,' said the landlord as they came in. 'There you are. I was just telling Alan here you'd be round in a bit.'

The landlord, whose name they could never remember although, Amaryllis thought, they probably should after wrecking his Range Rover, wasn't usually so loquacious. There was a man she didn't know standing at the bar, a glass of whisky in front of him. She hoped they weren't going to get dragged into some pointless conversation with him when they could spend the time deciding where to go next with the shark-octopus clue.

'Hello,' she said. Christopher, behind her, murmured something.

'Those are the two I was telling you about, Alan,' said the landlord. 'Amaryllis Peebles and Christopher Wilson. They go around solving things. A bit like the Famous Five, except there are only two of them and they're not really young enough to play games.'

Oh dear, thought Amaryllis. Alan's a lawyer and he's going to sue us over the Range Rover incident. The landlord certainly didn't sound too friendly. Then he suddenly laughed and said, 'Only joking. They're good citizens who help out with catching villains. Them and their friends. I think Jemima and Dave were in earlier, by the way.'

'So can we help you, Alan?' said Amaryllis politely to the other man, who had been waiting patiently for the landlord to finish rambling on.

'Alan's got a wee jeweller's shop in the High Street,' said the landlord.

'Fantastic!' said Amaryllis. 'Can we get you another whisky, Alan? Let's go and sit over there. Near the fire. It's too cold to be standing around in a draught.'

Now she understood why Alan looked so miserable. It must have been a shock to his system to be robbed at gun-point, particularly on Christmas Eve when things were winding down to the holiday. She steered him over to the table while Christopher got the drinks in.

It was the perfect opportunity. She wondered if he actually wanted to hire her as a private investigator or whether the landlord had just been recommending her as an interested amateur for whom money didn't matter. As it happened, the money itself didn't really matter to her; the main advantage of being a professional investigator was that it gave her some sort of standing. Not that it would necessarily be accepted by the police as a good reason for her to stick her nose into everything, but it made her role unambiguous. She might just mention that once she'd spoken to him about the robbery, but without any aggressive marketing.

By the time Christopher brought the drinks over, they had been through the boring preliminary chat; when she met someone new she thought this resembled the start of a chess game, with little pawns moving about before the main action took place. Of course as a chess player she was also aware that these moves could equally well lead to instant disaster, so she always tried to keep her wits about her even during casual conversation.

'Alan was saying there was somebody in the shop choosing an engagement ring when the robbery started,' she told Christopher. 'That must have given her a terrible fright.'

'She and her fiancé ducked down behind the counter,' said Alan. 'She gave him a telling-off afterwards for being such a coward. It sounded as if they were about ready to break off the engagement. They never did choose a ring,' he added sadly. 'I haven't been open since then.'

'But they couldn't really go anywhere else for one,' said Amaryllis, trying to comfort him. 'The roads have been closed all this time and there isn't another jeweller's in Pitkirtly, is there?'

He shook his head somberly. 'Sam just told me the snow plough's broken through. First thing this morning. But I can't open up the shop yet anyway - the police are still treating it as a crime scene.'

'Do you get much business at this time of year?' said Christopher.

'It builds up just before Christmas, but this is a dead time, between Christmas and New Year. I don't do post-Christmas sales so people just don't come in unless they've got something special in mind. To be honest, it doesn't really make much difference not being able to open up the shop. I've been in a few times just to use the computer though. There are some things I have to do online or by phone. Speaking to potential buyers, that kind of thing.'

'So do you ever find special things for potential buyers?' said Amaryllis, seizing the opportunity. 'Or source things to order?'

She couldn't imagine he would just have happened to have a golden octopus among his stock. It wasn't the kind of thing someone would want unless they had a reason for it. Personally she found the idea of an octopus gave her the creeps since the incident in Anatolia. She shivered slightly just thinking about it.

'Would you like to sit nearer the fire?' said Alan, noticing.

'No, I'm fine...'

Just answer the question, she was screaming silently in her mind.

'Do you have clients in other parts of the country, or overseas?' Christopher asked.

'Yes, a few. It's the only way to survive these days. There isn't much money in Pitkirtly. On the other hand, the business rates aren't too bad. If it wasn't for that and the online trade I might move to Dunfermline. Or even Edinburgh. Not to the city centre, though, I couldn't afford it.'

'So what exactly happened during the robbery?' she prompted. He was a bit of a rambler, but she had learned not to be too impatient with people like that, at least not outwardly. Sometimes you could learn a lot from them. 'The robbers rushed in, the engaged couple dived behind the counter – what did you do?'

'I asked them what they wanted,' he said. 'I was surprised at how calm I felt. If anyone had told me I'd have to face a man with a gun that day, I wouldn't have bothered going into work... But they weren't waving the gun around randomly. The man who had it – well, it looked like he'd handled one before. I didn't think he would let it go off by accident or anything. The other one, the one without the gun, said they wanted me to open the safe. I couldn't think of any way to stop them, or fob them off. It happened too quickly. Maybe I should have worked something out in advance, but –'

'But you didn't know there was going to be an armed robbery that day,' said Amaryllis. For a moment it crossed her mind to wonder if he did know, and if the whole thing was going to turn out to be an insurance scam, but then she decided to carry on as if she believed him. She wouldn't get very far with her questions otherwise.

'No. I hadn't even thought about it actually. Pitkirtly seems like such a sleepy place. Why would anybody have a gun in the first place?'

'So you opened the safe,' said Amaryllis. She had finished her drink. She was dimly aware of Christopher taking her glass away.

'Yes. Then they just bundled everything out of the safe and into a kind of holdall they had with them, and then they took off. It was all over in minutes. I went after them for a bit, but then I heard the shots from outside and I - just went back in to see if the engaged couple were all right. And to ring the police.'

'Very sensible,' said Amaryllis, knowing that she wouldn't have gone back inside but would have pursued the armed robbers to the bitter end. 'Is there anything else you can tell me? And how can I help?'

'There's a special piece among the stuff that's missing,' said Alan.

'An octopus?'

He looked puzzled. 'No, why should it be an octopus? It's a peacock. A gold peacock set with sapphires and emeralds. Said to have been made by Fabergé - like the eggs, you know.'

'A peacock? Are you sure it was a peacock and not a shark?'

'Of course not! I don't know much about wildlife but I do know the difference between an peacock and an octopus and a shark.'

'What's so special about it?' said Amaryllis. 'Apart from it being an antique, of course.'

'That's just the thing,' said the jeweller.

'What?'

Christopher put a drink on the table in front of her. She was too intent on the conversational chase to take a sip from it.

'The thing is,' said Alan, 'it wasn't an antique after all. It was a fake.'

'Are we talking about the octopus?' said Christopher.

'No!' said Amaryllis and Alan at the same time.

'What made you think it was an antique in the first place?' said Amaryllis to the jeweller.

'It's quite embarrassing really,' he said.

'You can tell us anything,' Amaryllis assured him.

'It was Lord Murray of Pitkirtlyhill,' he said. 'He sold it to me personally a few weeks ago. Just appeared in the shop with it. Gave me a little piece of paper with the alleged provenance written on it in copperplate, and said it had been handed down in his family. Well, I'd been looking for something like that for one of my overseas clients so I jumped at it. I wasn't quite as careful with my checks on it as I should have been. And I wouldn't have wanted to contradict his lordship anyway. Of course, I'd have had to look at it very closely before sending it to Dubai. But when the robbery took place I'd only just finished examining it. That morning. And I found I'd been deceived.'

'By Lord Murray of Pitkirtlyhill?' said Amaryllis. 'Are you sure it was him?'

'Well, yes. He had all the paperwork. There was nobody else it could have been. It was a modern copy - quite a good one, but a modern technique had been used that wouldn't have been known to Fabergé, and the stones weren't real.'

'I still don't know what you want us to do,' said Amaryllis.

'I thought you might be able to look into the Lord Murray situation. Discreetly. See if he's been involved in anything else dodgy, or if this is a one-off. I don't want to take any action if he's just some forgetful old man. Not that he's all that old, as it happens. I thought maybe you could get up there and have a word with him. Of course, the weather makes it a bit more difficult.'

'Up there? To Old Pitkirtlyhill House?' said Amaryllis.

'Yes, that's where he lives.'

'It'll be a pleasure,' she said, and heard a faint groan from Christopher.

### Chapter 25 Normal or what?

They were all going home. A mini-bus full of officers from other stations had arrived, not far behind the snow-plough, and in the continuing absence of Inspector Forrester Charlie Smith had to hand over to Inspector Farmer from somewhere just along the coast, who had spent Christmas trapped at home with his family and was now eager to get back to work. He claimed to be disappointed to have been sent, even temporarily, to a backwater like Pitkirtly, but Charlie didn't think he would feel like that for long, not with all this mayhem going on.

It didn't often happen that they handed over to a whole new shift like this, but the little Pitkirtly team had been working solidly for days instead of relieving each other every so often, and they were all due to spend at least a couple of days sleeping and, allegedly, being with their families. It was frustrating to be off the case - off both the cases - especially after the discovery of the golden peacock, but it did make sense.

Despite seeing the sense of it, Charlie was still last aboard the mini-bus for his journey home. There were two reasons for this: one was that he kept remembering more things he had to pass on to Inspector Farmer, and dashing back into the building to tell him, and the other was that he insisted on taking the dog with him and the consensus of opinion on the bus was that they didn't want that smelly old mutt in with them. In the end he had to pull rank to get the driver to agree to having the dog on board. Even then Charlie had to sit segregated from everyone else. Not that there were many once the new shift had decanted at Pitkirtly.

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.'

For 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 over 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.

'Well, don't think about it again. You looked as if you'd just eaten something revolting. Feverfew, or salad cream, something like that.'

'I don't mind salad cream,' said Christopher.

Then they were moving again, and he had to force his eyes to stay open as Dave took another run at the hill. This time he got past that dangerous road junction and by driving in a way that Christopher at least thought was quite skilful, he managed to bring the Land Rover to a halt in more or less the place the Range Rover had come to rest the other night - only without such dramatic results. Rosie swept on past them in her smaller van and up the hill towards the cattery.

'I don't think we're going to get the gate open,' said Christopher. 'We'd better walk the rest of the way.'

'We could try the gate - see if we get buzzed in,' suggested Amaryllis. 'You wait here and I'll just go along there quickly and see if there's any chance of anyone opening up for us.'

She was just getting out of the Land Rover when Christopher said quickly, and without really knowing why, 'Be careful.'

'Aren't I always?'

He stared after her departing figure, his brow wrinkled in a frown.

### Chapter 27 Master of Pitkirtlyhill

Amaryllis didn't intend to go into the grounds on her own, but she found herself moving so fast that even before she had paused to consider a strategy she had already cut another hole in the fence further away from the gate than before, hoping there might be a gap in the security coverage. In some ways it was just as well she had done this on her own: she knew she worked best without other people holding her back.

She had definitely had to leave Dave and Jemima in the Land Rover. It was safer for them, and they could act as backup or even just call or go for backup if necessary. The decision to leave Christopher behind hadn't been quite so clear-cut, and she couldn't help feeling slightly guilty about him. He would either freak out or go into a hurt silence when he found out. Either way, at some later time she would wish she hadn't rushed on ahead. The trouble was that she had constructed a scenario in her mind in which at least one person she knew was involved in the armed robbery, and possibly in the murder of the homeless man too, and she wanted the chance to get it sorted out herself before anyone else came along to interfere. If she had to do something slightly dodgy, the kind of thing where she stood on the line between legality and crime, perhaps even edging one toe over the line, she didn't want Christopher around to act as her conscience. She knew that, although he seemed vague and woolly at times - well, all the time, to be honest - he had a very much more inflexible attitude than she did to what was legal and what wasn't.

Justifying her actions to herself took up most of the time that she spent dodging through the vegetation at the other side of the fence, moving fast, trying to think like a wild animal that skimmed across the surface of the snow. It was still soft and untrodden in here where no traffic pounded it down into a solid lump of ice. The scrubby little bushes which the deer had undoubtedly been ravaging came to an end at the side of the drive that she knew led up to the house. She had to walk up the drive from here or dart across the open space that would usually be carpeted with rough grass but at the moment was covered in a thick blanket of snow. She was reluctant even to leave footsteps on it to show the path she had taken, although she was reasonably sure the cameras would have picked her up somewhere by now anyway. She shivered suddenly. She had borrowed a parka from Dave, wearing it over several layers of jumpers and the PI vest to fill out its cavernous space, but it was quite an old one without all the scientifically researched layers of fabric and down that her own one had, and it wasn't entirely fit for purpose.

She had almost decided that the homeless man had been one of the armed robbers. She remembered that he had limped and that the golden peacock had been found in the Land Rover after his body had been transported in it. His motive must have been simple desperation. Amaryllis wondered if perhaps he had got to know his accomplice in the army. She knew there were cases of men who came out of the army and couldn't cope with civilian life and ended up homeless. He might even have arrived in Pitkirtly because he knew his old comrade was there, and then either not managed to meet up with his friend or been turned away by him. No, that wouldn't work if they had then linked up to plan and carry out the robbery. Maybe it was after the robbery that he started sleeping rough. But that didn't work either, because people had seen him around town before that - hadn't they? And also, once the robbery was done, in theory the conspirators would be rich and wouldn't have to sleep on the streets.

She frowned as she circled the house, keeping within the scrubland area, looking for the best way in.

It didn't entirely add up. And yet, if it didn't, then how did the homeless man get hold of the golden peacock?

Conscious that she still had more questions than answers in her mind, she knew she had to concentrate on finding a way into the house and if possible collecting more evidence and then getting out without being caught. This wasn't what the jeweller had in mind when he asked her to have a word with Lord Murray. But then, the jeweller probably didn't imagine that Lord Murray himself was the victim of theft either. She felt he could have been a bit more careful about who he was buying from, though. Had he been over-awed by the mention of a title? Or simply dazzled by the sight of the peacock?

At one point, the night before, Amaryllis had been doubtful about whether Lord Murray even existed. But she had done a bit of research online which had reassured her. He didn't very often go outside the boundaries of his estate and was sometimes described in the papers as 'the reclusive Lord Murray' which seemed appropriate enough. His gamekeeper, on the other hand, wasn't mentioned at all online. Perhaps he was the one who didn't exist.

At last! She had found that the house was built into the slope of a hill, as almost any house would have to be around here, and that there were more storeys at the front than the back, which was the reason for the impressive steps up to the front door. At the back, where the lowest storey almost disappeared into the ground, one of the windows wasn't closed properly. She headed for it, crossing the open ground to the house in a weaving gallop which she hoped would minimise the risk of being picked up on camera, although she knew that if anyone was watching the screens in the security room constantly they were certain to spot her.

She was halfway through the window, having prised it fully open with the wire-cutters, when she heard a voice behind her.

'Nice of you to drop in again, Miss Peebles.'

Firm hands wrapped themselves round her legs, which were flapping around in mid-air in an undignified way as she wriggled through the window, and pulled her backwards, setting her down carefully in the snow.

She turned to face Mal.

'You've got some nerve, breaking in during daylight hours,' he said. His face was transformed by a sneer into being dark and sinister. 'You'd better come this way.'

Oh dear, thought Amaryllis, I've put myself and others in danger again. Just what Charlie Smith keeps telling me not to do. She braced herself to overpower Mal. It wouldn't be easy, but it should be possible. He didn't have a gun trained on her, after all. Just as well since she was only armed with wire-cutters.

Of course, she still didn't know if he was only being stern with a trespasser who had caused damage to the fence, in his fairly legitimate gamekeeper's son role, or if he had a more sinister reason for marching her in through the back door, which was at the foot of some rather dangerous, slippery stone steps, and then along a dark corridor where closed doors stood at intervals like blank-faced sentinels. But she already had her suspicions of him, so she was prepared for the worst, or so she thought.

He kicked a door open, and shoved her into a room. She heard the door close and lock behind her. It was pitch dark, and she couldn't find a light switch, although she felt along each wall in turn. It wasn't a large room and she decided it might be a cellar. This suspicion was confirmed when she stumbled into some racking which didn't so much rattle as clank, as if laden with bottles. A wine cellar, then. Oh well, at least I can drink myself into oblivion, she thought, and immediately discarded the idea. She had to keep a clear head and remain focussed, otherwise she wouldn't be able to fight her way out when he came back.

If he came back, said the small, frightened part of her brain that she usually managed to keep well under control. And what about the spiders?

'Spiders?' she said out loud into the darkness.

There was a groan from somewhere in the room. She jumped almost out of her skin. Visions of hideous monsters, of vampires kept in coffins from which they only emerged at night, and -

'Stop it, you idiot,' she told herself, and realised she had spoken aloud again. 'Who's that?'

Another groan. 'I don't know.'

'No, I don't know. You're the one who's supposed to know,' she said accusingly.

'Oh. Let me think. Alastair Murray. At your service.'

She paused for a moment, trying to work it out. 'Are you Lord Murray of Pitkirtlyhill?'

'I am. At least I think so. My head's hurting. I'm a bit fuzzy round the edges. Sorry.'

'It's not your fault.'

As they spoke she had been working her way over to the source of his voice. She bumped into more racking, then kicked something softer. He groaned again.

'That was me,' he said, still sounding not quite all there.

'I'm Amaryllis Peebles,' she said clearly, hoping he might recognise her name and draw the appropriate conclusions.

But he just said, 'Delighted to meet you, my dear.'

She tried to recall everything she knew about him. The main thing, of course, was that he had once been the owner of the golden peacock, so she decided to start with that and to hope that all other relevant facts could be extracted from him as she went along, preferably before Mal came back. She would keep an ear open for that too.

'Did you once own a golden peacock said to have been made by Fabergé?' she said.

'What is this, an interrogation?' he mumbled. There was a shift in the air and a sort of scraping sound as, she imagined, he tried to drag himself upright. 'Not in the police, are you?'

'No! Certainly not.'

'Hard to tell these days... Yes, we had the golden peacock. My grandfather insisted it came from the Romanov collection but there was a lot of confusion about that.'

'And you sold it in a jeweller's shop in Pitkirtly not long before Christmas?' she enquired, realising how unlikely that would seem to him with his cultured English accent and old-fashioned mannerisms.

He laughed. 'No, I certainly did not sell the golden peacock in Pitkirtly. If I had wished to dispose of it, I would have used our family jewellers' in Knightsbridge. I don't believe I've ever set foot in a jeweller's shop in Pitkirtly - I didn't even know there was one. I only go there once in a blue moon, of course. Church services sometimes, school prize-giving occasionally. Not for shopping.'

He probably got all his food delivered in hampers from Fortnum and Mason's, she thought, and immediately scolded herself for being such an inverted snob.

'I've been doing all my food shopping online lately,' he added calmly, shattering the stereotype. 'One of those supermarkets. They bring it in their own brand plastic bags - bad for the planet, useful for putting out the rubbish.'

'So if someone sold the golden peacock in Pitkirtly, it wasn't with your consent or approval?'

'No, certainly not! Apart from anything else,' he said, 'it would have been a fraudulent transaction. The peacock was fake.'

'Fake?'

'There may have been a golden peacock from Fabergé in our family at one time, but the one we have now - or had, if you're right about it being sold - certainly wasn't genuine.'

'Do you have any idea when the fake was substituted? If your family ever had the real one in the first place, that is.'

'Oh, we had records that suggest it was real when it came to us,' he said. 'But the last time I looked at it closely a year or so ago, I realised it wasn't. The stones were wrong. I asked a friend who has expert knowledge and he confirmed it.'

She couldn't see his face in the darkness, but his voice had a kind of sad, resigned tone about it, and she wondered if he had known all along that someone in his own family had made the substitution, sold the real one and kept all the proceeds.

'Was it -?' she started to ask.

The door swung open suddenly, and Amaryllis half-turned and saw a figure outlined against the dim light from the corridor.

'Well, this is a cosy little scene,' said Mal. 'I see you've introduced yourself to my big brother.'

'Your brother?'

'Yes. Who did you think I was - the butler?' He laughed without any warmth in his voice.

'So you've met Malcolm before?' said Lord Murray. He had very little expression in his voice.

'Yes,' she said, trying to equal his lack of expressiveness with her own, although she was afraid her surprise had already worked its way through into her speech. It would have been better if she could have pretended to know a bit more than she actually did. It would have given her a bit more of an edge. Now all she had to rely on was her martial arts skills combined with some other kinds of fighting that often produced results more quickly but in a less orthodox way. She would also have preferred that Jimbo hadn't known Mal and hadn't told him about her past. She had lost the element of surprise that was sometimes on her side. But of course Mal didn't know the extent to which she had kept her skills up to date since leaving the intelligence service.

Amaryllis balanced on the balls of her feet, geared up for fight or flight. Which was it to be?

### Chapter 28 Cavalry or rearguard?

Charlie Smith wasn't far along the road when he wished he hadn't bothered to come out. He glanced at the dog, which sat up on the front passenger seat of his boring Vauxhall saloon as if it had been doing so for years. Even the dog seemed to be on edge, staring at the ridges in the road as if they were hurdles the car had to jump. Some stretches were a lot like that. It wasn't doing his suspension any good, not to mention his nerves. He found himself tensing up whenever another car came in sight - not that it happened very often, since only an idiot would be driving around Fife on a day like this - and then relaxing, letting his concentration drift and allowing the car, its steering flaky at the best of times, to head straight for the next snow-hole.

How much further to the turning? Was there any chance Lord Murray would be at home and not just his butler or gamekeeper or whoever? Maybe he himself had headed south for the winter, to Cannes, Montpellier or Barcelona as Charlie admitted he would have done if he could afford it and if he hadn't had to be on duty thanks to Inspector Forrester's indulgence in selfish pleasure.

He smiled. He knew perfectly well he would have been the first one to turn up at the station begging to be allowed to help once the armed robbery had taken place, and as for the murder... He hoped Inspector Farmer was taking that seriously. The victim may have been homeless but that didn't mean he was worthless.

He overshot the turning and had to go right round the roundabout just ahead and come back to it. This was the best thing to do anyway, since it meant he could take a better run at the slope of the side road.

There was a Land Rover parked by the woods, just past the Old Pitkirtlyhill House driveway. It was up on the verge but he didn't think it was in trouble. He did, however, recognise the three passengers, something which gave him no pleasure, just a sinking feeling. Especially when he established that Amaryllis wasn't one of them.

'Where is she?' he growled as Christopher wound down the window.

'Um,' said Christopher.

'Go on, tell me! I need to know before I go barging in there. Goodness knows why she had to go and meddle in my case.'

'I didn't think it was your case any more,' said Christopher tentatively. 'And she's not meddling - she's following up on something for a client.'

'A client?'

'The jeweller. He thought she should come and speak to Lord Murray.'

'But I've come to speak to Lord Murray!'

Charlie Smith kicked the Land Rover tyre. It felt quite a lot more solid than his foot, even in his protective boots.

'It's no use getting in a state,' said Jemima reprovingly from the front passenger window.

'I'm not getting in a state!' yelled Charlie. The sound seemed to echo round the snow-laden trees, and it caused a minor avalanche from the leaning branch of a tall spindly rowan.

'I'll come into the house with you if you want,' offered Christopher.

That didn't help.

'How long has she been in there?' said Charlie.

Christopher looked at his watch. 'Hmm, an hour and a half. We were just wondering whether to go in after her. It could take her a while just to walk up and down the drive with all the snow lying about.'

'Borderline,' said Charlie.

'What do you mean?'

'Hard to tell whether to be worried or not. On balance, I think we should be worried. Do you want to scout round the back? Just in case there's something going on?'

He thought Christopher probably regretted even offering to go in with him now. He was angry with himself for not bringing someone with him. Apart from the dog, of course. He glanced back at the dog, still sitting in the front seat of the Vauxhall in a stately way.

'Would you mind if the dog came in here with you?' he said to Dave and Jemima. 'This is what I'd like you to do...'

A few minutes later, once he had explained himself, he and Christopher watched as Dave, Jemima and the dog disappeared up the hill in the Land Rover at a speed that would have been ridiculous on a narrow road except that nobody would have managed to get up it otherwise in those conditions.

'Thank goodness for that,' said Christopher. 'I didn't like having them along in the first place, but if things have gone pear-shaped, it's even worse.'

'I agree,' said Charlie. 'We don't want to have to worry about them. They'll be safer up at the cattery. Let's get going.'

He sent Christopher to walk the length of the fence and see if there was a gap further round. It would take him an hour or so, and by then Charlie hoped it would all be over. Whatever it was. He had radioed in for backup, but he knew it would be while coming. They didn't have many officers to spare, and after all he only had a vague feeling things were coming to a crisis point. He had very little actual evidence that this was the case.

Following Christopher for twenty metres or so round the perimeter, he discovered a gap in the fence where it had been cut with wire-cutters, and he hopped through. There was sort of scrubland at the other side. He walked forward through the small trees and bushes. The ground was covered in snow but every so often clumps of tall wild grass stuck up through it. In places it had drifted against tree-trunks. He hoped he wouldn't fall into a drift. He didn't want to appear at Lord Murray's door looking ridiculous - not that it would make any difference, of course. Except that he would prefer to deal with the situation with calm confidence.

By this time the sky had darkened and it had started to snow again, at first half-heartedly and then heavily. There was an open stretch just before the house loomed up ahead. It was in the Georgian style, not an old-fashioned Scottish tower house, and a flight of stone steps curved up towards what must be the front door. As an officer of the law, he felt he should march up to the door and demand to have his questions answered. As a suspicious man, he was reluctant to do that but he told himself not to be so silly. Maybe if he had followed through his earlier intention and questioned the owner then, things would have been straightened out before now. And then the homeless man might not have died, and the dog would still be with him. Approaching the house, every instinct advising him in the strongest possible terms to turn and run for it, he considered whether that would be a good thing or not.

The door opened when he was halfway up the steps, and a man came out on to the paved area at the top, behind a carved balustrade. This must be the gamekeeper's son: it couldn't be Lord Murray. Not when he was wearing leathers and looking so dangerous.

Charlie was annoyed to have lost the element of surprise, although he couldn't have said why.

'Lord Murray?' he asked politely, taking it easy up the remaining steps, because he didn't want to fall flat on his face. He had the sense that he was already at enough of a disadvantage compared to this man.

'I'm afraid Lord Murray isn't at home,' said the man, unsmiling. He reminded Charlie of a soldier on guard. Perhaps he had even been a soldier.

'Do you know when he might be back?' said Charlie, but without feeling much hope.

'I'm not sure,' said the man. He seemed to want to keep Charlie waiting on the door-step.

'I need to speak to him on urgent police business,' said Charlie.

'Oh, really?' There was a bored, sneering tone in the man's voice that he really didn't like very much. 'Maybe I could give him a message?'

'It's confidential,' said Charlie, standing his ground. 'I can only discuss it with Lord Murray himself. Is he away from home at the moment?'

Perhaps the man had indeed gone south for the winter, in search of warmth or even just to get away from this family retainer, if that was what he was. He had another thought and added, 'Are you in charge here while he's away?'

'Not exactly,' said the man in leathers with a faint, unpleasant smile.

Suddenly his gaze strayed away from Charlie's face, out over the grounds. Charlie half-turned to see what he was looking at. Someone was approaching fast, on skis. Who was this? Lord Murray himself? Another of the staff?

'Good way to cover the ground,' he commented, wishing he could ski and yet knowing he had always shunned the sport because he didn't see the point in courting danger just for fun.

'Hey, Mal!' called the man on the skis. 'Who's your friend then?'

The man on the door-step looked enquiringly at Charlie, who remembered he hadn't produced any identification or introduced himself properly. He had allowed this other man to set the agenda. He pulled out his identity card and showed it. 'Chief Inspector Smith. West Fife police.'

There was a whoosh, presumably as the other man skied up to the foot of the steps, and then some snaps and clicks which could have been him unfastening and removing the skis.

'Why don't you go round the back with these, Jimmy?' said Mal sharply. But a moment later there were footsteps coming up the steps which Charlie tried to ignore. He was watching Mal for any sign of alarm or guilt.

If he hadn't been doing this, he might have been in a better position to defend himself, but as it was, when the heavy weight came down on the back of his head, he just felt the unbearable pain and crumpled instantaneously to the step. And knew nothing more.

### Chapter 29 Rescuing the rescuer

Christopher suspected Chief Inspector Smith had sent him on a wild-goose chase to keep him out of the way in case anything went wrong. At least he hadn't suffered the ignominy of being packed off to the cattery with Dave, Jemima and the dog. He plodded through the snow, keeping the fence immediately to his left. After a while it curved round away from him, and he followed it doggedly.

He was depressed to see the sky darkening and the snow beginning again. What if Dave and Jemima got stuck at the cattery? Did Rosie have enough food for all of them, or would they have to ration it - or start to eat the animals? This idea amused him for about five seconds, and then he started to worry again. Why had Amaryllis been away so long? Perhaps Lord Murray had offered refreshments. He pictured the two of them sitting on hard but elegant chairs, one at each side of a small fire, a worn but expensive Persian rug between them, sipping Earl Grey tea from old-fashioned china cups. There might even be cucumber sandwiches. He knew this was a trick by his mind to divert him from more sinister thoughts. Amaryllis must have had her suspicions that everything wasn't above board at Old Pitkirtlyhill House, or she would never have agreed to come up here in the first place.

He couldn't quite work it out himself, unless she thought Mal hadn't been entirely honest with them when they had met him here. Few things would have pleased Christopher more than finding out that Mal was a crook, and yet contrarily, knowing this was just based on gut instinct and jealousy made him more reluctant to accept it without evidence. He would have thought her friend Jimbo was more likely to be in the frame for the murder of the homeless man, since they had witnessed Jimbo speaking to the man as he went up the hill at the end of Amaryllis's cul de sac. And yet Jimbo was a bona fide member of the armed forces with a cast-iron reason for being in the vicinity. Whereas they still weren't sure how Mal had come to be in the old house....

The fence changed from being a tall structure with spikes on the top which somehow made him think of dinosaurs into a low wooden one, apparently much less threatening. But he saw when he approached it that it had a wire running along the top with a little sign saying it was electrified. For one wild moment he entertained the idea of taking a run up and vaulting over it.

At least this made him smile again.

He trudged on, still following the line of the fence even when it led him through a bramble patch as it had done once or twice so far. The snow was coming down more solidly now, and he couldn't see more than a few metres ahead because it was blowing right across his path. Even if he had been able to see the house from this angle, which was doubtful in any case, it would have been rendered invisible by this whiteout. He hoped Dave and Jemima had got up the road to the cattery before it had developed fully.

It was at this point, isolated from the rest of humanity by the blizzard, unsure of where he was going and of whether he was due to walk into danger some time soon, that he reached into the pocket of his parka and took out his mobile phone, on this occasion fully charged up and, as he discovered when he switched it on, fully operational. He smiled again as he replaced it in his pocket. At least this time he hadn't left it on the kitchen table. He had a live link to the outside world after all.

Almost as if the phone had been a lucky talisman, almost immediately after this he came to a stile. In normal circumstances he would have hesitated even then: but if Amaryllis was in trouble, which he had a horrible feeling she was, he had to do something to help. He batted aside his reservations about whether he would be any use against ruthless men, possibly armed with guns, and his feeling that he might get in the way or even just commit some hideous social faux pas. None of these thoughts were at all relevant.

He heaved himself up on to the first step of the stile. A deer stood at the other side, watching with what he could only think of as derision. He clapped his hands in their heavy gloves.

'Shoo!' he called, and the deer left. It tiptoed unhurriedly through the snow and eventually vanished from sight among the spindly birches and rowans, which had only now themselves become visible in a gap in the blizzard. He hoped it hadn't gone to fetch reinforcements. He wasn't sure how many deer constituted a herd and whether he could just push through them or if they would gang up on him.

This was so typical! He might have to face armed robbers any minute and he was worrying about a herd of deer. Christopher realised all over again that he really wasn't suited to this kind of activity. He thought back fondly to the time he had helped Jemima unravel her family history in the library: that was where his strengths lay.

As he struggled over the top of the stile, slipping on the steps and clinging on to the sides to stop himself falling, he thought he heard a shout and a crash in the middle distance. Oh, great, someone had spotted him. But, glancing over in what he fervently hoped was the direction of the house, he found he could still only see about fifty metres ahead, so it seemed unlikely anyone had seen him, unless perhaps the security cameras happened to point over this way. But was this a fruitless quest anyway? He wondered if he might be better to go back, call Dave and Jemima and see if they had sent for reinforcements. After all, if the police did come along they would need somebody on hand to guide them quickly to the house, and if he stationed himself by the main gate...

But what would Amaryllis do?

He wouldn't usually have bothered asking himself this question. It must be the extreme weather that was making everything seem urgent and somehow bigger, as if real life had suddenly turned into some sort of Nordic saga, or Russian epic along the lines of War and Peace. He would have to change his name to Kristoforovsky in the latter case, he joked to himself.

Somehow smiling propelled him onwards through the tundra, instead of back over the stile in ignominious retreat. He didn't think he had the depth for a character from Tolstoy. Making himself smile would have been frowned on, for a start.

He started as a face suddenly popped round a tree trunk a few metres ahead - and relaxed as he saw it was another deer looking at him. Would the police, when they came, find him wandering around in a state of paranoia, convinced animals were watching him round every corner? There was something about the snow and the deer and indeed the whole situation that made him feel as if he were in a different world.

The falling snow had one big advantage, but he didn't realise that until it slowed to a few flakes and then stopped altogether. It had hidden him from observers, but it had also concealed from him how close he was getting to his target. He could now see the back of the house through the remaining vegetation - and he knew anyone looking out from there would be able to see him too.

He would have lurked for much longer at the edge of the scrubland, except that two things happened in fairly quick succession as he hesitated.

The first thing was that two men appeared round the end of the house, carrying something between them. It seemed at first like a sack of something heavy, because they were laboring over the task and it sagged in the middle between them. As they came closer, he saw that it was a person in a big jacket - a lot like Chief Inspector Smith's big jacket, in fact. Christopher weighed up the chances of someone else wearing Mr Smith's jacket and decided it was rather unlikely. So his hunch that something was badly wrong had been correct, but that wouldn't be of much use to him now.

One of the men walked unsteadily, with a bit of a limp. His mind flew to Mal, who had been around the last time they were here. The other looked vaguely familiar too. What was going on here? Crouching now behind a Christmas tree that grew near the edge of the wild area, he rapidly discounted the possibility that Charlie Smith had fallen accidentally somewhere in the grounds and they were bringing him round to the back of the house for medical attention. That didn't leave very many other possibilities. If they were desperate enough to attack a police officer, then he certainly didn't want to confront them.

He thought one of them had said something - or maybe it was just Charlie Smith groaning.

Then he heard a couple of words - they sounded like 'Pitkirtly fireworks', but that was so weird that he didn't really believe his ears.

Then loud laughter and 'set the charges, then,' from one of the man. Again, he didn't know whether to believe the evidence of his senses. He hoped they were deceiving him, since his mind leapt to explosions, perhaps because he knew Mal at least had once been a soldier. That was it. Now he knew it was all in his mind. He breathed a small sigh of relief, but lurked behind the tree just in case. He wondered if the aristocracy planted out their Christmas trees after using them just as some normal people did, in the hope they would take root properly. He remembered his father once planting out a Christmas tree and then having to chop it down a few years later because it had grown so big and towered over his sweet peas.

Why was he even thinking about sweet peas at a time like this? He peered out from behind the tree again. They had disappeared into the cellars, if these were the rooms accessible through the open door he could see. It must be confusing having doors at different levels like this. It might be useful to have cellars, though.

He knew his thoughts were rambling to avoid focussing on the crux of the matter.

The other man had looked vaguely familiar. He pictured Jimbo as he had last seen him, climbing the hill outside Amaryllis's flat sideways on his skis in that clever way that skiers had. And talking to the homeless man. This time an alarm bell definitely rang in Christopher's mind. It wasn't that he didn't believe in coincidence - he came across evidence of random occurrences being related to each other every day - but suddenly all the unusual things that had happened in Pitkirtly over the past few days had linked themselves together in a pattern. He couldn't quite work out what pattern they were making, but it was almost certainly a dark, sinister Gothic one and not just a harmless Paisley.

He heard voices again, and kept well behind the tree for a few minutes until he judged that they were now coming from further away. He peered out again. The two men were walking away round the corner of the house, leaving a new set of tracks in the snow. No sign of Charlie Smith now. He wondered if the men were planning on returning to the back of the house any time soon.

It took him a while to get himself out from behind the tree. He knew Amaryllis would have done it much more quickly. He pushed the thought of Amaryllis further down in his mind. It wouldn't help if he got emotional about this; he had to think rationally.

Then he heard a muffled bang from the back of the house, and reason went out the window.

He sprung out from behind the tree and headed out into the open, trying to run across the snow but failing miserably as his feet in their winter boots sank into it, collecting ice on their soles and weighing him down. He flung himself at the wall of the house when he got to it, clinging on and trying to merge into the stone. There was smoke now billowing from what he imagined was either the back door or a separate entrance to the cellars. Pushing all his instincts aside, he headed straight for it.

As he went in, he bumped into someone heading out. Someone who was dragging a dead weight behind her.

'Help me with Charlie,' she said irritably. 'I've got to go back for Lord Murray.'

He pushed her aside and went on into the smoke.

'Just get out,' he said over his shoulder, coughing. 'I'll be back.'

### Chapter 30 Alive and Kicking

Amaryllis hated not knowing what was going on, and she hated even more that Mal had overpowered her and left her lying around the wine cellar like a substandard bottle of claret. But as soon as she came round, she became determined not to stay there long enough to get covered in cobwebs.

'Lord Murray? Are you still there?'

'Yes, but he's tied me up, I'm afraid.'

Amaryllis, trying to move, realised for the first time since regaining consciousness that she was also tied up, and groaned. Although being tied up was only a nuisance and not a disaster, it would hold her up in any attempt to get out of here.

'Just a minute,' she said, resigned. 'I'll just get myself free and then we can see about forcing that door.'

'That door's six inches thick,' said Lord Murray. 'How are you going to get through that? It's one of the original doors. And there's one of these slit windows somewhere but no-one could possibly wriggle through it..'

Just don't start on original features and mullioned windows and planning permission, thought Amaryllis, using a technique she had learned during her professional career to loosen and finally break free of the rope that was tied round her wrists. She undid her ankles too and, after wiggling her hands and feet about to restore full movement, she went over to Lord Murray. She tried not to puzzle over what was really happening here; instead she concentrated for a few minutes on getting him on his feet. He had been tied to an old empty wine rack, and she realised as he lumbered to his feet that he must have been in that position for some time.

'Better do a few stretches now,' she advised, and headed for the door to make a preliminary assault on it.

Yes, it was old and thick, but she was confident she could find a way through.

After a while she was conscious that he was so close behind her that he was almost breathing down her neck. She couldn't exactly complain he was standing in her light, since the available light was so dim it was almost negligible, but she definitely felt crowded. She turned towards him and said, 'Would you mind taking a step back, please? I need a bit of space to do this.'

'What are you doing? You do know that's an original door, don't you? I don't want it damaged.'

'We've got to get out of here,' she said, calling up her not very extensive reserves of patience. 'If he comes back -'

'Who, Mal?' He laughed. 'Mal's just playing games with us. He wouldn't really hurt me. He's got bigger fish to fry, anyway.' He seemed to think about it for a moment, then he added, 'Maybe literally.'

What was the idiot talking about? She gave up on the lock. She would have to kick the door in. Never mind not damaging it. Amaryllis was more concerned about whether Mal would be back to damage her again before she could get out of here. If Lord Murray didn't believe his brother would hurt him, he was welcome to stick around and find out.

'Can you please stand back? I'm going to kick the door, and I need more space.'

'Kick the door?' his voice squeaked to a crescendo.

'Go and stand over there. By the wine-racks. Don't move until I get the door open,' she ordered him firmly. To her surprise, he stumbled off again, his feet catching on aged flagstones as he went.

She tried a tentative kick. But tentative wasn't going to work, she knew that already. She took a deep breath, tensed her muscles appropriately, and went for it with all guns blazing - figuratively. If she had really had all guns blazing she could definitely have blasted her way out of here a lot more quickly.

She jarred her leg almost unbearably against the solid oak of the door. Paused for breath. Had anyone called for reinforcements yet? She would be very happy if the cavalry - or its modern equivalent - were to come galloping over the hill at this point.

She kicked the door again with her other foot in annoyance, not putting much effort into it. The door swung open. The lock must have been fatally weakened by that first, stronger kick.

As she peered out into the dim light that filtered down the corridor from the back door, she heard voices, not far away. She was sure she heard the word 'fireworks', but it wasn't quite clear, and she couldn't think what its significance was. There was laughter immediately after this and some more words to do with setting charges. But she didn't really listen to the words: the voice alone transfixed her. One of the men out there was her old friend Jimbo, or at least someone who sounded very like him. The other one, she thought, must be Mal.

They were approaching from outside, breathing heavily as if they had been running. As she cowered back into the doorway of the wine-cellar, they flung something down in the corridor. She had imagined they might check on their captives in the wine-cellar, but they didn't seem to be lingering here.

Suddenly, while Amaryllis still lurked in the shadows, there was a smallish explosion and smoke billowed along the corridor. They must have thrown something in as they left: either a relatively harmless smoke bomb - if you didn't count the effects of smoke inhalation - or some sort of small grenade, which could do worse damage.

She hissed in the general direction of Lord Murray, who was still obediently loitering in the deep shadows, 'Come on - we've got to get out now.'

She didn't wait for him, but headed for the door to the outside world. Even if Mal and - possibly - Jimbo waited out there, there was a chance that she could get past them. She didn't want to wait for another, more powerful explosion, which was what she would have arranged if she had been setting something off, or to be overcome by smoke.

She thought she was close to the door when she fell over something on the floor. It was soft, and groaned faintly when she fell on top of it. It was Charlie Smith.

Almost as soon as she started to drag him towards the open air, someone else ran in from that direction.

'Help me with Charlie,' she said brusquely. 'I've got to go back for Lord Murray.'

To her surprise, he pushed her out of the way, muttered something like 'I'll be back' and disappeared, coughing, into the smoke. She had never seen Christopher put himself in danger with quite so much determination.

She thought there was no point in all of them blundering around in the semi-darkness and breathing in smoke, so she completed her task of dragging Charlie Smith outside, put him in the recovery position behind an overgrown Christmas tree at the edge of the scrubland, and was about to return to the fray when two things happened.

One was that a helicopter came into view round at the front of the house, and landed on what would have been the front lawn if it hadn't been covered with snow. The other was that Christopher emerged from the back of the house, coughing like mad but managing to support a portly middle-aged man in jeans and a holey jumper, who looked like a tramp but who, she now knew, was a minor member of the aristocracy.

### Chapter 31 Going Up

When he opened his eyes, Charlie Smith thought he had fallen through a warp in the space-time continuum into another dimension. He was sure he could hear a helicopter - or was it just the buzzing in his head? As he struggled to his feet Amaryllis said in a satisfied tone, 'Jemima and Dave are behind this!' He was so befuddled that he found himself straining his eyes to see if he could spot Mr and Mrs Douglas lurking in the bushes at the other side of the helicopter as it decanted a small group of armed, uniformed men who went straight into a classic formation, fanning out to cover the whole area around the house.

'What?' he asked blearily, and coughed.

'Take it easy, you may have inhaled some smoke,' Amaryllis warned him. She didn't seem to be rushing to join in with the operation, whatever it was, but was fussing over Christopher and another man who had both collapsed in the snow not far away.

There were sirens in the distance. In his befuddled state Charlie struggled to distinguish between police and ambulance, police and fire service.

'Good, they're on their way,' said Amaryllis. She pushed Christopher back down as he tried to stand up. 'Stay there until the paramedics have checked you out.'

'I didn't - I forgot to call,' said Christopher, hoarse and gasping for breath.

'Sssh - you might need some oxygen,' she said. 'It looks as if Jemima and Dave called for backup.'

The other man wasn't so determined to get up. He lay with his eyes open, watching them and wheezing.

'This is Lord Murray, by the way,' said Amaryllis to Charlie. 'I don't think this is the best time to speak to him. But you might catch him later on. Once all this is finished.'

'What was that about Pitkirtly and fireworks?' said Christopher suddenly.

'Did you hear it too?' said Amaryllis. 'Was there something else about setting charges?'

He nodded, set himself off coughing again, and gave up trying to speak.

Amaryllis frowned. 'There's something funny about all this... I thought the setting charges bit must be to do with what they did in there -' she waved her hand towards the back of the house, where the smoke had died down a bit but, even more ominously, flames now shot out through the door, and as they watched, a window caved in and they saw fire inside the room too. Charlie shuddered as he thought about what might have happened. But Amaryllis didn't seem to want to waste time worrying about that. She continued, 'Are you sure they said Pitkirtly?'

'Well it might have been Timbuktu, I suppose,' said Christopher, in the middle of a coughing fit, with a trace of his usual sarcasm.

'Don't try and talk any more,' Amaryllis told him brusquely. 'I don't know... Jimbo told us he was guarding Longannet against a possible terrorist attack. It did seem a bit unlikely at the time, and what's that got to do with fireworks anyway?'

Her voice tailed off as one of the uniformed men approached. She took him aside, out of earshot, and Charlie saw her talking with great animation and many gestures. At first he seemed to be listening in patient resignation, but after a while he became alert, like a dog pricking up its ears, and eventually he and Amaryllis went off together. Charlie felt suddenly tired, leaned against a tree and closed his eyes. By the time she came back he was more or less asleep on his feet.

'They've found ski tracks. They'll take the chopper away and look for the two men,' she told Charlie.

'Oh, God, I'm tired,' he said, yawning.

She gave him a look. 'Don't you want to know about the island?'

'Oh, all right, what about it?'

Christopher, still coughing, sat up with a struggle, and seemed to be listening. Lord Murray was still just lying there.

'There's been a ransom demand,' she told them. 'They think it's to do with Longannet – the power station. Unless we give them lots of money and a safe conduct they'll detonate charges they've planted in the old mine tunnels and blow it up.'

There was a stunned silence. Then Christopher started to cough and wheeze in alarm. Charlie felt a shiver of panic ripple through his body. He noticed how stupid Christopher looked as he turned a shocked gaze on Amaryllis, and decided to make an effort not to appear quite so stupid himself. He thought of an intelligent question.

'So was Longannet mentioned in the demand?'

'Not exactly. They just said they would blow the whole place sky-high and the fires would be seen for miles around.'

'The whole place?' Charlie queried.

Amaryllis shrugged.

'They assumed it was about Longannet – nothing else around here would have the same impact.'

'So,' said Charlies, 'this demand - how did it come in?'

'Mobile phone - not used before or since. Around twelve today. They must have been quite confident of getting into position before anyone did anything. They didn't know they'd have to deal with us, though. That was a mistake. They should have secured the perimeter before they sent the demand.'

Her voice held a note of triumph which was, Charlie thought, a little bit premature.

'Not over yet,' said Christopher, speaking with difficulty.

'Do they know what sort of damage that would do?' asked Charlie in a low voice. He didn't particularly want Christopher and Lord Murray to overhear.

Amaryllis frowned at him. 'Wait,' she mouthed.

'Damage?' wheezed Christopher. 'What about Pitkirtly? How much damage?'

'You need some help,' said Amaryllis, fixing him with a stare. 'Hey!' she called to a couple of paramedics who had just emerged from a newly arrived ambulance. 'Over here!'

'But why?' said Charlie. 'Why would they want to do that? What's in it for them?'

The fire brigade arrived just then, making their way through the snow with some difficulty; two fire engines skidded to a halt by the back door of the house and the firemen began work.

Just when Charlie thought there was nobody left to come along, a small van pulled up alongside them and the woman from the cattery tumbled out of the driving seat, followed closely by Jock McLean from the passenger side. By this time the paramedics had whisked Christopher and Lord Murray away to the ambulance where they were receiving treatment for smoke inhalation. Charlie felt he was fortunate not to have suffered too badly from it, but then, according to Amaryllis he had been dumped close to the door and she had got him out fairly quickly. She herself seemed immune to that kind of thing.

'Here, wasn't that his lordship?' said Jock McLean, jerking an irreverent thumb towards the ambulance.

'Do you mean Christopher?' said Amaryllis.

Jock snorted in his usual inelegant way. 'No, course not. Lord Murray, that's the one. He gave out prizes at the school every year - until some idiot decided prizes weren't fair. I can tell you what wasn't fair - depriving the whole school of the extra couple of hours of freedom we got from going home early on prize-giving day.

Fortunately Amaryllis, who had received some sort of a signal from one of the armed men - were they army or Special Branch? Charlie asked himself - interrupted Jock's random reminiscences. Otherwise Charlie realised there was a good chance Jock would drive his companions to do something desperate such as covering him with snow and leaving him to stand there with his pipe still clamped between his teeth like a hideously moth-eaten snowman.

'Charlie - would you be ok to come with me in the helicopter? I've hitched a lift – to help them spot Jimbo and Mal. And then to see how it all works out.'

'OK,' he said, hoping he wouldn't regret it later.

And so it was that he unexpectedly got an aerial view of Pitkirtly and its environs as the helicopter defied gravity to lift itself into the air and swing out over the trees, its occupants keeping their eyes peeled for two men crossing the snow below. He hadn't realised before how many trees there were between Old Pitkirtlyhill House and the town of Pitkirtly, but then of course he hadn't had any reason to think about it before.

### Chapter 32 Confessions of a minor peer

After what seemed like a lot of time-wasting by the paramedics, although they were probably either waiting for more casualties or trying to find out which hospital to go to, Christopher and Lord Murray were whisked away by ambulance. It was an unnerving experience because, as they soon found out, ambulances didn't handle any better than any other vehicle under these conditions. Christopher almost wished they could have gone by helicopter instead, although he knew he would only have embarrassed himself by being sick or having a panic attack.

Neither of them was ill enough to justify the sirens, and the paramedic who was with them spent most of the journey leaning into the front of the ambulance and making jokes with his colleague who was driving.

After a while Lord Murray pushed aside his oxygen mask and said, 'You don't think they'll really be stupid enough to blow anything up, do you?'

'Mmhm,' mumbled Christopher. He pushed aside his mask too, coughing as he did so. 'Amaryllis will stop them.'

'Good-looking girl,' commented Lord Murray.

'Yes,' said Christopher. Even when he wasn't actually coughing, his throat hurt so much he didn't feel like speaking very much. It turned out, however, that Lord Murray did.

'Never thought Malcolm would do something like that,' he said, struggling to sit up and eventually flopping back on the pillow. 'Wild boy – that's why we put him in the army, you know. Couldn't settle to anything... Did someone mention blowing things up?'

Christopher tried a tentative 'Mmm' to see if that would hurt too. It wasn't quite as bad as forming words. Unfortunately Lord Murray took it as a prompt to continue with Mal's life story.

'He got into a bit of trouble with that before,' continued his lordship dreamily. 'Playing with explosives in the tunnels under Pitkirtly Island. I heard a couple of the local girls drowned. We had to put him in the army after that. Save the family name. That sort of thing.'

'The family name?' said Christopher incredulously. He hadn't removed his oxygen mask so he didn't think anyone would notice his tone of voice, and perhaps they hadn't even heard the words.

'Bit of a hero in Afghanistan,' added Lord Murray, wheezing a little. 'He and his friend went in all guns blazing to rescue some local people from one of the warlords... He found out afterwards they didn't even want to be rescued – extraordinary.'

It didn't sound all that heroic to Christopher; he even caught himself feeling smug about having seen through Mal at a very early stage in their acquaintance. He had always known it wasn't natural to want to go on these major quests. Doing good by stealth or in small ways was the better option. Not that you always got any thanks for it.

He started to cough again and the paramedic was at his side in a couple of moments, adjusting the oxygen mask and then listening to his chest.

'Better keep quiet for a while,' he advised.

Christopher started to explain that he wasn't the one who had trouble keeping quiet, but the paramedic just shooshed him and turned to Lord Murray.

'We don't just give you these masks for fun, you know,' he scolded. 'Try and keep quiet – give your lungs a rest.'

'Nothing the matter with me,' said Lord Murray, trying to wriggle into an upright position while struggling against a paroxysm of coughing. The paramedic put one hand on his chest and gently pushed him back down.

'I don't want to hear another word from either of you,' he said. 'You're distracting the driver with all this coughing. It's not easy getting along at all under those conditions, you know.'

Christopher considered pushing aside his mask again to say something sarcastic about the conditions, but the paramedic gave him a look.

They lay there silently for a while, one at each side of the ambulance. The paramedic resumed his conversation with the driver. A few minutes later there was a bump, and the whole vehicle shuddered and lurched. Christopher braced himself: he could picture them skidding along on two wheels, heading for the nearest ditch. But they suddenly made a 180 degree turn and came to a halt. The driver was swearing under his breath. Somehow that made it seem much worse than if he had shouted obscenities into the frosty air. But he probably wasn't allowed to do that while he had passengers.

'Everybody all right back here?' asked the paramedic, picking himself up from the floor. 'There'll be a slight delay while we regroup. Try not to talk amongst yourselves.'

He swung past them and jumped out through the back doors, closing them behind him, while Christopher heard the driver, still swearing, open his door and get out. Various bumps, thuds and shouts came from outside.

'We're not going to make it to hospital,' wheezed Lord Murray, having removed the oxygen mask again. 'Might as well have stayed at home.'

'Mmhm,' mumbled Christopher. He hoped they wouldn't have to spend the night here in the ambulance. Surely that wouldn't be very good for smoke inhalation. He supposed they couldn't have stayed at Lord Murray's with the fire going on, but maybe if he asked the ambulance crew nicely they would drop him off in Pitkirtly and he could rely on the restorative properties of Old Pictish Brew instead of modern medicine.

He suddenly felt suffocated by the oxygen mask – was this even possible? - and moved it away from his nose and mouth again. He decided to compromise by not speaking.

Lord Murray succeeded in pushing himself up into a sitting position. 'I'd better be getting back home to find out what Malcolm's up to. You never stop looking out for your little brother, do you?'

Christopher glanced at him uneasily. He knew aristocrats sometimes seemed a bit weird to normal people like him, but he wasn't keen on being trapped in a snow-bound vehicle with one who was having a funny turn. He decided not to confess that he didn't have a brother, just a sister. He didn't want to talk about Caroline. Even now that they were on good terms again, he couldn't entirely forget the past.

'Been covering up for him for years,' continued Lord Murray. 'Lying – cheating – stealing.' He glanced round furtively, as if convinced there was another paramedic hiding in the dark space behind the door. 'He stole the golden peacock, you know.'

'From the jeweller's?'

'Before that – long before that. He was the one who replaced it with a fake. Years ago. It was a family heirloom – my father would have been furious if he'd found out.'

'Did you know it was a fake all along?'

The minor peer's eyes, small, pale and cunning, met Christopher's.

'Not until Malcolm told me. And that was after I'd taken it down to the jeweller's. I needed the money, you know. House doesn't pay for itself. Grounds – deer park – roof crumbling.'

'Can't you get a grant for the repairs?' said Christopher. They had both discarded their oxygen masks. Christopher was so engrossed in the story he forgot to cough.

'Ha! Grants!' said Lord Murray. 'Council poking about, can't be bothered with all that. They're a bunch of lefties anyway – keep haranguing me about the deer park. Think I shouldn't be keeping deer in captivity. It's a perfectly natural environment for deer. The grounds wouldn't look right without them.'

'So what happened – when Mal told you the golden peacock was a fake?'

'Got him to steal it back,' said Lord Murray. He glared at Christopher as if to pre-empt any censure. 'I didn't know he was going to take a gun and frighten people! I told him to do it discreetly.'

'Rob a jeweller's shop in the middle of the afternoon when people were doing their Christmas shopping – discreetly?'

The wrongness of it made Christopher feel faint. He lay back on the pillow and lifted the oxygen mask to his face again, more to hide his expression than because he really needed it now.

'I couldn't have the family name brought into disrepute,' said Lord Murray. He paused, as if thinking, and then added, 'Suppose it is now – in disrepute I mean. I hadn't thought of that. Maybe it was a mistake to ask him to do that. I knew he would steal other things as well once he got into the safe. He wouldn't be able to resist the temptation.'

He stared in Christopher's direction, but his eyes were looking at something in the distance, perhaps in that different universe inhabited by his kind, where it was normal to have a deer park, and where roof repairs were a matter of historic importance and not just a way to prevent water from dripping on to your pillow.

'He doesn't take drugs, you know. He's got a big project to help people in Africa. He's the black sheep of the family, but he isn't all bad... You don't think he really will blow anything up, do you?' he added in a plaintive tone. 'The family would never live that down.'

Christopher wondered if this man had a wife and children stashed away somewhere, or whether he was the last of his line, the only person standing between his ancestral home and the developers who would no doubt move in after him to turn the place into a luxury hotel or old people's flats. He tried to think of a tactful way of asking this, without hinting at feelings of surprise or even revulsion that the man had bred.

'Is your wife - away?' he ventured at last.

'Oh, Marion left me years ago. Lives on the Riviera with a Lottery millionaire. Kids grown-up – skiing over Christmas. I see them sometimes.'

'Oh,' said Christopher.

He suddenly thought of the homeless man and wondered if he had ever been married and had children, or whether his dog had been his only companion in the world ever. He supposed Mal and Jimbo must have killed the man because they thought he knew too much about them and their activities. They had got rid of him with the same insouciance as most people would swat a bluebottle.

He lay there and pondered on the various consequences of Lord Murray's urge to protect his family name.

Until there was the sound of a car engine outside, and a low growling voice that he recognised.

'... give you a hand to get that moved?' said Dave.

Christopher cast aside the oxygen mask, struggled to his feet and flung open the back doors of the ambulance. He stumbled round the side of the vehicle and came to a snowdrift, in which the front wheels were embedded. Dave and the paramedics were assessing the situation by staring at it and shaking their heads. Beyond them sat the Land Rover, Jemima's uprightness in the front seat only threatened by the dog, which stood on her lap glaring at the group of men. When it saw Christopher it started to bark. He chose to believe it was pleased to see him, but he didn't test out that theory by going anywhere near it. Instead he waved to Jemima, and approached Dave and the others.

'What are you doing on your feet?' said one of the paramedics.

'Where are we going?' said Christopher. He tried hard not to cough, but the freezing air got into his throat and he began to wheeze.

The driver indicated the snowdrift in front of the wheels and said, 'Where do you think we're going?'

'I could pull you out,' Dave offered.

Christopher stared at him. Dave was a big man but even so...

'With the Land Rover, I assume,' said the paramedic who had been looking after them.

'Haha,' boomed Dave. 'Hear that, Jemima? I could still do it on my own, mind you. We used to have a tug of war team years ago. I had to give up after a while – the others didn't think it was fair having me in the team. Discrimination, I suppose you'd call it nowadays.'

'I'm afraid we can't let you tow us out, sir,' said the driver after a brief consultation between the paramedics. 'It's against the rules. We have to call it in and wait for a replacement ambulance.'

'I could take them home,' said Dave, sweeping his arms around to encompass Christopher and Lord Murray, who had appeared beside the ambulance.

'They're supposed to stay with us,' protested one of the paramedics. 'They should really be in hospital. At least overnight.'

'Oh, come on,' said Dave cheerily. 'A bit of smoke never hurt anybody.'

'I'd rather go home than hospital,' said Christopher. 'And it's much nearer.'

'Not sure if the house is habitable,' muttered Lord Murray. 'Might have burned down by now.'

'Take him as well, and you've got a deal,' said the driver, addressing Dave. 'But make sure you keep them indoors and call out a doctor if they get worse. I'll give them a couple of inhalers to calm down the coughing. And at least they're on their feet now, so it's doubtful if they'd be kept in hospital anyway.'

He turned to Christopher. 'It's at your own risk,' he warned. 'Against medical advice.'

Christopher shivered. He couldn't see that the risk of going off with Dave to a nice warm house, where Jemima would undoubtedly bring them hot cups of tea and refilled hot water bottles every ten minutes as well as producing some hitherto unheard-of Scottish delicacy that had the twin effects of curing smoke inhalation and causing a dangerous leap in cholesterol, was any worse than the risk of standing around here in the cold while the paramedics argued about how to get the ambulance out of a snowdrift.

'Fine,' he said.

Lord Murray nodded agreement.

'Good,' said Dave. 'Jemima's got some pease brose on the go.'

Christopher smiled to himself, and happily followed Dave to the Land Rover.

### Chapter 33 Following the Trail

The men on the ground had made better progress than anyone expected: the helicopter made several sweeps over the whole area: the grounds of Old Pitkirtlyhill House, the towns of Torryburn, Pitkirtly and Culross, Pitkirtly and Preston Islands and the mud-flats in between them, and nobody saw them. Amaryllis couldn't believe Mal and Jimbo had just vanished into thin air. For a few moments she wished she was on the ground chasing them. If they had skied along the line of trees it would have been easier to follow on foot than from the air. But surely they would have to emerge at some point.

Listening in on a headset she heard an exchange of radio messages between people on the ground and the pilot. A place was named where the helicopter could touch down, but it hovered for a while. Just after that, the helicopter suddenly lurched, the pilot corrected it and they headed out to the middle of the river.

'Sudden cross wind,' Amaryllis shouted in Charlie's ear.

'Are you enjoying this?' he shouted back.

She nodded and smiled. 'How did you know?'

'Your hair!' he said, and pointed at her head. 'It's standing on end.'

Her hands instinctively went up to try and smooth it down, but it was a lost cause, what with the adrenalin that always seemed to go straight to her hair, and the draught that whistled through the interior of the helicopter.

Charlie's expression told its own story. He would have done anything to avoid this sort of scenario, she knew. Almost like Christopher, except that none of it seemed to have an impact on the loose partnership between him and Amaryllis, which she knew some people considered completely incongruous. It seemed to work though. The helicopter hovered over Pitkirtly Island for a few minutes, then circled above the mud-flats in the bay. It was frustrating not being able to see the action at closer range, but she had a lot of sympathy for the idea of not being caught in cross winds. She listened to the headset again and frowned.

'Still no sign of them,' she called to Charlie. Even in this raised voice he detected a note of grudging admiration. 'They've disappeared, maybe gone to ground... There's going to be hell to pay in the army over this - they always claim they can spot people who are likely to do this kind of thing, and to alert the civil authorities to people leaving the forces. But presumably you didn't get any word of it?'

'Nobody would have told me anyway,' said Charlie gloomily. He had spoken almost too quietly for her to hear, but she sensed that he hadn't really been speaking to her at all.

'Not your fault!' she yelled.

'Too bothered about the weather, and Christmas... We had Christmas dinner at the station... Microwaved sprouts. Might as well have been cold pizza... Minds on the job instead of...'

She wasn't sure if she had heard him properly. What was all that about microwaved sprouts?

'Charlie, what are you talking about?' she shouted in his ear. 'Microwaved sprouts? Cold pizza?'

'We had Christmas dinner,' he shouted back. 'At the station. Instead of concentrating on the job. Might as well have been cold pizza.'

'Everybody deserves a Christmas dinner,' she yelled, although she was far from convinced of the truth of this.

As the helicopter's circuit widened to include Preston Island and Culross, Amaryllis glanced down. The top of the old mine shaft leading to the workings that had once extended out under the Forth caught her eye. There were patches of snow scattered across the seaweed, but it was freshly fallen and would melt quickly with all the salt water and mud around it. She pictured men working in tunnels far below, in constant fear of the water breaking through and drowning them, or the tunnels collapsing and burying them forever in layers of rock and mud. She shivered. They had worked there all the year round, even in this weather. Who knew how many tunnels criss-crossed each other below the mud flats, as well as inland around the power station?

'Tunnels!' she exclaimed aloud. 'There are tunnels under Pitkirtly. That's what they've done!'

Charlie stared at her blankly.

'Tunnels!' she said again. 'There are tunnels all around here. Old mine workings. Mal and Jimbo haven't gone to ground – they've gone underground - that's why we can't see them.'

Charlie was still staring as if she had grown two extra heads. She remembered something important.

'The maps! From the kitchen table!'

She slid her hand into her pocket and brought out her mobile phone, hoping the pictures she had taken of the maps were still there. Of course they must be: she hadn't archived anything off recently: she hadn't had time. The only thing that might have gone wrong would be if Christopher had used the opportunity of staying at her flat overnight to play with the settings.

As she navigated to the image store and retrieved the maps, she knew she had been worrying unnecessarily. Christopher treated his own mobile with the caution that most people would have applied to an unexploded bomb. He wouldn't have dreamed of touching an unfamiliar phone that didn't belong to him. She peered at the maps on the small screen. She wished now that she had given in and bought reading glasses. But it didn't matter too much. All she had to do was to remember what Christopher had found in the library that day when they had looked it all up.

'It looks as if they must have gone into a tunnel before they even hit the main road,' she said, zooming in and using the touch screen to trace the probable route taken by Jimbo and Mal.

'I thought all the tunnels around here were flooded years ago,' said Charlie, looking puzzled.

Amaryllis consulted the map images again. It was all coming back to her. She could almost hear Christopher speaking, in the quiet but confident voice he used when he was talking about history and archives. Not that she encouraged him to do that under normal circumstances. She didn't want to be bored to death, after all: there were other, worthier ways to die.

After a while she spoke to the pilot. 'Can you put us down on Pitkirtly Island?' she asked.

'You're joking, aren't you?' said the pilot's voice in the headphones. 'You'll be a sitting duck if I winch you down. And there's no way I can land around there. They've set up an exclusion zone for ten miles round Longannet – that was HQ telling me more about it just now.'

She sighed, consulting the maps again. 'OK, near that little wood then. Behind Sunk Causeway.'

'We're waiting for reinforcements,' he said censoriously. 'They're arriving by boat in twenty minutes.'

'But we won't be in the way,' Amaryllis protested. 'I just want to check something out near the island.'

She had visions of making her way through the tunnels with Charlie and taking out the conspirators. Then she looked at Charlie's face. Was he up for it? He had always seemed far too sensible. Too law-abiding. Playing it by the book.

Like Christopher.

She sighed again. Why was Christopher in an ambulance when she needed him? He would have tried his best to stay completely law-abiding, but she knew from previous experience that in this kind of situation he would just follow her lead and do what she asked him to do – unless it involved keeping mobile phones charged up and switched on, of course. She wasn't sure Charlie would be so ready to relinquish responsibility to her. In fact she was almost sure he –

'When you asked if he could put us down, what did you mean?' he asked.

'I meant I want to be on the ground where the action is, not skulking up here as if I were watching the whole thing on television,' said Amaryllis.

'Yes, but 'us'?' he said.

'You can come with me if you want,' she said. 'But there are rules. You've got to forget you're a boring policeman.'

'Hmm.'

'You've got to do what it takes.'

'Oh, yes?'

'And remember, Christopher will kill you if anything happens to me.'

'That'll be right,' he muttered as the co-pilot helped Amaryllis into a harness. 'I'd better do it, I suppose. It won't be any stupider than any of the other things I've done lately.'

She smiled at him just as she slid over the edge. 'Up to you,' she said. Then the cold air hit her and she shivered all the way down to the ground. She landed well, went into a crouch, dodged behind the nearest tree and called Christopher on her mobile phone. When he didn't reply, as she had thought he wouldn't, she called Jemima instead.

She wasn't surprised when Charlie arrived on the ground a few moments after her, in the middle of the conversation. He joined her behind the tree and waited patiently while she spoke, only stamping his feet once and rubbing his gloved hands quite unobtrusively.

There was a lot of background noise and she found it hard to make out what Jemima was saying, but the gist of it seemed to be that something strange had happened when she and Dave were making their way back to Pitkirtly.

'... got them in the car... pease brose,' was what it sounded like.

'Who do you have in the car? And what's pease brose when it's at home?'

'No, we're going home,' said Jemima.

'But who's in the car with you?'

'It's Christopher, of course,' said Jemima. 'And some old man with him – I don't know who he is. He's wearing a tweed jacket. And wheezing a lot.' Her voice lowered slightly. 'He looks as if he's been living rough for a while.'

'That's Lord Murray of Pitkirtlyhill. Can I speak to him?'

Amaryllis made a thumbs-up sign to Charlie. He smiled politely.

'Hello?' said Amaryllis. 'Lord Murray?'

'No, it's me,' said Christopher. She could hear him wheezing even with the line being so bad. Why wasn't he in the ambulance? Had Jemima and Dave kidnapped him?

'Get off!' he added. She deduced that he wasn't speaking to her.

'Is Lord Murray there? I need to speak to him about Mal.'

'What about Mal?' Christopher sounded suspicious. He wasn't going to give up the phone without a struggle. She gave in for the sake of speed.

'Can you just ask Lord Murray if there's any previous connection between Mal and Pitkirtly Island? Any reason for him to want to –um – destroy it? And,' she added hastily, 'does he have any background in explosives? In the army, I mean.'

There was a pause, then Christopher said tentatively, 'He told me about it. In the ambulance. Mal got into trouble over some incident on the island. When he was younger. Something to do with explosives. And girls drowning. Then they sent him away to join the army... Get off me, you stupid dog!'

'Girls drowning?'

She heard a lot of coughing at the other end of the line, mixed with what sounded like whining, and then Jemima's voice. 'He can't talk any more just now. We've got to get him home.'

'Hmm,' said Amaryllis, cutting the connection. 'That makes sense. But it means he'll be more desperate to succeed. More dangerous.'

'What's that?'

She explained it to Charlie as best she could. In the end he shook his head and said, 'I'll never understand you, Amaryllis. You're still enjoying all this, aren't you?'

That was why, she reflected, she had some sort of a relationship – albeit a strange, flawed one - with Christopher, but could never have one with Charlie. Christopher accepted her without question: even when he strongly disapproved of some of the things she did, he knew it was her right to do them. Charlie had that urge that, in her experience, policemen and school teachers often had, to persuade or coerce people to behave in a way that met their own standards.

'I'll enjoy it when we catch up with them,' she muttered.

### Chapter 34 Arguing in the Dark

'What now?' said Charlie, glancing around. They were right on the coast here but there was still a good layer of snow lying almost up to the edge of the mud flats. The tree they lurked behind was part of a small copse near a footpath right at the edge of the town. In front was the railway line, beginning to curve away from Pitkirtly at this point, and beyond that the River Forth and Pitkirtly Island, which of course wasn't really an island but a peninsula. It was smaller than its very similar neighbour, Preston Island, and less industrial. But evidently that was all on the surface, for according to Amaryllis there was a rabbit warren of old mining tunnels under it.

Amaryllis was consulting the maps on her phone again. He didn't know how she could read the text without glasses, the screen was so small. It was one of the many things about modern life he just didn't understand.

'Was the dog there?' he asked suddenly.

'The dog?'

'I left it with them. Did they still have it?'

She frowned.

'Maybe. I think I heard something whining once or twice when I was on the phone to them... And Christopher told it to get down. Or at least I think it was the dog he meant. Might have been Lord Murray.'

'So where do we go now?' said Charlie. 'Whatever we're going to do, we'll have to do it now. Otherwise they'll be here and we'll have no chance.'

'They could be here already,' said Amaryllis. Then she looked up and grinned. 'But I don't think so. Even if they did that first stretch quickly on skis, they'll have slowed up when they got into the tunnel.'

'But we don't know where they went underground.'

'Oh, yes, we do. Look.'

She showed him the screen and he screwed up his eyes and pretended to be able to make sense of the map.

'Look, here,' she said eagerly. 'There's an entrance in the grounds of Old Pitkirtlyhill House. That's where they'll have gone in. The tunnel leads straight from there into Pitkirtly, and right under the town, and then under the island. But it'll take them a while. Even if there aren't any rock falls. But they may have checked that out beforehand. May even have shored up the tunnels with steel beams. That's what I would have done.'

'So they've been planning this for a good while? And it's all going to kick off here, not at Longannet?'

She nodded. 'I think so.'

Charlie got out his phone. 'I'd better call it in.'

'Who to?'

'I don't know – the station first. They can pass it on to anyone else who needs to know. The fire service. The army. Your lot.'

'They aren't my lot any more,' said Amaryllis. He gave her a look. Once a spook, always a spook, as far as he was concerned. Not that he had actually seen her carrying out spook-like activities. Not for a while anyway.

She shrugged her shoulders. 'I'm a PI now. And I'm on a case.'

'You're not going to find the proceeds of the jewel robbery down there in the tunnels,' he said, trying to sound scathing. Of course, now that he had said that, they would probably go straight down the ladder and into an Aladdin's cave full of treasure. The mental image made him smile, and he moved away from Amaryllis to make his call. It wouldn't do for her to think he found this very serious situation amusing.

He ended the call and glanced up to find she had already crossed the railway line and was waiting for him at the other side. She seemed to be staring hard at an old stone bridge that stood incongruously on its own in the middle of a patch of nettles and sticky willow. Maybe she thought there was a tunnel entrance there.

'They were all heading for Longannet,' he said, 'but they're going to send a contingent round this way, just in case.'

'Hurry up, Jimbo and Mal will get ahead of us if we're not careful,' she said. She pushed through the undergrowth and led the way under the stone structure. He couldn't decide if it was the remaining arch of a railway bridge, or part of an old sea wall.

'What's in here?'

'One of the tunnel entrances. At least that's what the map seems to be showing... Pity we don't have a few aerial shots.'

'Or a bigger map,' he said as they walked under the arch. Suddenly there was a heavy-looking door in front of them with a new-looking padlock on a heavy steel chain.

Amaryllis took something that resembled a Swiss army knife out of her pocket. 'Look away for a minute,' she told Charlie.

There was a clunk and a bang, and when he looked back the padlock was lying on the ground. She unbolted the door and pulled it towards her.

'There's a tunnel. It looks as if it goes into a kind of bank first,' she said. 'There'll be either a ladder or a slope before too long.'

Or a deep dark shaft plummeting suddenly down to the centre of the earth, he thought suddenly in an uncharacteristic effort of the imagination.

'We should wait for back-up,' he said, but he knew it was only a token protest. Amaryllis was going into tunnel and he was going with her.

It was a dark tunnel going into the bank, then sloping downwards. Amaryllis produced a torch that was much more powerful than it looked. Charlie experienced an odd feeling of envy mixed with guilt. Why wasn't he, as a police officer, at least as well-equipped as her? It was no use blaming government spending cuts: he knew they had all the stuff they needed, but it was all back at the station or in the Land Rover, and he hadn't thought to bring it with him. Of course, he had never been in the Cubs or Scouts. His parents' irrational fears of uniformed organizations had a lot to answer for. How horrified had they been when he joined the police force?

'You'd think they'd have blocked this off altogether,' he said censoriously. 'Anybody could come in here.'

'I suspect the authorities think it is completely blocked off,' said Amaryllis.

The tunnel led them in a slow spiral downwards. The ground under their feet made a fairly smooth surface for walking on. Every so often the roof was strengthened by wood beams. Amaryllis turned the torch beam on to one place where this had happened.

'They've been busy here. These are newly fixed – look at the bolts.'

'Hmm, at least it's a bit less likely we'll be buried in a rock fall,' said Charlie gloomily.

'Don't worry, there's still the risk of firedamp,' said Amaryllis. 'So you don't have to stop worrying altogether.'

'There won't be any firedamp down here, will there?'

'Who knows?' she said lightly.

They came to a place where the tunnel divided.

'One way leads out under the Forth and the other way goes back to Old Pitkirtlyhill House,' said Amaryllis. 'What do you think?'

Charlie didn't know what to think, since he had lost all sense of direction. He didn't like being underground: it seemed to be preventing his brain from functioning properly. Maybe he was partly solar-powered. He smiled to himself at this fanciful idea, and suppressed the smile quickly when he noticed Amaryllis giving him a funny look. He didn't want her thinking he'd gone nuts already from claustrophobia.

'We could try one way for a bit and then go back and try the other,' he suggested.

'OK, I think this way goes towards the river so let's have a look,' said Amaryllis, choosing one option apparently at random and leading the way with the torch again. They had only gone about twenty metres when she stopped.

'Water underfoot. That isn't a good sign.'

'There isn't much yet. Do you think it's from the river?'

'Probably. Let's try the other way.'

He couldn't see her face but there was a sort of frown in her voice. He wondered about that. She seemed disconcerted.

They passed the junction and walked on for about twenty metres the other way. Then two things happened very quickly: the first was that Amaryllis fell over something and swore like a trooper, only under her breath. The other thing was that when she stopped swearing, Charlie heard other people's voices in the distance. It was hard to tell how far away they were because of the tunnels and the echo.

'It's them,' he breathed, helping her up.

'The torch!' she whispered, leaning down to find it. They could see the beam from it spilling over the floor of the tunnel. She shone it down on the thing she had fallen over. It was a box shape covered with a tarpaulin. There were more boxes behind it, a line of them stretching along the tunnel as far as they could see.

He tugged at her arm to get her to move.

'Come on, we've got to get away. Back up to the surface.'

'No!' She lifted a corner of the tarpaulin to reveal a plain wooden crate. 'It's the explosives. We've got to stop them.'

'But the reinforcements – they won't be long. We should go up to the surface and wait. Show them where to come.'

'The whole town could be blown sky-high by then!' she said, raising her voice slightly. 'We haven't got time to wait for reinforcements – we have to do this ourselves.'

'Sssh – stop arguing,' he hissed. 'They're not going to blow anything up straight away – they'll wait and see if they get the ransom money first.'

Still she hesitated. The voices were coming closer.

He tugged at her sleeve again. 'Come on, we can't let them catch us here. We can't move the crates. It's a no-brainer.'

She stood still for another moment.

'I know what we can do,' she said suddenly. 'Come on, let's go along the other branch – to Pitkirtly Island and the Forth.'

'No! We've got to get up to the surface.'

'I didn't know you were such a stubborn man, Charlie,' she said as they started moving at last. 'You can go on up to the surface if you like – I'll go the other way.'

'No! We'd be better to stick together – and what are you planning to do anyway?'

'You don't want to know.'

Her voice was grim. Their steps speeded up.

'You know you said Christopher would kill me if anything happened to you?' he said after a moment's silence.

'I was only joking,' she said.

'But all the same – I'd better keep an eye on you,' he said. 'We'll both go towards the river. I'll look the other way if you need to do anything bad.'

They reached the fork in the tunnel where one way led up to the open air and the other out under the Forth. Amaryllis suddenly switched off her torch. Charlie heard the voices behind them much more clearly than before.

'Is this how you left the tarp?'

'Maybe... Do you think it's been disturbed?'

One of the men swore, and the other said, 'There was a very faint light. Ahead of us. I thought I'd imagined it.'

A pause, then the voices came loud and clear again.

'Why didn't you tell me?'

'You know what? It's that interfering friend of yours. I knew she was bad news.'

'Don't be stupid. We left her in the house. How could she have got down here?'

'I don't know.'

'Give me a hand and we'll get the stuff out. No point in hanging about now. Let's get on with it.'

'I'll go this way,' Amaryllis whispered in Charlie's ear. 'Sorry, I'll need the torch. You go on up to the surface – just follow the left hand wall and you'll be fine. Hurry!'

She gave him a little push and placed his hand on a wall of rock. He sensed her slipping away from his side. It did make sense for them to split up so that only one of them would get caught, but it was a hard thing to decide, and he wasn't sure that he would have been ruthless enough to do it.

As he climbed back up the tunnel as fast as he could, he heard one of the men say, faintly now, 'Fireworks in the old town tonight,' and laugh.

His heart thudded so hard he was sure they would hear it. The rock wall began to feel slimy, cold and damp under his hand but he knew it was just the dampness of his own sweat. He had begun to doubt that he would ever find his way back to the surface when he glimpsed a hazy greyness ahead, encouraging him to speed up and reach the big door again.

He burst out of the tunnel, half-closing the door behind him, and drew a deep trembling breath as if he hadn't taken in any proper air since he had been underground. He emerged from under the archway and scanned his surroundings to try and locate the helicopter, or the back-up he hoped for. Everything was quiet, and white.

Charlie felt a stab of guilt. He should have gone with Amaryllis. It was pointless having come out in the open when there were no rescuers to alert. He turned back towards the archway – and heard the door being flung open with such force that it seemed to rattle the old stonework around it. He just had time to think, that can't be her, before diving for cover in a clump of brambles. He heard a shot, and cowered down even lower, trying to make himself impossibly small.

When he dared to glance up through the brambles, he saw Mal's head appear round the archway, and then quickly draw back, like a tortoise retreating into its shell. Charlie kept very still, even although an extremely prickly branch was digging into his leg, and another one seemed to have trapped a strand of his hair. His knees were starting to ache well before he decided it was safe to come out.

He crawled backwards through the brambles, cursing under his breath as they snatched at his face, hands, legs and hair, and then at last stood up.

A shot whizzed over his head. Mal must have miscalculated his height. He didn't have time to look round for cover: he just flung himself to the ground, this time in a patch of icy mud. It was a stupid thing to do, of course. Mal would just walk forward and shoot him where he lay. He would have been far better to run... It was no use running now.

The buzz of the helicopter came at the same time as the sound of running feet in heavy boots, and the shouting of terse commands. After a moment he raised his head to look. The helicopter was right overhead, and a small group of uniformed policemen had crossed the railway line and were heading right for him. He pushed himself up and turned round. A small flotilla of grey boats had arrived in the bay, and men in combat gear were disembarking from them and swarming on to the island. Back-up had arrived.

Where was Amaryllis? Had Mal gone back underground?

'Fireworks,' he managed to say to the first lot of policemen. 'They're going to blow the place up.'

There wasn't time to stop them. Charlie had to turn everyone back: they were all right in the firing line.

'Get back!' he said, feebly at first and then with more emphasis. 'Get back!' He shouted it to the other men too, gesturing wildly. And where was Amaryllis?

'We can't go back,' said Inspector Farmer, putting a hand on Charlie's shoulder. 'Are the explosives down in the tunnel?'

Charlie nodded. He heard his voice saying, 'I'll show you,' although the last thing he wanted to do was to go back down into the darkness.

A small party quickly assembled including, he thought, some naval explosives specialists who had come off the boats. He led the way through the archway to the door, now hanging open, and down the tunnel. Several people had powerful torches. They didn't bother with stealth or whispering.

As they approached the junction in the tunnel, there was a roaring sound from the branch that led out under the river, almost like –

'Water!' somebody yelled.

The first wave knocked one of the policemen off his feet, and would have swept him away if another man hadn't grabbed him and hauled him back to safety. They all moved up to what seemed like firmer ground as the water rushed past them into the other part of the tunnel, where the two men and the explosives presumably still were.

Charlie thought again of Amaryllis. Was this her doing? What had happened to her?

A drenched figure staggered round the corner from the other branch of the tunnel, splashing through the water, coughing and spluttering. Two of the officers grabbed at him, just as another wave came down and threatened to sweep him away. The water lapped at their feet. It seemed like a good time to move upwards again.

'Mal,' gasped the man. 'The water – help me. Mal's still in there.'

You must be joking, thought Charlie. He thought back to what Amaryllis had said about not needing to know what she planned. He thought he knew now what she had meant. But had she really sacrificed herself to save the town? If she had been in that tunnel when the water swept in, she might not have been able to get out in time. He thought about the prospect of Christopher killing him. It may have been a joke, but it was beginning to seem slightly more serious than that.

He turned and began to push his way through the group of people and make his way to the surface. If she had got out, she must be on or close to Pitkirtly Island, wherever the tunnel ended. In this weather she would need to be rescued before she got hypothermia at the very least.

He heard someone behind him call his name, but he pressed on. He had to find her. This time he didn't even pause to breathe at the entrance. He turned in the direction of the island and kept walking.

A little cluster of the men from the boats had formed round something, out on the mud-flats at the point where the yellow-grey of the winter sky met the green-brown water of the river which had started to ripple over the greenish-grey mud as the tide turned, and just in the spot where the remains of a low circular stone wall had always been visible at low tide. He plunged down on to the pebble beach that surrounded the island, quickened his pace as the pebbles turned to mud, broke into a run at the end, slithering on the wet surface. She wasn't moving... she was moving. She stood up, helped by one of the men, just before he got there.

'Amaryllis!'

Her dark red hair had turned even darker and was plastered down flat against her head. She was wet and muddy from head to toe. She must be freezing; someone had a space blanket they were about to wrap her in. But her teeth gleamed white in a huge grin even as they chattered violently.

'I did it!' she said as he arrived.

'I know,' said Charlie. He didn't intend to fling his arms around her and hug her, but he found he had done it anyway. If Christopher ever found out he would have another reason to kill him. One of the soldiers pushed him out of the way so that they could wrap her up warmly.

He looked down at the dark slimy hole in the ground from which she had emerged like a very unglamorous Venus. He didn't ask for details of what she had done. They would keep for another day.

Someone said the word 'hospital' and Amaryllis laughed. 'What I need is to get myself to Jemima's as soon as I can. She's bound to have some weird Scottish dish on the go that cures all known ills.'

### Chapter 35 Hogmanay Party

Not for the first time, Christopher was glad he hadn't known what Amaryllis was doing until afterwards. Charlie phoned Jemima to let them know they were on their way, and it was already dark when they arrived. Charlie Smith seemed grim and exhausted when they were dropped off by a police driver, but he didn't look quite as fearsome as Amaryllis did, with her mud-encrusted hair, dirty face, and boots that had to be put outside the back door in case they messed up the new fake laminate tiles Dave had just finished fitting in the kitchen.

Fortunately there was some pease brose left for Amaryllis after she had cleaned herself up and put on an old brown dressing-gown of Jemima's, which was the most unflattering garment Christopher had ever seen her in.

They all spent the night there, with Charlie and the dog occupying the settee in the front room, Amaryllis sleeping on a spare mattress on Dave and Jemima's bedroom floor, and Christopher and Lord Murray on the extremely uncomfortable twin beds in the spare room. It would probably be the only time Christopher slept so close to a peer of the realm and listened to him snoring, although after Lord Murray's confessions in the ambulance he wasn't exactly over-awed by the experience. It seemed that noble families were just as likely as anyone else's to contain thieves and murderers. More so if anything, he reflected drowsily, casting his mind back to school history lessons just before he dropped off to sleep.

It was difficult to get any information out of Amaryllis and Charlie about what had happened at Pitkirtly Island.

'Tell you at the Hogmanay party,' Amaryllis said to Christopher as they drank tea and ate toast together at the kitchen table in time-honoured fashion.

'But you know what it's like at the Hogmanay party, don't you?' he said. 'It's impossible to talk about anything sensible. It's far too noisy – and rowdy. You haven't forgotten Dave dancing on the table last year, have you? The landlord made him pay for the damage too. Those bar tables aren't cheap. Not to mention the bottles of whisky he crashed into.'

'I haven't forgotten Jemima sitting there knitting right through it all, either,' said Amaryllis. 'We'll find a quiet corner and I'll tell you everything that happened.'

Christopher wasn't convinced. And he wasn't happy that Charlie Smith knew more than he did, either. It was one thing for Amaryllis to go off to Turkmenistan or Virginia wreaking havoc and escaping the jaws of death by a whisker, but the idea that it had happened in Pitkirtly brought it all too close to home.

'It's all right,' she said quietly. 'I survived, didn't I?'

He sighed, but resigned himself to waiting. In fact he was so good about not pestering her for information that she began to get impatient before he did, and for the next day or two she kept dropping hints about what had happened, until by Hogmanay he was rather exasperated and even felt tempted to get his own back by not even going to the party. If the thaw continued the way it was going, he might even get himself invited up to the cattery to see if Rosie's friends were any use at arm-wrestling. Only of course he would have to see in the New Year with Jock McLean if he did that. Hmm. There was always a down-side.

But when it came to the point he just had to go along to the Queen of Scots. Apart from anything else, Amaryllis called round to fetch him, and he didn't want to fall out with her permanently. Just letting her know he was a bit miffed with her was enough, and he knew he had done that already.

She took his arm on the way to the pub.

'It wasn't nearly as good having Charlie with me as it would have been if you were there,' she said, apparently in an attempt to mollify him.

'I suppose he didn't do stupid things and make you laugh at him,' said Christopher grumpily.

'No, it wasn't that – he can be just as stupid as you in his own way,' she said. 'It was because he tried to stop me doing what I knew had to be done. He nearly got the town blown up because he thought he needed to protect me.'

'Really?'

'Yes, really. You wouldn't make that mistake, would you?'

'I know it's no use trying to stop you when you get an idea in your head,' said Christopher. 'If that's what you mean. I've never met anybody so stubborn.'

She started to laugh, but she wouldn't tell him why.

Dave and Jemima were already ensconsed in a small private room at the Queen of Scots, and a familiar figure stood at the bar ordering drinks.

'I thought you were at the cattery!' said Christopher accusingly to Jock McLean. Amaryllis went off to speak to Jemima.

'I got the sack,' said Jock. 'Don't ask. You having Old Pictish Brew tonight?'

'I think I'll need it. We're meant to be going to hear the whole story.'

'You mean she hasn't told you it already? About having to fight her way up the ladder to the surface while the mud and water were pouring down all round her?'

'What? How do you know all that?'

Jock shrugged his shoulders. 'Heard it in the paper-shop.'

'In the paper-shop?'

'I thought she would have told you by now.'

'Well, she hasn't. Why am I always the last to know everything?'

As usual when Christopher raised his voice, there was a freakish lull in everyone else's conversation, so that his words rang out across the suddenly still air like an important announcement. In some ways he supposed they were. An announcement that he was fed up with being kept in the dark, especially by Amaryllis. Not to mention his other friends.

'I suppose you both know the whole story by now too?' he said to Dave and Jemima, having picked up his pint of Old Pictish Brew and marched across to the table. He stood over them, glowering.

'Have a seat, Christopher, don't just stand over us like that,' said Jemima placidly. 'You don't want me getting a crick in my neck do you? At my age that can be quite nasty.'

At least Jemima hadn't brought her knitting this time. He sat down between her and Amaryllis, who been silent and meek throughout his miniature tirade although she must have known it was aimed at her.

When they were all sitting there, she said,

'I haven't told anybody what happened. I wanted to wait and see if it was finished.'

'What's that supposed to mean?' snapped Christopher.

She looked at him. Her eyes were uncharacteristically sombre.

'Charlie Smith should be here soon. He'll tell us.'

'How did the man in the paper-shop know?' he said.

Jemima smiled in an irritating way that suggested she could see through everybody's foibles and inconsistencies. 'He likely made it all up himself,' she said, leaning back in her chair.

Christopher was even more cross now that he was unexpectedly in the wrong.

'What I don't understand is where the golden peacock fitted into it all,' said Jemima. 'I've made my own little one, just to remind me of everything.'

She brought out a little beaded peacock from her capacious handbag, and set it on the table. They all stared at it. Christopher wasn't sure what to say. It was rather a hideous thing constructed mainly of gold wire, with purple and orange beads sticking up out of its head, and a neck twisted at such an unnatural angle that it seemed to have been strangled.

'I don't think I could eat a whole one,' said Jock McLean at last.

Jemima glared at him.

'Is it a brooch?' said Amaryllis.

'You could put it on a key-ring if you wanted,' said Jemima. 'There's a little loop here – look. Oh dear, the neck's gone a bit wrong.'

She picked it up and was just manipulating it back into place when Charlie Smith, the dog and Maisie Sue arrived at the same time. There was a minor skirmish as the landlord queried the presence of the dog and Charlie assured him it was a highly trained working police-dog which was allowed into any premises.

'We aren't really together,' Maisie Sue assured them as she sat down. 'We just bumped into each other on the way down the High Street. I wouldn't want anyone to think anything of it.'

Christopher couldn't imagine Charlie Smith and Maisie Sue getting together even if they were the last two creatures left on earth. Or at least, he didn't want to imagine it. Of course the more he tried not to imagine it, the more it imprinted itself on his brain, so that it was there even when he tried to think about the new archive material that had been donated to the Cultural Centre just before Christmas and which he planned, as a treat, to take his time cataloguing once he went back to work.

Charlie brought some drinks over to the table. The dog sat down on his feet and sighed.

'Let's hear it all, then,' said Dave. 'We don't want to hold up the party.'

'It's only half-past eight,' said Jemima. 'There's plenty of time.'

'But we need to get in the mood,' said Dave.

'Not in the kind of mood you got into last year,' said the landlord, who chose that moment to come over and collect the empty glasses. 'You could have got barred for doing that, you know.'

He closed the door behind him as he left.

'Shouldn't Lord Murray be here?' said Jock McLean. 'Or has he gone back to his stately home in disgrace?'

Charlie pulled his chair a bit closer to the table and leaned forward. 'Don't tell anybody I told you this, but he's been arrested.'

'What for? Impersonating a human being?' said Jock, laughing. 'Or has the revolution started and nobody's told me?'

'It's a bit more sordid than that,' said Charlie. 'He's an accessory in the jewel robbery case.'

'Ah,' said Christopher. 'It's about what he told me in the ambulance, isn't it?'

'Yes, kind of. But he told us it all over again when we were talking to him about his brother. Didn't seem to see anything wrong with it.'

'Hmph! Typical!' said Jock McLean.

'Why don't you start at the beginning, Mr Smith?' said Jemima gently.

'The trouble is, I'm not entirely sure where that is,' said Charlie.

'The drowned girls?' Amaryllis prompted him.

'Yes, I suppose that's as good a place as any... The drowned girls. It was recorded as an accident at the time, you know. But in the light of what's happened since, we're no longer sure about that.'

'Just get on with it, man!' muttered Dave. Jemima nudged him to shut him up.

'Well, basically Malcolm Murray was always a problem and an embarrassment to the family,' Charlie began. 'His older brother of course always knew he would be the one to inherit the estate and the responsibilities, so he maybe had more sense of his place in the scheme of things. It was when Malcolm was in his late teens that the drowning incident took place. He and a friend and two girls were out on Pitkirtly Island playing around in the tunnels. He somehow got hold of explosives and set them off. Part of the tunnel collapsed, water came in, and the two boys got out and the girls didn't. The whole thing could have been much worse for Malcolm than it was. But their father, old Lord Murray, knew the Chief Constable, so it was played down and turned into an accident, although the other boy later spread the word around that it had all been Malcolm's fault.'

'And they put him in the army,' said Christopher. 'To protect the family name.'

'Yes, he was shipped off to basic training first and ended up in Iraq and then Afghanistan,' said Charlie. 'He was thought to have been some kind of hero in Afghanistan, but apparently that was just a rumour started by one of his friends.'

'Lord Murray said he'd gone to rescue people who didn't want to be rescued, or something,' said Christopher, trying to remember exactly what the wheezing aristocrat had been talking about in the ambulance.

'Indeed – he killed some local warlords in the process, and they came after his unit,' said Charlie. 'He and his friend James Molyneux got the boot from the army after that. Malcolm Murray returned to Pitkirtly. He was always full of new schemes. He said he was planning to go and start something up in Africa. But it was all just talk.'

'Who's this James Molyneux?' said Jock McLean.

'He got me out of trouble once, in Uzbekistan,' said Amaryllis. 'I always called him Jimbo after that.'

Christopher looked round at her. She still had the sad expression in her eyes, but she did glance up and smile at him a bit ruefully. She had been taken in by Malcolm Murray, but perhaps it was the role of her friend Jimbo that hurt the most.

'But what about the golden peacock?' said Jemima. She waved her own version of it in front of Charlie's nose. He seemed completely bewildered. 'Where does that come in?'

'According to Lord Murray, his brother claimed to have sold the golden peacock years ago, before he even went into the army, and replaced it with a fake without anybody else in the family knowing. When Lord Murray himself needed money, he got the jeweller in Pitkirtly to find a buyer for what he fondly imagined was the real thing. Then Malcolm returned and confessed it was a fake, so Lord Murray persuaded him to go and steal it back. We don't know if Lord Murray's telling the truth about that part of it – it looks as if he may have known earlier it was a fake. Of course Malcolm and his accomplice couldn't resist stealing other things too. They needed the money for their African scheme – which, by the way, was to do with setting themselves up as mercenaries and smuggling in weapons, and not with any charity work.'

'What about the homeless man?' said Christopher. He glanced down at the dog, which appeared to be listening intently.

'He was ex-army too,' said Charlie. 'He knew both the others from Afghanistan, and he was a witness to the robbery. When we took him into the cells for the night they were afraid he'd shop them. They decided to get rid of him, thinking nobody would care enough to do anything about it.'

'Except the dog,' said Amaryllis. She sounded almost as if she were about to burst into tears, only that Amaryllis wouldn't do that, especially in the Queen of Scots. Maybe the wood smoke from the landlord's over-enthusiastic real fire had got into her throat.

'Then they carried on with their plan to threaten to blow something up if the authorities didn't pay them a massive amount of money. They didn't have much respect for the forces of law and order: they didn't think we would catch them and stop them in time. Especially as they guessed correctly that everybody would rush to protect the power station.'

'If it hadn't been for Amaryllis you wouldn't have stopped them at all,' Christopher pointed out. Charlie glared at him.

'That's a matter of opinion,' he said through gritted teeth. 'As we all know from previous experience, it's always better to work with the forces of law and order if you possibly can... Anyway, Malcolm Murray didn't really care if we stopped them in time or not. He regarded Pitkirtly Island as his playground, he knew that the Council had given planning permission for the mining tunnels to be filled in and consolidated in the near future so that they could construct walkways and a children's playground there without any chance of people falling down abandoned mineshafts. If he couldn't play in his tunnels and on his island then he wasn't going to let anyone else do so either.'

Christopher shivered at the mention of abandoned mineshafts. He was surprised and pleased when Amaryllis's cool smooth hand crept into his at that moment, hidden from the view of the others by the table.

'When Malcolm Murray and James Molyneux left Old Pitkirtlyhill House a few days ago after abandoning several people in a smoke-filled basement they only escaped from thanks to the persistence and courage of Christopher Wilson...'

There was a small round of applause at this point. Christopher blushed, and Amaryllis squeezed his hand.

'After they left the house, as they thought, in flames, they put on skis to make us think they were planning to ski all the way over the hill to Longannet, but in fact they only skied to the edge of Lord Murray's grounds, where they entered an old mine tunnel and proceeded through it on foot to the place where they'd left the explosives.'

'Meanwhile we travelled by helicopter and got there first!' said Amaryllis, at last showing a small spark of enthusiasm. 'Using our knowledge of the maps Mal had on the kitchen table when he was finalising his plans and Christopher and I came knocking at the door.'

'Amaryllis and I investigated the tunnels, and located the explosives, but when we heard them coming we separated.' Charlie's voice took on a grimmer tone at this point. Was this where Amaryllis had insisted on doing things her way and he had objected? Christopher wasn't sure.

'Charlie was very brave and distracted Mal to give me time to get along to the end of the tunnel,' said Amaryllis sweetly. Jock McLean gave her a suspicious look.

'And that was when reinforcements arrived by land and sea,' said Charlie, trying hard to stick to the official line.

'By sea?' said Jemima.

'Yes, from Rosyth,' said Charlie. 'They happened to be on exercises in the Firth of Forth and they headed for Longannet when the ransom demand came in.'

'So was that when you got drenched in mud and sea water?' enquired Christopher, still holding Amaryllis's hand.

'It wasn't quite as dramatic as the man in the paper shop made it seem,' she protested. 'I'm not any kind of a heroine.'

'Amaryllis opened the sea gate at the end of the tunnel,' said Charlie. 'She clung on to the ladder when the water rushed in, and climbed up and hammered on the hatch at the top. Luckily for her, the landing craft had just arrived and the men from the navy were able to give her a hand out.'

'So you were ready to sacrifice yourself to save Pitkirtly!' said Jemima. 'I think you deserve a medal, dear.'

'Jemima could make you one,' suggested Christopher, light-headed with the terror that had flooded his mind just as the sea water had flooded the tunnels. 'With gold wire and purple and orange beads.'

'It wasn't the most dangerous thing I've ever done in my life,' said Amaryllis modestly. Christopher sensed that she was rather pleased that she had managed to do something important and worthwhile, even if she hadn't really intended to.

'Are the two men in custody?' said Dave.

Charlie made a face.

'James Molyneux was caught in the tunnels when we went in. He had an ice-axe with him, and it saved his life. He jammed it into the rock and hung on to it. There was no sign of Malcolm Murray, but the roof had caved in with the force of the water, and another team of officers found a body washed up at the other end, near the grounds of Old Pitkirtlyhill House.'

'So it's the end of his epic quest,' said Amaryllis quietly. Christopher had never known her so subdued. He guessed it was because she had initially been so well taken in by Mal: she would take a while to forgive herself for being such a bad judge of character.

'Oh well, you'll just have to concentrate on your PI business. Maybe you can re-brand yourself as an expert on lost cats or something,' he said, trying to cheer her up by being stupid again.

'That reminds me,' said Jock McLean. He was about to say more when his mobile phone suddenly rang – or at least, something played 'All Things Bright and Beautiful' in his pocket. He took out the phone, glanced at the display, and his face brightened. 'Rosie. Maybe she's speaking to me again after all.'

He didn't bother getting up from the table and moving away for privacy. They heard him say, 'That's great!... How did it happen? So they're all present and correct now, are they?... I can be up there in the morning if you like. If I can get a lift.'

He faced them all after disconnecting.

'So what had you done? At the cattery?' said Dave, preparing to look menacing.

'It was one of the cats,' said Jock. 'She said she couldn't find him – and I had been the last one in there, putting more Fun-Cat in his dish.'

'Fun-Cat?' Amaryllis mouthed to Christopher. He felt a huge, stupid laugh building up inside him.

'That was why she fired me.'

'And?' said Dave, leaning back and looking a bit less fierce.

'She's found him. He never got out. He had just found a way of hiding in between the little house thing and the wire fencing. He was there all the time.'

'That's what Fun-Cat will do for you,' said Amaryllis, nodding wisely. She still had a tight grip on Christopher's hand. He felt her nails digging into him as a warning not to laugh.

Amaryllis could be quite a scary woman sometimes.

### ~~~

### Author's Note:

### Frozen in Crime is a mystery novel in the 'Pitkirtly Mystery' series. If you enjoyed it, please try the others in the series, also available digitally:

### Crime in the Community

### Reunited in Death

### A Reformed Character

### Death at the Happiness Club

### To find out more about Cecilia Peartree please visit my blog at http://ceciliapeartree.wordpress.com or follow me on Twitter: @ceciliapeartree.
