Frozen in Crime

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.