Frozen in Crime

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.