Frozen in Crime

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.