Frozen in Crime

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.