The Ice House Read Online Free PDF

flagstones, remembered how one of them had nuzzled the palm of his hand. With an abrupt movement, he wiped the hand down his trouser leg. He puffed smoke relentlessly into the atmosphere. "I follow your reasoning about why the animals should have gone for the abdomen and thighs, but they seem to have done a pretty good job on the top half as well. Why is that? Is it normal?"
    Webster stood up and wiped his forehead with the sleeve of his shirt. "God knows, George. About the only thing I'm sure of is that this whole thing is abnormal. I'll hazard a guess that the poor sod pressed his left hand to his belly to try to stop the blood running out or hold his guts in, whichever you prefer, then did what I just did- wiped the sweat off his face and smeared himself with blood. That would have attracted rats or whatever to his left hand and arm and the upper half of his body."
    "You said he'd have been in a coma." Walsh's tone was accusing,
    "Maybe he was, maybe he wasn't. How the hell should I know? Anyway, people move in comas."
    Walsh took his pipe out of his mouth and used its stem to point at the chest. "Shall I tell you what that looks like to me?"
    "Go on."
    "The bones on a breast of lamb after my wife's skinned the meat off it with a sharp knife."
    Webster looked tired. "I know. I'm hoping it's deceptive. If it's not-well, you don't need me to spell out what it means."
    "The villagers say the women here are witches."
    Webster peeled off his gloves. "Let's get out of here-unless there's anything else you think I can tell you. My own view is I'll find out more when I've got him on the slab."
    "Just one thing. Do you reckon he got his abdominal wound here or somewhere else?"
    Webster picked up his case and led the way out. "Don't ask me, George. The only thing I'm sure of is that he was alive when he got here. Whether he was
already
bleeding, I wouldn't know." He paused in the doorway. "Unless there's anything in this freezer theory, of course. Then he'd have been good and dead."

4
    Three hours later, after the remains had been painstakingly removed under the direction of Dr. Webster, and a laborious investigation of the ice-house interior had revealed little of note beyond a pile of dead bracken in one corner, the door was sealed and Walsh and McLoughlin returned to Streech Grange. Phoebe offered them the library to work in and, with a remarkable lack of curiosity, left them to their deliberations.
    A team of policemen remained behind to comb the area in expanding circles round the ice house. Privately, Walsh thought this a wasted exercise-if too much time had elapsed between the body's arrival and its discovery, the surrounding area would tell them nothing. However, routine work had produced unlikely evidence before, and now various samples from the ice house were awaiting dispatch to the forensic labs. These included brick dust, tufts of fur, some discoloured mud off the floor and what Dr. Webster asserted were the splintered remains of a lamb bone which McLoughlin had found amongst the brambles outside the door. Young Constable Williams, still ignorant of exactly what had been in the ice house, was summoned to the library.
    He found Walsh and McLoughlin sitting side by side behind a mahogany desk of heroic proportions, the photographic evidence, developed at speed, spread fan-like in front of them. An ancient Anglepoise lamp with a green shade was the only lighting in the rapidly darkening room and, as Williams entered, Walsh bent the light away to soften the brightness of its glare. For the young PC, viewing the pictures upside down and in semi-darkness, it was a tantalising glimpse of the horrors he had so far only imagined. He read his small collection of statements with half an eye on McLoughlin's face, where black hollows were etched deep by the shadowy light. Jesus, but the bastard looked ill. He wondered if the whispers he'd heard were true.
    "Their statements about the finding of the body are all consistent, sir.