Miles embraced him, and as we headed outside, DCI Randolf and DS Birch got out of their car when they saw us all filing down the stone steps. Gloria shot off ahead, tail wagging excitedly that she was getting so many people to accompany her, as opposed to her usual drab walk with Jeannie.
‘What’s going on?’ asked Randolf, a deep line creasing his forehead.
‘We are going for a walk!’ Jeannie said tartly, clutching the Harrods tin in one hand and her walking pole– so firmly her knuckles were white– in the other, her breath misting and floating away in the air. ‘Is that a problem, officer? Or are you taking away our human rights now, too?’
He held his hands up in supplication. ‘I’m not here to attack you, Mrs Weiss, I’m here to protect you.’
‘Pah! Fat lot of help you’ve been so far! Perhaps you’re a murderer, Mr Randolf? Perhaps we should lock ourselves away from you?’
‘Please, Mrs Weiss, I can’t imagine what you must be going through. But I’m just trying to do my job.’
‘Well, do it, then!’ she barked.
He took a deep breath. ‘I just heard from my colleague, and he said Ceecee never made it to Cambridge. She has not been seen anywhere on campus or in her halls. We can’t find any record of her being at the train station.’
Jeannie went stock-still, her lips tightly pressed together. Miles put his hands behind his head, pulling at his hair.I should really speak to him about that, I thought. At the rate he was going, he’d be bald by next week.
‘Is there anywhere else she could have gone?’ Randolf asked. ‘We are checking with the local bus and taxi drivers?—’
‘She would never take the bus,’ Jeannie cut him off, flatly. ‘Idon’t think either of the girls have even seen the inside of a bus.’ She waved her stick in the air. ‘I need to bloody walk. I need to clear my head from all this insanity!’
‘Would you mind if DS Birch and I joined you?’ Randolf asked. ‘We don’t think it’s wise for you all to go unattended.’
Jeannie’s nostrils flared and she stormed ahead down the path, stabbing her walking pole brutally into the frozen earth as she went. The rest of us trailed after her as she steamed ahead like a freight train on a deadline.
I was relieved to have the police with us. I was half expecting to be bludgeoned to death with Jeannie’s walking pole. Hell, at this rate I wouldn’t be surprised if Gloria turned around and ate me whole. We walked in silence for a while as I tried to put what I had just witnessed with Quentin to one side and raked over where Ceecee could have gone to. She wasn’t in the house, we would have seen her by now. The police would have seen her.
We followed the path leading away from the house. It curved around a large pond that was home to a pair of cygnets in the summer months, but was now desolate and frozen over. Gloria sniffed around the edges at the dead rushes.
Jeannie came to an abrupt halt.
‘Here we are! The pond. It’s as good a place as any, I suppose.’
‘As good a place as any for what?’ Randolf asked.
Jeannie shook the tin. ‘For my husband. Here, hold my pole for me please, Martha?’ With her free hand, Jeannie started prising off the lid. ‘Does anyone have anything to say?’
‘We are really doing this now?’ asked Fergus flabbergasted, ‘I haven’t had time?—’
‘George wanted a quick cremation with no fuss. So that’s what I’m doing. Quick and fuss-free. You were the ones who told me I was being selfish’—Jeannie looked pointedly towards Miles—‘so here I am, being totally unselfish!’ She upended the tin. Plumes of ash fell, scattering into the air and down on to the frozen lake. In a moment, a cold wind whipped up, changing the course of George’s remains and blasting the fine sand into our faces.
‘Argh, my eyes!’ Martha wailed.
Randolf spluttered and spat. ‘Oh, shit. It’s in my mouth.’
Miles stared at his mother, then down at the icy lake where his father’s remains lay, unable to submerge in the water, just dashed onto the surface where he would eventually melt into the lake, or blow away entirely.
‘What on earth has gotten into you, Mother? Why are you so hellbent on being so ruddy disrespectful?’
‘Oh, so it’s aboutyounow?’
‘You are insufferable!’ Miles yelled. ‘Insensitive, selfish, self-obsessed—’ He caught himself as he realised the two officers were watching them. But it seemed he couldn’t help himself as he continued, ‘What I hate more than anything is the fact that you subject my kids to your utter horribleness.’ He put his arms around Callum and Martha and led them away.
Jeannie watched them, her chest rising and falling like adrenaline had taken over.
Randolf waited for Birch and said under his breath, ‘As soon as we get back, can you put in for a psych eval for MrsWeiss?’
It took all my willpower not to turn around and beg to read the report once it was done.
