by M C Jacques
He began the email by thanking John for his last one, went on and enquired how matters were in work and play and, then, set down exactly how he had been asked to ‘help out’ with the intrigue at the war museum and outlined a special request for help. He wished his old college friend to make some discreet, distant enquiries around four people whom he named and listed with their dates of birth and other data. The last one, that of Sarah Millar, he stressed, must be particularly thorough and he would not interview her in any depth until he had received John’s assessment of her. Wondering how to stress the potential consequences of John being caught or identified whilst ‘delving’ into Millar’s background, habits and life, he simply appended, ‘Don’t leave any footprints, old boy!’
Once the cheque was settled, McKay took a walk to the furthermost point in the museum; the Warfare on Land Exhibition Hall. Although it had been closed to the public already, Graham Locke was keen to show the damage to the Conqueror’s turret. “It’s the heaviest turret on any tank we’ve got here! There’s only the turret on the Joseph Stalin – the heavy Russian tank which helped them blast through to Berlin – which comes anywhere near it! It weighs about three tons in all – the turret, I mean, just the turret! It’s been drilled and filed away at systematically by someone who knows exactly what they’re doing! All it needs is for one young tearaway to put any weight on it at all and thud – it would crush a car, let alone a schoolboy or toddler! Actually, it could crash down at any time; it’s been done that precisely.”
McKay noted how far the mighty turret pushed across the gangway, frequented by toddlers and veterans, pensioners and babies. It was all too easy to imagine one from a group of rambunctious Year Nine students leaping up, catching grip and pulling the dreadful, tubular tonnage down on him, and possibly on his mates, too.
“Let me have a list of all similar incidents.”
“Will do. I’ll get it to you tomorrow. We’ve got to nail this idiot, Mark. And it looks like there’s been some corrosive put on this one, too.”
“Too?” McKay queried.
“We’ve found evidence of an aggressive corrosive agent being used on the doors and panels of the Thorneycroft Antar Tank Transporter over there.” He indicated with his hand. “It’s only cosmetic in that case, but here it could have been lethal!”
“From what you say, the person who did this or, at the least, somebody involved in this would need a pretty astute engineering mind to be sure of getting it right; not causing it to snap prematurely, whilst being sure that it would break should someone swing on it.”
Locke nodded. “Certainly. But the horrid thing is that there are, in engineering terms, so many imponderables here –uneven deterioration of the metals, for example, irregular metal fatigue, for another – which means that it was always going to be a deathtrap once the filing had gone beyond a certain level – and as soon as you try and factor in corrosive agents, well! I mean, if it hadn’t have caused the death of some poor blighter this week, it could well have done next week, or next year! Anyone! Anytime! Random madness!”
14
McKay reflects in his room at the White Hart
Having returned to his room, undressed, showered and seated himself near the window overlooking the Saxon church, McKay took account of what he had learned so far. He struggled to see why anybody he had spoken to, or been spoken about, would be as callous and indiscriminate as to sabotage a gantry or a hefty tank turret. Anybody could have been the next victim – surely there could be no system at work here; just a demented mind, hungry for innocent death or suffering in the extreme. But why Smith, why Smith?
Smith had been shot by an improvised device pointing a quivering finger in the direction of Graham Locke or towards another one of the museum’s technical team. But, so far at least, there was nothing; not a bird-pecked wafer of evidence that anybody in the technical department had a motive for murdering Smith. Actually, thought McKay, there was precious little indication that anybody whom he had yet spoken to had any good reason to do the Sergeant to death.
Fothergill had been helpful enough, in a high-handed, resentful sort of way and, sure enough, his colleagues and underlings knew that he had no love of military personnel. But that was a long way away from actually pulling a trigger, though. Jill Prestons had, apparently, undergone some dreadful experience as a cadet and was certainly scarred, resentful even, but could McKay imagine her shooting someone in cold blood? Ambitious? Yes, she was. Sassy, yes. But callous? Definitely not. A business mover, a climber? Yes, he knew that. A good time girl? Well, he suspected that, too!
Graham Locke appeared to be just as Mountfitchet had described him: totally level-headed, a tad boringly so, maybe. His work record would appear to confirm that he was, indeed, totally committed to the wellbeing of the RWM and to its reputation. McKay shook his head as each and every avenue he travelled down just headed into a brick wall. What was he not seeing? What was evading him? He knew already that the candles in Room 11 of the White Hart Inn would burn late into the night.
Actually, he’d sensed undercurrents when both Fothergill and Prestons had mentioned Sarah Millar. Neither of them gave her a completely glowing report and he must check with DI Burrows about her Cambridge friends. And he would need to track down Andy Fordham, too; his absence seemed highly convenient, suspicious even. It was at this point that he fired up his netbook and viewed his inbox; John had replied. Good old John Foote! thought McKay.
Indeed, John hadn’t wasted any time getting down to business. All was well over there and he intended to visit the UK at the earliest opportunity. The niceties disposed with, he advised McKay to read very carefully what he had discovered about one of the people on the list. The words were succour for McKay’s tired eyes and listless mind. He read carefully. He studied his friend’s words and phrases which were unusually prosaic for such a graphic ‘wordsmith’ of a journalist. Clarity and accuracy were the qualities John had striven for and achieved. The sum of these McKay could hardly believe. At last, he had illuminated a person with a real motive for murdering a British military serviceman. A person who, it would seem, harboured a vengeful grudge against military personnel and British military people in particular; a person who had been seen lurking around the museum at strange hours and behaving in a suspicious manner. In short, what John Foote had written convinced McKay that it was time for him to begin to find out more about the private life of Sarah Millar, the museum’s Sales Manager and Visits Co-ordinator.
McKay shook momentarily as a solid rat-a-tat on his door jolted his eyes and his immersed attention away from John Foote’s email.
“Mr McKay, there is a Mr Andrew Fordham downstairs. He would like very much to talk with you! He is there now, waiting.”
“Thank you. I’ll be down in a few minutes. Please give Mr Fordham a drink and place it on my tab.”
15
Andy Fordham visits Mark McKay at the White Hart
Andrew Fordham was a local man and came fully fitted with the accent. “My family’s bin in these parts for years, it has, Mr McKay. And I met Mr Locke in Tesco’s at Newmarket earlier and he told me you might like to have a word with me. Well, here I am, so as you can see! Sorry if it’s a bit late but I did put my foot down on the way here!”
He was dressed in what would seem to be an almost entirely army surplus outfit: shiny black boots, khaki cotton drill trousers, and an olive green T-shirt. Some sort of denim jacket, dark green this time, with what appeared to be some sort of badge affixed on the top of each sleeve, had been flung on the stool near the bar. His arms were heavily tattooed and one on his left forearm – a large ‘E’ about which a snake was entwined – attracted McKay’s attention, perhaps because it bore the reddening and the swelling of recent imprint and incision.
“Can I help you please, sir?” asked the same girl from reception, leaning across the counter as she enquired.
“Just a small Pinot, please
. Now, Andy, let’s get on, if that’s okay. They haven’t seen much of you at the museum recently; any particular reason for that?” McKay gratefully acknowledged receipt of his wine with a nod and a smile.
“I’ve bin quite busy of late. Loads of private work. Bin pouring in, it has! Bin working on Matt Fothergill’s old Land Rover for one. Got it from Singapore, he did. Nice machine but needs a bit of TLC – well, it needs quite a lot, if the truth be known!” He laughed before sipping his ale. “Bin updating the electrics and the dials in the cabin. Slow work; got to get the right bits and that. But he pays me well for it; on the nail, too. So long as I do a good job!” He combed his long but thinning ‘Bobby Charlton-look’ hair, bestrewn across his beige forehead as he studied his real ale. McKay detested estimating age, but reckoned the would-be soldier could well have been between thirty-five and forty years old. Handy Andy had, in fact, turned thirty-eight on April 3rd.
McKay wondered why Fothergill had omitted to mention the fact that Andy Fordham was painstakingly restoring his own Land Rover. Even Graham Locke had appeared not to know why Andy, one of his best men, was no longer putting in the number of hours at the museum he had previously been.
“Where do you do this work, Andy; at Mr Fothergill’s?”
“Some of the time it is, but I do quite a bit of it at my Uncle Ernie’s garage over towards Red Lodge there. He lets me ‘ave a corner in the workshop, he does. I use his tools and do Saturday mornings and some breakdowns for him as a payoff. He’s good like that, he is. Ernie Johnston.”
McKay’s eyes had fastened on the E with snake tattoo again. “It sounds a good arrangement all round, Andy. How’s the pale ale?”
“Grand, Mark, it is. Grand. Nice and light, it is. Just right for a hot summer’s night like this, it is. Specially with a mile or two to drive yet! I like putting me foot down a bit when it’s like this, I do! Safely, mind… safely!”
“Sure. Will you be calling in to the museum on your way back tonight, Andy?” McKay took a long, slow sip from his glass, indicating, perfectly fallaciously, that Andy’s answer would bear no consequence.
“No, not tonight. Need to get my beauty sleep, I do, tonight!” It was a few seconds before he realised the full implications of his all too casual reply to McKay’s languidly delivered, yet cumbrous, question. He didn’t say another word as he glared at McKay before snatching his jacket from the back of his bar stool and making a very sharp exit.
It was one of those occasions whereupon the next morning shook McKay rather too quickly and certainly too violently. His netbook’s Steptoe & Son alarm tone seemed unduly loud with Old Ned being in far too much of a hurry to get things moving. McKay had noticed that, since the loss of his parents, in painfully quick succession, he occasionally awoke to face the day with a default setting of ‘unwilling’ and a dark foreboding, hitherto entirely unfamiliar to him. ‘You’ve always been such a happy thing!’ his late mother had said to him, just weeks before she lost her delicate grip on life and just weeks after she had observed the heavy clouds of failure beginning to accumulate above her only son’s marriage.
16
Cambridge by day
After a breakfast which was, considering the bounteous selection of hot and cold items on offer, as healthy as McKay’s ailing willpower was able to render it, he stepped out into the White Hart’s car park at about a quarter to nine. The air had something of an early autumnal bite to it which had been wanting for a few weeks. He did consider firing up the Scimitar but then recalled that there was a train into Cambridge from nearby Whittlesford every twenty minutes or so. Although he’d put back a couple of strong coffees already, a brisk morning walk would be just the thing to bring him round, and to consolidate his rehabilitation into the orb humanus.
The passenger’s initial impression of Cambridge when entering from a southerly direction may not be favourable at first. The University Press buildings and offices – significant though they may be – are drab and uninspiring, the old mills, closer to the rather inadequate station itself, are imposing but uninspiring nonetheless; the newer complexes, scattered about, comprising hotels, cinemas, restaurants and appurtenances are, perhaps, just a little too unexpectedly modern for the traveller, no matter how apposite and functional they might be for the local residents.
McKay had liked to carve his own way from the station into the old town on previous visits, just as he did in Norwich. He enjoyed comparing the larger bay-windowed Victorian semis and detached properties with those similar ones he’d seen in North Oxford off the Banbury and Woodstock Roads and in Summertown. It also made for a gentler, less hustling peregrination altogether. By the time he’d reached Waterstones on Sidney Street it was getting on for around half-past ten; time for a browse, then, followed by the inevitable Americano with milk.
McKay was pleased to see his own book upon the shelf in the centre of one of the UK’s premier university towns. It sat there quite prettily, he thought, but he would. “Smug twerp,” he muttered inaudibly, “gawping at your own book!” He picked it up, thumbed it through casually, checked the glossiness, the outright virgin newness of the covers, and smirked. But then, as had been his wont of late, he allowed himself to brood.
So here it is: over thirty years of life-throttling research summed up in under three-hundred pages, he mused – Davidson, Wenham, Robinson, Stevenson, Wheelock and several other names of Classical and Semitic grammarians and their eponymous printouts streaked across his mind’s eye. A whirl of wooden desks, volumes, ink, Parker pens, A4 writing pads, repeated phrases, terminations, declensions, inflections and inseparable articles (a Semitic phenomenon) vied for occupancy in a still moment’s thought.
And that was the fun part: the foray into research, the party before the air raid, whatever – Ashby, Moorlands, St Andrews and Oxford had been the venues in those heady days. But, post-publication, the egress had been slashed tyres, smashed windscreens, lost friends, lost relatives and all; the academic wilderness, the departure lounge, that was the current venue. At least, that was how it seemed to McKay that summer morning in Waterstones, Cambridge. That was how it felt as he took a second, ambivalent look at his book’s shiny, red-brown sleeve.
He was too old to be at the sharp edge of such controversy, he’d confided sympathetically to himself some weeks back. Too long in the tooth to start announcing to the world’s brethren that their beloved Jesus Christ had been, in fact, according to the oldest primary sources available, a first century (Galilean) radical with shadowy origins; a violent reactionary against Roman rule whose real name had been Yeshua-bar-Yosef; an insurgent, just like those insurgents who are killing occupying forces today in various parts of the Middle East and North Africa – no better, no worse. He glanced about him, compassing the bewildering maze of titles, colours and slogans. Pushing his book discreetly but firmly back into the tightly packed shelf, McKay slipped away, relieved that, on this occasion anyway, he had not been recognised and pointed at.
It was too early in the day for alcohol and, supposedly, too late for a serious measure of caffeine, but it was to be the latter that carried the day. McKay was barely through the door of a little Italian café, hard by the bus station, when the plodding rhythm of the Steptoe & Son theme emanated from his Motorola, threatening to rival the buzz of the chatting, gesticulating customers’ banter. It was Mountfitchet, the ‘old native’, as his late father had quipped. “Laid up for a few days, old man. Be right as rain soon. Leave you to it, then. Well done with keeping Fothergill on board! A real rooster, that one! Can’t keep his trousers belted, if you ask me!”
“Goodbye, sir. Thanks for the call. I’ll keep you posted, sir.” The call was over. McKay felt better for his chat with the Wing Commander, who was currently enjoying a stay in some lakeside spa, not far from Carlisle. He’d certainly cooled down somewhat and seemed to be content with the slight, edging progress McKay had been able to report.
Reaching the dregs
of his second cup, McKay considered his next move. He knew where he was heading, he knew why, too, but he was still not sure about precisely how to procure the information about Sarah Millar which he sought.
Now, this indecision was by no means due to any lack of planning or forethought. Not by any means. But McKay was well aware that he was performing well below par at this time. Everything seemed to take that little bit longer these days; since his parents, since the divorce, since he’d misguidedly allowed himself to publish a book, the abrasive, impassioned reaction to which he could never have hoped to have gauged accurately beforehand. Years later, when amongst his close friends, he would jest about his ‘childhood forties’ with no little fondness.
His confidence and self-esteem had been buffeted severely of late, but, somewhere, tucked away deep down inside, was a conviction which held fast amidst the thunderous storms and hail. He’d been right. He’d uncovered the real JC and that was the real problem. Mountfitchet held fast to him, too, and he had a robust Christian faith, quite a middle-of-the-road C of E one, but a sound faith, nonetheless. And a number of academics had, after all, congratulated him on his courage for publishing his research. Even the Bishop of Lincoln had come to his aid in the press.
Almost begrudgingly and in a ‘I suppose it will be okay’ sort of a way, McKay thus began to acknowledge that he was well placed, albeit a little life-beaten, to rumble this ‘intrigue’ – to poach Mountfitchet’s shibboleth for it – at the Royal War Museum. He was… and, if he could unravel it, he would.
His resolve refortified, it was not long before he was circuiting Parker’s Piece, the ‘home’ of Association Football, he recalled to himself, on his way to Mill Street and the vicinity of Sarah Millar’s flat and various other environs. The ever so slight morning breeze had abated and surrendered to the charming might of the Aesopian Helios, so that the park was now speckled with white T-shirts and the occasional bared chest and even – McKay noted with interest – the odd bikini, or was that one actually a pink bra?