The Sleep of the Dead

by Tom Bradby

  Mac saw that they all knew exactly what he was talking about. Rigby was staring at him now, as well as Sanderson.

  ‘Let me be plain,’ Sir Robert said. ‘You have an investigation to complete, for which this has no relevance whatever.’

  ‘How do I know until I have seen the file?’

  ‘I’m telling you it has no relevance.’ Sir Robert’s voice was soft. An iron fist in a velvet glove, Mac thought.

  ‘With respect, sir, I was given the investigation—’

  ‘For which, as I said, this has no relevance.’

  ‘And, as I said, how can I know, if I can’t see—’

  ‘Captain Macintosh. Please.’

  ‘I don’t understand why the file has been removed.’

  ‘Captain Macintosh,’ Sir Robert put his hands in his pockets, ‘could you tell me how something that transpired in the Falklands War could possibly have any bearing on the criminal investigation you are engaged upon?’

  Mac looked at them.

  ‘You’re to hand over the case to Sanderson,’ Rigby said. ‘He’ll brief you on the incident in Cyprus. The flight is at one o’clock.’

  Mac glanced down at the file in his hand. He did not know what was driving his own stubbornness. Perhaps it was the way he could sense their fear, but not its cause.

  ‘I had a call on Saturday,’ Mac said, ‘from a reporter on the Sun. Got wind of something. Glamour girl in trouble, all that. I tried to put him off, of course.’

  ‘Is that … a threat?’ Quemoy asked.

  ‘Of course not. But I believe it’s important that we are thorough in how we approach Captain Havilland’s case. I don’t think the newspapers should be given the impression that there is any suppression going on.’ Mac looked at Rigby, who dropped his eyes to his lap. ‘It’s a sensitive case, as you say.’

  There was silence.

  Quemoy stood. ‘All right, Macintosh. You have a day or two to complete this, but if you leave this office for any reason in the pursuit of this investigation, I want Sanderson here to accompany you. Is that clear? When you’ve finished, we will reconvene. Interview the girl and please confine your inquiries to matters that might possibly be relevant instead of matters that certainly are not. I’m sure I don’t need to warn you that impersonating a fellow officer is a criminal offence.’

  Once Quemoy had gone, Mac took his address book from his bag and walked towards the loo. Sanderson watched him go.

  As soon as he was out in the corridor, Mac went straight down to the yard and across to his car. He drove out of the gate and down the road outside until he got to a lay-by at the bottom, underneath a giant poster advertising the new Mercedes estate car.

  He stopped and called the Ministry of Defence switchboard. ‘Records office,’ he said.

  They gave him another number, which rang for a long time before a man answered, ‘Records.’

  ‘Captain Macintosh of the Royal Military Police. I urgently need to get hold of a former corporal by the name of Wilkes. Falklands War veteran. I want a name and address.’

  ‘I’m afraid I’ll need written authorization for that.’

  ‘Can I fax it to you?’

  Mac was wondering if he had any headed paper at home.

  ‘No, sir. I’m afraid you’ll have to send it.’

  ‘Look, this is a criminal invest—’

  ‘Those are the rules. They are there to protect retired men’s privacy.’

  Mac breathed out heavily. ‘Well, can you at least tell me that you have it?’

  ‘Not without authorization, sir.’

  Mac ended the call in frustration. He leafed through the directory he had put inside the back of his book, which listed home telephone numbers. He thought that if Maurice had been working the weekend he would be off today. Mac didn’t like to think what Maurice got up to on his days off.

  ‘Hello.’ There was music in the background – a classical recording Mac didn’t recognize.

  ‘Maurice?’

  ‘No. Hang on a minute, I’ll get him.’

  It had been a man’s voice. There was a long wait.

  ‘Maurice, it’s Mac.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Mac.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You were not supposed to know that Rigby had taken out the file. I’ve been told to stay at home indefinitely.’ Maurice’s voice, which had been angry, had immediately collapsed into self-pity.

  Mac cursed himself inwardly. ‘I need your help, Maurice.’

  ‘Don’t be so self-important.’ The music seemed to have got louder. ‘I can’t help you, Mac, I’m sorry.’

  ‘Maurice, I give you my word—’

  ‘Oh, come on …’ Maurice was angry again. ‘It’s not like it’s the first time. It happened in Vietnam. I’m sure it happens in every war.’

  It took Mac a few seconds to work out what Maurice was talking about. ‘What happens?’

  ‘Fragging. Or whatever they call it. Killing your officer.’ There was another pause. ‘That’s all I’m saying, Mac. You’ve got me into enough trouble.’ He put down the phone.

  Mac tapped his fingers against the keys in the ignition, then took his notebook from his pocket and placed it on the steering-wheel in front of him.

  Ford was not going to be co-operative, which left, of the officers, Rouse and Haydoch. He doubted Rouse was going to be any more helpful – certainly he’d been inexplicably hostile at the fête.

  Pascoe was the key, but he was missing. Wilkes was the next best potential source. He had already spoken to Mrs Claverton, so Mac thought that perhaps Danes’s wife might supply him with an address for Wilkes at the very least.

  After leaving Simon Crick’s studio, Julia went into the newsagent, bought a copy of the Daily Telegraph and folded the file into it. Then she walked down the high street, turned into Cross Keys Lane and entered the Swan. The pub’s interior had not changed much since the days when she had sat here illegally as a schoolgirl, its tacky décor not endearing it to the staff, thus, by convention, leaving it free for the pupils.

  It was almost empty now, but for some parents having lunch with their son. The boy had red hair and freckles and was wearing the bright blue and gold blazer of the cricket colours, which did not suit him.

  A shaft of sunlight lit a triangular patch of the table in front of her. Julia wasn’t hungry, so she ordered coffee and, since there was a pot on a hot-plate on the side, it came immediately, with long thin ginger biscuits.

  Julia did not know what to think about the pictures. She didn’t know what they meant. She didn’t know if she would tell Professor Malcolm about them.

  They were disturbing. They stimulated an explosive cocktail of thoughts and memories. The common had been a place of childhood innocence at least until the day of the murders, but here was evidence that that had been merely an illusion, even a conceit.

  Julia thought again of Alice. Of the pink dress and makeup. Somehow, that image and the pictures of Adrian Rouse and Sarah fucking – the corruption of the idyll – all seemed connected.

  Julia tried to think about something else.

  She flicked through the newspaper. The search of Welham Common was front page news. Inside, there was a story about the Security Forces in Ireland predicting a new ceasefire.

  Julia leant back in her chair.

  Her time in Ireland now seemed to have occurred in a different life altogether. Indeed, everything in her working life was like that – all parcelled off in her memory and unconnected to anything else. Sometimes it was as though she had not really lived it at all.

  The army would throw her out, of that she had no doubt, and the thought now struck her with the certainty of truth. She wondered when the crunch would come.

  She thought about Mac. What in the hell was he doing getting himself involved? For a moment, she felt intensely annoyed with him, but it faded. It was impossible to be irritated with Mac. She wondered what he was doing now. Probably talking to the two sergeants, meticulously notin
g down details of her aberrant behaviour. Trying to find a way out for her when there wasn’t one. She pushed the business section of the paper to the edge of the table. She had never once read one, or attended a careers fair or compiled a CV – not a proper one, anyway, with neat typing and hobbies. Opera, jazz, sport, dealing with very scared minds and looking at an execution as evidence of your own failure. What did that qualify you for? Loyalty and betrayal. Conscience and a lifetime of suspicion. Which particular piece of carpet-tile and standard-issue furniture did this qualify you to occupy?

  She picked up her mobile phone and dialled Mac’s number. He was on answering-machine. She put the phone down on the table in front of her.

  Mac, she thought, had contentment. Lots of other things, too, but that most of all. His life had been hard, but he had it. Julia could not remember contentment, or imagine the shape, feel and weight of it. Where did it spring from?

  Mac’s father had abandoned the family just at the age when he had become aware of what it meant, but he had dealt with it quietly and it underscored his basic decency. Was confronting the past brave, or was forgetting it more courageous and clever?

  She thought about her father and of the image that played out in her dreams, the great roaring bull of a man in full combat fatigues, soaked with the mud of battle, breaking cover and charging out to save the life of a soldier. Did circumstances make heroes or did heroes seek out circumstances?

  She was playing with the corner of the white envelope and her mind kept returning to the pictures within. It ought to have been surprising, but wasn’t. Nothing about Sarah was surprising. Confronting Adrian Rouse directly with them was out of the question, but she didn’t want to tell Professor Malcolm, either.

  Before leaving Cranbrooke, Julia went to visit Dr Simon.

  His surgery was at the bottom of the high street, below the abbey and close to the railway station, in a new building that he shared with three other doctors. It was called the Cranbrooke Practice.

  While she waited, Julia watched a heavily pregnant woman playing with her two young boys on the floor. They drove the trucks and the cars around noisily, each engagingly involved in his own world as the mother shuttled between them.

  They went in to see Dr Balen. A few minutes later, Julia was summoned to see Dr Simon.

  He was exactly the kind of doctor that Sarah would have had. He was tall – well over six feet – with jet black hair and a large moustache. He bore more than a passing resemblance to Omar Sharif.

  There were toys on the chair, so Julia perched uncomfortably on the bed, but the room was too small for him and the resultant atmosphere too intimate.

  He asked for accreditation or identification and she handed him the letter and her plastic army ID card. He looked at both without comment, before handing them back to her. He did not mention the search.

  Julia crossed her legs and took out her notebook. ‘You remember Sarah and Alice, I presume?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, of course.’ He leant back in his chair, a stethoscope still around his neck. ‘They were some of my first patients after I moved here from South Africa.’

  ‘Where from?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘I mean, whereabouts in South Africa?’

  ‘Cape Town.’

  Julia smiled. ‘Brave man to move here from there.’

  He shrugged. ‘Things were different then.’

  Julia was embarrassed, realizing that it was possible he had not been classified as a white. ‘Did you know Sarah well?’

  ‘As much as you know any patient.’

  ‘Was there anything about her that gave you any hint as to what happened?’

  He was shaking his head vigorously. ‘I was her doctor.’

  ‘No evidence of abuse or anything like that.’

  He shook his head again, but a smile had crept into the corner of his mouth. ‘She was quite a feisty woman. I don’t think that would have been an issue.’

  Julia looked down at her notepad. ‘What about Alice?’ He was waiting for her to continue. ‘As her doctor, did you notice anything out of the ordinary, any signs of abuse or neglect?’

  ‘On the contrary, Alice seemed to have been in unusually excellent physical condition.’

  ‘What do you mean, “unusually excellent”?’

  He shrugged. ‘Nails. Hair. Teeth. Any cuts always very clean. If anything, I would have said Sarah was an overprotective mother. She … every time the girl had a snuffle, she was in here. Always wanting antibiotics. I refused to prescribe them, sometimes, because if they take them like that as children, they’re no use when they’re really ill.’

  This was again so at odds with the neglectful, disinterested mother Julia remembered that she was silent for a few moments. ‘What about the relationship between mother and daughter? You probably wouldn’t have been aware, but Alice was being professionally modelled towards the end of her life and … Sarah may have been developing what could almost be seen as, well, an unhealthy interest in her daughter’s physical appearance. And one other thing, she seems to have made a lot of appointments to see you.’

  ‘I’m not a psychologist so I’m not going to comment on the relationship between mother and daughter, except to point to what I’ve just told you. In general, I always found her an endearing child. Well behaved, eager to please. Quiet. As to the number of appointments, yes, Sarah Ford and her husband had had some problems conceiving and we were, at that time, working with them both to ascertain whether any genuine difficulties or obstacles had emerged. We’d established that there were none with her, so our attention was turning to her husband. However, the nature of his military duties made hospital appointments difficult to keep.’

  ‘But they had Alice all right?’

  ‘Yes, but that was before I was Sarah’s doctor. I believe … I think you will find that Alice was in fact conceived before …’

  ‘Before what?’

  He realized he had gone too far. ‘No, I’m sorry.’

  ‘This is a criminal investigation, Dr Simon.’

  He was waving his hand. ‘Yes, I know, I know. It is no great secret. But the point is that sometimes it is easier to conceive when you are not trying than when you are.’

  ‘So Alice was conceived before marriage?’

  ‘Yes. That’s what Sarah said. She did not give me to believe it was a secret, nor was she shy of it, but …’

  ‘And they were unable to have more children?’

  ‘It was too early to say they were unable. They had been experiencing difficulties, that’s all.’

  Dr Simon had been looking at the clock. He gave her a patronizing, almost admiring smile. She stood up abruptly and thanked him.

  Outside, Julia leant against the wall in the sunshine, not knowing what to make of the fact that Alice had been conceived out of wedlock. It made sense of why Alan had married Sarah, of course, but didn’t seem to have any other relevance.

  The description of Sarah as a protective mother was more confusing. At the start of this process, she would have claimed to have known the relationship between Alice Ford and her mother well, but as she proceeded, she felt less and less sure of its dynamic.

  The easiest way to get out of Cranbrooke from the surgery was to drive past the station, cross the railway line and come back on the main road that skirts the bottom of the hill, but just as Julia was about to turn left to cross the line, she saw Mac in his familiar beaten-up old white Fiesta driving past the park in the direction of the abbey. Instinctively, Julia found herself following, at a distance.

  Mac turned left in front of the abbey, past the coffee-houses and sweet-shops Julia remembered so well from her schooldays here. Then, down towards the playing-fields, he turned left again. Julia could see this was a residential side-street, so she pulled over in front of the boys’ school cricket pitch and waited.

  She gave him about two minutes, then got out and walked round the corner. There was a cricket match in progress.

&nbs
p; Mac’s car was parked right at the far end on the other side so Julia crossed to the opposite pavement and walked slowly down towards it. There were small terraced houses, with wrought-iron fences and small yards in front of them, with well-tended flowerpots and plants. Julia guessed they were mostly occupied by elderly and retired people, of whom there were a great many in Cranbrooke. At school, they had joked bitterly that the town was full of schoolchildren and the elderly – ‘those waiting to live and those waiting to die’.

  In each house, there were two big windows on either side of the front door, one looking into a living room, the other into the kitchen. As she came to the end, Julia slowed still further. There was a light on in the kitchen of the last house and Mac was standing with his back to the window, his bulk filling most of it. He was turning his Akubra hat in his hand, the way he always did, and there was a woman opposite him, under the light, with her head down. She had dark hair and, as she looked up, Julia saw both that she recognized the woman and that she was crying.

  Julia had to wait an hour for Mac to come out. He stopped on the step and put his hat on his head.

  ‘Hello,’ he said.

  She found herself not knowing what to say. Her hands had been in her pockets, fingers scratching at her legs. She took them out and rubbed her palms together. ‘What are you doing here, Mac?’

  ‘Working.’

  Julia looked at her feet. ‘Who was that in the house? I recognized her.’

  ‘Jennifer Danes.’

  ‘As in Richard Danes, one of my father’s regimental sergeants?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Julia frowned. ‘Why were you seeing her?’

  Mac looked at her. ‘Have you got time for a coffee?’

  He fell into step beside her, looking across at the boys playing cricket, squinting against the sun which was directly above the clock-tower on the pavilion.

  Julia was suddenly, almost hysterically pleased to see Mac’s big smiling face. He was nothing to do with it – nothing to do with West Welham, or with Sarah, or corruption and lost innocence, or with any of it.