Chapter 18
“Mrs Crane, you are the wife of Sgt Major Crane and in the light of a possible threat, we have been ordered to take any precautions we think necessary to protect you and your son. There will therefore be a jeep with two Royal Military Policemen in it outside the front of the house and two more men covering the rear.” Then Staff Sergeant Jones’ voice softened. “Look, Tina, I know you don’t like it, but just go with it for now, okay? At least until we know what’s going on. Let me just check there’s no one in the house and then you won’t even know we’re here.”
“As long as I don’t look outside.”
Jones gave a short laugh. “Yes, Tina, as long as you don’t look outside,” and he stepped inside the house to do his check.
A few moments later he nodded to Tina and left. She closed the door and prepared to wait for her husband to come back. As an Army wife she was, of course, used to ‘waiting for her husband to come back’, but this time it was different. This time the threat wasn’t just to Tom. This time the threat appeared to include her and their son. Wandering from room to room, Tina wondered about ringing a friend, maybe Julie next door. Sharing the worry with someone would help. That’s what they normally did, the Army wives, support each other by sharing worries. But it was probably best not to do that in this case. Until she knew what was really going on, she better not share.
The trouble was that living on the garrison was akin to living in a goldfish bowl. Everyone saw everything. Good times, bad times and even just plain boring times. Sometimes there seemed no getting away from it, yet at other times the wives wouldn’t make it through a particularly hard time without the support the community could give them. But if she rang a friend, even with an assurance that the woman wouldn’t tell anyone, Tina couldn’t guarantee it wouldn’t happen. Most women shared stuff with their husband, thinking that was okay. But, of course, that just meant that the soldiers knew and so they gossiped away over meals, or a few beers in the mess. And that gossip then got circulated round again and in that way, back to their wives. So, no, she best not ring anyone at the moment. Tom was bound to find out if she did.
Tina wandered into the kitchen, opened the dishwasher and started to put away the clean crockery. She thought back to her post natal depression, which was never far from her mind. Leaving work, leaving their house in Ash, moving onto the garrison and then having her first baby, all in quick succession, had been too much for her fragile emotions. She’d become stuck in a never ending cycle of not coping, feeling a failure and unable to live up to her husband’s high standards. That was when she really did need the support of the garrison community and they hadn’t let her down - everyone following Tom’s meticulously prepared timetable for helping with Daniel and the housework. At the time Tina had thought it a dispassionate thing for Tom to do, preparing that bloody timetable. But as she got better, she’d had to admit that Tom was just doing what Tom did best. Being a soldier and finding the most effective and efficient way to address a problem.
The kitchen tidy, Tina went upstairs to check on Daniel. He was sleeping, of course, in his cot. His long dark lashes and dark hair, a gift from his father and his snub nose one from her. Daniel was the one thing guaranteed to break through Tom’s tough policeman and soldier exterior. The one thing to make him freely feel emotion. She knew, of course, that he loved them both dearly, but at the end of the day he was a soldier. He was married to the Army as much as to her.
Creeping back out of the nursery, Tina heard the scraping of a key in the lock downstairs. As she realised Tom was home, she relaxed, only then appreciating how tense she had been and she sank to the floor outside Daniel’s room and burst into tears.
But the tears hadn’t lasted long. They’d given way to anger. And she turned that anger on her husband.
“Bloody Army,” she shouted at him. They were in the kitchen making a cup of tea and Crane’s lack of sympathy for her tears made her snap at him as she turned on the kettle. “Look what’s happening now! Armed RMP outside the house!”
“Tina, it’s not the Army’s fault.”
“Really? The way I see it everything is the Army’s fault. Foster’s ex-Army isn’t he?” she said as she banged the tin holding the tea bags down on the work surface.
“Yes,” Crane answered, “but he’s the killer, not the Army.”
“Don’t try that one on me, Tom,” she whirled around, his platitudes fuelling her anger, not dissipating it. “The Army trained Foster to kill remember? Jones told me Foster had been a sniper, trained to lie in wait for the enemy. For all we know he could be lying low somewhere within sight of the house. Watching and waiting. Bloody hell I feel like a fish in a bowl! I want to get out of here. I’m going to take Daniel to my Mum’s,” and she made to leave the kitchen.
“Tina, love, you can’t do that.” Crane’s words called her back.
“Why not,” she said from the doorway.
“Because if he is watching and following you, all you’ll do is put your mum in danger. It’s better you stay here on the garrison, where we can keep an eye on you.”
“So I have to stay here and put up with soldiers watching the house and following me around.”
“Yes, Tina, you do.”
“Well, fuck you, Tom, and fuck your bloody Army. You can make your own bloody cup of tea,” she shouted and flounced out of the room. She was angry with Tom and angry with the Army, but underneath it all, she knew her outburst had its roots in fear.
*
As he went upstairs to bed, Crane first went into the nursery to check on Daniel. Looking at the sleeping boy he wondered if he would want to be a soldier like his dad when he grew up. Crane smiled at the thought of generation after generation of Cranes following him into the forces. Real soldiers. Real men. Not poncy officers.
He loved his boy with a ferocity that surprised him. A love that cut through the layers of protection he wrapped his emotions in. Protection from feeling desolate at times, when he was posted away and missing Tina. Protection from reacting emotionally when his lads were killed and injured in Afghanistan. Protection from the fear of a terrorist attack, when the Olympic athletes were on the garrison. That armour around his heart enabled him to do his job properly. Made him detached when looking at the dead and giving him the ability to plan and investigate with clarity and determination. It didn’t make him immune to the horrors of death, but enabled him to cope with it.
And now Daniel had arrived. Another attack on his emotions. Crane would do whatever it took to keep Daniel safe. Barry Foster would not be allowed to get away with threatening his family.
“I won’t let you down,” he promised the sleeping child, as he bent to kiss his boy.
*
He had to admit Tina had a point the next morning, when he tried to go to work. A point she’d made about how difficult life would be with military police posted outside. But she had to accept that they would sit outside the house and shadow her and Daniel when they went out. Crane was determined that they had to be protected. When Tina had sarcastically asked this morning if someone would be coming shopping with her to Tesco, he responded with an emphatic ‘yes’. Even down to driving her there and back in a jeep.
As he came out of the house there was a military jeep blocking the driveway, which had to move before he could get away. Crane found himself getting away physically as well as metaphorically, needing to get off the garrison, which was becoming claustrophobic. Somehow living on the garrison meant that he never got away from work. Tina complained she could never get away from the Army, but it was the same for him. He found it difficult to unwind and relax sometimes, always being so close to the office. Living so close to Provost Barracks also meant he was more often than not the investigator called to a crime scene. It was beginning to get to him as well.
Pulling into the car park behind Aldershot Police Station, he tried to shake off his negative thoughts and turned his mind to the investigation of Mel Green’s murder. Walking through to t
he CID office he caught sight of Anderson going into the break room. Anderson lifted up a mug and Crane nodded, going to wait in Anderson’s office for both the policeman and a welcome cup of coffee.
After listening to Anderson regaling him with tales of being on the television last night over coffee and biscuits, they eventually got down to the results of the phone-in. Basically it all boiled down to three main witnesses. A local Aldershot resident had seen a white van in the vicinity of the underpass the night of Mel’s murder and provided a partial number plate. Tina had seen and talked to Barry Foster outside Crane’s house and Moore and Richards, the Producer and Director of the am dram group from The Westy, called to say that Foster was the man who had failed to become a permanent member of their group.
“We’re talking to the DVLA and trawling through records of white vans with that partial plate, finding the ones registered locally.”
“How do you know the van will be registered locally?”
“Well, it stands to reason.”
“Really?” Crane didn’t bother to hide his sarcasm. “Foster could have bought it and registered it to an address hundreds of miles away. Just because he’s around here at the moment, doesn’t mean his van is registered here.”
“I know, Crane, but it’s a start okay? We have to start somewhere, for God’s sake.”
“Well then, what about finding Foster himself, if you can’t find his bloody van?” Crane demanded.
“Ah,” was Anderson’s enigmatic reply.
“Ah?”
“Yes. Well, you know how the Army can’t find him?”
“Yes, Derek, I’m well aware of that. Can the police find him?”
“Not exactly.”
“Not exactly? What the hell does that mean?”
“Well, I suppose it means no we haven’t found him. But we will, Crane.”
“I bloody well hope you find him, Derek, before I do. Because when I do I’m liable to break his neck, firstly for threatening my family, secondly for killing Mel Green and thirdly for killing Carol Newton.
“Stop taking it out on me, Crane.” Anderson raised his voice to match Crane’s.
“Taking what out on you?”
“Your anger about the dressing down you’re going to get from Edwards, when you make your report to him. The report where you have to tell him that we’re getting nowhere fast.”
Chapter 19
Brigadier Sir Peter Dunne (retired) was pottering around in his garden. He was dressed down for the job, but still wearing sharply creased trousers, albeit pushed into wellington boots, a soft cotton checked shirt, topped off by a cravat, with an old straw hat covering his bald pate. He had gardeners, of course, to help with the two acre garden that surrounded his renovated coaching inn situated in West Sussex, but he liked to help. Believing in the hands on approach. The personal touch. How could he give them instructions regarding planting, trimming and strimming, if he couldn’t do those jobs himself? His employees understood that Dunne could do their job but didn’t because he was so important and so rich.
As he stood and surveyed his handiwork with satisfaction, he had to admit life had been good to him. He’d had a very successful career in the British Army and been duly recognised for his service with a knighthood, something Mrs Dunne coveted as though it were a diamond necklace. She always said Sir Peter and Lady Dunne had a certain ring to it. One she never seemed to tire of telling people.
He pulled the gardening gloves from his hands and placed the hoe he had been using next to the pile of weeds he had eradicated from the flower bed. Weeds got short shrift in his garden. He hated plants that strangled the life out of others, taking all the water and food from the ground for themselves and, if left to grow and flourish, all the sunlight. No, all the beds had to be weed free at all times, the plants properly fed with fertilizer and watered at regular intervals. There was nothing irregular in his garden. Sir Peter was hoping to be included in the Royal Horticultural Society Open Garden Days. So he could show off his efforts and his wife could show off his title.
As he plodded towards the house, he was looking forward to a cup of coffee and reading the Daily Telegraph. Maybe they would have printed his letter today. The one commenting on the forthcoming round of redundancies in the Army. At the thought of that, he quickened his pace and met his wife coming out of the kitchen door, as he approached it.
“Oh, there you are, Peter. There’s a phone call for you.”
“Oh, very well,” Sir Peter didn’t bother to hide his disappointment at the delay in getting to his beloved paper. “Who is it?” he snapped.
“Well, I don’t know. One of your bloody Army blokes, but he wouldn’t give his name.”
Now Sir Peter was retired, his wife seemed to hate the establishment that had given them all the trappings of a successful life and, to Sir Peter, seemed to take every opportunity to rubbish it.
“Thank you, dear,” he said with a sigh and walked through the house to his library cum study.
“Dunne,” he barked into the phone, always careful about using his title before he knew who was calling. Not wanting to offend anyone of a higher standing than himself.
“Is that Brigadier Sir Peter Dunne, retired?”
“Yes, yes, who is this?” Dunne couldn’t place the voice, but then again he did know an inordinate number of people.
“A ghost from your past, Sir Peter, a ghost from your past. That’s who this is,” the unknown voice said.
“What? What the bloody hell are you talking about, man?”
Sir Peter moved around his leather topped desk and sat down in the large leather chair stationed behind it, the better to get his head around this strange phone call.
“It’s Foster, Sir. Sgt Barry Foster retired.”
The notes of anger in the voice seared his memory. “Foster?” he said. “Is that really you?” Sir Peter used both hands to hold the phone he had nearly dropped in shock.
“The one and only, Sir Peter. I’m so glad you remember me. But how could you forget the Sgt Barry Foster who carried out your orders to the letter? The Sgt Barry Foster spirited out of Aldershot to do your bidding.”
The voice sounded older than he remembered. Not as razor sharp. But still, just as threatening. Sir Peter’s hands became clammy and the receiver threatened to slither through them.
“How the hell did you find me?”
“Find you? That’s a good one, Sir Peter. Have you forgotten your entry in that useful tome, ‘Who’s Who’?”
“Oh, yes, right,” in his panic he’d forgotten about that. He’d gained entry when he received his knighthood. “Anyway, what do you want?” he managed to ask. He had inkling, but if he was honest, he didn’t really want to know.
“Nothing, Sir Peter. I don’t want anything from you. I don’t want you to do anything. That’s the whole point of this phone call.”
“Stop talking in riddles, man.”
“Very well. It seems I may have become the subject of police interest in a delicate matter in Aldershot.”
“A delicate matter? Stop with the Army speak, Foster.”
“It’s as delicate a matter as the incident 10 years ago. I’m sure you remember that don’t you?”
Sir Peter remembered all too well, but kept his mouth shut.
“So,” Foster continued, “should anyone come asking about me, mention my name, or phone you asking for your help, I don’t want you to do anything. Don’t help. Don’t give any information. You know nothing. Get it?”
“Got it,” Sir Peter managed to stammer. “Anything else you want?”
“This isn’t an extortion phone call. I don’t want your money. It’s got the blood of too many men on it. The men who died under your command as you clawed your way up the ladder, no matter the cost. No, keep your blood money and keep your mouth shut. That way you keep your privileged life and your title. Talk and you lose the lot, because I won’t go down alone, I’ll take you with me.”
As Foster cut the call, Sir
Peter’s wife came into the room. “Coffee dear?” she asked brightly, a cup and saucer in her hand and his newspaper tucked under her arm. Sir Peter didn’t hear her. He was still staring at the receiver in his hand. All he could hear was Foster’s words bouncing around in his head, ‘I won’t go down alone. I’ll take you with me.’
Sir Peter started as his wife placed the coffee cup on his desk. “Oh, thank you, my dear,” he said and replaced the telephone handset. As she walked out of the room he watched her go and knew he couldn’t do that to her. Be reckless enough to lose his title and their lifestyle. She had supported him for all those years, had been the perfect officer’s wife and now she was reaping the rewards of that service. She deserved to enjoy her life now. She’d given so much in the past, he couldn’t take her present away from her. He’d do as Foster asked.
Chapter 20
Crane once again pulled his list of people he needed to speak to about the Carol Newton case, towards him. In fact it was looking more and more likely that the same man killed both women, with the same knife, in the same place, ten years apart. And that man could be Barry Foster. If they could find him and interview him that is. Or, if Crane could make someone else talk about the murder 10 years ago. The recording of a dying man’s confession that he knew the name of Carol Newton’s killer was not cutting it with Edwards and to be honest Crane couldn’t blame him. Even though there was a date and time on the recording, which corresponded with when Crane was at the Hospice, there was still no corroborating evidence to support the fact that it was Richmond he was speaking to. There was no independent witness, not even a nurse or helper at the The Oaks, as they were alone at the time.
Nor could Crane prove that Foster killed Richmond. He could have been suffocated, but there was nothing to suggest that. No bruising on his mouth and nose, no fibres in his mouth, throat or lungs. All there was, was cancer and a bloody lot of it at that. So it had been decreed that Richmond had died of natural causes.
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