It should have reassured Paniatowski – but it didn’t.
An air pocket, she thought. What the hell was an air pocket? The words didn’t make any sense, because what else would anyone expect – up in the bloody air – if not air?
In an effort to stem her rising panic, she forced herself to focus her mind on the case.
Something had happened on that island below her – an island on which she might eventually land safely! – which had cost the lives of two men seven years later, and could yet be the cause of more deaths.
So what had Terry Pugh done that had merited decapitation?
What crime had Reg Lewis committed which meant that he ended up hanging from a crane?
‘We should be landing in another two or three minutes,’ the flight lieutenant told her, looking out of the window.
I’ll believe it when I see it, Paniatowski thought, looking in quite the other direction.
Before his wife Maria had been murdered, Bob Rutter had always eaten a hearty breakfast each morning – though he had never been able to match the championship artery clogging efforts of his boss, Charlie Woodend – but since her death he had found it difficult to manage even a slice of toast. Now he usually contented himself with a cup of strong coffee, and two or three cigarettes, and that morning – as he scanned the morning newspapers – was no exception.
The papers were full of the murders, which was hardly surprising, given both the sensational nature of the crimes and the chief constable’s eagerness to re-establish his own position by talking almost constantly to the press. But though Elizabeth Driver’s own paper had gone to town on it more than most, there was no article which bore Elizabeth’s by-line.
There hadn’t been an article by Elizabeth in the previous morning’s paper, either, despite the fact that – after she’d promised to keep it to herself – he had fed her information which would have put her well ahead her rivals.
So, it seemed to him, his gut feeling had been right. Despite both Monika’s and Woodend’s scepticism, Elizabeth was no longer the woman she’d been when they first met. She was trying to become a better, more honest, person. And if she could make that change, then perhaps he could too.
He tried not to think about her in a sexual way, though that was becoming increasingly difficult as time went by. He knew that he didn’t love her, he told himself. Not as he had once loved his wife, and not as he still loved Mo …
An iron grille came down in Rutter’s head, slicing through that particular line of thought before it could wriggle even further into his brain.
He took a deep breath, and started again.
He knew that he didn’t love Elizabeth as he had once loved Maria, but he did yearn to hold her – to feel her firm and exciting body pressed against his.
But he must resist that temptation. The book they were to write together was all that mattered. He must not do anything that might get in the way of that.
Monika Paniatowski stood on the hot tarmac at Akrotiri Base, looking up at the Blackburn Beverly which had brought her there, still not quite able to understand how the heavy metal bird had managed the trick.
She was still looking at it wonderingly when she heard a Land Rover pull up close to her, and voice call out, ‘Sergeant Paniatowski?’
She turned. Sitting behind the driving wheel of the vehicle was a boy. He was wearing a lightweight military uniform which consisted of a grey socks, shorts, and a short-sleeved shirt which sported a single chevron on one of the sleeves.
‘A boy!’ Paniatowski thought with horror. ‘I just called him a boy!’
The word had automatically come to her mind, because he was clearly several years her junior. And that had to make him a boy!
Didn’t it?
Except that he wasn’t. Looking at him objectively, it was difficult to see him as anything but a young man.
Paniatowski realized she was suddenly starting to feel very, very old.
The boy – the young man – was still sitting behind the wheel of the Land Rover, waiting for an answer.
‘Yes, I’m Paniatowski,’ she heard herself say aloud.
The lance corporal grinned. Was she allowed to call it a boyish grin, she wondered.
‘I’m Bill Blaine, Sarge,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you hop into the vehicle, and I’ll take you to meet the boss?’
DC Colin Beresford knew that many of his colleagues stayed in bed until the last possible moment. Then, in a flurry of activity, they shaved while they smoked their first cigarette of the day, ate a bowl of cereal while they dressed, and were out of the house in fifteen minutes flat.
He couldn’t do that.
He had responsibilities.
The first thing he had to do, this morning as every morning, was to cook his mother’s breakfast. The second was to sit there and make sure she ate it. That accomplished – and sometimes accomplishing it wasn’t easy – he always set aside five minutes for talk, because the doctor had told him that it was important to make sure that his mother talked – that though it would not stop the slide into dementia, it might possibly slow it down a little.
These tasks having been completed, he walked around the house, making sure it was a safe place in which to leave his mother.
The main fuse in the kitchen had to be removed and hidden, because once she had turned on the cooker, forgotten she’d done it, and burned her hand badly.
The stopcock in the bathroom had to be turned off, to prevent a recurrence of the time the bath had overflowed and the flood had almost brought down the living room ceiling.
And finally all the locks had to be checked, to make sure that his mother couldn’t leave the house even if she wanted to, since she had an inclination to wander, even if she were only wearing her night-gown.
When all that was done, he’d kissed her on the cheek.
Some mornings, she would look at him strangely, as if wondering why a complete stranger would ever do such a thing.
But this morning was one of her good ones. This morning, she smiled at him, and said, ‘Take care, Colin.’
‘I will,’ he promised.
As he stepped through the front door – and then carefully locked it behind him – he felt as exhausted as if he had already done a full day’s work. But that day’s work still lay ahead of him.
In his pocket, he had a list of several men who had served in Cyprus at the same time as Terry Pugh and Reg Lewis – and he was rather hoping that they could explain to him why the two of them were now dead.
When Mrs Bygraves appeared at her front door, it was clear to Bob Rutter, from the haggard expression on her face, that she’d had little sleep the night before. Then she saw who’d been ringing the bell, and her face flooded with hope.
‘You’ve found him, haven’t you!’ she gasped with relief. ‘You’ve found my Tom. I knew it was stupid of me to worry.’
‘I’m afraid we haven’t found him yet,’ Rutter said gently, ‘but it is still early days.’
‘If you haven’t found him, then why are you here?’ Mrs Bygraves demanded, as hope immediately gave way to anger and aggression. ‘Why aren’t you out there?’ she gestured expansively towards the wider world beyond her home. ‘Why aren’t you still looking for him?’
‘We are still looking for him,’ Rutter assured her. ‘We’ve got scores of men out there involved in the operation. But that’s not what I’ve been asked to do. My job is to search the house.’
‘Search the house? Go through all our personal things – through the life we’ve had together? What good could that possibly do?’
‘We might find some clue as to where he’s gone,’ Rutter explained.
‘Have you got a search warrant?’ Mrs Bygraves demanded.
‘No, I haven’t,’ Rutter admitted. ‘I didn’t think I’d need one. I thought you’d want to help.’
‘Of course I want to help,’ Mrs Bygraves said, close to tears. ‘But don’t you think that if there was something here, I’d already have found
it?’
‘With the greatest respect, madam, you don’t have a policeman’s trained eye,’ Rutter said.
‘No, but I do know my husband. And I know there’s nothing in the house that will tell you where he went – because when he left, he didn’t know where he was going himself.’
‘Well, I can’t force you to let me in, if you don’t want to,’ Rutter told her. ‘We’ll let you know if your husband turns up. Good morning, madam.’
He turned towards the garden gate.
‘Wait!’ Mrs Bygraves said.
‘Yes?’
‘Do you really think you might find a clue of some sort?’
‘I can’t promise anything, madam.’
Mrs Bygraves brushed a tear from her cheek.
‘You’d better come inside,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry for the way I spoke to you just now. I really don’t know what’s come over me.’
‘It’s perfectly understandable, madam,’ Rutter said.
And it was.
First there’d been desperate hope, but that had been rapidly followed by despair, anger, defiance and eventually misery. These were the string of ever-changing emotions that people felt when they believed – and yet at the same time refused to believe – that they had lost their partner.
And he should know, because he had run the whole gamut himself – at least a dozen times – after Maria had been murdered.
Captain Howerd was in his mid-thirties, but already greying at the temples. He looked at Paniatowski as if she were something that the cat had dragged in.
‘We’re not accustomed to the civilian police force carrying out investigations into army personnel,’ he said.
‘The men I’ll be investigating haven’t been in the army for a number of years,’ Paniatowski replied.
‘But they’ll still be able to recite their whole army pay book number without a second’s hesitation,’ Howerd said.
‘I’m afraid I don’t quite get the point,’ Paniatowski admitted.
‘You wouldn’t,’ the captain said dismissively.
‘Though perhaps I just might, if you were to take the time to explain it to me.’
The captain sighed. ‘In a way, we are a little like the Jesuits,’ he said.
‘We?’ Paniatowski repeated. ‘Who’s we?’
The captain sighed again, even more heavily this time, as if it were a real strain to have to explain anything to this stupid civilian.
‘We are the army,’ he said. ‘The professional soldiers. The fighting force that has kept Britain safe for the last five hundred years, and will continue to keep it safe for the next five hundred.’
‘I see,’ Paniatowski told him. ‘Do please carry on.’
‘We take our raw material at a young age, as the Jesuits do, and we mould it into exactly what we want it to be. And once that’s done, it’s ours for ever. It belongs to us. So from our perspective, Sergeant Paniatowski, there’s no such thing as an ex-soldier. There are only soldiers who are no longer on active duty.’
‘You resent me being here, don’t you?’ Paniatowski said.
‘While you’re on the Sovereign Base Areas, you’ll be granted the same status as a sergeant in the military police,’ the captain said, ignoring her question. ‘A billet has been made available for you in the sergeants’ quarters, and Lance Corporal Blaine will be your driver. You will be issued with a military pass, which will allow you to go wherever you wish to on the island. You have my permission to speak to whoever you feel the need to, provided that, in doing so, you do not compromise the position of the army vis-à-vis the local authorities. Any questions?’
‘What kind of support can I expect?’
‘As I’ve already said, Lance Corporal Blaine will be your driver.’
‘No one else?’
Howerd smiled bleakly. ‘You surely wouldn’t expect us to do your job for you, would you, Sergeant?’
‘What about access to your records?’
‘We cannot allow you to trawl through them wholesale. If there is a specific record you wish to see, you must request it specifically. We will then consider your application.’
‘And how long will that take?’ Paniatowski wondered.
Howerd shrugged. ‘Could take days. Perhaps even longer.’
‘I imagine it could,’ Paniatowski said. ‘I imagine it could take until I’d already left the island.’
‘That’s a possibility,’ Howerd admitted. ‘I should also mention that you do not need to report your activities to anyone in the military chain of command. In fact, we’d much rather not know what you’re doing. Any more questions?’
‘No, that just about covers it,’ Paniatowski said.
‘In that case, I will detain you no longer,’ the captain told her.
It was as Paniatowski was walking to the door that Howerd added, ‘There is one more thing, Sergeant Paniatowski.’
‘Yes?’
‘We’ve been ordered to pull out all the stops for you, and I think you’ll agree that we have.’
‘In some respects, yes.’
‘I can’t ever remember having to do that before, not for a mere civilian. You must have friends in very high places.’
‘It’s not so much that I’ve got friends in high places myself as that I know a man who knows a man who has,’ Paniatowski said.
Captain Howerd nodded, as if, understanding the way the world worked, that was just the answer he’d expected her to give.
Eighteen
When Paniatowski emerged from Captain Howerd’s office, it was to find that Lance Corporal Blaine was just where she had left him, sitting behind the wheel of his Land Rover and basking in the sunshine.
When he saw Paniatowski approaching, he smiled.
‘Did Captain Howerd give you a right proper bollocking, Sarge?’ he asked.
‘Now why should you ever think that?’ Paniatowski wondered.
‘He never bothers to see anybody personally unless a bollocking’s on the cards,’ Blaine said, with a total lack of guile that Paniatowski found remarkably refreshing.
‘I think he did try to bollock me, but it just didn’t take,’ Paniatowski told him.
Blaine’s smile transformed itself into a very wide grin. ‘Good for you!’ he said. ‘So where are we off to now, Sarge?’
A good question, Paniatowski thought.
‘Do you have any idea of how many of the soldiers on this base would have been here seven years ago?’ she asked.
‘Are we talkin’ about the infantry, or the technical staff?’
‘The infantry.’
Blaine grinned again. ‘Then that’s an easy question to answer, Sarge. None of them.’
‘None at all?’
‘Not a one.’
‘Wonderful,’ Paniatowski said, dejectedly.
‘The longest anybody serves here is two years. I’ve only got a few months to go myself. Must say, I’ll miss the place. A lot of the other lads will, as well. After living in the sunshine, by the sea, it’ll be a bit of a wrench to have to return to wet old Blighty.’
‘Yes, I can understand that,’ Paniatowski said absently. Her mind had already moved on, searching for new lines of inquiry, and deciding that there were depressingly few open to her.
‘Of course, if you want to talk to somebody who was here at the time, you could always pay a call on the Real McCoy.’
‘The real who?’
‘Sergeant Ted McCoy. He’d been in the army for donkey’s years, but he said that of all the places he’d been, Cyprus was the absolute best. So when the time came for him to be demobbed, he married a local girl and stayed on. Bought himself a little taverna in Larnaca, he did, and called it the Real McCoy. It’s a bit of a play on words, you see.’
‘Yes,’ Paniatowski agreed. ‘I do see.’
‘The place is a great favourite with the lads, when they’re off duty. Some nights you can hardly get through the door.’
‘When exactly did this Sergeant McCoy of yours leave the
army?’ Paniatowski asked.
‘Let me see now,’ Blaine said, scratching the top of his head. ‘From what McCoy said to me the last time I was in his pub, I think it would have to have been around six years ago.’
Paniatowski climbed into the passenger seat of the Land Rover. ‘Take me to the Real McCoy,’ she said.
The inside of the Bygraves’ house produced no surprises for Bob Rutter. It was, as it should have been, the aspiring middle-class home of an aspiring middle-class family. It was tidy and cared-for, and where corners had been cut, a valiant attempt had been made to disguise the fact.
There was nothing in Tom Bygraves’ personal papers to suggest where he had gone – nothing to even hint that he had somewhere he could have gone – and after an hour, Rutter was prepared to admit defeat.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said to Mrs Bygraves, as if it were his fault that her husband had not left a paper trail.
‘You did your best,’ the woman said, as if she thought that it was his fault, but was trying not to blame him too much.
He did not want to leave with nothing, and it was the vague hope that he still might rescue a little from the visit which made him say, ‘My chief inspector mentioned that one of the last things your husband did before he left was to light a small bonfire in the back garden, Mrs Bygraves.’
‘Yes?’
‘You don’t happen to know what it was that he burned on it, do you?’
Mrs Bygraves shrugged, as if it were a stupid question – and Rutter silently agreed that it probably was.
‘It was garden waste,’ Rosemary Bygraves said. ‘Leaves, grass cuttings, that kind of stuff.’
And suddenly, she was looking thoroughly ashamed of herself.
‘Is anything the matter?’ Rutter asked.
‘We … we have this committee – the Brighter Neighbourhood Committee – and I’m one of the founder members,’ Rosemary Bygraves said.
‘I see,’ Rutter replied – though he didn’t.
‘We drew up a set of rules which were designed to stop us from bothering the people who lived around us. One of them is that if we play the radio in the garden, we have to keep the volume very low. Another is that if we have a party, we must make sure there’s no noise after eleven o’clock at night.’
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