A Long Time Dead (26 page)

Bascombe grinned. ‘You got me scared now.'

‘And so you should be. Because if we're not happy – and I mean
completely
happy – about the way you've co-operated with us, we'll send you to Fulsom with a report which states that you attacked us. And the two years you've got left to serve will very quickly become five or six. Maybe even more.'

Bascombe grinned again. ‘Yeah, sure,' he said. He shifted his weight slightly. ‘I think I know pretty much what this is all about.'

‘Do you? And what
is
it all about?'

‘You're investigatin' the disappearance of a nigger-lovin' captain called Robert Kineally, ain't you?'

Grant rocked in his chair, then tried his best to look as if he hadn't.

‘Who told you that?' he demanded.

‘
Ain't
you?'

‘We are investigating a matter of national importance. The exact details of it are no concern of yours.'

‘Only we both know that the nigger-lover didn't
disappear
at all, don't we, Special Agent?'

‘Do we?'

‘Yeah, I reckon so.'

‘If you are involved in – or know of – any crime which relates to Captain Kineally, and if you conceal that fact from us, then you have yourself committed a criminal act,' Grant said stiffly.

‘So maybe I
don't
know nothin',' Bascombe countered. ‘Maybe I just got a theory.'

‘Then we'd like to hear it.'

‘I think he was kidnapped.'

‘And
who
do you think kidnapped him?'

‘Them big old bug-eyed monsters from outer space. Way I figure it, they beamed him up to their flying saucer.'

‘You're yanking my chain,' Grant said angrily. ‘And that's a very, very, foolish thing for you to do.'

‘You don't like that theory?' Bascombe asked easily. ‘OK, I got another one you'll prob'ly be happier with.'

‘If you're still wasting our time—'

‘I ain't wastin' your time. You're
really
gonna like this one.'

‘Then let's hear it,' Grant said.

‘Not yet awhile,' Bascombe told him. ‘'Fore I tell you my second theory, I gotta talk to a lawyer.'

T
wo hours had passed since Huey Bascombe had dropped heavy hints that he knew a great deal more about what had happened to Robert Kineally than he was saying – two hours in which frantic phone calls had been made, and urgent meetings convened. And as a result of all those phone calls and meetings, the three original participants were back in the interrogation trailer, though now they had two additional men for company.

The two newcomers, who flanked Bascombe like the guardian angels they had, in fact, been assigned to be, were a middle-aged English solicitor in a tweed suit and a younger American army captain who had been originally slated to play a role in the anticipated court martial.

‘Before we begin, I would like my client's position made completely clear,' the English solicitor said. ‘He agrees to tell you what he knows about the disappearance of Captain Robert Kineally in May 1944, and in return for that information, you agree to commute the remainder of his prison sentence for armed robbery.'

‘Fine,' Special Agent Grant said, with just a touch of petulance.

‘You will also agree to grant my client full immunity for any part which he himself might have played in the events surrounding the disappearance of the said Captain Kineally,' the solicitor continued.

‘Provided he didn't play any direct part in the murder,' Special Agent Grant cautioned.

‘As far as I can recall, we have not yet mentioned any murder of any kind,' the solicitor continued, smoothly. ‘But should we do so in the course of our discussion, I am assuming that unless my client actually struck a blow himself, or restrained the victim of the attack while such a blow was delivered, he is covered by any and all immunities already stipulated.'

‘He's covered,' Grant said wearily.

‘Very well then, that being the case, I am happy to proceed,' the solicitor said.

‘I ain't,' Bascombe said.

The solicitor raised a quizzical eyebrow. ‘My dear chap, why ever not? Is there a problem of some kind?'

‘Yeah! What's this guy doin' here?' Bascombe asked, jerking his thumb in the direction of the captain sitting next to him.

The solicitor sighed. ‘As I've already explained, Mr Bascombe, I am not licensed to practice law in the United States—'

‘We ain't
in
the United States!'

‘For the purposes of these proceedings, I can assure you that we are. At least temporarily, this camp has been designated as American soil. And taking that as a given, it is necessary for the captain – as an American
lawyer
– to provide you with additional representation.'

‘But he's in the army!'

‘That doesn't matter in the slightest. Since he has agreed to accept you as his client, your interest has become his primary concern.'

‘An' he can't welsh on the deal?'

‘Nobody can “welsh” on the deal, Mr Bascombe,' the solicitor said, wrinkling his nose at the inelegant language he had just been obliged to use. ‘Welshing is simply not an option.'

‘Well, all right!' Bascombe whooped triumphantly.

‘Can we proceed now?' Special Agent Grant asked.

‘Sure,' Bascombe agreed. ‘What do you wanna know?'

‘We want to know who killed Robert Kineally,' Grant said.

‘Hell, that's an easy one to answer. That liberal piece of shit was stuck by a good ole boy called Harry Wallace.'

‘Why did Wallace kill him?'

‘Cuz Kineally showed him up in front of a couple of niggers. Harry said no white man should do that to another white man, an' he was just gonna have to be punished for it.'

‘So he decided to kill him?' Grant asked.

‘Not first off, no. First off, he was just gonna beat the crap outta the Yankee son-of-a-bitch. But then he saw the problem.'

‘What problem?'

‘Kineally was an officer. If you beat up an officer, they lock you in the stockade, an' throw away the key. So whatever he did to Kineally, Harry had got to make sure Kineally couldn't talk about it afterwards.'

‘So
then
he decided to kill him?'

‘Yeah! He didn't have no choice, did he?'

‘
How
did he kill him?'

‘A couple o' weeks earlier, Harry had stole this big old knife from a dipstick Limey officer called Coutes, an'—'

‘Why had he stolen it?'

‘Cuz he liked the look of it, and cuz Coutes had left it around where it could be stole. Anyways, once he'd decided to kill Kineally, he thought it'd be real smart to use that knife to do it with.'

‘Why would it be “real smart”?'

‘Cuz if the stiff was ever found, they'd blame the whole thing on this Coutes guy.'

‘How did Coutes's bloody fingerprints come to be on Kineally's dog tags?' Woodend asked.

‘How in hell would I know that?' Bascombe demanded.

‘Quite,' Grant agreed dryly. ‘Now the next thing I want to know is the exact location—'

‘Just hold your horses a minute!' Bascombe said.

‘Yes?'

‘I think I got an answer to that dog tag question.'

‘You have?'

‘Sure. A couple o' hours before Harry killed him, that son-of-a-bitch Kineally got into a fight with this Coutes guy over at the Dun Cow. Maybe Coutes grabbed his dog tags
then
.'

‘Maybe he did,' Grant agreed. ‘I'd now like you to tell me
where
Wallace killed Kineally.'

‘He done it over on that piece o' land where they used to keep all the military vehicles.'

‘How did Wallace persuade Kineally to go there?'

‘Dunno. Musta fed him some kinda yarn about wantin' to show him somethin'.'

‘Why did he choose that spot?'

‘Cuz it was well away from the main camp. An' cuz that's where we were gonna bury the body.'

‘Did you actually
see
Wallace kill Kineally?'

‘Oh yeah! Not from close to, cuz I was keepin' watch. But I seen it, right enough. Drove that knife into him like he was stickin' a hog. Kineally didn't hardly make no sound at all.'

‘What about the jeep?' Woodend asked.

For the first time since he'd begun his story, Bascombe looked uncertain of himself. ‘What jeep?'

‘Captain Kineally's jeep. It was driven to the railway station and abandoned.'

‘Don't know nuthin' about no jeep,' Bascombe said. ‘Maybe Wallace took it later.'

‘Once Wallace had killed Captain Kineally, the two of you buried the body?' Grant asked.

‘Right.'

‘Where?'

‘Under one of them ole armoured cars. See, we figured the tracks would soon cover what we done.'

‘Where's Wallace now?' Grant asked.

Bascombe shrugged. ‘Don't rightly know. Ran into him in a bar in Montgomery once – must have been round about 'forty-eight or 'forty-nine – but I ain't seen him since.'

‘What made you decide to run the risk of helping Wallace in the first place?' Woodend asked.

‘The guy was a buddy of mine, an' you always help your buddies out,' Bascombe said.

‘An' that was the
only
reason you helped him?'

Bascombe turned to his solicitor. ‘Can they get me for somethin' I
didn't
do – somethin' I only
planned
to do?' he asked.

‘Not if you took no actual steps to put the act into commission,' the solicitor said.

‘Say what?'

‘Not if you did no more than think about it.'

Bascombe nodded. ‘The other reason I helped Harry out was cuz Harry had promised he was gonna help me right back,' he said.

‘Help you with what?' Grant wondered.

‘Harry wasn't the only one who'd been showed up in front of them two niggers,' Bascombe said.

‘Who else was?' Grant asked.

Bascombe ignored him, and turned to Woodend, instead. ‘Remember it?' he asked.

‘I'll never forget it,' Woodend told him. ‘When my fist hit your gut, it felt like I was punching an overstuffed bag of sand.'

‘Yeah, I was a real hard man back in them days,' Bascombe agreed complacently.

‘But when you went down, you went down like the bag of
shit
that you really were,' Woodend added.

‘I wish I'd got you, like I wanted to,' Bascombe said angrily. ‘I wish I'd stuck you like Harry stuck Kineally.'

‘But I'd been transferred by then, hadn't I?' Woodend said.

‘Yeah, you had, you Limey bastard,' Bascombe agreed, ‘an' I was
real
sorry about that.'

Woodend sat in the ‘operational command module', smoking a cigarette and watching Special Agent Grant transfer files from the table to boxes labelled, ‘FBI documents in transit'.

‘So what happens now?' he asked. ‘Will you give Douglas Coutes a clean bill of health, and release him?'

‘The Minister was never
officially
under arrest,' Grant said, closing one full box, and then immediately opening an empty one. ‘Even so, I think that to state unequivocally that he's been completely exonerated on all charges would be a tad premature.'

But from the speed with which he was packing away his files, it was plain that he didn't consider it
that much
premature, Woodend thought.

‘You'll start looking for Harry Wallace now, will you?' the Chief Inspector asked.

‘We're
already
looking for him. There are agents all over the States following up leads, even as we speak.'

‘An' d'you think you'll find him?'

Grant nodded. ‘I don't want to sound in any way disrespectful to you or any of the rest of the wonderful British bobbies, Chuck,' he said, ‘but I don't think you have any real concept of just how
effective
the Bureau can be once it's got its teeth into a case.'

‘Robert Kineally called me “Chuck”,' Woodend told him.

‘Is that right?'

‘Which means I'd rather you didn't.'

Grant looked troubled. ‘You've never really liked me, have you,
Charlie
?' he asked.

A wave of guilt swept over Woodend. Though he could not put his finger on
why
it had happened, he had begun to experience a feeling of vague discontent from the moment Bascombe had made his confession. And rather than starting to abate, as he'd expected it to, the feeling had got worse – like a sting which only really begins to itch some time after it's been inflicted. But even so, that was no excuse for being deliberately unpleasant to Grant.

‘I'm sorry, Ed,' he said. ‘I don't think it's that I dislike you so much as that I don't
understand
you. We're two very different kinds of policemen. You see the big picture – the Communist menace, and the spread of organized crime – while I just look at a dead body and wonder who-dun-it. But I think there's room in the world for both kinds.'

Special Agent Grant smiled gratefully. ‘That's what I think, too,' he said. ‘It's what I've always thought. But it's still a great pleasure to hear those words coming from you.'

‘What happens if you
can't
find Wallace?' Woodend asked.

‘We'll find him.'

‘But what if he's dead?'

‘That would be a pity,' Grant conceded. ‘The Senator would dearly love to see his brother's murderer stand trial for his terrible crime. But the really important thing is that we've solved the case.'

‘So you do believe Bascombe?'

‘That depends exactly what you mean by your question. Do I believe that he had no part in the actual murder? I'm not sure about that. But even if we hadn't granted him immunity, we'd never have been able to put together a case against him. As for the rest of what he told us, I'm pretty confident it happened in just the way he described it.'