A Long Time Dead (4 page)

‘I seem to have lost you, Chief Inspector,' said a smooth, carefully-modulated voice.

Woodend snapped himself back into the present.

‘Sorry, sir, you're quite right, I was miles away,' he told Forsyth. ‘What was it you were sayin'?'

‘I was asking you if I've got all my facts right. As I understand it, you first met the Minister in the early spring of 1944. Is that correct?'

‘Yes, it is.'

‘And it turned out to be a very short-term posting, didn't it? You actually served under him for just two months?'

‘Aye,' Woodend agreed. ‘It doesn't seem long, does it, when you put it in those terms?'

‘What terms would
you
put it in?'

‘Coutes was hard work,' Woodend said. ‘
Bloody
hard work. An' even after only a couple of months with him, I came away feelin' as if I'd earned a long-service medal.'

‘Y
ou're to be assigned to work with Captain Coutes,' the quartermaster told Woodend, when he arrived at the camp. ‘He left instructions that he wanted to see you as soon as you got here.'

Woodend looked down at his heavy military kitbag. ‘I'll just dump this in my billet, sir, and then I'll—'

The quartermaster laughed. ‘You don't know our Captain Coutes, do you, Sergeant?'

‘No, I—'

‘When he said as soon as you got here, that's what he meant. He's in the officers' mess.'

‘Still an' all, it won't take me more than two shakes of lamb's tail to go to my billet an—'

‘He'll check up later, you know. He'll want to know, to the second, when you arrived. And if there are even a couple of minutes left unaccounted for, he'll have your guts for garters. So if I was in your shoes, Sergeant – and I wouldn't be, not for a king's ransom – I'd get over to that mess sharpish.'

The officers' mess was only distinguishable from the other wooden huts which surrounded it by a large notice nailed to the wall, and by a corporal posted on guard beside it. The notice said that ‘other' ranks were prohibited from entering, unless with the explicit permission of an officer, and the corporal had clearly been charged with seeing that the edict was obeyed.

The corporal gave Woodend's pay-book a cursory glance, then said, ‘He's at the bar. Says you're to report to him there.'

Inside, the mess was as unimpressive as its exterior had suggested it would be. There was a bar, and a few tables and chairs, but all in all, it was far less inviting than the average pub.

Ah, but
anybody
could go into a pub, Woodend reminded himself, whereas officers' messes were exclusive – and exclusivity mattered to some people.

Apart from the steward, the only man in the entire place was a captain who was sitting at the bar, sipping a pink gin and reading a newspaper. Woodend marched smartly over to him, deposited his kitbag on the floor, and came to attention.

‘Sergeant Woodend, reporting for duty, sir!' he said.

The officer looked up, nodded vaguely, then turned his attention back to his newspaper.

Coutes kept him standing there for a full five minutes before folding his paper and giving him the briefest of inspections.

‘So you're my new dogsbody, are you?' the Captain asked.

‘Yes, sir.'

Coutes took a thoughtful drag on his cigarette. ‘Surprised you didn't try to get out of this show altogether.'

‘I beg your pardon, sir.'

‘Served in North Africa, didn't you?'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘I heard it was rough.'

‘It could be. On occasions.'

‘So I'd have thought you'd have had a pretty good case for claiming battle fatigue, and putting in for some kind of clerical post.'

‘It was suggested that I might.'

‘Then why didn't you?'

Woodend shrugged. ‘I've never been very keen on sittin' behind a desk. Besides, the job's not finished yet.'

‘What job?'

‘Defeatin' Hitler.'

Coutes snorted, then signalled to the steward that he wanted another drink. And though he would have been quite within his rights to order a drink for his new sergeant, too, he showed no signs of doing so.

Captain Coutes was slightly younger than he was himself, the sergeant decided. The Captain had a thin, pointed face and sharp little eyes. It wouldn't have been accurate to call him ugly – Woodend could think of any number of girls who might find him quite handsome – but there was definitely something untrustworthy and devious about him.

‘So you think that it's your job to fight Hitler, do you, Sergeant?' Coutes asked.

‘I think it's all our jobs, sir,' Woodend replied.

Coutes nodded. ‘I suspected you were probably a death-or-glory boy the moment I saw you, and you've not disappointed me.' He lit a fresh cigarette from the butt of his old one, but did not offer the packet to Woodend, nor suggest that the sergeant stood at ease. ‘Do you know what our job really is, Sergeant – I mean mine and yours?'

‘We're to be a liaison with the American Army, based in Camp Haverton, aren't we, sir?'

‘That's the fancy way of putting it. What it boils down to is keeping an eye on them until the time comes for us to ship them across the Channel to be used as cannon fodder And I'm not just talking about the white farm boys here. We also – God help us – have to nursemaid the niggers.'

‘The situation that we find ourselves in is particularly delicate because it involves not one, but
two,
important people,' Mr Forsyth explained to Woodend. ‘The first is my minister, the Right Honourable Douglas Coutes. He's important not so much because he
is
a minister as because he's a
bloody good
minister in a
bloody difficult
ministry. The Yanks like him, the Russians respect him. And getting them both on your side, to a certain extent at least, is no mean feat.'

‘So you're sayin' he's indispensable?'

Forsyth shook his head. ‘Of course not. Nobody ever is. But we'd be pushed to find a replacement half as good as him.'

‘If he goes down for murder, you won't have much choice,' Woodend pointed out.

‘Exactly,' Forsyth agreed.

‘Who's the other important person?' Woodend asked.

‘Senator Eugene Kineally, Robert Kineally's older brother. He's braying loudly for Douglas Coutes's head on a platter, and he has such a powerful voice in the US Senate that the American government is – extremely reluctantly – joining in on the chorus.'

‘What would have happened if Robert Kineally hadn't had such an important brother?' Woodend wondered.

‘The case would have gone away,' Forsyth said flatly.

‘I beg your pardon?'

‘Douglas Coutes is involved in matters which will affect the fate of millions of people. The Americans, as I've already said, have the greatest possible confidence in him. Thus, if they could have looked the other way, they almost certainly would have done.'

‘Even though Coutes killed one of their citizens?'

‘Now, now, Chief Inspector,' Forsyth said, wagging his finger, almost playfully. ‘All we know for a fact is that there is
some
evidence which might
tend
to implicate the Minister in the killing.'

‘Are you talkin' about the bloody fingerprint?'

‘Yes. Certainly that. But there's also a knife which appears, on the face of it, to have been the … er … murder weapon.'

‘So they've found that, have they?'

‘Yes, indeed. As a matter of fact, it was there in the grave – right next to the body.'

‘That's convenient,' Woodend said. ‘What kind of knife is it?'

Forsyth looked sheepish. ‘A Prussian Army knife, of the kind the German Infantry used in the First World War.'

‘One of them with a channel in the blade which allows the victim's blood to drain from the wound?'

‘Exactly.'

‘Coutes had a knife like that.'

‘I know. To be frank with you, it's almost certain that the murder weapon did actually
belong
to the Minister.'

‘So there's his prints on Kineally's dog tags, an' his knife was used to do the killin'?'

‘As I said, some of the evidence does tend to implicate the Minister. But that's a long way, as I'm sure you'll agree, from concluding that the Minister wilfully and deliberately murdered Robert Kineally.' Forsyth paused. ‘Any questions so far, Chief Inspector?'

‘Yes,' Woodend said. ‘Why are you tellin'
me
all this?'

‘Because our working assumption is that the minister did
not
kill Kineally – and we want you to prove it.'

‘Charlie Woodend, PI,' the Chief Inspector said.

Forsyth laughed politely. ‘Not exactly. You will be granted some kind of semi-official status, because the Americans can quite see the need for us to have a presence in the investigation.'

‘A presence?' Woodend repeated. ‘We should have more than a bloody presence in the investigation! This was a murder committed in
England
.'

‘Actually, it wasn't,' Forsyth corrected him. ‘The body was discovered within the boundaries of Haverton Camp, which, at the time, was considered to be American soil.' He paused. ‘Are you familiar with the Visiting Forces Act of 1942, Chief Inspector?'

‘I can't say I am,' Woodend admitted.

‘It was an act of parliament which authorized the Americans – acting through their own court martial system – to impose the death penalty, even within the confines of the United Kingdom. Of course, actual executions, when they were carried out, were left in the hands of an
English
hangman, but nevertheless, the general principle was established that it was the Americans who had the right to—'

‘Hang on a minute,' Woodend interrupted. ‘Douglas Coutes is a British citizen.'

‘But he was on secondment to the American Army at the time the murder took place. They argue – and they seem to have very strong legal grounds for doing so – that that places him under their jurisdiction.'

‘So if he's brought to trial, it'll be an American court martial that he appears before?'

‘That seems to be the current thinking.'

‘An' if he's found guilty, he'll be executed?'

‘That eventuality seems highly unlikely, however much the senator pressurizes his government. But I think we're getting ahead of ourselves here. We don't want the minister to be even brought to trial. And that, of course, is where you come in.'

‘Even if he's never tried, won't just the fact that he's been implicated in the investigation destroy his credibility?' Woodend wondered.

Forsyth chuckled. ‘Of course not. This whole matter is being kept completely confidential. The official version of events is that the minister is still involved in intense negotiations with the American military.'

‘An' what happens when the press get hold of the story?'

‘They won't. And even if they did happen to, we'd slap D Notices on them, and they wouldn't be able to print a thing. So you see, Chief Inspector, if there is no trial, it will be – to all intents and purposes – as if there had been no investigation, either.'

‘I can't become personally involved in the investigation,' Woodend said. ‘I was a witness.'

‘You raised that objection with the Minister, too,' Forsyth said mildly. ‘But it's not actually true, is it? At the time of the murder, you'd already been posted to the Isle of Wight. And what the Minister
told you
is perfectly correct. It's
because
you were there then that we want you there now. It's hard enough investigating a twenty-one year old murder, without having to try and imagine the atmosphere and circumstances in which it took place. But you don't have to imagine it, do you, Chief Inspector? Because you lived it!'

‘I won't do it,' Woodend said flatly.

‘I'm rather afraid that you will, you know,' Forsyth contradicted him. ‘I am acting on the orders of the highest authorities, and you simply have no choice in the matter.'

The man from the Ministry reached down for an attaché case which was positioned – suspiciously conveniently – by the side of his chair. He opened it on his lap, took out a single sheet of paper, and laid it on the coffee table.

‘Sign this,' he said.

‘What is it?' Woodend asked.

‘It's a copy of the Official Secrets Act. It commits you not to reveal anything you may discover during the course of your investigation, on penalty of imprisonment. Sign it.'

‘Don't you think that it might be wise of me to read it through first?' Woodend said.

Forsyth shrugged. ‘You can if you wish. But it doesn't make any difference. You may not like what it says – very few people who read it actually do – but you'll have to sign it anyway.'

Woodend took out his pen and scrawled his signature at the bottom of the document. ‘Happy now?'

‘I won't be happy until this rather unpleasant business is completely resolved,' Forsyth said. ‘And perhaps not even then.' He picked up the document and returned it to his attaché case. ‘There is one more thing I should inform you of, Chief Inspector.'

‘An' what might that be?'

‘You won't be conducting the investigation alone.'

‘Are you sayin' that even though it's not a Central Lancs case, I can still take my sergeant with me, instead of just relyin' on local help?'