A Long Time Dead (8 page)

‘We are the most technologically advanced nation in the world,' he said. ‘We have pledged to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade, and I have no doubts that we will fulfil that pledge, whereas—'

‘Whereas
we
can't get the Number Seventeen bus between Whitebridge and Darwen to run on time,' Woodend said dryly.

‘I beg your pardon?'

‘I think what you're tryin' to say is that the reason you had the body shipped back to Washington is because the FBI has labs which make ours look like junior chemistry sets.'

‘I wouldn't put it quite in those words,' Grant said, though it was plain that was exactly what he
had
meant. ‘The body would have had to be flown back to States eventually, anyway, because once this investigation is over, it will be buried in Arlington Cemetery, with full military honours.'

‘From what I remember of Robert Kineally, that's the least he deserves,' Woodend said.

Just beyond the end of the line of trailers, half a dozen workmen were busily engaged in constructing a pre-fabricated – but nonetheless substantial-looking – building.

‘What's that?' Woodend asked.

‘The courtroom,' Grant said.

‘Is it, indeed?' Woodend asked thoughtfully. ‘You think you'll need it, do you?'

‘We did consider other options,' Special Agent Grant admitted. ‘But it somehow didn't seem quite right to hold anything as important as a court martial in an ordinary trailer.'

‘You're missin' my point, lad,' Woodend said.

‘And what point might that be?'

‘A court martial is a bit like a theatrical performance – you might have all the props ready an' waitin', but you can't stage the production at all without your star turn.'

‘True, but—'

‘Or have I missed somethin' here?' Woodend interrupted. ‘Has Douglas Coutes been arrested an' charged in the time it took me to drive from Whitebridge to here?'

‘No, he … uh … hasn't been either arrested
or
charged,' Grant said, looked slightly embarrassed. ‘At the moment he's just doing what I believe you British bobbies like to call “helping us with our enquiries”.'

‘Then isn't all this a bit like knotting the noose before the sentence is passed?' Woodend wondered.

‘Hell, if we don't charge him, we can always take the courtroom down again,' Grant said, trying to sound casual.

But you don't think that's going to happen, do you? Woodend thought. As far as you're concerned, the whole deal's already done and dusted.

They had left the parade ground behind them, and were almost at the perimeter fence. The ground was covered with rough grass, except for one small area which had been excavated.

Woodend looked down at what had been a shallow grave. ‘Remind me how was this discovered?' he said.

‘The way I heard it, the surveyors were taking some kind of soil sample when they started uncovering bits of the stiff,' Grant answered.

‘Robert Kineally,' Woodend said harshly. ‘He wasn't a stiff! He wasn't a cadaver! His name was Robert Kineally.'

Grant looked shocked by the other man's sudden, unexpected vehemence. ‘They started uncovering bits of
Robert Kineally
,' he corrected himself. ‘Once they'd realized what it was they'd found, they cleared a little more earth to make sure there really was a body in here, then they called the local cops.'

‘So if they'd decided to take their soil sample from somewhere else – say, a couple of feet to the left or the right – they'd have missed the body completely,' Woodend said thoughtfully.

‘Damn straight!' Grant agreed. ‘And there's guys in
both
our governments who wish they'd done just that.'

Woodend looked around. The parade ground was behind him, the perimeter fence in front and to the left, and the barrack blocks to his right. But what had been on the spot where he was now standing back in 1944?

This was where most of the motor vehicles had been parked! he suddenly remembered. The jeeps and the trucks, the armoured cars and motor cycles.

He pictured the killer moving silently across the camp in the dead of night, a corpse slung over one shoulder and held in place by one of his arms, while in his free hand he carried a shovel.

There had been night-time patrols at the time, he recalled, but they'd been on the other side of the fence, because attention had naturally been focussed on stopping outsiders getting in – not on preventing those
already
on the inside from burying the bodies of their victims.

So, the murderer had reached this spot without being intercepted. Then what had he done?

Chances were that he had begun to dig the grave close to where one of the armoured cars was parked – because when it pulled off, the following morning, its treads would all but eradicate any evidence of the night's work.

Woodend lit up a cigarette, and examined the grave again. The killer would have known that the longer he was involved in his grisly task, the greater the chances he would be discovered. But he would also have been aware of the fact that if he made the grave
too
shallow, there was a strong possibility that the army vehicles – churning up the earth – would uncover it. So he had made a calculated decision, and this grave – not too deep and not too shallow – was the result.

The man who'd dug it must have had nerves of steel, Woodend thought. And Douglas Coutes – for all his other faults – had just such nerves. So how likely was it that, having kept his cool thus far, he would then make the stupid mistake of leaving the murder weapon beside the corpse?

Woodend turned to Special Agent Grant. ‘Let me ask you the big question now,' he suggested.

‘And what might that be?'

‘How the hell are we even supposed to even
begin
conducting this investigation?'

The American shrugged. ‘I'm not overly familiar with your current methodology, Chief Inspector, but I would imagine you'll begin it pretty much the same way you begin every other investigation.'

‘With every other investigation, I like to start by talking to the potential witnesses,' Woodend said tartly.

‘Sure!'

‘But that's not possible here, is it?'

‘Why ever not?'

‘Because all the potential witnesses in this case are either dead, or dispersed over two – possibly even three – continents.'

Grant smiled. ‘Even a top-notch organization like the FBI can't do anything about the dead ones,' he said. ‘But we've tracked down the live ones, and they should be here real soon now.'

‘All of them?' Woodend asked incredulously.

‘I believe so,' Grant confirmed.

‘And how the hell have you managed that?'

Grant shrugged again. ‘We employed a number of the various means at our disposal.'

‘For instance?'

‘Some of the witnesses agreed to come because they saw it as their patriotic duty. Others did it because they're government employees, and it was what Uncle Sam wanted them to do. That accounts for most of them.'

‘An' the rest?'

‘In the case of the more problematic ones, we found that sweetening the pot soon overcame any objections they might have had.'

‘Sweetening the pot?'

‘For the time they're here in this country, they'll be drawing the pay of a full colonel – which, for some of them, is more money than they've seen in their entire lives.'

‘You've spent so much on this case already that you really
have to
solve it in the end, don't you?' Woodend said.

Grant grinned again. ‘We've already solved it,' he said. ‘We
know
we have. And this whole dog and pony show is only being laid on so that eventually
you'll
believe it, too.'

‘Well, that's certainly puttin' it plainly enough,' Woodend said. ‘Absolutely no frills at all.' He turned to his sergeant. ‘I've got somethin' that I need to do alone, Monika. Can you find a way to keep yourself occupied for half an hour or so?'

‘I expect so,' Paniatowski replied. ‘What is it you'll be doing?'

‘I thought I might as well go an' pay a visit on the condemned man,' Woodend told her.

S
pecial Agent Grant had insisted that Paniatowski return to his trailer with him, in order to sample a cup of what he called ‘real American coffee', and it was while she was drinking the brew – which wasn't half bad – that the large military truck pulled outside.

Paniatowski looked out of the window. ‘It's loaded with boxes,' she said. ‘And I mean
loaded
.'

Grant drained the dregs of his coffee, and placed his cup carefully back on the counter. ‘Excellent!' he said.

‘And are you going to tell me what's in all those boxes?' Paniatowski wondered.

‘Sure,' Grant agreed. ‘It's evidence.'

‘Evidence?'

‘Service records, reports, statements made to the military police at the time of Robert Kineally's mysterious disappearance, newspaper clippings – and the results of all the forensic tests which were carried out back at our headquarters in Washington.'

‘In other words, they contain everything but the kitchen sink,' Paniatowski said.

Grant looked at her curiously. ‘Is there a kitchen sink involved in this investigation?' he asked, and then, without waiting for an answer, stood up and walked over to the door.

A large MP had climbed down from the truck, and looked at him expectantly. ‘Where do you want all this junk, sir?' he asked.

‘Junk!' Grant repeated, his sensibilities clearly offended. ‘It's very far from junk, my friend. What you have on the truck is the possible solution to an unsolved major crime.'

‘Whatever you say,' the MP replied, indifferently. ‘Where do you want I should unload?'

‘The trailer next to mine,' Grant told him.

‘You got it, sir,' the MP said, and began lifting boxes off the back of the truck.

Grant watched the whole process with obvious pleasure. ‘It's kinda like being given a map to a secret buried treasure, don't you think, Sergeant?' he asked Paniatowski.

‘Kinda,' Paniatowski replied, with none of the enthusiasm which the Special Agent seemed to be expecting.

The problem was, this wasn't her sort of work at all, she thought. Following paper trails – making dry, dusty documents yield up their secrets – was something her ex-lover, DI Bob Rutter, had excelled in. She herself was much more like Charlie Woodend – clogging-it around, ferreting out hidden thoughts from hidden corners of other people's minds.

She wondered how Bob was dealing with life at that precise moment.

Not well, she suspected.

Though she couldn't really
know
.

When she'd first heard about Rutter's nervous breakdown, her impulse had been to rush to his side and offer to nurse him through it.

But she hadn't done that, had she? Instead, she'd held back, because she simply didn't want to intrude where she wasn't wanted.

If he needed her help, she had argued to herself at the time, he would ask for it. If there was to be contact – of
any
kind – between them in the future, then he should be the one to initiate it.

And she'd always thought he
would
– which showed just what a lousy judge of human nature she'd turned out to be!

She thought about her current lover, Detective Chief Inspector Baxter, a man closer to Woodend's age than to her own. She had no idea how long that particular relationship would last – was not even sure if she wanted it to last at all. She did not love him, as she had once loved Bob (and perhaps still
did
love Bob) but she enjoyed his company – both in and out of bed.

‘Since we've got time to spare while they're unloading the evidence, maybe we should take the opportunity to get to know each other a little better,' Special Agent Grant suggested.

‘I beg your pardon?' Monika said.

Grant laughed. ‘Oh gee, given everything I've heard all about how you Brits are famous for your reserve and stiff upper lips, I suppose I should have been expecting that response,' he said. ‘Still and all, it seems to me that if we were to fill in a little of our own backgrounds, it might help each of us to understand where the other one is coming from.'

What a strange way this American had of putting things, Monika thought. But she suspected that she knew what he meant.

Probably!

‘All right,' she agreed, pushing her reserve and stiff upper lip to one side for the moment. ‘I'm Polish by origin—'

‘Yeah, I didn't think Paniatowski was much of an English name,' Grant interrupted her.

‘My father was in one of the Polish cavalry regiments when the Germans invaded our homeland in 1939,' Paniatowski continued. ‘By all accounts, the regiments fought heroically, but even they must have known that horses were never going to be any match for tanks.'

‘I suppose your father must have been killed in action,' Grant asked, sympathetically.

‘Yes, he was killed,' Paniatowski agreed. ‘So many brave men were killed in such a short time.' She shuddered. ‘Anyway,' she pressed on, more matter-of-factly, ‘my mother and I spent the next six years wandering around Central Europe as refugees.'

‘That must have been tough.'

‘Well, it certainly wasn't the kind of life that I'd recommend to anybody else. We fed ourselves on things that even the pigs would probably have turned down, and when there wasn't even that available, we almost starved to death. Eventually, at the end of the war, my mother met an English officer in occupied Berlin. He asked her to marry him, and when she agreed, he brought both of us to England.'

‘It's almost like a fairytale ending,' Grant said.