A Long Time Dead (9 page)

‘Yes it is,' Monika agreed.

If you're prepared to overlook the fact that he made my mother's life a misery and sexually abused me, she added silently.

‘Gosh, after the amazing life you've already led, mine seems so dull that I hardly dare tell you about it,' Grant said. He took a deep breath. ‘But here goes anyway. I was born on a farm in Wisconsin, and that's where I lived until I went to college.'

‘Harvard, wasn't it?' Paniatowski asked. ‘Just about one of the most famous universities in America.'

‘Yeah, I got lucky,' Grant said dismissively. ‘Anyways, I graduated, got a postgraduate law degree, and looked around for something to do. I suppose I could have gotten a job on Wall Street, but what I was really searching for was a worthwhile purpose to dedicate the rest of my life to, and joining the FBI seemed to pretty much fill the ticket.'

‘Are you married, Ed?' Paniatowski asked, before she could stop herself.

‘No ma'am, I certainly am not. I'm not even involved with anyone. How about you?'

‘I'm semi-involved,' Paniatowski said, wondering how Baxter would feel about that particular description of their affair.

‘Guessed you might be,' Grant said. ‘It'd be a miracle if a pretty girl like you wasn't.'

Paniatowski found herself caught up in mixed emotions. One the one hand, she felt an urge to preen at still being called a girl. On the other, she couldn't quite avoid the suspicion that Grant had only said what he had because he knew
exactly
what effect his words would have on her.

‘What's it like working for the FBI?' she asked in an effort to change the subject. ‘Did it live up to your expectations?'

‘It most certainly did. In fact, it exceeded them.'

‘And what about the famous J. Edgar Hoover?'

‘Mr Hoover
is
the FBI,' Grant said, going almost gooey-eyed. ‘He's an inspiration to everyone working for him. His spirit imbues the whole organization with purpose, and when my immediate boss talks to me, we both know he's only talking as a representative of Mr Hoover. What about your boss? He's called something like a Chief Policeman, isn't he?'

‘Chief Constable,' Paniatowski corrected the Special Agent.

‘Yeah, that's it.'

‘And he isn't my boss – Charlie Woodend is.'

‘Sure,' Grant agreed easily. ‘But I'm sort of assuming that, like my own boss, he's only standing in for—'

‘Charlie Woodend's my boss,' Paniatowski repeated, with a ferocity which took her by surprise. ‘I couldn't give a tuppenny damn about any of his so-called superiors.'

Grant laughed. ‘Well, that's plain enough for anybody to understand. So what's Charlie Woodend like?'

‘Honest,' Paniatowski said. ‘Honest and dedicated. I'd trust him with my life.'

Grant was starting to look at her a little strangely. ‘You sound almost as if you're half in love with the guy,' he said.

‘I
what
?'

‘When you were talking about him just now, you kinda looked as if there was something special—'

‘Let me assure you, Special Agent Grant, that I'm not in love with Chief Inspector Woodend now, nor have I ever been, nor am I likely to be in the future!' Paniatowski said hotly.

Grant held out his hands in front of him, as though getting ready to ward off an attack. ‘Hey, hold on there,' he said. ‘I wasn't trying to insult you. I was just making an observation.'

Paniatowski took a deep breath. ‘Of course you were,' she said, more calmly. ‘But you're way off the mark.'

‘I'll take your word for it,' Grant said. ‘So tell me, Monika, how do you think I'll get on with this paragon of an English policeman?'

‘That depends.'

‘On what?'

‘On how well he decides you're doing your job. If he thinks you're playing straight with him – and are as dedicated to finding out the truth as he is – then you'll have no problems with him at all.'

Grant thought about it for a moment, then said, ‘I think your Mr Woodend and I are going to get along just fine.'

T
he two American military policemen were standing near the trailer which had been assigned to the Right Honourable Douglas Coutes for the duration of the investigation. They could not have been said to be actually
guarding
it, but they couldn't have been said to be
not
guarding it, either.

Which was rather a neat way of exemplifying Coutes's current predicament, Woodend thought. The Minister of Defence wasn't under arrest – but he certainly wasn't at liberty, either.

When Woodend knocked on the door of the trailer, a voice from inside called out that he should enter. The Chief Inspector opened the door and stepped into the trailer's living room.

Coutes was sitting at the table, ostensibly – and possibly ostentatiously – examining the contents of his Ministerial Red Box, which was probably still being delivered to him on a daily basis. He looked up briefly, registered the Chief Inspector's presence, and then returned his attention to his papers.

Woodend took the opportunity to get a proper look at the man he'd once both served under and heartily despised.

Coutes had not been entirely untouched by the passing of the years, he decided, but that touch had been light, and any impartial observer, looking at the two of them together, would probably have guessed that the policeman was a good ten years older than the politician.

Another minute passed before Coutes looked up again, and when he did, he said, ‘Well, well, well, this is quite like old times, isn't it?'

Woodend thought back to their first meeting in the officers' mess, all those years earlier.

‘Quite like old times?' he repeated. ‘Insofar as you've kept me standin' here like a puddin', waitin' until you feel inclined to speak to me, then I suppose it is. But a lot's changed, as well.'

‘Like what, Sergeant Woodend?'

‘For a start, I'm a Chief Inspector now.'

‘Of course you are,' Coutes agreed.

He sounded, Woodend thought, as if he believed that a man in his position had no need to apologize for any mistakes he might make over another man's rank – or over anything else, for that matter – and possibly that was just what he
did
believe.

‘I didn't do it, you know,' the Minister continued.

‘Didn't do what?'

‘I did not kill that man,' Coutes said emphatically. ‘I did not kill him, and I did not place his body in a shallow grave.'

And Woodend – who knew from experience that Coutes would lie without a second's thought when the situation demanded it – was surprised to discover that he didn't think the Minister was lying this time.

‘How did your knife come to be in the grave with the corpse?' Woodend asked.

‘I can only assume it was there because the real murderer
put
it there.'

‘How would he get his hands on it in the first place? Did you lose it? Or did he steal it from you?'

‘He stole it. I'd never have been careless enough to lose that knife. I was very fond of it.'

‘So when exactly was it stolen?'

‘I'd guess it was five or six weeks before the Invasion, which would make it a week or two before Robert Kineally disappeared.'

‘Where was it stolen from?'

‘From here, of course. From this delightful little camp we liked to call home.'

‘I assume, in that case, that there'll be some written record of the theft.'

‘Written record? What are you talking about? Why would there be any written record?'

‘Because, if you'd reported it missin', I imagine some clerk or other would have made a note of it.'

‘I
didn't
report it missing.'

‘Why not?'

‘It would have reflected badly on me.'

‘It would?'

‘Of course. An officer who is held in so little respect by his men that they think they can steal from him with impunity, will very soon become a figure of ridicule.'

‘But whoever stole it wasn't one of
your
men. If it disappeared here, it must have been stolen by one of the Yanks.'

‘We were all part of the same glorious army of liberation – or so you used to tell me with monotonous regularity. Besides, the American officers looked down their noses at us Brits often enough as it was. I certainly didn't want to give them a further excuse to feel superior.'

‘Pity, though, isn't it?' Woodend mused. ‘If you had reported the knife missing, you'd probably be in the clear now.'

‘If I had reported it missing, the Americans would now be claiming I only
pretended
it was stolen,' Coutes countered. ‘Whoever decided to frame me back then had thought the whole thing through fairly carefully.'

‘So you still think that the murderer had some kind of personal grudge against you?'

‘I don't think he would have lost any sleep over me taking the blame for his crime, but his main aim in pointing the finger at me was probably to take the pressure off himself. And if we're talking about grudges, then the person who he must have had the biggest grudge against was surely Robert Kineally.'

‘You had a bit of a grudge against Kineally yourself, didn't you, Mr Coutes?' Woodend asked.

‘I wouldn't put it quite like that,' Coutes said. ‘We had our disagreements, as any officers faced with a difficult situation will, but I—'

‘A grudge,' Woodend interrupted firmly. ‘A bloody
big
grudge. Which brings us right back to Mary Parkinson.'

‘As I think I told you over the phone, she meant nothing to me,' Coutes said wearily.

‘Not as a person, she didn't,' Woodend agreed. ‘You never did care much about people as people. But as a
challenge
, I think she was much more important than you're now willin' to admit.'

They had been in the Dun Cow public house when they first saw her. Woodend would not, by choice, have spent his free time in Coutes's company. But in the army it was the officers who decreed when an NCO's time was free, and Captain Coutes had decided – by a very narrow margin – that he would rather drink with Woodend than drink alone.

There were a number of women in the saloon bar that night. Some of them were Land Girls, mostly big, beefy lasses, who had taken over the agricultural work of the men who had gone into the army, and daily gave the lie to the popular belief that men were always the stronger sex. There were some local girls, too, on the lookout for Yanks who would sweep them off their feet and take them back to their ranches in Texas once the war was over.

‘Slags, the lot of them,' Coutes pronounced, after surveying all the available women. ‘I couldn't poke one of them unless she had a paper bag over her head and I had a clothes peg on my nose.'

Woodend took a half-hearted sip of his pint – beer consumed in Captain Coutes's presence never
did
taste quite right – but said nothing.

‘Have you got some tart of your own, back home, that you're slipping it to, Sergeant Woodend?' Coutes asked.

‘I rather think that's my own business, sir,' Woodend replied, hating to sound so stiff and wooden, but knowing that wooden words were a wiser response than smashing Coutes in the face.

‘Didn't they teach you, during your basic training, that you should always answer an officer s question – whatever that question might happen to be?' Coutes asked.

‘An' didn't they teach
you,
durin
' officer
trainin', that if you goad a worm long enough, it will eventually turn – and that could be dangerous when the worm has access to a bayonet?' Woodend countered.

The way the conversation was going, things could have turned nasty – especially for Woodend – but at that moment the door of the bar opened, and Mary Parkinson walked in.

Mary was nineteen at the time, and the daughter of a local farmer. She had a classic English peaches-and-cream complexion, and her blonde hair cascaded on to her shoulders in ringlets. She was wearing a floral dress which hugged her dainty figure. She wasn't beautiful, she wasn't even very pretty, in the conventional sense. But she had an aura – a kind of inner glow – which made Woodend think she was one of the loveliest sights he'd ever seen.

‘Now there's a piece of totty well worth getting your knob out for,' Coutes said.

Mary glanced around the bar, and – not seeing the person she was obviously expecting to find there – first looked disappointed, and then a little lost.

‘I'm in luck,' Coutes said, rising from his seat.

He walked over to where Mary was standing.

‘Can I help you?' he asked the girl.

‘I … I was supposed to be meeting my cousin, but she isn't here,' Mary said. ‘I don't know quite what to do now. To tell you the truth, I'm not really used to public houses.'

‘Perhaps your cousin's been delayed. Why don't you come over to our table and wait for her?' Coutes suggested smoothly.

‘I don't know if I should,' Mary said hesitantly.

‘She'll be disappointed if she does arrive and finds that you're not here,' Coutes pointed out. ‘And if she doesn't turn up, my sergeant over there will drive you home. Now what harm could there be in that?'

‘None, I suppose,' Mary said, allowing Coutes to take her by the elbow and steer her across to the table.

‘I'm Dougie,' Coutes said, when they'd sat down. ‘And this is my sergeant, Charlie.'

‘Pleased to meet you, Charlie,' Mary said coyly.

Coutes ordered the drinks – a pink gin for himself, a pint for Woodend, a port and lemon for Mary – and then duly set about trying to impress the girl.