Dutch Courage (16 page)

‘His protection is your job. His recovery is mine . . . and you might just have set that back considerably.'

‘We need answers from him,' Max repeated doggedly. ‘A serious crime against him has been committed and only he can set us on the right track, but he's claiming loss of memory. Without checking that with you I know that's not the case. He's lying, either to cover his own back or because he's afraid of further retribution if he talks. Contrary to your belief we don't use Nazi methods, which means we have no way of forcing him to give us the info we want. All we can do is wear him down with experienced questioning. It works, but it takes time. I don't think we can afford the time in this instance. The campaign against him has been going on for a month or more already, involving the harassment of his wife ranging from petty inconveniences to attempts to run her off the road in that fancy car of hers. Our main concern has to be to prevent a serious attack on
her
, which I suspect Collier fears. It might be wise for her to go to friends until we've got this sorted.'

‘She won't go,' Clarkson said immediately. ‘She spends hours at his bedside, even though he's asleep the whole time. She sits quietly drawing patterns on a sketch pad, content just to be near him.'

‘Mmm, obsessively devoted, I understand.'

‘Really? She's in the early stages of a third pregnancy, the other two having terminated at fourteen weeks. Women tend to need more than the usual cherishing in those circumstances, and this is the critical period once more.'

‘Which adds further urgency to our need to get her husband to confess the reason for the punishment attack on him. That's what his colleagues called it, guessing that it was because of the injury to his co-pilot during that daring rescue, but I feel certain there's something more complex behind it.'

Clarkson rubbed his brow wearily. ‘I'll have a word with him about his wife's safety.'

‘
We
need to question him,' Max insisted.

‘All right. Give him a couple of hours peace, then send a woman. She might be less aggressive than you. Collier is the
victim
here, don't forget.'

‘He or his wife could be
dead
victims if he doesn't tell us who administered that brutal warning. Bear that in mind, Major.'

Tom decided to escape to Section Headquarters before his family descended for breakfast. Cowardly? Just discretion being the greater part of valour. He and Nora rarely quarrelled, but when they did they never let acrimony remain until the next day. Last night had been different. Maggie had refused to come down for supper. Nora resolved the situation by allowing all three girls to eat in their rooms, thereby diluting Maggie's defiance and easing the atmosphere created by Tom's anger.

Husband and wife ate together, striving to make conversation which avoided any mention of Hans Graumann, their daughters, or Nora's wedding dresses. Tom declined to discuss his own work. This left only the subject of their forthcoming Easter visit to both sets of grandparents, and snippets of regimental gossip, with which to break the tension. Nora was aloof; Tom was resentful.

As soon as she had finished eating Nora had returned to her sewing machine, leaving Tom to stack the dishwasher then repair to the tiny alcove he used as an office and where he kept his model steam engine collection. Tonight they failed to please him. Were they really boys' toys? Should he be out indulging in more macho pastimes? Quad-bike racing, squash, hang-gliding, shooting rapids in a skiff? Thirty-five was surely the prime of a man's life. He should not be spending his evenings surrounded by giggling girls and acres of white satin covered in sequins and rosebuds.

If he had a son it would be different. They could do man things together; leave the women to gush and sigh over clothes, make-up and posters of pretty-boy ‘celebrities' clad in tight black leather, or displaying puny bare torsos. Tom knew his own pecs were more impressive, his shoulders broader, his thighs more powerful. A body to tingle any woman's spine, Nora frequently declared. So why was she spending so much time fiddling with diamanté, veiling and frilly petticoats?

Staring blindly at the miniature Flying Scotsman, Tom thought of a couple who spent more time upstairs than down; of a woman so crazy about her man she had his pants down as soon as he shut the front door. Was he aware of his amazing good fortune in having that effect on a woman as stunning as Margot Collier?

Tom had still been in that restless, frustrated state of mind when George Maddox phoned to say, with a wobble of laughter in his voice, that the Duty Officer and Sergeant had just brought in a man found loitering and behaving suspiciously in the vicinity of the Armoury.

‘Sneaking around with a torch, sir. He claims he was conducting an investigation into a case of GBH but, as they rightly asked, what was he doing there in the dark alone, if that was the truth. The suspect's details are as follows: Sergeant Philip Maurice Piercey. He claims he's SIB, sir, but he's a shifty-looking bugger.'

Tom was livid. Piercey was a good detective, but an inveterate maverick. Maddox's men were tasked to search that area, if necessary, after Collier had been interviewed in the morning. Piercey was jumping the gun again, seeking personal kudos. In his present mood, Tom had no time for Piercey's antics.

‘Where is he now?'

‘Duty Officer handed him over to our jurisdiction. That'll be in his report.' The wobble of laughter increased. ‘We put him in one of our cells while I contacted you.'

‘Right. By the time the paperwork is completed, it'll be too late to call out Captain Rydal to confirm identification and question him. You'll have to keep him overnight, Sergeant.'

‘Happy to, sir. We'll dispense with bread and water and give him a good breakfast.'

Only Beth had come downstairs to kiss her father goodnight. Gina had called from the landing. Silence from Maggie. With the sound of a fast-running sewing machine in his ears, Tom had taken a book to bed. His eyes scanned the pages, but his mind registered nothing of their content. Did that scar down his left cheek bother Nora so much? Was it that repulsive? His concern deepened when she slid into bed, gave him a peck on his unblemished cheek, then turned to present her back to him.

He had lain awake after she drifted into sleep, unhappy and angry at the way things were changing; at the way he seemed no longer to be valued by the quartet of females who used to be loving and trusting.

His last waking thought had been that, whatever his heroic appeal might be, Sam Collier was unlikely to excite any woman in
his
present state.

Phil Piercey was absent during the morning briefing. Securing his release from custody, Max had sent him to his quarters to change his clothes and smarten up, after bending his ear with a warning against ignoring authority and acting alone. Feeling a mite of sympathy for the man who would not live down this episode for some time, Max nevertheless understood why Tom had allowed it. Piercey was intelligent and keen, frequently offering interesting slants on a case no one else thought of, but he was opinionated to the extent of regarding himself sharper than his colleagues. Not fully a team player. Yet he had courage and initiative, both valuable assets. It was to be hoped this incident would not result in resentment strong enough to force his transfer elsewhere. Max would be sorry to lose a good detective, and Piercey did not irritate him the way he did Tom.

Max was concerned about his old friend, whose judgement seemed slightly off-key lately. He was surely too young to be suffering what was called a ‘mid-life crisis', yet he was certainly bothered by private worries of some kind. His relationship with Nora was very sound, and his girls were level-headed, bright and family-orientated. It could not be Nora's health causing concern, or Tom would have confided the facts by now. That left Tom's own health. Were repercussions from the head injuries sustained four months ago affecting the man's moods and capabilities? It would account for his keeping quiet on the subject. A few casual enquiries when an opportunity arose might bring the answer.

Tom was certainly heavy-eyed and unsmiling this morning. Max was about to add to his grimness by outlining his brief interview with Sam Collier.

‘He claims to have no memory of the attack, or even of the phone call summoning him to the RV. The medical dictate forbidding questioning for twenty-four hours allowed Collier time to get his act together. He's cool, he's glib, he's lying his head off. There's something complex behind this persecution of him and his wife. While I'm prepared to accept that a man would tolerate petty instances of anonymous letters and smashed eggs on the doorstep, because reporting them would create worse trouble in our unique military world of living as well as working very closely together, I grow highly suspicious when he allows thugs to deal out bodily violence and still protects their identity.

‘Of course, he's also protecting himself and whatever he's done to provoke the attack. We have to persuade him to confess, however serious it is, before a fatal tragedy occurs.' He gave a faint smile. ‘I'm sure you're all wondering what my famous guts are telling me. They indicate that these perpetrators are so incensed they won't stop until Collier bows to their demands and “tells the truth that'll remove the blinkers”. He's showing no promise of doing that, at the moment, and I strongly believe we should advise Mrs Collier to leave and stay with friends until this business is settled and out in the open. She's very vulnerable right now, and Major Clarkson said her pregnancy is at the critical fourteen-week stage, at which her previous two pregnancies terminated. She has to be protected . . . and the unborn child.'

For a brief moment Max was back in an office on a grey, stormy day in England, when they had come to tell him his pregnant wife had not survived a car accident. His thoughts were so occupied, he finally responded to a female voice to find Connie Bush regarding him with bright expectation on her face that reflected her dedication to health and fitness.

‘You asked a question, Sergeant?'

‘I queried Major Clarkson's estimation of the stage of Mrs Collier's pregnancy, sir.'

‘Oh?'

‘You said he mentioned the critical fourteen-week period.'

‘He did, yes.'

The glow on her cheeks deepened with excitement. ‘If he's right, it means that Sam Collier is not the father of that child. He didn't return from Afghanistan until eight weeks ago.'

There was a brief silence as the import of her comment sank in, then Heather Johnson said, with a touch of disparagement, ‘So it wasn't a matter of him playing around in Afghanistan, it was she doing the dirty on him while he was serving in a war zone. So much for her supposed hero-worship! A neighbour said she spent those four months in the Seychelles with a group of theatre people, if you recall.'

Max was silently kicking himself for not picking up on something a woman would immediately realize. Had Clarkson made a mistake? If not, this put a new slant on the case. A further complication.

Olly Simpson glanced up from his doodling. ‘Shouldn't it have been Collier doing the beating up? The cuckolded husband.'

‘Cuckolded by someone from
the theatre world
,' said Connie, with the emphasis used to impress facts on small children.

‘Just making a passing comment,' he replied mildly, returning to his abstract scribbling.

Heather looked upset. ‘If he's aware of her betrayal he's surely being dealt more punishment than any man deserves.'

Beside Piercey's empty desk, Derek Beeny, looking curiously like a twin with his counterpart missing, said, ‘Is
that
the truth that must be told? Guys who resent the recent publicity, and his father-in-law who's pushing him up the ladder, would love that bit of inside info.'

‘So, when he refuses publicly to humiliate himself and his wife they beat him up in their attempt to show he's really weak and vulnerable?' put in Heather scathingly. ‘That only happens in trash fiction.'

Suddenly entering the briefing he had remained unusually aloof from, Tom snapped, ‘You're all indulging in a prurient barrack-room jaw, instead of using your apology for brains in constructive, professional reasoning.'

Connie was reluctant to surrender what she felt to be an important point. ‘It's surely relevant to the case, sir. Her present pregnancy must have stemmed from the holiday in the Seychelles, but could a previous one have been the result of a liaison with one of Collier's squadron colleagues? A liaison he's reluctant to abandon and so mounts a campaign of harassment ending in an attempt to run her off the road.'

In his usual laconic fashion Olly Simpson said, ‘Maybe she's been the squadron bicycle. They've all had a ride, and . . .'

‘This has gone far enough,' ruled Tom in parade-ground volume. ‘A casual statement from Major Clarkson, which could easily be erroneous due to the serious charge hanging over
him
at the moment, has no bearing on the brutal attack we're investigating.'

Good God, thought Max with a jolt, it's more than normal male reaction to a stunning woman. The poor sod has fallen into the honey trap! He decided to take back the initiative.

‘As Mr Black says, you're all being sidetracked by what could easily have been a slip of the MO's tongue. Our task is to bring to book whoever grievously harmed Lieutenant Collier. The motive for the attack will emerge – the supposed truth that must be told – but our first concern is to track down the perpetrators, not to unravel the tangle of the Colliers' relationship.

‘Major Clarkson will allow a woman to interview his patient this morning. He didn't approve of my “Nazi” tactics. Sergeant Bush can employ her gentler persuasion in an attempt to coax facts from a man maintaining a determined pretence of amnesia.

‘I'll set Sergeant Maddox's team on searching the area where the victim was found for evidence of the attack. I want all vehicles owned by members of his squadron and attached personnel, and that includes wives' and family cars, examined for blood, fibres or any signs that Collier had been transported in it.