Indian Summer (11 page)

‘Who's she?' asked Max, pouring hot water into their mugs.

‘No idea, but my girls all want to be her.'

‘Not Nora?'

Tom took up his full mug. ‘She has more sense. Besides, she's hooked me so she's no need to fish around for a better catch.'

Even as he said it, Tom realized it was not the most tactful joking comment to make on this particular morning. That was confirmed when Max failed to reply in kind and walked back to his chair, his shoulders rigid with tension.

‘Then there's the fact that Keane was wearing only underpants. I don't believe the killer removed his corpse's outer clothes before putting him in the tank, so we have to work on the assumption that he was with one of his ladyfriends when he died. Sex, you see, is linked to everything in this case.'

‘Even the jellyfish?'

Max nodded. ‘Near strangulation is used by the sexual dilettanti as an orgasmic enhancer, as you know, and sometimes it accidentally kills a participant. That's what we have to look for here.'

‘Not the straightforward choking to death in a momentary loss of control?'

‘Of course, and the straightforward choking to death with cold deliberation.' He got to his feet. ‘I'm going to seek out our old friend Ben Steele and get his views on Keane, who was in his company. Back at noon.'

Tom watched Max walk from the building and sighed. The split might well have been mutual, but it was certainly not amicable or he would not be so tightly wound he could easily snap. What had brought such a sudden, drastic end to a relationship any sane person could see was certain to result in disaster? Sadly, Max appeared to have been deeply committed for the first time since the death of his wife Susan, so it was a second heavy blow for him to sustain. He gathered up the spread case reports and locked them in his desk drawer, then left the office to go and talk to four pseudo knights about possible nocturnal wandering.

Lieutenant John Sears was in his office frowning at a computer when Tom knocked on the open door and asked permission to enter. The frown remained as the officer registered the identity of his visitor.

‘Still worrying about that tank, Mr Black?'

Taking several steps into the office, he said, ‘No, sir, we have a witness sighting of a knight riding a horse around the base late on Saturday night. I'm checking on the movements of all eight riders who participated in the jousting. Would you tell me what you did at the end of the Open Day?'

The frown deepened. ‘I told you that yesterday.'

‘Concerning the tank, but not your routine regarding the horses and accoutrements. Who procured them?'

‘Horses or
accoutrements
?'

He was going out of his way to be obstructive and Tom wondered how soon he would get the chance to puncture this man's inflated sense of importance. ‘I know about the horses; some are privately owned and the rest are on the strength and used mainly for ceremonial events. I haven't before had cause to investigate suits of armour,' Tom said crisply. ‘That's why I'm after enlightenment on the subject. Were they hired from a fancy dress supplier?'

Sears took exception to that. ‘It's clear you know very little about our “Court”.'

‘Your
court
?'

‘On this base there's a shifting nucleus of “knights” who regularly joust. We're all accomplished riders who enjoy the skill required for this medieval style of combat. We use blunt lances, of course, and because we do this purely as a sport – much like those cavalry regiments who still enjoy tent-pegging and splitting melons at the gallop – we wear padding to prevent injury when falling.

‘Whenever we give a display, as we did on Saturday, we each wear a tabard bearing our personal emblem of chivalry over a hauberk – that's chain mail, Sar'nt Major, not a suit of armour – and our horses are fully comparisoned with our colours.'

Tom was starting to be amused by this man's fulsome description of mounted gallantry, feeling certain he would make light of, or not even mention, his highly dangerous work during his recent deployment in Afghanistan.

‘Where's all the fancy dress kept, sir?'

Sears looked irritated. ‘The heraldic vestments are hung in a cupboard at the
QM
Stores. When there's a top-flight do held at any of the Messes we're asked to provide two knights to flank the main doors. It impresses civilians. So all our equipment is listed as military supplies.'

Deciding he had heard enough about medieval pomp, Tom asked, ‘What happened to it at the end of the afternoon?'

The subaltern lay back in his chair. ‘We left it in the pavilion where we dressed and rested between each contest.'

‘So it would have been possible for someone to get hold of it for their own purposes that evening?'

‘If they did so before it was collected and returned to Stores.' His eyes narrowed. ‘What are you getting at, Mr Black?'

‘We have a witness who saw a knight riding through the base at twenty-three thirty. Would you tell me what you did between the end of the jousting and midnight, sir?'

Sears regarded Tom with a return of disparagement. ‘I took a long shower, dressed in jeans to stable my horse, checked the guys at the water tank, drove home, played with my little girl, ate a meal, sat in the garden while my wife weeded, linked up with my sister in Oz on Skype, phoned my parents, read two chapters of
Churchill's War Years
, went to bed. At no time did I ride around the base dressed as Sir Bloody Lancelot.' He sat upright again. ‘If that's all, I have two promotion assessments to write before fourteen hundred.' He turned his attention back to the computer, effectively dismissing Tom.

Corporal Ryan Moore strongly resisted Connie's demand that he should go with her to Section Headquarters for questioning. She found him at home cradling the son who was born while he was in Afghanistan, expertly feeding the baby while reading a fairy story to twin toddlers seated on the floor by his chair. Very much a family man delighted to be back with them after six months in the desert.

‘I already told Sar'nt Simpson all I know about Flip Keane,' he protested. ‘We came home, handed in our kit, had the usual debrief, celebrated with a booze-up and went our separate ways. I never saw him after that. On Saturday these two charmers at my feet wanted to see what was going on and have some fun. So my missus took them out and had some fun herself while I looked after this little chap.' He appealed to her. ‘First time I saw him just a few days ago. Thought Jean was going to lose him at one stage, but he wasn't going to miss out on something good and here he is, fully fit and raring to go.'

This obvious delight in his new son swayed Connie into dropping her insistence on interviewing him at Headquarters, but she used his tender mood to her advantage. Deprived of the fairy story, the curly-haired girls got up and ran out to the garden where their mother was pegging out her washing.

Once they had gone, Moore said, ‘Flip was my best mate. No way would I have done for him.'

Connie smiled. ‘You're not being accused of anything.'

‘Then why're you nagging me like this?'

‘Because you
were
his best mate. You know more about Flip Keane than anyone. He would have told you things only mates tell each other about their wives or girlfriends, about their problems with sex, about fears of a medical condition, about mounting debts. Even about a dread of going into action. Isn't that true?' she prompted gently.

Moore's relaxed attitude vanished. His square freckled features tightened, his greenish eyes darkened with anger. ‘Flip was no coward. Whoever said he was is a bloody liar.'

Retaining her gentle tone, Connie reassured him. ‘We've been told about how he brought his men safely from an ambush. That's not the action of a coward. There was simply a reference to Flip's very real edginess during the first few weeks of your deployment, which could have been construed as reluctance to face possible danger.'

‘They're bloody liars,' he repeated, pulling the teat of the empty bottle from the sleeping baby's mouth.

‘He
wasn't
worried or anxious out there?'

‘No! He was . . . look, it had nothing to do with . . .' In some agitation, Moore got to his feet and walked through to the kitchen where his wife was being bombarded with demands for milk and biscuits by her daughters. Handing the baby to her with a few quiet words, he then returned to the room where Connie had settled in a chair, and shut the connecting door. Minus a suckling baby he looked tough and aggressive in patched jeans and a new T-shirt across which was emblazoned in bright blue
HERE'S LOOKING AT YOU, KID.

Connie addressed his back as he gazed from the patio doors, his entire body tense. ‘You were saying that Flip's anxiety had nothing to do with being in a warzone.'

It was a while before he spoke, anger in every word. ‘You're right about mates telling each other things they wouldn't want made public. The same applies when they're dead. In fact, that's worse because they're not here to speak up for themselves. What right have you to question me about him?'

She knew she was getting to him emotionally and continued to use a calm, friendly tone. ‘As an infantryman you know precisely what your job entails; as a corporal you have a responsibility to your platoon. As a military policewoman I know precisely what my job entails; as a
detective
I have a responsibility to get justice for a brave man whose life has just been taken by a vicious killer.' She paused to let that sink in. ‘If you know something that would help me do that for your best mate, refusing to tell me is a bigger betrayal than revealing it.' After another pause, she asked, ‘Why was Flip worried and forever phoning home during those first weeks?'

‘It's not relevant.'

‘
Why
, Ryan?' she repeated with gentle insistence.

She sat through his silence, hearing children's voices and a short burst of an infant's fretful grizzling in the adjacent kitchen. Maybe it was these sounds that weakened him, caused the tenseness to leave his body, soften his voice.

‘He met Brenda in Iraq. She was
the one
! I thought it was because she helped him through that blue on blue fiasco, but he swore she was everything he had ever wanted . . . and he'd played around a lot. They were all set to get married when she finished her stint over there two months after we came back.'

He turned into the room and perched on the arm of a chair, looking at the carpet and speaking as he would to just a sympathetic woman. ‘Once he was back here, he got stressed out again about what had happened. Couldn't get it out of his mind, even though it had been sorted. He went on leave to the
UK
and the Walpoles descended on him. The whole family! There was Starr waving the baby at him, her mother shouting rape, and the brothers inviting him to come out and get sorted.

‘His parents are churchgoers – had Flip late in life – so they put pressure on him to make Starr an honest woman and accept his responsibilities to his child. Between them they piled stress on stress which, along with his bloody stupid guilt trip, tipped the balance. He believed he was not good enough for Brenda, ended the relationship and allowed the Walpoles to march him down the aisle.'

At that point he slid from the arm into the chair and glanced at Connie, suppressed grief for his lost friend now released. ‘After a coupla years Starr had had enough and wanted him out. Gave him hell when we were on standby for Afghanistan.' He stared at his linked hands between his knees. ‘That's when he told me he'd been seeing Brenda again and she was pregnant. He was going to tell Starr when we got back after the six months; get a divorce.

‘For those first weeks he was strung out about having to fire to kill; kept calling Brenda for reassurance like she gave him before. Then he pulled them out of that ambush and he was fine. Those last four months he was strutting around like the cock of the farmyard, so full of himself his platoon wondered if he'd been taking something on the quiet.' He gave a strained smile. ‘Brenda had told him the kid was a boy, due about the time we'd get back here. He was that wound up on the flight home, wondering if she'd had the baby and everything was fine. At the airport he gets a text saying she'd gone into labour, then he jumps down from the bus to find that fat bitch waiting for him with her two kids, whingeing about leaving the Army like he promised.'

He suddenly lost the fight for control. Doubling up, shoulders heaving, he said with difficulty, ‘Daft bugger sees to the Taliban, then goes out like that before he can sort everything the way he wants, at last.'

SIX

H
eather Johnson had to drive to the other extremity of the base to interview the third of her four mounted suspects. Lieutenant Melanie Dunstan, one of the two female knights, served with the Intelligence Corps, which operated from a small block of offices similar to SIB's. Half expecting her to be the product of a county set who all lived in large houses with stables attached, people as much at home on a horse as in a 4x4, Heather was surprised to meet an unpretentious daughter of a market gardener, who spoke with an attractive Cornish burr.

Tall and bony, with a cap of smooth tawny hair she greeted Heather with some puzzlement. ‘Something you think I can help with, Sergeant?'

‘I'm just checking out a witness statement, ma'am,' she replied, envious of this young woman's colouring. The one time she had dyed her hair a rich red it had caused so many tiresome comments from colleagues and interviewees she had felt her authority was being undermined. It was now back to its natural shade akin to that of peanut butter.

The subaltern waved at a chair. ‘Have a seat. How does this witness statement concern me? Oh, one of my staff, I guess.'

Heather shook her head. ‘A knight in armour was seen riding in the vicinity of the Sports Ground around twenty-three hundred on Saturday. We're checking with the eight people who participated in the jousting displays so that we can eliminate them from our investigation into the murder of Corporal Philip Keane.' She held her pencil poised above her notebook. ‘Would you tell me your movements after the displays ended?'