The Enemy Within (6 page)

‘Of course you're not,' Woodend agreed. ‘We'll use vodka embrocation – an' we'll apply it from the
inside
.'

H
e knew he was in his bedroom. His mind and his memory both told him that it was so, and his fingers – running along the edge of the familiar mattress – only reinforced the belief. Had he opened his eyes – which he wouldn't, because he didn't
choose
to – he would have seen the bedside light he had not bothered to turn off, and the ticking alarm clock which was standing next to it. Yes, there was no doubt at all about where he was.

Why then, did his sense of smell keep telling him he was somewhere else entirely? Why, even though such a thing was impossible, did his nose insist that that it was inhaling the sticky cloying smell of decaying vegetation which belonged to a place thousands of miles away from Whitebridge?

There had been four them in the jungle that day – himself (LH), Jacko, Socks and the new sergeant. It had been meant to be no more than a routine patrol. Out just before dawn, back in time for tea. In theory they were looking for communists, but they did not expect to find any, because everybody knew there were no commies in this particular sector.

Like hell, there weren't!

Right from the start, the sergeant had tried to stamp his authority on the patrol. He had seen more active service than they could ever imagine, he'd told them. Had any of them ever killed a man? No? Well, he bloody had. And not just the one man, either.

‘Ever been in the jungle, though, Sarge?' Jacko had asked.

What was that supposed to mean, the sergeant demanded.

Nothing, Jacko replied. No offence meant. He just wondered if the sarge had ever been in the jungle, that was all.

‘I've fought on the burning sands, and up to my waist in water,' the sergeant replied. ‘I shouldn't think a few trees will bother me.'

But the jungle was not ‘a few trees'. The jungle was a tangled mass of roots, branches and creepers. It sweated and it groaned. It drained the strength out of a man after only a few minutes. It was deceptive – creating false trails which seemed to lead the walker in the direction he wished to go, yet in reality doing no more than lead him round in circles.

Spend more than an hour under its sweltering canopy and it was no longer possible to believe that any other world existed. Memories became dreams, the jungle was the only reality. The three young commandos already knew this. They could only hope and pray that their new sergeant would soon come to realize it too.

Despite his men's protest that they should stick to familiar trails, the new sergeant led them further into the jungle than they had ever ventured before. By noon – though the sergeant would not admit it, even to himself – they were lost. Prickly heat made their backs itch unbearably. Countless insects, ignoring the creams the men had applied to their whole bodies, were slowly and patiently devouring their legs and arms. Their tongues were swelling with thirst, but they had drunk too much of their valuable water already, and so forced themselves to conserve what little was left. When they finally managed to persuade the sergeant to call base camp for assistance, they discovered that their radio had stopped working.

It was perhaps half an hour before dusk when, still wandering aimlessly, they heard the sound of machetes cutting their way through the vines, and the tramp of heavy boots on the ground. As quietly as was possible, they retreated into the undergrowth and crouched down. A minute or so later they saw what had been making the noise – a column of perhaps twenty-five heavily armed members of the Malayan Communist Party.

There was a clearing no more than a hundred yards past their hiding place, and when the enemy reached it, their leader called a halt. The communists set about making camp for the night. A fire was lit, and pots were brought out. Soon, despite the almost overpowering stink of the jungle, the four British soldiers were treated to the tantalizing smell of food being cooked.

The sergeant's bold, early-morning front had been gradually deteriorating over the course of the day and now, when he spoke, it was with the voice of desperation rather than command.

‘We'll wait until they've gone to sleep, then we'll slip away,' he croaked.

The other two young privates looked to Jacko for leadership.

‘Slip away?' Jacko whispered. ‘If we can't find our way back to base in the daylight, what chance will we have in the dark? Besides, we've used up most of the water. Even if we did know our way out, we'd die of thirst before we were halfway home.'

The sergeant bowed his head. ‘Then we have no choice but to surrender,' he said.

Jacko did not even try to hide his contempt at this. ‘If we surrender, we lose face,' he said.

‘I don't care,' the sergeant mumbled.

‘Well, you should. It would make us less than human in their eyes. There's no telling what they might do to us then.'

‘We'll be prisoners of war,' the sergeant whined.

‘You're not listening,' Jacko hissed angrily. ‘We're the white man, and we'll have lost. They'll use us an example to frighten the coolies.'

‘How?'

‘They'll think of something. Maybe they'll crucify us on rubber trees. Maybe they'll just carry our heads around on poles. I don't know exactly – and I don't want to find out.'

‘So what can we do?' the sergeant whimpered.

‘Attack them while they're asleep. At the very worst, we'll get our hands on their water. At best, we might manage to keep one of them alive and force him to lead us out of this hell.'

‘We're outnumbered,' the sergeant said. ‘There's a good two dozen of them.'

‘But we have the element of surprise on our side.'

‘How can we surprise them?' the sergeant asked hysterically. ‘They'll have sentries posted.'

‘Yes, they will,' Jacko agreed. He turned to LH and Socks. ‘You're going to have to take the sentries out first.'

Crawling on his belly, LH reached the edge of the clearing. The campfire had died down, but there was just enough light left for him to see that there were only two sentries on guard. One for him, one for Socks. Once they were out of the way, the three privates would spray the sleeping bodies of the enemy with machine-gun fire.

It could work. It
had
to work!

He edged forward, just as he hoped that Socks was doing on the other side of the clearing. The plan was for him to make the first move, then Socks, who should be watching, would take out his man almost immediately afterwards.

LH's target had his back to him, and from his stance it was clear that he kept dozing off where he stood. Good. That would make things easier. LH assessed his task, calculating just when he would get up off the ground and exactly where he would grab the guard.

This guard wasn't very tall, even for a Chinese. Not very broad, either. More like a boy than a man. That didn't matter. This was war – and in war being weak was no excuse. LH slowly reached towards his belt, and pulled his knife from its protective sheath.

A knocking on his door!

‘LH? LH? Are you all right?'

The stink of the jungle receded. Now all he could smell was furniture wax and his own sweat.

‘LH?'

‘I'm fine.'

‘I heard you crying out.'

‘So what? Didn't the nut doctor tell you to expect that kind of thing?'

‘You shouldn't call Dr Freedman that. He's a trauma therapist.'

‘He's a
shrink
. If you have to go and see him, it's because you're crazy. That's why
I
go – because I've got a screw loose.'

The doorknob rattled. ‘Let me in, LH.'

‘No!'

‘Please! I want to help.'

‘
You
can't help. You – and what you've done – are a big part of the problem.'

‘If we could just talk . . .'

‘If you don't go away this minute, I'll take my knife out,' LH threatened. ‘And once it is out, I'll have to use it – because that's what I've been taught to do.'

‘Please don't threaten me!'

‘Who says I'm threatening you? Maybe I'm only threatening myself.' LH took a deep breath. ‘I'm going to count to five, then I'm getting the knife.'

‘You mustn't . . . you . . .'

‘One. . . two. . . three . . .'

It was on ‘four' that he heard the footsteps reluctantly signalling a retreat. He closed his eyes again and let the stinking green hell of the jungle seep back into his nostrils.

The guard still had no idea that he was there . . . still didn't know just how close death was . . .

Though rivers of blood

May spill through the crack

The dam has been breached

And there's no turning back.

U
nder the cloak of darkness, Mad Jack's Field had seemed a sinister place to Bob Rutter. Now, in the dull light of an overcast November day, any chill he might experience had more to do with the temperature of the air than with any atmosphere which might emanate from the field itself. This was no potential location for a horror film. It was simply a patch of wasteland which no one had yet thought worth developing – just another urban blemish in a declining town which had more than its fair share of such sites.

Rutter shifted his gaze from the charred remains of the bonfire to the edges of the field. A dozen uniformed constables were slowly and meticulously scouring the ground for clues, but it was unlikely they'd have any luck. The earth had been rock-hard the night before, so there was little chance of being able to lift any footprints. Besides – and to use one of the newly fashionable policing phrases which Charlie Woodend affected to despise – the crime scene had been ‘contaminated' by two small boys, a passing couple, a number of police units, several spectators who had managed to slip through the cordon (including the one Monika chased) and two bloody big red fire engines which, as well as putting out the fire, had drenched the ground around it.

He turned his thoughts from the crime scene to the dead woman's clothes. They'd been bothering him – on and off – since he'd first examined them the night before.

Her shoes had at once struck a jarring note. They were bright scarlet, with very high heels. They seemed totally at odds not only with the woman's age but also with the frumpy cloth overcoat and heavy woollen cardigan she'd been wearing. Then he'd examined the rest of her clothes, and quickly understood that it was the overcoat and cardigan – not the shoes – which failed to match the rest of the ensemble.

The skirt was black, knee-length and tightly fitting. The blouse was low-cut, frilly and electric blue. Underneath these outer garments, the woman had been wearing a black lace bra and panty set, stockings and a suspender belt.

That kind of underwear would have suited his wife – or Monika Paniatowski – Rutter thought, but it hardly seemed appropriate clothing for a woman who was fifteen years their senior.

Or
was
it inappropriate? he wondered, pulling himself up short.

On more than one occasion, Charlie Woodend had accused him of seeing the world through arrogant young eyes – of assuming that any woman over thirty-five had either lost the urge for sex or, at the very least, the power to attract a partner.

Slightly guiltily, Rutter accepted both the criticism and the extent of his own ignorance which that criticism implied. Perhaps
all
middle-aged women wore the same kind of underwear as the victim. He'd never undressed one of them, so he simply didn't know.

Rutter checked his watch. It was nearly ten twenty-seven and, under normal circumstances, the team should have been able to put a name to the dead woman by now.

Yet that hadn't happened. There'd been no phone calls from anxious husbands who wanted to report that their wives hadn't come home; no children turning up at the police station to say they'd lost their mum; no concerned employers wondering if the reason one of their workers had failed to turn up that morning was because she'd been murdered.

He looked at his watch again.

Ten twenty-nine!

Christ, was it really only a couple of minutes since the last time he'd checked?

‘Calm down!' he told himself.

Calm down? There wasn't much chance of that. His personal life had got his nerves in such a state that he made a spider tap-dancing on a hotplate look tranquil.

When Woodend had briefed the press in the old days, he had done it from wherever he happened to be at the time. Sometimes the briefings were conducted out on the street, sometimes in Woodend's office and sometimes – very often, in fact – in a pub. He'd liked doing things that way. He could get to know the journalists, and they could get to know him. When it had been necessary to draw a line over which they should not cross, he'd been able to do it informally, without raising too many hackles. When he'd wanted their help, he could ask for it without having to fill in the mountain of paperwork which was now necessary if he wanted to cover his own back. It had been a good system – one which had actually helped him to get the result he was after.

The Chief Constable did not approve of such effective anarchy. On his return from one of the countless conferences he attended – conferences which, coincidentally, were all within reasonable distance of a good golf course – he'd announced that what the Mid Lancs Police needed, more than anything else in the world, was a good press room. And so one of the larger rooms on the ground floor had been set aside for the purpose, and the criminal records department – which had hitherto been making full use of the room – had been dispatched to a dusty basement.