A Long Time Dead Page 5

  ‘What about the other part of you?’ Paniatowski asked.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Since you say you had mixed feelings about it, I take it there was a part didn’t want to go.’

  ‘True enough, there was,’ Woodend agreed. ‘I hadn’t been in Haverton Camp for long, but it had been long enough for me to meet some very nice people – an’ in wartime, meetin’ nice people is one of the few things that seem to make life worth livin’.’

  Mary Parkinson had been a nice person, he thought.

  He recalled seeing her, still standing on the platform, as the train had pulled out – a small and delicate creature made even smaller and more delicate by her obvious misery.

  He wondered whether he’d made the right decision in choosing not to brief Monika on Mary – and thought that he probably had.

  Coxton Woods lay about half a mile beyond the railway station, and the road cut right through the middle of them.

  Woodend had not remembered them as being so extensive. But then, he supposed, a lot could change in twenty-one years. Some things had got older, some things had died, and some things – like the woods and Douglas Coutes’s power – had gone from strength to strength.

  ‘So here we are on the Trail of the Red Herring,’ he told Monika Paniatowski.

  ‘Meaning what, exactly?’ Paniatowski asked.

  ‘Meaning that when Robert Kineally went missing, his jeep went missing as well. An’ this wood is where they found it.’

  ‘Where who found it? The American military police?’

  ‘Not them, no. Although, accordin’ to what both Forsyth and Coutes told me, they’d certainly been lookin’ for it hard enough.’

  ‘Because they thought that if they found the jeep, they’d find Robert Kineally as well?’

  ‘Exactly. But, as things turned out, it was actually discovered – purely by chance – by a local lad, some ten days after the search began.’

  ‘You say it was abandoned in the woods?’ Monika Paniatowski said, thoughtfully.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘How deep into the woods?’

  ‘Not very deep at all, as a matter of fact. No more than a short stroll from the station.’

  ‘Then why …?’

  ‘Wasn’t it found earlier?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It was covered with American Army-issue camouflage – which they managed to trace back to Haverton Camp. So what conclusion do you think the MPs came to?’

  ‘That Robert Kineally had camouflaged it himself. Because the longer it took his pursuers to find the jeep, the longer it would take them to realize that he’d caught a train.’

  ‘Just so. An’ for anybody who didn’t know he was already dead and buried, it’d be a perfectly logical conclusion to reach. Anyway, as far as the American MPs were concerned, that pretty much ended their part of the investigation into his disappearance. Wherever he’d gone after he boarded the train, he was now somebody else’s problem.’

  ‘Which is, of course, just what the killer must have wanted them to think,’ Paniatowski stated.

  ‘Too right. And the ruse worked for twenty-one years! But not any more. Now, the FBI will claim it was Coutes who drove the jeep, in an effort to cover his own tracks.’

  ‘Though whoever killed Kineally would probably have done the same thing,’ Paniatowski pointed out.

  ‘True,’ Woodend agreed.

  But I’d so like it to be Douglas Coutes, he thought to himself. I really want it to be Douglas Coutes.

  ‘What was your impression of Robert Kineally as a person?’ Paniatowski asked.

  A smile – half-warm, half-regretful – found its way to the Chief Inspector’s lips.

  ‘I liked the feller,’ Woodend said. ‘I liked him a lot.’

  Captain Robert Kineally was tall, and had the kind of even white teeth that British dentists would dream about but never expect to see. His face was pleasing, rather than handsome, but – above all – it was earnest.

  ‘I guess I’m what you might call a relationships kinda guy,’ he explained to Woodend and Coutes over pints of warm beer at the Dun Cow, which was the nearest pub to Haverton Camp.

  ‘A relationships kinda guy,’ Coutes repeated, with something bordering on contempt.

  ‘Sure,’ Kineally agreed, missing the tenor of Coutes’s words completely. ‘The way I look at the situation, we’re all in this big battle against the Nazis together, and I kinda see it as my job to ensure that everybody becomes friends and stays friends.’

  Coutes took a sip of his beer, grimaced, pushed it to one side, and ordered a pink gin.

  ‘Very nice – but a million miles from the truth,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah?’ Kineally asked.

  ‘Yeah,’ Coutes mimicked. ‘What your job really boils down to, Captain Kineally, is passing on messages from your boss to us, so that we can pass them on to our bosses.’

  Kineally looked troubled by the statement. ‘Is that all you see it as, Captain Coutes?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ Coutes replied.

  ‘I’m sure glad about that,’ Kineally said, looking relieved.

  ‘The other part is a little more complex,’ Coutes continued. ‘When your bosses screw up – and they will screw up, trust me on that – then it’s your job to convince us they haven’t actually screwed up at all.’

  ‘And what’s your job?’ Kineally asked, looking troubled again.

  ‘Our job is to pretend to believe whatever pathetic reason you come up with to excuse your boss’s incompetence. Of course, it works the other way round as well, and you’ll have to practice pretending to believe the excuses that we come up with to explain away our boss’s cock-ups.’

  ‘There’s surely more to it than that?’

  ‘Not at all. Neither of our countries wants to lose more men than it has to in the fighting, and so we’re splitting the risk. Which means that, even if we come to hate each other, we have to put on a united front. And that’s what we’re here for – to paper over the cracks.’

  Kineally’s frown deepened. ‘See, I think there’s a more positive role that you and I could play,’ he said.

  ‘And that is …?’

  ‘I think we could work to make our armies understand each other a little better.’

  ‘They don’t need to understand each other,’ Coutes said disgustedly. ‘They’re here to learn how to fight. And while they’re learning how to fight, they should also be learning how to obey orders without question.’

  ‘You make them sound like machines,’ Kineally said, sounding increasingly bewildered.

  ‘I wish that’s what they were,’ Coutes told him. ‘Machines are much easier to handle. Big guns stay in position and fire when they’re told to. Squaddies, on the other hand, are born with a tendency to cut and run.’

  ‘Squaddies?’ Kineally repeated.

  ‘Ordinary soldiers,’ Woodend supplied.

  ‘Oh, grunts,’ Kineally said. ‘Yeah, it’s the grunts I’m mostly concerned about. I’m from Connecticut, which can be a pretty sophisticated kinda place, and I’ve travelled to Europe before. But most of the men who make up our army have never left the States. Hell, most of them have never even left their own state – or their own part of their own state. And suddenly they’re the other side of the pond, having to deal with a people whose English they can hardly understand, and a way of life which they’ve only ever seen in old movies.’

  ‘So what?’ Coutes wondered.

  ‘I’d like them to get something out of the experience of being over here,’ Kineally said. ‘When they go into battle, I’d like it if they were fighting not only for their own country but also for the ordinary decent folks they’ve met while they were over here in Britain.’

  ‘If you want to make that your hobby, then by all means go ahead,’ Coutes said coldly. ‘But don’t ever confuse it with the job you’re actually meant to do. And don’t try to drag us into it.’

  Kineally turned his attention to Woo
dend. ‘What do you make of all this, Chuck?’ he asked. He paused, and almost reddened. ‘You don’t mind if I call you Chuck, do you?’

  ‘I don’t mind at all,’ Woodend said.

  ‘So, do you think I’m right?’

  A picture of Joan came uninvited into Woodend’s mind, and he knew that however difficult things became in the future, that picture would somehow pull him through.

  ‘I think you’ve got a very good point, sir,’ he said. ‘In my experience, men always fight better when they’ve got something to fight for.’

  He should never have said that, he thought, noticing how Coutes was glaring at him.

  But it was the simple truth as he saw it, and he could not bring himself to regret speaking the words.

  Once they’d left Coxton Woods behind them, the roads got narrower, and soon they were travelling along a high-banked country lane which was bordered by spring primroses. It was a twisty-turny lane, one of those which dutifully respected the boundaries of fields which had existed long before there had been any metalled road there at all.

  ‘Are you absolutely sure we’re going the right way, sir?’ Monika Paniatowski asked.

  Woodend grinned, and though he already knew the answer to the question he was about to put, he said, ‘Now why on earth would you ask that?’

  ‘I suppose it’s because I was probably expecting something altogether more … more …’

  ‘Impressive?’

  ‘Yes, that’s probably what I mean,’ Paniatowski agreed. She paused, as if searching for a tactful way to phrase what she wanted to say next. ‘It was a proper camp that you were based at, wasn’t it, sir?’ she continued.

  ‘Depends what you mean by “proper”,’ Woodend said. ‘It had all the things that most camps had.’

  ‘Including heavy vehicles?’

  ‘Most certainly including heavy vehicles.’

  ‘Tanks?’

  ‘No, none of them, as it happens. They were either on Salisbury Plain or down on the coast. But we had most of the rest – jeeps, armoured cars, trucks. We even had a couple of bulldozers.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘We needed them to clear away any obstacles we’d meet when we eventually landed in Normandy.’

  ‘And all of that came down this lane?’ Paniatowski asked. ‘The trucks? The armoured cars? Even the bulldozers?’

  ‘They had to. There was no other way.’

  ‘So how the hell did they manage it?’

  Woodend grinned again. ‘Slowly – and with great difficulty,’ he said. ‘You have to understand, Monika, that though the Invasion of Normandy was probably the biggest amphibious landin’ that the world has ever seen – an’, with a bit of luck, is ever likely to see – a lot of the decisions about how it was to be run were made entirely on the hoof.’

  ‘It all sounds very amateur.’

  ‘I suppose it was, in a way. There was no laid-down procedure for an operation on that scale, you see, so the planners invented them as they went along. An’ while it would have been better to have nice wide roads runnin’ to all the camps, neither the time nor the resources were available, so the planners decided we could do without them.’

  ‘Why is it the British always seem to make a virtue out of having to put up with botched-up jobs?’ Paniatowski asked, the Polish side of her nature – for once – coming to the surface.

  ‘It might have been botched-up, but you can’t deny that it worked,’ Woodend said, surprised to find himself suddenly so much on the defensive.

  ‘True,’ Paniatowski agreed. ‘But given the way that things were run back then, it’s hardly surprising that Robert Kineally’s body could have lain undiscovered for over twenty years, now is it?’

  Six

  The last remaining soldiers had finally departed from Haverton Camp in 1946. They left behind them enamelled signs which proclaimed that what lay beyond the chain-link fence was Ministry of Defence property, and that trespass was strictly prohibited, but neither the army nor the ministry itself had given much thought to the place since then.

  Had there been a church on the camp, thieves would no doubt have descended on it and stripped the lead from the roof. Had it been close to a large town, then it might well have been squatted in by those unwilling to continue paying high urban rents. But as it was stuck out in the middle of the countryside, with nothing in it worth stealing, it had pretty much been left alone – except by courting couples anxious for a little privacy, and bike-riding kids in search of an adventure.

  With the boom in house building and the extension of private motor car ownership, all that had changed. Suddenly, the camp did not seem so far from civilization any more. Suddenly, it ceased to be a decaying relic of another time, and had become a prime development site.

  And then the body had been discovered by the team making the developers’ preliminary survey, and the camp had come alive again as a camp, Woodend thought as they approached the main gate. Now, for the first time in nearly twenty years, the Stars and Stripes fluttered from the flagpole, and the entrance was guarded by two stern-looking men in white helmets.

  The Wolseley pulled up at the barrier, and Woodend wound down his window and produced his warrant card.

  The military policeman examined it carefully, then stepped back to look at the car. ‘You come far, sir?’ he asked, conversationally.

  ‘About two hundred and fifty miles,’ Woodend said.

  ‘In this thing?’ the policeman asked, sketching out the body of the Wolseley with his hands, as if trying to establish whether what he was seeing was actually what was there.

  ‘What’s wrong with my car?’ Woodend asked, stung.

  ‘It’s kinda small,’ the military policeman said. ‘Jeez, a vehicle like this would fit into the trunk of my automobile.’ He paused, and coloured slightly. ‘No offence meant, sir,’ he continued.

  ‘None taken,’ Woodend assured him.

  After all, it wasn’t really his fault, the Chief Inspector thought.

  The Yanks he himself had known during the war had been just like this one – surprised by the minuteness of everything they came across, from the size of the country they found themselves in (which their education officers had informed was slightly smaller than Oregon), to the size of the rations on which the British people were expected to subsist. They’d got used to it in time – so much so that they didn’t even really see it as abnormal any more – but their initial shock had been almost comical to observe.

  ‘When did you arrive in Britain, son?’ he asked the military policeman. ‘Yesterday? The day before?’

  ‘Flew in yesterday, sir. How did you know that?’

  Woodend grinned. ‘I’m a detective. Says so on my warrant card.’

  The MP returned his grin. ‘Sure does,’ he agreed.

  ‘An’ I imagine there was more than just the two of you on that plane who were heading for this camp,’ Woodend hazarded.

  ‘Hell, yes,’ the MP agreed. ‘I’d guess there must have been a hundred guys in all.’

  A hundred guys, Woodend repeated to himself.

  His own government had sent him and Monika – and Monika was only there because he’d asked for her. The American government, on the other hand, had sent a hundred guys.

  He should have remembered, from his days at the old Haverton Camp, that the Yanks never did things by halves. And this time they weren’t just demonstrating their natural inclination to be thorough – this time they had the additional incentive of being spurred on in their actions by a powerful politician who was demanding results.

  It was like travelling back in time, Woodend thought as the Wolseley followed the MP’s jeep through the old camp. No, he corrected himself, it wasn’t like travelling back at all – it was the real thing.

  Driving past the endless rows of barrack huts, he felt the young Charlie Woodend entering him; the Charlie who didn’t have a wife with a heart condition and a daughter who was training to be a nurse; the Charlie still to discover that
murder was rarely simple, and the motives behind it often amazingly complex; the Charlie who, despite three years of war, was yet to kill another living being face to face – was yet to look into the eyes of a man whose life he was just about to steal from him.

  They had left the huts behind them, and were approaching the open space which had once been the parade ground.

  But it wasn’t an open space any more! A whole encampment of caravans now covered the area where formerly there had been only a sea of concrete.

  ‘Christ!’ Paniatowski gasped.

  Woodend knew exactly how she felt. It wasn’t just the number of caravans which had taken her breath away, it was their magnitude. These caravans were not the fragile tin boxes on wheels which normally held up traffic on the narrow Devon roads during the summer holiday months. Instead, they were monsters – as long as some houses.

  ‘Where, in God’s name, do you think they got those bloody big things from?’ Monika asked.

  ‘From the same place they got the MPs,’ Woodend said. ‘They’ve flown them in from the States.’

  The jeep came to a halt in front of one of these juggernauts, and Paniatowski parked the Wolseley behind it.

  The MP turned around. ‘That trailer just in front of you is Mr Grant’s, sir,’ he said.

  Then he put the jeep into gear, and pulled away.

  ‘Who’s Mr Grant?’ Paniatowski asked.

  ‘My guess is that he’s our oppo from the Federal Bureau of Investigation,’ Woodend replied.

  Edward Grant was not quite the fresh-faced college boy Woodend had feared he might turn out to be from Forsyth’s description, but there was no doubt that he was still approaching thirty with confidence, rather than walking away from it with a vague sense of foreboding.

  Despite the fact that he had been totally alone in his caravan before they had arrived, Woodend noted, the Special Agent was still dressed formally, in a sober suit, white shirt and dark tie. The shine on his black shoes would have satisfied an inspection by the most critical of Regimental Sergeant Majors, and his even teeth gleamed like stars.