Dangerous Games (29 page)

Lewis picks up a large stone from the ground.

‘We all have to do it,' he says. ‘We all have to strike a blow so we don't know which of us killed her – so we all share the responsibility.'

The other men – even Murray – nod sombrely.

The girl's head is still covered by her skirt. Lewis smashes his rock down on it, and there is the sickening sound of bone splintering. The others follow suit, though none of them with the force that Lewis has employed.

‘What now?' Bygraves asked.

It is at this point that Mark Hough takes charge. ‘We have to get rid of the body,' he says.

‘Why can't we just leave her here?' Pugh asks.

‘Because if they can't find the body, they can't prove she's dead,' Hough explains. ‘If they can't find prove she's dead, then they can't charge us with her murder.'

The others shiver at that last word. They know they have killed the girl, but they have not been thinking of themselves as murderers. Now they see that that is exactly what they are.

‘What do we do with her?' Bygraves asks.

‘We throw her into the sea,' Hough says. ‘It's the safest way.'

They load the girl's body into the back of the Land Rover – it does not take up nearly as much space as Corporal Matthews's body had – and drive to the cliff tops. The sea is deep at this point, and there are strong currents. With any luck, the body will never be found.

The moon comes out as they are lifting her from the Land Rover, shining on her thin young legs which are sticky with dried sperm and stained with blood.

Blood! A virgin's blood!

‘Cover her legs,' Hough says.

‘What's the point of that, when we're about to throw her over the cliff?' Lewis asks.

‘It's the decent thing to do,' Hough tells him.

‘Decent?' Lewis says, incredulously.

‘Cover her legs!' Mark Hough repeats, in a tone which suggests that if they do not do exactly as he says – and immediately – then more blood will be spilled that night.

Lewis shrugs, and pulls back the skirt from over her face.

And then they see it.

‘Oh, my God!' Bygraves moans.

‘It's the wrong girl!' Murray gasps.

It's the wrong girl. She looks similar to the one who led them into the ambush – she may even be her sister – but she is the wrong girl!

‘Let's get her over the cliff quickly,' Pugh says.

As if that will make a difference. As if, as she plunges towards the sea, she will miraculously become the right girl.

There is a bottle of whisky crammed down between the seats in the Land Rover. The unit did not touch it on their way out to the village, but now, on the journey back to camp, it is opened and passed around.

They are very drunk now. Drunker than they can ever remember being before. But for some of them, at least, the image of the dead girl – the
wrong
dead girl – will not go away.

As they are approaching the camp, Mark Hough notices the dark stain on the floor of the Land Rover. More blood! From her head! From the injuries that they inflicted.

He struggles to his feet.

‘What the bloody hell are you doing?' Bygraves asks.

‘Want to be sick,' Hough groans.

He grasps hold of the cover frame, leans out over the back of the vehicle, and throws up all over the road.

In the front of the vehicle, Tom Bygraves has just been handed the whisky bottle. He raises it to his lips and glugs it down. As the fiery liquid burns his throat, he finds himself wishing that Jack Matthews was there, to tell them what to do next. But if Jack Matthews had been there, he would never have allowed them to get into this fix in the first place.

Bygraves is still drinking when he swings the Land Rover around a bend on the wrong side of the road. It is then that he sees the lorry heading straight towards them. He drops the bottle, and wrenches desperately at the wheel.

The Land Rover swerves, its tyres screeching their protest, the air suddenly filled with the smell of burning rubber. He misses the lorry by inches, but now the Land Rover is in danger of coming off the road completely. He pulls hard on the wheel again, and the vehicle is more or less pointing in the right direction. He applies the brakes – none too gently – and the Land Rover comes to a juddering halt.

‘You almost killed us,' Reg Lewis screams.

‘No harm done,' Bygraves replies weakly.

The truck has stopped, too, and the driver and his mate are running back down the road.

‘Tell them we had some sort of mechanical failure,' Terry Pugh says. ‘Tell them the steering slipped.'

But the two running soldiers never reach the Land Rover. Instead, they come to a halt besides something lying in the road.

‘Where's Hough?' Martin Murray asks worriedly. ‘He was here a second ago.'

But that is not quite accurate. He was there ten or fifteen seconds earlier. Then, as the Land Rover swerved, he had gone flying through the air. His body had struck one of the lorry's big wheels. He had bounced off it immediately, but the damage had already been done.

Part of his spine is crushed, and he will never walk again.

T
he two MPs marched Monika Paniatowski into Captain Howerd's office, stamped their feet in the approved manner, then wheeled round, and left.

‘Your privileges have been revoked,' Howerd said, his voice thick with fury. ‘You are no longer welcome on either the island of Cyprus or within the Sovereign Base Area. The next military flight leaves for Britain in a little under an hour, and you, Sergeant Paniatowski, will be on it.'

‘What about my friend's friend in the War Office?' Paniatowski wondered. ‘How's he going to take this?'

Howerd gave her a savage smile. ‘It would appear, from a communication I have recently received, that he has been over-ruled by people with even more power and influence than he has himself,' he said.

‘I need to ring my boss,' Paniatowski said.

‘You mean, you'd
like
to ring your boss,' Howerd said.

‘No, I mean I
need
to. His instructions to me were that I should call him every few hours, and we haven't been in contact since last night.'

‘Well now, isn't that too bad,' Howerd said. ‘But unfortunately for you, making phone calls over British Government lines is one of those privileges which has been revoked.'

‘And when was this decision to revoke my privileges made?' Paniatowski asked.

‘That is of no interest to me, and no business of yours, Sergeant. It is enough for both of us to know that they
have
been revoked.'

‘If I had to guess, I'd say the decision had been made within the last hour and a half,' Paniatowski mused. ‘To be even more specific, Captain Howerd, I'd say that it was made some time between me walking into Police Headquarters and me walking out again.'

‘You had no right to take it on yourself to speak to the local police!' Howerd said. ‘No right at all.'

‘You told me that I could talk to anyone I wanted to,' Paniatowski reminded him.

‘I meant anyone
within reason
, as well you know,' Captain Howerd countered.

‘Corporal Matthews was killed in an ambush, and the same night, his mates stole the Land Rover and went back to the village where he'd died. And when they returned to the base, whoever was the base commander at the time flew into a complete panic, didn't he?' Paniatowski asked.

‘You're babbling!' Captain Howerd said.

‘There were two courses of action the man in charge
could
have taken,' Paniatowski continued. ‘The right one – the
decent
one – would have been to have all five of them arrested. The wrong – but
practical
– one would have been to keep them in isolation for a couple of weeks, then slip them quietly away when no one was looking. But he didn't do
either
of those things, did he?
Because
he was in such a panic, he shipped the four who could be moved out the very next morning. And that left a trail which it hasn't been too difficult to follow.'

‘I don't know what you're talking about,' Howerd said.

‘I've lost count of the number of times you've told me that,' Paniatowski replied. ‘But however many times it's been, it's never been even remotely true, has it? You had nothing to do with the incidents I keep referring to. You weren't even here at the time. But the army was here, and since you
are
the army – and the army is
you
– to all intents and purposes, it's just the same as if you
had
been here.'

‘I neither know, nor care, what that deranged Cyp chief inspector of police told you,' Howerd said, ‘but for your own sake, I would strongly advise you not to repeat anything that he may have communicated to you. In fact, if you wish to salvage what little may possibly be left of your own career, you would be wise to forget that you have ever visited Cyprus at all.'

‘When your people pulled the police off their investigation into that young girl's disappearance, they claimed it was because they didn't want to inflame the Greek Cypriot community against the Turkish,' Paniatowski said. ‘But that wasn't true, either, was it? What they were really worried about – what they were scared shitless over – was the possibility that once the truth got out, the Greek community would turn on the
army
.'

‘There was no link between the girl's disappearance and the army,' Howerd said stubbornly. ‘But if there
had
been – and if the police had uncovered it – can you even begin to appreciate how many more British lives would have been lost? And I don't just mean soldiers. I'm talking about soldiers'
wives
as well. And soldiers'
children
.'

‘So the men involved with whatever happened to the girl were allowed to get away with it – until now,' Paniatowski mused. ‘Do you know, there's a part of me that hopes we'll never find the chap who's killing them off.'

‘I'm sure there is,' Captain Howerd said. A cruelly amused smile came to his lips. ‘You want to ignore the law, and decide for yourself how justice will be served. But doesn't that make you just as bad as you seem to think we are?'

The constables had been on guard outside the model shop all night, but once the news of Nikopolidis' death had been announced, there seemed no point in keeping them there any longer, and the order had come through for them to withdraw.

Martin Murray had watched them leave without either concern or regret. What had to happen, had to happen – and the only question was whether it would be sooner or later.

He was putting the finishing touches to his model railway – his own private world – when he heard the doorbell ring, and the sound of rubber on tiles which followed it.

‘Nikopolidis, the Cyp who killed Pugh, Lewis and Bygraves, is dead,' his visitor said.

‘I know he is. I heard it on the radio.'

‘So now there's a problem.'

‘Is there?'

‘Oh yes. Since he's dead, he cannot complete his work. But it must
be
completed.'

Murray had still not looked up from his model railway. ‘I need five more minutes to finish off what I'm doing,' he said. ‘Will you allow me that?'

‘You're not going to put up any sort of fight?' his visitor asked, surprised.

‘Did you expect me to?'

‘I thought it might be a possibility.'

‘
What if
?' Murray asked. ‘What if I decided to resist you?'

‘Then I'd have to find some way to overcome that resistance.'

‘It wouldn't be easy.'

‘No, it wouldn't.'

‘And though it might result in my death, I would not die in the manner you would wish me to.'

‘That's true. But I can only do what I can – what I am
able
to.'

‘I won't resist you,' Murray promised. ‘What would be the point of it? I should have been hanged seven years ago. We both know that. It would have been a merciful release for me if I had been. But now the time has finally come, and I will not struggle against the inevitable.'

‘This isn't some kind of trick, is it?' his visitor asked suspiciously. ‘You're not simply stalling me until the police arrive?'

Murray laughed. ‘I haven't even looked at you yet – I have more important things to do – but from the moment you entered this shop, you have not taken your eyes off me for a single second. Isn't that true?'

‘Well, yes,' the visitor agreed.

‘You should have looked around the shop,' Murray told him. ‘If you had done, you'd no longer have any doubts about the seriousness of my intention.'

The visitor did now look around, and when he saw what was in a corner of the room not visible from the window, he said, ‘I am sorry I ever doubted you.'

‘So you will now allow me the five minutes I requested?' Murray asked.

‘Of course,' his visitor agreed.

T
he two young military policemen, who'd been charged with the responsibility of ensuring that Paniatowski did exactly what she'd been ordered to do, were nowhere near as stern and forbidding as the ones who had taken her into custody outside the police station. On the contrary, they seemed to be enjoying what they considered to be a really rather pleasant assignment.

‘It's a pity you can't stay a few more days,' one of them – who said his name was Brian – told her. ‘We've got a dance on Saturday, and there's always a shortage of ladies.'