French Leave (31 page)

‘I had a message from that prissy estate agent this afternoon. That German woman has pulled out of her agreement to rent the adjoining apartment, and the bloody landlord is holding out for a dual let. Won't let me move in until the other place is also about to be occupied. Some guff about letting my friends use the other premises illegally. I think he imagines I'll hold orgies and drunks'll camp out overnight there.'

‘Doors can be locked from the inside,' Max pointed out, wondering why she was telling him all this.

‘Have you ever known a locked door get the better of an inebriated soldier?'

‘I guess he might have a point if you were a guy.'

‘
I'm
a soldier, chum.'

‘So you can't move in at the weekend after all?'

‘No.' A short pause. ‘You once said you were unhappy living in the Mess. I don't suppose you'd be prepared to become my neighbour?'

He laughed. ‘Then he'd have
two
soldiers living it up in his posh apartments.'

‘I'm serious, Max.' When he made no immediate reply, she said persuasively, ‘You were impressed with the place when you viewed it with me.'

Recalling what he had confessed to her while walking alongside the river afterwards, he gave her his news. ‘I've just got engaged to Livya and I'm taking fourteen days' leave to settle everything. I don't want to wait too long before we marry.'

‘Oh! Well, congrats.' She sounded taken aback, then added something Max found curious. ‘I hope “honey” deserves you.'

FIFTEEN

T
om was at Section Headquarters early the next morning, putting a small pile of DVDs and CDs with those taken from the Morgan summerhouse. The girls had been surly over surrendering them, but Tom could not allow his own family to be part of an illegal scheme.

He was called by Connie from the rear area where confiscated items were stored, because Captain Will Fanshawe wanted to speak to him. The Cricketing Captain, as Max called him, was waiting in Tom's office and greeted him heartily.

‘Morning, Mr Black. Great result regarding Lieutenant Farley. Heard he's being set free from the hospital today, arriving back for duty tomorrow.' He sobered somewhat. ‘As for Smith, as we knew him, I fear we were all a bit careless about failing to recognize the problem and reassigning him.'

Tom shook his head. ‘From all we've learned about him, I doubt reassignment would have changed anything. He was one of life's perpetual misfits.'

Fanshawe put on the desk a tin box similar to those frequently used for petty cash. ‘Let me tell you about this. I was asked to speak to Eric Miller about his daughter, who was refusing to see him.' He wrinkled his brow. ‘He's a good man, an excellent sergeant, but he's in a no-win situation with his second wife and her two rather loathsome sons. In consequence, he's short-tempered and intolerant. This unfortunately extends to his own daughter, who rebels. Because she apparently had a juvenile liaison with Smith, it makes her afraid of her father's reaction. Together with the Padre I discussed this with him, and the outcome is that Miller has arranged for the girl to go to his parents, who reared her until she was five.

‘She'll stay with them until we return from Afghanistan in the spring. Sharon's doctor gave her this news, and Miller went to the hospital last evening to reassure his daughter.

‘The welfare of the girl is not my concern, but the efficiency of one of my sergeants is, so I'm relieved this grotty affair is over.' He put his hand on the tin. ‘Miller brought this to me this morning, having found it in Sharon's room where she said she had hidden it. Smith gave it to her early in their relationship; asked her to keep it safe for him because his mates had found where he kept it, and pestered him to show them what was in it. The contents were very private and personal, he told her, and he was afraid they'd break it open. Sharon claims she never had a key for it. As the guy's dead, the responsibility for it passes to you. Mission accomplished.'

As soon as Fanshawe left, Tom opened the small drawer in his desk and took out an envelope containing the key he had found beneath the DVDs in Carr's locker. Not the key to a bank safety deposit box, nor the key to a sports locker, as they had thought. It opened this cheap tin cash box. Inside lay Jack Carr's birth certificate and National Insurance card. There was also a passport in his name, which appeared never to have been used.

Under these items was a yellowing snapshot of a good-looking young man in a blazer and white shirt, with a jauntily knotted cravat. Tom turned it over. On the back, in a schoolboy hand, Carr had written: My dad the famus esplorer.

Dan Farley put his few possessions in the blue holdall and checked the time on the small travelling clock his mother had brought in on her first visit. She was due to pick him up in ten minutes. He had said he would hire a car to drive to Tidworth, where he would stay overnight with his parents before flying back to Germany, but she had insisted on fetching him.

The clock followed two paperbacks into the holdall. Lewes police had recovered his gold watch and his mobile, but they had had to retain them as evidence. Dan did not mind too much. They were safe enough in police custody. He would have left his watch with his parents when he went to Afghanistan, anyway.

He knew his platoon would be minus one man when he got back tomorrow. His friends had phoned to tell him Smith had been found in the river. Dan still felt a mild pang of responsibility. Not a good start to lose one of your men two months into your first command. He would have to be more diligent in future. And he would never again accept a lift from a biker.

On the point of closing the zip on his bag, the telephone beside the bed rang. His mother was running late? Not unusual.

He stiffened as Trish's voice greeted him with breathless emotion. ‘
Darling
, I've just heard a
terrible
story from one of my clients, who heard it from Jem Hawkins in the taxi coming here. Tell me it isn't true. Those bikers didn't
really
leave you to
die
.'

Dan silently cursed. As far as he knew, the MoD had put a press embargo on the case. If that man was relating the facts to every passenger he carried, it would soon hit the headlines.

‘How did you know where I was?' he asked harshly.

‘Jem Hawkins told my client you were fighting for your life there. Oh
darling
, I can't stop crying. It's
my
fault. If I hadn't been so cruel to you, you wouldn't have had to get a lift to Heathrow. Can you ever forgive me? I don't know what—'

Dan held the phone away from his ear while he picked the clock from his holdall to check the time. His mother would be waiting.

‘—and they made up the most gorgeous bouquet of red roses. I've also bought you the biggest box of chocolate-covered nougat Thorntons had. I don't suppose you're able to eat things like that yet, but you'll know how much I care when you see the box. And the flowers. I'm about to leave, so I'll be with you in forty minutes. Hang on in there, my darling. It must have been terrible, sweetheart, but at least you have the perfect excuse not to go to Afghanistan.'

She was still talking when he took up the holdall and headed for the main entrance.

Max overslept, but his only concern was that he might miss breakfast. He had worked late last night so he deserved a couple of hours to compensate. As he dressed he reflected that he ought to get Clare to change the strapping around his ribs before going on leave. That reminded him that he should reserve a seat on Thursday evening's flight, so he lingered long enough to make the booking online. Still no e-mail from Livya. He would call her mobile after a satisfying breakfast.

As he walked through the lobby he took three letters from his pigeon hole, noting that two were non-official and from the UK, which was unusual. Egg, bacon, sausage, mushrooms and the inevitable spoonful of baked beans, surely enough to rate another rung up Clare's ladder of approval. She would presently be dealing with the early morning sick parade, so could not witness his man-sized meal.

Smiling at the thought, he slit open the envelope directed in an unfamiliar hand. As he read the single page a curious burning sensation began to creep through his senses.

Stunned, Max stared at the address at the top of the faintly scented letter, slowly accepting that it was not a joke from one of his colleagues. Pushing aside his plate he opened the other letter posted in the UK and took out a gilt-embossed invitation to attend, on October 2nd, his father's marriage to Helene Lisette Dupres, and later an evening reception at the Saint Germain Cultural Institute.

Ignoring the brief accompanying note from his father, Max sat in frozen stillness gazing at the card. His name on it, and his address on the envelope, had been written by Livya. She would have dealt with all the invitations; would have collaborated with Helene Dupres to provide a list of guests Andrew deemed it necessary to invite. This had not happened overnight. How many days ago had Livya suggested early October would be a good time for him to take leave? How many days ago had she been reluctant to see him or discuss their future? Four days. She had known then that this was being planned.

For long moments emotion battled with visual evidence, then he got to his feet and returned to his room to snatch up his mobile and punch in the number of the headquarters of the Joint Intelligence Committee. Giving the information clerk his name and rank, he snapped out Livya's extension number. She had given it to him to be used only in serious emergency. This was one.

‘Good morning, sir,' she said in her official manner, although the girl would have told her who was calling before putting him through.

‘If you had told me why early October would be a good time to take leave I wouldn't have sent that e-mail yesterday. How long have you known about this? At the drinks party? Is that why you were so angry about my assertiveness? She hadn't had long enough to size me up.' There was silence on the line, so he continued. ‘I can excuse him springing a surprise of this magnitude on me – it's typical – but not you.' He took a steadying breath. ‘Why didn't you warn me this was on the cards?'

‘It wasn't my place to give that information before the Brigadier deemed it to be the right time.'

‘I can't believe you just said that. Yes, he's my father, but you're my . . . how
could
you have kept quiet? We spent a bloody night together after that drinks party.' He took another deep breath. ‘Did you regard me as just another name on the guest list?'

Into another silence, he said, ‘Please answer that, Livya.'

‘I'm sorry, sir, I have a visitor with me and we have a meeting with the Brigadier in ten minutes. I'll call you when the meeting ends and we can discuss this situation more fully. I really am sorry, sir.'

He disconnected slowly. Livya had been professionally formal because she had a high-powered visitor in her office. Correct, of course. The JIC Headquarters was not the place for impassioned telephone calls between lovers. All the same, there was only one interpretation to put on ‘It wasn't my place to give that information'. Even as Andrew's prospective daughter-in-law, did her loyalties lie with her professional boss, rather than with the man she professed to love? Apparently so, because she had lain in bed with him after that drinks party, allowed him to make love to her, yet kept this knowledge to herself.

Max walked to the window and gazed from it for a long time, observing the moving fabric of his life here in Germany; a life he found professionally fulfilling and worthwhile. Eventually, he turned back to his landline telephone and punched in an extension number.

‘Captain Goodey. Good morning.'

‘Call that prissy estate agent and tell him to inform the landlord he has a tenant for the second apartment.'