Indian Summer (16 page)

‘Hmm, never heard of that one. Isn't it usually plastic bags over the head?'

‘Maybe jellyfish are the new plastic bags.'

She turned and smiled broadly. ‘
Co-ool
, as our daughters would say.'

He smiled back. ‘Forgiven?'

She nodded. ‘More toast?'

‘Wasn't there a doughnut left over from yesterday?'

‘The forgiveness doesn't stretch that far. I can't have you developing a paunch.'

‘Just the usual stale crust then,' he said in plaintive tones, knowing the curious little spat was over.

Any reflections on it were banished when he arrived at Headquarters. Everyone save Max was there and raring to go. Connie Bush and Olly Simpson had been very busy following their visit to Rathausstrasse. After outlining the information given by Julia Reiter, they gave the results of their follow-up investigations.

‘The woman in the apartment above confirmed that Starr and the children had arrived there around thirteen thirty; it was the loud voice and babies crying that caused her to look from her window,' said Connie. ‘I suspect she has a chair permanently beside it. A widow living alone who's smitten with arthritis, what's going on out in the street is her major means of entertainment.'

‘Her evidence makes Starr a likely candidate for her husband's murder,' Olly pointed out. ‘It would take her half an hour to drive there from the base after she'd got the kids' clothes and food packed ready, so if Keane was killed some time around midday she could have done it just before she quit the house.'

‘Yet there was apparently nothing in her manner that suggested to Julia that she'd done anything more than sneak away from the husband she no longer wanted,' said Connie.

‘And Starr certainly didn't move the body later that night, because she was with the Reiter woman,' Olly reasoned. ‘Incidentally, she had no idea her friend was a user. She was genuinely appalled when we told her.'

‘I had a great deal of sympathy for Julia,' Connie admitted. ‘Starr dumped herself and her kids uninvited on her, commandeered the landline phone whining to her mother and brothers for the rest of the day, then tootled off to meet the one named Chas the following morning leaving her two-year-old boy and an eight-month baby with someone they hardly knew. Julia was then told this so-called friend was killed in a road accident while she was doped-up to the nines, by two strange women with authorization to take away the children, then we arrived to investigate the murder of Starr's husband. It must have been a nightmare. Pity her husband was away on business.' She studied her notes. ‘I checked out Friedhelm Reiter. He buys and sells antique books, first editions, rare copies. I'd say we can disregard him as Starr's supplier. He's fifty-eight, a widower who probably married Julia to gain a mother for the boy he had late in life.'

‘Starr's supplier is on-base,' said Piercey expansively.

‘You know something we don't?' Connie challenged.

‘It's obvious. We know there's some kind of syndicate in operation here. We've been trying to crack it for several weeks. Of course it's on-base.'

‘I've checked out Chas Walpole,' offered Olly swiftly. ‘In fact, both the brothers drive for the same firm which trades with various companies here and in France. The truckies deliver export goods, then load up with the imported stuff. That way the vehicles never run empty. You've got to be tough for that job. Tough, and very sharp,' he added. ‘I ran their pictures past Customs and Immigration on both sides of the Channel. Those lads are well known.'

‘Because they're so frequently back and forth?' suggested Heather.

‘That, and because they've three times started up serious brawls when the French truckies blocked the roads to ports. The other brother, known fondly as Beefy, was once suspected of bringing illegals into the
UK
, but when police were alerted and stopped him two hours from Dover, there was no sign of them.' He grinned. ‘They're both marked men now and are invariably searched from bonnet to rear doors each time they leave or return.'

Tom interrupted him at that point. ‘George Maddox was given to understand that Mrs Walpole and both her sons were on their way, yet one is already here.'

Olly nodded. ‘He'll know why his sister didn't meet him by now, and I guess he'll wait for the rest of the family to arrive. One interesting point is that Julia Reiter had the notion that Chas could have done for Keane, but my check showed he was crossing France on Saturday afternoon, so he's off the hook. I toyed with the possibility that the brothers were Starr's supplier, but their vehicles have been taken apart too often by Customs for that to be viable.'

‘One last point,' said Connie when she believed her colleague had ended his report. ‘Starr told Julia she would return to her house when she knew Flip would be away, because she'd left some things there that she needed to collect on her way home. Home being the
UK
. Her exact words were, “I've got some posh frocks and stuff that I refuse to let the bugger give to one of his tarts.” If she really meant what she said, it's unlikely she'd go to the house if she'd killed him there on Saturday.'

‘
My
last point,' stated Olly, with a sideways glance at her, ‘is that I checked out Julia's ex, Harry Fortnum. He and Keane apparently fell out big time over the marriage to Starr, which indirectly led to Fortnum's own marriage ending on the rocks. There was a possible motive there.'

‘And?' prompted Tom.

‘He was wounded in Afghanistan and shipped home. He's presently at Headley Court learning to use a prosthetic hand.' He grinned again. ‘Great aid to strangulation. Pity he was too far away to have done the deed. The Boss could have followed one of his
WG
s on that.'

‘So I could,' said Max, who had entered very quietly.

Tom turned to him. ‘Morning, sir. I'll bring you up to speed later. Plenty of interesting info, but no breakthrough yet.'

Max merely nodded and sat astride a chair, leaning on the back of it ready to listen. Tom thought he looked pale and hungover. Drowning his sorrows? With luck, they were ten fathoms deep and unlikely to resurface.

He nodded at Connie and Olly. ‘Good work! So we have a situation where timewise Starr could have killed her husband before heading for the friend's place, but would have been unable to dump the body in the tank that night. There's no physical evidence to support a charge of murder, and she can't now be interrogated.'

Piercey glanced up. ‘The claim that she'd return to pick up some stuff from her house rings true enough. I saw a few glad rags in the wardrobe that she's unlikely to have abandoned, and there was that row of beauty aids still in the bathroom. Knowing how much that stuff costs she'd have taken it with her to the
UK
.'

‘Right, so we strike her from the list of suspects,' Tom decided.

‘Do we
have
a list?' challenged Piercey.

Caught wrong-footed, Tom hastily compiled one. ‘The mystery knight . . . and the other truckie brother. Where was he?'

‘In Swindon, loading up,' said Olly. ‘I checked.'

‘And I'm sure the knight was Mel Dunstan,' added Heather swiftly. ‘I spent yesterday afternoon checking out her alibi. We know she was at the stables with Staff Fuller on Saturday night, leaving there around twenty-two thirty. She admits that, and claims she went directly to the Mess where she took a bath, called friends and read a book before sleeping. I've not found one person who had seen her, heard her, or could offer any evidence that she was there at the relevant time. Three women took a bath that night, so Mel's supposed long, luxurious bath must have been well after midnight. When she returned from her ride around the base wearing armour she'd hidden for that purpose,' she concluded darkly.

‘She was going for nookie on the quiet,' said Piercey.

‘No!' Heather flashed back. ‘From my questioning I learned from several people that her fiancé had died in an accident a year or so back. She took her loss badly and hasn't even looked at a man since then.'

‘So she was going for nookie with Staff Fuller,' Piercey returned provocatively. ‘You said she'd referred to the sisterhood.'

‘But she'd been with Fuller in the stables just an hour earlier,' Heather snapped.

‘Maybe rolling in the hay isn't their scene.'

‘Stop this nursery school squabbling and act like criminal investigators,' roared Tom in true sergeant majors' style. ‘They should have put you two on horses, with long poles to jab at each other. I'll suggest it next time.'

Into the ensuing silence, Max said, ‘So we have a woman who had access to armour and a horse, whose whereabouts at the time a knight was seen riding around the base is in doubt.'

‘
And
she was alone in her room during the time the actual murder took place, according to her,' Heather added eagerly.

‘So we put her at the top of the list.'

Tom felt a twinge of resentment. He had been handling this case from the start; Max had been part-timing throughout whilst officially on leave. Now his woman had ditched him, he aimed to take command having heard only half the evidence. This I Corps woman was going to be his next wild goose, that was clear. Heather, and probably one other member of the team, would be sent in pursuit of it when they should be following up on solid fact.

‘We've already established that Lieutenant Dunstan has never before served with Keane. She came here five months ago – after the RCR had departed for Afghanistan – and Keane had been back only six days before he was murdered. She might have had the opportunity to choke the man to death, but what would have been her motive, sir?'

‘If the nursery school squabblers start acting like criminal investigators we might find out, Sar'nt Major.'

EIGHT

P
hil Piercey was disgruntled and expressed his feelings to his friend and colleague at a mid-morning break in the
NAAFI
.

‘I've been given all the duff jobs on this case, Derek.'

‘I've been right there beside you, mate,' said Beeny who, on joining 26 Section, had ruled that he would never answer to Beano or Heinz . . . or to
any
name other than his own. Amazingly, he had got away with it.

‘Yes . . . well,' grunted Piercey. ‘Connie and Simpson have been working their arses off over those truckies and a Jerry bookseller when it's obvious the dealer must be on the base. The Keane woman's just one user. There's a dozen more among the squaddies, you bet, so why all that time and effort checking out Starr's
UK
family? Eh? Tell me why.'

Beeny, the more placid of the pair, began on his apple turnover. ‘They were just being thorough.'

‘Huh! Busy earning Brownie points, you mean. “Good work”, smarms Blackie with a smile. Then Squat Johnson gets the Boss all excited over some I Corps sub who owns a horse and speaks with a plum in her mouth.'

‘You're wrong there, Phil,' he returned through a mixture of apple and pastry. ‘Heather told me she comes from your part of the world and speaks the way you do – like a Cornish farmhand. Ooh-ah, they be turnips, they be,' he parodied outrageously. ‘And don't let Heather hear you call her Squat.'

‘So she is. Short and fat, and that beige hair makes her look like a walking mushroom when she wears those pale trousers.'

‘She's clever.'

‘Too bloody clever. Like now. What d'you bet the Dunstan woman is a real looker, which is really behind her theory she killed Keane and later took the corpse on her horse to the water tank? Maddox said Keane was a hefty guy. How did the woman manage to sling his dead body over a horse, for starters? And, saying she does get him to the tank, how did she manage to dump him in it? With a block and tackle? Nah, it's a load of crap! Dunstan's never had any contact with Keane. Where's the motive?'

‘We criminal investigators are meant to find out,' quoted Beeny, pushing things further in his impatience with Piercey. They had worked together throughout this case and he was also bored with knocking on doors to ask questions that had so far brought no useful answers. He agreed that the Dunstan theory was feeble, and he shared Piercey's dread that it had become one of their boss's wild geese. However, he knew from past cases that theories were all very well, but it was the painstaking accumulation of facts that was needed to prove them. That was the task they had been given today.
Again
. It had prompted one of Piercey's frequent gripes, but it had not put him off his food. He had taken two apple turnovers, the second of which he was now wolfing down.

‘Phil, you're certain the supplier is on-base, right?'

Piercey nodded, chasing pastry clinging to his chin. ‘Has to be.'

‘So we've been given the direction that'll lead us to the guy. We know there's a definite link with Starr, but apparently not with Keane himself, so we continue to push any contacts of hers. Female contacts who're getting supplies through a husband or boyfriend.' He slurped some tea from his mug. ‘What gets me is these women have kids. They're raising a generation of new junkies.'

Piercey's eyes narrowed. ‘I'll get the bugger, and put him in the glasshouse for a very,
very
long time.'

‘Let's get started, then. Can you move after eating all that gunge?'

It was another unusually warm October day, which was holding at bay the first frosts that normally heralded a quite severe winter. The two young detectives were oblivious to the aesthetic delights of brilliantly coloured autumn leaves against a clear, vivid sky, and the birds who had emerged with joyous song and immaculate plumage after the summer moult. They were not that type of men. Their minds were set on tougher things, yet they looked innocent enough in neat suits, plain ties and spotless shirts. They had once been mistaken for Jehovah's Witnesses on a householder's doorstep, so clean-cut and pleasant had they looked.