Indian Summer (17 page)

Yesterday they had managed to track down three of Starr Keane's bosom pals, but they had not detected signs of drug use either in their houses or in the behaviour of the women. They had then moved on to a few members of B Company, the Royal Cumberland Rifles, in the hope of finding some link with Keane after all. No luck there, either, hence they approached this second day of probing with the determination to uncover some reward for their diligence.

They began with those men of the
RCR
they had not managed to question yesterday. The big disadvantage was that so many were away on post Afghanistan leave. That fact touched every aspect of the case. There was just one lonely soul lying on his bed looking at girlie magazines; so lonely that he actually appeared to welcome a visit from the Redcaps. Unheard of!

Piercey then suggested to Beeny that they returned to the married quarters to call on those wives they had not yet talked to. Beeny was agreeable, so they split up and took a road each. They were ostensibly investigating a murder, so their questions camouflaged the true reason for their call.

There was no response to Piercey's knock on the first two front doors, but the third was standing ajar. He knocked on it and called the woman's name, but it was a small boy who peered round the door a few moments later.

‘Hallo, who are you?' asked Piercey briskly.

‘Who are
you
?'

He was not experienced with children; never knew what to say to them. ‘I'm a man who wants to talk to your mummy. Can I come in?'

‘
No!
'

He pushed past the child, calling the woman's name again. The place was clean but a total shambles. Toys, a basket of clothes for ironing, newspapers and magazines littered the floor. An ironing board bearing an iron stood amidst the clutter, and a low coffee table held a large pink padded bag filled with numerous bottles of nail varnish and jars of hand cream. This was surrounded by Pooh Bear mugs, small plates containing crumbs, and a larger one on which lay a slice of very gooey cake over which a somnolent bee crawled.

‘Mrs Marshall,' he called yet again, a flutter of adrenalin heralding the possibility of finding her hurt, ill . . . or dead.

‘Yes, who is it?' came a faint voice from the upper floor, dispelling these notions.

‘Sar'nt Piercey,
SIB
. Come down here, please.'

‘I won't be long. I'm not dressed.' A short pause. ‘There's a piece of cake left, I think. Make yourself some coffee.'

The boy was beside the ironing board, staring at him. Piercey vowed to have a word with his mother about the danger of leaving the front door open with her child free to run off, and any person free to walk in. Moments passed and he grew suspicious. The items on the table suggested a make-up party with friends, so why was she having to dress up there? Could there be some kind of sexual activity going on?

On the point of climbing the stairs he saw her at the top in a knee-length T-shirt, and start down. Great legs, he thought. The tits aren't bad, either. She's very definitely a man's woman, not a dyke. So what was she doing up there dressed in next to nothing?

‘Hallo,' she said brightly. Too brightly. ‘Oh, you haven't got coffee. Must have a coffee. And some
cake
. Big tough guy like you needs plenty to keep you going.' She giggled as she closed with him and squeezed his bicep. ‘Oooh,
muscles
.'

That was when he was certain she was high and had no notion who he was, apart from a male visitor to provide some excitement. A rush of satisfaction went through him. This woman displayed the unmistakable signs he was looking for. Had she just had a fix upstairs, or was the nail varnish a cover for a communal session?

Grabbing her wandering hands he deposited her none too gently on the squashy sofa, then squatted on his haunches to question her. It was useless. She was on another planet, erotically charged-up and only interested in bonding with him. When she put her bare foot up between his bent knees and wiggled her toes against his crotch, he straightened up and took out his mobile. Corporal Meacher answered his call to the
RMP
post on the base, and Piercey swiftly outlined the situation.

‘She's high and quite incapable, Ray. There's a boy of about three years old here with her. The door was open to the street when I arrived. She was upstairs. There's an ironing board set up with an iron plugged in. If she should switch it on and forgets about it the kid will be in further danger. I'll stay on site until one of you gets here with a woman from Welfare. Make it snappy. I've things to do.'

Closing the phone he unplugged the iron and took it through to the kitchen before collapsing the board that could easily fall on the child if he brushed against it. The boy watched him warily throughout, clutching a one-eared teddy bear for comfort. Piercey smiled to reassure him, but anger was not far away. Corporal Marshall had just gone to Afghanistan with the West Wiltshire Regiment. Surely he must have known what she was doing while he was living here with her, unless she had become a user after he departed two weeks ago and was overdosing herself for comfort. He would have to be made aware of the danger to his son. Another source of stress for the poor bastard.

Looking again at the mugs, cake and nail varnish Piercey surmised that the habit had started at some kind of girlie get together; just for recreational purposes while their men were away, something to give their spirits a lift, no worse than a few G and Ts. But it was. G and Ts produced a head ache, cocaine produced a craving that could never be satisfied. Also, it put children in danger. Piercey might not know how to handle them, but he was their fierce protector.

As soon as the two uniformed Redcaps arrived, one of them a woman, Piercey left them to it and went upstairs two at a time. The first place he looked was the bedroom. Again, it was clean but impossibly untidy. Clothes were strewn everywhere, shoes all over the floor, handbags piled on a chair. What he was looking for was not there. He searched in all the likely places without success. A glance in the boy's room encountered the usual lack of order but, unlikely though he knew it to be, he searched there. That just left the bathroom, but there was no sign of the evidence. Frustrated, he had to conclude that one of the women at the coffee gathering must have brought the stuff.

He left the Redcaps arranging a child minder for the boy and a visit by Clare Goodey before she took afternoon surgery. He knew Mrs Marshall would be unfit for questioning for some time, but it was essential to get from her the names of the women who had been present in her house that morning. It might be worth visiting all the West Wilts wives for evidence of other users. He would have some lunch before going to Headquarters for the list of their names and addresses. Those apple turnovers were not enough to sustain a big tough guy, as the Marshall woman had described him. Mmm, great legs . . . and she could do very interesting things with her toes!

Piercey was halfway through ham, eggs and chips when his ever busy mind produced an image that caused him to pause his enthusiastic transference of food to mouth. He finished his meal more slowly as possibility mounted to certainty, and all thoughts of a pudding were abandoned.

He drove to the
RMP
post and collected the keys to the Keanes' married quarter. Entering, he took the stairs at a run. There they were, all in a row like they had been in the Marshalls' bathroom. Donning gloves he unscrewed the lids of the pots that purported to contain homeopathic beauty aids, and laid them aside. He then spread a towel over the floor and began scooping out the various creams, tipping alongside them two collections of brightly coloured tablets. When he had done that he sat back on his heels and gave a triumphant smile. The depth of each pot was at least an inch higher than the outside base.

‘
Yes!
' he breathed. ‘I've cracked it!'

Max made himself black coffee while the team departed on their separate tasks. He needed further caffeine stimulus to get to grips with the plethora of facts on the Keane case. Having made a late start on it he wanted to spend the morning analysing the information presently available in the hope of finding a thread of continuity he could follow to a logical conclusion. Nothing would shake his belief that the jellyfish was the killer's signature. Extending the premise that there was a sexual issue behind the murder, he was certain it was a case of
cherchez la femme
.

Tom came up beside him to make his own coffee, glancing at the very dark liquid in Max's mug. ‘Heavy night?'

‘Overslept. No time for breakfast.' He turned to lean back against the counter, sipping the hot, strong coffee. ‘So you discovered a bit more about the mysterious Brenda yesterday.'

‘Could be her. As I told the team just now, Brenda Nicholson, aged twenty-eight, Staff Nurse at Cranfield War Memorial Hospital, volunteered for service in Iraq in 2007. She returned there the following year for a further stint, then was discharged from the
TA
in the September. The
TA
sergeant I spoke to had no info on her from that date, and Cranfield told me she left to take an exchange appointment in Europe for three years. The almoner was new to the job; couldn't tell me where in Europe.' He poured milk and added sugar. ‘I tried Immigration last night, but they were either asleep or in the boozer.'

‘Both, probably.'

Tom grunted. ‘I haven't had much time at home since this began, so I left it at that in favour of a hot dinner with my family. There's not the urgency to find her as there was to finding the Starr kids, although Brenda needs to be told hers no longer has a father.'

‘If it exists.'

Tom glanced up sharply. ‘The woman went into labour on the day Keane flew back.'

‘Mmm, I find the whole story of Brenda somewhat shaky. In Iraq she's everything to Keane, but he marries the mother of the boy he sired the minute he gets home. A woman spurned is a vengeful creature, Tom. Right now,
she's
the top of the list of suspects, rather than the female knight with a horse named Jetset.'

‘But a short time ago you backed Heather's theory on Mel Dunstan!'

Max shrugged. ‘She had means and opportunity, but until we find some connection between her and Keane she's only an outsider. Brenda, on the other hand, has a strong motive and, on the Open Day, would have had plenty of opportunity.'

‘She'd just given birth,' Tom protested.

‘Had she? The evidence we have on that is pure hearsay. Ryan Moore was
told
about the text by Keane. Did he actually see it written? Come to that, everything about the reunion with this nurse is hearsay. Moore doesn't know her full name or where she lives at present. Connie found no trace of a woman named Brenda giving birth during the past few days, although that's not necessarily conclusive. Keane
told
Moore he had made her pregnant and planned to divorce Starr on his return from Afghanistan so they could marry.'

Tom looked pugnacious. ‘Why would he invent all that?'

‘To boost his credo at a time when it was all round the base that Starr was dumping dirty nappies on his gear to force him to leave the Army. For Brenda to tell him she was in the club before he left for the warzone, he had to have been seeing her on the quiet for at least two months. How is it his best mate had no hint of what he was up to until Keane told him when they were on stand-by to fly out? Moore had known Brenda in Iraq. Wouldn't a man confide in his closest friend the great excitement of his reunion with the woman he had been smitten with out there? Of course he would.'

‘He did confide it to Moore.'

‘Only on the brink of returning to active service, Tom. We've learned from several sources that the men hadn't complete faith in Keane; worried that he might wimp out under fire after Iraq. He knew that. He also knew Starr was spreading it around that he had agreed to leave the Army after his return from deployment. Suggesting that the woman he'd done the dirty on after Iraq was pregnant with his child would sound like a thumb of the nose to Starr and, with the curious logic some men have, prove he was man enough for anything.'

Looking really aggrieved by now, Tom said, ‘You're suggesting Keane fabricated the whole business with Brenda?'

‘Possibly. Revenge can simmer for a long time, then come to the boil when the opportunity arises. I've no doubt she's here in Germany and we need to
find
her, Tom.'

‘Isn't that what I've been doing, sir?'

Max gave him a steady look. ‘No need to get on your high horse. No criticism intended. I know I'm taking over a case you've been handling perfectly well, but a fresh eye often sees a new angle. Brenda's been hovering in Keane's life for a long time and I'm anxious to meet her, aren't you?'

Still straight-faced, Tom said, ‘I can't see any way she could kill him at noon then hang around unnoticed so that she could dump him in the tank at midnight, whatever the truth about her proves to be.'

‘Oh, Tom,
Tom
! You've been in the business long enough to know the impossible becomes possible once we have all the facts and evidence.' Seeing his friend's lips clamp on any further comment, he added, ‘A man was strangled, his corpse was displayed ten to twelve hours later in a manner that was indicative of why he was killed. Fact. We have no lead as yet on who did it. Fact. Let's pursue the elusive Brenda meanwhile. If she did indeed produce Keane's baby a week ago, he would have taken every opportunity to see them both. If nothing else, Brenda will give us evidence of his movements. What puzzles me is why, in the circumstances we've been led to believe, Keane would have been on-base on Saturday. He was on leave, for God's sake. Free to spend as much time as he wanted with the woman he loved and his new son or daughter. Only explanation I can come up with is that
she
was coming to see
him
. See what I'm getting at?'