A Long Time Dead (7 page)

Kineally turned his attention to Woodend. ‘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?'

T
he 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.

He gave Woodend a firm manly handshake, and Paniatowski a more restrained, genteel one.

‘Would you like a soda in my trailer first, or should I take you to your own quarters right away?' he asked.

‘Neither,' Woodend replied. ‘Before we do anythin' else, we'd like to see where the body was found.'

Grant grinned, good-naturedly. ‘Gosh, you guys really
are
a pair of eager beavers.'

‘Mr Woodend always likes to clog-it around the scene of the crime before he even thinks about doing anything else,' Paniatowski explained. ‘He's famous for it, back in Lancashire.'

‘Oh, OK, that's fine with me,' Grant said, though it was plain he had no idea what on earth she was talking about. ‘The quickest way to get to the grave is to cut through J. Edgar Hoover City.'

‘Cut through
what
?'

‘J. Edgar Hoover City,' Grant repeated. ‘It's the name that the guys have given this little set-up of ours.'

‘Cute,' Woodend said, unconvincingly.

The caravans – the
trailers
– had been set out in neat rows, and each one had its own generator.

‘We've got men out laying power lines right now,' Grant said, shouting over the generators' hum, ‘so, with luck, we should be able to get rid of stone age technology by tomorrow at the latest.'

‘Most impressive,' Woodend said.

And it was! After years of having to almost beg to secure the resources which he needed to do his job properly, this was like landing in Santa's Grotto.

‘The trailers at this end are mainly accommodation,' Grant explained. ‘The good stuff's at the other end.'

‘The good stuff?' Woodend repeated.

‘The crime labs,' Grant said airily, adding, in case Woodend had missed the point, ‘the forensic laboratories.'

‘You're speakin' in the plural. How many of them are there?' Woodend asked.

‘Three.'

‘An' how many technicians?'

‘Eight.'

Woodend whistled softly to himself. This was another way of looking at the world entirely, he thought – though, of course, as with every other aspect of this particular investigation, it probably helped that it had Senator Eugene Kineally's total support.

‘Are these technicians of yours the same ones who did the examination of Robert Kineally's remains?' he asked.

Grant shook his head. ‘No, these guys are all just as new to the case as we are ourselves.'

‘So who
did
carry out the initial tests on Kineally? Were they done at Scotland Yard?'

‘No, not there, either,' Special Agent Grant said.

‘Why not?'

‘I have the greatest possible admiration for the British police and their methods,' Grant said, obviously choosing his words with the greatest of care. ‘We, in the FBI, have learned much from studying your methods in the past.'

‘But …?' Woodend asked.

‘But we must all accept the fact any workman is only as good as his tools, and that even with the best will in world, you simply can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.'

‘I don't suppose you can, though it's not somethin' I've ever tried to do myself,' Woodend said. ‘But I still have no idea what you're talkin' about, Special Agent.'

‘May I be frank?' Grant asked.

‘You can be whoever you like, as long as you answer my question,' Woodend told him.

Grant smiled, as if accepting that Woodend had just said something funny but still not quite understanding what it had been.