Dangerous Games (28 page)

‘And had it?'

Karamanlis shrugged. ‘I suppose there was a certain justification, in some cases, for the belief. At any rate, a decision was made to bring in British policemen to supplement the work of the local force. They were all volunteers who came out here to serve for twenty-one months, and they were all promoted by one rank, so that constables became sergeants, and sergeants became inspectors.'

‘How many of them were there?'

‘There were a hundred and fifty of them initially, though their number eventually rose to over two hundred and fifty.' Karamanlis chuckled. ‘At first, I think, some of them saw it as no more than a very long holiday.'

‘But it wasn't?'

‘Not at all. They were, in fact, putting themselves into a very dangerous situation. They carried weapons for their own protection, which they would not have done in your own country, and, in addition, they were escorted everywhere by armed soldiers. But even so, in the three years they were here, seven of them were murdered, and eleven seriously wounded.' The Chief Inspector puffed on his pipe again. ‘But you are not here to listen to me talk about what is now no more than ancient history, are you, Sergeant Paniatowski?'

‘In a way, I am,' Monika Paniatowski countered. ‘I'd be very interested to learn about any serious crimes which might have been committed on the ninth of June, 1958.'

‘You are being very specific,' Karamanlis said.

‘Yes,' Paniatowski agreed. ‘I am.'

The Chief Inspector swung his chair round, opened his filing cabinet, and pulled out a battered cardboard file. He flicked through the pages until he came to the right one, consulted it for a moment, then said, ‘
Any
serious crime?'

‘
Any
serious crime,' Paniatowski agreed.

Karamanlis frowned. ‘There were two on that date – though since one of them involved the British Army and EOKA, it might be more accurately called an “act of war” from one side of the fence, and an “act of terror” from the other.'

‘And what would you call it?' Paniatowski wondered.

‘That would depend on whether I was thinking as a policeman or as a patriot,' Karamanlis replied enigmatically. ‘At any rate, the act of war/act of terror occurred in the afternoon of that day. A British Army patrol was ambushed, and the corporal leading it was killed.'

‘That would be Corporal Matthews,' Paniatowski said.

‘Yes, but how would you …?'

‘What about the second crime?'

‘That same night, a young girl disappeared from the village in which the ambush had taken place. She has not been seen since, so she is presumed dead.'

‘Could you give me any more details about that incident?'

‘She was a very lively young woman, by all accounts. She was very interested in astronomy – which is unusual for Cypriot girls – and that night she had gone out to look at the stars. She never returned home.'

‘You gave me all that information without looking down at your file once,' Paniatowski said.

Karamanlis smiled wistfully.

‘You suspect that I have a personal involvement in the case, and you are right,' he said. ‘I was, indeed, part of the team which investigated the poor girl's disappearance. My boss at the time, Chief Inspector Harding, was very angry about the case – almost unprofessionally so. But we understood the reasons for his anger – we knew that he had two young daughters of his own and we were very much in sympathy with him.'

‘So he pulled out all the stops, did he?'

‘He most certainly did. He told us that even in troubled times like those were, the disappearance of a child was simply not to be tolerated. He cancelled all leave, and put every available man on the investigation.'

‘But you still didn't find anything that might have helped explain what had happened to the girl?'

‘No,' Karamanlis agreed. ‘But in our own defence, I must point out that we were only working on the investigation for a short time before we were pulled off it again.'

‘But I thought you said that your Chief Inspector Harding was keen as mustard to solve it.'

‘So he was. But the situation changed after he had spoken to your Special Branch and Military Intelligence.'

‘And what did
they
have to say, that cooled his enthusiasm?'

‘That a roving band of Turkish Cypriot vagrants – men of the worst possible class and kind – had been spotted near the village that very night, and that it was probably they who had taken – or murdered – the girl.'

‘And you accepted that?'

‘Why would we not have? The Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots were as much at each other's throats then as they are now. Perhaps even more so. There had already been several inter-communal murders that very year. It seemed highly probable, given that the Turkish scum had been spotted in the area, that they were responsible.'

‘And no attempt was ever made to track this band of Turkish Cypriots down?'

‘None,' Karamanlis admitted, looking a little ashamed. ‘But that was not our choice – it was a
political
decision that we drop the case.'

‘How did the disappearance of a young girl ever manage to become political?' Paniatowski wondered.

‘It was not the disappearance that was political, it was the nature of the probable perpetrators.'

‘I still don't understand.'

‘It was felt that once the men had returned to the Turkish area of the island, it would have been very difficult to identify them, and that even if we
could
identify them – and establish conclusively that they had been near the village – we would still find it impossible to prove that they had murdered the girl.'

‘Still, there would have been no harm in trying, would there?' Paniatowski said.

‘That is where you are wrong,' Karamanlis told her. ‘It was also felt – and I happen to agree with this – that by even
attempting
to make an unmakeable case, we would be running the risk of further inflaming the violence between the communities, and that, as a result, even more innocent people would die. And so the girl – the poor
child
– became simply another casualty of war.'

‘You've been very helpful, and I mustn't take up much more of your time,' Paniatowski said. ‘But before I go, I do have just one more question.'

‘Yes?'

‘About how far is it from the Akrotiri base to the village where the girl disappeared?'

Karamanlis thought about it. ‘Eighteen or nineteen miles, I would guess,' he said.

And there had been forty miles on the clock of the stolen Land Rover, Paniatowski thought.

She shook hands with the Chief Inspector, and took her leave. When she stepped out onto the street, the bright sunlight almost blinded her for a few seconds. Then her eyes adjusted, and she looked around for Lance Corporal Bill Blaine and his Land Rover.

There was no sign of either the lance corporal or the vehicle, but two severe-looking military policemen were very much in evidence, and the moment they saw her, they began to walk towards her in a most determined manner.

Considering the amount of alcohol they have consumed, they should have reached some kind of philosophical plateau by now, and be saying things like, ‘Well, if a bullet's got your name on it, there's nothing you can do about it.'

Failing that, they should at least have reached the stage at which it was possible to re-write the past, in order to turn events which had either been mundane or unpleasant into amusing anecdotes – ‘Remember that time Jack Matthews pretended he was going to shoot those three Cyps if they didn't tell him what he wanted to know. I don't know if they believed him, but I certainly bloody did, and I was near shitting myself.'

Neither of these states has been achieved. They have been drinking, but they are not drunk. They are speaking – occasionally – but they are not really saying anything. It is as if their nerves and feelings are coated in a layer of ice, and will remain coated until one of the unit has the nerve to start a fire.

It is Reg Lewis who strikes the tinder. ‘What if?' he says. ‘What if your corporal was killed by a bunch of cowardly bastards in the hills? What would you do then?'

If they were still playing the game
as
a game, someone would come back with an immediate answer, but this is real, and there is a long pause before Tom Bygraves says, ‘What can we do?'

‘We can go back to the village,' Mark Hough says, with a determination which takes all them – including himself – by surprise.

‘And do what?' Terry Pugh asks.

‘We won't know till we get there,' Martin Murray says, grasping the existential moment.

And suddenly they are all agreed. They have no plan. They have no real expectations. But it seems the right thing to do.

The guards on the gate are only too well aware that these five men do not have permission to take the Land Rover out at this time of night. But they also know what the men have been through in the previous twelve hours, and so, instead of raising a hand or lowering the barrier, they choose to look the other way.

The Land Rover leaves the camp, and heads towards the hills. Bygraves' driving is erratic, because now he really is drunk. Now that they are finally taking action, they are all drunk.

They park close to the village, on almost the same spot where they had parked earlier in the day. They climb down from the Land Rover and look around them, waiting for Corporal Matthews to tell them what to do next – for though they know he is dead, they have still not quite realized it.

As if Matthews's spirit has taken control of him, Hough begins to walk towards the village, and the others follow. They still do not have a plan, but they are hoping that something will happen to give them a sense of direction.

And something does! What happens is the girl!

This is the second time they have seen her in a single day – and after the first there were bloody consequences.

They do not know what she is doing outside the village at that time of night. They will never know. But there – bathed prettily in the pale moonlight – she undoubtedly is.

She sees them, and turns to run back to safety. She never has a chance. She is little more than a child, while they are fit adult males, and before she has gone more than a few yards, Reg Lewis has brought her down in a rugby tackle.

Lewis clamps his hand over the girl's mouth, but not quickly enough – and not completely enough – to prevent her from biting it.

‘Little bitch!' he moans.

Then he lifts her skirt and pulls it up over her face, pressing down on the part of it which is covering her mouth, so that she is effectively muffled.

Events have been moving so quickly that none of them has really had time to think, but now, looking down at the girl – her thin bare legs kicking helplessly in the air – they know that some kind of decision has to be made.

‘What are we going to do with her?' Bygraves asks in a panic. ‘We can't let her go, because if we do that, she'll run straight back to the village.'

Lewis is still holding the girl's skirt tight around her head, but his eyes are on her legs.

‘I've no intention of letting the little bitch go,' he says. ‘She's the spoils of war.'

‘You're … you're going to rape her?' Murray asks, troubled.

‘I'm certainly going to stick one to her,' Lewis says. ‘Whether it's rape or not is another matter. Her father and her brothers have probably all had her already. Why shouldn't I?'

‘I'm not sure it's right,' Murray said.

‘She got our corporal killed,' Lewis says angrily. ‘What are we going to do about it? Give her a prize for it?'

‘No, but …'

‘Pugh, you take her arms,' Lewis says. ‘Bygraves, you take her legs – and make sure you keep them well spread.'

The two men hesitate, then a cloud drifts over the moon, and it seems almost as if it is a signal – a permission – for them to go ahead. Terry Pugh grabs the girl by the wrists, Tom Bygraves by the ankles, and Reg Lewis stands up in order to properly unbutton his flies.

Lewis takes her roughly and quickly, and when he has finished, he says, ‘So who's next?'

Nobody speaks.

‘We're all in this together,' Lewis says. ‘We're Matthews' Marauders, and whatever one of us does, the rest of us have to do as well.'

It makes sense. If they are to punish the girl, they should all punish the girl. And if they are to bear the consequences of their actions later, they should all have taken part in those actions.

Pugh follows Lewis, Bygraves follows Pugh, Hough follows Bygraves, and finally – though it is clear that he doesn't want to do it – Murray follows Hough.

For the first few minutes, the girl was struggling, but by the time Murray enters her, she is perfectly still.

Murray finishes quickly, and gets to his feet. He looks as if he wishes he was dead.

‘What happens next?' Bygraves asks. ‘Do we let her go?'

‘How can we let her go?' Lewis asks contemptuously. ‘She's seen us, hasn't she? We know we haven't done anything wrong – anything she hasn't asked for – but we could still all get twenty years for this.'

‘Then we …?' Bygraves begins.

He says no more, but he doesn't need to. Ever since Lewis penetrated her, they have known they have gone beyond the point of no return. Ever since then they have all understood – though they may not have acknowledged it – that they were going to have to kill her.