Dutch Courage (22 page)

This brought a strong reaction. Sam sat up, wincing with pain. ‘How did you . . . what kind of confession?'

Watching with deep scepticism as Margot fussily arranged pillows behind Sam, Max said, ‘He's now facing a charge of blackmail. Obtaining money from a fellow officer with menaces.'

‘Oh, God!'

‘He's admitted writing the anonymous letters you found on your doormat, and he told us how much you paid him to keep quiet about your drinking sessions while on duty.'

‘He's lying! It's all lies.' It was a cry of deep distress. ‘I've never given him money.'

‘He stated that he caught you drinking vodka in your car on two occasions when you were officially on duty. He gave us the dates and times. We checked. You
were
on duty then.'

‘He's lying. Why would he do that?'

Max moved closer to the bed. In the low light of that clinical room the young pilot looked a genuinely sick man; eyes sunken in drawn features.

‘Ray denied having any hand in Monday night's attack. So far we have no evidence to disprove that. He claimed he would not have reported your drinking despite your later refusal to pay up. He appeared to regard that statement as some kind of mitigation. In our view, his responsibility as a colleague was to offer you help and advice, then report to the CO if you didn't take it.'

At that point Tom came in, his large bulk making the room seem crowded. He glanced at Max and nodded almost imperceptibly. So, Sam Collier had been cuckolded as well as blackmailed and flogged.

Max looked at Margot. ‘Mrs Collier, were you aware of who wrote those unsigned letters?'

‘I would have told you.'

‘Would you?' He let that expression of doubt sink in, then asked, ‘Did you know your husband was paying a neighbour hush money?'

‘I've told you Ray's lying,' cried Sam hotly.

Max leaned forward and fixed Sam with an intense look. ‘You did not pay Fox a large sum on March the tenth, and again on the twenty-fifth?'

‘No.'

‘You have never drunk alcohol when on duty?'

‘Never.'

‘You're not in the habit of boosting your confidence with a secret slug of vodka?'

‘No!'

‘Ray Fox swears you are. And so does your wife, Sam. She told me this morning that you hide bottles around the house before going to a war zone, and for a few weeks after your return.'

Max had never before seen an expression of such emotional anguish as there was on Sam's as he gazed at the woman he loved. Hardened though he was to human behaviour, Max felt like a voyeur of this marital pain as the man in the bed struggled to accept such betrayal. Even so, he deliberately allowed the moment to go on and on, knowing it would bring a turning point in Collier's stance.

Margot looked hardly less moved, and eventually said brokenly, ‘I did it to protect you, darling. That's all I've ever wanted to do.
Protect
you.'

Those words increased the pain she was inflicting on this man of proven courage, with their suggestion of mothering an ineffectual nonentity. Wondering if this curious marriage would survive a supposedly premature birth in a few months' time, Max decided to continue the interrogation. Sam Collier was presently at the bottom of a deep, dark hole. Unless he could claw his way out, he was liable to stay there. Ray Fox's military career was virtually over, with a prison sentence to follow. Would Collier also be out on his ear and behind bars at the end of this case?

‘I suggest you start being sensible and give us the truth, Sam.'

Dragging his gaze from Margot, he said huskily, ‘I'd like my wife to leave, then I'll answer any questions you put to me.'

‘Sam!' she cried in protest.

Max swung round. ‘Please escort Mrs Collier out to her car, Mr Black.'

Tom's hesitation was only momentary before he stepped forward to take Margot's arm in a firm clasp to lead her away. Max then asked if Sam would like the doctor on duty to be present and was given a shake of his head. Similarly to the offer of painkillers or a cup of tea. Waiting for Tom to return, Max then began to unravel the mystery surrounding Monday night's attack.

‘You knew Fox was the author of those letters?'

‘It had to be him,' Sam replied in a bleak monotone.

‘You didn't tackle him about them?'

‘I thought he'd eventually recognize the futility of it.'

‘You had no intention of handing over any more cash?'

Sam's face appeared to have grown even more drawn. In the pale glow from the light above the bed his deep tan merged with the purple bruising to suggest a dark, expressionless mask.

‘I get the shakes. Can't control my hands. A quick slug of vodka sorts it. Ray caught me at it in my car on two occasions.'

‘So you paid him to keep quiet.'

It was a while before Sam said, ‘Aye, I did. It's never enough to affect my judgement or reflexes, but I'm breaking the rules. I'd be grounded and disciplined. Couldn't risk that.'

Max pondered the significance of that last comment. Couldn't risk Daddy knowing he wasn't toeing the line? ‘Why haven't you sought help with the problem?'

‘Same reason. I'd be grounded.' He appealed to Max. ‘I'm not an alcoholic. I only do it when it's necessary to function properly.'

‘Pilots function properly when they're sober,' ruled Tom. ‘That's why the rules concerning drinking are in place.'

Max continued the questioning in quieter tones. ‘Your wife told me she found hidden bottles in the run-up to your departure for Afghanistan, and for these weeks after your return. How did you manage out there in an alcohol-free zone?'

‘It's a long story.'

‘Give us the short version,' Tom snapped.

It was a fair time coming, and there was a deal of languor in his voice when he replied. ‘What they did to us in Sierra Leone would be nothing compared with the cruelty of those bastards in Afghanistan. Ask the Russians about the obscene torture their men suffered before dying at the hands of the Taliban.'

‘All our troops are aware of that, but they don't resort to furtive drinking to give them false courage,' Tom countered, giving no leeway.

Max resumed the interview. ‘Are you afraid to go to war, Sam?'

‘
No!
' There was enough energy in that one word to make the denial convincing. ‘It's like an actor with stage fright. Once he gets out there in front of an audience he gives a faultless performance. I'm naturally hyped-up when the enemy is at the door.'

‘So do you regard capture as failure?'

Another long silence. ‘I thought you were SIB, not psycho boys.'

‘They asked you that, did they?'

Collier raised a hand, then let it flop back on the bed. ‘What are you going to do about Ray's evidence?'

‘You won't be flying for a while, so it can wait,' Max told him, sitting on the chair Margot had vacated. ‘Tell us about Monday night. Who called you arranging a rendezvous?'

‘I don't know.'

‘Drop that amnesia bullshit,' Tom ordered crisply.

‘At the time I believed it was Ray. The caller had a Welsh accent.'

‘You'd refused to meet further demands, so why go to the meeting?'

‘The voice said “I know what you did, so let's settle the score once and for all”. I went because I wanted him off my back.'

‘You were prepared to offer a final payment? You had a largish sum in your wallet when I found you in the road,' Max told him.

Collier's head wagged against the pillow. ‘Pure coincidence. Mother's birthday next week.'

‘Where was the proposed RV?'

‘That triangle of no-man's-land at the back of the Other Denominations Church hall. It's quiet and shadowy there at night.'

‘Go on.'

He spoke as if reciting words memorized earlier. There was no anger or any other emotion in his voice. What he had seen as Margot's betrayal had clearly left him beyond caring what happened.

‘I went expecting to meet Ray. When I arrived there someone walked from the shadows. Before I saw him clearly my arms were seized and roped together behind my back, while the one coming towards me thrust a bag over my head and tied it tightly around my neck. They took me to a car and shoved me in the boot. After a brief drive they dragged me out and force marched me to a place where one of them laid into me with something covered in metal studs while the other two held me. I was practically choking on blood when they untied my arms and pushed me hard up against a wall and lashed my back until I passed out. I don't remember anything more until I woke up here.'

Max weighed up this statement and decided it was probably the truth. ‘So you can't identify your attackers.'

‘The one I thought was Ray looked a big guy in the shadows. He had a Welsh accent.'

‘What did he say? Enough for you to recognize the accent.'

‘Much of it was incoherent because of the bag over my head. He was highly excited.' Sam made another weary gesture with his hand. ‘Something about getting appropriate punishment for what I'd done. I was beyond taking it in after the first few blows, except that it seemed excessive retaliation for having an occasional slug of vodka.'

‘You believed these men were half-killing you because of the furtive drinking sessions?' asked Tom sceptically.

Looking on the brink of total exhaustion by now, Collier said, ‘The guys take their safety in the air very seriously. They must believe I invariably go aloft half-pissed.'

‘The normal procedure would be to report their suspicions to the Squadron Commander, not to beat the hell out of the offender,' Max pointed out. ‘You don't seriously believe that vicious attack was linked to Ray Fox's blackmail. Come clean, Sam. What have you done to prompt such a reprisal?'

Those dark eyes stared back from a brusied and battered face. ‘Broken faith with guys who expect me to value their lives as highly as I value my own.'

Ten

T
he house was remarkably quiet when Tom let himself in. Not even the sound of Nora's sewing machine. A note in the kitchen informed him there was a pork pie with salad in the fridge, or a microwavable risotto in the freezer. They would be late home because Nora had been reliably informed that the supper after the school play would be worth staying for.

Tom stared at the note. He had clean forgotten the school play. He had sneaked away this morning without wishing his girls good luck with their performances. He had not been there to watch, tell them how proud he was of his daughters. Yet again the Black sisters had seen all the other dads smiling and applauding and felt let down by theirs. He had the concept the wrong way round. His family were not excluding him, he was excluding them.

Wandering moodily to the dining room where wedding finery hung on the walls, Tom poured himself a double whisky and drank half while regarding the bouffant dresses sparkling with crystals or sequins. Nora said it was the most important day of a woman's life, the one occasion when she was the star of the show.

He tried to imagine Maggie, Gina and Beth dolled up like fairy princesses, and heard Nora saying he was of yesterday's generation. Would he come in from work one day and find a note in the kitchen revealing that he had forgotten his daughter's wedding, without even realizing she had grown old enough to marry?

Tossing back the rest of the whisky, he poured more. The silence depressed him further. What would life be like without the chatter, the giggles and thumping music; without the noise of a sewing machine running full speed, and the sound of Nora's throaty laughter? He stared morosely in the glass. Was he losing them? Was he regarded merely as ‘the lodger' by a family unit complete without him?

Walking back to the kitchen with another whisky refill, he took out the pork pie from the plate of salad, cut it in quarters, then sat looking at it without enthusiasm. Nora usually drew a smiley face and a row of kisses on her notes. They were missing tonight.

Five minutes later, with a cheese and crushed onion crisp sandwich in his hand, Tom sought his model steam engines. They looked the same as when he had last looked at them. He picked up the latest edition of the enthusiasts' magazine from the neat, numbered pile, and flipped through it aimlessly before replacing it. The beautiful, expensive engines did nothing for him tonight. They were unchanging; static. Yesterday's generation toys?

Nora had claimed men fantasized about young girls when they realized the world was no longer just for them. Not guilty of that; he had three of his own. Had he been fantasizing about Margot Collier? No, that would have involved imagining having sex with her. She had simply revived emotions he had been a stranger to for too long, and undermined his judgement. Max had mistrusted her from the start, and he had been right to do so.

Leaving the sandwich uneaten, Tom abandoned his steam engines and walked out to the small rear garden. There was a full moon and a skyful of stars. He stood looking up at them and acknowledged their power to reduce a man to less than a grain of sand on planet earth. He suddenly grew curiously afraid. Afraid of the certainty of his beloved little girls in white dresses being led away forever by faceless young Lotharios with strong, muscular bodies. Afraid of growing old, of being the day
before
yesterday's generation. Afraid of being left alone, feeble and ailing. Afraid of dying.

Moments later, his troubled gaze lowered to the glass in his hand. Alcohol to numb fear and uncertainty. Dutch courage. In that moment Tom felt at one with Sam Collier, a man who was afraid of capture by the enemy yet had put his life on the line to save four others from that fate. He did not deserve such vicious punishment for calming his raw fear with the occasional furtive charge of vodka.

Dinner in the Mess was over. Max contemplated making do with a mug of soup and a NAAFI sandwich in his room, but he felt the need to get away from military life, mingle with people untroubled by its demands and restrictions. In no mood for Yevgeny's effusive fellowship, Max drove to a small inn on the edge of the forest well away from town.