Spanish Inquisition (4 page)

‘Never better. I flew in an hour ago.'

‘You're home?'

‘And raring to go. Everything OK with you and the girls?'

‘Fine.'

‘How about the little lad? Almost ready to join the Blackies, isn't he?'

‘I'll be glad when he does. He's much too lively. Soon as I sit quietly he decides to try his footballing skills.'

Max laughed. ‘He needs all the practice he can manage if he takes after his father. Tom couldn't score a goal if the net was a mile wide.'

She also laughed. ‘He's always preferred rugger. I'll tell him you're back. He's taking a shower ready for an early night after a call out at three this morning.'

‘Oh? Something serious under way?'

‘He'll tell you about it tomorrow, Max.'

‘Max on the line at this hour?' asked Tom in the background. ‘Is he OK?'

‘He's come home,' Nora told him, followed by more in an undertone that Max could not translate, but could guess at. She wanted her tired husband to get to bed.

‘Had enough of the lotus-eating life among dark-eyed senoritas?' quipped Tom, taking over from Nora.

‘If only,' he returned. ‘All I attracted was a desperate Irish divorcée of mature years who wanted to eat me for breakfast. I managed to escape whole, but only just. Tom, why the early call this morning?'

An obvious hesitation before, ‘You're on leave for two more weeks yet.'

‘I'll be at Section Headquarters at the usual time tomorrow morning, so gen me up now and it'll save time then.'

After further hesitation Tom offered a brief account of the charge against Piercey.

‘Where is he now?'

In a spare room in the Mess until his own has been combed and declared clean, or until he can produce a solid alibi.'

‘Bloody fool,' snapped Max. ‘He behaved completely out of character with that woman, but Phil's not a violent man. He'd never assault her because she turned him down. She's protecting someone. Her story has yawning holes in it. We can soon tear that apart.'

‘
We?
' There was a definite protest in that one word.

‘Tom, I'm perfectly fit and well, I'm back on base and the defendant is a man I trust and value as a member of my team. Of course it's
we
. See you at eight on the dot.'

He took a shower, then lay in bed in the darkness reviewing all he had been told. Tom had twice wanted Piercey posted elsewhere, could not accept the Cornish sergeant's freelance attitude to the job, but Max thought he was nevertheless an asset to the team and overruled Tom. He might have to change his mind after this. Piercey was the last man he would have expected to become so besotted with a woman she would have enough ammunition to charge him with something so serious.

He settled for sleep thanking Mollie Hubbard for driving him back here at exactly the right time.

But for the alarm clock Max would have overslept. When the loud buzzing brought him awake it was a moment or two before he knew where he was, then he gave a delighted grin. Back in command with an interesting case to pursue.

The grin faded when he spotted the envelope propped against the toaster in the small kitchen. The last time that had happened he had read Livya's apology for not loving him the way he believed she did.

This note had not been there last night, which meant Clare had somehow discovered he was back and had come in while he was asleep. He stared at his name written in her typical medic's scrawl. Had she jumped the gun to make it clear her interest in him was just that of a doctor, a neighbour, a professional colleague?

He made coffee and drank a mugful before pulling out the single sheet of notepaper bearing a message that restored the grin.

I made my usual Sunday inspection to be sure all was as it should be, and found a squatter had moved in. Gave me a fright to see a body in the bed. I have an early start in the morning. Conference at Regional Headquarters. Confess why you returned early over dinner at Herr Blomfeld's. My treat.

There was a large X beneath Clare's name, which made Max's grin widen with pleasure. That inn beside the river where he rowed most Sunday mornings had become ‘their place'. Maybe it was fortunate that she was occupied all day. She was unable to stop him from returning to work.

The guard on the main gate greeted him jovially and looked set to embark on a long conversation regarding the explosion that had killed a brave but shattered man and injured Max, but he skilfully escaped and headed for Section Headquarters with his spirits rising by the minute.

The parking area was full. Tom must have put the word around to ensure the team arrived early. There was no mistaking their pleasure because he was back to full fitness, but Max detected a downbeat mood even as they offered him coffee and one of the sultana and walnut muffins he liked so much.

Tom opened the briefing by outlining details of his interview with Maria Norton the previous afternoon, which she had ended abruptly by feigning the onset of illness.

‘I'll have another session with her this morning, get the answers to a number of questions I was prevented from asking by the orderly who responded to her cries for assistance. I'll also discover if she tells the same version of events today.'

He looked around at the intent expressions. ‘One thing is certain. Captain Goodey told me Norton is in the early stages of pregnancy. That opens an entirely new avenue of possibilities. A more likely one, in my view. The Doc put it in a nutshell. Norton tells the father, he says get rid of it, she says no, he beats her up to make his point.'

‘Then she protects him by accusing Phil,' mused Connie Bush. ‘Sounds familiar. Remember Sharmayne Parker a few years ago? Accused her husband of knocking her about and was believed, until it happened again when he was on remand at his regimental headquarters. Even when we arrested and charged her lover, she tried to defend him. Crazy woman!'

‘Damn near finished Jack Parker's career,' recalled Tom, ‘which is why we have to get Piercey off the hook for this, pronto.'

Olly Simpson glanced up from his doodling. ‘How do we do that? Everyone we spoke to yesterday mentioned Phil's obsession with Norton throughout rehearsals, and at the party. He, himself, admits to having a hot session with her backstage, but can't prove he didn't do what she claims.'

Tom gave him a pointed look. ‘Then
you
have to find the means to prove it. Someone on this base must have seen him returning to his room that night, or noticed that his car was parked outside the Sergeants' Mess when he says it was. It's not enough to prove he was actually inside the building and in his room, but I'd feel happier about dismissing Norton's version of what happened if we had some solid fact to back it up.'

Derek Beeny, Piercey's friend and frequent investigating partner, asked cautiously, ‘You think he might be guilty, sir?'

‘I didn't say that, but I'm pretty damn certain he's being economical with the truth over how far he went with Norton in her dressing room. We need a revised statement from him on that.'

‘How far he went was as far as she drove him to, you bet,' said Heather Johnson, surprisingly rising to the defence of the man whose personality frequently clashed with hers. ‘All the women in the cast that we interviewed yesterday afternoon said she was a right tease, playing off the men against each other.'

‘And
they
,' added Connie, ‘excused her behaviour as “getting fully into her role”.'

Heather scowled. ‘Pathetic! Phil might have been as gullible as the rest, but he's too arrogant to beat a woman up if she's reluctant. He'd walk away and find someone more willing. Knowing him, it wouldn't take long.'

Max could see Tom was irritated by this sexist interlude and was not surprised when he interrupted it somewhat forcefully. ‘So we know who didn't do it. Let's find who did. I want you all to look at your notes and come up with the names of whichever of your interviewees could have been in the auditorium just before Bill Jensen locked the Recreation Centre. Two men chatting up some chorus girls, according to Norton. We need to hear their versions of what happened to send Piercey slipping through the rear stage door after Norton ran out there claiming he was trying to strip her. She told me those two men were set to square up to him, and subsequently offered to drive her to her billet.'

‘What I don't get,' put in Olly Simpson still gnawing the bone, ‘is why this woman who tingled every male's toes, if not elsewhere, had not had offers galore for a romantic tête à tête after the party ended. Why was she lingering in the theatre with just Phil and some guys chatting to chorus girls, unless she'd planned it that way?'

Connie gave him a straight look. ‘No romantic offers because the guys with tingling toes had their wives or girlfriends with them at the party. Had to behave themselves.'

‘And there's another thing,' added Heather. ‘I find it hard to believe the pair who arranged to give her a lift would drive away leaving her there, as she claims. When she went back to look for whatever she reckoned she'd left in the dressing room, and was away for so long, one of them would surely have gone to see if she was OK. If it had happened at a disco in town, and they were all legless, I can see a couple of likely lads telling a taxi driver to get going without her, but this was different.'

Tom nodded. ‘A cock and bull story which she must know we'll swiftly demolish. I don't believe her mother called on her mobile to ask about the success of the final performance. Not at that hour, unless Mrs Norton lives in Australia or some place well east of here.'

Max had been sitting quietly listening to this sound reasoning and now had a good grasp of the case. ‘I'd like to applaud the importance of finding that group remaining in the theatre when everyone else had left,' he said, entering the discussion. ‘Their evidence could swing this case in a new direction. Discovering who made her pregnant is also very important. Captain Goodey's nutshell makes sense. We need to talk to Norton's friends and colleagues about who she's been dating, on or off the base. The pregnancy could be the outcome of a one-night stand after binge drinking in town, of course, which would make it well nigh impossible for us to trace her sexual partner. If he was a local German it would rule out the nutshell theory, because he wouldn't have been on the base at midnight on Saturday.'

Getting into his stride, he continued. ‘We also have to explore an angle not yet mentioned. The theatre occupies just one area of the Recreation Centre complex. Any number of activities are catered for, classes in almost any subject under the sun. Check what else was regularly taking place on the same evening as rehearsals for the opera. It's possible that a man pursuing some other hobby saw Norton week after week strutting her stuff in seductive manner and became fixated on her as Carmen.

‘It might be a mistake to concentrate too much on a connection between the attack and her pregnancy. Bill Jensen will have details of everything that takes place at the Centre, and we also need his account of that final half hour before he locked the doors after the party.'

Getting to his feet, he nodded at Beeny and Simpson. ‘I want you two to concentrate on tracing a witness who'll give Phil an alibi for the actual time of the attack.'

‘We don't know the exact time, sir,' Beeny returned somewhat coolly. ‘All we have to go on so far is her arrival at the RMP Post at oh two hundred. Her engineered spell of distress prevented Mr Black from questioning her on how the attack ended, and how she managed to reach the Post in that state.'

This pointed reminder that he had picked up on a case that was already one day old made Max aware that his eagerness to get back in harness was not particularly politic. The team had been focussing on Tom, seeing their convalescent boss as merely ‘sitting in' at the briefing. Tom had been commanding the Section successfully for four months. Realizing tardily that Tom might resent his trying to take over, Max told himself he must ease his return to full command.

‘That's a very pertinent point,' he said quietly. ‘Her claim of a call from her mother on the mobile suggests she had it with her after Phil left the theatre. The RMP Post is as far across the base as one can get, so why didn't Norton use the mobile to call for help?'

‘It was lost during the assault,' Beeny reasoned.

‘Or?' prompted Tom, with a complicit glance at Max.

‘The attack took place just a short distance from the Post,' said Connie, picking up the significance of the question. ‘Someone
did
give her a lift, and things turned nasty.'

‘Which makes our prime object to trace the two men chatting to chorus girls. Where did they disappear to, by the way, leaving the lads free to offer Norton a lift? Did she go with them in good faith then discover they wanted the same as Phil?'

‘She'd have been lucky to get away from two men without being raped,' Heather reasoned, ‘so I'd say it's more likely that the driver dropped the other man off, then tried his luck with Norton who somehow managed to get away and reach the RMP Post.'

Seeing that Max had sat down again, suggesting he would play no further part in the briefing, Tom wound up the proceedings.

‘Trace these two men and the girls who were with them. If you have doubts about the blokes don't hesitate to bring them in for in-depth sessions. Get from Babs Turvey any info on Norton's mobile. It wasn't on the locker beside her bed, and Captain Goodey made no mention of it being with her bagged clothes. Finding it might give us a lead on who she planned to meet after the party, because surely that's why she lingered there so late. If I learn anything new this morning, I'll pass it on.'

Once they were alone, Max apologized. ‘You've been running the Section famously in my absence, Tom. I didn't mean to undermine your authority; just spoke my thoughts.' He smiled. ‘Too long out of the job; too anxious to get back on board. It's an intriguing case. If Norton continues to blame Piercey you might consider sending Connie to talk to her, woman to woman. That was a valid point from Olly. If the woman's so popular with men why wasn't she inundated with offers to run her home . . . with the hope of being asked in for coffee? Doesn't add up.'