Czech Mate (10 page)

His reflective mood was jolted on discovering a large number of men and women gathered in the ante-room. Bright conversation, laughter, an air of cameraderie more usually found on obligatory dining-in nights were exactly what he did not want right now. Having had no time really to get to know anyone he felt very much the cuckoo in this merry nest. Tempted to turn around and seek a meal elsewhere, regardless of the snow, Max was prevented from leaving by Lucy Farmer who greeted him effusively.

‘Hi there! How are you on traffic control? This lot need to be channelled into lanes leading to the food. I'm ravenous, are you?'

‘What's the occasion?' he asked, ignoring her flippancy. Maybe she really was a police groupie.

‘
This
isn't the occasion, that comes later in the week. Best togs and deeply intellectual conversation. Tonight's just an informal welcome to the eggheads.'

‘Eggheads?'

She patted his arm sympathetically. ‘You wouldn't know, of course. Too busy detecting. For the next ten days the annual inter-services chess championship is being held here on the base.' She adopted a grave expression. ‘It's all deadly serious. Service honour is at stake in addition to personal esteem. Players frequently take hours over each move.' She then laughed. ‘Can you think of any other game played so slowly? I prefer sport with furious action. How about you? You look the athletic type.'

Max shook his head. ‘My father is an outstanding all-round sportsman. I'm merely a competent rugby player and oarsman, I fear.' Appreciative of her attractiveness in a figure-hugging pale blue sweater and skirt, he wished she were less shallow. ‘I'll steer clear of the eggheads. Chess, like all sedentary games, has never held any interest for me.'

Putting her head on one side and studying him in a very frank manner, she said, ‘I think you'd be good at chess. Your mind is geared to fathoming solutions from miscellaneous facts. Have you discovered yet who attacked young Kevin?'

Max was spared a reply by an eager, fresh-faced young man who dragged Lucy off through the press of people moving to the dining-room. Max held back, still vaguely inclined to eat elsewhere.

‘Steering clear of the deadly serious chess players?' asked a voice tinged with amusement from beside him.

She was tall and dark-haired, with eyes so deeply brown they seemed almost black against her pale skin. The red-haired Lucy Farmer was glowingly attractive, but this woman's understated sensuality robbed Max of words.

‘I plead guilty to eavesdropping on your conversation. Quite a feat in this hubbub, but you made such an arresting couple I was unashamedly inquisitive.' She offered her hand. ‘Livya Cordwell. One of the eggheads.'

Her handshake was firm, her gaze was steady. Those things usually told Max a lot about people, but all he could think of now was how nearly he had missed this moment by going elsewhere for his dinner.

‘Your head isn't in the least like an egg,' he said, then cursed the banality of his words.

She laughed. ‘That's the strangest compliment I've ever received. Rugby player and oarsman, but what else do you do and who are you?'

How he wished he had inherited his father's abundant ease with women. ‘I'm Max Rydal. SIB.'

‘Ah, that explains the comment about fathoming solutions from miscellaneous facts. She's right, you'd probably make a good chess player.'

Fighting to recapture his equilibrium, Max demurred. ‘You have total control over the pieces on a chess board. We deal with humans who make their own moves, frequently turning our conclusions into a dog's dinner.'

‘But you forget we have an opponent who forces us into moves that make a dog's dinner of
our
stratagems. We don't have total control, you know.' She nodded in the direction of the dining-room. ‘Shall we continue this while we eat?'

Max followed her unable to take his eyes from her curves enhanced by her tightly belted amber wool dress. The evening had grown unexpectedly exciting. They found two seats together at the end of a table. Unfortunately, they were opposite two men involved in the championship. They knew Livya Cordwell and embarked on anecdotes of previous such occasions. This at least enabled Max to collect his thoughts. It was a long time since he had been so dumbstruck on meeting a woman. Well . . . since first meeting Susan.

Livya soon adroitly ended the focus on chess and concentrated on Max. He then took the opportunity to find out more about her.

‘Are you with a regiment or corps? You didn't say when you introduced yourself.'

She smiled. ‘I was too busy being a bighead about being an egghead, wasn't I? I'm with Intelligence.'

His interest multiplied. ‘So we have a link. We rely on info from you to get to the bottom of some of the cases we investigate.'

‘I'm more concerned with internal security, Max.' She studied him closely. ‘Are you in any way related to Brigadier Andrew Rydal? I can see a faint resemblance.'

‘You know my father?' he asked, unhappy about the comparison she was certain to make.

‘Not well. Our paths have crossed once or twice. He's very charming.'

Max moved from that subject quickly. ‘Is your name a shortened version of Olivia?'

‘No. My mother is from the Czech Republic. She had a close friend with that name. It ends with ya and is pronounced Liv-yah.' She smiled. ‘I have numerous Czech relations whom I adore and visit often.'

‘You're bilingual?'

‘With a smattering of German and Polish.'

He was now getting a good idea of how she knew his father, and in which department in Intelligence she worked. Her Slavic connections would be useful to them. That bloodline also explained her dark attractiveness and the lilt in her voice.

Hardly aware of what he was eating, or of the activity around him, Max heard that she had been taught to play chess at the age of eight by her Czech grandfather, and had taken part in two previous inter-services championships. She had been a finalist last year, and beaten by an RAF corporal.

‘Bob Hollins is a genius,' she said with fervour. ‘No one's beaten him for five years. I'd love to be the one who breaks his record.'

‘I'll break his neck for you, if it'll help.'

She let her hand rest lightly on his for a moment in acknowledgement of his humorous offer. ‘I want to outfox him the hard way. I'm extremely competitive.'

‘So when do you fire the first shot?' he asked, wishing he had taken up chess years ago.

‘Tomorrow. The pressure is on for the army to win this year.'

‘I'll be following progress with interest. Should I fly flags on my car as they do during the World Cup?'

Her laughter enchanted him further. ‘Black background with an egghead rampant?'

The evening flew past until they realized everyone had gone. It was then that Max had another reason for cursing his need to live in-mess. Officers were not expected to entertain members of the opposite sex in their rooms. It sometimes happened, of course, but was deeply frowned on and always prompted a reprimand from the commanding officer. If it continued, one of the officers was posted elsewhere. What they did in private hirings was their own responsibility, unless it was adultery with another serving person. Max had handled such cases in the past. He now experienced the other side of the coin and understood the temptation.

They said goodnight and parted. Max's only consolation was that Livya would be there for ten days. A lot could happen in that time. Sleep did not come but, for once, he had no wish to induce it by listening to his CDs of mandolins or Paraguayan harps. He lay thinking of her and making plans for furthering their friendship.

Well into the early hours he drifted off, to be woken shortly afterwards by his mobile ringing. The clock showed four a.m. He grunted his name, still half-asleep.

‘Sorry to disturb you, sir,' said Tom. ‘I've had a call from Corporal Meacher. They've just arrived at the Medical Centre with Lance-Corporal Treeves. They believed him to be asleep in the back of the vehicle, but they couldn't wake him. The Duty Doctor has just confirmed that he's dead.'

Five

T
he next three days led them no further forward to answers to vital questions. The pathologist had not yet discovered why Lance-Corporal Treeves had not survived the journey back to base. The Military Police at the post near the border, who had collected the driver from the home of the Haufmanns, confirmed that they had organized an immediate medical examination in view of his alleged assault. The doctor had declared him fit to travel.

The RMP Corporals Meacher and Stubble had been questioned about the hazardous road journey. Shocked by the death, both had claimed Treeves was fairly communicative until midnight, when they stopped at an all-night café for a hot drink and a sandwich. They then believed he had fallen asleep. Most likely he had, but somewhere along the way his heart had stopped beating. A quiet, peaceful, instant death. The question was why?

The corporals said they had all had salami sandwiches, and tea from the same urn. They had all taken sugar from the container on the table. Even so, the
Polizei
investigated the café premises and checked the food suppliers they used. A German policeman, along with a sergeant from the RMP post, interviewed the Haufmanns. In particular the wife. She gave her medical opinion that the English soldier had been bewildered, hungry, thirsty and anxious to get back to his own people, but otherwise was none the worse for his ordeal. She told her questioners that she and her husband found his story hard to believe. How many gangs of thieves carried with them sleeping-bags for the comfort of their victims? But for the warmth of it the soldier would surely have suffered from hypothermia – perhaps would have died.

Throughout the investigation that fact was the huge flaw in Treeves' story. It strongly suggested that he had been party to the theft, which cast doubts on his partners-in-crime being held responsible for his death. Klaus Krenkel, commanding the area police who often worked with their military counterparts, thought the theft had probably been carried out by a gang of immigrants who had been monitoring 26 Section's preparations to move premises.

The Redcaps knew there were many illegal immigrants who were forced to turn to crime in order to live. The sleeping-bag could be explained by the belief that murder, especially of a soldier, was a crime too far for them. If Treeves had been involved there was now no case against him to pursue, and the
Polizei
were searching for the stolen equipment. In the uniformed branch of the RMP there was some sniggering over the fact that the Special
Investigation
Branch had lost their property and had no idea where it was.

Departmental rivalry was the least of the Section's worries. Forensics had failed to get any good fingerprints from the club because one of the paramedics had first trodden on it, then tossed it free of the space around their patient. Similarly, with footprints. So many small feet had scurried across those tiles that evening it was impossible to lift anything from the mess.

After again questioning the adults present at the party, who repeated their belief that everyone was there the whole time, the team had to conclude that Kevin's attacker had entered and left the building unseen. This faced them with the prospect of checking the movements of all who had remained on-base that night.

At the Thursday morning briefing Max deferred that for one day, insisting that the key to cracking the case lay with pinpointing a motive.

‘Before I'll accept that this was a chance assault by someone entering the Recreation Centre with an overpowering need to bash someone for the fun of it, I need to be absolutely sure there's no other explanation. Sergeant Johnson, you said you have young brothers.'

‘That's right, sir. Thirteen and fifteen.'

‘I want you to visit Kevin. With your experience of male teenagers maybe you'll coax more from him than I did. Sergeant Bush, interview Mrs McRitchie at her home. Dig deeper into her relationship with her son. And with her husband. That's a very complex family group.'

Connie Bush smiled. ‘Perhaps we should get the Padre's wife to psychoanalyse them.'

Piercey chuckled. ‘We've only to wait and she'll spirit the guilty party to our door any day now.'

‘I hope she will. I sincerely hope she will,' said Max. ‘In case she doesn't, we'll continue investigating and you can go with Sergeant Beeny to interview more penetratingly the three lads who form Swinga Kat with Kevin. My guts tell me someone had a motive for punishing that particular boy. It's out there. Go and find it.'

As they dispersed, slipping their arms in the sleeves of topcoats, Max turned to Tom. ‘I agree with your suggestion that it's worth checking with Greg McRitchie's platoon, and with his fellow NCOs. He's an aggressive, macho type. Excellent qualities in combat, provided they're kept under control, but in day-to-day dealings they can create resentment fierce enough to inspire revenge. To hurt him through the boy is the easy option.'

‘Particularly if it's not known that he cares nothing for his son.' Tom nodded. ‘I don't accept the random attack theory either, but my problem is still the timing. Unless chummy waited up on the first floor on the off chance of Kevin visiting the bog, and unaccompanied, it has to have been an arranged rendezvous. Is that boy truly amnesiac about that evening, or is he hiding something?'

‘Let's hope Heather gets the answer today. We can't rule out the possibility that Kevin was handling drugs, which would satisfy the notion of a rendezvous. There's no evidence the boy is a user, but I'm off to visit the studio where Swinga Kat made a video. It sounds a very dodgy place where legit business is only a fraction of what they're up to. Kevin is fervent enough about making his mark in the pop world, he's liable to agree to do anything in return for the promise of musical promotion. He's the perfect agent for a dealer wanting to start up on an army base where his own entry is prohibited.'