26
Lizzie squirmed in her chair, which was a lot less comfortable than it had been a few moments previously. She watched as the station commander’s face darkened.
“I’m sorry?” Group Captain Leeson said in a low voice. “What did you just say?” Lizzie swallowed before replying. There were a lot of ranks in between sergeant and group captain.
“I’m afraid I can’t tell you anything, sir.”
“Okay,” Leeson said. “Let me re-phrase the question. Sergeant Jarman, you are to tell me about Corporal Hunter’s injuries.” Lizzie knew that him using the words are to made it a direct order, but it was still a question that she could not answer.
“I still can’t answer, sir,” Lizzie replied. “It would be a breach of medical confidence.” She wasn’t sure, but she thought she heard Tom mutter told you so under his breath. The dark look that the station commander gave the SWO confirmed it. Lizzie considered telling the group captain that the order he had just given her was technically illegal, but when she looked at Tom, he was shaking his head almost imperceptibly from side to side.
Leeson took a sip of his coffee and grimaced.
“My God, Tom,” he said. “This coffee is bloody awful. What on earth have you done to it?” Leeson looked at Lizzie with a thin smile. “How’s yours, Sergeant Jarman?” Lizzie raised her cup to her lips but didn’t drink any of it.
“I think it’s lovely,” she replied, mirroring his smile.
“You’re an excellent liar,” Leeson said, his smile broadening. Lizzie took a deep breath, grateful that she appeared to be off the hook for the time being. “Now, accepting that you can’t say anything about Corporal Hunter’s injuries, what can you tell me about him?” Perhaps she wasn’t off the hook after all?
“How d’you mean, sir?”
“What was your take on him?”
“Um, I’m not really sure, to be honest. He seemed okay to me.” Lizzie hadn’t particularly liked the man, but she wasn’t about to tell the station commander and SWO that. “Can I ask why you’re asking?”
“No, Lizzie,” Tom said before the group captain could say anything. “You may not.”
They sat in silence for a few moments, an uncomfortable silence developing. Lizzie was just wondering if she should ask if she could be excused when the station commander asked her another question.
“I was just wondering what you thought about him, that was all. Whether you noticed anything unusual about his behaviour?”
“No, sir,” Lizzie replied. “I didn’t notice anything unusual about him at all.”
“Okay, thank you.” Leeson looked at Tom for a few seconds. “Tom? Anything from you?”
“No thank you, sir,” Tom said, nodding at Lizzie. She took that as her cue to go and shuffled forward in her seat.
“Are you not going to finish your lovely coffee, Sergeant Jarman?” Leeson asked with a mischievous smile.
“I’ll, um, I’ll finish it in the kitchen, sir. Will there be anything else?”
“No, thank you Sergeant Jarman. That’ll be all.”
Lizzie got to her feet and said goodbye to the two men before making her way to the small kitchen, where she poured the coffee down the sink and rinsed the cup. When she turned to leave, she almost walked into Tom, who was standing in the doorway.
“Jesus, Tom,” Lizzie said with a gasp, pressing her hand to her chest. “How can you creep up on people so quietly with a prosthetic leg?”
“It’s because I’m the SWO,” Tom replied, laughing. “It’s a special skill you only get when you’re a warrant officer.” He looked at her warmly. “You did alright in there, Lizzie. I did try to tell him you wouldn’t be able to tell him anything, but he wasn’t having it.”
“He is the station commander,” Lizzie said. “He’s perfectly entitled to ask.”
“Fair play to you for standing your ground, though.”
“Thanks, mate. Can you tell me what that was all about?”
“I shouldn’t, but there’s been some rumours about young Corporal Hunter. Nothing specific, but enough for us to be worried.”
A few moments later, Lizzie was back in the sunshine. She checked the time, wondering if it was too early to knock off for the day. She didn’t really want to walk all the way back to the medical centre, but equally she didn’t want to be caught finishing early. When she realised the coffee shop was open for another half an hour, she decided to grab a decent cup of coffee and give Adams a bell. He should be at home by now after his early shift.
“Hey, you,” she said when he answered the phone. “You okay?”
“I’m always okay,” Adams replied. “You should know that by now.”
“What are you up to?”
“Just watching some porn.”
“Seriously,” Lizzie said with a giggle. “What are you really up to?”
“Seriously, just watching some porn. How’s your day been?” She could hear from his tone that he was smiling. Adams was probably watching Country File or some inane game show, but would rather admit to watching pornography than either of those.
“Yeah, it’s been okay. I got summoned to the station commander’s office, though.”
“Really? What’ve you been up to?”
“I’ve not been up to anything,” Lizzie replied. “He was asking me about a patient I saw last night. Wanted to know what was wrong with him, what I thought about the bloke. That sort of thing.”
“I hope you didn’t say anything?”
“Of course I did,” Lizzie said, rolling her eyes. “In fact, I showed the group captain his medical records. Let him have a good old root through them.”
“Very funny,” Adams replied. “Wonder what that’s all about?”
“No idea. I did ask the SWO, but he didn’t say much.”
“Fair one. What are you doing tonight?”
“I’m duty medic all week, remember? What were you thinking?”
“Bugger, I forgot about that. I was going to take you out for dinner.”
“Is the McDonald’s in Norwich open again, then?” Lizzie asked with a grin.
“I could come over to yours?”
“But that would be highly irregular, Flight Lieutenant Adams. For a start, I would have to smuggle you into the sergeant’s mess via the fire doors. Then we would be breaching the fire regulations by having too many people sleeping in a room.” Lizzie’s grin broadened, and she dropped her voice to a whisper. “Plus, I’ve told you, I’m not having sex with you again.”
“I was hoping you might have reconsidered that bit,” Adams said. Lizzie knew he was smiling, as was she.
“You just go back to watching your pornography or whatever crappy game show you’ve got on.”
“Tipping Point is not a crappy game show. It’s a masterpiece of suspense.”
“Just text me when you’re in the car park, and I’ll come down and let you in. Make sure it’s after dark, though.”
“Can I bring my porn? We could watch it together?”
“We could always make our own?” Lizzie said.
“Got it. I’ll bring my camera.”
Lizzie opened her mouth to say something, but then realised Adams had hung up. One thing she did know, though, as she got to her feet and smirked at his reply, was that if he turned up with a camera, he’d be driving back to Norwich that evening with a black eye.
27
Adams lay back on Lizzie’s bed, utterly spent. He put one hand on his forehead and blew a breath out of his cheeks.
“My God, Lizzie,” he said, still out of breath. “That was something else!” Lizzie, who was lying next to him with her head propped up on one elbow, smiled in response.
“It was a bit enthusiastic, wasn’t it?”
He looked at her, taking in her tousled hair and flushed cheeks. The duvet covering them had slipped off her shoulder, almost but not quite exposing one of her breasts.
“Stay exactly as you are, Lizzie, don’t move an inch.” He reached behi
nd him and grabbed his phone from Lizzie’s bedside cabinet.
“What are you doing?” she asked him as he swiped at the screen to open the camera app. A few seconds later, she squealed as he raised the phone and took her photograph. “Give me that! Delete it, you bastard!” Adams laughed as he held the phone away from her.
“Wait, wait,” he said. “Let me show it to you. If you really want me to delete it, I will, but at least look at it first.” Making sure he held the phone out of her reach, he showed her the photograph he had just taken. She looked at it and, to his relief, just smiled even more.
“Why did you take that?” she asked him. “Look at the state of me. My hair’s all over the place, and it’s pretty obvious from the look on my face what we’ve just been doing.”
“I know,” Adams replied. “You look beautiful in it. There’s nothing explicit about it, but it’s one of the most erotic photos I’ve ever seen. But it’s only erotic if you know the background, which only we do.”
“If you ever show that photo to anyone, Paul Adams,” Lizzie said, “I will have you killed.”
“I promise you on my hamster’s life, I won’t show it to anyone.”
“You haven’t got a hamster,” Lizzie replied, snuggling into him as he put the phone back on the cabinet.
“I swear on the soul of my last hamster, I won’t show it to anyone.”
Lizzie pulled the duvet back over her shoulder and rested her head on the pillow.
“Do you think when the Queen’s in bed she ever pulls the duvet up like this and says, ‘Look, Philip. I’m a stamp’?” she asked Adams.
“Bit harsh when he’s dead, mate,” Adams replied, sliding an arm around her.
“Oh, forgot that bit. Still a funny one, though.” Lizzie closed her eyes and Adams watched her take a deep breath. He knew she would be asleep in minutes. “What was your hamster’s name?”
“Hammy.”
“That’s imaginative. How old were you when he died?”
“Twenty-six.” Lizzie giggled in response. “Can I ask you something, Lizzie?”
“Of course you can, my liege,” she replied, “as long as it’s not about filming us together.” Adams paused for a moment before continuing, not sure how to ask what he wanted to ask.
“Do you enjoy what we do?” He watched as her eyes fluttered open, and she looked at him with a curious expression.
“How d’you mean, do I enjoy what we do?” Adams knew she was stalling as all she had done was repeat his question back to him.
“I mean, do you enjoy it as much as I do, because it’s not really clear that you do? Do you get what I’m asking?”
Lizzie leaned forward and kissed Adams tenderly. He responded, sliding his arm around her and pulling her closer to him. Then she ended the kiss and looked at him through half-open eyes.
“I enjoy what we do very much, Adams.” She pecked him on the cheek and he knew the conversation was over and she wanted to go to sleep. “Don’t spoil it.”
A couple of hours later, Adams, who was still wide awake, tried not to toss and turn too much. Beside him, Lizzie was fast asleep with her back to him. He watched, envious, as her thin shoulder rose and fell with each breath.
Frustrated at his inability to sleep, which was made worse by the knowledge he had to be up before sunrise to get out of the sergeant’s mess without being seen, he reached out for his phone. Adams looked again at the photograph he had taken of Lizzie and smiled broadly. The camera had caught her expression perfectly. Her hair was mussed from his hands running through it, her cheeks were flushed, and she had a wry smile on her face that hinted at so much without actually saying anything.
Adams swiped out of the photo app and brought up the BBC news one. He idly scrolled through the stories. A senior minister had been caught drink driving, and another one caught in a bed he wasn’t supposed to be in. The prime minister was refusing to comment on either indiscretion, saying that what they did in their private lives was their own business. The leader of the opposition thought differently, but Adams didn’t care enough about it to read the article. There was rioting in South America, Russian troops massing on the Ukrainian border, and an outbreak of something nasty on the Liberian border that the World Health Organisation were getting very excited about.
Bored, Adams closed the news app and opened up the phone’s browser. He typed Allied Forth into the browser bar and a few seconds later was looking at a photograph of a white woman surrounded by black children. All of them were beaming at the camera, and in the background, lush green mountains could be seen. According to the picture’s caption, this was a woman called Claire in Kakoya village, northern Sierra Leone.
Adams looked closely at the photograph, trying to imagine Lizzie where Claire was. He also looked at the expression on Claire’s face. She looked incredibly happy, and the smiles of the surrounding children supported her expression. Was that what Lizzie was looking for?
He spent a few moments looking around the organisation’s website. It was professionally put together and detailed the work that the volunteers did within the local community. There was a link to a Partners page which had some information on the parent organisation, the Ascalon Institute, but it was fairly sparse. What interested Adams more was a link to the private company that provided healthcare to the volunteers.
A few moments later, Adams was looking at the vacancies page for the healthcare company. He scrolled through the vacancies until he came to a section for clinical staff which he bookmarked, telling himself that he would have a closer look at it later. He put his phone down and pressed his head into the pillow, closing his eyes tightly. A range of things went through his head. The experiences he’d had with Lizzie over the last couple of years flashed across his imagination. Some were bad, really bad. Some—the more recent ones in particular—were good. They didn’t cancel the bad memories out but, in Adams’s mind, as the good experiences built up, the bad ones got further away.
Adams put his arm round Lizzie and pulled the duvet up over them both. She mumbled something in her sleep, which he couldn’t understand, but Adams was glad she didn’t wake up.
He didn’t want her to see him crying.
28
General Waterfield waited until the tube had stopped before he folded his copy of The Times and got to his feet. Just before the pneumatic doors hissed to a close, he stepped out onto the platform of Westminster tube station. He was surrounded by people in suits like the one he was wearing, both male and female but predominantly male, and excited tourists.
Waterfield glanced at his watch as he made his way toward the escalators that would take him to street level. He stood on the right-hand side to allow people in more of a hurry than he was to pass, grinning briefly as a tourist further up the escalator was shoved to the right by an irate commuter. When he got to the entrance hall, a brief tap of his Oyster card let him through the barriers and out into Westminster.
Directly across from him was the Elizabeth Tower, although almost everyone called it Big Ben. A clutch of tourists at its base were holding up phones and pulling faces as they took selfies with the iconic stone-faced building with its distinctive bells behind them. The tower had been given many names over the years. Some people called it St Stephen’s Tower, but this was the name of another, smaller tower over the main public entrance to the Houses of Parliament. It had also been known as the Clock Tower and the East Tower, but Big Ben was its best-known name.
Waterfield turned right, away from Westminster Bridge where a would-be terrorist had been subdued with a fire extinguisher and a narwhal tusk before being shot in the head by police a few years previously, and made his way to Parliament Street. He nodded at the statue of Winston Churchill on the corner of Parliament Square Gardens, and a few hundred yards further down the street, nodded again at the Cenotaph, Britain’s primary war memorial.
Keen to avoid the clutch of tourists and protestors gathered outside the gates to Number 10 Downing Street, Waterfield stayed
on the right-hand side of the road, only crossing when he got to the statue of Montgomery. Since 1980, the old soldier had stood proudly at ease on his marble plinth, staring across the road at the tall Georgian buildings that housed Waterfield’s destination, the Cabinet Office.
As he approached the reinforced green doors at the front of the building that could withstand a direct hit from a rocket-propelled grenade, Waterfield nodded at the security guard standing outside the door wearing a high-visibility vest over a white short-sleeved shirt. Even though he had been through this door almost every week for the last two years, the guard still checked Waterfield’s identity card before relaying his arrival to someone in the building's interior. A few seconds later, having received confirmation that Waterfield was on the list of authorised attendees, the guard returned Waterfield’s nod and stepped to one side.
Waterfield walked into the interior of the building, relieved to be off the street. Inside the building, the air was cool and there was an air of calm urgency among the few people walking through the building. He made his way to a set of lift doors at the rear of the foyer and put his right thumb onto a small scanner set into the wall. A couple of seconds later, there was a muted ping, and the doors slid open. Inside the lift, there were no buttons other than an emergency call button. There was only one destination.
As the lift descended, Waterfield studied his reflection in the mirror. He was, by his own admission, a good-looking man, and the sun on his face the previous day on the water had given him the slightest hint of a tan. The suit he was wearing was from Gieves and Hawkes, based in Savile Row, and had the traditional structured roped shoulder that marked the tailor’s work. The fact that the firm, one of the oldest continual bespoke tailoring companies in the world that had dressed royalty, senior military officers, and even Formula One drivers was owned by a firm in Hong Kong irritated Waterfield no end, but there was no denying the quality of their garments.
Enemy Within: A heart-wrenching medical mystery (British Military Thriller Series Book 3) Page 11
