“Do you know why I was late meeting you?” Hannah asked him.
“No?”
“I was changing the bedding, doing some female personal admin, and making sure that I’d not left anything lying around my flat that would embarrass you.”
“Er, thank you?”
“Not the right answer, Adams,” Hannah said, and he was relieved to see a faint smile on her face. “But you’re not the only one who’s lonely.” Her smile faded. “Don’t apologise again.”
Adams closed his mouth. He had been about to do just that.
“Are you sure you don’t want a kebab?” he asked as a taxi approached them.
“Thanks, but I’m good.” Hannah took a few steps toward Adams and put her arms around him. Then she kissed him on the cheek and whispered in his ear. “She’s a lucky woman, this Lizzie. That’s all I’m saying.” Then she got into the taxi.
As he watched the taillights of the taxi recede into the distance, Adams blew his breath out from between his cheeks. The truth was, he felt awful. When Hannah had sat next to him on the bench and their legs were tight against each other, that would have been the moment to tell her about Lizzie. Not after she had said what she’d said and kissed him. He should never have let it get that far, but his own conceit had prevented him from saying anything. Adams knew he wanted to know if the opportunity with Hannah would have been there had he allowed it to continue. And that wasn’t fair to either her or Lizzie by a long stretch of the imagination.
Adams decided to walk home. He could do with the fresh air and the exercise, and if he got a stomp on, he would still be back at his place in time for the football. As he walked, he thought about Lizzie. If she knew what he had just allowed to happen, what would she think? How would he feel if it were the other way round? If Lizzie had led a man on to the point where he kissed her and asked her into bed, only to turn around and mention the fact she wasn’t single after all? There was no other way of putting it. What Adams had just done to Hannah was low, and had probably cost him a friendship. Additionally, he had kissed her back, if only for a few seconds, and during those seconds he had wanted her.
Shaking his head, Adams made his way down the steps and onto the path that led alongside the River Wensum. There were a few hire craft moored up at Norwich Yacht Station. Their windows were lit up and, as he walked past them, Adams heard people laughing inside the boats. He continued past the boats and on to Coltman Fields, the small park that surrounded the flint and brick Cow Tower. He noticed some rubbish flapping in the slight breeze and, as he approached, he realised it was some blue and white tape with writing on it in capital letters.
POLICE
Adams stopped. This was where the young woman had been stabbed to death the other night. He shivered involuntarily, as if the place was haunted. As far as he’d seen on the news, the police were no closer to finding anyone and he knew the longer they didn’t, the less likely it was that they would. Adams picked up his pace. There was little likelihood of anyone jumping out of the bushes and coming at him with a knife, but he was still slightly spooked at the thought.
He managed to get to the corner shop a few hundred yards from his flat just as the owner was putting away his National Lottery sign. Adams bought a half bottle of cheap whisky—he was going to get the smaller size, but the walk home and what had happened with Hannah had sobered him up—and a few moments later he was sitting in his lounge with a very generous measure of it in a tumbler. Adams winced as he took a sip, the cheap blend burning as it made its way down his throat, and while he listened to the theme tune for Match of the Day starting, he scrolled through the photographs on his phone.
A few seconds later, he was looking at the photograph of Lizzie he had taken while they were in bed. The look on her face was indescribable. Try as he might, he couldn’t think of a word to describe it. The lop-sided wry smile, the reddened cheeks, and the tousled hair were all testament to what they had been doing a few moments before it was taken.
“I’m sorry, Lizzie,” Adams said as he drained his glass and coughed. “I have just been a bit of a twat.”
49
Lizzie peered through the windscreen at the outline of the house in front of them, silhouetted against the night sky. She couldn’t see a great deal in the moonlight other than a blocky looking three-storey building surrounded by a high wall. The lead vehicle of their convoy had stopped outside the main gate in the wall, and Claire was tapping at a keypad to the side of the gate. A few seconds later, the wide metal gate opened.
After their altercation back at Tagrin, Lizzie was still amazed at what Claire had said. She must have been talking about Charlotte, Lizzie had realised afterward, and she couldn’t believe that Claire had seen her as some sort of threat. Presumably, Charlotte and Claire were a couple, even though Charlotte was almost old enough to be Claire’s mother. Lizzie didn’t care about any of that, but she objected to what Claire had done. Lizzie grinned again to herself when she thought back to her response. Adams would have been amazed. She wasn’t sure where the threat to break Claire’s nose had come from, but Lizzie thought the other girl had got the message.
The only person who seemed to have noticed what had happened was JoJo, who had looked at her with an enquiring expression as she had climbed back into the SUV. Lizzie had just shaken her head at him, and he’d nodded in reply, seemingly content that all was well.
The SUV inched forward and approached the gate just as the first car in the convoy triggered a floodlight, lighting up the house. Lizzie looked at the white walls, interspersed with windows at regular intervals. There appeared to be bars on the windows, and Lizzie could see what looked to her like a series of pockmarks in lines that ran across the walls. The floodlight had also exposed the coils of barbed wire on top of the surrounding wall.
“Bloody hell,” Jack had said in the seat next to her, craning his neck. “It looks like a prison.”
“It’s to keep people out,” JoJo said from the front seat. “Not to keep them in.”
The house was located around ten miles south of Freetown, in a place called Kissy Town. Once they had finally made it across Tagrin Bay on a ferry that had bobbed about like a cork, much to Jack’s dismay, the drive from Freetown had taken just over an hour. Lizzie hadn’t been able to see a great deal through the windows of the vehicle, to her disappointment. One thing there wasn’t a great deal of in Sierra Leone was street lighting. Other than occasional glimpses of roadside shacks with dim bulbs, she’d not been able to get a sense of the place at all.
When Lizzie stepped out of the car, the heat and humidity were back with a vengeance, the earlier storm long gone. The air smelt of wood smoke and peat, and the loudest sounds she heard when the engines were silent were the chirping of insects, the calls of birds, and the low hum of a generator.
Followed by Obi and Jack, Lizzie made her way to the front door, where Claire was standing.
“If you make your way into the kitchen, I’ll give you all the grand tour.” Claire looked at Lizzie with a cool expression, but any sense of her earlier anger was not apparent. Lizzie walked past her and into a large entrance hall with a marble floor and stairs leading to the upper floors. “Keep going straight and through the door at the end,” Claire said.
Lizzie walked down the corridor and into the kitchen, where Divya and Isobel were already sitting at a large wooden table. Divya smiled at Lizzie when she sat down next to her.
“That was an eventful trip,” Divya said.
“You’re telling me. Remind me never to get into a car with Jack again,” Lizzie whispered.
“Why?” Divya dropped her voice conspiratorially. “What did he do?”
“Threw up all over the floor about five minutes after we left the airport.”
“Oh, no,” Divya giggled as she looked across at Jack, who had just walked into the kitchen, followed by Claire. The cohort leader crossed to a large ancient fridge in the corner of the room. Stacked next to it was a small pallet, with water bo
ttles stacked on top of it. She opened the fridge and took out six bottles before replacing them from the pallet.
“One out, one in,” Claire said as she distributed the bottles. A look of confusion crossed Jack’s face, and, not for the first time, Lizzie wondered if he’d ever been away from home before. “If you take a cold bottle out of the fridge, you put one in to replace it, Jack,” Claire explained.
“Okay, got it,” Jack replied with a slow nod of his head.
It didn’t take Claire long to show the group around the house. On the ground floor was the kitchen and a large communal lounge, filled with comfortable-looking sofas. In the corner was a large screen television.
“The reception’s a bit patchy, and non-existent when it rains, but we can get the BBC and a bunch of other channels,” Claire said before pointing at a low table in the middle of the room. “The remote lives there. No-where else.” She had a faint smile on her face when she said it, but Lizzie didn’t think she was joking.
The first and second floors were all bedrooms, with a central bathroom and toilet. Lizzie was impressed at how clean everything was. Although old and dated, the fittings were sparkling.
“Don’t use the water from the taps for anything other than washing your hands,” Claire told them. “Not even for cleaning your teeth.”
There were three bedrooms on the first floor and four on the second, which Claire allocated as they walked around. Obi, Jack, and Isobel were on the first floor, much to Lizzie’s relief. If Isobel was bothered about having to share a bathroom with two men, she didn’t show it, but Lizzie didn’t think it would be long before arguments started over keeping the facilities clean. The group dwindled as people stayed in their rooms once Claire had allocated them, and by the time they got to Lizzie’s room, it was just Claire and her.
“This is your room, Lizzie,” Claire said as she pushed the door to one of the upstairs bedrooms open. “You’ve lucked out. This is the nicest room in the house.” Lizzie looked inside the room. It was light and spacious, with a double bed in the corner made up with crisp white linen and hospital corners. There was a small desk, windows in two of the walls, and a small sofa.
“I’m surprised you’ve not taken it, Claire,” Lizzie said, careful to keep her voice light. “I’m happy to swap if you want?” It wouldn’t hurt to make an effort at reconciliation, even though Lizzie had done nothing wrong. “You are the cohort leader, after all.”
“I’m fine, thank you,” Claire replied. Her lips were thin and pressed together. “Besides, Charlotte was quite insistent that you have this room.” Then she turned and left abruptly, without another word.
50
“Can I get the keys for the armoury, please?” Titch said to the uniformed guard sitting behind the desk at Honington’s main guardroom. He slid his military identification card through a small opening in the screen. The guard took it, glanced at Titch’s photograph and then up at his face, and without a word got to his feet. Titch waited as the guard checked the list of authorised personnel allowed to have the keys to the armoury before he returned with the keys on a bunch, sliding them through the hatch before returning his attention to his newspaper. It hadn’t taken him long to check the list, as there were only a few names on it. Titch’s, Chalky’s, whoever the orderly officer that week was, and the station commander.
Except that RAF Honington didn’t currently have a station commander if the gossip Titch had heard over breakfast was true. According to a couple of JNCOs sitting near Titch that morning, the scuffers had picked them both up at lunchtime yesterday. Then, later on in the afternoon, someone out for a run had apparently seen the station commander’s wife hurriedly packing bags and children into their car before speeding off.
When Titch got to the armoury, Chalky was leaning up against a sign that prohibited smoking anywhere within twenty metres of the building.
“Took your bloody time,” Chalky said, as he flicked his cigarette butt into some long grass next to the path.
“Sorry, Chalky,” Titch replied. “The bloke in the guardroom wouldn’t stop talking.”
Titch unlocked the doors to the armoury and swung the heavy metal door open.
“You hear about the station commander?” he said to Chalky as they walked into the building. It smelled musty, as it always did. Armouries weren’t allowed to have windows. Titch locked the door behind them.
“I did, yeah,” Chalky replied, crossing to the kettle and flipping the switch to turn it on. “And the SWO as well. You hear about that?”
“No, what?”
“The scuffers took them both. OC Base must either be shitting herself or rubbing her hands together at the opportunity.” The Officer Commanding Base Support Wing was the station commander’s natural second in command, but Titch had never met the woman.
“Bloody hell,” Titch said. “I wonder what they’ve done.”
“I would say each other,” Chalky replied with a grin. “But that’s allowed these days. Not like back when I was your age. We used to chuck women out when they got pregnant back then as well. Different times, Titch. You don’t know how good you’ve got it. Even racism was allowed.”
Titch looked at Chalky carefully, wondering what he was going to say next.
“I’ve been thinking about the other day,” Chalky continued a moment later. “What you said was bang out of order, but I’m not going to write you up for it.” Titch was just about to thank him when the armourer cut him off. “But, if I hear a single squeak from you about that sort of nonsense, you’ll be on a charge.” Chalky tapped the side of his head with his index finger. “Keep it in here, understand?”
An hour and a half later, after three cups of tea each, they had finished their morning checks. Everything was present and correct, as always, and Titch was just about to make them both a fourth cup when there was a knock at the hatch set into the wall of the armoury. Titch glanced up at the clock. The first bunch of weapons weren’t due to be issued through the hatch until after lunch.
“You carry on making the wets, I’ll tell whoever that is to fuck off,” Chalky said, getting to his feet with a scowl. He returned a few moments later with a much more serious expression. “It’s for you, Titch.”
“Who is it?”
“Some bloke called Corporal Green.”
“I don’t know a Corporal Green.”
“He’s from SIB.”
Titch drew in a sharp breath at Chalky’s reply. The Special Investigation Branch, part of the military police, was not known for making house calls. Was it about the fire? How could they be here so soon when he’d been so careful?
“I’ve done nothing wrong, if that’s what you’re wondering,” Titch mumbled as he made his way to the hatch, his heart hammering in his chest. When he looked through it, he saw a heavily built man wearing a suit outside. “Hello, mate. I’m Corporal Hunter. You after me?”
“I need to speak to you in private, preferably not through a hatch if that’s okay with you?” Titch knew it wasn’t a question.
“I’ll be two minutes,” Titch replied, closing the hatch. He told Chalky that he needed to nip out for a while. Technically, there were always supposed to be two people in the armoury at any one time, but Chalky wasn’t bothered about the rule, so neither was Titch. A few moments later, Titch was sitting on a picnic bench outside the building. The fact that the man from SIB was alone, and hadn’t arrested him the minute he’d walked outside the building, had reassured Titch somewhat that he wasn’t here about the fire after all.
“So, Corporal Hunter,” the police officer said. He was about Titch’s age, and a similar build. “My name’s Chris Green. First thing I need to say, mate, is that you’re not in any bother.” He opened a small notebook with one hand, the other was holding a pencil. Titch was waiting for him to lick the pencil like on the telly, but he didn’t.
“My name’s Titch,” Titch replied, breathing a sigh of relief. “But what does the SIB want with me?”
“You were picked
up the other night after climbing over the fence, is that right?”
Titch nodded. There was no point in trying to deny it. “I was, yes. Had a few drinks with the lads and it just got high spirited, that’s all.”
“Which lads?” Green asked, giving Titch a stern look.
“Um, most of the boys from the block,” Titch replied. “I’ve only just been posted in. I don’t know their names.”
“You were naked.”
“Like I said,” Titch said, trying a laugh, “high spirits.”
“How did you get on the other side of the fence?”
“I climbed over.” The look on Green’s face at Titch’s response was disbelieving at best, angry at worst.
“Bollocks,” Green said. “You got drunk, climbed over the fence, and then climbed back again?”
“That’s what happened. It was a dare.”
“That’s bollocks,” Green repeated himself with a sigh. “Look, come on, Titch. We both know what game we’re playing. I know exactly what happened, and they’re not going to know you gave us their names. You were injured if I understand it, right?”
“They’ll know it was me if I tell you who it was,” Titch replied. “Who else would it be?” There was no way he was giving this copper anything. If word got out, that would follow him round for the rest of his career, and Titch had few enough friends as it was.
“What was all that about?” Chalky asked as Titch walked back into their small crew room a few moments later. Titch noticed he’d made himself a cup of tea, which he’d nearly finished, but not one for him.
“Jack brew, is it?” Titch said, nodding at the mug in Chalky’s hand.
“I didn’t know how long you’d be, did I?” Chalky replied. He made no effort to make Titch a cup. “What did the scuffer want?”
“There was some sort of incident the other night near the block,” Titch replied as he threw a tea bag into his mug. “Wanted to know if I’d seen anything.”
Enemy Within: A heart-wrenching medical mystery (British Military Thriller Series Book 3) Page 19
