Another Life t-1

by Peter Anghelides

  ‘Lieutenant-Colonel Yorke briefed me ahead of your arrival,’ admitted Major De’Ath. ‘He told me you Torchwood people always take the extreme view. We have a saying in basic training: “If you hear hoof-beats, you look for horses, and not zebras”.’

  ‘You don’t know the half of it,’ Gwen said. ‘In my job, if I hear hoof-beats, I expect to see unicorns.’

  ‘I’m starting to understand that now.’ De’Ath took in a deep breath, and exhaled it slowly. ‘What Bee said though. That wasn’t the only strange thing. We’ve had two other deaths here recently. Two more young soldiers. They had… savage injuries to the backs of their necks. At first we thought they were animal wounds…’

  ‘… but the tooth-marks were clearly human,’ Gwen continued.

  De’Ath’s reaction told her she was right.

  ‘And from your post-mortem on Sergeant Bee, you concluded it was him that had bitten them. Murdered them.’

  The Major was plainly astonished. ‘We’ve told no one. We hardly know how to describe what happened, never mind anything else. How can you possibly know about it?’

  Gwen smiled apologetically. ‘Bizarre is my strong suit.’

  SEVENTEEN

  It was surprising how long Jack had managed to keep his temper, reflected Toshiko. The Lieutenant-Colonel had been unable to get him even to raise his voice, despite his continued evasions and obstructions. Jack had just nodded a curt agreement when told that he and Toshiko would be accompanied around the barracks at all times by an armed guard. Faced with a walk across the parade ground in the pelting rain, Jack had merely rolled his eyes, pulled up his collar, and stalked off at a brisk pace with his hands thrust deep into his pockets. What had made him blow his top was the sight of the barracks garage.

  It was spotless.

  ‘You’d better explain what the hell happened here,’ Jack raged at Private Foxton, their unfortunate escort.

  The tall blond soldier didn’t flinch. ‘Corporal Schilling was found over there,’ Foxton began politely, ‘by the Pinzgauer…’

  ‘Not my point,’ yelled Jack. He’d moved so close to the soldier that Toshiko began to wonder whether Jack might strike him. Which would have been a mistake. Jack was taller and broader than Foxton, but the young soldier held his rifle with a calm ease that told her he was not going to be intimidated, especially by an eccentric senior officer from another service. Toshiko didn’t want to be carrying Jack’s body out from the camp with a bullet through his head.

  ‘What is your point, Jack?’ Toshiko asked quietly. She placed her hand softly on Jack’s arm, not sure whether she was restraining him or reassuring him.

  Jack wheeled around, with an exasperated gesture that encompassed the whole room. ‘Look at this place.’

  Toshiko looked. In the corner opposite them, two mechanics worked on the carcass of a flatbed six-wheeler. Apart from the equipment around them, tools were neatly stacked in racks against the wall and locked behind cages. An orderly row of vehicle wheels were arranged by size and aligned on parallel rails. She could see two Land-Rovers and half a dozen trucks, all in the grim khaki of army vehicles. The screed concrete floor was swept clean. ‘They keep the place tidy,’ she joked.

  ‘Exactly!’ To her surprise, Jack was pleased with her observation. ‘After all that polite chit-chat with the base commander, we learn that one of his maintenance engineers was slaughtered by one of his training instructors. In this room. Now we’re here, and the scene’s not even secured. The first responders are long gone or buried on other duties. Look at it. And smell it.’

  Jack filled his lungs with a deep breath in. Toshiko did the same, more tentatively at first. Amid the smell of engine oil and stale sweat was a chemical scent in the background. It was the chlorine tang of bleach.

  ‘Yorke sent his clean-up crew in here early,’ continued Jack. ‘No hope of getting any trace evidence here now. No impressions, no hair or fibres. Do you see evidence of a struggle? Blood spray? Anything?’

  Toshiko shook her head. ‘And a luminol trace for blood is no use, because the bleach will overwhelm it.’

  ‘Shoulda known,’ muttered Jack. ‘Shoulda known as soon as he told us the body had been transferred offsite. Better hope that Gwen’s getting more cooperation from the MO.’

  Toshiko walked over to look at the oblong shape of the six-wheel truck, the Pinzgauer, that Foxton had indicated earlier. The bleach smell was stronger here. The unnaturally clean grey white of the concrete beneath the Pinzgauer showed little evidence of recent oil spills, mud or tyre tracks. Evidence of absence, she thought. The scene had been scrubbed clean.

  ‘Private Foxton,’ she said. ‘What else do you know about Corporal Schilling’s murder?’

  Foxton looked less comfortable now. ‘Nothing but what I was told, ma’am. Sergeant Bee smashed Schilling’s skull in because Schilling caught him stealing a truck full of equipment.’

  ‘How do you know what happened here?’

  ‘It was what Lieutenant-Colonel Yorke told us. Told those of us who caught up with Spadey.’

  ‘Spadey?’ asked Toshiko gently, trying to contrast her mood with Jack, who was still pacing up and down the garage as though working off his anger.

  ‘Sergeant Bee, ma’am. Big hands. Like shovels.’

  ‘Was the dead man a friend of yours?’

  ‘I didn’t know Corporal Schilling.’

  ‘I meant Sergeant Bee,’ Toshiko said. ‘Was Spadey your friend?’

  There was a flicker of something across Foxton’s face. Then he stiffened, and the moment had passed. ‘I saw Sergeant Bee shoot dead one of my friends.’ Foxton shuffled his feet. ‘I shot Sergeant Bee, ma’am. In the line of duty.’

  It seemed that Jack had concluded that stamping around the garage was getting him nowhere. Toshiko felt a little surge of irritation when he barged into her polite questioning of Private Foxton. ‘Nothing to see here any more,’ he snapped. ‘You’d better take us to Sergeant Bee’s quarters.’

  They made another series of short dashes through the open, skirting close to walls wherever they could in an attempt to obtain some shelter from the continuous rain. As they sprinted between two squat buildings, Toshiko looked up and saw towering thunderheads looming in the distance over Cardiff, dark and menacing.

  Private Foxton ushered them into one of the sleeping blocks, and firmly pulled the outer door closed. Apart from the three of them, the building was empty and silent, which made the contrast with the hiss of rain outside all the more marked. The occasional gust rattled rain against the windows like handfuls of thrown gravel.

  ‘This is the single living accommodation,’ Foxton explained. ‘Trainees plus some of the staff.’

  Toshiko had imagined the place would be set out as two rows of beds in a barn-like space, with a sergeant-major pacing between them while squaddies in vests stood to ramrod attention beside their neatly folded grey blankets. There would be grim communal showers, large dank rooms with wide expanses of mouldy tiles and a dozen corroded shower heads poking out of the walls.

  Instead, there was a series of smaller rooms, containing no more than four beds each, sometimes only two. Each was tidy and organised, though with none of the formality of an old-fashioned barracks. The narrow single beds had plain white headboards and neutral covers. Toshiko was pleased to find at least one stereotype was true, because the beds were all perfect: their crisp white sheets covered by grey blankets with hospital corners and pulled so tight you could practically bounce a coin off them. Next to each bed were either fitted cupboards or cheap but sturdy chests of drawers. There were bedside lamps and small family photos, sometimes of parents sitting on sofas or in gardens, while others showed young women grinning at the camera, their complexions bleached and flattened by flash photography. Shower rooms contained single cubicles in a row, and a separate room housed washing machines and dryers.

  ‘I didn’t think the facilities would be like this,’ she told their escort. ‘It’s less… well, less regim
ented than I’d expected.’

  Talking with Toshiko rather than Jack seemed to have relaxed Foxton again. ‘It’s not the institutional stuff that civilians expect,’ he agreed. ‘It’s a modern training site. For example, newcomers get their first taste of shooting a weapon on a computer-simulated firing range.’

  ‘Owen would love that,’ Toshiko smiled at Jack, who was still looking sullenly at their surroundings.

  ‘I’d still whip his ass,’ Jack growled back.

  ‘We’ve got the obvious stuff like a sports hall,’ continued Foxton. ‘But there’s also a cinema and a bowling alley.’

  ‘A regular holiday camp,’ interrupted Jack. ‘Where’s Sergeant Bee’s room?’

  Private Foxton showed them to the end of another corridor. ‘As an instructor, Sergeant Bee had a single room. I think the door may be locked.’

  Jack stepped back, raised his right leg, and kicked out savagely just above the handle. The door crashed open, taking a splintered chunk of the lintel with it.

  Toshiko followed him into the room. ‘You could have tried the handle first.’

  ‘I’m not a try-the-handle kinda guy.’

  Inside was a compact, square space. Set into the far wall was a window behind two short, half-closed curtains. Toshiko made her way across to open them fully. Greyish-white light filtered into the room through a screen of rainwater. Drawing the thin blue material back revealed a thermostatically controlled radiator beneath the sill and, in the corner, a freestanding basin on a metal frame. The bed was stripped bare, revealing a mottled mattress on which fresh blankets and sheets had been piled. Presumably, these had been delivered to Bee’s room for his return from leave, but he was never going to put them on his bed now.

  A plain, bare desk and armless wooden chair stood against one wall. Beside the desk were piled three stout cardboard boxes, one much larger than the others. One of the smaller boxes was so overfilled that it would not close, and papers jutted out of the top.

  ‘Looks like the door wasn’t locked,’ said Foxton. It was an observation, not a reproof. The soldier seemed unfazed by Jack’s violent method of entry. He held his rifle in one hand and was examining the doorframe with the other, cautious not to get splinters.

  Toshiko indicated the boxes by the desk. ‘He was all packed and ready to go?’

  ‘No,’ explained Foxton. ‘We packed those up to make space for when the new instructor moves in. Tomorrow, I think.’

  ‘You don’t waste much time around here, do ya?’ Jack flipped open the top of another box. ‘Door unlocked, no guard on the premises. New guy practically installed. It’s like Bee was never here.’

  Foxton looked at Toshiko to see what her reaction was. He seemed to be judging Jack’s reaction from her own.

  ‘You’re not even curious, are ya?’ Jack hefted the smallest box onto the desk, sat next to it, and then turned to consider the soldier. ‘You seen any battlefield action, soldier?’

  ‘Not yet, sir.’

  ‘So,’ continued Jack. ‘Soldiers at Caregan Barracks. Expendable, huh? Replaceable.’

  ‘Not my place to say, sir.’

  Toshiko studied Jack thoughtfully. ‘They’re trainees. In and out all the time.’

  The largest box contained a mesh duffel bag, black with red details and the word ‘Edge’ printed on one side. It was almost empty. Toshiko pulled out three items. She found a yellow and white snorkel with reflective tape at the surface end. Beside that, still in its packaging, was an SL951 close-up lens for a SeaLife Reefmaster camera. The third thing was a squarish, zippered bag that contained a circular black and silver device that Toshiko did not recognise.

  ‘It’s a diving regulator,’ Jack told her.

  ‘Spadey was a sub-aqua enthusiast,’ explained Foxton.

  ‘Where’s the rest of the equipment?’ asked Toshiko. ‘No wetsuit, for example?’ She explored the wardrobes, but the rails were bare, empty except for a handful of jangling metal hangers. ‘Do you mean snorkelling?’

  ‘No, I mean scuba,’ said Foxton. His voice was pensive as he started to recall something ‘Spadey was always telling us about his latest trip. Loved to take pictures of the fish.’

  ‘That would explain the lens,’ said Jack. He continued to rummage in the other boxes, and located a clutch of film negatives. ‘A bit old-school, don’tcha think? Thirty-five millimetre, not digital. So I wonder what happened to the rest of the photos? Ah, here we go.’

  Jack had found a shoebox, labelled ‘SGWBA’ in neat capitals, and filled with glossy prints. Jack started to spread them out on the desk. They had not been sorted, so out-of-focus shots were mixed with other, clearer pictures of exotically coloured marine life. Some included divers, anonymous in their dive masks, exploring underwater.

  Toshiko realised the difference between these pictures and the photos she had seen earlier in the soldier’s quarters. ‘No pictures of his family.’

  ‘Didn’t have any immediate family,’ Foxton said. ‘No known next of kin. But he went on dives with a regular group of friends.’

  ‘I’ve seen this somewhere before,’ Jack said. He passed one of the photographs to Toshiko. It showed three people suited up for a dive, all masked. The vivid colours in their wetsuits echoed the images of divers in the other photos.

  With the pile of glossies scattered over the desk, Jack eventually found a handful of pictures that included some shots of the divers without their masks on.

  ‘Well, hey!’ Jack slid one of the photographs across the desk so that it was in front of Toshiko. ‘Recognise this guy?’

  He had the defined torso that a well-fitted wetsuit gives to any man who isn’t very overweight. The figure’s wet hair was plastered to his head, darker than its usual grey. It took her a moment, and then Toshiko remembered.

  The last time she’d seen him, he hadn’t looked much like this. There hadn’t been that much of his face to recognise after it had hit the pavement. She only knew what he should look like from seeing the identity pass photo she’d obtained from the Blaidd Drwg security database. ‘It’s Guy Wildman.’

  They rummaged around in the pile for more photos.

  ‘Have you been making a mess?’ said a familiar voice from the door.

  Toshiko looked up to see Gwen coming in, accompanied by her escort, the dark-eyed soldier from earlier who looked like he might be Russian. Private Foxton had jumped into a more alert mode as he heard Gwen arriving. He now relaxed a little and nodded a greeting to the other soldier.

  Gwen kicked at some of the splinters of wood from the broken door. ‘I didn’t need John-Paul’s help to find you. I could have just followed the trail of debris.’

  ‘John-Paul?’ asked Toshiko.

  ‘Private Wisniewski,’ said Gwen. She glanced at him, and his polite smile told her that she’d got the pronunciation correct.

  Toshiko passed some of the glossy photos to Gwen. ‘We made a connection with Guy Wildman.’

  ‘There were underwater photos at his apartment. Not to mention some wildlife in his bathroom.’ Gwen was rummaging in her pocket, and brought out a small Geiger counter. She switched it on, and it clicked reassuringly at the lowest end of the scale. The two soldiers had stiffened, their eyes showing their alarm. Before they could say anything, Gwen spoke reassuringly to them. ‘Nothing to worry about. Entirely routine.’ She showed them the readings. Toshiko noticed that they didn’t seem much more reassured.

  ‘Here’s another of the three divers,’ noted Jack.

  Gwen and Toshiko looked at the photo he had held out. A trio of divers on a boat, ready to drop into the blue water behind them, their masks on and their thumbs raised. ‘We saw that picture at Wildman’s apartment,’ agreed Gwen.

  ‘Wildman, Bee, and another one,’ mused Toshiko. ‘And this could be the third. She’s quite a looker. Girlfriend?’

  ‘I don’t think “quite a looker” is likely for Wildman, do you?’ laughed Gwen.

  ‘That’s one of the other instructors,’ sa
id Private Foxton. Toshiko had been unaware that the two soldiers behind them had been looking at the photographs too. ‘That’s Sergeant Applegate. She was another sub-aqua enthusiast. Hwntw, the two of them.’

  ‘They were what?’ asked Toshiko.

  ‘South Waleans,’ explained Gwen. ‘Perhaps she was having a thing with Bee, though. The MO wasn’t very forthcoming, but he said that some of the officers thought Bee was too familiar with the other soldiers. Do you think that’s code for “shagging the staff”?’

  Toshiko passed her the photograph. ‘I don’t know. What do you reckon — would you?’

  At first, she thought Gwen might have been offended by her teasing question. As soon as she saw the photograph, Gwen’s expression had hardened. She twisted the photograph so that Jack could see it more clearly.

  ‘I would,’ said Jack, but there was little humour in his voice. ‘But then I have a thing about blondes with legs that go all the way up to their ears.’

  ‘It’s Betty Jenkins!’ Gwen said.

  Toshiko laughed. ‘The pensioner at Wildman’s apartment?’

  ‘No,’ replied Gwen. ‘The woman who claimed to be Betty Jenkins.’

  Jack leaped from the table and made for the door. He paused in the shattered doorframe and snapped a question at Foxton. ‘Where is this Sergeant Applegate? We need to see her now.’

  Foxton looked flustered for the first time. ‘I don’t know sir. Sorry.’

  ‘What kind of outfit is this?’

  ‘No, sir. I mean, no one knows. She’s been absent without leave for three weeks.’

  Jack screwed up his eyes tight and bellowed at the ceiling in frustration. He slammed at the open door with his clenched fist, and winced. ‘I wish I had time to go and slap the Lieutenant-Colonel in his stiff upper lip. He knew this and told us nothing when we got here. It’s obstruction, pure and simple.’

  ‘It’s trust,’ Gwen told him quietly. ‘It’s not right, but it’s understandable.’