Dangerous Games (22 page)

‘In what
way
was the unit special?' she asked.

‘In the only way a unit
can
really be special in the army – it got involved in some bloody awful engagements with the enemy, and it survived the experience.'

‘But that must have been true of many other units as well.'

‘You're right. But no other unit got into as
many
engagements. And no other unit came out of them as unscathed as Matthews' Marauders did.'

‘Unscathed?' Paniatowski repeated. ‘What do you mean by that? Without casualties?'

‘Partly that,' McCoy agreed. ‘But there are other ways of being wounded, apart from being hit by a bullet.' He paused to take another swig of his beer. ‘You can't really imagine what it's like to be caught in an ambush, unless you've experienced it yourself. You feel shattered when it's over. You know for a fact that your nerve's gone, and you don't think you'll ever get it back again. You usually do get it back, of course, but that takes time. Which is why I'd never even think of sending a unit out on patrol again for at least a week after an ambush – unless that unit happened to be Matthews' Marauders.'

‘They were
that
impressive?' Paniatowski said.

‘They were the best. But they also had what Napoleon thought was the most important quality in his generals.'

‘And what quality was that?'

‘Luck! But even their luck didn't last for ever. They blundered into an ambush one day, and Jack Matthews was killed. And then, the very same evening, Mark Hough fell out of the back of the Land Rover, and almost under the wheels of a lorry. The army investigators said he was lucky – there's that word again – not to have been killed, but I don't know whether he considered it lucky, because it must have been hard for a man who'd been as active as he'd been to be told that he'd never walk again.'

‘How did the accident happen?'

‘He was drunk as a skunk. They all were. They'd been out holding a wake for their fallen comrade. Can't blame them for getting drunk, though the Red Caps
could have
blamed them for stealing the Land Rover that Private Hough fell out of, if they'd had a mind to.'

‘They
stole
a Land Rover?'

‘Well, that's maybe a bit harsh. It was more like borrowing it without first getting permission – but even that's still a fairly serious offence under Standing Orders.'

‘Were they punished for it?'

McCoy shook his head. ‘No, for once the army chose to look the other way – to temper justice with mercy, as you might say. Everybody knew they'd taken Corporal Matthews's death hard, and what with Mark Hough getting crippled as well, it would have been almost inhuman to lock the rest of them up in the glasshouse. So what the authorities did instead was to ship them out immediately. All except for poor bloody Private Hough, of course. It was months before they dared move him – and even when they did, they had to fly a special ambulance plane in from England.'

‘Have you got a phone?' Paniatowski asked.

‘Over there on the wall.' He smiled. ‘What's the matter? Missing your boyfriend all ready?'

Paniatowski smiled back. ‘How did you guess?' she asked.

And then she went over to the phone and rang Whitebridge CID.

A cloud of gloom hung over Woodend's office, and for about five minutes nobody had said a word.

Finally, it was Beresford who spoke.

‘If we could find the typewriter that the letter was written on, we could prove it was a match,' he said.

‘True enough,' Rutter said, ‘but to find it, we'd first have to know where to look.'

‘Are we all in agreement that the letter Terry Pugh received – the one he kept readin' at work – is probably an exact copy of this one?' Woodend asked.

‘Yes,' Rutter said.

‘Almost bound to be,' Beresford added.

‘So chances are that Reg Lewis got one as well. And so did the rest of the people on the list – if there
is
anybody else on the bloody list!'

The phone on his desk rang, and Woodend picked it up. ‘Yes? … Good work! … No, I don't need to write that down … Have you come any closer to finding out exactly what? … No? … Well, keep looking.'

He replaced the phone on its cradle. ‘That was Monika,' he said.

‘Has she …?' Rutter began.

‘She still doesn't know what this terrible “accident” or terrible “thing” that happened in Cyprus actually was,' Woodend told him, ‘but at least she's been able to add a couple of names to our list.'

There are six of them in the Land Rover, as it bumps its way along a dusty road at the base of the mountains.

Often, on such an expedition, they will be following up a lead provided by one of the legion of informers who operate on the island. But not this time. This foray is mainly to maintain ‘visibility'.

‘We have to show the Cyps that we're still around and have no intention of going away,' the briefing officer told them before they set out. ‘We have to show them that we're still in charge.'

‘And we have to hope that they don't notice that when night falls, we retreat behind our razor wire fences,' the men think – though they say nothing.

So the expedition's aim is not to engage with the enemy. It is simply to be visible. But if the unit does just happen to blunder across a group of EOKA terrorists, then it will be expected to do what it has been trained to do.

In the front of the Land Rover are Corporal Matthews and Private Bygraves. Matthews is unquestionably their leader, and not only because of the stripes he wears on his sleeve. The other men respect his calm and steadiness, and know the main reason the unit coheres so well is because of his influence. Bygraves, on the other hand, is much more a follower than a leader – competent enough to obey orders conscientiously, but unlikely to ever initiate any of his own.

The four men in the back of the Land Rover are playing a favourite game of theirs, which is called, ‘What if?'

In many ways, it is a childish game, or at best an adolescent one. They know this, but are also silently aware that its very nature is perhaps its greatest strength. Because it enables them to face their fears without admitting that they are real fears at all – because it allows them to discuss these gut-churning concerns as if they were of no more importance than youthful pimples or squeaky voices.

‘What if?' Murray begins. ‘What if one of us was killed by an orthodox priest?'

‘That's a difficult one,' Pugh says.

‘No, it isn't,' Lewis says scornfully. ‘If he kills one of us, he's the enemy – and if he's the enemy, he deserves to die himself. But him being a priest would make a difference to how I killed him.'

‘How would it make a difference?' Murray asks.

‘I'd make sure he died really slowly,' Lewis says with some relish.

‘Why?'

‘Because I used to be a choir boy, and that taught me to hate all priests.'

The others are slightly uncomfortable with the last comment, but then they often uncomfortable with the things that Lewis says. They do not think about their future beyond the army very often, but when they do, none of them really sees Lewis as being a part of it.

‘Say the priest didn't actually do the killing,' Mark Hough suggests. ‘Say he just facilitated it.'

‘Facilitated it?' Lewis repeats. ‘What the bloody hell does that mean?'

‘Say he didn't do it himself, but still allowed it to happen.'

‘You mean, say he led us into a trap?' Pugh asks.

‘Either that, or while he didn't have anything to do with setting it up, he didn't warn us that there was a trap.'

‘He's still guilty,' Lewis says. ‘He still has to die.'

‘I'm not so sure of that,' says Murray, who tends to take a wider view of most things than any of his comrades do – who sometimes seems capable of looking down from a great height at the situation they all find themselves in.

‘Not sure!' Lewis repeats, contemptuously

‘This is his country, after all.' Murray argues. ‘He didn't invite us here, and I don't see why he's under any obligation to protect us.'

‘We're British soldiers,' says Lewis, who has no time for the finer points of debate. ‘And you're either for us, or you're against us.'

A girl, who looks no more than fifteen years old, suddenly appears at the side of the road and waves frantically at them to stop.

‘Men are here!' she says, when the Land Rover slows to a halt and draws level with her.

‘Men?' Corporal Matthews repeats. ‘What men?'

‘In village.' She points to a cluster of red-tiled houses about half a mile away. ‘With guns,' she adds urgently.

‘Are these men locals?' Matthews asks.

‘Not understand.'

‘Do you know them? Are they from the village?'

The girl shakes her head. ‘No, not from village. Strangers. They come to rob our food.'

‘They must be running very short of supplies in the mountains if they're prepared to take a chance like this,' Matthews tells his men. He turns back to the girl. ‘Are they still in the village? Or have they gone?'

‘Still in village,' the girl tells him. ‘Go to taverna. Have many drinks.'

‘How many of them are there?' Matthews asks.

The girl holds up her hand, and shows him three fingers. ‘That many.'

‘So there's three of them, and they're probably half-pissed by now,' Matthews says thoughtfully. ‘What does your village look like?' he asks the girl. ‘Can you draw us a map?'

The girl nods. She picks up a twig, and begins scratching in the dirt.

‘Street,' she says, pointing to two parallel lines she has made.

‘Understood,' Matthews said.

She draws a rough rectangle half way along the lines. ‘That is … I don't know words.'

‘The village square?' Matthews suggests.

‘Yes, square. Taverna is on square. Men in taverna.'

‘This is what we'll do,' Matthews tells his men. ‘If we drive any closer, they'll probably hear us, so we'll leave the vehicle here with Bygraves, and the rest of us will make our way into the village on foot. Pugh and me will approach it from the west, the rest of you from the east. We'll converge on the
taverna in exactly twenty minutes. With any luck, we'll capture these bastards without a shot being fired. Have you all got that?'

The men nod.

‘Once we've got the Cyps in custody, I'll fire a single shot in the air,' Matthews tells Bygraves. ‘That's the signal for you to slam your clog down on the accelerator, and get to the village as fast as you can. Drive straight to the square. We'll load up the prisoners, and be out of there before anybody knows what's happening.'

‘What if there's more than one shot?' Bygraves asks, worried that he might find himself in a situation where he alone might have to take a decision.

‘If there's more than one shot, it probably means that something's gone seriously wrong, my old son,' Matthews tells him calmly. ‘In which case, we'll want you there even faster.'

The sound of the shot comes much earlier than it should have done, and it is rapidly followed by several more.

‘Oh my God!' Bygraves moans, as he puts the Land Rover into gear, and presses down hard on the accelerator, exactly as the corporal has told him to.

It is hard to be sure of exactly what it is he is hearing over the roar of the engine, but as he gets closer to the village, Bygraves becomes convinced that it is more shooting.

‘Please let it be all right!' he prays. ‘Please! Let it be all right!

He has reached the edge of the village. The street is empty. There are no old women sitting in their doorways on short-legged chairs, no children playing in the street. No donkeys. No dogs. There is not even a chicken – and there is never a time when there is not even a chicken.

Everybody knew this was going to happen long before it actually did, Bygraves thinks.

Everybody but us.

He enters the square, and sees his unit immediately. They are crouched down, using the tables outside the taverna for cover, and firing across the square. But one of them is not firing at all. One of them is lying on the ground, not moving. And Bygraves' stomach lurches, as he realizes that that man is Corporal Matthews.

He slams on the brakes, and stops next to the taverna. Hough and Lewis continue to fire at the unseen enemy, but Pugh and Murray pick up Corporal Matthews and carry him to the vehicle. Once they have laid Matthews in the back, Pugh and Murray start firing again, and under the cover that provides, Hough and Lewis rush back to the Land Rover, and scramble in.

‘Go, go, go!' Hough screams.

Bygraves slams the Land Rover into reverse, and as the tyres scream their protest, backs down the street as fast as the engine will allow. Only once they are clear of the village does he change gear, performing the tightest three-point turn he has ever managed, and speeding away.

The men in the back of the vehicle are huddled over Corporal Matthews. But they are not trying to help him – because he is beyond that.

P
riscilla Charlton looked up from the report she was studying on her desk, and smiled prettily at Woodend.