Spanish Inquisition (22 page)

‘Let me make that phone call first.
Please.
'

Clare began to withdraw. ‘After you've talked to Captain Rydal and Sergeant Bush. That's a promise, Maria.'

Max remained standing, allowing Connie to take a less official pose on the bedside chair. ‘Are you anxious to call your parents?' he asked quietly.

Maria made a slight negative gesture with her head on the pillows.

‘Who, then?'

She turned her face to the wall.

‘To the father of the baby?' It was said gently, but it surprised Max who had not expected Connie to plunge straight in with something so direct. ‘You must want to talk to him very badly about how you feel now you've done what he wished.'

Silence.

‘I can't believe the hospital staff prevented you from making that call. They're usually very helpful.'

Silence.

‘Was it him you tried to call from the Poppin Eaterie?'

That brought a response. ‘How d'you know about that?'

Connie smiled. ‘It's part of our job to find people. You were still suffering from the beating you had and we wanted to help you.' Connie waited several moments before repeating the question, then added, ‘The café staff saw you make three calls without apparent success. Did he refuse to answer?'

‘He wouldn't do that,' she said vehemently.

‘Had you arranged to meet him at the Imperial Hotel?'

‘I sent a text telling him I'd be there so we could talk again.' Her dark eyes stared at Connie, ignoring the man standing well back from the bed. They were full of desperation. ‘He must've been delayed. He wouldn't have . . .' The protest died away.

‘But he did, didn't he?' reasoned Connie very gently. ‘He failed to come when you most needed him.' She let that sink in for several moments, then probed further. ‘And he won't take any calls from you. Why d'you think he's behaving that way, Maria?'

The patient's eyes were growing glassy with tears. It was clear she was near the end of her tether and starting to respond to Connie's sympathetic approach.

‘He doesn't know I've done it, because he won't speak to me. I need to tell him. Show him that everything will be back to how it was.'

‘I could take a message. You could write him a note, and . . .'

‘I did that at the hospital. They couldn't have posted it. I asked a nurse to send an email, but she obviously didn't. He would have come there if she had.'

Once more Max admired Connie's ability to coax people to reveal what they were reluctant to admit. Norton was certain soon to identify her lover, if only by inference.

‘Perhaps he was unable to. You know how orders come out of the blue sometimes. Attend a two-week course. Replace someone who's dropped out of an exercise. That kind of thing. Is he liable to get sudden transit orders?'

‘Not any more. He was wounded in Afghanistan three years ago, so he's Admin now. He's not happy about it, but he couldn't have been in
Carmen
unless, could he? And we wouldn't have found each other. I
have
to speak to him, tell him it's all right again. I
have
to.'

‘Yes, I see that. I'll try to help. Which regiment is he with?'

‘The West Wilts. Can you contact him? Get someone to tell him to call me urgently? You can
make
them, can't you? You're police.'

‘It doesn't work that way, Maria. I can certainly go and talk to him. Take a note from you, if you like.'

Max's admiration of Connie's professionalism increased further. She had not betrayed to the distressed girl that she had just given out an important piece of information, and was continuing her ‘water on a stone' technique which was slowly succeeding. He slipped unobtrusively from the room to text Tom, who was probably interviewing Sergeant Dennis Maple of the West Wiltshire Regiment. Had he been wounded in Afghanistan three years ago?

When he re-entered the ward he saw Maria Norton sobbing against Connie's shoulder while disconnected phrases tumbled from her hoarse throat. Connie signalled with her eyebrows that he should stay in the background, which he was happy to do.

‘I was
thrilled
. The baby was a part of him I'd have forever.
Forever
. I thought he'd just love that. He adored me.
Worshipped
me. He'd do anything I told him to do.
Anything
. I was his whole life. Nothing else mattered. He told me that over and over again,' the girl in the hospital bed cried brokenly.

‘But it mattered to him that he'd made you pregnant?' murmured Connie, still sending optical signals to Max.

‘He was angry when I first told him, but I knew he'd be
thrilled
when we could really talk about our future together. With our baby.'

‘But he was still angry when you met him after the last night party?'

Maria pulled away to look at Connie with the pain of incomprehension. She seemed unaware of another presence in the room. ‘He was so different,' she whispered. ‘The way he behaved. The way he spoke to me.
Shouted
. He'd always been so loving, so anxious to please me. Always afraid I'd not let him do the things he wanted when we met. I'd tease him. He loved it when I did that.' She gripped Connie's hands very tightly with her own that were shaking. ‘How could he suddenly be so different?' she begged.

‘Did he want you to have an abortion, Maria? Is that what he demanded when you met up after the party?'

There was a long pause before the answer came, and the girl sagged back against the pillows with exhaustion. ‘I tried so hard to make him understand how wonderful it was, but he was furious. He said it could be anyone's child. He'd seen me throwing myself at all the men night after night, just to make him jealous. He said . . . he said it was over. Told me to find another bloody fool. Someone like Phil Piercey, who deserved to be lumped with an anonymous bastard.'

D
ennis Maple was angry, unable to control his words and actions. He swore loudly and looked set to defy Beeny's instruction to accompany him to 26 Section Headquarters.

‘What flaming for? Some bugger been speaking out of turn?' he demanded, his square face reddening. ‘You can't just come in here and tell me I'm under arrest. What right . . .'

‘You're not under arrest, Sergeant Maple,' Beeny told him calmly. ‘We need to clarify some points in your statement, and we need to do it
now
.'

‘Statement? What statement? I've made no bloody statement.'

‘I'm here to accompany you to Headquarters, not to argue with you, and I'm getting impatient.'

‘So am I, Sonny Jim,' Maple sneered. ‘Get your act together and find the right guy who
made a statement
. The
right
guy.'

Derek Beeny took some handcuffs from his pocket and made ready to apply them and, after a swift glance at his interested colleagues, Maple said testily, ‘OK, OK, play your little game if it amuses you.' Picking his beret from the hook he pulled it on. ‘I'll sort this out with someone more intelligent.'

Having to wait in an interview room while Beeny relayed to Tom the aggressive attitude Maple was in did not improve his mood, so the irate NCO got his protest in the moment the two detectives entered.

‘This is bloody insulting! What right have you to treat me like a felon? Give me chapter and verse.'

Tom ignored that and took his time to sit and arrange a file with precise neatness on the table between them. While Maple silently but visibly fumed, Tom went through the formalities before opening the file and reading out the first part of Connie's report.

‘
When asked what time he left the party following the final performance of the opera, Sergeant Maple said it was a short while before midnight because his children were tired. His wife, Christine, supported that statement
.' Tom glanced up and felt no surprise on seeing the concern on the man's face. ‘Is that correct?'

‘What?' Maple now looked dazed. ‘What the hell is this all about?'

‘Do you stand by that estimate of when you returned to your house after attending the stage party?'

‘That woman came on Sunday afternoon when we were packing to go off for a week's break, and asked our opinion of that melodramatic tart Norton,' Maple replied belligerently. ‘That's all it was. We weren't
making a statement
, for Christ's sake. It was an
opinion
. What right had she to write it down and file it?'

‘Do you own a bronze hatchback with this registration number?' Beeny asked, showing him a computer printout.

Maple's tone subtly changed. ‘It says there that I do.'

‘So can you explain why a witness saw it parked outside the gymnasium an hour and a half after you claim you drove your family home on that Saturday night?'

‘
What
? Who saw it? He made a mistake. Couldn't have seen it there.'

Both Tom and Beeny remained silent, keeping eye contact, as long moments passed and Maple grew restless.

‘What's that bitch been saying?' he demanded suddenly.

Still the detective duo maintained their silent scrutiny.

‘Someone must have taken the bloody vehicle from outside the house. Yes, of course they did. Kids. Teens. Joyriding around the base in it for fun. Embryo thugs!'

Tom tapped a finger against the report before him. ‘Sergeant Bush states here that you and your wife were preparing to drive to Holland when she visited you on Sunday afternoon, so your vehicle was back by then?'

‘Yes.'

‘Unusually considerate embryo thugs! I've never known joyriders to return a vehicle they've stolen and driven the guts out of. They either wreck it in a smash-up, or trash it before torching the carcase.'

At that point Tom's mobile buzzed to indicate a text coming in. When he read Max's message the inquisition really began.

It took them all day trying to wrest a confession from Dennis Maple, but he was a tough nut to crack. Shortly before sixteen hundred Max received a call from Clare who said Maria Norton was asking for Connie Bush to visit her because she had something important to tell her. Within an hour the accusation of ABH against Phil Piercey had been withdrawn and transferred to Dennis Maple, who instantly denied it. However, by then the team had gathered evidence from Christine Maple, who had known her husband was having an affair with his acting partner so they had been sleeping apart for around two months.

She told Heather, who had teamed up with Olly Simpson, ‘Dennis mooned around like a pet poodle waiting for a pat from her. He'd even sit up and beg for it, I shouldn't wonder. He lived in a make-believe world, seeing that woman as a temptress he strove to satisfy. Ugh, it was sickening to see him and her living a fantasy before an audience night after night. The week in Holland was meant to iron things out between us, but it failed and he's been in a foul mood since we got back.'

In some distress she admitted that her husband had a violent temper, but added, ‘If he really did beat her up he was still acting his part as the jealous lover in the opera. He's never lifted a finger against me. Or the children. He simply grew obsessed with Carmen.'

Nobody pointed out to her that the opera has Don Jose killing the woman he is obsessed with, not making her pregnant.

After eating the meal Nora had kept hot for him, Tom settled beside her on the sofa to finish the contents of the bottle of wine he had opened on arriving halfway through the evening feeling in need of alcoholic stimulant. They had chatted lightly while he ate, one topic being that Clare had asked Nora to make her dress for the wedding.

‘Not a huge billowing affair more suited to a panto fairy queen, I trust,' he had said, munching rhubarb crumble.

Nora had shaken her head. ‘I gather she wore something like that when she married her titled husband, because it took place in a cathedral with five hundred guests and an escort of Guards officers in full fig. His family chose the dress and footed the bill.'

‘Hmm, the Clare we know doesn't seem the type to be dominated by prospective in-laws.'

‘No, but she was very young. I guess she and her parents could have been overwhelmed by the aristocracy and all the swagger of uniforms, coronets and earls in a cathedral. His mother was a real force to be reckoned with, Clare told me.'

‘Did they have a twenty-one gun salute?'

Nora made a face at him. ‘Now you're being silly. She wants a simple classic long gown in deep cream silk . . . and you're not to tell Max.'

‘We men don't waffle on about such trifling things,' he had told her airily.

‘No, you
waffle on
about footballers' antics in their hotel rooms, and the new strip club that's opened in town.'

Once they relaxed on the sofa, Strudel in her favourite spot against Nora's slippers, Tom returned to the subject of romance, and
Carmen
.

‘Their kinky relationshp went unnoticed publicly because they were acting it out in the opera. In the role of Don Jose he had to be besotted with Carmen, and insanely jealous of any other man she flirted with. She played the role too well, and he really grew besotted with her. In turn, she found she got her kicks from teasing and tormenting him.' He gave a dry laugh. ‘In a brothel he'd have to pay to be dominated and taunted, but he got it free from her.'

‘Until stark reality hit him,' murmured Nora. ‘Men forget to add possible pregnancy in the equation.'

‘Oh, birth control wasn't part of the fantasy they were living, love. Remember my telling you the Bandmaster sounded almost orgasmic in describing how realistically Norton played the role?'

‘Mmm, and you worried about your virility because you preferred feeling Christopher kick my stomach to watching her.'