The Dead Lie Down (Adam Lennox Thrillers: Book One) (14 page)

"The Two Ronnies."

Gerry spotted the challenge immediately.

"Only Fools and Horses."

"Porridge."

"Frost."

"Clarence."

"Open All Hours." Chimed Gerry with a grin that implied 'Checkmate'.

Adam frowned deeply. "That's cheating. They were both in that."

"But I thought of it first so I get the points."

The pain may have become excruciating had they not, at this point, arrived at
the 'Cat and Litter'. Until recently a 'spit and sawdust' pub by the name of
'The Dog and Bone', the landlord had given way to the fashion for more
avant-garde names. The regulars weren't sure that he had grasped the concept
quite correctly.

A
group of newspaper hacks were gathered around the bar, looking as if they'd done
an all-nighter on the Sunday editions, having a quick pick-me-up before
disappearing to try and remember what their family looked like. The barman
cleaned the mirror on the wall behind the bar and ignored the barrage of witty
banter being levelled at him.

As the change of name hadn't been accompanied by a change of decor, the old
fashioned high-backed partitions still separated most of the bar into stalls and
they found Barry Sutton, already half way through a pint of something black. A
fresh round and introductions followed.

Barry Sutton was not your archetypal newspaperman. Tall, slim bordering on thin,
hair once black now greying inconsistently. His glasses perched on the end of a
prominent beak-like nose. He reminded Adam of a Ralph Steadman cartoon
caricature.

Barry, having polished off the first pint, got down to business.

"You wanted to know about Granger Bartlett's accident. Is that right?"

"That's right. Anything that seemed out of the ordinary. Tell me what happened."
Adam replied.

"On the face of it, nothing much to tell. Bartlett had been out to dinner with
some friends in the next village. Lord of the Manor it was I think. Anyway, he'd
had one or two by all accounts, although his host swears he was sober as a
judge." There was a pause whilst a mouthful of liquid was despatched down
Sutton's throat. "Round midnight, one o'clock-ish he sets off for home, just him
in the car. Five miles later the car fails to take a sharp right hander, leaves
the road and dives into a dell, hitting a huge oak at full speed. Bits of the
car everywhere according to the reports. The whole thing goes up in flames
because the tank was full, he'd filled up that afternoon. Anything bigger than a
postage stamp was burnt to a crisp."

"Including the body?" interrupted Adam.

"Especially the body."

"How much coverage did it get at the time?"

"It was a big story for a very short time. You can imagine, someone as well
known as that created some interest in business circles. The story ran for over
a week, covering the accident investigation, and then overnight it died."

Adam interrupted. "What do you mean it died?"

"Just that. One minute still taking up a quarter page, the next minute, zip. No
reason, just as if the editors had been told to pull it."

"What about the police investigation?"

"By all accounts it was progressing as you would expect it to. They were making
press statements as normal and then something clammed up."

"What do you mean."

"It's difficult to describe, more 'reporter's nose' if you like. It was as if
the whole thing was being orchestrated. Information came very neatly, very
tidily packaged. Questions answered before they were asked. Interest died very
quickly after that."

"What was the final outcome?"

Sutton wrinkled his nose, almost losing his glasses in the process. "Coroners
verdict - Accidental Death."

Gerry put down his pint. "You don't believe it then."

Sutton leaned forward conspiratorially." Not a word of it. Classic cover-up if
you ask me."

Adam leaned forward to meet him. "Why?" He breathed.

"Nothing was found wrong with the car. There were no drink or drugs in him at
the time and the car was doing the safe speed limit before it left the road, ran
down the embankment and hit the tree. No skid marks. It just doesn't stack
up."

"So what are you saying?"

"Murder or suicide is my guess. Granger was under a lot of pressure apparently,
no one knows why. There were no suicide notes that anyone found. It wasn't
impossible that some business rival had him run off the road. He was getting a
reputation for ruthless take-overs, making himself plenty of enemies in the
process."

"Was Granger the kind of man who would use suicide as a way out?"

A
pause as Sutton lubricated his throat with the second pint.

"No, not likely. Strange thing. There was a strong rumour that Granger had taken
over a million out of his personal account two weeks before his death. The
million was never traced."

Gerry paused in mid swallow. "What do you reckon. Bribes or blackmail
payments?"

"Dunno."

Adam finished his Ginger Beer and Lime and then explored a different avenue.

"Who identified the body?"

"Granger's personal manservant. Granger's wife was already dead. Son John was
abroad on a school trip." Sutton paused. "Must have been a difficult job,
identifying the body burned as it was."

Adam considered for a moment. "Can you do one thing more for me. Can you find
out what was happening in Ireland in the couple of months running up to
Granger's death?"

Sutton shrugged. "Sure."

Gerry turned to Adam. "You still think that Granger's and John's deaths are
linked?"

Adam nodded. "I'm sure of it. I don't know how and I don't know why, but I'm
sure of it. Publicists' nose. He grinned. "The question is why did Granger have
to die?"

Gerry and Adam made to leave when Sutton cleared his throat meaningfully. They
sat back down again. Sutton looked at Adam.

"I recognised your name. You're the one that got shot up in the tank in Iraq,
aren't you? I covered the story here. Friendly fire wasn't it? Shot up by our
own side."

The roof was green. The bed
was as hard as nails and the nurses were all beautiful. That was how it seemed
anyway. He could still vividly remember the sand in his mouth and the heat of
the sun on the back of his head when he came to. And pain, lots of pain. And
struggling to move with a leg that wouldn't work, eyes that couldn't see and
ears that couldn't hear. He had eventually managed to roll over and through one
eye see the devastation around him. In the vast Iraqi scrub the remains of his
Challenger tank lay in pieces around him, gouts of smoke and flames still
billowing from the ruptured diesel tank. As his sight improved he noticed, some
five or six feet away, a leg, blackened and torn. In a moment of absurdity he
looked down to see if it was one of his but thankfully no, his were still
attached.

But blood was coming from
somewhere, he could feel it sticky on his face and hands. He scanned the area to
see who else had survived but as his memory came back to him of the moment the
shell had struck he knew that no one else could have survived the detonation
inside the hull of the tank. That he had survived this far was in itself a
miracle.

He detected the roar of
Challenger engines approaching, the rest of the unit moving in fast in support
and before long voices and hands started to arrive, distant and indistinct. As
he lost consciousness more explosions echoed in his brain as the remains of his
tank blew itself apart.

And now here he was in the
field hospital, full of morphine and God knows what else. Still couldn't hear in
one ear and the other was still muffled. One hand was covered in bandage. He
hadn't seen it but the doctors told him he had lost a finger, torn away by
flying shrapnel., which was strange because he was sure he could feel all ten
fingers. Two others had been sown back together but bizarrely the other hand
wasn't scratched at all.

He hated the smell of
hospitals, the standard smells of disinfectants, unwashed bodies and canteen
food. He might be in the middle of the God-forsaken desert but the smell was
there just the same.

He brought his good hand up to
the bandages covering one half of his face where flying burning metal shards had
sliced open his cheek. He longed to scratch the itch. He looked past his leg in
traction, broken in two places apparently, and tried to attract some attention.
The burns on his chest were giving him hell.

But he was the lucky one. As
the tank Commander sitting in the open turret he had been blown clear when the
incoming shell had struck. Down in the hull the driver, the loader and the
gunner had no chance against the devastating percussive detonation of the shell
and died instantly not even realising what was coming. The tank's own ammunition
and the massive diesel tank had made short work of what was left. The others had
told him that you could have posted the whole thing through a standard letterbox
afterwards. No need for the recovery vehicle, only a brush and shovel.

Someone was playing pop music
over the tannoy. Anger welled up inside him. Didn't they know that people were
going through hell here? Didn't they realise? Uncontrollable tears started to
stream down his face, soaking bandages, and he didn't care. He didn't care about
anything.

He wished he had died as well.
Rationally he knew there was nothing he could have done, and he didn't subscribe
to the captain going down with the ship unnecessarily, but he had lost his best
friends in that tank and he didn't deserve to outlive them.

He managed to attract
attention at last and the murmur of background conversation died as a doctor
came over to him. He looked as if he was only out of short trousers but Adam had
come to respect him all the same in the three days he had been there.

And the MPs had arrived, as
they always did, to address security issues and issued stern warnings. The
Regimental CO had also arrived and warned him that he had achieved celebrity
status. There was an investigation as to who had fired the shell because it sure
as hell wasn't the Iraqis. In the meantime say nothing, to anyone.

At that point he had wanted to
give up, but despite everything, something deep inside him rebelled at the
thought, and so now he was going out on the next medical helicopter to Kuwait
and from there back to UK.

As the saying goes 'for him
the war was over'.

Adam looked at Gerry and then back at Sutton. His voice when he spoke had ice on
it.

"They never found out one way or another."

"But the Iraqis were nowhere were they?"

"I can't talk about it."

"Can't or won't."

Adam leaned quietly over the table and grabbed Sutton by the lapels. "Three of
the best men I've known died in that tank, the most horrific death you can
imagine and I'm not going to sully their memories by discussing it with you." He
paused. "Do I make myself clear?"

He let him go.

"So you don't want to know what else I found out then," said Sutton,
straightening his jacket, the makings of a sneer playing around his mouth.

Adam stopped. "What do you mean?"

"I looked into the circumstances around your wife's death whilst I was at
it."

Adam stiffened, going quite still. "And?" he asked guardedly.

"There were funny aspects to that as well." Sutton replied tentatively.

Adam motioned for him to continue, whilst privately debating whether he wanted
to hear it or not. Was this going to help, or just confuse the issue? Would it
help him overcome grief or cause him to wallow in it? He was getting fed up of
that coin.

Sutton watched him carefully, aware of the potential minefield he was treading
through.

"There were inconsistencies that the police couldn't quite resolve. The internal
police report remarked on the lack of skid marks on the road but came to the
conclusion that the driver, presumed drunk or under the influence of drugs,
didn't see her and therefore didn't brake at all." He hesitated, watching for
any reaction on Adam's part.

He continued, "this didn't hang together with the fact that the car had stopped
immediately afterwards. There were conflicting witness reports as well. Did you
know that Brad Wilding was the last person to see your wife alive?"

Adam shook his head, afraid to say anything.

Sutton drained his glass as if considering his words carefully.

"A colleague of your wife's claimed that she was seen walking out of the
building with a sheaf of papers. Wilding maintains that she had no paperwork
when he saw her get into the lift. The first police on the scene after the
accident swear that there was no paperwork either on the body or in the
vicinity."

Adam interjected." Is it possible she left them at reception on the way
out?"

This time it was Sutton's turn to shake his head. "The night porter said no. He
couldn't remember noticing any paperwork or not. Chances were that he was
asleep, or buried in a book."

Adam rubbed his eyes as if to make sense of it all.

"Was any paperwork reported missing?"

"No."

"Why didn't this come out at the inquest?"

"Pass. I suppose that it didn't seem important. By that time an accident verdict
was almost a foregone conclusion."

Adam sat motionless for a minute or more. He didn't know what to make of it but
he needed to get out.

On leaving the pub Adam stopped and took several lungfuls of fresh air, needing
to step back and assess what he had heard.

He turned to Gerry. "What are the chances of two unexplained deaths related to
the same company?"

Gerry zipped up his jacket against the cold air. "Probably higher than you
think. Don't read too much into it Adam. You're too close to be objective and
you'll draw the wrong conclusion. The chances are Fran's death was just what it
appeared to be, a hit and run drunk in the wrong place at the wrong time."