TWENTY-TWO

'Are you sure he's dead?' Chipchase asked as Harry stretched a shaking hand across the pool of blood to feel for a pulse beneath Dangerfield's ear. But Harry already knew he was not going to find one. The angle of Dangerfield's head to his body told its own story. A broken neck and a smashed skull were a fatal combination.

'I'm sure.' Harry stood up and retreated to where Chip-chase was standing in the doorway.

'Bloody hell. How…'

'From up there.' Harry pointed to the landing. 'Straight down. Smack onto the floor.'

'Christ Almighty.'

'Somebody did this to him. It was no accident.'

'But…'

'I'm going to phone the police.'

'Hold on.' Chipchase clasped Harry by the elbow. 'This looks bad for us, Harry. They'll try to pin it on us.'

'What do you want to do, then? Scarper?'

'It's an idea.'

'A bloody stupid one. That would clinch it in their eyes. We have to phone them, Barry. Now.'

—«»—«»—«»—

The phone call made, they retreated to the road and waited there. Neither wanted to remain indoors. The horror of what had happened in the house held them in an ever strengthening grip. Dangerfield dead; Dangerfield murdered: a killer on the loose somewhere, identity, motive and intentions… unknown.

'He could be watching us right now, Harry. You realize that, don't you? He could be sizing us up right this bloody minute.'

'No. He's long gone. Danger was… cold to the touch. He must have died… a while ago.'

'You're an expert, are you?'

'No. I'm just saying—'

'Who's doing this, Harry? Who the bloody hell is it?'

'I don't know.'

'And why?'

'I don't know.'

'Danger was one of the good guys. Salt of the earth. He didn't deserve… that.'

'There isn't something you're not telling me, is there, Barry?'

'What the hell do you mean?'

'I mean… something that might explain what's going on.'

'I haven't the first bloody clue what's going on.'

'No?'

'No.'

'Well, that's a relief.'

'Why?'

'Because neither have I.'

—«»—«»—«»—

The police came in waves. First one squad car. Then two more. Then several white vans and unmarked cars. Lights were set up. Radios crackled into life. Men in disposable boiler suits padded in and out of the house. A photographer arrived. Then a pathologist. And, last but by no means least, Detective Chief Inspector Ferguson and Detective Sergeant McBride.

Harry and Chipchase had not been allowed back into the house. Left under the wordless supervision of a PC in one of the squad cars to await Ferguson's convenience, they exchanged apprehensive glances, shrugs and shakes of the head as the elaborate but orderly response to violent death took shape around them.

Then, eventually, the PC was ordered out. McBride took his place and Ferguson slid into the front passenger seat.

'Mr Barnett and Mr Chipchase,' he said, turning to look at them. 'Together at last.'

'We didn't move anything, Chief Inspector,' said Harry emolliently. 'It's all exactly—'

'I've heard what you've had to say for yourselves so far. You may as well know it won't wash.'

'It happens to be the truth.'

'Bullshit. A few hours ago, Mr Barnett, you claimed to have no idea where your friend was. Now I'm to understand you've had an impromptu boys' night out together. At the end of which Mr Dangerfield winds up dead. You'll forgive me if I make a connection between those events, won't you?'

'The only connection is that we came back here and found the body.'

'And we phoned you lot straight away,' said Chipchase.

'Can anyone vouch for what you were doing earlier?'

'Well…' Harry began.

'Not sure,' Chipchase finished.

'Thought so.' Ferguson drummed his fingers on the seat-back for a moment, then turned to McBride and said, 'Have them taken to the station, Sandy.'

'Are you arresting us?' Harry asked, hoping fervently that he had somehow misunderstood.

'Are we arresting them, Sandy?'

'Aye, sir,' said McBride. 'I think we are.'

—«»—«»—«»—

The ironic and remorseless circularity of life presented itself with bleak force to Harry during the largely sleepless remainder of the night. His confinement with Chipchase in the guardroom cells at RAF Stafford had led them to Kilveen Castle and the apparent salvation of Operation Clean Sheet. Now, fifty years later, their connection with Kilveen unexpectedly re-established, they were confined once more, this time to the cells of Aberdeen Central Police Station.

He had not seen Askew's body after they had scraped it off the railway line, nor Lloyd's after it had been pulled from the wreck of Wiseman's hire car. Until he had stepped into the lounge of Sweet Gale Lodge and caught his first, indelibly memorable sight of Dangerfield, lying where he had fallen, the deaths were at one remove from him, reported, imagined — but not experienced. All that had changed now. The possibility that Askew committed suicide or the car crash was an accident had been replaced by the sickening certainty of murder.

'Who's doing this?' Chipchase had asked him despairingly. 'And why?' There was no answer that came close to making sense. Yet there was an answer. There had to be.

Who? And why?

In the end, one way or another, by hook or by crook, Harry was going to have to find out.

Who. And why.