‘What's this all about, sir?'
`Well, Lieutenant Richards,' said Adam Arrow lazily, about you, really. You're a very important soldier. You could give my friend and me the answer to some questions that
'ave been troubling us.'
Stephen William Richards sat, straight-backed, immaculate in his brown uniform, gazing slightly anxiously across a desk, in an interview room in the basement of the Ministry of Defence building in Whitehall. Two Military Police Sergeants, who had escorted him from his base in Aldershot, stood to attention behind him, the peaks of their caps casting crescent shadows across their faces.
`My friend here,' the little man nodded to his right, 'he's a policeman, from Scotland. His name's Detective Chief Inspector Donaldson.' Suddenly he smiled. 'Bloody long ranks, these coppers 'aye, don't they?' he said conversationally. 'No wonder they must use initials.
DCI Donaldson and I are involved in the investigation of the murder of the Secretary of State and all those other people who were killed in the plane crash last week. Those people included your half-brother Maurice, I understand.'
The Lieutenant nodded, a shadow of pain passing across his face.
`Mr Noble kept quiet about your relationship when I vetted him for the Private Office job earlier on this year. I wonder why? Maybe it was because 'e was embarrassed about your run-in with the Minister and the Permanent Secretary and about your problems as a trainee equerry. Could that have been it, d'you think?'
Perhaps,' said Richards quietly.
'You're quite an athlete, aren't you, Lieutenant?'
A bit.'
`Sexual athlete too?'
`Hardly.'
`You like older women though, don't you?'
`Perhaps.'
`You like your half-sister-in-law, Ariadne. You fancy her something rotten, don't you?'
The young man flushed.
`Come on, admit it — you've always fancied her.'
He nodded, eyes downcast.
`Tell me, Stephen,' Arrow asked, 'what did she see in Maurice? They must have been an odd couple.'
`No,' said the Lieutenant, 'not always. When he met Ariadne, Maurice was a different guy.
Sure, he was serious, but he was confident, outgoing. He had had plenty of girlfriends, but they'd always been quiet types, never his equals in personality terms. Ariadne was different. He looked up to her, and as her career progressed, the higher he had to look.
They married very quickly. Maurice began to change shortly after that. He became possessive, to the point of being boring about it. From the earliest days, I knew they were headed for trouble.'
But you didn't resent Ariadne for it,' said Arrow slyly. 'You leched after her instead!'
`No, I didn't. I adored her but she was my brother's wife. End of story.'
‘For as long as your brother was alive,' said Donaldson quietly’
Richards looked at him, with sudden apprehension. 'What you mean?'
`With your brother dead, the field might be clear for you., If it weren't for Morelli,' Richards interposed. 'Anyway,' he added, with a touch of defiance, 'she's still my sister-in-law.'
`Come on, Richards,' Arrow snarled. 'Your moral code's a load of crap. You did everything for Ariadne except fook 'er, but that was only because she never asked you. If she 'ad, you'd have been in there like a rat up a drainpipe, you two-faced little bastard. You betrayed your brother just as surely as if you'd slept with her. You knew about her and Morelli, but rather than put a stop to it, you helped them by letting them use your cottage as a fuck-pit.'
He stopped and glared across the table at Richards. The young man's face was white, and a study in panic.
I know all about it, Short Wave. We've been trailing Ariadne; this morning we picked her up in Swinbrook, and him. They're upstairs now, in separate rooms, with colleagues of ours, listening to some pretty fruity tapes and waiting for some very big brass to come down from Scotland to interview them.' He paused, letting his words sink in.
`Tell us, Lieutenant,' said Donaldson, picking up his cue, `when did Morelli first learn of your relationship to Maurice Noble?'
The Lieutenant's head slumped towards his chest. 'At the time of the fuss last year,' he muttered. 'I had to fill up a personnel form for the Palace, listing next of kin. I put down Maurice's name. My MOD file hadn't been updated since my father's death.'
I see.' The policeman nodded. 'Let's talk about something else now. When Morelli put that mark on your record, didn't you think he was being harsh?'
`Yes. I threatened to appeal to the Chief of Staff, but Sir Stewart said that if I did that he'd see that the appeal resulted in my being kicked out.'
'How long after that did you find out about him and Ariadne?'
'Not long. Ariadne told me about it.'
'And when were you first asked for the keys to Swinbrook?' About the time that Maurice was given the Private Office job.'
'Who made the approach?'
'Ariadne asked me.'
'Were you offered any inducement?'
The young officer nodded. 'Yes. She said that Sir Stewart would be grateful, and that after a while he would remove the note from my record, and push my promotion through. She said that she had persuaded him to agree to review it after a year.'
About now, in fact.'
`Yes. When we met the other day, she said he'd promised to do it next week.'
Donaldson smiled sadly at him. 'Didn't you ever make the connection — that Morelli had got you under his thumb for the very purpose of furthering his relationship with your brother's wife? Or are you the sort of poor innocent who can't conceive of people being that devious?'
`Yes,' said Richards, after a while. 'I suppose I am. But I'd still have done anything for Ariadne.'
Okay,' said Arrow suddenly. 'This place is reeking of hearts and fookin' flowers. Which one of them asked you to make the bomb? Morelli or the woman?'
The Lieutenant looked across at him in blind fear. 'What do you mean?'
`You know what I mean. That plane was blown up by a device hidden in Davey's Red Box. We think that you made it. Now did Morelli ask you, or did Ariadne?'
`Neither. I don't know what you're talking about, Captain’
‘`Bugger this,' barked Arrow roughly. 'Dave — Sergeants. Leave us alone.'
The Military Policemen turned, unquestioning, and marched over to the door. Donaldson looked doubtfully at his colleague for a second, then followed them.
Left alone together, the two soldiers sat in silence for a while, Arrow staring directly across the table at Richards.
I've been in places like this before,' said the little man eventually, in a quiet, matter-of-fact tone. 'With people like you. They all expected me to beat seven different colours of shit out of them. Some of them even wanted me to. But I 'ardly ever had to. I'll grant you, there have been some cases when both of us knew that someone wasn't going to walk out of the room. But either way, even when some bugger thought he was too tough for me, I always wound up hearing what I needed to hear. Now Stephen, look me in the eye' He fixed his gaze on the young officer, and held it there, unblinking.
`Did Stewart Morelli ask you to make a device for him?'
`No.' The voice trembled slightly.
`Did Ariadne?'
`No'
‘ Did anyone?'
`Where would I have got the explosives?'
`That isn't an answer. Your regimental records are okay, but that doesn't mean anything.
You could have pulled our Special Forces trick and taken the HE out of a heavy shell, for use in covert operations. The shell gets marked down as a dummy on the live firing range.'
He paused. 'Now, did anyone else ask you to make a device?'
`No, sir.'
`Not Maurice?'
'No, absolutely not.'
Arrow nodded. He broke his gaze, as if allowing the young man a few moments rest then fixed it on him once more. `Let's talk about your brother. Did you get together often?'
'As often as we could.'
Did he ever talk about his job, since he moved into Private Office?'
`No, he didn't like to. It depressed him.'
`Did he ever talk about his wife?'
`Yes. All the time. From the earliest days, he would go on about her affairs.'
`That must have been very difficult for you, when you knew that it was true.'
`Yes, it was. But I regarded it as a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy.'
And you lusted after her yourself, anyway.' Arrow gave a short laugh, with no humour in it.
'Did Maurice ever ask you about your work, about the technical side?'
Occasionally.'
`Did he ever ask you about assembling devices?'
Richards's eyes narrowed, but he did not turn them away from Arrow's stare. 'Yes, he did.'
And what did you tell him?'
It was all conversational. I just told him the basics, that you take your HE, stick in detonators and set up a wiring circuit, to be completed either by a timer or a mechanical trigger.'
`Was Maurice a technically-minded man?'
'He wasn't an idiot; as I recall he had Physics A-level. But he always had people in to do jobs around the house.'
What did Maurice think of Colin Davey?' Arrow asked suddenly.
Richards blinked. 'He thought he was a shit. That's the thing about Maurice. He was never really cut out for MOD. Shits all over the place in the Services. Like Davey, like you — like me I suppose. But you can't be wholly nice and still be efficient in a business where the ultimate speciality is killing people.'
With the speed of a striking snake, Arrow's right hand flashed across the table and slapped Richards, open-palmed, across the face. 'True, that is. You can't be,' he said coldly. 'And don't you ever call me a shit again.'
The younger man's head snapped sideways with the force of the blow. He stared at Arrow, in surprise and fright, a red weal growing on his left cheek.
Did Maurice think that Ariadne was having an affair with Davey?'
`Maurice thought everyone was having an affair with her,' said the Lieutenant, his voice shaking. 'Except Morelli and me, that is.'
Arrow's left hand flashed out. A second slap cracked around the small room. This time Richards howled.
`That's very neat,' said the little man, with a smile that was not in the slightest amused.
'You've really put your brother in the frame for it, haven't you? And you reckon I'll believe that because it's the easiest option. But Ariadne still had complete access to that box.
`Now,' he said, still smiling, grabbing the younger man's right hand in his and beginning to squeeze his knuckles together. `Who asked you to make the device? Was it Morelli, or was it her?'