‘Do we have real soldiers in the Royal Belgian Army?’
‘Come on, girl, you know we have; though not like him, not any more. When our boys go abroad these days they’re usually wearing the blue UN cap. Malou’s from another era, forty years back. I believe he may have been infantry at one point, but he told me that the later part of his career was spent in the administration of the band of the First Guides Regiment. That’s no joke either; it’s world famous. When he retired, fifteen years ago now, he came upon this lot and decided to put a bit of discipline into them.’
‘What went wrong?’
‘Don’t be so bloody cynical, nothing went wrong . . . other than age, at both ends of the spectrum. A marching band has to be sharp. When Malou took over, he brought in some new faces, guys he had known in his army days. And he formed the Musket Platoon, to give them a bit of extra pizzazz. The Bastogne Drummers . . .’
‘Why are they called that?’ the woman interrupted. ‘They’re from Brussels, not Bastogne.’
‘They were named in honour of the fallen in the great siege of World War Two. They were famous at first, but they had fallen away, until Malou revitalised them.’
‘Revitalised? They look a little shop-soiled to me.’
‘He could only do it once. The men he brought in are in their forties now, and beyond, some of them; their crispness has gone, and the youngsters . . . some of them haven’t found theirs yet. But don’t be too hard on them; they’re still not bad, not when they’re fresh at any rate. They were invited to Edinburgh, remember.’
‘They were? I thought they volunteered.’
‘No, the trip is official. It may just be too long, though.’
‘Why? Won’t they get better with all these stops?’
The journalist grinned. ‘That’s the problem. Them getting better, that’s not how it works. You take a few dozen old soldiers, free of their wives and their fancy women, you put them on buses and you send them away for ten days; before you know it, well, they’re not as fresh as they might be.’
The woman looked puzzled. ‘Why?’
The veteran shook his head. ‘I have to spell it out? The baggage compartments on those buses are very large. There’s room for all the luggage, and the instruments, and the muskets, and for still more; so they fill it up with as many cases of Stella as they can get in.’
‘You mean they get drunk?’
‘They’re Belgians, aren’t they? Our country is proud of two things above all others: its chocolate and its beer. Those boys aren’t too keen on chocolate, that’s all.’
‘But can’t the colonel keep discipline?’
Her fellow journalist frowned. ‘He’ll try, I suppose, for a couple of days: this is an important trip, and it will reflect on Belgium, and on the army. But old Auguste isn’t in the army any more, and besides . . . Did you see the colour of his nose?’
3
Deputy Chief Constable Robert Morgan Skinner peered into the goblet that he held cupped in his big hands, swirling the sweet sticky Amaretto around the sides, then watching as it settled back at the foot. Finally, he took a sip, nodded and smiled at his hostess.
‘I like this stuff,’ he said. ‘I’m not a great one for liqueurs: your VSOP and your Armagnac would be wasted on me, and I positively dislike whisky, but I do like this.’
Louise McIlhenney, nee Bankier, laughed. ‘You could have fooled me. You didn’t have any aversion to the hard stuff when I knew you at university. Whisky and dry ginger ale as I remember it.’
‘I was young then, though,’ he countered. ‘My dad took a nip now and again, so I did too, till it came to me that it didn’t make me a better person. When I realised that, I stopped.’
She looked across the space between them, her mind transporting them back twenty years and more. ‘You used to talk about your father all the time. You don’t any more. What happened?’
Bob sighed and let his head fall against the high back of the armchair. ‘He died,’ he said softly. ‘And I haven’t passed a day since then without missing him. It hurts too much to talk about him.’
‘It shouldn’t. You were so obviously proud of him.’
‘Still am. I’ll talk about him when it’s right, don’t worry. James Andrew and Seonaid . . . and Mark; even though he’s adopted and has a living granddad of his own . . . should know about him, about who he was and what he was. It concerns me when I hear of sections of family history dying with successive generations. Did I ever tell you I had an ancestor who was press-ganged to fight against Napoleon? That story was given to me by an aunt, but she never wrote it down, so now even if I was inclined to try to trace him, I would have trouble.’
‘Come on, man,’ Neil McIlhenney chuckled. ‘You’re a detective.’
‘Maybe so, but you know as well as I do . . . or you bloody should, Inspector . . . that every investigation has to start somewhere. I don’t even have a name I can be sure of, never mind a place and year of birth.’ He grinned, laugh-lines crinkling round his eyes. ‘I might still write a book about him one day, though.’
‘How can you, if you can’t trace him?’
‘I might do what a few unscrupulous coppers have done before now: falsify the evidence.’
‘Eh?’
‘Make it up. I’m talking about fiction, Neil. It’s a long way off, though; writing’s one of my retirement dreams.’
McIlhenney frowned. ‘You’re not thinking about writing your memoirs, are you?’
‘No way! I’d have to leave too much out.’
‘How’s Sarah?’ Louise asked suddenly. ‘You haven’t mentioned her all evening.’
‘Fine,’ Bob replied absently. ‘She’s fine. So are the kids; the bold boy Jazz has started school now, God help them.’
‘Fine she may seem,’ his hostess interrupted, ‘but she must still be feeling the loss of her parents.’
‘Of course. It’s been a lousy year for her: for both of us, for that matter, with my health scare as well. We’ll be glad to see the back of it.’
She smiled. ‘Well, here’s something that might cheer you up. This old lady’s pregnant.’
Bob sat bolt upright in his chair. He stared at her, mouth agape, then at Neil. ‘You what?’ he exclaimed. ‘Congratulations. Nah, that doesn’t go far enough, at . . .’ He stopped abruptly.
‘At my age, were you going to say?’ Louise teased.
‘No, of course not!’
‘Of course yes, but it doesn’t matter. We’ve taken medical advice, I’ve had every physical you could imagine and we’ve been assured that everything’s fine. I’ve been told not to run any marathons this winter, but that wasn’t on my game plan anyway.’
‘Well, that’s just great. What do Lauren and Spence think of it?’ Neil’s children from his first marriage were watching television in the room that Lauren insisted on calling ‘the study’.
‘I suspect that my daughter thinks it’s disgusting,’ said her father. ‘Kids her age think that people our age are supposed to stop all that stuff, but they’re both acting pleased.’
‘Too right. Does anyone else know?’
Louise shook her head. ‘You’re the first other than them through the wall. We’re going to tell Mario once he gets back from his New York trip.’
‘I hope you ask him to be godfather. He’ll be great.’
‘He is,’ Neil reminded him. ‘He’s Spencer’s god-dad. But if he’s to do it again, we might need to put a word in for him with Jim Gainer. I don’t imagine he’s his Church’s favourite son at the moment, being separated and everything else.’
Bob shrugged. ‘That’s between him and his conscience . . . and Maggie to an extent, although I’ve spoken to both of them and their separation does seem amicable.’ He looked his friend in the eye. ‘Between you and me, is she involved with anyone else?’
McIlhenney hesitated. ‘She’s been out with Stevie Steele a couple of times, but just for dinner; no afters. They’re friends, and that’s all. Stevie’s got a girlfriend on the go just now, anyway.’
