‘Private Foxton,’ she said. ‘What else do you know about Corporal Schilling’s murder?’
Foxton looked less comfortable now. ‘Nothing but what I was told, ma’am. Sergeant Bee smashed Schilling’s skull in because Schilling caught him stealing a truck full of equipment.’
‘How do you know what happened here?’
‘It was what Lieutenant-Colonel Yorke told us. Told those of us who caught up with Spadey.’
‘Spadey?’ asked Toshiko gently, trying to contrast her mood with Jack, who was still pacing up and down the garage as though working off his anger.
‘Sergeant Bee, ma’am. Big hands. Like shovels.’
‘Was the dead man a friend of yours?’
‘I didn’t know Corporal Schilling.’
‘I meant Sergeant Bee,’ Toshiko said. ‘Was Spadey your friend?’
There was a flicker of something across Foxton’s face. Then he stiffened, and the moment had passed. ‘I saw Sergeant Bee shoot dead one of my friends.’ Foxton shuffled his feet. ‘I shot Sergeant Bee, ma’am. In the line of duty.’
It seemed that Jack had concluded that stamping around the garage was getting him nowhere. Toshiko felt a little surge of irritation when he barged into her polite questioning of Private Foxton. ‘Nothing to see here any more,’ he snapped. ‘You’d better take us to Sergeant Bee’s quarters.’
They made another series of short dashes through the open, skirting close to walls wherever they could in an attempt to obtain some shelter from the continuous rain. As they sprinted between two squat buildings, Toshiko looked up and saw towering thunderheads looming in the distance over Cardiff, dark and menacing.
Private Foxton ushered them into one of the sleeping blocks, and firmly pulled the outer door closed. Apart from the three of them, the building was empty and silent, which made the contrast with the hiss of rain outside all the more marked. The occasional gust rattled rain against the windows like handfuls of thrown gravel.
‘This is the single living accommodation,’ Foxton explained. ‘Trainees plus some of the staff.’
Toshiko had imagined the place would be set out as two rows of beds in a barn-like space, with a sergeant- major pacing between them while squaddies in vests stood to ramrod attention beside their neatly folded grey blankets. There would be grim communal showers, large dank rooms with wide expanses of mouldy tiles and a dozen corroded shower heads poking out of the walls.
Instead, there was a series of smaller rooms, containing no more than four beds each, sometimes only two. Each was tidy and organised, though with none of the formality of an old-fashioned barracks. The narrow single beds had plain white headboards and neutral covers. Toshiko was pleased to find at least one stereotype was true, because the beds were all perfect: their crisp white sheets covered by grey blankets with hospital corners and pulled so tight you could practically bounce a coin off them. Next to each bed were either fitted cupboards or cheap but sturdy chests of drawers. There were bedside lamps and small family photos, sometimes of parents sitting on sofas or in gardens, while others showed young women grinning at the camera, their complexions bleached and flattened by flash photography. Shower rooms contained single cubicles in a row, and a separate room housed washing machines and dryers.
‘I didn’t think the facilities would be like this,’ she told their escort. ‘It’s less… well, less regimented than I’d expected.’
Talking with Toshiko rather than Jack seemed to have relaxed Foxton again. ‘It’s not the institutional stuff that civilians expect,’ he agreed. ‘It’s a modern training site. For example, newcomers get their first taste of shooting a weapon on a computer-simulated firing range.’
‘Owen would love that,’ Toshiko smiled at Jack, who was still looking sullenly at their surroundings.
‘I’d still whip his ass,’ Jack growled back.
‘We’ve got the obvious stuff like a sports hall,’ continued Foxton. ‘But there’s also a cinema and a bowling alley.’
‘A regular holiday camp,’ interrupted Jack. ‘Where’s Sergeant Bee’s room?’
Private Foxton showed them to the end of another corridor. ‘As an instructor, Sergeant Bee had a single room. I think the door may be locked.’
Jack stepped back, raised his right leg, and kicked out savagely just above the handle. The door crashed open, taking a splintered chunk of the lintel with it.
Toshiko followed him into the room. ‘You could have tried the handle first.’
‘I’m not a try-the-handle kinda guy.’
Inside was a compact, square space. Set into the far wall was a window behind two short, half-closed curtains. Toshiko made her way across to open them fully. Greyish-white light filtered into the room through a screen of rainwater. Drawing the thin blue material back revealed a thermostatically controlled radiator beneath the sill and, in the corner, a freestanding basin on a metal frame. The bed was stripped bare, revealing a mottled mattress on which fresh blankets and sheets had been piled. Presumably, these had been delivered to Bee’s room for his return from leave, but he was never going to put them on his bed now.
A plain, bare desk and armless wooden chair stood against one wall. Beside the desk were piled three stout cardboard boxes, one much larger than the others. One of the smaller boxes was so overfilled that it would not close, and papers jutted out of the top.
‘Looks like the door wasn’t locked,’ said Foxton. It was an observation, not a reproof. The soldier seemed unfazed by Jack’s violent method of entry. He held his rifle in one hand and was examining the doorframe with the other, cautious not to get splinters.
Toshiko indicated the boxes by the desk. ‘He was all packed and ready to go?’
‘No,’ explained Foxton. ‘We packed those up to make space for when the new instructor moves in. Tomorrow, I think.’
‘You don’t waste much time around here, do ya?’ Jack flipped open the top of another box. ‘Door unlocked, no guard on the premises. New guy practically installed. It’s like Bee was never here.’
Foxton looked at Toshiko to see what her reaction was. He seemed to be judging Jack’s reaction from her own.
‘You’re not even curious, are ya?’ Jack hefted the smallest box onto the desk, sat next to it, and then turned to consider the soldier. ‘You seen any battlefield action, soldier?’
‘Not yet, sir.’
‘So,’ continued Jack. ‘Soldiers at Caregan Barracks. Expendable, huh? Replaceable.’
‘Not my place to say, sir.’
Toshiko studied Jack thoughtfully. ‘They’re trainees. In and out all the time.’
The largest box contained a mesh duffel bag, black with red details and the word ‘Edge’ printed on one side. It was almost empty. Toshiko pulled out three items. She found a yellow and white snorkel with reflective tape at the surface end. Beside that, still in its packaging, was an SL951 close-up lens for a SeaLife Reefmaster camera. The third thing was a squarish, zippered bag that contained a circular black and silver device that Toshiko did not recognise.
‘It’s a diving regulator,’ Jack told her.
‘Spadey was a sub-aqua enthusiast,’ explained Foxton.
‘Where’s the rest of the equipment?’ asked Toshiko. ‘No wetsuit, for example?’ She explored the wardrobes, but the rails were bare, empty except for a handful of jangling metal hangers. ‘Do you mean snorkelling?’
‘No, I mean scuba,’ said Foxton. His voice was pensive as he started to recall something ‘Spadey was always telling us about his latest trip. Loved to take pictures of the fish.’
‘That would explain the lens,’ said Jack. He continued to rummage in the other boxes, and located a clutch of film negatives. ‘A bit old-school, don’tcha think? Thirty-five millimetre, not digital. So I wonder what happened to the rest of the photos? Ah, here we go.’
Jack had found a shoebox, labelled ‘SGWBA’ in neat capitals, and filled with glossy prints. Jack started to spread them out on the desk. They had not been sorted, so out-of-focus shots were mixed with other, clearer pictures of exotically coloured marine life. Some included divers, anonymous in their dive masks, exploring underwater.
Toshiko realised the difference between these pictures and the photos she had seen earlier in the soldier’s quarters. ‘No pictures of his family.’
