‘Like I say, sir, it was just routine.’
‘By the book.’
‘Right.’
‘Well, sometimes you got to put that book of yours aside.’ Milligan was quite calm, his self-importance leaving no place for anger. ‘You missed something, Hollis. Labarde was seeing Lillian
Wallace.’
‘Seeing…?’
‘Seeing. Screwing. The maid knew all along.’
‘I don’t understand.’
But he did, he just needed time to assimilate the news. It explained Rosa’s nervousness when he’d pushed her on the matter of her mistress’s bed, which hadn’t been slept in. He had read her right, she’d been holding out on him, but this realization gave him little satisfaction, for he’d utterly failed to grasp the true nature of the Basque’s involvement.
‘What’s there to understand?’ asked Milligan.
What had he thought, that the big fisherman was playing at the amateur sleuth, doing his bit for local law enforcement? Christ, had he grown so blind in the last year?
‘Hollis?’
‘Is it relevant? I mean…to the question of her death?’
‘It’s relevant, Hollis, to the fact that Labarde has been harassing the Wallaces. The girl’s brother, Manfred, he was round here earlier raising a stink.’
‘Harassing?’
‘Hartwell’s bringing him in.’
‘Bringing him in?’
‘What is it with the goddamn echo in here?’ said Milligan. ‘Yes, bringing him in. The Wallaces are worried. So would you be if you’d read these.’
He tossed a couple of files across the desk.
‘They’re Labarde’s military records. The guy’s a fucking fruitcake.’
Hollis read the files in the privacy of his office. He felt bad, soiled. No one had the right to peer into the depths of a man’s soul uninvited.
The Basque clearly felt the same way. The reports by the English psychiatrist were peppered with references to the patient’s stubborn resistance to discussion. The doctor’s building frustration leapt off the page. At least he seemed to care. There were several mentions in the handwritten notes of the brother, Antton, and his death some years before the war; but again, it was a line of discussion Labarde had refused to co-operate with.
Statements by fellow soldiers pointed to a marked deterioration in his state of mind following the First Special Service Force’s assignment to southern France. There was a detailed account of an assault by the 2nd Regiment on a German position on the Ile du Levant, wherever that was. Ironically, in the light of what happened next, Labarde’s growing recklessness and disregard for his own life had only won him more accolades.
Labarde claimed to recall nothing of the incident near the Italian border that had ended his war and almost his life, but there were enough other testimonials to piece together the sequence of events. Labarde had been out scouting German positions in the mountains just back from the coast when some kind of fire-fight had erupted and he’d called in an artillery barrage. When the rest of his squad arrived on the scene, they found him badly wounded by shrapnel, barely alive. The Germans were all dead—from gunshot wounds. It was possible that other Germans had retreated before the barrage hit, but there was a chilling statement from a lieutenant that suggested otherwise. He had been watching from across the valley through his field glasses, and he described how he’d seen Labarde climb to the top of a large rock on the spur and just stand there in the open, facing the incoming shells. Everything pointed to Labarde killing the Germans then calling in the barrage—right on top of himself.
Hollis closed the files and lit a cigarette. He had heard of men losing it in combat—shell-shock, battle fatigue— catchphrases known to all. But this seemed different, more like a gradual heaping up of war, pressing down on a man, buckling him slowly. He reached for parallels in his own life, but there were none. What had he ever really seen that came close, what had he ever really done?
It was a sobering realization. He tamped out his cigarette and stared at the wall clock, the second hand ticking interminably by, hammering out the inescapable truth: he had lost the initiative, events had outrun him in the last few days while he’d been dallying around with Mary, at the mercy of his own lust like some overheated schoolboy.
Voices in the squad room brought him round. He entered as Chief Milligan was ushering the Basque into his office. Hollis caught the Basque’s eye, but there was no sign of recognition.
‘What’s going on, Tom?’ asked Bob Hartwell.
‘I’ll tell you later,’ he said, entering Milligan’s office.
His earlier display of ignorance, stupidity even, had earned him the right to watch the great man at work.
Milligan went in hard, way too hard. There was no teasing, no coaxing, no insinuation designed to unsettle; he just slapped it on the table like a side of meat.
‘I’m not sure I know what you’re saying,’ was the Basque’s response.
‘I’m not saying anything, I’m asking.’
‘You mean, why did I keep quiet about my involvement with Lillian Wallace?’
‘What else do you think I mean?’
