“What’s this all about, Rebanks?” I demanded. “What’s going on?”
“Why did you ask about hollowpoints the other day?” he said, ignoring my question to pose one of his own. “You asked if you’d be firing them. Why?”
“Just something somebody mentioned,” I said, wary enough to be deliberately vague.
“Who?”
“I don’t recall.”
He let his breath out, exasperated. For a moment he regarded me with his head slightly cocked, as though he couldn’t quite make up his mind if I really was innocent, or whether I was just stalling him.
“Look, Charlie, there’s stuff going on here that you can’t begin to understand,” he said suddenly then, speaking low and urgent. “Blakemore was into it and look what happened to him. You and I both know that crash wasn’t an accident, but the Major’s stonewalling.” He glanced over his shoulder, just to make sure the corridor leading to Gilby’s study was still empty.
Surprised by this unexpected confidence, I said, “Surely the local police will turn up evidence of the other vehicle.”
He gave me a withering look. “The local plod will toe the line,” he said. “What they turn up is immaterial. Gilby’s got influence. If he wants it kept quiet, that’s the way it will stay. Trust me on this.”
And how would he know that? Of course, Gilby had done it before. Kirk had died in the most suspicious of circumstances, but the school had not been put under the microscope, hadn’t been closed down. The whole matter had been dusted under the carpet.
I feigned puzzlement, tried to push aside everything Blakemore had told me right before he died. “But why the hell would the Major want to cover up the man’s death?”
“Ah,” Rebanks said, giving me a bleakly knowing look. “Isn’t that the question? Maybe what you should be asking is why he wanted him dead in the first place.”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh come on, Charlie,” he said. “You said yourself it wasn’t an accident!”
“No,” I said carefully, dismissing the doubts I’d shared with Elsa and Jan. “That’s not what I said. It could very well have been an accident. I meant it wasn’t simply down to rider error. The other driver could just have panicked and run, that’s all. And now you’re telling me that Major Gilby wanted Blakemore dead. What possible reason could he have had for that?”
Rebanks stepped back away from me abruptly, staring, and a combination of thoughts flitted across the screen of his face too fast for me to unravel any of them.
“I thought—” he began, then stopped, shook his head. “Never mind, forget it.” He turned and started away from me, but I grabbed his arm, pulled him back.
“Hang on a minute, Rebanks,” I said. “You can’t just drop that one on me and then walk away. What the hell are you talking about?”
Rebanks shook his head again, more forcefully this time, his mouth compressed as though I wasn’t going to force another wrong word out of it. “Forget it, Charlie,” he repeated, urgently. “I mean it. If you value your safety, you won’t pursue this any further.”
***
That evening we handed in our reports on the fleshpots of Einsbaden village, which Gilby warned us he would mark and return the following morning, like junior school homework. I wondered who’d be getting a gold star and who’d be getting a “See me.”
I was aware, also, when I’d finished mine that it was a shoddy piece of work and unlikely to earn me particular praise, but that was just too bad. I had other things on my mind.
Why would Gilby have killed one of his own men? And why choose such a hit and miss fashion to do it? There was always the chance that Blakemore might have avoided the ambush. Kirk’s death had been much more certain, much more precise.
Maybe Gilby had realised that he wouldn’t get away with two such obvious executions. It made it all the more important to find out what he was up to.
Just after supper McKenna had walked out of Einsbaden Manor, as he’d said he would, to meet a taxi down at the main gate. I watched him go from the dormitory window, but didn’t feel inclined to go down and indulge in any kind of fond farewells. Not many of the other students did, although I was surprised to see Jan talking to him outside the front door. Maybe she had a softer heart than she’d like us all to think behind that sharp exterior.
McKenna hadn’t tried too hard to make friends during his short spell in Germany. I doubt he was going home with answered questions. Still, at least he was going home in a seat in Economy, rather than a box in the hold.
Elsa came into the dormitory then and disappeared into the bathroom announcing her intention to soak in the bath before turning in. I didn’t want to risk being overheard, so I grabbed my jacket and the mobile, and headed back out to the woods where I’d collared McKenna that afternoon.
It took me a while to wind myself up to call Sean, but even so I had no clear idea what I was going to say when he picked up the phone. In the end I needn’t have worried.
“I know about Blakemore,” he said as soon as he came on the line. “Madeleine called me.”
I didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed. “Did she tell you about McKenna’s uncle as well?” I asked.
“Yeah. Do you think he could be our boy, or do you think the Russians took Blakemore out?”
“Neither,” I said, and I told him what had happened since I’d got back to the Manor.
“So McKenna’s claiming he saw another of the Audis near the scene, and Rebanks is hinting that Gilby’s responsible?” Sean said and there was no mistaking the incredulous note in his tone. “And you believe either of them?”
“I don’t disbelieve them,” I said. “It’s a moot point as far as McKenna’s concerned anyway. He’s packed up and left.”
“Hmm, either lost his nerve or accomplished his mission,” Sean murmured. “Take your pick.”
“I keep coming back to the fact that Blakemore admitted they had some involvement with the kidnapping and that Kirk was in on it, too.”
“We’ve been through this before, Charlie,” Sean said, rather tiredly, “he couldn’t have been.”
“Yes, he could,” I said. “He just couldn’t have been shot by Heidi’s bodyguards, that’s all.”
“He was with us all the way,” Blakemore had said of Kirk. “Salter wasn’t the one who threw a spanner in the works.”
What kind of a spanner? “Supposing Gilby’s not the one who planned the kidnapping?” I demanded then. “Supposing it was his staff who did it, and when Gilby found out he went ape-shit, and that’s when Kirk was killed?”
For a while there was silence at the other end of the line. I could almost hear the gears whirring. “It’s close,” he conceded, and just when I’d begun to feel pleased with myself he added, “But how do you explain the money Gilby’s been banking over the last six months?”
I swore under my breath.
“Quite,” Sean said. “Sorry, Charlie, but Blakemore must have been spinning you a line.”
“I didn’t get that feeling from him,” I insisted, stubborn.
“And you can tell when somebody’s lying to you?” Sean said, and there was just a hint of taunting there. “Just like that?”
“Sometimes, yes,” I threw back at him, stung. “You remember you once told me you’d never hit on one of your trainees before? Well, I believed you. I didn’t ask for evidence, I just knew.”
Oh God, where did that come from? It was the last thing that had been in my mind, but as I said it I realised it had never really been away.
A full five seconds went past before Sean spoke again.
“Well, I have to hand it to you, Charlie,” he said dryly, “you certainly know how to stop a guy in his tracks.”