When Figgis finally stood up and called, “He’s gone,” to Todd, it almost came as a relief. I let a shaky breath out slowly, felt the implications sink in like heat on frozen skin, and wondered how this new death changed things.
It was at this point that Major Gilby arrived.
We heard the Skyline approaching for a good couple of minutes before the big silver-grey car snaked into view. The deep throaty growl of its exhaust rebounded through the valley and set up an echoing vibration like the onset of thunder.
Gilby pulled up fast by the side of the road and jumped out. He stalked over to Todd, demanding a situation report. Todd just waved a hand towards the barrier without a word.
When the Major went and leaned over it, he saw Figgis climbing back up the rocks towards the road, leaving Blakemore’s still figure lying in the stream at the bottom. After that, he didn’t need to be told the man was dead.
Gilby turned away and just for a second he let himself droop. Just for a second he let the mask slip and I saw the tension that was tearing him apart. The Major, I realised with no little surprise, for all his apparent icy cool, was feeling the pressure. And feeling it badly.
Then, as quickly as it opened up, the fissure was sealed. He was barking out orders for us to get back to the Manor. It was just a tragic accident. There was nothing to see here.
Sluggishly, we began to converge on the trucks. As I joined the others I watched the Major walk out the same lines that Elsa, Jan and I had taken on the road. He saw it all just as quickly – the skid marks, the broken glass – and from the way he was frowning I knew he’d put together a scenario that was very similar to our own.
So what was he planning on doing about it?
As little, it would seem, as he’d done about the ambush in the forest. If my suspicions were correct and he was behind the kidnappings, what could he do?
The Major stayed at the roadside waiting for the police and the now redundant ambulance. As we pulled away I watched him move across to talk to the elderly couple who were waiting stoically by their camper van. I had a feeling that by the time the police arrived he would have persuaded them to leave, too.
If you’re going to construct your own version of events, it’s always better not to have anyone around who might conceivably contradict you.
***
Figgis and Todd dropped us all off at the Manor’s front door. We had been posted to be doing unarmed combat in the afternoon, but even though Figgis was more than qualified to take over the class, they decided to let it drop.
Instead, they told us that after lunch we had the couple of hours to write up our survey reports on the village, while it was still fresh in our minds. By that time I’m sure the only thing that was fresh in any of our minds was the image of Blakemore’s broken body lying at the bottom of that drop.
Lunch was a sober and almost silent affair. The only noise that accompanied the meal was the clink of cutlery on china. Even Ronnie had forsaken his usual tuneless whistling as he served up dollops of pasta with meatballs.
McKenna made a reappearance towards the end of the meal, pale and subdued. He sat at a table as far away from me as he could manage, but after I’d dumped my plate onto one of the plastic waste trays I swung by where he was sitting. I quickly realised from his vague answers to the others’ questions that he was trying to make out he’d never left the Manor all morning.
“So you’ve heard about Blakemore?” I challenged.
He looked at me warily. Maybe because I could call him a liar in front of everybody else and know it was the truth. He shook his head even though it could have been the only topic of conversation.
“He’s dead. Got knocked off his bike and went off the road,” I said bluntly. “It was a long way down.”
McKenna turned paler still. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Craddock raise his eyebrows at me.
“Are you trying to make the boy faint, Charlie?” he said in that mild voice of his.
It made me pause, blinking. Then I turned and walked away.
I walked out of the dining hall and slowly upstairs, almost blindly. What was I trying to do? Take out my anger at the wilful waste of a life on the nearest person who wasn’t going to hit back?
I needed to talk to someone. More than that, I needed to talk to Sean.
I picked up the pace and hurried along the faded corridors to the dormitory. It was empty when I walked in. I went straight to my locker and switched on the mobile phone, but before I could dial a number, it rang.
A generated voice at the other end told me I had one new message and I obligingly pressed the right buttons to retrieve it.
“Hi Charlie, it’s Madeleine.” On the recording she sounded hesitant and almost breathless. “Look, I’ve got some information you asked for, some things you ought to know about McKenna and that fight he had with Blakemore. It’ll probably explain a few things. I should have told you this morning but, well, other things got in the way. Call me as soon as you can, OK?”
I sighed, suppressing my irritation. She seemed to have plenty of time to interrogate me about my relationship with Sean, so why had something like this taken a back seat?
I dialled in the number she’d left and she picked it up almost right away, as though she’d been waiting for my call.
“Charlie! Thanks for getting back to me so quick. It’s about McKenna and Blakemore—”
“He’s dead,” I interrupted.
“Oh,” she said, coming to an abrupt halt. “What do you mean? Which one?”
“Blakemore.”
“My God. How?”
“He crashed his bike,” I said, “and before you ask, no, it wasn’t entirely an accident.”
Of course, she wasn’t going to let things go at that. I explained, as briefly as possible, what we’d found by the ravine, my suspicions about the men in the Peugeot, and about the conversation I’d had with Blakemore just before he died.
“That doesn’t mean he was killed deliberately,” she said when I’d finished. I could hear the frown in her voice. “It just means somebody else was involved.”
“So why didn’t they stop?”
“People often don’t,” she said, almost gently. “That’s why it’s called hit and run.”
“OK,” I allowed, trying not to take offence at her moderate tone. “But it seems a hell of a coincidence that the guy admits to involvement in the kidnapping, tells me he can get me answers about who shot Kirk, goes off and then just happens to get himself accidentally knocked off his bike and killed by a complete stranger. Don’t you think?”
“Yes,” she agreed slowly. “It does seem a bit unlikely, I’ll grant you that.”
There was a pause while we both considered the implications.
“Anyway,” I said, “what was this news about Blakemore and McKenna’s argument the other night?”
“Well, it hardly seems relevant now, but actually young McKenna had a very good reason for taking against Blakemore.”
I went very still. “Which was?”
“Well, McKenna had an uncle who was in the Paras. He was only about six years older than McKenna, as it happens. When he came out earlier this year he decided to train to be a bodyguard. So, he signed up for a course at Einsbaden Manor and managed to get himself killed in a car crash during the first week of the course.”
Memory arrived like a camera zoom, hitting me flat in the face out of nowhere. Sean’s words back in that pub came back to me, hard and fast. “They had a pupil killed in a driving accident six months ago, and there were rumours that it wasn’t quite as accidental as it could have been.”
Suddenly, all McKenna’s edgy behaviour fell into place. His almost unhinged reaction when we were all buzzed by the men in the Peugeot that first time and his attack on Blakemore in the Einsbaden bar.