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He started singing, softly, under his breath, ‘I’m a puppet just a puppet on a string.’
Jessie could sense that Callan was getting frustrated. His hands were clenched into fists on the tabletop, his legs jiggering underneath it. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the tense set of his jaw. It would be easier for him if Starkey refused to talk at all. At least he could then assemble evidence from other avenues, without having the water muddied like this. But it wasn’t so strange to Jessie. She had seen it a number of times – both before joining the Army and after. Patients who loved the wordplay, saw it as a game. Didn’t want to be tied down, or couldn’t be. Their heads a jumble of disassociated ideas, memories drifting loose, thoughts they couldn’t straighten into anything intelligible. Which was Starkey?
Callan stood suddenly, strode over to the light switch. Flicked it off, waited a couple of beats, flicked it on again. The strip light above them continued to flicker.
‘For fuck’s sake,’ he snapped, returning to the table.
‘Is that what you and Jackson were working on?’ Jessie asked. ‘PsyOps?’
Starkey smirked. ‘I thought you were PsyOps.’
‘But you were working on something with Jackson?’
‘There’s a lot of intelligence to be gathered in Afghanistan. Some things I worked on with Jackson, other things not.’ A muscle in his jaw twitched. In anguish? With stress? ‘Fucking amateurs, and that’s how we get burnt,’ he muttered.
‘Burnt.’ Her mind flitted to Major Nicholas Scott, his skin like melted treacle. Scott was attacked in Afghanistan. A long shot, she realized. ‘Did you work with Major Scott?’
‘We only overlapped for a few days,’ Starkey said.
She felt Callan shift beside her, tilt forward in the chair.
‘I heard he was a good guy, though, Scott,’ Starkey said. ‘Committed to the cause.’
‘And he got burnt.’
Starkey’s fingers were tapping out a frantic tune on the tabletop. ‘Maybe he was too committed, did too much for the cause.’ He found her gaze across the table. ‘Just a puppet on a string.’
‘Do you have nightmares, Sergeant Starkey?’
‘Nightmares. My life’s turned into a nightmare.’
He leaned forward, stretching his hands across the table towards her, palms upwards, fingers cupped slightly as if he was holding them out to God. She resisted the urge to lean back, put distance between them. She could sense Callan next to her, muscles taut, tuned to make a move if Starkey did.
‘You know what really frightens me, Dr Flynn?’ Starkey’s voice was barely more than a whisper. ‘Injustice.’
‘Are you the subject of an injustice?’
‘Why don’t you ask Captain Stiff-as-a-fucking-board Redcap here, Doctor? Because I sure as hell don’t know what he’s thinking.’
Anger rippled across Callan’s shoulders. ‘Stop playing games and tell me the truth. Why did Andy Jackson die?’
‘The truth will set you free, Captain Callan.’
‘Jesus Christ.’ Callan slammed both hands flat on the tabletop, making the voice recorder rattle.
Starkey grinned. ‘Temper temper.’
Shoving his chair back, Callan strode to the door. ‘What the fuck is wrong with the lights.’ He slammed his hand on the switch a couple of times, flicking the lights on and off. On again. Off. The frail afternoon light seeping through the window coated their faces in sepia, the colour of old photographs.
Jessie remained where she was at the table. Her gaze sought out Starkey’s; she looked him straight in the eye. She thought that his gaze might flicker, wander. It didn’t. The eyes that met hers were intelligent, astute.
‘If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine; and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free,’ she said quietly. ‘John 8:32.’
Starkey raised his hands, clapped them together, a slow, deliberate handclap.
‘Very good, Dr Flynn. I didn’t have you down as the religious type.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Though I’d like to see you in a nun’s habit.’
Jessie stared back, unflinching. ‘Convent education does wonders for religious knowledge. Sadly, we wore drab grey uniforms, calf-length, but you can dream, Starkey. So what is the truth?’
Callan was leaning against the wall by the door. ‘This evaluation is terminated, Sergeant Starkey.’
Jessie glanced over at him. What the hell was he playing at? Something seemed to have ignited in his eyes: they shone, icy white, from the slits in his face. Icy white, but unfocused.
‘I have a few more questions, Callan.’
The muscles along his jaw bulged.
She turned back to Starkey.
Callan was suddenly beside the table. Grabbing Starkey by the collar, he hauled him off the chair, slammed him back against the wall and jammed his forearm into Starkey’s throat.
‘You’re a fucking little shit, Starkey, and if you have done something wrong, I will find out and I will hang you for it.’
Jessie jumped to her feet. ‘Let him go, Captain Callan. Now.’
He let go of Starkey, stepping back, raising his hands in front of him in a defensive gesture. He looked almost as shocked as Starkey. Starkey backed away, straightening out his uniform.
‘I could fucking hang you for that, Captain.’
Callan was shaking his head, but it didn’t look as if he was shaking it in denial of what Starkey had said. The movement was jerky, uncoordinated, as if he was trying to dislodge something from his brain.
‘Are you OK, Captain Callan?’ Jessie asked.
‘I’m fine,’ he said, through gritted teeth.
A hand caught her arm. Turning, she found Starkey right behind her.
‘The answer to your question about the truth, Jessie, is – I don’t know.’ His voice was quiet, a caress in her ear. She could feel his breath, hot against her cheek. She yanked her arm away, suddenly aware that she and Starkey were alone in the room, that Callan had left. ‘I never found out. But if you could ask a dead man, say please – nicely, mind – he might tell you the answer.’
11 (#ulink_5dae7446-1079-56a9-844c-87387092293b)
‘What the fuck was that all about?’ She was so angry that she didn’t try to keep her voice down.
She had found Callan in the room at the end of the corridor, a Special Investigation Branch team room it seemed from the white boards bearing crime scene photographs, the hubbub of conversation, the manic clicking of computer keys. He was sitting behind a desk in the far corner, elbows on the desktop, cradling his head in his hands.
Looking up, he met her gaze. He looked wrecked. Utterly wrung out. His eyes were bloodshot and she wasn’t sure if it was a product of the sickly grey light seeping through the blinds from the window above his desk, but his skin looked greyish pale, his face drawn.
He shrugged. ‘It was about the fact that I don’t have time for cunts any more.’
‘Unfortunately dealing with cunts is always going to be part of your job. If you can’t handle it, perhaps you should do something else.’
‘Like what? Become a banker or a lawyer? I’ve probably left it a bit late, and I’m not sure the personality fit would be seamless.’
‘He could have you on a charge.’
‘He won’t.’
‘What makes you so sure?’
‘He’s not the type. He may be a murdering bastard, but I don’t think he’s a petty one.’
Jessie slumped down in the chair across the desk from Callan. ‘And he may actually be innocent.’
Silence. She let it stretch. Dropping his head to his hands again, Callan ground his fingers into his eyes sockets, grated them through his hair.
‘You’re right, I was out of order.’ His tone was sheepish. ‘And I do not have any preconceptions about Starkey’s guilt or innocence. He wound me up. After I … after what I went through in Afghanistan, I find that much harder to handle than I used to. Where is he?’
‘He’s left. Our conversation finished a short while after you disappeared. He said he’d see himself out. He’s not under arrest, after all.’
‘What do you think?’
‘I think you should be straight with me.’
He ignored the inference. ‘About Starkey?’
‘About you.’
‘I just was straight with you.’
‘I think there’s more. I think there’s something you’re not telling me.’ Her gaze found the scar from the bullet wound on his temple.
‘And I think my life is no longer any of your business.’
‘You asked me here.’
‘To help with a case.’
She watched him in silence for a moment, caught between two conflicting desires – the first to tell him to go fuck himself for walking out and leaving her with Starkey, and the second, to press him for the truth. But he was right. It wasn’t her business. He was no longer her patient.
Crossing her arms across her chest, she sat back. ‘You said that the impression Starkey gives doesn’t reconcile with the glowing reports from his commanding officers, and I agree. But then he is Intelligence Corps.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It’s not mainline Army, is it? What they do, what they’re after, the methods they use.’
‘Is he sane?’
Jessie dropped her gaze to the floor, drawing a picture of Starkey to mind. The look in his eyes: intelligence definitely, but was there complete sentience? You know what really frightens me.… injustice. His fingers frantically tapping on the tabletop. Fucking amateurs and that’s how we get burnt.
‘He’s clever, but is he aware of what he’s doing? Yes, I believe he is.’
‘So he was playing with us?’
‘I don’t think it’s that simple.’ She sat forward. ‘If he’s deliberately playing a game, then he’s doing it for a reason. It’s not for fun. No one was having fun in that room, even him, whatever it looked like.’
‘So what’s his upside?’
‘He’s hiding something. Probably a whole range of somethings.’
‘The fact that he killed Jackson?’
‘I think it’s more complex than that. Why would he want Jackson dead? Because he didn’t like him? Everyone works with people they don’t like. And he has been in the Army long enough to have learnt self-control in the face of extreme provocation.’ She looked up. ‘Is there any history between them?’
‘Nothing formal. No disciplinary. Their commanding officer said that they got on fine. He also said that they were both based at TAAC-South, but weren’t working together at the time of Jackson’s death.’
‘What else did the commanding officer say?’
Callan put the tips of his index finger and thumb together to form a circle, aping the gesture that Starkey had made.
Jessie rolled her eyes. ‘Need to know.’
‘Right.’
‘Jesus. They’re certainly into protecting their own.’ She sighed. ‘I don’t think you’re going to get anything else out of Starkey. He clearly believes that he has too much to lose.’
‘So to move forward I need to find factual evidence.’
‘Yes. And if you find factual evidence, even if it’s not enough to charge Starkey, you can use it to put the thumbscrews on him. Force him to talk.’
‘What was that bit about “the truth will set you free”?’ The corners of his mouth twitched. ‘I didn’t know that you went to a convent school.’
‘There’s a lot that you don’t know about me, Callan.’
Their eyes locked across his desk. Jessie felt colour rise in her cheeks. Glancing at her watch, an excuse to look away, she slid her chair back.
‘If there’s nothing more you need, I’m off. I said I’d have tea with Ahmose at six. I have some smoothing over to do after your insults regarding his gardening prowess.’
Callan looked at his watch, too. ‘It’s only five. How about a—’ He broke off, seemed to be weighing up saying something, then changed his mind. ‘I’ll call you if I need anything else.’
Leaning over the desk she shook his hand, the gesture feeling strangely over formal, but too late now to retract.
‘I’m not sure that there will be much more I can help you with.’
He smiled, held her hand for a fraction of a second longer. ‘Perhaps. Perhaps not.’
Jessie withdrew her hand. ‘Goodbye, Captain Callan.’
It was dark outside, a strong wind gusting clouds over a sliver of moon. Provost Barracks’ car park was deserted. Lights on inside the building cast yellow rectangles on to the tarmac next to it, but beyond was only blackness. Jessie wished she’d parked closer to the main door, if only so that she wouldn’t trip over or sink into a freezing puddle in her blind trog to her car.
