occur to you that not everyone on the post has to come through
the main gate? Doesn’t it occur to you that someone recorded
as not being here could have slipped in through the wire?’
‘Unlikely,’ I said. ‘It would have given him a walk of well over
two miles, in pitch dark, and we run random motor patrols all
night.’
‘The patrols might have missed a trained man.’
‘Unlikely,’ I said again. ‘And how would he have rendez
voused with Sergeant Carbone?’
‘Prearranged location.’
‘It wasn’t a location,’ I said. ‘It was just a spot near the track.’
‘Map reference, then.’
‘But’Unlikely”possible?’I said, for the third time.
‘Anything’s possible.’
‘So a man could have met with the shirtlifter, then killed him,
then gotten back out through the wire, and then walked around
to the main gate, and then signed in?’
‘Anything’s possible,’ I said again.
‘What kind of timescale are we looking at? Between killing
him and signing in?’
‘I don’t know. I would have to work out the distance he
walked.’
‘Maybe he ran.’
‘Maybe he did.’
‘In which case he would have been out of breath when he
passed the gate.’
I said nothing.
‘Best guess,’ Willard said. ‘How much time?’
‘An hour or two.’
He nodded. ‘So if the fairy was offed at nine or ten, the killer
could have been logging in at eleven?’
‘Possible,’ I said.
‘And the motive would have been to dead-end something.’
I nodded. Said nothing.
‘And you took six hours to complete a four-hour journey,
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thereby leaving a potential two-hour gap, which you explain
with the vague claim that you took a slow route.’
I said nothing.
‘And you just agreed that a two-hour window is generous in
terms of getting the deed done. In particular the two hours
between nine and eleven, which by chance are the same two
hours that you can’t account for.’
I said nothing. He smiled.
‘And you arrived at the gate out of breath,’ he said. ‘I
checked.’
I didn’t reply.
‘But what would have been your motive?’ he said. ‘I assume
you didn’t know Carbone well. I assume you don’t move in the
same social circles that he did. At least I sincerely hope you
don’t.’
‘You’re wasting your time,’ I said. ‘And you’re making a big
mistake. Because you really don’t want to make an enemy out of
me.’
‘Don’t I?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘You really don’t.’
‘What do you need dead-ended?’ he asked me.
I said nothing.
‘Here’s an interesting fact,’ Willard said. ‘Sergeant First Class
Christopher Carbone was the soldier who lodged the complaint
against you.’
He proved it to me by unfolding a copy of the complaint from
his pocket. He smoothed it out and passed it across my desk.
There was a reference number at the top and then a date and a
place and a time. The date was January 2nd, the place was Fort
Bird’s Provost Marshal’s office, and the time was 0845. Then
came two paragraphs of sworn affidavit. I glanced through some
of the stiff, formal sentences. I personally observed a serving
Military Police major named Reacher strike the first civilian
with a kicking action against the right knee. Immediately subsequent
to that Major Reacher struck the second civilian in the
face with his forehead. To the best of my knowledge both attacks
were unprovoked. I saw no element of self-defence. Then came a
signature with Carbone’s name and number typed below it. I
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recognized the number from Carbone’s file. I looked up at the
slow silent clock on the wall and pictured Carbone in my mind,
slipping out of the lounge bar door into the parking lot, looking
at me for a second, and then merging with the knot of men
leaning on cars and drinking beer from bottles. Then I looked
down again and opened a drawer and slipped the sheet of paper
inside.
‘Delta Force looks after its own,’ Willard said. ‘We all know
that. I guess it’s part of their mystique. So what are they going
to do now? One of their own is beaten to death after lodging a
complaint against a smart-ass MP major, and the smart-ass MP