‘Address?’ asked Burns, and Skinner took it down.
‘He hasn’t been in for about three weeks,’ said the clerk. ‘Probably on holiday.’
‘No, he’s dead,’ said Burns. ‘You can close the file. He won’t be coming again.’
‘Are you sure?’ asked the supervisor, clearly worried by the irregularity of it all. ‘We ought to be officially informed.’
‘He can’t do that,’ said Burns. ‘Inconsiderate of him.’
The two detectives found the address by using the London A–Z and asking a few neighbours. It was another housing estate and the small one-bedroom flat was on the fourth floor. Walk up; lift broken down. They let themselves in.
It was shabby, but neat. There was three weeks of dust and some dead flies on the window sill, but no mouldy food. Washed plates and cups were on the draining rack beside the sink.
A bedside drawer yielded bits of army memorabilia and five military medals, including the MM, awarded for courage in combat. The books on the shelf were well-thumbed paperbacks and the pictorial decorations were prints. Burns finally stopped by a framed picture on the sitting-room wall.
It showed four young men, staring at the camera, smiling. In the background was what looked like a stretch of desert and the edge of an old stone fort. Beneath the picture was printed ‘Mirbat, 1972’.
‘What’s Mirbat?’ asked Skinner, who had come to stand beside him.
‘A place. A small village. Dhofar, western province of Oman, at the end of the Saudi peninsula.’
The young men were all in desert cammo. One wore a local Arab keffiyeh of chequered cloth, held in place by two rings of black cord. The other three had sand-coloured berets with a badge at the front. Burns knew that if he had a magnifying glass he would make o
ut the emblem of a winged dagger with three letters above it and three short words beneath.
‘How do you know?’ asked Skinner.
‘The Queen came to Devon once. I was on Royal Protection duty. There were two from that regiment attached to us. Bodyguard duty involves long periods of waiting. We all began to reminisce. They told us about Mirbat.’
‘What happened there?’
‘A battle. There was a war going on. A secret war. Communist terrorists were being sent over the border from Yemen to topple the Sultan. We sent down a British Army Training Team, the BATT. One day a force of between three and four hundred terrorists attacked the village and garrison at Mirbat. There were ten men from that regiment and a group of local levies.’
‘Who won?’
Burns jabbed a finger at the photograph.
‘They did. Just. Lost two of their own, downed over a hundred terrorists before they finally broke and ran.’
Three of the men were standing, the fourth was on one knee at the front; twenty-four years ago, in a forgotten desert village. The one at the front was the trooper; behind him were a sergeant, a corporal and their young officer, or ‘Rupert’.
Skinner leaned forward and tapped the crouching trooper.
‘That’s him, Peter Benson. Poor bugger. To go through all that and end up kicked to death in Edmonton.’
Burns had already identified the trooper. He was staring at the officer. The smooth blond hair was covered by the beret and the arrogant blue eyes were creased by the glare of the sun. But that young officer was going to go home, leave the army, attend law school and a quarter of a century later become one of the great advocates of his country. Skinner had made the connection with a sharp intake of breath near Burns’s ear.
‘I don’t understand,’ said the detective sergeant. ‘They kicked his mate to death and he went out of his way to get them off.’
Burns could hear the public-school voice murmuring in his ear.
‘This may surprise you, Mr Burns . . .’
Staring at the faces of the four young warriors of a generation gone by, Jack Burns realized too late that the deceptively languid lawyer was not talking of the justice of the Old Bailey, but of the Old Testament.
‘Guv,’ said the troubled young man at his side, ‘with Price and Cornish back on the streets, what will happen if that sergeant and that corporal ever come across them?’
‘Don’t ask, laddie. You really do not want to know.’