James Benn - Evil for evil

"Colonel, there's nothing to hide. Don't worry, this is only a gift. I'll put it down here," I said, placing the case at the side of his desk. "Major Thornton hopes that you can bring me along with him, if his transfer works out."

"Sit down, Lieutenant, and tell me what you're talking about," Warrenton said. As I did, he leaned over and flipped open the case. "There's one missing," he said as his head came up.

"One what?" I asked in mock ignorance. I waited while silence filled the space between us. Finally, he laughed.

"Very good, Lieutenant-what was it?"

"Boyle, sir. William Boyle."

He wrote the name on a piece of paper, folded it, and opened a drawer, carefully placing it in an envelope. "How long have you worked for Major Thornton?"

"Not long. I got transferred from North Africa. Too hot for my taste."

"Things might get hot for you again in a few months. Scuttlebutt says the division is training for the big invasion. You have any ordnance experience?" He'd gone from "Major who?" to acknowledging he knew Thornton and the assignment he wanted, in less time than it would have taken to open one of those bottles.

"None, Colonel. I'm what you might call a supply specialist. You need a supply of something, I make a special effort to get it. Like this whiskey."

"You said it was from Thornton."

"Well, in a way it was. It was his. Now it's yours. You see, everything that he's been organizing for you, well that was me doing all the work. I figured he probably didn't mention that, so I thought I'd bring you the last case by myself."

"He said there wasn't any more."

"Well, goes to show, know what I mean?"

"Lieutenant Boyle, I think we can use someone with your initiative at corps, I really do. Thanks for stopping by for a visit."

"Don't mention it, sir."

"Don't you mention it, Boyle. To anyone-understood?"

"Not even the major?"

"Major who?"

Now it was my turn to laugh. Before I was on my feet, his head was buried in his papers again, rearranging folders, assigning personnel to wherever his whim dictated or wherever the payoffs led. Like a councilman back home, he had the power to grant favors, but his were of the life-or-death variety. You, to a rifle squad. You, with the whiskey and hams, over to HQ. Maybe he thought that since people were going to die anyway, he ought to get fat off it. Or rich. I shut the door behind me and walked into the office opposite.

"Well?" Heck asked as he flicked a cigarette out the window. His Adam's apple bobbed in that scrawny throat.

"I was right. Thornton's paying him off for a transfer to corps. Probably others too; he seemed like a smooth operator. Check the second drawer to his left, he put my name in an envelope there."

"OK, Boyle, I can break him. I'll tell him we just picked up you and Thornton, and that the only way he can save his hide is to tell all. Good work." He placed a thick envelope in my hand and brushed past me, into Warrenton's office. I shut the door behind him, sat down at the empty desk, and opened it. Out spilled his side of the bargain.

I'd made a deal with Heck. I'd promised him it would make him look good, and that I'd stay out of the limelight. I figured he'd been on the trail of whoever was shorting supplies being delivered to the division- why else would he be looking through all those shipping invoices and bills of lading? He might have been trying to make a connection between the weapons theft and the supply pilferage, but I doubted he'd gotten anywhere with that.

The key was to find someone who would turn on Thornton. I didn't think Brennan would, for a lot of reasons. He'd gotten what he'd wanted from Thornton, and anyway I didn't want to interfere with whatever he felt he had to do. It had to be someone else, preferably a higher-ranking someone else, who'd be happy to let all the shit roll downhill in Thornton's direction. The gamble I took was that Thornton was trying to bribe the corps G-1, the personnel officer who could approve his transfer to the corps ordnance unit, which would be about as far to the rear as you could get and still claim to be in the shooting war. It all fit, though, with the lies about Brennan and the story about wanting to get a combat command with the heavy weapons company. I'd figured the worst thing that could happen was that Heck would get even madder at me, which hardly seemed possible, and that an innocent G-1 would get a free case of Irish whiskey.

In return, Heck agreed to hand over his file on the BAR case and give me free rein, plus any manpower I needed. All I had to do was share the glory with him if I found anything. Glory was the last thing I wanted. All that did was create the notion that I was the guy to call on when things were really tough, like Cosgrove had for this job. I preferred to stay with Uncle Ike, farther away from the shooting than Thornton ever dreamed of. So glory, that would be all Heck's, yet I bargained hard to give up my share of it. He had to think it was as important to me as it was to him. That's what bought me the promise of help if I needed it.

I dumped the contents of the envelope Heck had handed me onto the desk. Photos of the crime scene showed empty shelves where the BARs had been stored. The broken lock on the storeroom door. Tire impressions left in the mud. All the usual stuff, nothing helpful, since we had already identified the truck.

There were several photos of Eddie Mahoney with the back of his head missing. He lay in a ditch by the side of a road, facedown. The rain had soaked his clothing and he'd sunk into the mud, as if he'd been half buried in a shallow grave. There was a shot of his hand, with the edges of a pound note visible within his grasp. Another of his face, after they'd turned him over. It was hard to tell what he'd looked like in life; the violence of the gunshots to his head combined with the mud caked around his face to make him look misshapen and grotesque. Another shot showed the surrounding area, including the road. Mahoney's feet stuck out from the edge of the ditch, as if he'd been standing by the side of the road when he was shot. Another photo showed him from the opposite direction. There was one photo of Mahoney alive on a city street. Could have been a surveillance shot. I put that one in my pocket.

I squinted my eyes to make out a building visible at the side of the road, maybe twenty yards or so from where Mahoney lay. It looked familiar, with its white walls and thatched roof. It was the Lug o' the Tub Pub, and this was the road I'd watched Tom McCarthy drive Grady O'Brick down last night.

Eddie Mahoney had been shot yards from the pub where Grady drank most every night! Had Grady walked by the body, not noticing it in the darkness? Or had Mahoney's killer shot him on the return trip from the base, after closing hours? Why not? It would be smart to keep him alive to help with the loading, and wait until after the theft to dispose of him. But that depended on why he was shot. If he was an informer, Carrick probably would have known. But neither he nor Slaine O'Brien had owned up to running him. Was he a danger to his companions? Dangerous enough to kill during the course of such a bold theft? It didn't make sense, but then, that was my job, wasn't it? To make sense out of a mass of unrelated facts.

I glanced at the RUC report, which was a copy of the one Slaine had given me. There was one new page, a note saying no fingerprints had been found on Jenkins's truck; it had apparently been wiped clean. There was a longer provost marshal's report. Nothing new about the theft or the murder but Heck had assigned one of his men to tail Jenkins the day after. The surveillance report covered three days. On the first, Jenkins drove to Newry, near the border, and went to the RUC station to make arrangements to get his truck back. The second day after the theft, he went to a pub in Portadown and met a girl. All work and no play, as they say.