Robert Ryan - Signal Red

She was smiling, but even so, he slapped her arm away. 'Yes. Yes, it is.'

'Good.' She stood up and brushed the suds from herself. 'Dinner's almost ready. You can tell me all about it over a nice Sunday lunch.'

Fuck a very large duck, thought Tony. Wonders would never cease. 'Tell the wives nothing,' Bruce had advised. Easy for you to say, Tony thought. You don't have one like Marie.

Cornwall, June 1963

The boy who had been first to spot the woman's torso was eleven years old, but looked younger. He had a head that was too large for his skin-and-bone body, saucer eyes and a scalp almost shaved clean but for a ridge of hair running along the apex of his skull, like a wayward privet hedge. Or someone from The Last of the Mohicans who had been left out in the rain, thought Billy.

He lived with his parents in a low granite-and-slate cottage on the edge of the village. The interview took place in the kitchen, where a blackened range heated a pot of what, from the smell, was fish stew and a kettle, boiling for tea. The sinewy parents sat either side of the boy, reassuring him he had done nothing wrong.

'Bull's-eye?' offered Hatherill. From his suit pocket he produced a crumpled bag of the boiled sweets and offered one to young Harry Bone.

'Go on, son,' said Harry Senior.

The boy reached out a grubby hand and took one. Hatherill offered them around the table and, when there were no takers, popped one into his own mouth. There was silence, apart from the sucking of the bull's-eyes and the building urgency of the kettle.

'So, Harry,' slurped Hatherill, 'do you remember when you first saw the body?'

'Didn't know it was no body,' the lad said truculently.

Harry Senior flicked the boy's shaved head with a bony finger. 'Sir.'

'It's all right. He can call me George. That OK, Harry? Good. Now, I appreciate it could have looked like any old bit of driftwood or flotsam. But when did you first see it?'

'Would have been a Saturday,' he said. 'I know 'cause I had helped Dad at the garage in the morning and then walked down to the beach. Saw it then.'

'Which Saturday would this have been, Harry?'

'It would have been the fifth,' said Mrs Bone as she got up to make the tea.

'So about two and a half weeks ago.'

'Suppose. Yeah.'

'And what did you think when you saw it?'

An exaggerated shrug. 'Nothing.'

Hatherill worked on his bull's-eye some more. 'Well, not nothing. You never think nothing. But did you think: "That's nothing important" or "Oh look, there's what looks like a body, but it can't be"?'

'Dunno.'

'You have to understand,' said the dad, in his thick accent, 'that we get lots washed up here on the Cornish coast. Used to it, y'see. Not worth making a fuss over.'

Even a dead body? thought Billy.

'Tell you what. How about we have a nice cup of tea, we grown-ups, and then you take me down to the beach and show me what you saw and when.' He looked at the parents. 'How would that be?'

Twenty minutes later the trio – Billy, Harry and George – were traipsing across the sand of the bay, with the boy four paces ahead. Gulls wheeled overhead, screeching as if complaining about being denied their human flesh to feed on. The tide was coming in, the sea docile, the sun trying to break through. It was a beautiful long stretch of beach, framed by black rocks, moulded into fascinating shapes. Nice holiday spot, thought Billy. Or, at least, he would have thought so if he didn't keep seeing that ruined torso, flopping about on the foreshore, being poked and pulled by the waves.

'You are wondering how you can ignore a body, aren't you?' the TM asked Billy.

'It crossed my mind.'

'Think of what this place was. Treacherous coast. Lots of shipwrecks. Not all of them natural. Wreckers, you know? Luring ships onto rocks…'

'I thought that was all, you know, stories.'

Hatherill simply raised an eyebrow. 'Put it this way. There is nothing remarkable about a body washing up on the beach hereabouts.'

Billy pointed at the boy. 'Not even for a nipper like him?'

'Especially not for a nipper like him.' He raised his voice. 'Where was it, Harry?'

'Over here.'

They swerved to their right, and Harry took them to the sea's edge, close to a cluster of three jagged, seaweed-encrusted rocks. The boy indicated a spot in front of them. Billy looked around. It was possible the outcrops had hidden the corpse from most people's view.

'And what was the tide doing?' asked Hatherill, lighting a cigarette. He looked slightly comical in his tweed suit and shiny black brogues, peering through his thick glasses at the lad, the sea edging closer to his feet with each lap of the waves.

'Tide were in. The thing was just here. It had seagulls on it. I didn't know it were a body right then, honest. Thought it was a seal.' Then the lad burst into tears.

Hatherill stepped forward and shot an arm round him, pulling him close. With his cigarette, he indicated that Billy should walk back up the beach and leave the two of them alone.

As Billy began the trudge back towards the low cliffs, he wondered what the hell he was doing out here. Why had Hatherill insisted on dragging him to Cornwall if he was going to exclude him? He had anticipated being Robin to the Top Man's Batman, Tonto to his Lone Ranger, but he was being treated more like Jimmy Olsen – the annoying kid – to his Superman. Or Boo-Boo to his Yogi Bear.

He reached a rock arch, expertly carved by the Cornish storms from the cliff-face, and sat at its base. He watched the two distant figures patrolling the shoreline, deep in conversation, devouring more bull's-eyes as they spoke, and pondered on what was going on back in London while they were messing about in the sticks.

'I fuckin' hate the countryside. It stinks. Phoar – cop a load of that. Worse than one of your farts, Gordy.'

'Shut up, Buster,' said Bruce. 'Wind your window up if you don't like fresh air.'

'Fresh? What's fresh about a cow's arse?'

They were heading west, past a string of dairy farms just outside Aylesbury, in the Jag they had borrowed off Brian Field. A 3.8. Roy wouldn't have approved, but Bruce was enjoying it. He clocked the milometer. More than twenty miles from Bridego Bridge so far.

'How much is this place?' asked Buster.

'Five thousand, five hundred pounds.'

Buster whistled.

'It's a whole farm, you cunt,' said Gordy.

'We got five grand left in the pot?' It was a good question, because the 'seed' money from the airport job was almost gone.

'I spoke to Brian. He'd do it through his boss, all above board. Make sure we only have to put ten per cent down for now. We can raise the rest, no problem. Go to the Frenchman if we have to, eh, Buster?'

Frenchie the Banker had put some money up for the airport, in return for a hefty percentage. 'If we have to.'

They had crossed over the A418, and were travelling on the B4011. The destination wasn't actually on the OS map, but Bruce had marked the spot with a Biro'd 'X', like a treasure map. 'The turning is at Oakley, on the Bicester Road.'

'Yeah, I remember,' said Bruce. He had already seen the farm, even met the owners, and knew exactly where it was. He wanted a second opinion about the place and location, that was all.

'And you've seen what is at Bicester?' Gordy asked.

'No.'

'The Army.'

'The Army,' repeated Bruce thoughtfully.

'And what do the Army do?' Gordy asked.

'Manoeuvres,' said Bruce.

'Sometimes at night,' added Buster, catching on.

'Brilliant.' Bruce's brain kicked into overdrive, as they all knew it would. 'That's bloody brilliant.'

They drove on in silence, each digesting what this new strategy might involve. In his mind, Bruce was already creating his uniform. Maybe he would get to be a real Colonel after all. A Major at least. Who was going to suspect the Army? Who was going to stand up to them? It was the perfect front.