Patrick Robinson - To The Death

This left Jimmy at the helm. The agency had many more senior officials in residence, commanders, captains, admirals, colonels, and brigadier generals. But Ramshawe had the ear of the mighty, and everyone knew it. He punched far above his weight in his job as assistant to Admiral Morris, thanks in no small way to his known friendship with the Great One, Admiral Arnold Morgan.

Everyone kept Jimmy posted, willingly and without rancor. Admiral Morris trusted him implicitly. If you wanted to get something urgent done, in any department, have a chat with young Jimmy. Everyone knew that rule. Indeed, most everyone believed that one day Admiral-or at least Captain-Ramshawe would occupy the Big Chair. Admiral Morgan said his protégé was the most natural-born intelligence officer he had ever met.

The downside, of course, for one so respected, was you had to work on national holidays. Jimmy’s fiancée, Jane Peacock, the Aussie ambassador’s daughter, was particularly peeved because she had wanted to dazzle the local populace of Chesapeake Beach on her surfboard, Bondi beach goddess that she was. But Jimmy swore to God he’d be at her house for dinner by 7:30 P.M.

Meantime, he had spent the morning catching up on the foreign papers. He never got to the local ones until quite late, and even then concentrated principally on overseas news.

However, the Estuary Killer was crowding in on him, since it was mentioned on all the front pages and he had heard mention of it on television news. He picked up the Washington Post and could scarcely miss the second lead, accompanied as it was by a large photo-artist identity of Carla Martin and a photograph of Matt Barker.

“Hello,” he muttered to himself. “Here’s the bloke who died with his pecker out.” He recalled the cleaning lady mentioning that it was jutting out there, large as life.

But it was not the pecker that arrested Jimmy’s attention. It was the dagger, which he thought sounded extremely old-fashioned. You just don’t hear it much, that’s all. You hear about knife crime, and stabbings, but you don’t hear about daggers. Except in Macbeth, or Julius Caesar-“Is this a pecker I see before me?”

Jimmy chuckled, floored by his own amazing humor. But he was taken by the jeweled dagger, taken by its off-key presence and by its suggestion of the Middle East, like something out of Arabian Nights or the Crusades. I don’t care what anyone says, he mused. There’s no daggers in 21st-century Virginia. Guns, yes. Knives, yes. Maybe even bombs. But no daggers. And that’s final.

Jimmy read on. And then he stopped dead. Brockhurst, now where the hell’s that? And where have I heard the name before? It’s too familiar. Someone has mentioned that town before.

He poured himself a cup of hot coffee and tried to concentrate. Then he went to his computer database, hit search mode, and punched in Brockhurst. Nothing. He’d never filed anything that included that name before. He called Jane, and she could not even remember hearing the name.

“See you later,” he said. “Call me if you remember anything.”

“Don’t be late,” she replied, archly.

He summoned up a big computerized wall map and searched for Brockhurst. Found it in the middle of nowhere, and confessed himself more baffled than he was before. Jesus, that place is in the bloody outback, he confirmed to no one in particular. I just can’t remember where or why I ever heard that name before. But I did.

He glanced through the paper to check whether anything truly diabolical had happened, and was glad to see nothing had. Iraq was quiet, Afghanistan was quiet, and Iran for once was behaving itself. The right-wing French president was threatening to quit the European Union, and the Brits were running out of North Sea oil, probably going broke with their massive welfare programs and no resources.

Then he had a brainwave. He called Jane and checked whether they had the embassy to themselves tonight, and, if they had, would she object to asking Arnold and Kathy to join them for dinner?

“Well, Mum and Dad are going out, and we do have the staff on duty. I don’t really have a problem with inviting them. Do you want me to call Kathy?”

“They probably can’t come,” said Jimmy. “But we’ve been to at least three really expensive restaurants with them lately, and it would be a good chance to repay something. You know Arnold always pays.”

“Okay. I’ll call. Will he be all right with Aussie wine?”

“I doubt it. He’ll call it grape juice. If they’re on, call me and I’ll try to do something.”

Brockhurst. The word was revolving around in Jimmy’s mind. He sat quietly and racked his brains. And suddenly, thinking of Arnold’s predictable reaction to Australian Shiraz, it hit him.

“It’s Kathy’s mum! I got it. That’s where she lives. I’ve seen a photograph of her house there. A picture of Kathy with two dogs, a big golden retriever and Kipper. That’s where Kathy goes when she visits.”

Jim was proud of that. He rewarded himself with a fresh cup of coffee and sat for a few moments pondering the world. He picked up the Post and read the story in more detail. Beyond the Pecker, as it were.

And he read with immense awareness of the hunt for the missing barmaid. Dark, beautiful, may have been the victim of a sex attack, covered her tracks and vanished. No other suspects.

He read some other newspapers. He read all the accounts and assessed the many facts that were spread out before him. And as the afternoon wore on, he came up with one question, as he so often did when trying to solve something: what was this Middle East weapon doing rammed into someone’s body, two hundred yards from Kathy’s mum’s house?

Did he like it? Absolutely not. And he cast his mind back to that big story in the Post, three or four months ago, the one that had painted Admiral Morgan as the archenemy of all Middle Eastern terrorist groups.

Here we have a new situation, he pondered. From right out of the wide blue yonder, we have the first murder in a hundred years in the town of Brockhurst, Virginia, international crossroads to nowhere. The crime was committed with an obvious Middle East weapon, a jewel-encrusted dagger, which, from the photos, looks like it belonged to Abdul the Turk or someone.

But it bloody didn’t, did it? It belonged to someone in Brockhurst, visiting or resident. Now what the hell’s a resident of a nice Virginia community doing with something like that? And then stabbing a bloke to death right down the road from the mother-in-law of the jihadists’ number one enemy. Don’t understand it. But I don’t like it.

Jane called back. “Arnold and Kathy can’t come. They’re going to the Bedfords’.”

“Well, at least we tried.”

“And we might have to try harder,” added Jane. “They’re going on vacation in three weeks for most of August. Kipper’s going to Virginia.”

“Okay, see you later,” said Jimmy.

Right now, it seemed to him, the local police detective was certain that this Mystery Woman had probably committed the crime, stabbed this Barker character for whatever reason. And Jimmy was inclined to go along with that, because people do not make really elaborate plans to remain anonymous, cover up every one of their tracks, and then leave the area. Not without they were bloody well up to something.

For Jimmy, that Middle Eastern dagger was critical. Because it had “jihadist” written all over it. He sipped his coffee and frowned. And he decided, then and there, that he would take a drive down to Brockhurst early tomorrow morning, try to get his facts in a row. Right now he would call Arnold, set out his suspicions, and then ask if it would be okay for him and Jane to visit Kathy’s mum while they were in the area.