LITMIR.BIZ

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on, Dog! Everyone knows when you Itis hear the order, Forward March! you automatically start running backwards!’

      He’d almost hit him, but had had control enough to know that assaulting a policeman would probably stop his army career before it began.

      Now it felt like a chance missed.

      But perhaps it was going to be offered again.

      The podginess had turned into a solid bulk, no less menacing for being gift-wrapped in a Pickwickian waistcoat and topped with a matching smile. The two men were sitting in the armchairs in the living room of Maguire’s flat. Tench’s companion was searching the bedroom. Introduced as Sergeant Stott, he had the features of a Narcissus, and if his Cartier watch and Jean-Paul Gaultier jacket stretched across pumping-iron shoulders reflected the inner man, there was no shortage of self-love here either.

      From the sound of it, the body-beautiful muscles were being exercised just now in tearing the bedroom apart. Johnson’s face appeared in the doorway with an expression of shocked interrogation, but Dog motioned him back inside. He had no idea what the newcomers were after, but if they found it, he wanted a witness.

      ‘Heard you joined the local boys after your spot of bother with the mad Micks,’ said Tench. ‘Surprised me, that did. Thought you’d have had enough of uniforms, especially when it meant dropping down to plod level.’

      ‘Can’t recall what I felt,’ said Dog evenly. ‘It was ten years ago.’

      ‘Long as that? Well, I never. And this is the first time our paths have crossed.’

      ‘Us plods don’t have much to do with the Branch,’ said Dog.

      He didn’t add that one thing he’d done before joining the Romchurch force was check out Tench’s whereabouts. He might have been confused, but not so confused as to take the risk of finding himself in the fat boy’s gang again. But now here Tench was, and clearly enjoying the ambiguities of the situation hugely.

      Time to clear the official ground at least.

      ‘What’s the score, Toby?’ he said. ‘What’s the Branch’s interest in Maguire?’

      ‘No real interest, Dog,’ said Tench with mock solemnity. ‘Nothing that I’d call an interest. Just that she’s on a little list of ours. People with a fine thread tied to their tails. Touch ’em and there’s a little tinkle in the guardroom, know what I mean?’

      ‘The computer?’ said Dog. ‘I wondered why that entry was there. Anyone asking questions jerks the trip wire, right?’

      ‘Clever boy,’ said Tench. ‘So tell me all you know.’

      Briefly, Dog outlined his investigation so far.

      Tench produced a notebook, not to make notes in but to examine.

      ‘Well done,’ he said at the end of the outline. ‘Missed out nothing.’

      ‘You’ve spoken to Parslow? You knew all this! What the hell are you playing at? Checking up on me or what?’

      ‘Hold your horses, my son,’ said Tench earnestly. ‘Not you. Old Eddie Parslow, he’s the one we need to double check. He’s so demob happy, he’s stopped taking bribes.’

      The muscular boy came out of the bedroom. In his hand was a foolscap-size buff envelope.

      ‘Found this in the mattress cover, guv,’ he said, handing it over.

      ‘Well done, my son,’ said Tench, smiling fondly.

      ‘You want I should organize a real search, guv?’ asked Stott.

      Dog Cicero had no doubt what a real search meant. He’d supervised enough in scruffy Belfast terraces and lonely country farms, watching as floorboards were ripped up, tiles stripped, walls probed, while all around women wailed their woe or screamed abuse, and men stood still as stone, their faces set in silent hate.

      Tench shook his head.

      ‘Early days, Tommy. Just carry on poking around.’

      Tommy went into the kitchen. A second later what sounded like the contents of a cutlery drawer hit the tiled floor.

      Tench was peering into the envelope.

      ‘What’s in it?’ asked Dog.

      ‘Not a lot. Hello. Must be saving for a rainy day. Well, the poor cow’s got her rain. Bet she’d like to get her hands on her savings!’

      He tossed a smaller envelope across to Dog. He opened it. It was full of bank notes, large denomination dollar bills and sterling in equal quantities, at least a couple of thousand pounds’ worth.

      ‘Can see what you’re thinking, Dog. That’s a lot of relief massage. Maybe she upped her prices for more demanding punters. Any complaints about queues forming on the stairs?’

      He looked at Dog with his head cocked to one side, like a jolly uncle encouraging a favourite nephew.

      ‘No,’ he said. ‘Nothing like that. Not so for.’

      The last phrase was an attempt to compensate for what had come out as a rather over-emphatic denial.

      Tench caught the nuance, said, ‘You don’t think she gives the full service then? Just the odd hand job for pocket money?’

      ‘I don’t know. I just don’t like running too far ahead of the evidence, that’s all.’

      ‘Oh yeah? Of course, she’s Irish, isn’t she?’

      ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

      ‘Quite a lot, as it happens, my son. But in your case, it could mean you’re so desperate to put the slag away that you’re falling over backwards to be fair. You never were much good at thumping people just because you didn’t like them, Dog. Always had to find a reason! You’ll not admit it, but what you’d really like is solid evidence that she’s topped her little bastard, then you can go after her full pelt! Well, you can relax, my boy. Uncle Toby is here to tell you it’s going to be all right. It doesn’t matter if she’s cut his throat or she’s the loveliest mum since the Virgin Mary. You’re allowed to hate her guts either way!’

      Dog was half out of his chair. One part of his mind was telling him to sit down and laugh at this provocation. The other was wondering how much damage he could inflict before Tommy, the gorgeous hulk, broke him in two.

      Tench wasn’t smiling now.

      ‘Down, Dog. Down. If you don’t like a joke, you shouldn’t have joined. Man who’s not in charge of himself ain’t fit to be in charge of anything.’

      Slowly Dog relaxed, sank back into the armchair.

      ‘That’s better. Godalmighty, just think, if you’d stayed in the Army, you’d have had your own company by now, maybe your own battalion. You’d have been sending men out where the flak was flying. Few more like you, and I reckon we’d have lost the Falklands. Still, not to worry, just think of the money we’d have saved!’

      Dog said steadily, ‘Don’t you think it’s time you put me in the picture, sir. You called the boy a bastard. I presume you were being literal rather than figurative.’

      ‘I love it when you talk nice, Dog. Shows all that time in the officers’ mess wasn’t wasted. But yes, you’re dead right. Bastard he is, or was. One thing we know for sure, Maguire never got married. How do we know? Well, Oliver Beck was never divorced, was he? Let me fill you in, old son. After she jacked in the teaching, our Jane got herself a job with a shipping line, recreational officer they called it. On one Atlantic crossing she came in contact with an American passenger, Mr Oliver Beck. On the massage table, I shouldn’t wonder! Anyway, he was so impressed with her technique, he set her up in his house on Cape Cod. Oliver was living apart from his wife, natch.’

      ‘So it was more than

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