Living Two Lives - Book 12

Chapter 1

On the Sunday morning Andrew got a lift back into London from a taciturn bloke named Steve. He dropped Andrew off near Regent’s Park and they arranged to meet at 8.00 that evening outside Headquarters. Jim and Freya were still at church when Andrew got home so he started some laundry and sat in the kitchen eating soup until they got home. Freya looked concerned when they got back but nothing could be said so all he got was.

“How do you keep ending up in these situations?”

Andrew laughed.

“I think it was a lovely lady brandishing an application form who is to blame.”

And that was it. Over lunch they talked around the issue without getting into details.

“Will we see you much?”

“I have no idea. I was told I would be there and ‘other places’, and they checked I had a passport.”

Eyebrows were raised from both of them.

“I hope to get back here at the weekends but I am still trying to sort out the rules. I got driven this weekend but I presume I am not going to have my own driver every weekend so then it will be train and maybe flight schedules. Who the hell knows.”

“Before we forget there are a couple of phone messages for you, both Helena and Navya called yesterday and I told them you would be back today. I think they were looking to meet up with you. Are any friends going to come down and stay?”

“I had not had a chance to ask you if it would be okay for someone to come and stay.”

“Don’t be silly Andrew. Of course they can come and stay.”

Well that saved him an awkward conversation. Andrew went through and called Navya first. It was a how are things going, catch up kind of call. She was already bored of working at her dad’s business and asked if they could meet the following weekend. Andrew agreed, but did tell her his job had him working out of town and would call if he couldn’t make it. They were on the phone for a while, not really talking about anything, she was just bored and wanted someone different to talk to. Eventually he got her off the phone but the call with Helena was just as long. She was chatty but there was a hesitation with her when Andrew asked how things were going at home. She too wanted to get together the following weekend but oddly did not want to meet on Saturday but rather wanted to wait until the following day when it would just be the two of them. Sometimes Andrew could be very slow on the uptake. Finally he called Suzanne and it was good to hear her voice. She had started her job and it was going well. Without going into any details Andrew explained how he was working out of London on the job and did not yet know when he would be free to come to Edinburgh. Hopefully in two weeks.

“Jim and Freya are getting married at the end of the summer and they have invited me. I know that these big fancy events are not your scene but I would love for you to be my date at their wedding. It is Saturday the 15^th of September. You don’t have to give me an answer now but would you think about it please?”

She said all the right things but the joy was missing. Andrew hoped she would consider it and come down. He hoped that getting her to commit to the first of these occasions would take a lot of the worry away. Sure they were daunting but she was a beautiful talented woman who could hold her own in any company. Just talking to her made him happy and Freya noticed it when he came through.

“All you need to do is talk to a pretty young woman, or two or three, and you get a smile on your face.”

Jim chuckled and Andrew’s smile widened.

“I just follow Jim’s example. He is always so happy.”

Jim laughed out loud and Freya flushed prettily.

“You sweet-talking devil. And you, stop encouraging him”

They took him out for an early dinner at the little Italian restaurant around the corner from the flat before he repacked his big backpack and headed down to Earl’s Court. Steve was as quiet on the way back to Colchester as he had been on the way into London.

Andrew’s first proper week on the job was a constant learning exercise. He and Vestergaard constantly switched back and forth between pupil and teacher. By the end of the Monday they were ‘Vestie’ and Jock, it was just easier. When you have a crime in the first five minutes of the hour-long TV show and you need 10 minutes for the dramatic dénouement at the end, the intervening time makes police work seem easy. Andrew was disavowed of that notion very quickly. Vestie spent hours on the phone trying to track down who knew about the AIMS program, which departments had been allocated copies when the Department of Industry bought 1,000. That was the thing. It wasn’t like they had only sold the government seven copies, yes the government was huge but a thousand copies of something must be somewhere. Then Andrew had another idea.

“Inspector, the Open University course had one single week where we had to attend Milton Keynes for an assessment. While I was there I met two civil servants who were also attending the course. One was in the Treasury, Steven Glamp, and the other was here at the Ministry of Defence. His name was Nigel something but I can’t remember the surname. Can I call the course administrator and get the name from her?”

“Why? Do you think he will be able to help?”

“When I had the meeting with the Minister, the first meeting, there were five civil servants with him, including one from the Treasury. I mentioned Steven’s name to that guy and less than a month later Steven called and let me know that he had been promoted and given new responsibilities because he was doing the course. I don’t think I mentioned Nigel’s name. I have no idea what he did, he never mentioned it but I figured given that he was doing the same course as me he may have some knowledge about computers and software.”

“Fuck it, give it a try. Anything to move this forward.”

You had to love the days before data protection. Andrew phoned Mary Young at the Open University and she remembered him, she could hardly forget the 18-year-old who was the first to graduate from the course. Andrew made up some tale about going to be in London and wanting to connect with some of the people he had met and remembered there was a Nigel somebody there. Five minutes later he had both Nigel Mountjoy’s name and his office phone number. Andrew thanked her and turned back to Brodie.

“Nigel Mountjoy. Here is his number.”

Various contacts were phoned to find out what he did before they called him. It turned out Mountjoy was involved in something in Northern Ireland but details were not forthcoming. Andrew had done the legwork getting his details but Brodie decided to talk to him directly. He was back in less than five minutes.

“He knows nothing, he is still working on the course and hopes to be finished by the end of the year. But he has never been contacted about, and never heard of, the AIMS software.”

Back to square one. It was Wednesday before they were able to track down someone in the Department of Industry, although now it was Trade and Industry. The British Government spent £25,000 buying 1,000 copies of AIMS but they found that 975 of the copies were sitting untouched in a warehouse in Wolverhampton. The government bureaucracy had bought them under political pressure, had no idea what to do with them so had stored them. More than £20,000 sitting getting obsolete by the day. Putting that aside they finally found out who had the 25 copies of AIMS, the Property Services Agency, the arm of the government that oversaw all government construction, both civil and defence related.

There were lots of ongoing issues with the PSA but they had no impact on that case. Someone knew ‘someone at Croydon’ and finally on the Friday morning they had a copy of AIMS, as originally sold to the government in the autumn of 1981. Why was this a big deal? In between chasing all these dead-ends looking for a copy of AIMS, they sorted and reviewed paper for a week, checking the files, all grouped together in folders to see if there were copies of disks. They had come up empty. So on Thursday night Andrew was told the team were going to West Germany to see the original documents and he was going too. They hoped to gain access to the original files as well as interview the soldiers at the Regiment. Andrew was told to pack for two weeks and would not be home from Germany in the middle weekend.

He didn’t recall ever being given an option and when he thought back about that summer he was treated very differently to how he expected. When Andrew had been assigned to this investigation, he was part of the team and was to go with the team and be part of the team. Never mind the fact that he was a summer student expecting to shuffle files around in the basement of the headquarters building. Andrew was the computer expert for a multi-agency investigation into potential espionage. When you put it that way he was James Bond’s nerdy lovechild. But he was also the ‘kid’ who had no control over his life, was being dragged around the UK and Europe, and was a virtual prisoner to this investigation. He was all but forbidden to have contact with anyone outside the team, who were all at least 10 years older than him. So sure it sounded glamorous but the reality was isolating and boring.

Never being one to cope well with doing nothing, in the evenings Andrew sat and noodled on the system that Tony and Maggie wanted him to create so that they could keep track of modelling assignments, and who had worn what, and when. Given that he was thinking about AIMS all the time during the day Andrew wiled away the evenings designing a simple database structure. He spent a lot of his time thinking about the field structure, lengths, all the details of what they wanted. By the end of the week he had an outline of what he wanted to create, and knew he could use routines from both his Open University project and AIMS as the basis of the database. Having seen the value of a snappy acronym he repurposed one with much darker connotations and created the Modelling Activity Database, MAD.

Given that they had to be at Earl’s Court at 6.00 on Monday morning for transport to the airfield Andrew was able to leave at lunchtime on Friday. Other than Vestie Andrew had little to do with most of the rest of the team, especially as lots of them seemed to come and go. He had packed up one of the computers to be shipped with them and once that was complete he headed out. What had been even more surreal was that another member of Manners’ staff had come out to get the computer and files back to the Headquarters building. Andrew was now on the investigative team and didn’t have to do such things. He cabbed to the station, lucked out and caught an express train into Liverpool Street and was back in the flat late afternoon. When Andrew got back from swimming at Marshall Street Jim and Freya were home. He had swum for an hour, as much to just enjoy the feeling of swimming as anything. Andrew had become very spoiled over the years and missed swimming whenever it was denied or unavailable to him. That day there was no deep thinking, it was all about letting the stress and uncertainty bleed away. Over dinner he updated Jim and Freya.

“I am going to be away for the next two weeks and won’t be back over the weekend. When I get back I plan to go to Edinburgh for the weekend. I will let you know if anything changes and where I will be the third week. At present I have no idea.”

“This job is not turning out how I imagined it would.”

“For me too, but I am assigned to this for the rest of the summer. It is important, and they think I am making a difference, doing things that no one else on the team can, so all this moving about is part of it.”

After dinner Andrew phoned Navya to confirm meeting the next day.

“Abigail called this week, she is going to be in town and wanted to meet up. Do you mind if she joins us Andrew?”

“Don’t care Navya. It will be nice to catch up with both of you. I have missed having some friends around to chat to. Everyone is older where I am working and so it will be good to see you both.”

Abigail lived out west somewhere, in the Cotswolds, so they would meet her off the train at Paddington. The following morning Andrew was waiting for Navya at Baker Street when she got off the Tube, they were going to change lines. Andrew surprised her with his greeting.

“Put me down, you big Scottish giraffe. Gah.”

He nearly kissed her.

“What brought that on? I am Navya remember, the one that doesn’t swoon at your feet.”

“Just happy to see you. Feels like it has been a long summer already. Too many soldiers, not enough pretty women.”

“You need your eyes checked but I will take it.”

She changed tone.

“Has it been that rough?”

“I think it is more the difference with College life. We are so spoiled there. It is relaxed, mostly fun and mixed. It is only when you live life outside our bubble that you see how things are for a lot of people.”

“I know what you mean. Cambridge can have its moments of sexism but it is nothing compared to what I see day in and day out. It has been three and a half weeks at Dad’s business and it feels like three and a half months. I still have two more months of it to deal with. After one year Ru found a job at a law office where she could get some experience. And she had done the same thing again this year so she has escaped the worst of it. Talking of which, somehow word got back to the firm that hired her that she had met Lord Barnes. They asked her in for a meeting, all very informal, but she said that their tone to her was a whole lot different than before. Even being friends with someone who has friends in high places has changed things. To be honest I think she is a bit conflicted. She wants to change the world and do it all through her own efforts. So this undermines that, but at the same time it has helped her be noticed and raised her profile internally. Anyway she says hi, and asks that you pass on her best wishes to Lord Barnes and Mrs. Moray.”

“I will do that. I wonder how her firm found out? Do you think she mentioned it?”

“No, she thought the meeting was just a standard meeting, pre-hire stuff, payroll info, that sort of thing. She was taken aback when they asked about Lord Barnes.”

“Knowing him, I wouldn’t put it past him to have mentioned it in such a way that it got back to the partners. She also was introduced to a couple of the other Lords as well. It will be interesting to see how the other articling students treat her when they find out.”

“Yeah, she thought about that as well. Is it going to mean they stay away from her, or will it put a target on her back? Maybe both.”

They had switched lines and were on the way to Paddington while they chatted.

“I didn’t realise that you were so friendly with Abigail. I thought she had paired up with Emma, just as you and Helena had done.”

“You really are clueless Andrew. Emma got herself a boyfriend in term three and was all loved up. Did you not notice that she was not around much?”

His face told her the answer.

“Of course you didn’t. You can be so self-absorbed sometimes.”

Harsh but fair.

“Emma dropped Abigail like three day old fish so the three of us hung out more during term three. You were so focused on studying that you never noticed. She is a nice person who is just shy. I must admit, I dismissed her at the beginning of the year, she seemed so aloof and I thought she didn’t like me but I think it was just shyness. Anyway, I went out to stay with her a couple of weeks ago for the weekend, she lives in a lovely town in the Cotswolds. She is going to stay with me tonight.”

“I never even noticed that Emma wasn’t around. After that terrible dinner at the start of the year she always kept her distance. Abigail was the same, she kept her distance but I didn’t even manage to upset her over dinner. Like you, I thought she was aloof. It is unkind but I thought she had the ‘I’m too pretty to talk to you’ syndrome.”

Navya snorted.

“Really?”

“Like I said it was unkind. We never hit it off and if Helena and Leslie hadn’t clued me in on her knowledge and interest in the fashion world I would never have realised that she would appreciate a scarf. I think I spoke to her more in the last couple of days of term than I had since the start of term two.”

Andrew shrugged. The other part of Leslie’s assessment was left unsaid.

“Yeah, well you did a good thing there. She was so pleased that you gave her a scarf. I don’t think she realised that you still had some left. How many do you still have?”

“Four, no five I think. Why?”

“No reason. Someone’s sister has tried to borrow it a couple of times, that’s all.”

“I thought I bought the daughters with gold or camels or something, not scarves.”

Navya shrieked with mock outrage and pummelled him.

“You arse. Camels? If you are going to be a shit, then at least be accurate.”

“Yes dear. Sorry.”

“I swear you just like being hit sometimes.”

Navya tucked her arm into his as they left the station and the two of them walked along happy in their friendship. Andrew was pleased that she could be so comfortable doing this knowing that it was friendship, nothing more. He was also pleased that some of the tension from term three had dissolved. They got up to the overland station from the Tube just after the Bristol train arrived so Andrew stood like a lighthouse at the back of the concourse and magically Abigail found them.

“He is handy in a crowd.”

The two of them hugged but somewhat unexpectedly Abigail hugged Andrew as well. Upon reflection maybe it wasn’t unexpected but it caught him by surprise. She also had her scarf on which Navya, the little shit-stirrer, commented on immediately.

“Nice scarf, I should have worn mine.”

“Can you imagine if all the woman Andrew has given scarves to turned up and all wore them. He would look like a sheikh out with his harem.”

Well someone seemed to be over her shyness.

“Come on Andrew, how many?”

“Nine, but most are family and friends. Not many concubines.”

That he responded to their teasing surprised them for a second. But just for a second.

“Concubines!”

“Is that not the correct term for ladies of the harem?”

Andrew had to run to escape the swats. This was the most relaxed and unguarded he had ever seen Abigail and the three of them planned a fun day doing nothing. They took the Tube into town and walked over to Covent Garden., ending up at the same pavement café where Andrew had met Judy the year before. They people watched, got mildly catty about the tourists but just relaxed having a couple of drinks in the summer sun. Well the two of them were in the sun, Andrew was sitting in the shade. When they finished their extended lunch he pulled out his ugly wide-brimmed hat, needing only corks attached to complete the sheep station look.

“You really do have to be careful in the sun don’t you Andrew?”

Abigail seemed curious.

“All the time. I put sun cream on even on overcast days and on sunny days I am extra careful. I rarely wear shorts out other than for sport, I always wear long sleeved shirts and this very stylish hat. I even put sun cream on my back under the shirt, which is overkill but it is how I have to live the rest of my life. Now all these years later it is routine, part of getting ready in the morning.”

“I know it was years ago but it still seems so strange to think of you as a cancer survivor. You think they would be like Nigel’s size, short and slight, not the size of you. I am not making you uncomfortable, am I?”

“No, it is something that happened to me and there are some minor consequences physically, being careful in the sun being the main one, but no I don’t mind talking about it. For people our age they don’t know many people who had cancer and so often there are misconceptions or just questions that they think of when they get a chance to talk to someone. It is much easier to talk about it now than in the immediate aftermath.”

Andrew didn’t think Abigail was finished with the subject but she dropped it for the moment. She was so much more human, approachable than when she was at College. Andrew was surprised at the transformation. They had been walking towards the river as they talked and joined the hordes of tourists and took one of the river boats down to Greenwich. It was Abigail’s idea and killed the afternoon nicely. Although crowded they stood on the Prime Meridian, the originator of Greenwich Mean Time as well as wandered round the old Naval College. Again the pub called out to them and Andrew listened as they took turns complaining about their summer. Abigail lived in Chipping Sodbury, a town with the kind of name found only in Britain. Her father worked for a business in the town and she was working there all summer, covering people’s holidays the same as Andrew was, well at least notionally. She wasn’t working with, or for, her old man so the work was okay but just not very interesting.

“Did you not think of trying to do something with computers, use what you learned on your degree?”

“It was tough to organise anything while I was away at Cambridge. The local scene is mostly boys playing Atari rather than doing any programming. I did not know where to start really and Dad had got this job lined up for me so I ended up taking that. It is one of the disadvantages of living in a small semi-rural town. And to be honest I didn’t want to spend all summer away from my family after the whole year at Cambridge. I don’t know how you are not homesick Andrew?”

That last comment, as always, struck home. It occurred to him as they sat in this pub in Greenwich that he was heading off to West Germany on the Monday morning and his parents didn’t know about any aspect of his summer job. Of course it was just one of a long list of things that his parents didn’t know. Andrew McLeod, the 1984 son of the year! Navya knew of the strained relationship with his parents so she moved the topic on. She did an excellent job of diverting them both with her recounting of the latest machinations of her mother looking to find ‘a nice Indian man’ for Rupashi. There was Rupashi being feted by the partners at her future firm but all her mother wanted to do was to marry her off.

“Is she giving you a hard time too?” Andrew asked.

“She never stops thinking about it but she is mainly focused on Ru. If Ru can find someone to share a flat with then I would not be surprised if she moved out, just to escape the relentlessness of it. Like you Andrew, I am going to try and work away from home at the end of both second and third year. It just gets tiring, she doesn’t listen to us, care about what we want and immediately goes to cultural and emotional blackmail. She is driving me away, I am not as prepared as Ru to put up with it. What about you Abi? Are your parents cool?”

Abigail smiled and nodded.

“My parents are the best. Mum is a primary school teacher at the local school and Dad is head of Sales for the construction business that he works for. Well it is more materials than construction, sand, stone, gravel, cement, stuff like that. I am an only child and so got a lot of attention from them growing up. Mum in particular was really good about not giving in to all the ‘girls don’t do that stuff’ that they heard when I was first interested in computers in senior school. They are happy for me, and I have a good family life. My parents claim that it was love at first sight with them so all I get from them is, you’ll know it when it happens. It is nice to have no pressure but it is frustratingly vague.”

“Do you want to trade? I had such a good time there two weeks ago. You come and stay with my parents and I’ll enjoy a nice relaxed time with yours.”

Andrew could see Navya was half serious.

“What about you Andrew? You don’t mention your family much.”

Navya watched him to see how he would respond to Abigail’s question.

“I am pretty independent these days. I live in a flat in Edinburgh when I am there, I don’t stay with my parents any more. I have a little sister who is a couple of years younger than me and we don’t get on all that well, so I try to avoid causing scenes and keep to myself. And I have a much younger little brother. He is.”

Andrew stopped and mentally checked.

“Scott will be five at the start of November. Dad and I are very different people and he spoils Rowan, my sister. Mum has been consumed with Scott for the last four plus years. My relationship with my parents is, remote.”

Abigail looked shocked at his description of the relationship with his parents. And that was the anodyne version as opposed to the sad reality.

“It is one of the reasons that I decided to take the job in London but I let that get in the way of spending times with my friends in Edinburgh. It is all a bit of a mess.”

The conversation was quiet on the boat back up the river, and they ended up standing as the boat was packed. Then things got tense. Abigail went to the toilet but didn’t come back immediately. Navya went to check on her and as soon as she went inside the boat she shot back out onto the deck.

“Andrew quickly.”

He hurried over and was shoved through the door by Navya. A couple of overweight early twenties blokes had Abigail pinned against the wall. She wasn’t being held or anything but they had her blocked in. She looked upset and frightened. Andrew saw red, the look of misery on her face went right through him. He walked over and pulled the fatter of the two of them out of the way, took Abigail’s hand and led her away.

“Oy. What the fuck do you think you are doing?”

Sometimes there are advantages of being 6’5” and Scottish.

“I am trying to control my temper before I decide to drown you two like a pair of unwanted puppies.”

Two fights in his entire life, never managed to get his hands raised in either, ended up in hospital bleeding from head wounds both times. But he could talk a good game. Andrew turned away and led both women back onto the deck. The surprise of his intervention meant the two of them didn’t immediately follow. By the time they came out onto the deck a couple of crew members had belatedly appeared. Andrew could see the two of them muttering but they sloped off without doing anything else. Andrew didn’t know who had the bigger adrenaline shakes, him or Abigail, but it took a few moments to regain control.

“Thank you Andrew. I did not expect that here.”

Abigail seemed more resigned that anything.

“This has happened before?”

Abigail looked at him with cold pity.

“Andrew, that happens all the time. At College, in Cambridge, at home, it happens everywhere. Pretty women have to deal with that shit all the time Andrew. Not as bad as that normally but comments, hands brushing against your body, hanging around not taking ‘fuck off’ as a hint. I can’t believe you look so surprised.”

Navya put her hand on top of Abigail’s, carefully.

“I don’t think he has ever acted that way in his life Abigail.”

The coldness left her face.

“Sorry for jumping down your throat there. It is a sad part of life as a woman, and definitely a part of mine. And I am sure Navya’s right, you have never acted like that before.”

Abigail turned and stared out at the Tower of London as they motored past it. Andrew had his back to the railing to keep an eye out for the fuckwit brothers and so Navya stood beside Abigail waiting for her to come back to them. Suddenly Abigail turned to him and gave him a quick hug.

“Thank you again Andrew. I liked how you upped your Scottishness for effect with them. I think they expected you to challenge them to a fight. Threatening to drown them rather cut to the chase.”

As they had been talking the boat had bumped against the dock and tied up and so they joined the throng waiting to get down the gangplank. They held back and waited until the worst of the crush had moved off before heading there themselves, and Andrew had also seen the two assailants get off the boat. They were not waiting to attack them from behind. But they were waiting on Embankment for them to exit the pier.

“What are we going to do Andrew?”

That was the question. Instinct and bravado had got him out of the confrontation on the boat but they were not going quietly into the good afternoon, they were standing there, fat and squat, looking thuggish. The karmic scales, once again, tipped in his favour. Two Met Constables came walking along the embankment. The Met had a lot of officers in the tourist areas as a deterrent for exactly these kinds of situations. Andrew, Navya and Abigail walked off the pier and towards their erstwhile assailants. They too had seen the police and were trying to figure out how to proceed.

“You think you’re so tough you Scot’s cunt. Hiding behind Plod.”

The one Andrew had pulled away was spoiling for a fight, Andrew could see it in his eyes. But he wasn’t going to do anything with two police constables only yards away. But the actions had been clocked by the constables. The two of them were jostling Andrew, constantly moving to stand in front of the three of them, but careful not to lay a hand on them. Navya and especially Abigail looked scared.

“Is there a problem here?”

He was in his forties with the look of someone who had seen a lifetime of Neds and was thoroughly sick of dealing with them.

“Just trying to get past these two. They were pestering one of the ladies on the boat. They don’t know the meaning of the word no.”

There followed a minute of squawking and name calling from the pair of them. It was pathetic.

“Enough. Show me some ID please. Everyone. You two first.”

That shut them up quickly and they gave up at that point and tried to walk away. Behaviour in no way going to appear suspicious to the police. But the police insisted and called in the two names and lo and behold they had a couple of people ‘known to the police’. While the older male constable was dealing with them his younger, and female, partner got to deal with Andrew, Abigail and Navya. The women scrounged up ID but it was just theatrics to justify getting the details of the other two. Andrew’s problem was he only had one piece of ID on him. His Ministry of Defence Police pass, photograph and all. He handed it to the young constable and she must have got whiplash as she looked up at him. Her partner had finally sent the other two off east with a warning and he came over when she called him. He took one look at the ID as well and several questions flashed across his face.

“This is genuine?”

Andrew nodded.

“Summer job.”

The older policeman looked down at his colleague, mid-twenties at most, and just laughed.

“And I thought you were young. Christ, they get younger every day.”

And with that he handed the ID back and the two of them went on their way. If only Andrew could get away so scot free.

“What was that you showed the police Andrew?”

Like Navya was going to let this go.

“I have an official Ministry of Defence ID badge with my photo. It was surprising given my age that’s all.”

“Can I see it?”

Too many questions so.

“No.”

“Why? Come on it is not a secret.”

So this went on for 10 minutes as they walked back to Trafalgar Square and the Tube. Just Navya, Abigail kept quiet.

“Enough Navya. I was told not to be flash with it. I am a temporary summer student.”

His stubbornness won out over her inquisitiveness but this was a very annoying side to Navya. She kept harping on about things well past the point the horse was dead. Abigail realised it but she did not. Just as Helena had quickly got the message from Freya whereas Navya refused to accept it. The whole incident had put a dampener on the day. They had not made plans but the assumption was they would have dinner together. Now it seemed best they went their separate ways. It was a shame the day was spoiled. Andrew hugged them both on the Tube as it pulled into Baker Street and promised to call the next time he was in London at the weekend. Navya made a token effort to extend the day but Andrew needed a break from her. Instead it was takeout curry after a long swim at Marshall Street. Jim and Freya were out and so he had the flat to himself.

The following morning Andrew shortened his run so that he had time to swim before meeting Helena at Waterloo. His summer days were spent loitering around train stations. Helena was easy to spot in the much-reduced crowds of Sunday travellers. She gave him a quick hug before leading him out. Before Andrew even had a chance to get to mindless small talk she put her hand on his arm.

“I wanted to tell you in person. I have met someone and we are now going out as a couple.”

The way she was acting Andrew thought she was ill or something. Helena had no problem talking to him about her lack of success with men, normally while lying naked in his arms. Suzanne was the same. Both of them had slept with significantly more people than Andrew had while at university. Suzanne was kissing, and a whole lot more, a lot of frogs seeing if there was any spark. Helena was not quite as determined as Suzanne but had still bedded quite a few guys during the breaks on the course. But this was different.

“I know it is odd that I wanted to tell you in person, given that we are not even a couple. But you have been a wonderful friend to me this year and have made me realise a lot of things about myself, what I want, what is important. When I got back I went out with my friends and I met Edward. We hit it off and I really like him. I didn’t want there to be a misunderstanding between us.”

She looked up at him.

“Congratulations. Thank you for taking the time to tell me personally but it was unnecessary.”

“Maybe but I felt you deserved it. I hope that we are still really good friends at College.”

“Of course we will still be friends.”

This seemed obvious to Andrew but it had clearly been weighing on Helena as she brightened up. To now spend time together in London seemed awkward. Rather than go through the whole day treading carefully Andrew told her that Abigail was in town staying with Navya. After giving Navya a call, Helena was off to spend the rest of the day with them, and Andrew was once again wandering the city on his own. Despite having been in the pool less than three hours earlier he went back to Marshall Street and slowly swam for more than an hour. He was unsure whether he would get the chance to swim while in West Germany so did so while could. It was round to the little Italian place for dinner before an early night. Andrew needed to be up at 4.30 for the first Tube into town. He was off to West Germany to be a policeman. Sort of.

 

 

Chapter 2

Two Transit vans collected the team, their luggage and the cases with the files and computer and drove them for two hours to RAF Brize Norton for the flight to Germany. Why they had to drive west before flying east to Germany? That’s the RAF for you. They had to go to them, rather than them have an aircraft at Northholt in London for the team. They were going in a Hercules which to nearly everyone on the team was an outrage but for Andrew was totally awesome. There were moments where he was still a teenage boy, and this was one of them. He was not sure what everyone expected but he didn’t mind in the slightest. When they got to the base there was much checking of passes but they were deposited in front of a nondescript building that could have been on any military base in the country. RAF movement controllers, that is their official title but Vestie described them as pathetic jobsworths, wanted to check the luggage including the locked cases of files but were told to desist. To be fair they were told to fuck off but this was all happening at the front of the line and Andrew was very much at the back. So who said what, and who won the dick swinging contest he didn’t know, but just before 9.00 they were led out to the Hercules. Cold, noisy, cramped and uncomfortable but Andrew loved it. They climbed in, were given two wax earplugs and then it was sit and wait until take off. If there was a safety briefing Andrew missed it. Once they were airborne it got noisier and colder and they still could see nothing. But barely an hour after take-off they landed in West Germany, although in the British base RAF Bruggen. There were more words and more attempts at inspections but finally the team escaped the clutches of the RAF and headed five miles down the road to the Headquarters of the British Forces in West Germany.

Everything to do with the armed forces in West Germany was complicated. At the end of the Second World War the four victorious allied powers occupied different parts of Germany. As Berlin was the capital it was occupied separately, even although it sat surrounded on all sides by the Soviet Zone of occupation. British forces were in the north, the Americans were in the centre and the south, the French were in the west and the Soviets were in the east. Over the next five years the three western allies went from playing nicely with the Soviets to seeing them as the deadly enemy. Within four years the three allied zones of occupation came together to form West Germany, the Federal republic. The Soviets created East Germany, the Democratic Republic, from their zone and the two sides were set. Over the next 20 years West Germany became reintegrated into European political and military structures. NATO had been created a month before the creation of West Germany, although the Germans were not admitted until 1955.

But in the meantime, there were forces of occupation from the three western allied powers in West Germany. Once West Germany joined NATO these forces stayed in place but went from being vestigial occupation forces from WW2 and instead immediately became fellow NATO members’ commitment to the security and integrity of West Germany. And 30 years later they were all still there. As the Cold War had got ever chillier the forces had increased and other nations had forces in West Germany beyond the original three, including the Canadians, Belgians and Dutch. In peacetime all of these armies have their own officers and command structure but at a time of crisis or war they all come under NATO command. So the Headquarters of NATO’s Northern Army Group was also the Headquarters of the British Army of the Rhine. Just as the Headquarters of NATO’s 2^nd Air Force was the Headquarters of the RAF in Germany. The team were going to the British Army and Air Force Headquarters but which were also NATO headquarters and had American, German, Dutch and Belgian (that Andrew saw, there may have been others) troops stationed there. So this was not some small inconsequential base.

This was one half of the forces expected to defend Western Europe against the Soviet Army if it was ordered to attack. Everything else was a distraction to this mission. It wasn’t that they didn’t care about potential espionage but they cared about the impact to them. The new tanks with the new armour were expected to hold up the Soviet forces better, survive multiple impacts. This impacted operational plans, attrition modelling, things like that. What the command staff of the BAOR also cared about was whether this was going to end up being blamed on them. If this new armour had gone missing over there in Germany then there would be firings. Well not literally since everyone had guns, but commanders could potentially lose their jobs.

So this investigation impacted war plans, may confirm that NATO plans were compromised and it may also cost people their jobs. So as you can imagine, they were made to feel really welcome.

Now that was Andrew’s mental summary of lots of conversations with Vestie. They were in Rheindahlen for two days before going onto Minden, finally, where the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers had been based during the exercise. Andrew said and did nothing, he could have flown over on Wednesday morning as he added no value during these first two days. What he observed, and had explained to him, was an education though. Once again it was the difference between a well-ordered life, an engineering problem, a maths test, things that had a right or wrong answer; versus dealing with a confused and messy situation where it appeared, at least to Andrew, as if everyone was pulling in different directions.

He left school with a lot of naiveté about life, and that summer from OTC camp onwards, did a lot to strip that away. Andrew also believed that leadership and command started to make more sense to him that summer as well.

They were still being kept apart from other troops so Andrew couldn’t comment about Army life at that time in West Germany because he met so few regular soldiers. Rheindahlen seemed to have a lot of political posturing but that is the same at the top of all organisations. Finally on the Wednesday morning they were loaded into two LandRovers for the drive to Minden. There were six of them from the MoD Police there in Germany, led by Detective Inspector Brodie. There were two other Detective Sergeants in addition to Vestergaard and a Detective Constable. And Andrew.

Vestie had given him an idea of who some of the other organisations on the team were. Just as with the Army there in West Germany, it was not clear that everyone was pulling in the same direction. There were two investigators from the Special Investigation Branch of the Royal Military Police. They would be taking over the investigation into the suspected individuals. There was someone from the Defence Intelligence Staff, ‘covering the MoD’s arse’ was how he was described by Vestie. MI5 and MI6 were not present on the team at the moment but that was expected to change. Instead they had a team from the British Services Security Organisation. They worked in a counter espionage role within West Germany, and most pertinently to this investigation, worked to support the Armed Forces in the country. Vestie was categorical that they were not looking to help so much as ensure that blame was kept away from BAOR command. It appeared to be a common presumption as no one in the LandRover challenged Vestie while he was telling Andrew all this. It was also why they had travelled as a separate team. The MoD Police didn’t trust the others on the investigation. At the time what struck Andrew more than that incendiary mindset was how matter of fact everyone was about it. British nationals working for different agencies of the British Government were just as worried about internal politics as the external threat to the country. In this case, the suspected theft of an armoured panel with the new type of armour.

By the time they got to the garrison at Minden Andrew was ready to get the computer unpacked and finally escape into his own little world. He could work at the problem, identify the information that the team wanted and then stand well back as they bickered about what they had found. But before he could do any of that he was taken along with Vestie and one of the other Sergeants, Trevor Drinkwater, who the others called Splash, to see police work in action. They wanted to build up an understanding of what had happened talking to everyone there. They needed Andrew there when it came to figuring out how AIMS fitted into all this. He was allowed to take notes so that information could be verified on the computer system.

Minden was the garrison for the 11^th Armoured Brigade but it was just the Headquarters. There were no actual tanks based in the town. The tanks were an hour south in Paderborn. What were based in Minden were mechanised infantry. This did not make the task any clearer or easier. The follow up questions started on AIMS and then things just turned sad. As in pathetic.

The Property Services Agency had been in West Germany making plans for additional or replacement barracks for the troops. Before they returned to the UK they asked the Headquarters staff to use AIMS to give them an updated list of all the high value facilities. Now they had all this information on paper files but they dumped the task of starting to computerise them onto the Army staff in West Germany, without explanation or most importantly, training. With no one there to explain what was required and the PSA staff having left, the task was deemed the lowest of low priorities, so the program was put to one side and ignored. No harm, no foul.

Oh if only. The program was discovered by some keen, fresh-out-of Sandhurst Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers officer. That Corps was responsible for equipment maintenance within the Army, including tanks. So this officer, trying too hard for his own good, tried to take an asset management program and use it as an inventory program. Remember the comment about entering shit into the system will only get you shit out the system? Exactly. The files that the team were trying to reconcile to paper records did not match because no one knew what they were doing.

Inspector Rob Brodie was a grumpy man, it was his default setting. On the best of days he wasn’t a bundle of sunshine. But being sent all the way to West Germany to discover blind stupidity and incompetence had extinguished any sunshine in his heart. After every interview the team had to listen to Brodie demonstrate a creativity with swearing that was extremely impressive. But it was also justified. Everything to do with AIMS seemed to be a mess, and more and more looking like it had nothing to do with the case whatsoever. After two days of trying to figure out what was happening, Andrew was told to go with the two Sergeants to Paderborn and find out if they were doing things there in an equally fucked up manner.

Their day trip to Paderborn gave Andrew the chance to be bounced around in the back of a LandRover and see another part of West Germany where he was not allowed to talk to anyone. What they discovered after getting the runaround from the Regiment staff was that the Royal Tank Regiment based there had Chieftain tanks not the new Challenger ones. And none of them had the secret new armour. And it was so secret in fact that most of the tankers knew about it. Nothing appeared to be a secret in the Army.

Vestie and Splash were in talking to one of the Regimental officers while Andrew was cooling his heels outside. A Lance-Corporal, not much older than him commented that there were no Challengers in Paderborn, they were further north at Bad Fallingbostel. Now Andrew had not mentioned anything to him about why they were there, in fact he had not spoken to him at all but here he was telling Andrew where the Challengers were based. Andrew was saved from answering as the other two came out of the office and grumpily told him we they heading back to Minden. When they were on our way he spoke up.

“The clerk at the last office you visited told me that the Challengers are at one of the other Brigades, at a place called Bad Fallingbostel.”

Once Andrew had convinced them to stop swearing at him for talking out of turn he carried on.

“Fuck’s sake, give it a rest. I never said anything, I didn’t even talk to the bloke. He just piped up and told me that they only have Chieftains down there and that the Challengers are at this Fallingbostel place. I told him nothing and asked him nothing. I never even got a chance to practice my denials because you came out right after he told me.”

They finally calmed down and thought about the next step. They had been told that the Challengers were assigned to the 1^st Armoured Division and they were currently dealing with the 4^th Division. They had not been told which garrison but would have found out later when they got back.

“McLeod, tell me what I am missing here. We get word that there is a problem at Colchester. Some of the Fusiliers have been up to something. Standard stuff for the Red Caps to investigate. Suddenly we are told through other sources that there is an issue with this new armour, and some may have gone missing after the last reinforcement exercise.”

Other sources were what they always called information from the spies.

“Everyone freaks out and start to investigate. Issues arise with paperwork back at Colchester when we start digging, including reports from AIMS that don’t tie in. This is where you come onto the scene. But the issue with AIMS is irrelevant. The Fusiliers were here for the exercise and the 4^th only have Chieftains. Plus none of these clowns know how to use that program of yours. The Army rumour service is alive and well and word about us has spread. And now we find out everyone knows that it relates to Challengers. We will tell Brodie when we get back and sure as shit we will get sent to Fallingbostel next week. I wonder if this is just a wild goose chase though. Surely someone has actually checked to make sure we have lost some of these panels. I swear if we get there next week and all are present and accounted for I will.”

He never did tell them what he would but drove on in grim silence until they were back in Minden. Andrew went back to being a wallflower and watched and listened as the whole team, from all organisations gave an update. The BSSO lead failed to hide his satisfaction that all was not going well. Once the meeting was over Brodie assembled the six of them in a separate office and called Lester for an update and instructions.

“Boss, who has confirmed that panels are missing? All the units here still have Chieftains and so all this crap with the Fusiliers is squaddie idiocy rather than some grand conspiracy. The Challengers are with the 1^st AD, not the 4^th down here. Have they confirmed that they are missing panels?”

The silence was lasting a moment too long.

“I will need to check Rob. Assume that they have. Are you going to head there now?”

“Tomorrow morning I think boss. Get settled in on Sunday and start fresh on Monday. You okay with that?”

“Okay Rob. Let me get confirmation that panels have gone missing and we will talk Monday morning from, where did you say you are going?”

“Bad Fallingbostel, halfway between Hannover and Hamburg. The Royal Hussars are the first regiment over here with Challengers.”

They had their marching orders. Andrew’s summer tour of West German hotspots was set to continue. Little did he know that there was going to finally be some truth to that statement. The bar that night was tense as the BSSO guys were making no secret that they thought the whole thing was a wild goose chase. Andrew headed to bed early and left the rest of them to it. The following morning Andrew was up early as usual, completed his exercises and then went for a run. He did his old standby of running for 30 minutes and then turning around, he had no idea where he was, other than 30 minutes down the road from the garrison. He even got back into the camp without a problem and was waiting for the rest of the team as usual for the trip up the road. Vestie and Splash had stayed at the bar until late and looked at Andrew with hungover disgust as he waited for them to finish.

“McLeod, can you drive?”

“Sure.”

He barely caught the keys flung at his head.

“Good, you can drive to Fallingbostel. Go get a map and directions. There are two Landrovers outside. You can drive the three of us in one.”

Andrew had no idea if he was permitted to drive that vehicle. He had been driving for less than two years at this point, had never driven a LandRover and had never driven on the Continent, and therefore the right-hand side of the road. None of that mattered a whit to Vestie and 20 minutes later they were on our way north. Well they went east first and then north. There was a straight-line route to Fallingbostel which involved much navigating, lots of different road numbers and had the potential for much fucking up. Or they could take the motorway due east to Hanover until it connected to the Autobahn north which went right past Bad Fallingbostel. Brodie went in the other vehicle and they headed north. Andrew went east, took shit the whole way from two hungover and grumpy Detective Sergeants, and got them there an hour before the others. Someone hadn’t passed their map reading course. Once they were on the A7 heading north Splash took the map and unfolded it. He started working out distances and checking that there was a train station in Bad Fallingbostel.

“We are off until Monday, right Vestie?”

“You heard Lester. Why?”

“Hamburg.”

“Good shout.”

The two of them carefully followed the train line and it looked like it went to Hamburg.

“You up for it kid? A night of filth and debauchery in Hamburg?”

Today it would be called an urban legend. Hamburg had the second most famous red-light district in the world, second only to Amsterdam, the Beatles had played there in the early sixties and so Hamburg had this mythical status. But it was in northern Germany and was not on the way to anywhere. So the chance to go there when you are only an hour away was more than intriguing, it was a chance in a lifetime. Such hyperbole is ridiculous in hindsight but in 1984, to a 19-year-old student, it was the truth. Andrew had no idea if he would ever be back in West Germany and even then, whether he would get to Hamburg. So he was definitely up for a trip to Hamburg. The rest of the journey was spent with the two of them regaling Andrew with tales from previous visits to Hamburg and all the things he would need to do while there. Spending time with a West German prostitute was not high up Andrew’s list of life’s unfulfilled dreams but other than that it was mostly harmless. Andrew thought the two of them were more excited than he was and they waited very impatiently for Brodie and the other two to finally get there from the byways and backroads of northern Germany. Two thirty somethings were twitching like a hyperactive Labrador when the other three finally pulled up outside their temporary accommodation.

Where that was, Andrew didn’t know. He had been told to never talk to anyone outside the team so he had no clue where they were half the time. He knew he had been in the RMP barracks in Colchester because it was a separate standalone garrison. Here in Germany he went where he was told. There were always RMP guys around so he guessed that they were in their barracks but was never told that definitively. The team kept to themselves and so he never got to explore, chat to squaddies based there, anything like that.

Once the rest of the team were squared away Vestie went and received permission to go to Hamburg. The Constable on the team decided to join them. Brodie and the other Sergeant laughed it off, claiming their days of misbehaving in Hamburg were behind them.

Three hours later they got off the train in the centre of Hamburg.

 

Chapter 3

It had taken a cab and two trains to get there but they had made it. They stood outside the entrance to the train station and Vestie got his bearings and turned to the left. After finding Kirchenallee, known to British squaddies as Kitchen Alley, they walked down the street turned right and at the next corner found the Hotel Condor. Cheap and cheerful but clean and used to dealing with British servicemen. And the next morning it was all of 200 metres back to the train station. They got rooms without a problem and were back out and on the go 10 minutes after checking in. The fourth member of the group was the only Detective Constable on the team, Owen Thomas, whose parents clearly won the ‘least imaginative parents in Wales’ competition when it came to naming him. He was new to the investigation side of the MoD Police and had not been with them for long. But he was about to turn 31 so he was hardly some newbie fresh out of the training school. He had done eight years as a uniformed constable before transferring over.

When all your knowledge of something is from the hysterical stories of teenage boys the likelihood of the reality living up to the fantasy is slim. Hamburg was the exception to that rule and was so utterly disgusting, in a good way, that for once the reality was better than the stories. Britain is an odd combination of a repressed yet prurient country. One of the ways that this repression manifests itself is with regard to sex. Something as gloriously tacky but at some level very matter-of-fact as the Reeperbahn in Hamburg could never exist in Britain, so unashamed and blatant. Andrew remembered walking through Soho with Judy the previous summer and it was sad. It was like drinking light beer compared to the Guinness that was Hamburg. Everything about Soho was a pastiche, an imitation and a poor one at that.

In the 21^st century pornography is ubiquitous. In the 1980s it was anything but. Andrew was a 19-year-old man and had only ever seen pornography once. He had seen some tatty magazines showing some tits and arse at various Army camps but until that night he the only porn he had seen had been at Maggie and Tony’s flat, when they showed him the magazine that Naomi had been published in. So Andrew was more than a little overwhelmed by the events of the evening. It started quietly though. Vestie and Splash led the way and they ended up in the Klimperkiste bar where the Beatles used to drink. It was a nice low-key, out of the way place that was perfect to start the night. The beer was good, as was the food and it was nice to see that 20 plus years after the Beatles were there the place was still going strong. It was clear the Beatles connection did not hurt. Neither Splash nor Taff (all Welshmen are called Taff or Taffy) had heard Andrew’s story so he had to go through the highlights again.

“You mean to tell me that you are 19, already have a university degree and this program that none of these poxy squaddies know how to use, you designed it?”

Andrew nodded.

“But, but” Splash stopped. “You seem so normal.”

Andrew wasn’t quite sure how to answer that.

“Jock is alright. Knows what he doesn’t know and listens.”

Andrew looked over at Vestie in surprise.

“It is true Jock. You could have been a complete tosser, total waste of oxygen. You designed the fucking program, and we would have had to put up with you. But you have stayed in the background and watched and listened. The questions you ask afterwards show that you are paying attention. I have been a copper for 15 years. Taff had to put in eight years in uniform before he could get a transfer. You turn up and you fit in, as in you don’t stand out. Sure you are not carrying your weight if you were an experienced bloke but that is it. You have no experience and no training and you are helping. None of us have a clue about this computer stuff, even though it seems to be a big red herring at present.”

Vestie stopped, looking sheepish at having voiced such praise.

“How did you end up with us, out here?” Splash asked.

“I was in support services at Headquarters, holiday cover for the records centre, hauling the files around, that sort of thing. On my fourth day there and only my third day working, Lester sent for all these files. As the new kid I was the one that got sent to Colchester. I saw an AIMS printout on the table and smiled. Some bloke from, well I am not sure who he was, but anyway he caught me smiling and thought I was smiling at what was on it, so I ended up having to tell Lester the story I told you.”

More beer was ordered but then it was Taff with the next question.

“I get how you ended up out here, but how did you get assigned us in the first place. You need Secret not Background.”

Meaning the clearances. Andrew sighed.

“I already had Background from all the CCF, Sapper and OTC courses I had been on. They got me to complete the Secret clearance forms, I think as an experiment. I passed but they never told me. Hell I turned up at the Main Building on the first day to be told I had to go to the Empress. When I got there they knew nothing about me. Took a whole day to get past reception.”

This example of British military efficiency had all three of them nodding. And with that it was dropped. Andrew was ‘the kid’, nothing more, nothing less, out with three older colleagues. Taff took his lead from the other two and the rest of the meal was Splash and Vestie reminiscing about the various times they had been here. For Vestie this was his third visit and for Splash it was his second. Like Andrew Taff was there for the first time. After they had finished a good nosh and drunk three big beers, it was time to venture out and see if Hamburg’s reputation was deserved.

After all the anticipation and excitement of going there it was time to see what all the fuss was about. And at one level Hamburg did not disappoint. But there is a reason Andrew never went back. The reason he was not a big drinker could be traced back to the Hogmanay night in 1979. He watched a collection of hard working farmers drink themselves unconscious. And did so with a grim determination as if passing out drunk was the point of the evening. Andrew had seen the same behaviour at various times at university and a lot while around Army soldiers. There was no joy in the drinking. For so many they drank because it was expected. The other thing that Andrew noticed that night was the fluctuating power dynamic. At one level the power was in the hands of those with the money, almost exclusively the men. But at a different level the power was with the women. There were so many more men around the area then there were women. The women could pick and choose which punters to deal with.

But on top of it all there was a lack of joy on both sides.

Did Andrew have a good time that night? Up to a point. Over the course of the evening they went to a sex shop, a strip club and finally a sex show. They walked past some prostitutes but did not talk to them. That part was more like street theatre. Andrew wasn’t helped by the fact that despite being pissed he was the soberest one of the four of them. It didn’t look like the other three got out much.

He was fascinated by the whole evening, but did recall at the end, watching a bored peroxide blonde with huge fake tits get fucked by some 130lb stick insect of a man with a big dick, that there was no joy. She was bored, he was bored, hell the audience was bored. Now the two of them were going overboard with the fake ecstasy expressions but it was clearly fake. They had paid a lot of Marks to descend into this sweaty basement and then drank overpriced bilge water whilst watching the least erotic thing he had ever seen. But that was the culmination of the evening.

After dinner and beer at the Klimperkiste they had walked the mile or so to the start of the Reeperbahn. The chat on the way was for three men of the world to show the kid all the things he had been missing in his life up until then. So they started with a large, garishly neon, sex shop. Maybe a block into the red-light district. Looking back this was the high point of the evening because it totally blew Andrew’s mind. Again, you hear the phrase sex shop and at one level it resonates; a shop full of sex stuff, a shop full of sexy stuff, a shop full of sex. Maybe others had asked the next question of what does that mean exactly? But for a shy young man from Edinburgh he never did. So as the blacked-out door behind swung closed Andrew was amazed, he was a robot with overloaded circuitry. For the first 10 minutes he wandered round in a daze just looking open mouthed at all the stuff.

And do you know what shook him out of his stupor. A pair of handcuffs. It was that pair of handcuffs that suddenly brought to mind a wonderful young lady with a desire to explore some edgier things. Andrew went from a gawking tourist to a serious shopper in the blink of an eye. The flashing neon proclaimed that this place was open 24 hours a day so he knew he could return. But as he looked at leather cuffs that buckled to a person’s wrists with clips to connect them together Andrew pictured Suzanne not just wearing them but thinking about wearing them. Andrew pictured them lying on the bed all day for Suzanne to look at and think about. It made everything real, and in a funny way, normal. As he walked back over some of the areas he had initially staggered past in a daze he saw a section full of beautiful corsets, including one with steel eyes sewn into the back. Andrew looked back at the cuffs and his second purchase was mentally made. The range of vibrators and dildos was impressive, but they would require further scrutiny to find an appropriate one.

He wandered over to one of the aisles where the guys were standing comparing different video covers and Taff decided to drop some cash on one that had caught his eye. In the end they were in there for maybe 20 minutes, no more than half an hour, but another layer of naiveté was stripped away. There was something oddly comforting to know that what Suzanne was feeling, wanting to explore, was sufficiently common that there were clothes and accessories for it. Up until then Andrew had been supporting her but doing it in total isolation. Let’s face it he could not imagine having the discussion with anyone. On the way out the store he passed the video racks and saw there was a small spanking section. What caught his eye? Someone holding a ping pong bat with a rosy cheeked arse also in the picture. No embarrassing prop, just a simple table tennis bat. Hmmm.

The sex shop had not so much peeled a layer of naiveté away as attacked it with a belt sander, and Andrew felt raw. It had been at least 45 minutes since they had had a beer and the troops were getting restless. So the strip club further down the block was the next destination. They got a table after paying a hefty cover charge and then their waitress arrived to take the order. You have seen a million pictures of German women in Lederhosen serving beer, most famously at Oktoberfest in Munich. Well imagine that costume but just a lot less material. Taff looked like he had lost the power of speech while Andrew was struggling to look her in the eye. Beer was ordered and Taff recovered the power of speech.

You would think that sitting drinking beer and watching women take their clothes off is relaxing. Well not exactly relaxing, not taxing is a better way of putting it. But the whole concept of private dances had never even occurred to Andrew, never mind been explained. So rather than just zone out and watch the women, he had to talk to them. Who knew? Well the other three obviously as they would talk to the women that came around offering a private dance. The thing that saved him initially was that he was wedged in the back, Andrew’s height has always made him seek the back of groups, partly his nature but mostly courtesy. So at first he was able to watch the interactions between the women and the other three. And there, playing out before his eyes, was the power dynamic again. As Andrew people watched within the club, not just at their table, you could see who were the skilled players and who were not. The prettiest women did not get the most dances. The women who made a connection, got the guy to laugh, those were the women who closed the deal and took the guy away for a dance.

Andrew was told that he could not hide in the corner all night and that if he did not pick out someone for a dance then they would. Which is how Andrew ended up having a dance from Rose. She was pale skinned and a redhead but rather than being Irish as the name would suggest she was Finnish of all things. Andrew knew that not all Scandinavians are blondes but it did surprise him. Judging by her resigned laugh to his reaction he was not the first person to find a redheaded Finn a shock. She was funny in a cynical way but for all her cynicism she was not jaded. She was 22, had no idea what to do with her life and was stripping her way across Europe. She danced for her two songs, shook her tits in his face and mock humped his leg, everything he had been told to expect from the others. When Andrew returned to his seat the banter was puerile but expected. ‘Rose’ had asked him about the four of them, she thought Vestie or Splash was his dad, and so that titbit distracted them from further abuse. After five minutes of ‘yes Dad’ an uneasy truce was declared.

That was the pattern of the evening. Drinking beer and watching women take their clothes off. Every so often one of them would wander off for a private dance. The time passed quickly. Finally Splash decided that they needed to see a sex show which is how they ended up in the sweaty basement watching two bored people fuck. Given the prices they were trying to charge for booze, after the bored pair had finished they all quickly agreed it was time to get the hell out of there. Now Andrew was pissed. Eight beers over an evening will get anyone pissed but he had eaten a good nosh at the start of the night and was still able to hold it together, immeasurably aided by being 6’5”. Splash and Taff had been seduced by a woman selling shots when Andrew was off having one of his dances and had added at least two shots of some kind of spirit to their beer total. They were now making no sense other than proclaiming loudly for all to hear that ‘you are alright’. Vestie was also pretty drunk but was a quieter, in danger of falling asleep, drunk. So the mile back to the hotel was quite the expedition. Vestie was quiet and fortunately the other two were happy drunk, so they avoided any hassle. The night clerk at the hotel barely looked up as they staggered back and after Andrew got the door to their room open for them he left them to resolve peeing, puking and passing out on their own. Vestie had progressed to the passing out stage when Andrew got into the room so he drained the last of the beer, drank some water and crashed on his bed.

8.00 saw him sitting on the bed with a raging headache. Four aspirin and two pints of water later and he headed out for some breakfast. Not even any exercise. The day was bright and clear, just what his headache needed! Andrew walked past the station looking for somewhere that served breakfast. Hamburg must have seen enough British squaddies over the years because within half a dozen blocks there was a nondescript café with a sign in the window ‘full English served here’. Assuming they were advertising breakfast as opposed to cannibalism he went in and was rewarded with the aforementioned breakfast. The sausages were German but other than that it could have been served at Peggy’s Café in Cambridge. It totally settled his stomach and so Andrew figured it was time to go shopping.

Walking into a sex shop at 9.00 on a Saturday night with a group of guys is a lot different to walking in at 9.30 on a Sunday morning, on your own. Still he managed not to bottle it, though it was touch and go as he got closer. But Andrew knew that Suzanne would love the corset and cuffs. And selfishly he knew he would be the beneficiary of the lust they would inspire. Andrew skipped everything else, the thought of bringing Suzanne to somewhere like this on their holiday had taken hold in his mind. So he made his two purchases without incident and escaped back into the sunshine. Suddenly the following weekend could not come quickly enough. Just thinking that made him laugh at his own double entendre. Hmmm.

When he got back to the hotel Andrew asked the clerk, who spoke decent English, if there was a place for a run and he marked out a little park north of the station on a small loch, or maybe it was an inlet from the sea, either way there was a park beside the water where Andrew could run. It was not huge but would suffice to escape the traffic. Vestie was still snoring away so Andrew did his exercises and then headed out for a run. He sweated all the booze out of his system, running at a good pace for the whole hour and then cooling off on the walk back to the hotel. Even he was disgusted by the smell of himself but fortunately the lift was empty on the way to the room. When he got there Vestie was lying in his bed, smoking a cigarette and looking like shit.

“Where have you been?”

“Went out for a run.”

The look of outraged disgust said more than words could.

Andrew showered, cleaned the stink off him and felt pretty decent. It was also 11.20, everyone else was asleep or still in bed and the train was not for more than four hours. Based on the ashtray Vestie was on his third fag when Andrew came out of the bathroom.

“You are making me ill just looking at you. Fuck sake kid, at least look a little hungover.”

“What’s the matter dad? Getting old?”

“Fuck you, cunt.”

“You getting up anytime soon? Can you face some food?”

Vestie seemed to consider this for a moment.

“Yeah, now that I think about it, top idea.”

“Well I found a place that does a decent breakfast. Full English, German sausage but everything else is the same. 10-minute walk.”

“You have had breakfast?”

“Hours ago. Before my run.”

“Go and see if the other two are awake yet. 15 minutes in the lobby for food.”

So Andrew got to bang on the door to get the others awake. With much cursing they agreed but it was more than 30 minutes before the four of them were in the lobby. A sullen silence descended over them but once they had some coffee in them and the smell of breakfast was all around they perked up, well a little anyway. Having run Andrew had a second big breakfast and felt tip top at the end. The others had also demolished their large plates of food.

He left them to go back to the hotel and found a park to sit in and think. Andrew was thinking about the case. He had a little notepad with him and doodled as he marshalled his thoughts. He wondered about AIMS. The software should not tie into the case, it was for immoveable assets, buildings and such like, not for parts of a tank that could be detached. The guys at the 4^th Armoured Division had entered all sorts of things into the system. What they had not thought to do was transfer the written reports they were already producing into the system. But when the MoD Police team looked at the reports out of the 4^th division they had tried to be diligent about the vehicles. The problem was that vehicles were particularly tough to keep track of. The team was a prime example. The MoD Police did not have jurisdiction in West Germany, yet they had two 4^th division LandRovers that they were using. Now the transport guys were used to having stuff scattered over hell and beyond and they had a system that although cumbersome kept track of who had different vehicles. Brodie had signed for the two LandRovers. But to try and use AIMS for that was pointless. It had nothing like the functionality, in fact it would be nearly 10 years before a software solution had any kind of functionality for that situation. All of that being said, tanks were not Landrovers, they were not able to be borrowed. So tank numbers for each regiment and division should be accurate. But what about these panels. Without the panels it was still a tank, the crew could drive it and it could be used in training, even in battle. It would be the visual inspection that would give it away. Missing the panels, the tank was going to stand out pretty clearly. Andrew wondered how many spares they carried in the regiment. The REME must have stockpiles of spares for replacement if damaged in battle. So was the issue with the tankers? Or was it with the REME guys? They repaired equipment not facilities or buildings. So were the reports from the 4^th division being produced by the Armoured Corp or the REME? For all Andrew knew it was both.

Was Vestie right and the whole software thing was a red herring? It could be. But Andrew wanted to see if the 1^st division did it differently than the 4^th. Why did they focus on the 4^th if the new tanks with the new armour were based 100 miles to the north in a different division? He shrugged. Lester and Brodie were in charge of this mess. Andrew would be back in the UK by the end of the week, and maybe sooner if nothing was missing when they investigated the next day. Why was he thinking about it? It was his nature he supposed. Andrew didn’t think he was smarter than the others it was just an intellectual challenge and it was confounding him.

Andrew didn’t talk about the case when he got back to the hotel, just grabbed his bag, his purchases carefully packed, paid his half of the room bill and walked over to the station. The journey back seemed to take longer and there was little chat amongst them but they got back to base in time for some dinner at the mess. Frighteningly, both Splash and Vestie thought that a couple of beers was what they needed, but Andrew retreated to his room and had an early night.

 

Chapter 4

The start of the week at Bad Fallingbostel was pretty much a repeat of the previous week. Lots of interviews trying to understand what had happened. The tankers were part of the 7^th Armoured Brigade, and the only formation within the British Army Of the Rhine that had the new Challengers. Now that they were at the garrison with the right equipment at least they might get to the bottom of it. But two days of talking at the command level had produced nothing, or at least nothing that suggested there was a problem. Most of the team were now sure that there was no issue. Lester had confirmed that the 7^th Brigade was not missing any panels. They walked up and down all 57 tanks and the detachable panels were all there. Walking back from another pointless interview Andrew finally started talking to Vestie about whether this was a REME issue.

“When did you think all this through?”

“Sunday after lunch, before we came back.”

They talked some more and the whole issue of the spooks insisting there was a problem versus nothing missing here hung over the conversation.

“Do you mind if I talk to some of the Sappers and REME guys. I want you to be there but I have seen an exercise out on Salisbury Plain where there was a lot of umpire directed damage, you know the attrition of battle they want to model, but also there was a ton of just mechanical breakdowns, especially on the old Chieftains.”

Vestie looked at Andrew closely.

“Okay, I see what you are saying. Just shoot the shit with them and see what they talk about.”

“It is worth a try. Nothing else seems to be working.”

They found out the assigned Engineers to the Brigade were half way back to Minden so Taff, Vestie and Andrew headed over to Nienburg. Taff had been there on Saturday as part of his drive round the West German countryside and this time they found the garrison without too much trouble. Taff stayed with the LandRover while Vestie and Andrew went to talk to the Sappers.

It is always amazing how defensive everyone gets when the Police turn up. There is that presumption that they have done something wrong, and even when they were squeaky, there was still a reserve. It was also amazing when they realised it was not them on the hook how helpful they would be. Vestie did the talking and explained they were just trying to understand how everything worked back and forth between the divisions and the different garrisons, when everyone is scattered as opposed to the exercises on Salisbury Plain. They got directed to a new lieutenant and a wizened old sergeant. Guess who was looking out for who? It was slow going at first but gradually they got them talking. Andrew explained he had been at Salisbury Plain twice now with the Sappers, watching them on exercise the first time and planning the exercise the second. The questions just flowed from there.

“We landed at Bruggen and have been at Rheindahlen, Minden, Paderborn, Bad Fallingbostel and now here. You are the assigned Engineering Regiment for the 7^th Armoured, but are an hour away from them. How does fixing stuff work? We are going to talk to the REME guys next but if you are on exercise and something gets broken where is it dealt with. I saw some of the old AVRE’s crap out when I was at Perham Down. Do you leave them with the REME or do you haul them back and get them fixed here?”

The answer was even more complicated. The tracked combat engineering vehicles stayed with the tanks, as the Army did not want to have to load them onto transporters and drive them back there, and the Germans did not want them wrecking the roads. The wheeled vehicles were there but the tracked vehicles stayed with the tanks. There was an attached REME unit with the tanks and they dealt with all the tracked vehicles at the garrison in Bad Fallingbostel. The Sergeant had been around the block enough to know that there was more to this than Vestie and Andrew were letting on and he and Vestie had a word before they left. They drove up the road back to Bad Fallingbostel but pulled off the road to chat before going on.

“From what we have been told it looks like they keep all the tracked vehicles together, which would make us suppose that the spares are there also. I doubt the REME have a central store site as it would be too vulnerable. There is a REME workshop here at Fallingbostel so we need to check there next.”

Taff spoke up.

“Brodie sent the other two there yesterday and they were going back today. We should have an idea if anything is missing from them.”

Vestie sat quietly thinking and Taff and Andrew sat patiently waiting for him to organise his thoughts.

“The point Jock made yesterday still doesn’t make sense. Why did the fucking spooks have us go to Colchester? The Fusiliers were nowhere near here. We checked. The 4^th never were within 50 miles of the 1^st. There is something not right about this.”

They drove back in utter silence as Vestie sat and mulled everything over. Brodie had called everyone together to let them know that there was a side panel missing from the REME stores. Splash had discovered this while watching the REME quartermaster do a check for him. That it had taken this long to confirm was also making a lot of people very nervous. They had dedicated repair vehicles in support of the tanks and the support vehicle carried two panels as part of its regular load to enable speedy repairs. Brodie explained.

“They had the exercise and as part of the plan the REME had to switch a panel on a Challenger. That went fine but a cable on the crane got caught on the Challenger and when it took off it wrecked the crane and damn near pulled the recovery truck over. The crane was unusable and they had a panel lying on the ground in the German countryside. This is where no one can find out answers. The Alvis was able to drive back under its own power. Troops were left to guard the panel and they wrote out a report confirming it was collected by a REME unit but no one knows where the panel went. The second REME unit did not have an Alvis so it took a whole squad of guys to load it onto the back of a four tonner and then they took off. This we know from the report. The report was from a TA unit in Newcastle and as you can imagine they are being asked a lot of urgent questions. Someone from Catterick is going up there to try and get the details of the unit that collected the panel and where the hell they took it. Everyone assumed it was the 7^th Workshop of the REME based here but it is not. So we know that a panel is missing. Definitely. We have a report that the panel was collected and loaded onto an Army truck by a REME unit but we don’t know which one. It was not the 7^th.

“Vestergaard, Drinkwater you two find out where the other REME units in this division are based. Jock, Taff go and get the LandRovers ready and out front. Wright” This was the third Sergeant. “Find out where Lester is and let HQ we need to speak to him urgently. Move it.”

As Andrew ran to get the LandRover the whole investigation seemed to have taken a more serious turn. Which did make him wonder what the fuck he was still doing here. There seemed to be no computer angle it just needed trained policemen, not an engineering student who was supposed to be helping with the filing. By the time he had the LandRover out the front Vestie was waiting.

“There is a third location and Brodie and Wright are going to deal with that. Get out of here before he changes his mind and makes us do something else.”

Where were they going? Osnabruck. Which was as far south as Minden but even further west. It was more than two hours away and Taff had got lost coming the other way on Saturday. They drive in silence for a long time before Vestie started talking.

“They are sending more men out. It is still a fucking nightmare with everyone sticking their oar in but now that we have evidence that something is really missing they are throwing resources at it. We are all likely to have to stay but you should be okay to get home on Friday as scheduled. You have done well but there is no AIMS component now, just missing equipment.”

Andrew pondered what Vestie had said. The thought of being stuck in Germany and missing another weekend had not occurred to him. He was clearly out of his depth and as Vestie had said there did not appear to be any AIMS or computer aspect to this. They arrived late in Osnabruck but the second in command of the REME workshop was waiting for them. He listened as Vestie told him the situation. Had any of their REME vehicles come back with a panel from the 7^th Armoured’s new Challengers? He was half way through immediately saying no when he checked himself.

“I was going to say no instinctively but that won’t cut it.”

And so called the whole unit out and they did a thorough search. Every REME vehicle was checked, the stores were checked and they checked the lorries that had been used as well. Nothing. Nobody from the 22^nd had stopped to offer assistance to anyone from the 7^th. They had been miles apart.

Vestie and Andrew were the last to check in and Brodie did not react well to the news that they too had not found the missing panel. After a quick dinner it was straight back to Bad Fallingbostel for them. Vestie was even quieter than before. They barely spoke the whole journey. When they got back to the investigation room Andrew was told he wasn’t needed that night and sent off. Saturday in Hamburg seemed a long time ago.

Things were no better in the morning. Additional men were flying into RAF Gutersloh, further east than Bruggen, slap bang in the middle of the concentration of British forces in the triangle between Osnabruck, Minden and Paderborn. They would not get there until after lunch. And Andrew was to all intents and purpose now surplus and off the investigation. So he sat at the computer reviewing the files they had copied from the 4^th Division at Paderborn and Minden. He was killing time comparing the AIMS files to copies of the source records. There were errors galore and Andrew was noting them trying to see if there was any kind of pattern. He sat reviewing what he had noted when he noticed that there was a second error. The AIMS printout mostly matched the source computer files but there were errors aplenty with the corresponding paper entries. But there were also some differences between the AIMS printout and the computer file. Andrew sat there wondering which one was right when it occurred to him that they were taking the paper records as correct and the computer files as rubbish. And although that was nearly always true what about the chance that the paper records were wrong. Never mind if AIMS was right or wrong. The 7th Armoured Workshop of the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers thought they had all the armoured panels when they did not. Could the converse be true? Was the panel sitting in the back of a lorry somewhere in a motor transport pool? Each panel weighed a third of a ton and was bulky and an awkward shape. Unless you had a crane or a squad of men, there was no way to move it.

Andrew also thought about the fact that the two Armoured Divisions were a lot closer together than he originally thought. He and Vestie had gone all the way to Osnabruck which was due west of Minden. But it was only two hours away. Regardless of how it happened, was there a chance that the missing panel was in the lorry park of the 4^th Division all this time? He needed to discuss this with someone so looked around. Brodie had taken his shouty pills that morning and was running hot. Andrew didn’t think he would have the patience to sit through and listen to him, especially if he was wrong. The obvious person was Vestie but would he give Andrew the time? Brodie went out the room at that moment so Andrew jumped in with both feet.

“Vestie, I know you are busy but I need to bounce something off you.”

“Not now Jock.”

“Vestie, I wouldn’t be asking you if I didn’t think it was important.”

Vestie channeled his inner Paddington but Andrew didn’t flinch and so he nodded.

“Make it quick then.”

He came and sat beside Andrew who talked through his thought process. He was looking skeptical about Andrew’s reasoning for a while but then Andrew reminded him that the REME guys at Fallingbostel thought they had all the panels and it turned out one was missing from one of their vehicles. When Andrew posited that the missing panel may be sitting in a lorry park somewhere within one of the garrisons of the 4^th AD Vestie looked thoughtful. He battled Brodie head on for the first 10 minutes but he got through to him.

“Okay, I agree it is worth checking out. I can only spare one person to go with McLeod. You want to stay here or go with him?”

Vestie was torn, this could be a wild goose chase, but he decided to see where their hunch would lead them.

“I’ll go with the kid. Just don’t leave all the shitty tasks for me when we get back.”

Brodie snorted and sent them on their way. Once again, Andrew was driving a bleeding Army LandRover back south to Minden. Vestie this time would not shut up. They were starting in Minden and working their way south through Detmold ending up in Paderborn. All three had tracked vehicles and a REME workshop on site. Andrew didn’t know who had words with the commanders but there was nothing but cooperation now. The change in attitude within the BAOR command over the two weeks was startling. Ostensibly nothing had changed from two or three weeks previously but for one of the units to confirm that an armoured panel was missing had them worried. It took Vestie and Andrew a long time to get through all the vehicles at Minden and it was well into the evening before they even reached Detmold and finished the last of the storage areas under Klieg lights. Andrew was tired and hungry when he went to bed but they were up at first light and off down the road to Paderborn. The Commanding Officer there had done a thorough pre-inspection and had come up with nothing. When they confirmed that the missing panel was not there both Vestie and Andrew sagged. They had both started to believe that they were going to find the panel. After thanking everyone they sat in an empty office and stared at each other, looking but not seeing. Vestie started talking, more to himself than Andrew.

“The panel is put on a Bedford wagon by a REME crew. But in checking seven fucking garrisons across two divisions we cannot find either the REME crew or the panel. What are we missing?”

They sat in silence for a long time.

“Vestie, where are the 2^nd and 3^rd Divisions?”

“What?”

“We have been looking all over the place checking garrisons and units of the 1^st and 4^th Divisions. Where are the 2^nd and 3^rd Divisions?”

So they went and asked the question. The 2^nd Division was UK based and was only in Germany if mobilised. But the 3^rd Division was the Army reserve. More than half the entire British Army appeared to be crammed in one German state. There were three locations in an arc SW, W and NW of Paderborn all about an hour away.

That was a preview of Living Two Lives - Book 12. To read the rest purchase the book.

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