Free Rough Cider by Peter Lovesey Page B

identify the bullet. After photographing it in situ, he had sawn away a section of the beam and was taking it away for analysis.
    The following afternoon he phoned through his preliminary report. The blood was human, from the group 0, common to about half the population. He’d identified the bullet as a 45, of U.S. Army issue, probably fired from an automatic pistol.
    That bullet turned the investigation on its head. George Lockwood was questioned for another hour and then allowed home to rebuild his haystacks. The suspicion had shifted to Duke. He, too, had a plausible motive. He’d been dating Barbara. It was an open secret that she was slipping out in the evenings to meet him. He knew about Morton pestering her.
    Moreover, Duke had opportunity. He was around on the crucial dates. And it emerged that he’d brought a gun out to the farm, a .45 service-issue automatic.
    Superintendent Judd hated GIs. If that sounds to you like unfair comment, try reading his memoirs. According to him, they destroyed our culture and seduced our women. The fact that they fought our war isn’t mentioned.
    He notified the U.S. Army base of his suspicions. The Americans agreed that there was a case to answer. They confided to Judd that Duke and Harry were “somewhere in Europe.” To invite them back for questioning in the middle of an invasion was a practical impossibility. The American Army Criminal Investigation Department would deal with it at the earliest opportunity. This wasn’t bloody-mindedness. Parliament had laid down a procedure under the U.S.A. Visiting Forces Act of 1942.
    Judd must have gone spare with frustration. All he could do now was wait for the war to end. He went back to Gifford Farm and redoubled the search for the murder weapon and the rest of the body. The haystacks came down again, the silage was given another airing. Nothing surfaced.
    I firmly believe it was only because time hung so heavily for Superintendent Judd that he decided to interview me.
    By then we were into 1945. I’d been back in London over a year when the policeman knocked on our door. I’d come back from Somerset just in time for Hitler’s buzz bombs. We’d had one in our street that killed six people. After that, Gifford Farm seemed like another world. I’d stopped crying over Barbara; our minds have ways of adjusting to grief. But I sometimes wondered about Duke. Everything had happened in a rush at the end. I’d left without seeing him. I had no idea how he’d taken the news of Barbara’s suicide. I wished I’d had the chance to speak to him.
    As I said, a policeman called. It was lunchtime, so I was home from school. When I saw the shape of the helmet through the frosted glass, I opened the door myself, remembering how it was a policeman who came in 1940 after Dunkirk to tell us that Dad was dead. I couldn’t think of anyone else who might have been killed, but I didn’t want Mum to faint again.
    Instead of doing long division and nature study with Junior 5 and Miss Coombs, I spent that afternoon in the police station. Superintendent Judd questioned me for a long time. He told me at the beginning that God would be listening, but all I could see was a lady policeman with a shorthand notebook.
    I remember Judd for his shaggy brown eyebrows. They twitched a lot, sometimes together, sometimes independently. I must have given him a few surprises.
    Most of his questions concerned Duke and Barbara, and I told him everything I’ve told you. I had no reason to be evasive. You see, he didn’t say anything to me about the murder or his suspicions of Duke. I thought he was on about Barbara’s suicide. At the end he reminded me that God had terrible punishments in store for boys who didn’t keep His Commandments and asked me if everything I’d told him was the truth. It was.
    Months went by. The buzz bombs stopped, and we kept hearing that the end of the war was coming. Everyone at school was back from Somerset. We had a Daily Telegraph