Free The Silver Stain by Paul Johnston Page B

can see through if you try hard enough and I’d told the security guys to leave him alone. So Maria was driving the Merc back. She’d left her car at my place so she could get home. It had worked before. I’d given her a wig so she looked like me from a distance.’
    The lives of the rich and famous, Mavros thought – just a scuzzy as anyone else’s.
    ‘Then that kid came out of nowhere, stumbled straight into the car. Maria wasn’t even going fast, but he flew through the air and hit the road head first.’
    Mavros was still watching her closely. ‘I don’t know much about the Californian legal system. Was it an easy case to defend?’
    ‘The best lawyers can do anything,’ Cara said.
    ‘So you paid?’
    ‘Of course,’ she said, looking shocked. ‘It was my fault that Maria was driving back so late.’
    He nodded. ‘Imagine the scandal if it had been you at the wheel.’
    Cara Parks looked away, her face suddenly pale. ‘Yeah,’ she said softly.
    Mavros left a few minutes later. He hadn’t learned much about Maria Kondos, but he knew more about the star. Cara Parks was convincing on the big screen, there was no doubt of that. Close up, on the sofa, things were harder to hide. He was almost certain she had been driving her Mercedes when it hit and killed Michael ‘Zee-Boy’ Timmins.

SIX
    F rom The Descent of Icarus :
    The sky was still full of our aircraft when we reached clear ground about three hundred yards from the Tavronitis bridge. There was sporadic fire from the trees on the other side of the river-bed and heavier weapons loosing off from the hill, but our scouts had done a good job. It seemed there was a gap between a pair of defensive positions. Captain Blatter arranged for covering fire at both, while the rest of us picked our way back across the stony watercourse and, to our amazement, reached the other side unscathed.
    By now the sun was high in the sky and we were sweating like packhorses in our jumpsuits, the flies hovering around as if we were already dead. I was still carrying the MG34, with Wachter as my loader. He had seen something in my expression and was keeping behind me – or, more likely, he was using me as a shield against enemy fire. Lieutenant Horsmann moved from unit to unit, outlining the plan of attack on the RAF camp south of the airfield. It was unclear how many men were arrayed against us, so maximum force was to be used.
    ‘Including killing prisoners?’ I asked.
    The lieutenant, a young man with little more than peach fuzz on his chin, avoided my eyes. ‘You heard Captain Blatter’s orders. We are the spearhead of the Wehrmacht. We cut through the enemy without mercy.’
    I was going to raise the commandments, but I knew I’d be wasting my breath. My comrades were ready for action, their brows furrowed and their breath coming fast. They’d seen the dead men floating down under their parachutes and the planes taking flak. Now was their chance to blood themselves. Most of them were no older than Horsmann and hadn’t experienced the assaults in Belgium and Norway early in the war.
    The idea was to probe the camp to see how well it was guarded. Several MGs were set up to cover the first wave, though I was told to go forward with the lighter-armed men.
    I caught sight of Blatter at the head of a group to my right. He was still wearing his cap, something which would earn him a stern reprimand from his senior officers if he survived. It was then I understood how his mind worked. He didn’t expect to survive and he instilled this in his men. That made them an almost invincible fighting unit, caring nothing for personal survival. I was thankful that my own lieutenant, now rotting in the spring flowers, had never been so harsh.
    Rifle shots rang out from the camp boundary, immediately answered by machine-gun fire from our men. I saw enemy soldiers drop down, while others remained in their slit trenches. Blatter’s unit was already at the edge of the camp and we were