Chapter 1

Andrew enjoyed his evening. Having missed seeing Robert Plant the previous year when he was in Edinburgh it was great to finally get to one of his shows. But the following morning as he swam at Marshall Street it was not Plant’s show that Andrew was thinking of. Just as the previous evening, even while he was at the show, he was thinking of Arabella Lindsay.

As he swam Andrew knew he had to get over his teenage crush on Ara. She had been the only woman that had affected him, and yet here they were five years later. Andrew thought about Arabella, what was it that drew him to her? Initially it was the superficial, like most initial attraction it was her face and her body. But it was more than that now. She was funny, interesting, extremely clever and she made him happy. There was also a strong element of her being forbidden fruit, wonderful but unattainable. But it was a limited acquaintance, probably at his instigation. He figured they needed to work on being friends before he started planning the wedding.

Dinner that final evening was quiet, it was not that Andrew sat with Jim and Freya every evening for hours but it was clear that they enjoyed having him in the flat, if only to put the coffee on for them in the morning! He warned them that they might get a call from Mhairi asking to pass a message onto him. There was a certain inevitability about the first sale of one of their investments happening when he was in Cyprus and Julian and Leslie were in the South Seas somewhere. But other than that and his results it should be quiet. They gave him crap for all the women that called, which led to Andrew recounting the tale of five women calling him seven times about a party. It was only after he started he remembered that Moira was one of them which just made the whole thing funnier. He started to blush and neither Jim nor Freya let him off the hook.

“I don’t remember this party Andrew. I would have insisted on some proper chaperonage.”

Firstly who used chaperonage in that day and age, and secondly, he blushed like a lighthouse much to the amusement of the pair of them. He was starting to get to bed bath territory. Bah. Then suddenly.

“Talking of which, who was chaperoning the pair of you that evening that you managed to miss Moira going to a party.”

Freya’s guilty face made his own suffering worth it and a truce was declared.

Other than his exercises Andrew was off early to meet Brodie at the Empress Building. They were at RAF Brize Norton by 9.30 and at the Air Terminal waiting for their flight. The last, and only other, time Andrew had been there was for the trip to West Germany the previous year and the investigative teams had been allocated a Hercules to themselves. The RAF filled the seats that the MoD Police did not need but they were not going to be thrown off the flight. This time Andrew got to watch sheer bureaucratic mayhem at its finest. There was a pecking order of who would be accommodated on the plane, starting with personnel assigned to Cyprus. After that it appeared to be complete guesswork as to who made it. There was a small part of him that would have been quite pleased to be told that they were not going on the flight. As it was when the flight was called, the two of them were among the first people walked out to the plane. It was a morning of hurry up and wait but eventually the VC-10 left heading for RAF Akrotiri.

Akrotiri was at the southern tip of the Western Base, about as far from their destination as they could land. Andrew spent the time on the flight doodling in his notebooks, thinking about his project, it worked as it didn’t feel like a four hour flight. When they landed they retrieved their luggage and got a lift to the car hire place on base. An hour of paperwork later he was driving a Toyota Celica, at least five years old, with lots of rattles. But it was a solid bloody thing and had a pretty decent turn of speed. They had taken off at 11.00, the flight had been four hours plus, and Cyprus was two hours ahead. So it was after 6.00 local time when he and Brodie finally were on their way. Brodie got them to the A6 and they headed east. The road designation changed but as long as they were on the coast heading east they would be fine. They left the West Base quickly, drove for an hour through Cyprus, traversed the East Base without incident and arrived at Ayia Napa about 7.30 at night. Andrew had been up at 5.00 that morning and had achieved nothing other than read on the plane, an odd day.

It took him a while to understand, and he asked a lot of questions, but the two Sovereign Base Areas were like the rest of Cyprus. Other than the signs at the borders you could not tell. There were no barriers, border controls, passports, anything like that. It looked no different than the rest of Cyprus. The actual garrisons, the airfields, they had security just like the same facilities in Britain. But Andrew had half expected the two Base Areas to be like East and West Berlin. It was the exact opposite, well apart from one area that he would find out about later. So when he drove through the East Base Area it meant he drove through without stopping. The main A3 appeared to pass to the north of the garrison. Now there were a thousand bloody rules and treaties and mutual obligations and rights and so on, but from a day to day living standpoint the Base Areas were part of Cyprus, other than the specific military garrisons. But that was all to come. At 7.45 he pulled into the Nissi Beach Resort, parked the car and the two of them went to check in. Andrew could see Brodie shaking his head, this was a long way from defending the wire at Greenham Common. He let Brodie go first and they arranged to meet in the bar in 30 minutes. But first.

“Good evening, McLeod, same booking as the previous gentleman.”

All was in order. When Andrew asked what the room was like it he was told it was a small garden side room. Andrew was frankly amazed that Susan did not have them sharing a room.

“So there is not a view of the beach?”

“No sir.”

“Are there any such rooms available?”

No tapping of computer keys, this was the shuffling of paper and looking at keys hung up on hooks. The only thing available was a small bungalow room, on the second floor. Each floor was set back from the one below for privacy which meant the second floor, the top floor, had rooms half the size of the ground floor and two thirds of the size of the first floor. But for him it was perfect. It took a moment or two to explain that he would pay the difference. He didn’t need to be explaining this to Lester when he got back. So the office got a bill for the room Susan booked and Andrew paid the upgrade to get the beach side bungalow. When he got to the room it was perfect for a couple, or in his case just him. And at that time of night the deck was shaded, important for him, and both the room and the adjoining bathroom were clean. Nothing else really mattered. Andrew unpacked quickly and went back over to the hotel bar. He ordered two beers and Brodie timed his arrival perfectly.

“We better catch this fuck.”

Andrew thought it better to not tell him about the beachside room.

“Can we talk some details before this whole thing starts tomorrow. How are you explaining me? What do you want me to call you? And most important right now, what is our story for here?”

“Our story?”

“What do we say to women we talk to at the bar?”

“What?”

“What do we tell women when we talk to them. This is hardly the kind of place for father son trips is it?”

Brodie went to get another beer, that first one didn’t seem to have lasted long.

“Now that I have decided not to throw you in the sea for suggesting this ridiculous location, I see your point. Tell them a version of the truth. We are out from London to do work for the Base Administration. I am the wise old guy who knows everything and you are the useless young git who is here to help get it all onto computers.”

Brodie smirked as he took another big swig.

“So we work for the Ministry of Defence at the Sovereign Base Areas and the rest is easy. Okay, that gets the social scene dealt with. Back to the job. I am not a policeman and am not in the chain of command. Now clearly I am going to obey you but what are we going to tell the locals?”

“Truth again. You are a civilian employee out here because of manpower shortages due to the cruise missile protests. Other than when someone wants to talk to me on my own we will be working together. Call me boss, it tends to be what we all call our superiors at the office. Vestie calls me boss, and I call the Super boss so go with that. You okay with Jock?”

“Sure. Okay so now that we are here what is the plan?”

“We are meeting Chambers, the Special Investigations Branch man from London, at the MP station at Dhekelia. It will be the three of us plus one locally based SIB man. First thing to figure out is whether the other countries UN detachments are caught up in this. We will need to call Lester with that news because Head Office will have to figure out what to say, if anything.”

At the end of the day it still appeared that they were making it up as they went along.

“What about hours? Are things a little slower to start in the morning out here?”

“No idea. I want to be at the MP station at 9.00. Breakfast at 8.00.”

It was going to be different than when Andrew was with Vestie and Taff. Brodie was more than 10 years older than Vestie but seemed a decent bloke when it was just the two of them. Although the bar they were in was busy it was tame compared to the main bar area of the resort. After dinner they followed the noise and encountered the Cypriot nightlife. The place wasn’t packed yet but it was busy and again Andrew felt very out of his depth, well outside the bubble. They grabbed a tall-boy table and just people watched. What made Andrew’s night was that Brodie was dragged off to the dance floor first. Now not by much as a young lady mimed dancing to him and soon he was out on the floor as well. Conversation was pointless and maybe that was for the best. In no time Andrew had worked up a sweat and after four dances nodded towards the bar. Annie wanted a Pina Colada so once they had their drinks and were sufficiently away from the speakers they were able to talk. She had got there on Saturday for a one week holiday and worked in the John Lewis in Southampton. She was here with three girlfriends and this was the third time she had been to Ayia Napa.

Andrew was glad that he and Brodie had talked about the story of why they were there. When Andrew told Annie that he had been sent there for a month for work her face was a picture. He just said he was a civil servant and was there to help with the installation of computers. What made the evening more taxing was that Andrew had to make the effort to find things in common to talk about. And for the most part succeeded. She and her friends were all set to cab it into Ayia Napa town itself, a couple of miles further east from the resort. When he told her he had to be up and at work by 9.00 she looked disappointed.

“Yeah, they didn’t send me all the way out here to have too much fun. Why don’t we meet tomorrow evening at the beach bar at 8.00? We can have a drink and go for a walk but you can still head out with your friends later.”

Annie brightened up at that and with a cheerful wave went off to find the rest of her friends. Brodie appeared to have been taken prisoner, and was making no effort to escape. Andrew had asked Susan and found out it was a couple of years since Brodie had been divorced. Andrew could see he was going to enjoy the trip. Given it was two hours ahead of Britain it took him a while to settle but he dragged himself out of bed at 6.15 to do his exercises before looking at the little map the hotel had given him to see where he could run. There appeared to be a trail along the coast away from any traffic so figured why not?

There was barely a soul stirring as Andrew ran, at least for the first part of his run. The path was perfect for running and other than a stretch of beach, at the next cove down the coast as it were, the footing was good. Even the beach wasn’t too bad as he was able to run on the harder wet sand. It was roughly two miles to the edge of Ayia Napa and Andrew figured he would just turn round at a convenient spot. Even that early the sweat was dripping off him but it was lovely to be out in such wonderful weather. He came to the outskirts of Ayia Napa and spun around to head back to Nissi Beach. On the way back he saw three female runners up ahead of him heading in the same direction. As he had passed no one on the way they had obviously come out of one of the hotels and done the same as Andrew just heading in the other direction. They were setting a good pace and were maintaining the distance between them. He never had the wind to talk to anyone when he was jogging, and usually ran with his headphones on, so it wasn’t as if he was going to engage them in conversation.