The Wages of Desire by Stephen Kelly Page A

are either too old for combat service or who are at the low end of the fitness scale—along with civilians employed by Taney. All of them can handle a shovel or an axe well enough. Corporal Baker, who escorted you here, and I are the only regular army people on the site. My job is administrative—to see to it that the work is done correctly and on time and budget.”
    Walton likely kept a well-organized and up-to-date filing system in his tent, Lamb thought. Meanwhile, he’d not bothered to post a guard at the camp’s entrance and had been unaware that one of the people for whom he was responsible had for several hours been lying dead with a bullet wound in her back three-quarters of a mile away. Walton didn’t even seem to have known that Ruth Aisquith was absent from the camp.
    â€œWe have taken possession of Miss Aisquith’s body in order to perform an autopsy,” Lamb said. “And there will be an inquest into the cause of her death. But we will coordinate that with the correct military authorities.”
    â€œYes, of course,” Walton said.
    â€œI also must ask you, Captain Walton, if you were aware that Miss Aisquith had left the camp this morning.”
    â€œI was aware, yes, though I assumed that she had returned by her usual time.” He raised his chin slightly. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have assumed.”
    â€œShe left the camp this morning with your permission, then?”
    â€œYes. Everyone who works here is allowed a certain amount of leave. When she first arrived here, she told Mr. Taney that her grandmother was buried in the cemetery in Winstead and asked his permission to visit the grave on occasion. He in turned asked me, and I approved it. I saw no reason to reject her request. She was not troublesome in any way, as I said. She went into the village a couple of mornings a week and always returned by the proper time—seven thirty A.M. ”
    â€œDid she give you her grandmother’s name?” Lamb asked.
    â€œNo. And I’m sorry to say that I didn’t ask. Perhaps I should have.”
    â€œDoes the name Mary Forrest mean anything to you, sir?”
    â€œNo, I’m afraid it doesn’t.”
    â€œHow about Lila Tutin?”
    â€œNo.”
    Lamb didn’t know quite what else to say to Walton. The captain seemed to have ceded much of his command of the camp to George Taney.
    â€œWhere can I find Mr. Taney?” Lamb asked.
    â€œI’ll have Corporal Baker take you to him.” Walton summoned Baker and ordered him to escort Lamb and Wallace to where Taney was working. “If I can be of any more assistance, you only need ask,” he told Lamb.
    â€œI’ll want to see whatever files you have on Miss Aisquith and to search her billet. We’ll also want to question the employees here.”
    â€œYou have my permission.”
    Lamb wondered how much weight Walton’s permission actually carried.
    â€œThank you, sir,” he said. Then he and Wallace followed Corporal Baker in the direction of George Taney.

EIGHT

    LAMB AND WALLACE REJOINED VERA AT THE CAR. LAMB POINTED to the two women toiling in the field whom they’d passed as they’d entered the farm. Thus far, the two were the only women any of them had seen about the place.
    â€œWhy don’t you try those two while I speak to Taney,” Lamb told Wallace. “They would have billeted with Aisquith.”
    Wallace gazed in the direction of the women. “Right,” he said.
    Lamb found George Taney directing a green lorry that was backing up to the pile of stone rubble the workers had removed from the foundation of the farmhouse. GEORGE TANEY. BUILDER AND CONTRACTOR. SOUTHAMPTON was printed in white letters on the lorry’s door. Taney was a well-built man, close to six feet tall, with brown, close-cropped hair and tanned, sinewy arms protruding from the rolled-up sleeves of a green cotton work shirt.
    â€œStop it