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Cora took a step closer. "Don't think you're playing any games with me," she told him quietly. "You know exactly what I'm talking about."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"Okay," she said. "Let me ask you this. Is there anything strange going on here on this base? Any sort of weird things happening? People turning up dead?"

"What the hell do you mean?" he snapped.

"Answer my questions. This is serious. People are dying; they’re being taken from their beds and killed. And I want to know why. Why have these recruits and young soldiers been taken at night? What's going on here?"

"There's nothing to say," he retorted.

"Oh, really? Because I was told you've been hushing it up. So, why have you been doing that? And if you were ordered to, then who gave you those orders?"

This conversation was all the more surreal for being conducted in a hoarse series of whispers, so as not to attract attention from the other rooms.

"Look, I was told by my higher-ups that nobody is to say anything about this, because we're on a big recruiting drive."

"So you're covering up murders because of recruitment?" Cora hissed incredulously.

He shrugged. "There's no murders."

"How do you explain the dead bodies then?" Cora was losing patience with him. But when he replied, she was surprised that he wasn't looking evasive.

"Look, people die on base. They die. It's hard pressure. People have heart attacks or accidents during training, and they commit suicide, and sometimes they end up having fights that get out of hand."

"That's what you think these were?" she asked.

"Yeah. It’s just bad luck, in my book, that they happened so close together. I think one might have been a fight that got out of hand and carried on after hours, and yes, that’s a huge pity but it happens. The others were suicides. At least, that's what I've been told."

"You've been told wrong. Didn’t you ask for details?"

“The details aren’t available. Postmortem results aren’t back yet. This has all happened in the past few days. We might get them in a week, and then, if they are out of line, I’ll discuss it with my commanding officer.”

“So you just accepted what he said?”

"Why should I have done anything different? I'm following orders. Right now, we're looking to recruit. Three deaths in a week or so will impact the recruitment drive. I mean, clearly these people were unsuitable. That's why they killed themselves. We need suitable people to take the Army forward, and we can't have them put off by what happened to others."

Cora thought, weirdly, that Garrett really believed what he was saying. He genuinely thought that these were the causes of the deaths. She could see it in his face. Most likely he hadn't asked too many questions, but had just accepted what he'd been told.

Maybe he'd been given an order and he was following it to the best of his ability, even if it meant turning a partially blind eye.

He didn't know more; that she could see. And although she was having to use her personal judgment here, since there was no official time of death for the victims and no alibi for anyone on base – he wasn’t showing the signs she was looking for. He wasn’t the killer. Absolutely nothing about his response or his body language gave her room for doubt. This was a dead end. She had to accept that.

But as she was trying to think of more questions to ask that could possibly prove useful, the crackle of a loudspeaker filled the air.

“There’s a civilian on base! Civilian on base! Guards, get to the exit points!”

Cora jumped. So did Garrett.

The prostitute barged her way out of the shower, hovering in the doorway, looking panicked.

"Listen up," said the voice. It was deep, and it boomed from the loudspeaker. "This is your base commander speaking. I’ve been told that there is a civilian woman currently at large in the barracks.She is here illegally and she is to be found and removed immediately."

She saw the horror in Garrett's eyes. But this was for her. Cora had no doubt about it. The soldier she'd hitched a ride in with had decided on payback. That was what he had been speaking about to the guard at the gate, and he'd gone big.

Three trucks were pulling into the parking lot. A spotlight was shining from the parking lot, its beam arcing over the windows along Garrett's row. Yup, they knew where she had been going.

"Come out! Come out, with your hands in the air," the noise crackled.

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