No Reason To Die

Fifteen

Kelly’s whole body was trembling as he drove home. Like Karen, he had found their kiss very special. It had woken up his senses again. He had always found Karen attractive, but in an abstract kind of way, and it had simply never occurred to him before that their relationship could ever become anything other than it was. And now, like Karen, he believed that what had happened between them had been very wrong, particularly at this time. The fact that he had so actively enjoyed kissing Karen, just one day after he had buried his partner, made him feel quite sick. In effect, what he had done was little more than to make a clumsy pass at Karen Meadows, quite possibly destroying a friendship he cherished. And then there was their professional association. Had he destroyed that too?

Normally, even at a difficult time like this when he was coping with grief, he would be feeling elated to be on the threshold of an investigation like the Hangridge one. And, indeed, he had been truly excited by the information which Karen had handed him on a plate. It was, after all, potential dynamite. This was the kind of story the old hack in him lived for. And now he had spoilt it all. Not only had he killed the thrill of it for himself, but also, for all he knew, Karen Meadows might not even be prepared to continue with the information-sharing scheme she had presented to him. At the very least she must consider him dangerously unstable, he reflected.

He muttered a few expletives as he parked the MG. Why was he such a fool? But then, perhaps he had always been dangerously unstable.

The house looked particularly dark and empty that night. He hurried to unlock the door, get inside and switch on the lights. It was almost as cold in the house as it had been outside.

He checked the central heating boiler. The timer had been playing up. The system had closed down a good couple of hours earlier than it should have done. Cursing some more, Kelly switched it on again, made himself a mug of tea and wandered upstairs to check his answering machine.

There was a message from Margaret Slade. Brief and to the point.

‘Neil Connelly has just phoned. Whatever you said to him worked. He’s come round in a big way. I think he’s going to join the campaign. Call me.’

Kelly smiled. At least this would give him something else to think about. Still marvelling at the change in the woman, he returned Margaret Slade’s call at once.

‘I told him all I knew and I reckon he’s prepared to go all the way with us,’ she said. ‘He’s a solid sort of man, too, I think. It’s just journalists he doesn’t like.’

‘I’m not a journalist.’

‘Yes, well that’s the sort of prevarication that puts him off ’em, I should say.’

Kelly chuckled.

‘You’ve got an answer for everything, all of a sudden, Margaret. And, by God, you’re going to need to have, taking on the military. You should know that the police, although aware of a big question mark hanging over these deaths at Hangridge, are not going to be investigating. Not at the moment, anyway. The official view is that these deaths have already been properly investigated by the SIB.’ Kelly paused. ‘Even though we now have four deaths to consider. I’ve found out about the squaddie called Trevor. And what you were told has turned out to be absolutely right. His death was another alleged suicide, very similar to your Jossy’s, as it happens. His full name was Trevor Parsons and I have his last civilian address.’

‘That is progress, John.’

‘Yeah. Look, you should know that I do have a very good long-time police contact, Margaret.’ Kelly paused again. The thought continued to lurk in the back of his mind that Karen Meadows might no longer be quite such a good contact. Not after what had happened that night. But he certainly had no intention of discussing any of that with Margaret Slade.

‘I’m not going to tell you who it is, but, suffice to say, we are talking about a senior police officer who has basically been refused permission to pursue matters with the army, and that this officer is actually angry enough about that to be prepared to pass on information to me.’

‘Wow! You are good, John, aren’t you?’

‘Umm. We’ll see. But what about you? I think I’m only just beginning to get the hang of you. No doubt, you’ve got your next move planned?’

‘Well, sort of. We’re going to call for a public inquiry. You have to be focused, don’t you, and it’s no good making a lot of noise without knowing what you’re aiming for. We thought we might march on the House of Commons, or something like that, but I’d like more ammunition.’

She broke off. ‘If that isn’t an unfortunate choice of words under the circumstances,’ she said.

Kelly smiled again. Black humour. All the best fighters, in any kind of battle, were inclined to indulge in black humour, he reckoned.

‘Anyway, I don’t think we’ve got enough to throw at Parliament yet, do you, John?’

‘Probably not. We need to co-ordinate everything, find out all we can and then make our move. The march sounds great. And I’ll handle the press side, when you decide to do it. I’d like to have a proper story ready to drop simultaneously. I do already have something to go on.’

He told her then, in some detail, about the inquest reports, and the various anomalies. ‘I also have an address for a young man who was called as a witness at the inquest into Jossy’s death. The other sentry. James Gates. Didn’t you go to the inquest, Margaret?’

‘I did, yes. But I was drinking then, wasn’t I. I hardly remember anything about it. Don’t forget, it never occurred to me to query that Jossy had killed herself.’

‘So you don’t remember Gates’ evidence.’

‘Vaguely. Now you mention it. Very vaguely.’

‘Well, it seems the coroner was more than a little vague too.’ Kelly gave Margaret Slade a summary of James Gates’ evidence. ‘It should have rung extremely loud warning bells. But the coroner challenged nothing and passed a suicide verdict, almost as directed by the army. Fucking disgrace, actually.’

‘Ah. So your next move is to talk to Gates?’

‘Absolutely. Him, and Trevor Parsons’ family, of course. I may find you some more campaigners there, Margaret. James Gates could be trickier, though. It’ll be a question of whether or not I can get to him, I reckon. He’s probably still a serving soldier. If he really thinks there was anything dodgy about those deaths, he’s likely to be pretty nervous about speaking to me or anyone else.’

Kelly thought for a moment.

‘I will tell you something I want from you, Margaret. A signed letter authorising me to act on behalf of the families. I’ll certainly need something like that if I’m going to get anywhere with the army, and it could be useful to show to all kinds of people. I suggest you list the other families involved so far, mentioning briefly what happened to their sons, and, of course, include your own details. Can you do that?’

‘Of course. I’m a drunk, not an idiot.’

‘A permanently sober drunk, I hope.’

‘So do I.’

‘Indeed. So can you fax it to me? Have you got a fax machine?’

‘No. But there’s one I can use at an office equipment shop just down the road. I’ll send it as soon as they open in the morning, at eight, I think.’

‘Good.’

‘John, reassure me, we’re not just imagining some kind of conspiracy, are we?’

‘No, Margaret, I’m damned sure of it. Actually, I get more and more sure with every step we take. And, for what it’s worth, my police contact, who is someone with very well-developed intuition in these matters, is damned sure of it too. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be getting anything like this level of cooperation. Something’s going on, and it’s very nasty indeed.’

‘It’s pretty hard to get your head around, isn’t it? I mean, I keep going over and over in my mind what we are talking about here. If it really is murder, who on earth would want to kill a load of young soldiers? And why?’

‘I don’t know, Margaret. And, if I’m honest, I don’t know if we’ll ever know. But there is no doubt that the army has successfully covered everything up so far, and one thing we can do is blow that cover-up wide open.’

‘You’ve said it, John. And how!’

Kelly found he was smiling broadly again as he ended the call. Margaret Slade was turning out to be some woman. He liked feisty, intelligent women who were not afraid of a fight. And that thought led him back to Karen Meadows and the somewhat disastrous end to their evening together, which caused him to stopped smiling at once.

Karen had been right. He was on an emotional roller coaster. He just couldn’t sort his feelings out at all.

Margaret Slade was as good as her word. The fax came through shortly after eight. Kelly folded it and tucked it into the top pocket of his suede bomber jacket. He had been waiting for it. He was all ready to leave the house and drive to Exeter to visit the last civilian address listed for Trevor Parsons. Once he was involved in an investigation, Kelly didn’t waste any time.

The drive to Exeter took little more than forty-five minutes, and it was still only just nine when Kelly pulled up outside a big, rambling, old house on the outskirts of the town. Two small boys, scruffily dressed but somehow well-scrubbed-looking, rosy-cheeked and apparently brimming with good health, were squabbling over a broken tricycle on the pavement right outside.

As Kelly stepped out of his MG, a large woman, in her early fifties, opened the front door.

‘Inside, you two, before you have an accident out there in that street,’ she ordered.

There was a chorus of ‘Oh, Mams’ and a pleading to stay in the street for just a bit longer, but the two boys none the less obeyed readily enough. They looked about the same age or thereabouts, and although Kelly wasn’t very good at guessing children’s ages, he was pretty sure this pair were both under five. That, of course, was an educated guess. It was term time after all. If they were any older than that they should have been at school. And glancing at the woman they had called Mam, Kelly didn’t think she would be someone who would take any nonsense on such matters. It did occur to him, though, that she was a little old to be the mother of these two small boys.

He became aware that the woman was studying him curiously now, which was hardly surprising. After all, a strange man had parked his car outside her front door and was now standing on the pavement, staring at her shamelessly.

‘Mrs Parsons?’ he enquired.

She looked puzzled

‘Who?’

‘You’re not Mrs Parsons?’

The woman shook her head. She was tall, broad rather than plump, and had long greying-brown hair which framed a strong kind face.

‘Oh. Perhaps I have the wrong address. I wanted to talk about the death of Trevor Parsons.’

‘Trevor? But I thought that was all over. I mean, it was more than a year ago that it happened, wasn’t it...’

The woman’s voice trailed away.

‘So you are Trevor Parsons’ mother?’

‘No. No. Not his mother.’

‘Well, you knew him, anyway?’

‘Oh yes. Of course. Look you’d better come in.’

Kelly followed her into the lofty hallway of the old Victorian villa. Inside the house was not unlike the two little boys who were now playing in the small front garden — a bit scruffy but well scrubbed. The tiled floor shone, although several of the tiles were chipped and broken, and the once white paintwork was scuffed and tinged with yellow, but none the less spotlessly clean.

‘Come into the kitchen,’ said the woman, leading the way into a big square room dominated by an old gas cooking-range and a huge wooden table covered with a flower-petalled plastic tablecloth.

‘Sit down,’ she said, gesturing towards any one of a selection of ill-matched chairs. ‘Are you from the army? There’s nothing more I can tell you about Trevor, that’s for sure. It was a tragedy, his death, but I didn’t think anyone was all that surprised.’

‘You didn’t?’ Kelly queried, as he chose the chair nearest to him.

‘Well, no. Look, who did you say you were?’

Kelly, glad that he had had the foresight to ask Margaret Slade for that letter, produced it from his pocket.

‘There’ve been some other deaths in the Devonshire Fusiliers, and I have been asked by the families of some of the young people involved to investigate a little further. There are some unsolved mysteries in certain cases. I’m looking into it, that’s all at this stage.’

Kelly held out Margaret Slade’s letter towards the woman and she took it from him.

‘I see,’ she said.

Kelly waited in silence while she read it. When she had finished and looked up at him questioningly, he spoke again.

‘Forgive me, but I wonder if I could ask who you are and what your relationship to Trevor Parsons was. I thought you were his mother at first, because, you see, yours was his last civilian address.’

The woman nodded. ‘I’m Gill Morris,’ she said. ‘I was Trevor’s foster-mother, but only quite briefly...’

There was a crash as if a ton of bricks had been thrown against the kitchen door, which swung open to allow the two small boys to burst through, pushing their tricycle before them like some kind of battering ram. Not for the first time, Kelly marvelled at the amount of noise and commotion the very youngest of children could create.

‘No, you don’t. Out!’ commanded Gill Morris. And without even bothering to dissent, the two boys swung around, still pushing the tricycle before them with dangerous force and speed, and crashed through the door again.

‘They’re at the worst age,’ said Gill Morris, casting her eyes heavenwards. ‘They’re already quite big and surprisingly strong, but they have little or no brain at all to go with their physical power. And no control, either. They’re like miniature loose cannons.’

She smiled indulgently. Kelly raised one eyebrow in silent query.

‘Yes, I’m fostering these two, too,’ she said. ‘My Ricky and I, that’s what we do. We’re professional foster-parents, I suppose. He inherited this great big house from his parents and it just cries out to be filled with children, doesn’t it? We had three of our own, and then, when they started to grow up, it seemed natural to take in some more.’

‘I see,’ said Kelly. ‘So Trevor was one of them. What can you tell me about him?’

‘Not that much, really. We only had him for seven or eight months. He’d had a hell of a life as a youngster, poor kid. Knocked around by his dad. Neglected by his mother. He’d been in and out of care since before school age, and it had certainly affected him. He was a difficult kid, no doubt about that, but who could blame him? He was fifteen when he came to us and hadn’t seen either of his parents for years. And he was about sixteen and a half when he walked out one day. He always said he wanted to join the army, but we didn’t even know he’d done it until they came to tell us he was dead. Apparently, he’d joined up as soon as he was allowed to, at seventeen, but we didn’t know.’

‘So, what about the six months or so between when he was with you and when he was able to join the army? Why didn’t he give that address?’

‘I’m not even sure that he had an address. We heard through social services that they’d found him staying with a mate at one point. I don’t know anything for certain. We never saw him again after he left us. Funny really, some of the kids do get to be almost like your own, however much you fight against it, and a lot of them come back and visit. We’re surrogate grandparents a couple of dozen times over now, you know.’

As she spoke, Gill Morris sounded like any proud grandmother. He thought what a special person she must be. And her husband, come to that.

‘But Trevor, once he’d gone, he’d gone. And like I said, he wasn’t with us that long. Ricky and I even thought that it was quite possible that he may have slept rough for a bit. He always fancied himself as joining the SAS, you know. But there wouldn’t have been much chance of him getting into a regiment like that. To be honest, Ricky and I were a bit surprised that he got into the army at all.’

‘Really, why?’

‘Well, like I said, he was pretty screwed up by all that had happened to him. He liked the idea of playing soldiers, but he wasn’t exactly stable. I wouldn’t have put a gun in his hand, I can tell you that for nothing.’

‘And from what you said, it wasn’t a shock to hear that he had killed himself.’

‘Well, it was a shock, but when you thought about it, poor Trevor was so messed up that he had to be a likely candidate for suicide. You couldn’t imagine him coping with army life. You couldn’t imagine him coping with any sort of life, really. We just hoped that as he got older he’d settle down, sort his head out a bit. But he never got the chance, did he?’

‘It would seem not.’ Kelly was thoughtful. Maybe Trevor Parsons’ death had been a genuine suicide, after all. It still didn’t mean that Jocelyn Slade had killed herself, or that the deaths of Craig Foster and Alan Connelly had been genuine accidents.

‘So, you honestly have never thought that there was anything suspicious about Trevor’s death?’

‘No. Not at all. Should we have done?’

Kelly didn’t know quite what to say. ‘Probably not,’ he responded eventually. ‘It’s just that the parents of three other dead Devonshire Fusiliers are very suspicious indeed about the way in which their children died.’

Gill Morris nodded her head slowly. ‘I grasped that from your letter,’ she said. ‘But all I can tell you about Trevor, Mr Kelly, is that the poor kid had probably been a tragedy waiting to happen for many, many years.’

Kelly left quickly after ascertaining that Gill Morris could help him no more. And what she had told him, while not necessarily having any relevance at all to the other deaths, had sown the first seeds of doubt in his mind. Back behind the wheel of the MG, he told himself that was no bad thing. It was important for him to keep as open a mind as possible in order to conduct a proper investigation. If he was too convinced that the deaths were suspicious, then his inquiries could end up being just as perfunctory as he was sure the army’s had been. He needed to be very sure of himself before coming to any conclusions. He owed Karen that, because he knew she was sticking her neck out probably more than ever before.

He checked his watch and, as he did so, cursed his luck that the home of the witness in the Jocelyn Slade case, Fusilier James Gates, was in London, and East London at that, which meant that when approaching from the west the whole of the city centre had to be crossed. After all, the Devonshire Fusiliers still considered their home county to be their major source of recruitment, and Kelly already knew from his days as an Evening Argus reporter that approximately sixty per cent of the regiment’s strength were native Devonians. Yet so far his investigations had taken him to Scotland and to Reading, and now he needed to travel to London proper. It was, however, only just gone ten o’clock. There was therefore plenty of time to make the return trip that day, and as he was already in Exeter, Kelly decided to pick up one of the Plymouth or Cornwall to London expresses from St David’s station.

He parked in the station car park. The next train, due just half an hour later, arrived at St David’s on schedule. For a change, the journey passed without incident and the train also arrived at Paddington on time. Kelly took the tube to Mile End, having already checked the London A — Z, which he always kept in his car, to plot the short walk necessary to take him from the tube station to what he believed to be James Gates’ family home. He no longer had the money for cross-London taxis, and in any case he hoped that the tube would actually be quicker. Certainly, on this occasion, his entire journey turned out to be a surprisingly efficient one.

His walk took him through a fairly rough part of London to a council flat in an uninviting tower block. A legacy from the sixties, he thought. A sullen-looking young man, with close-cropped orange hair and a sprinkling of freckles, answered the door. He looked about the right age to be Gates himself. Kelly wondered if he had struck really lucky.

‘James Gates?’ he ventured.

The young man scowled. ‘Is that some kind of a sick joke?’ he asked.

‘Uh, no.’ Kelly was puzzled. You never knew what sort of response to expect in a situation like this, but the reaction of this particular youth was highly curious, at the very least.

‘I’m looking for James Gates,’ Kelly persisted.

The young man’s eyes narrowed.

‘Well, you’d better try the cemetery, then, hadn’t you.’

Kelly felt his pulse quicken.

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘My brother’s dead.’

‘Dead?’ Kelly repeated the word. It was all he could manage. He was totally stunned. He felt as if he had been hit by a thunderbolt.

‘Who the fuck are you?’

Kelly struggled to overcome his shock. He knew he had to explain fast. ‘I’m investigating the deaths of a number of soldiers at Hangridge barracks, on behalf of their families.’

‘About time,’ said the young man.

‘Could you spare me a few minutes?’

‘Are you police?’ The young man stared at Kelly suspiciously.

‘No.’

‘Then you’re army?’

Kelly opened his mouth to reply, but was prevented from doing so when the young man answered his own question.

‘No, you can’t be, or you’d have known Jimmy was dead.’

‘Absolutely right. I’ll explain everything if you’ll give me the chance. Look, what’s your name?’

The young man seemed to consider for a few moments. ‘It’s Colin,’ he said eventually.

‘Right. Well, Colin, if I could come in just for a few minutes, then I’ll explain exactly why I’m here.’

Colin stood in the middle of the doorway, square on, staring at Kelly for several moments more, before abruptly stepping back and gesturing for him to enter.

Gratefully, Kelly followed Colin Gates through a dark hallway and into a sparsely furnished but spotlessly clean and tidy sitting room. Colin threw himself almost full length across a sofa rather unattractively upholstered in vivid red leather, which clashed with his hair. The only other chairs in the room were the four upright ones positioned around a brightly shining, wooden dining table. Kelly pulled one of those across the room and sat down facing Colin.

‘I had no idea your brother was dead,’ he said. ‘Would you tell me what happened to him?’

‘They posted him to Germany. He died only five days later. An army chaplain and a major came round in the middle of the night to tell us.’

‘But what happened exactly, Colin? Do you know?’

Colin Gates shrugged. ‘We know what they said happened. They found our Jimmy dead in a paddling pool. He was pretty tanked up, allegedly, and fell in and drowned. So they said.’

‘You’re not convinced?’

‘No. I was never convinced, but who was going to listen to me?’

Kelly studied Colin Gates more carefully. He was long and gangly and, upon reflection, Kelly realised that he was probably no more than fifteen or sixteen. But there was something in his manner that made him give the impression, at first, of being older. He was, thought Kelly, a lad who had had to grow up fast.

‘Your parents didn’t agree, then?’

Colin Gates sniffed in a rather derisory, dismissive sort of way.

‘Me dad said I’d been watching too many bad movies. But then, he did twenty years in the paras and came out a staff sergeant. He’s army through and through, me dad. The military police investigated, over there in Germany. They showed Dad their report, a tragic accident they said, and Dad accepted it.’

Another one, thought Kelly. Army families lived by a different code, it seemed. The habit of obeying orders and accepting what those in authority told them sometimes stayed with them, Kelly was beginning to realise years after they actually quit the military. For ever, probably.

‘But you didn’t accept it?’

‘No.’

‘Any particular reason?’

Colin shrugged again, and this time said nothing.

Kelly changed tack.

‘Shouldn’t you be at school?’ he asked. ‘How old are you, anyway?’

Colin shrugged again. ‘I’m sixteen. I’ve just left school. I’ve got a temporary job in a hotel kitchen, but I hate it. I’ve taken a sickie today. Don’t tell me dad, that’s all. Jimmy was the golden bollocks round here. I’m the little bugger nobody listens to.’

Colin grinned. Kelly thought there was something rather likeable about him in spite of the aggressive front he affected.

‘I won’t,’ he said. He glanced round the room. There were a few family photographs on a shelf above the fireplace, and that was about all. Most of those seemed to be of a young man in uniform, whom Kelly assumed to be James.

‘What about your mother?’ he asked. ‘What does she think.’

‘She buggered off when I was a baby,’ said Colin. ‘Dad said she didn’t take to being an army wife. Me nan brought me and Jimmy up, but she died a couple of years back.’

‘Colin, will you tell me, please, why you didn’t believe the army version of your brother’s death?’

Colin drew his knees up to his chest and spent what seemed to Kelly to be an inordinately long period of time staring at his trainer-clad feet. ‘If you like,’ he said eventually. ‘Jimmy and I was always mates, you see. He told me all about it. About how he’d been on duty with that girl, who they said killed herself. Jimmy never believed that. He said he knew she hadn’t. Just knew it. He said there were all sorts of things wrong. He gave evidence, didn’t he, at her inquest, and he told them how he and the others had searched where her body was found, and it just hadn’t been there. Jimmy reckoned she must have been moved. Also, there was some drunken Irish bloke trying to get into the officers’ mess without any proper identification that night. Made quite a commotion, apparently. Then this Rupert came out and said to let him by. Jimmy said sentry duty was a joke at Hangridge. They didn’t have a clue who was coming and going half the time, he said.’

‘Did he ever find out who the Irishman was?’

‘No. At least, I don’t think so. He never told me, anyway. There was something else, though. He said, after he heard the shots the night the girl died, he saw someone running across the playing field away from the perimeter fence. He called out, challenged like — you know, the way they’re supposed to.’ Colin Gates paused and looked directly at Kelly. ‘“Who goes there?” Is that what they really say?’

Kelly found himself grinning. ‘I don’t have a clue,’ he said. ‘Go on. Did Jimmy tell you what happened next.’

Colin Gates nodded.

‘Yeah. Apparently, this person kept running and just disappeared out of sight. Our Jimmy didn’t even know whether it was a man or a woman. He said he thought it was a man, though, but he wasn’t sure why.’

Kelly was fascinated. ‘Why didn’t he say all that at the inquest?’ he enquired.

‘He said he wasn’t asked anything like that, that it was all sort of cut and dried, really, and he never got the chance to say anything except answer the questions he was asked.’

‘But he had told the military police about seeing someone running across the playing field, away from the scene?’

‘Oh yes. He said they kept pushing him about identifying whoever it was, but he hadn’t a clue.’

‘So it would be in the MP records.’ Kelly was thinking aloud.

‘How do I know?’

‘No, of course not.’

With the elasticity of extreme youth Colin Gates suddenly swung his legs off the sofa and straightened himself, so that he was sitting bolt upright and staring quite directly at Kelly.

‘Do you think my brother’s been murdered, then? Is that what all this is about?’

Kelly found that he was quite disconcerted by the young man’s blunt approach.

‘Colin, I didn’t even know your brother was dead until ten minutes ago,’ he responded rather lamely, he thought.

‘Right.’ Colin continued to stare at Kelly for what seemed like another long period of time. ‘How many deaths have there been up at Hangridge, then?’ he asked eventually.

Kelly reckoned then that the young man before him was probably considerably more astute than he looked.

‘I’m not sure that I know the answer to that,’ he replied truthfully. ‘Every time I move I seem to discover another one.’

Karen was in her office at Torquay police station. Her mobile was on the desk before her. And it was ringing. But she made no attempt to pick it up and answer it. Instead, she sat staring at it as Kelly’s number appeared on the display panel.

‘Damn,’ she thought. What was it about her life? Everything in it seemed to get complicated. And it was invariably her own fault. Her relationship with Kelly had never been complicated before. In addition, although they had had their ups and downs over the years, their rather unusual friendship, which she so valued, had always remained strong. Until now.

Unaware that Kelly had exactly the same misgivings, she feared it would never be quite the same again. She finally reached for the phone just as it stopped ringing. She knew that Kelly had been planning to visit the families of both Trevor Parsons and James Gates, and she wanted to know what he had learned. She wanted to know that very much. Which meant, she realised, that she had to overcome the embarrassment she felt and talk to Kelly at once.

She punched in his number.

‘Good afternoon, Karen,’ he said quietly. And the sound of his voice caused her whole body to react, as she involuntarily remembered that forbidden kiss and how it had made her feel. She wouldn’t think about it. She just wouldn’t.

‘Look, about last night—’ she began, after a short pause.

‘I know, it was an apparition,’ he interrupted.

‘Damned right,’ she said, instantly relieved, but at the same time, in spite of her better judgement, just a tad disappointed to hear those words from him. ‘You’re almost certainly still in shock from Moira’s death, and as for me, well...’

‘I know. I’m so sorry. Look, can we just forget about it, go back to how things were before?’

It was exactly what she had wanted, of course. So why did it also make her feel rather sad? She gave herself a mental shaking. What was wrong with her sometimes?

‘Of course we can,’ she replied.

‘Good, because I’ve got something to tell you.’

‘Right, fire away.’

‘OK. Just listen to this.’ Kelly sounded excited now. And tense. ‘Look, I’m in London. I came up to try to find James Gates. Now, it could be that the death of Trevor Parsons really was a suicide. It’s impossible to say for certain, but it at least seems that he was a likely candidate. But, well, you’re not going to believe this — Gates is dead too. Gates is dead, Karen. And if you want my opinion, the way he died absolutely stinks.’

‘Jesus,’ said Karen, finally genuinely forgetting all about the events of the previous night. ‘Not another one!’

‘The fifth,’ responded Kelly. ‘And wait till you hear what happened to him.’

He told her then everything that he had learned from James Gates’ younger brother.

Karen was quite incredulous. ‘He died in a few inches of water, in a paddling pool? And in Germany, so there aren’t any inquest records over here. And, coincidentally, he was a key witness at the inquest into one of the most suspicious deaths of all. You’re right, Kelly, it stinks. And, quite frankly, if I can’t get permission to open a proper police inquiry now, I think I’ll tell the arseholes where to stick this fucking job.’

‘Hang on, Karen. Hang on. You still have the situation where the army doubtless has plausible explanations for each individual case, even if we think that those explanations look thin when you consider the whole picture. So why don’t you let me have a go at Gerrard Parker-Brown before you do that. I have quite a dossier now to put to him, and I am representing the families, don’t forget. I don’t see how he’ll be able to ignore me. If I turn up unannounced first thing tomorrow morning, I might get something out of him. The surprise approach so often works, as you know...’

‘And you might pre-warn him, Kelly.’

‘He’s warned already. He’s met you, got to know you a bit. I can’t believe that he was left in much doubt that you would not step back from this without a damned good fight. That’s the sort of copper you are, and, from what you’ve told me, he’s no fool. He would have grasped at once what he was up against. After all, he went straight to Harry Tomlinson, didn’t he? The old pals act and all that. They’re natural allies those two, aren’t they? So, do you honestly think Parker-Brown doesn’t know every official move you make? Let me have a go, first, please.’

Karen thought for a moment. ‘OK, Kelly,’ she said eventually. ‘I don’t know if it will do much good, but I can’t think it’ll do much harm.’

She put the phone down thoughtfully. If she was honest, she quite liked the idea of Gerrard Parker-Brown being given the third degree by Kelly, who was, she knew, an excellent interviewer. It still rankled that Parker-Brown had, she was sure, deliberately set out to handle her. And, even worse than that, she admitted reluctantly to herself, he had initially succeeded rather well.

Also, she did need to be absolutely sure that when she went back to the chief constable, her case for an investigation would be so strong that he would have no choice but to agree. And Harry Tomlinson was a stubborn man. Furthermore, he was not the sort of policeman who would ever want to be involved in any kind of showdown with the military. Karen knew all too well that Tomlinson would only consent to her putting a formal police investigation in place, if the case she presented was so overwhelmingly strong that she gave him no choice.

She was well aware that she needed all the help she could get. In particular, she needed support from within the force. Karen did not really want to be put in the position where her only hope of taking matters any further was to inform the chief constable that the Hangridge affair was about to be blown wide open by the families of the dead soldiers, led by John Kelly. In the first place, Tomlinson would probably take that as some kind of threat and might react with increased bloody-mindedness. And in the second place, Tomlinson had always viewed Karen’s close association with Kelly with deep suspicion, and had even dared, on more than one occasion, to hint at the station gossip, which she knew had been going on for years. There had long been a rumour that she and Kelly were having an affair, which was pretty ironic really, she reflected. Because there had never been even a breath of truth in that — until the previous night, when it had very nearly become a fact. Even though that now seemed rather unreal.

On the other hand, something that was very real, was the existence of one man within the police force whom she trusted totally to confide in concerning Hangridge and the Devonshire Fusiliers, and of whose support she was confident. However, he was somebody she had had an affair with. And he was a junior officer at that.

‘Damn,’ she said out loud, as once more she cursed herself roundly for creating her own complications.

Phil Cooper had been her sergeant when they had investigated a particularly complex and emotionally draining case, full of twists and turns. And one of the twists had been that somehow along the way she and Phil had begun an affair. No. It had been much more than that. For her, at least. She had fallen deeply and irrevocably in love, although she was no longer quite so sure of his true feelings.

Phil had recently been promoted to detective inspector and had rejoined the Devon and Cornwall Constabulary, after a brief spell with the Avon and Somerset. And Karen was well aware that his new job would be right up his street. Phil was now with the force’s Major Crime Incident Team. The unit operated in a clandestine way, from an anonymous warehouse on an industrial estate on the outskirts of Exeter, unmarked and unheralded. Karen knew that the team thought of themselves as the elite, SAS-like, front-line troops of the police force, and there had always been a boy-soldier side to Phil, who was a big, rugby-playing, very physical sort of man. And although solid and reliable on the one hand, he was also the kind of policeman who enjoyed the unorthodox and, like Karen, was unafraid of taking risks — which may have been one of the reasons they had always got on so well.

Anyway, one way and another, in a professional sense she trusted Phil Cooper absolutely, even if personally she had grown to have her doubts.

He had called her not long previously to tell her about his new appointment and he had also made it quite clear that he was still available to her. Indeed, that he would very much like to re-open their relationship.

‘Things would be different, I promise you, Karen,’ he had said.

But she had asked just one question. ‘Are you still married, Phil?’

‘Well, yes, but—’ he had begun.

‘But nothing, Phil,’ she had interrupted. ‘Just fuck off, will you.’

And that had been their last conversation. Karen smiled wryly. Complicated or what? Well, she wasn’t going to let it be. Not as far as the job was concerned, and not as far as Hangridge was concerned either. Resolutely she punched out Phil’s mobile number.

‘Cooper,’ he replied, in that slightly sing-songy way of speaking with which she had once been so familiar.

‘Hi, Phil...’ she began.

‘Hello, Karen, I’m so glad to hear from you,’ he responded at once.

‘Let me say from the start, this call is purely and absolutely professional,’ she told him sternly. She felt rather pompous, but was none the less determined to make her position on that clear at once.

‘Yes, of course,’ he replied, backing off instantly. However — and she couldn’t have explained why — she felt that he didn’t entirely believe her. Typical, bloody arrogant man, she told herself.

Out loud she said: ‘Look, Phil, I’ve got something big on. It’s a very hot potato and I need some help. Just you and me, quietly. I don’t want to talk about it on the phone, so I was hoping we could have a meet. Soon as you can.’

Phil asked no questions.

‘I won’t be able to get away this evening because we’ve got a big job on here, and it’s likely to hang over into tomorrow, but what about tomorrow night?’ he replied, with obvious eagerness, and she hoped it wasn’t just that he was keen to see her. He would know, of course, that Karen must be referring to something very important indeed.

‘I could drive over to the Lansdowne, if you like?’ Phil continued.

Karen opened her mouth to say no. She didn’t want an evening drinking session with Cooper. That was, after all, how their affair had begun in the first place. On the other hand, the quicker she met up with him the better. And as she was absolutely adamant that she never wanted to rekindle their relationship and that she was totally over him, then what possible reason could she have for avoiding an evening meeting with him?

‘That would be ideal,’ she said casually. ‘But let’s make it another pub, shall we?’

She didn’t want the entire station knowing that she had been drinking with Cooper. The word that their affair was on again would be round the nick in about five minutes, if they met in the Lansdowne. And that had caused enough problems first time round. But as Cooper replied, she almost wished she hadn’t made the request for a different pub.

‘Of course,’ he said, sounding quite conspiratorial. ‘How about that quiet little boozer we used to go to out on the Newton Abbot road.’

Oh, God, she thought. That had been one of their regular haunts during their affair. But she was determined not to show him that it meant anything to her one way or the other to go there again.

‘Sure,’ she replied, even more casually. ‘See you there about seven? All right?’

‘All right,’ he replied, with rather more enthusiasm in his voice than she would have liked. And warning bells were ringing in her head as she ended the call.

But she needed Phil Cooper’s help, she told herself. She really did.