No Reason To Die

Five

Outside on the pavement, Karen paused to pull on her white mackintosh cape. It was still raining and she didn’t like getting her hair wet. Kelly caught up then and was right behind her as, the steel tips on her boots making sharp ringing noises on the Tarmac, she hurried across South Street, past Torre Conservative Club, to the CID offices in their recently converted building opposite the entrance to the main police station yard. She heard Kelly start to laugh as he studied the sign outside the Lansdowne Dance Centre next door. It advertised tuition in everything from modern ballroom through Latin American disco, to rock and roll.

‘I can just see Chris Tompkins doing the tango with a rose in his teeth,’ he said.

In spite of herself, Karen laughed. Detective Sergeant Tompkins, one of Torquay CID’s longest serving officers, who had only recently managed to finally achieve promotion from detective constable, was very tall, very thin, moved with a bony awkwardness and had a permanently morose hangdog sort of face. Karen always thought he looked like an anorexic bloodhound.

She punched the security code into the door ahead of her and led the way upstairs to her first-floor office. They had to pass through the open-plan incident room and Karen was aware of the eyes of every officer there focusing on Kelly. That last case still weighed heavily on all of them, and Kelly had been at the hub of it. Kelly might be a kindred spirit and someone for whom most of the team had considerable professional respect, but he did spell trouble, and she had known that bringing him, unannounced, into the CID offices would be bound to create something of a stir.

To hell with it, thought Karen. She had neither the time nor the inclination to pussyfoot around. Yes, Kelly did spell trouble, but that was because he had yet again encountered something troublesome, and being Kelly, he never seemed to learn to walk away. One thing Kelly didn’t do was cry wolf. Karen may have given Kelly little or no indication of her true opinion, but in fact she reckoned that if John Kelly thought there was something fishy about that young squaddie’s death, then there probably was. The only question was whether or not Karen wanted to take a potentially politically tricky matter further. And she was all too aware that she really wasn’t so different from Kelly. Almost certainly, she would be unable to resist.

‘Right, Farnsby,’ she called to a young woman detective constable sitting at one of the computer stations by the wall. ‘I want you to help Kelly build up an E-fit. We need to get a picture of two possible witnesses. Go on, Kelly, you know the form.’

‘Your wish...’ began Kelly, then let his voice trail away as he saw the look in Karen’s eye.

Janet Farnsby, whose serious, rather humourless nature was somehow emphasised by the way she kept her straight, light brown hair tied back from her face and the round granny spectacles she affected, stood up and looked doubtfully around her. Torquay CID didn’t run to providing a computer for every CID officer. Instead, they shared the bank of machines where DC Farnsby had been sitting. Karen knew what the young woman was thinking. Was she really supposed to work with John Kelly, of all people, in the middle of the incident room?

‘You can use my office, I’m off to Middlemoor,’ Karen announced, once more leading the way. Once inside her little glass cubicle, Karen busied herself picking up and sorting out the various papers she needed for her meeting with the chief constable at headquarters. There was just one item on the agenda: CID budget. Karen’s favourite topic. No doubt, further economies were about to be demanded. Not only would her officers be sharing computers, Karen reckoned they’d be sharing notebooks and pencils if Harry Tomlinson had his way. She gritted her teeth and made herself concentrate on ensuring she had everything she needed for her unwelcome meeting.

Janet Farnsby, who had recently completed a course on building E-fits, the modern computerised alternative to identikit, had settled in front of Karen’s screen with Kelly by her side and was already typing in data and calling up various images for him to study.

Karen, still wearing the white cape, with an untidy bundle of papers tucked under one arm, the big denim Voyage bag under the other, watched them from the doorway for a few seconds.

Kelly glanced up at her and looked for a moment as if he might be about to say something clever. Karen didn’t give him the chance.

‘Right, I’m off,’ she announced briskly. ‘Good luck.’

As she crossed the incident room once more, heading for the stairs, she very nearly bumped into Chris Tompkins.

‘Sorry, boss,’ muttered the veteran detective in his familiarly flat tones.

Karen couldn’t look at him. She really couldn’t. But if she’d happened to have had a rose handy, she would definitely have at least attempted to put it between his teeth.

Once settled in her car for the forty-five-minute or so drive to the Devon and Cornwall force’s HQ at Middlemoor, on the outskirts of Exeter, Karen immediately called the chief constable’s office, ostensibly to confirm her appointment for later that afternoon.

The chief constable’s secretary, Joan Lockharte, was her usual snooty self. Karen could just picture her, prim little face framed by an irritatingly geometric yellow haircut, sitting perfectly straight before her invariably immaculately tidy desk. Karen disliked the bloody woman almost as much as she did her boss, but she made herself remain courteous because she wanted something. She wanted information. She was far from ready to share any concerns she might have about Alan Connelly’s death with Harry Tomlinson, but she was quite prepared to use his contacts.

‘Oh, by the way, you know the commanding officer of the Devonshire Fusiliers, at Hangridge. He was at the CC’s Oldway Mansions commendations bash last year,’ she began. The chief constable traditionally threw an annual reception at Torbay Council’s imposing offices at which he presented members of the local community with various awards for bravery and outstanding service, and Karen vaguely recalled the Fusiliers being commended for the part they played in searching for and rescuing a missing Dartmoor rambler.

Joan Lockharte muttered something that sounded vaguely affirmative. Or it may just have been a sniff. Karen wasn’t sure.

‘Could you remind me of his name?’ she continued determinedly.

‘Colonel Gerrard Parker-Brown.’ The chief constable’s secretary rattled off the name without hesitation. She was at least efficient, Karen had to give her that. And her memory was faultless. Karen knew that well enough. She had often had cause to wish that it wasn’t quite so good.

Her next call was to Hangridge. She had decided to make her initial inquiries informal — which was in any case all she could reasonably do under the circumstances — hence her desire to know the name of the Fusiliers’ commanding officer before contacting the barracks. She wanted to trade on her one and only social contact with Parker-Brown. That was, after all, how dealings between potentially immovable forces like the police and the army were more often than not conducted. Karen, as a relatively young woman with certain idiosyncrasies regarding her work, who had not only managed to survive but usually to triumph in a man’s world, was not particularly good at these kind of tactics. It did not suit her either to prevaricate or to dissemble. But she reckoned that, in this case, her best chance of getting any real co-operation out of the army was to give it a go.

The sergeant who answered the phone put her straight through to the colonel, whose double-barrelled name, while so traditionally appropriate for a senior army officer, did not fit at all with her brief memory of him. Certainly she was not surprised when he so promptly came on the line. He hadn’t seemed the type who would hide behind minions under any circumstances.

‘Parker-Brown.’ He spoke crisply, not quite with the aristocratic intonation of previous generations of army officer, but Karen suspected that upper-crust vowels had probably been deliberately toned down.

She quickly introduced herself, at the same time reminding the colonel that they had met once at the CC’s party at Oldway Mansions.

‘Yes, yes, I remember,’ he responded at once, in such a way, however, that Karen was quite sure he didn’t remember at all. ‘How nice to hear from you, Detective Superintendent.’

His approach threw Karen a bit. She had expected the CO of the Devonshire Fusiliers to be rather more on his guard with a senior policewoman, albeit one who was playing the social card. She found herself pausing while she worked out exactly how to word what she wanted to say next. The colonel, still sounding helpful and friendly, filled the silence.

‘So what can I do for you, Miss Meadows?’

Karen decided to get straight to the point.

‘Look, I wondered if I might come up and see you. As soon as possible. Tomorrow morning, perhaps? It concerns one of your young soldiers, Alan Connelly, the lad killed on the road over the moors last night, near Buckfast. Certain matters have come to my attention that I’d very much like to talk through with you...’

‘Ah, yes, Connelly. Tragic, quite tragic. He was only seventeen, you know. I’ll help in any way I can, naturally. But his death is hardly a police matter, is it, Miss Meadows?’

‘Any sudden violent death is a police matter, Colonel, at least in the initial stages. And that is the case even with serving military personnel when death occurs in a public place.’

Karen was determined to make that clear from the beginning.

‘Yes, yes, of course. I do understand. Would you like to come up here for coffee tomorrow? Midmorning? Would about eleven suit you?’

Karen agreed at once, reflecting on how civilised the modern army was, or at least how civilised it liked to be perceived as.

She ended the call and forced herself to concentrate for the last half-hour or so of her journey on the unwelcome meeting ahead. Karen reckoned that she was a good copper. She’d had her ups and downs, but, in reality, she knew darned well that she was a good copper. Paperwork, however, was her bête noir. She hated it. She loathed it. And managing a budget was the worst sort of paperwork in her opinion, and the most unsatisfactory aspect of her job. However, the chief constable was a paperwork sort of policeman. If you considered him to be any kind of policeman, that is. Which Karen actually didn’t.

It was one of those days when Karen was extremely pleased eventually to get home. Her meeting with the chief constable had gone much as she had expected. It had been a bit like a visit to an accountant, really. Only an accountant who was not so much on your side as that of the tax authorities. As usual when finances were under discussion, Karen had found herself forced to duck and dive quite spectacularly. It had been one of her trickiest sessions with Harry Tomlinson, and by the time it was finally over Karen had felt uncharacteristically drained of energy.

As soon as she entered her apartment in West Beach Heights, an old Victorian block to the west of Torquay seafront, she headed straight to the small kitchen at the back to make herself a large gin and tonic. Plymouth gin poured over lots of ice and a slice of lime, in a decent tall glass filled to the brim with Schweppes tonic — her favourite tipple, and the kind of G and T that was still hard to find in British bars of any kind, and virtually non-existent in pubs.

As she took a long, deep drink she became aware of a small furry creature rubbing itself against her legs. Sophie, the handsome brown and white cat with which Karen shared her home, was inclined to scratch, claw and deliver impatient love bites if she did not receive enough attention. So Karen, wondering why she was quite so fond of such a self-centred pet, dutifully bent down to tickle Sophie’s ears, as she knew was required. Then she carried the remains of her drink into the sitting room. It was a rather lovely room, decorated in pale creams and white, and furnished with the various antique pieces Karen so much liked to collect. Two huge windows along one wall, stretching almost from floor to ceiling, gave sweeping views of the bay. Karen was by nature congenitally untidy, but she more or less kept her untidiness to the bedroom, making a real effort to keep the living room in at least reasonable order. She slumped gratefully onto the sofa, deliberately omitting to switch on the lights so that she could savour the view outside. Almost at once, Sophie took a flying leap onto her lap and demanded attention again.

Karen grumbled at her in good-humoured fashion. She was actually grateful for Sophie’s company. It wasn’t that she was short of friends, or certainly acquaintances, eager to spend time with her. But she rarely seemed to have time in her head to arrange anything, even if she did have the inclination. And since her affair with the man she had believed to be the love of her life had ended the previous year, she seemed to have no interest whatsoever in starting a new relationship with anyone. Or certainly not with anyone she had so far met.

She sighed, and trying not to disturb Sophie — who now appeared to be asleep, after digging her claws into Karen’s legs for at least a minute while making herself a suitable bed in her mistress’s lap — she reached for the telephone on the little table next to the sofa. She pushed the appropriate buttons to check for messages.

The first was from her elderly neighbour Ethel, whose spirited attitude to life and apparently perpetual good humour put Karen to shame, she sometimes felt.

‘I’ve taken in a parcel for you, dear. Pop round any time. I’ve got a nice bottle of port that fell off the back of a lorry. Only I shouldn’t be telling you that, should I? Still, if you arrest me and put me inside, at least I won’t have to spend Christmas with that blessed sister of mine.’

Karen grinned and waited for the next message.

‘Darling, where are you? It’s Alison. Didn’t you get my message at the weekend? George and I would really love you to come to dinner on Saturday. Our new neighbours will be there, and Sally Sturgis and her husband are down from London. Sally Court that was, do you remember her? She’s dying to see you again...’

Karen pulled a face. She and Alison Barker had once, a million years ago, been good friends, when they were at police training college together. Since then their paths had diverged dramatically. While Karen had concentrated on her career, and had only once even come close to marriage, Alison had quickly abandoned the police force to become a wife and mother of four. The two women had absolutely nothing in common any more, in Karen’s opinion, but, none the less, Alison had been wooing Karen constantly since she and her husband had moved to Torquay from the Midlands several months earlier. Twice now Karen had accepted invitations from Alison, primarily, if perversely, in an attempt to make her phone calls go away, and each time she had regretted it. On the second occasion, Sunday lunch a few weeks previously, Karen had been obliged to spend her entire visit cooing over Alison’s first grandchild. Apart from anything else, that had made her feel dreadfully old, as she knew she was almost exactly the same age as Alison. And now Alison wanted her to meet another police cadet from their ancient past. Someone else she would no doubt have absolutely nothing in common with. She could barely even remember Sally Court.

Resolutely, she pressed delete. Just hearing Alison’s voice had somehow made her even wearier than she had been before, and she knew that she would have to be at her desk by seven, at the latest, in the morning if she wanted to keep her appointment at Hangridge. First, she had to sort out a load more paperwork to send off to Harry Tomlinson, in a desperate effort to back up some of the claims of financial diligence which she had made that afternoon.

Carefully, she lifted a purring Sophie off her lap and laid her on the sofa by her side. The cat stretched sensuously, but otherwise didn’t stir. Lascivious little beast, thought Karen, as she wandered into the kitchen to pour herself another drink. She was vaguely hungry, but not sure that she had the energy to make herself something to eat. Missing supper would, in any case, do her no harm, she reflected. She had consumed that rather large lunch in the Lansdowne, after all.

All she really wanted to do now was to fall into bed and watch TV for the rest of the evening.

Ethel would have to wait until tomorrow. And Alison Barker could wait for ever.

In the morning, Karen succeeded in making her early start as planned. And by around ten she was able to throw a bundle of papers at a somewhat bemused DC Farnsby, along with instructions to send them to the chief constable’s office. Then she set off for Hangridge. In spite of his apparently relaxed manner, Gerrard Parker-Brown was still a soldier, and a high-ranking one at that. Karen doubted he would have much truck with unpunctuality.

She had decided that in order to keep up the appearance of informality she would make the trip in her own car, a modern MG convertible, which she thought was a great little motor, even though Kelly, an MG purist, had looked down on it from the start.

She took the coast road to Paignton, then on through Dartington, and on to the moors via Buckfastleigh, so that she would pass the spot where Alan Connelly had been killed. The incessant rain which had fallen barely without pause through the first week of November had finally cleared up, and this was a beautiful day for a drive over Dartmoor. She slowed down as she approached the stretch of road where the accident had happened. It was not difficult to pinpoint. Karen had been told that part of the drystone wall on the north side of the road had been demolished by the rear end of the big articulated lorry, and angry black tyre marks criss-crossed the Tarmac, which had paled with age. Today, driving conditions were perfect. Everything was bathed in the orange glow of autumn sunshine. But Karen knew Dartmoor. She could imagine well enough how different it would have been on a dark wet night, with a swirling mist cutting down visibility to just a few feet.

Thoughtfully, she continued on to Two Bridges, turned right towards Moretonhampstead, just as Kelly had done two days previously in such very different driving conditions, and then, a couple of miles before Moreton, swung north through the pretty village of Chagford and up on to the remote part of the moor along the narrow winding road, which she knew led to Hangridge. All around her, vaguely purple hills, each topped with a tor, a distinctive irregular pile of granite, jaggedly dissected the skyline. Hangridge was relatively new. It had been built on MoD land in the 1970s. Karen knew almost exactly where the barracks were situated, built on a hillside in a particularly remote and unforgiving part of the moor, not far from Okehampton. But she had never actually been there before. The camp was quite isolated, the last two or three miles reached only by its own specially constructed approach road, so even the most tenacious of tourists exploring the moor would be unlikely to pass it by chance. And, in any case, Karen, who had loved Dartmoor since she was a child, rarely had time any more to play tourist. In addition, with every promotion her job had become more and more that of a manager and less and less what she regarded to be that of a police officer. She was desk-bound far too much of the time. No doubt about that. Karen didn’t think that was healthy for any police officer, whatever their rank and job description. And at least one bonus of this so far unofficial inquiry was that it had already given her the excuse to get out of her office and back on the beat, as it were, even if only fleetingly.

She was mulling over these thoughts as a dip in the hills took her through a ragged patch of dark conifers. The road swung sharply to the right as it rose steeply upwards again and, as she turned the corner, quite suddenly she was confronted for the first time by Hangridge barracks, headquarters of the Devonshire Fusiliers and a crack infantry training depot. Karen was completely taken by surprise.

She didn’t know quite what she had expected, and indeed had been unaware of any particular expectations, but she had not been prepared at all for what lay directly before her, built in such a way that she could see almost the entire layout on the bleakly exposed hillside.

Karen was well aware of Hangridge’s reputation for housing one of the army’s toughest training centres, a place designed to turn out elite fighting forces, or so she had been told, and she supposed that in her imagination she had conjured up a picture of some grim, moorland reincarnation of Colditz. Certainly, she admitted to herself, her extremely limited knowledge of the army was probably stuck in a time warp. Somewhere inside her head lurked an image of squat, black Nissen huts surrounded by unassailably tall walls or fences, topped by tangled rolls of potentially lethal barbed wire.

The reality of Hangridge could not have been more different. A neat cluster of conventionally built buildings, one or two storeys high, lay surrounded by playing fields which had been levelled out of the hillside. A rugby game was in process on one such field and groundsmen were at work on another. Karen realised that this was the kind of glorious moorland day which would even brighten the dark bleakness of Dartmoor Prison at Princetown, about as grim a building as you could get. But there was definitely nothing grim or at all forbidding about Hangridge. There was a perimeter fence, of course, made of wire netting, and even a strand or two of barbed wire here and there, but the whole impression of the place was open and pleasant.

Indeed, thought Karen, the place looked more like a comprehensive school than a barracks. Or her idea of a barracks, anyway. Of course, she reflected, as she drove very slowly towards the gates, Hangridge had been built in the ’70s when new comprehensive schools were popping up all over Britain. Obscurely, she wondered if the same architects had been used by the army.

The gates to Hangridge stood open, and only the presence of two young men on sentry duty, both carrying automatic rifles, detracted from the notion that the camp was as likely to be a centre of education for young civilians as a military establishment.

Karen pulled to a halt at the sentry point and wound down her window. One of the sentries stepped smartly forward. Every inch the soldier. But his dark blue beret, with its distinctive Fusiliers’ red and white feathered hackle, seemed too big for his head and Karen was struck at once by how young he looked. At first sight he could have been an overgrown fourteen-year-old. God, she must be getting old. This was boy-soldier land, but she knew the fresh-faced sentry had to be at least seventeen, probably more.

The young sentry saluted as he approached. He was of mixed race and rather gorgeous. His smooth olive skin gleamed with good health and he had big, beautiful, black eyes. There was something boyishly cheeky about him, and Karen could not help thinking how nice it would be to see him smile. She swiftly dismissed the thought from her mind and made an effort to pull herself together. She began to introduce herself, but it seemed she did not need to.

‘Good afternoon, miss,’ said the boy soldier respectfully, and Karen couldn’t help enjoying the moment. It had been a long time since anyone had called her ‘miss’, let alone an attractive young lad. Unmarried as she remained, she was none the less much more of a ‘madam’ nowadays than a ‘miss’.

‘The CO is expecting you,’ the sentry continued.

‘Thank you very much. Now, where do I go exactly?’

‘Just a minute, miss,’ interrupted the second sentry, who looked equally boyish in spite of the stern expression he had adopted. ‘Your ID, please.’

The first soldier flushed slightly. Karen was reminded that these young men probably still had their L-plates on. They may have been primed by their commanding officers about her visit, but they were still supposed to go through the motions of correct sentry duty.

She produced her warrant card which was duly inspected almost to the point of unnecessary diligence, she thought, by the second sentry. Finally, she was directed to the largest and most centrally positioned of the cluster of buildings where, after she had parked her car in one of several spaces reserved for visitors, a third sentry led her directly to the CO’s office.

Gerrard Parker-Brown was exactly as she had remembered him from their previous brief meeting: warm, affable and almost disturbingly unmilitary.

He rose from his desk as she was shown into his room, and stared at her in undisguised surprise.

‘Oh, it’s you,’ he said. ‘I didn’t realise. Terrible with names, always have been. But I remember you now. And I remember thinking when we met at that do, how unlike a police officer you were.’

He stepped forward and enclosed her right hand in both of his.

‘Splendid to see you again, absolutely splendid,’ he went on. ‘Now, coffee, tea? Something stronger?’

He grinned broadly, flashing big strong white teeth. He had sandy hair, cropped short around the sides, and somewhat unruly at the front, where it had been allowed to grow a little longer over a broad, open face heavily sprinkled with freckles. His square-jawed, rather old-fashioned, kind of boy’s comic, good looks could only properly be described as handsome. There were prominent laughter lines around his dark brown eyes, which were framed by unusually long thick eyelashes. Karen couldn’t help registering that they were rather exceptional eyes, more like a woman’s than a man’s, although she didn’t remember noticing that before.

‘Coffee, please,’ she said, and found herself smiling at him involuntarily. He was quite disarming. ‘And I remember thinking how unlike an army officer you were.’

He positively beamed back at her. ‘That’s only because everybody still thinks in clichés,’ he said, gesturing for her to sit in one of the two low armchairs to one side of his desk, and lowering himself into the other. ‘But things have changed, about time too in many respects, but not all for the good, unfortunately. Army officers, police officers, we’re all the same nowadays, aren’t we? Bloody managers. Don’t know about you, it’s the endless paperwork that gets me down.’

‘Absolutely,’ smiled Karen.

She had not expected to meet this kind of kindred spirit in the British army, that was for certain. She studied Parker-Brown carefully for a moment. He was tall and slim, looked extremely fit, and she suspected that his almost excessively casual manner involved more than just a little bit of front. None the less, you couldn’t help responding to him. She had to make a conscious effort to remember that this was an extremely senior military man, commanding officer of a major infantry regiment, and she was a senior police officer with a job to do, which might yet prove to be extremely tricky.

‘So, what exactly can I do for you, Detective Superintendent?’

‘As I indicated to you on the phone, Colonel, I have one or two anxieties concerning the death of Alan Connelly.’

‘But I understood it was perfectly straightforward. A tragedy, of course, but there’s no mystery, is there? Private Connelly had left base without permission and was, unfortunately, extremely drunk. He more or less threw himself in front of an articulated truck, didn’t he, in conditions that made it almost impossible for the driver to have avoided hitting him? That’s what I understood, anyway.’

‘We have no evidence to the contrary, Colonel, but there are one or two so far unexplained aspects of the case, and as I was quite sure you would be as anxious as we are to clear everything up, I decided it might be helpful for you and I to have an informal chat.’

Karen was aware of the colonel studying her quizzically. The corners of his mouth twitched. Had she said something to amuse him? Karen was pretty certain that he had not been entirely taken in by her allegedly informal approach, and probably suspected that she had good reason for being there and that she would have some serious questions to ask. Indeed, she was becoming increasingly more determined to find out everything there was to know about Alan Connelly’s death.

‘Of course,’ he said. And then he waited.

Karen told him about the two men, believed to be soldiers, who had come to find Alan Connelly in the pub, and then more or less disappeared, and about how Connelly had earlier claimed that he was likely to be killed and that his death would not be the first at Hangridge.

‘We have a reliable witness to all of that,’ she concluded, trying not to think too much about Kelly and the trouble he had got himself and her into over the years.

The colonel’s reaction surprised Karen. He burst out laughing. She observed in silence, more than a little thrown. Then he stopped laughing as abruptly as he had begun.

‘I’m so sorry, Detective Superintendent,’ he said. ‘That was absolutely appalling of me. A young man has lost his life in a tragic accident and I really shouldn’t have laughed. It’s just that, well, of course, you didn’t know Alan Connelly...’

He paused and it seemed some sort of response was called for. Karen obliged with a slight shake of her head.

‘No,’ continued Colonel Parker-Brown. ‘Well, to put it short, sharp and sweet, Connelly was a complete Walter Mitty. He damned near lived in a fantasy world. He was always making up stories. It was as if he couldn’t stop himself.’

‘What sort of stories, Colonel?’

The colonel flashed her the quickest of smiles. ‘Gerry, please.’ he said.

She nodded.

‘They varied. Some were quite funny, and the majority pretty harmless, but some were disruptive. Most were absurd, like saying he had a date with Kylie Minogue, and not just mentioning it in passing, you understand, but giving the lads an allegedly detailed account when he came back from a weekend pass. Oh, and he would claim that his father was a millionaire and he’d only joined the army because it was a condition of his inheritance.’

The colonel paused again.

‘No truth in that either, I don’t suppose,’ commented Karen.

‘Indeed not, Detective Superintendent.’ Parker-Brown flashed her yet another of his grins. ‘Or may I call you Karen?’

‘Yes, of course,’ she responded automatically, while reflecting that this meeting was not going quite the way she had planned. One way or another the colonel seemed to be taking control. She supposed he was trained to do just that, and made a mental note to watch him in future. If indeed she ever had cause to meet with him again, she reminded herself.

‘No,’ continued Parker-Brown. ‘Connelly’s father was a shipbuilder in Glasgow, who lost his job some years ago when so many of the shipyards on the Clyde were closed down. He has never worked since and is apparently a manic depressive and an alcoholic, inclined to take out his own disappointment with life on his family. Violently, sometimes, I’m told. No wonder the boy took to fantasy—’

‘You’re extremely well informed,’ interrupted Karen.

‘We operate a major training programme here, with upwards of two hundred young people going through our infantry course at any given time. We take in soldiers from other regiments for specialist infantry training, and some of it is pretty demanding stuff. My staff give me a weekly report in writing on every young man and woman we have here. Our job is to train soldiers, and an intrinsic part of that, I’m afraid, is to weed out those who should not be in the army, or certainly not attached to infantry units. Therefore, all of us in charge need to know about our young people. And that includes as much as possible about their backgrounds, as that can have considerable bearing on their behaviour and progress. I’m the boss. I need to be aware of everything, Karen. Past and present.’

He held out both hands in a gesture that could have been supplication or maybe just resignation. ‘I’m not, of course, but I do my best. And naturally, as soon as I heard about Fusilier Connelly’s death, I not only studied his file thoroughly but also went over everything with his training sergeant.’

‘You said Alan Connelly’s fantasies were sometimes disruptive, Colonel?’ Karen was determined to regain a little of the high ground and quite deliberately avoided addressing the Hangridge commandant by his Christian name as he had requested, even though he was now using hers.

‘Yes. We have young women undergoing infantry training here as well as young men. There are a lot of senior people in the army who still disapprove of mixing the sexes in this way, and I have to say that my tour of duty here has, on occasions, made me think they might sometimes be right.’ He shot her a sideways look. ‘I don’t really mean that, Karen. I do believe in a thoroughly modern integrated army. But, by God, it brings its problems along with it. Particularly when you have a young man like Connelly aboard. He used to invent relationships with the female soldiers—’

‘I didn’t actually realise that you had women in infantry regiments,’ Karen interrupted.

‘We don’t, not as such,’ Parker-Brown replied. ‘But women from other regiments are stationed here for infantry training if they are going into certain situations, in particular in preparation for a posting to Northern Ireland, for example. Anyway, there was one young woman, in particular, whom Alan Connelly focused his attentions on in ways which were quite unacceptable. He referred to her as his girlfriend, even though she patently wasn’t, he plagued her with thoroughly inappropriate love letters and followed her around the place...’

The colonel took a cigarette from a packet on his desk and offered Karen one. She shook her head. Karen had been a heavy smoker for most of her life since her late teens. She had given up for the umpteenth time just a couple of weeks earlier and this time she was determined to stick it out.

Parker-Brown nodded. ‘Filthy habit,’ he muttered, in a manner which left little doubt that the remark itself was also a habit and not something he gave any thought to whatsoever.

‘You have probably gathered, Karen, that Alan Connelly was one of those chaps who was just not going to make it here. Strangely enough, he wasn’t actually bad at the job — I think it was like another fantasy game to him, really, playing soldiers.’

Parker-Brown tapped a file on his desk. ‘It’s all here. I’ve had the computer data printed out and final reports put together by the training staff.

‘Connelly was a fit, athletic young man who was quite organised and able in his work, and certainly extremely willing. But his state of mind gave us a great deal of concern and there was little doubt that we were going to have to let him go. He had actually been disciplined only a couple of days before his death for pestering the young woman recruit I told you about. He knew his days were numbered here. He’d been warned often enough. To be honest, Karen, I imagine that is why he took off from here and went on such a God-almighty bender.’

‘So your opinion is that when Alan Connelly told our witness that he feared he would be killed, that this was a figment of his imagination?’

‘Most definitely.’ Parker-Brown made the openhanded gesture again. ‘That would have been Connelly all over. He watched too many bad action movies, then made up his own script as he went along.’

‘What about his claim that there had been other deaths at Hangridge? “They killed the others, now they’ll kill me,” he told our witness. Have there been any other deaths here recently?’

Parker-Brown looked thoughtful, as if he was trying desperately to help but didn’t quite know how to.

‘Well, we did have a tragedy earlier in the year, about six months ago it would have been. One of our recruits died in a training accident on the firing range. They happen, I’m afraid. The first thing we try to teach them when we give them guns is elementary safety. And still they manage to shoot themselves.’

‘This soldier shot himself?’

‘Yes. Accidentally, of course. We have our own range about a mile away from the barracks. The recruits were simulating an attack on an enemy position, running forwards, throwing themselves on the ground, that sort of thing, and this young soldier had his gun cocked, fell awkwardly and blew a hole in his chest. Our standard issue automatic, the SA80, is a formidable weapon and the results were not pretty. Got a bit of press coverage, particularly locally, you may have seen it. But these things do happen when you are training military personnel, however hard you try to avoid it.’

Karen nodded again, suddenly vaguely remembering seeing reports of the death of a soldier in an army training accident on Dartmoor. But it hadn’t been a major story. As the colonel had said, accidents like that happen in military training, and, having occurred on army land and been summarily investigated by the SIB, neither did it ever become a police matter. So she had taken little notice. She had no recollection of even taking the details on board. Certainly, she hadn’t registered that the soldier concerned had been stationed at Hangridge.

‘And that has been the only other accidental death here at the camp in recent years.’

The colonel nodded back. ‘Since I’ve been here, definitely, which is coming up to two years now. And I did study the records for several years before that.’

‘How old was this soldier?’

‘He was eighteen. Promising lad, too.’

‘Can you supply me with a file on the incident, including all the young man’s personal details? Family address, and so on?’

‘Of course. Although I don’t see the relevance.’

‘I’m sure you’re right, but I do need to be sure.’

Karen thought for a moment.

‘We need to look at every aspect of this, Colonel. I am particularly interested in tracing these two men who went looking for Connelly?’

‘Really?’

‘Yes. After all, those men were definitely not figments of Connelly’s imagination. As I think I have already explained, our witness saw them in the pub, The Wild Dog, just half a mile or so from the scene of the accident, Colonel—’

‘Gerry,’ he interrupted.

She studied him curiously. He gave the impression of being so eager to please and so anxious to be liked. What was going on behind those warm brown eyes, she wondered? Karen had had enough dealings with the military to know that you didn’t become a colonel of a crack infantry regiment through being an ingenuous nice guy. And she thought that Gerrard Parker-Brown, whom she reckoned to be in his late thirties, was considerably younger than usual to be holding such a senior rank. In peacetime, at any rate.

‘So, have you any idea who these two men might be, Gerry?’ she enquired, putting only a light emphasis on his name.

He shrugged. ‘I have no idea at all, Karen. We don’t even know for certain that they were soldiers, do we? Let alone stationed at Hangridge. If they were army chaps, I would imagine they were mates of Connelly’s who went looking for him to try to stop him getting himself into more trouble...’

‘A logical conclusion, and the same one our witness made. But I thought I’d explained that the witness also said Connelly didn’t react as if they were mates. Just the opposite. In fact, he seemed terrified of them.’

Gerry Parker-Brown shrugged. ‘I can’t comment on that, Karen. I wasn’t there. But if they were his army mates and they were determined to bring him back to camp, and he didn’t want to come back, well, he wouldn’t have been pleased to see them exactly, would he? Even though they were almost certainly trying to do him a good turn.’

‘Are you sure of that, Gerry?’

He flashed the easy grin again. ‘How can I be? But I’d bet a month’s pay on it. Soldiers look after their comrades, Karen. Indeed, it is part of their training that they do so.’

‘So nobody at Hangridge officially sent anyone out looking for Connelly—’

‘We didn’t even know he was missing until we were contacted by the police after his death,’ interrupted Parker-Brown. ‘I’m more than a little embarrassed about that, to tell you the truth, Karen, but apparently his mates had been covering up for him. Again, that’s what soldiers do.’

‘All right. So, just assuming for a moment that your assumption is correct, and if these two men were soldiers that they were Connelly’s mates, how easy would it be for you to find out who they are? I mean, would you know if Connelly had any special friends who would have wanted to bail him out from any trouble he’d got himself into?’

‘I’m not sure, but most squaddies do have mates like that.’ For the first time Karen thought that Gerry Parker-Brown looked a little wary. ‘I’d have to make enquiries.’

‘I wish you would, Gerry.’ She paused. ‘There’s something else. Our witness reckoned that both men were quite a bit older than Connelly. That indicates to me either that they are instructors or more senior soldiers from another company here at Hangridge, rather than the training unit. And if so, they aren’t likely to have been mates of Alan Connelly’s, are they?’

Gerry smiled. ‘I really wouldn’t know, Karen, and as we have already established that you have no real idea whether or not these men even were soldiers, I wouldn’t like to guess.’

For a moment Karen thought there might be a slightly patronising note in Gerry Parker-Brown’s voice. But only for a moment. When the colonel continued to speak, he still appeared to be trying to be as helpful as ever.

‘I will tell you this, though, Karen. Our instructor NCOs are inclined to be extremely protective towards their charges. Any one of them, knowing that Connelly was already in trouble with his career, could have taken it upon himself to seek him out and make one last attempt to get him back on the straight and narrow.’

‘The straight and narrow?’ queried Karen. ‘At best, they left the lad to wander blind drunk along a dangerous road. At worst, I dread to think. I would really appreciate it, Gerry, if you would work on the assumption that these two mystery men are soldiers and do your best to seek them out.’

‘Yes, of course. I’ll put out an appeal for them to come forward. And as it is highly unlikely that they have done anything wrong or untoward, if they are soldiers stationed at Hangridge, I’m sure they will do so.’

‘Maybe, Gerry, but we don’t actually have to rely on them doing the right thing, as it were. Not entirely, anyway.’ Karen felt in charge again now. ‘I have computer images of them, compiled with the help of our witness.’

Parker-Brown passed no comment. Karen opened her bag and removed a cardboard-backed envelope. She dropped the contents onto the colonel’s desk right in front of him. One E-fit landed the right way up, the other she had to turn over, and as she did so, she arranged both so that they were properly facing him.

‘Do you recognise either of these two men?’ she asked quietly.

He looked down then at the images before him. She had no idea how closely they resembled the men Kelly had seen, and doubted that Kelly did either. Certainly, the waterproof clothing they had both been wearing and their woolly hats pulled down almost to their eyes had not helped.

With his left hand Parker-Brown rubbed the back of his neck, and with his right he moved the E-fits slightly closer to him as if to make it easier for him to see them.

‘Not from these, I don’t,’ he said casually. He was still looking down, and for a moment Karen thought he was not going to meet her eyes. But after a few seconds more of what appeared to be careful study, he suddenly looked up, leaned back in his chair and flashed her that grin again.

‘Actually, they look a bit like Ant and Dec going skiing to me,’ he said, and the laughter lines at the corner of his eyes crinkled, etching themselves even more deeply into his skin.

‘This isn’t a joke, Colonel,’ said Karen. She was beginning to feel a little irritated now, and her reversion to addressing him by his rank was just part of her sudden determination to make it clear to Gerrard Parker-Brown that his boyish charm was not going to bowl her over. Absolutely not.

He changed his attitude at once. ‘You’re absolutely right, Detective Superintendent Meadows,’ he responded with such elaborate correctness, that she once more wondered fleetingly if he were patronising her. But when he spoke again there was no such inflection in his voice and he seemed absolutely sincere and straightforward.

‘A young soldier has died and it was quite wrong of me even to appear to be making light of it,’ he continued. ‘I do, however, assure you that I do not recognise either of these men. Certainly not from the pictures you have shown me, anyway. However, I also realise that this does not rule out their being part of our complement here. And I assure you that I will take this immensely seriously and that I will commence inquiries immediately. If these are our chaps, Karen,’ he tapped the two computer images before him, ‘we’ll find them, have no fear.’

‘Thank you,’ said Karen. And she couldn’t have begun to explain why she was so convinced that Colonel Gerrard Parker-Brown’s inquiries would be of no help to her whatsoever.