No Reason To Die

Six

Kelly was sitting in front of his computer when she called around lunchtime the following day. He had been in front of his computer all morning. Since six. He had just checked the machine’s memory and it seemed that he had so far played ten games of backgammon and eleven games of hearts.

The bleep of his telephone was a welcome displacement activity. At least it would relieve him, albeit briefly, from even having to pretend that he was writing.

‘Good morning, Detective Superintendent,’ he said.

‘Yeah.’

Karen Meadows rarely had time for life’s niceties, Kelly reflected. He saw no point in speaking further until she had told him whatever it was she wanted to tell him. Karen was not the sort of person who used the telephone for small talk.

‘I’ve been out to Hangridge,’ she began. ‘Had a long talk with the CO. It has to be said that he did give me a rather better reception than I expected.’

She paused. Kelly continued to wait.

‘In fact, Colonel Parker-Brown was not what I expected in any way at all.’

There was a note in her voice that Kelly couldn’t quite make out. He was unable to resist butting in with what was, no doubt, a totally inappropriate quip.

‘Really. Drag queen or something, is she?’

‘Hilarious, Kelly. No, Gerrard Parker-Brown is the acceptable, accessible, personable face of the modern army. Helpful, friendly and highly co-operative. At least, that’s what he appears to be. So why do I think the result of our meeting will be much the same as it would have been had I spent yesterday morning with Colonel Blimp?’

‘Ah.’

‘Look, to tell the truth, Kelly, I am not at all sure there is much else I can do without something hard to go on. The colonel has promised to try to find those two soldiers you encountered. I gave him the E-fits. But, I wouldn’t hold your breath, if I were you.’

‘So, you think he’s hiding something?’

‘Kelly, why do you always take everything in life a step too far? I have absolutely no reason to believe he’s hiding anything. Indeed, to all intents and purposes, he was very open and honest with me. He said he did not recognise the two men from the E-fits, that certainly nobody was sent officially from Hangridge to search for Connelly, and that if they were soldiers they were probably mates of Con—’

‘Oh, no, they bloody well weren’t. I’d stake my life on that.’ Kelly interrupted. He wasn’t going to let that go by.

‘Kelly, I had no reason to argue with the man about anything. And no reason to probe any further into army affairs. I just wanted to call you and tell you that I had tried. Oh, and I also had the SOCOs out at the accident scene again today. Made them go over the ground there with an effing toothcomb. So far, zilch, and I don’t have very high expectations.’

‘There must be something,’ interjected Kelly. ‘There has to be.’

‘No, Kelly, there does not have to be. It is of course possible that there is something in this which we have yet to discover, and it is also possible that you are totally mistaken and that the death of Alan Connelly was merely the tragic accident it appeared to be from the start.’

Just occasionally, Kelly got extremely fed up with the way Karen Meadows was inclined to talk down to him. He knew he’d probably given her good reason to do so over the years, because of his tendency, on occasion, to behave with a recklessness bordering on gross stupidity. None the less, it grated sometimes, and this was one of those times.

‘This isn’t about me, Karen,’ he responded curtly. ‘It’s about a young man who was frightened half out of his wits. You didn’t meet him. I did. Had you done so, I suspect you might have taken this whole matter more seriously.’

‘Don’t get stroppy with me, Kelly,’ she said. ‘I have taken it seriously. And I am still taking it seriously. More so than I should be doing, I suspect, with the caseload of crimes I have on my books right now. That is why I have phoned you.’

Kelly relented slightly.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. I appreciate what you’ve done, really I do. Did you get anything at all out of this Colonel Parker-Brown? Alan Connelly said there had been other deaths at the camp. What about that? Did you ask about other deaths? What did he say?’

‘Whoa, Kelly. One question at a time. I was coming to that. Of course I asked.’

She told him then, very briefly, about the recruit who had been killed on a training exercise.

‘Shot?’ Kelly responded eagerly. ‘Did you say shot? So that makes two violent deaths in six months. Jesus, surely that’s enough to warrant taking this further, isn’t it?’

‘No, Kelly, I don’t think it is. And I bloody well know the chief constable wouldn’t think so. There was an inquest of course. Even the military has always been bound by that procedure — in peacetime, anyway. I did a quick check with the coroner’s office and the verdict was, quite properly, accidental death. As I am sure it will be ultimately with Alan Connelly. Yes, there have been two deaths, but both, although tragic, were hardly earth-shattering. A soldier dies in a training incident. Well, when you play with loaded guns, every so often some poor bastard gets shot.’

‘Look, Karen, Connelly said: “Like they killed the others.” It could all fit...’

‘Not really, Kelly. There’s more. Not only was he drunk out of his skull the night he died, but apparently Connelly was considered to be a real Walter Mitty. The colonel says he was always making up unlikely stories...’

‘“The colonel says,”’ repeated Kelly in a mocking voice. ‘Of course he would, Karen. Surely you are not going to be taken in by some sort of military whitewash? You of all people, Karen.’

‘Kelly, don’t be so bloody insulting or I’m going to finish this call.’

‘Sorry, sorry. It’s just that, as you know, I really think there is a strong possibility that that poor little sod was pushed under the lorry which killed him, and I reckon you must agree with me or you wouldn’t even have got this involved.’

‘Kelly, I did consider that after what you told me, of course I did. But I also considered suicide...’

‘Oh no, oh no. For a start, why would a young chap like Connelly kill himself in that way, even if he did want to take his own life? He was a boy soldier, for goodness sake. He had access to guns...’

‘Maybe he didn’t like guns that much, in spite of his job. I don’t know. I do know we can’t rule out suicide. The lorry driver’s description of the way the accident happened would be totally consistent with someone deliberately throwing themselves into the path of an oncoming vehicle—’

‘Or being pushed,’ Kelly interrupted.

‘Kelly, please, will you listen. Apparently, Connelly was on the brink of being chucked out of the army because of his story-telling, and, rather more seriously, he’d been fantasising about a woman soldier and had been more or less stalking her. He’d been warned about his behaviour and the possible consequences several times. He knew he was on the way out, and yet other than this Walter Mitty side to him he was a good soldier, it seems. He would not have wanted to be made to leave the army. And apparently his family life was pretty terrible. According to the colonel, his father is a drunken bully, who hasn’t worked in years, and a manic depressive. So if you put all that together, suicide has to be a possibility, if we are being sensible about this, which I am desperately trying to be.’

Kelly took on board the note of criticism in her voice and decided he’d better accept it. It was probably justified. Kelly was not noted for being sensible. Karen didn’t need to spell that one out. He waited for her to continue.

‘There’s something else, Kelly. A witness has come forward, just this morning, after noticing a report of the accident in an old copy of the Argus. A passing motorist who saw a young man, almost certainly Connelly, walking along the side of the road a couple of hundred yards or so away from The Wild Dog, just minutes before the accident. He was weaving erratically. The witness said he nearly hit him. And, apparently, Connelly seemed to be quite alone.’

‘All right,’ said Kelly. ‘But if he really was alone, where did those two men go to so suddenly, right after having found someone they had been searching for? And why? Why did they leave him alone? If indeed they did. If I’m right and they were soldiers, they probably know all about keeping themselves out of sight when they want to. Are you sure Parker-Brown doesn’t know a hell of a lot more than he’s telling you, Karen?’

‘Look, I’ve no doubt he’s as reluctant as any other army officer to let the police force meddle in army affairs, in spite of trying to give the opposite impression,’ responded Karen. ‘But I have absolutely no reason to believe that he is hiding anything that is in any way pertinent to this case.’

‘Come on, Karen. How many soldiers are there up at Hangridge? I bet your colonel knows them all. So why can’t he lead you to those two who came to the pub, eh? I bet he knows bloody well who they are.’

‘Kelly, you’re running away with yourself. How many times do we have to go over this ground. We don’t even know that these men were soldiers, for God’s sake. And for your information the total complement at Hangridge, including the training unit, is well over a thousand men and women. I very much doubt that Parker-Brown could recognise and name all of them.’

‘I bet he’s got a fair idea, from the way you describe him.’

‘Oh, Kelly. In any case, you only saw the two men briefly in the pub. Sometimes E-fit images are terrific and sometimes they’re a bad joke. How the hell do I know how good yours were, when I doubt you do yourself. The two guys you created looked pretty damned peculiar, I know that, especially in those silly hats. Look, closing ranks against the meddling of the civilian police force is one thing, Kelly, but I really don’t think the commanding officer of the Devonshire Fusiliers would tell me a deliberate lie. Come on. Do you, Kelly?’

‘Only if he thought he could get away with it,’ muttered Kelly.

‘What?’ Kelly knew that Karen had heard him perfectly well. You could tell that from the way she had snapped her reply.

‘I don’t know, Karen,’ Kelly replied in a more conversational tone of voice. ‘I expect he would, if he were privy to murders. Most people in that situation don’t find lying too difficult.’

‘Now you’re talking nonsense.’ Karen snapped the words again. For a moment Kelly thought she was going to hang up on him. And he wasn’t going to let her do that until he had extracted all the information he possibly could from her.

‘Look, just tell me one thing,’ he asked quickly. ‘Do you have the name of the recruit who was killed on the range.’

‘Yes, I do.’

‘Well?’

‘C’mon, Kelly. I know you. You’re always bloody trouble. I’ve made further inquiries and, to be honest, I’m pretty well satisfied now that Alan Connelly’s death was a tragic accident and no more.’

‘No you’re not, Karen, or you wouldn’t even have phoned me today.’

Kelly was quite certain he was right. He knew Karen Meadows every bit as well as she knew him.

‘Apart from anything else, Kelly, I’m not sure that you of all people should be getting any further involved. You’ll start poking around and causing mayhem as usual. It’s not even your territory any more, is it? You’re supposed to be a novelist now.’

‘Yeah, and Hangridge is just a displacement activity, that’s all. And maybe a way of earning a bit of linage which I could certainly do with. Look, if everything is as above board as you say it is, what harm can there be in giving me that name?’

He could hear Karen sigh.

‘I know I’m going to regret this...’ she muttered.

Kelly waited. He still wasn’t sure whether or not Karen was going to give him the information he had asked for, but he knew well enough when to stop pushing her.

‘OK,’ she said eventually. ‘It’s Foster. Fusilier Craig Foster. Actually, I’m a bit surprised you don’t remember anything about his death. Though I must admit, I didn’t. But apparently it did get some press coverage, and you were actually working for the Argus at the time.’

‘Six months ago? I think I probably had other things on my mind.’

Six months previously, Kelly had still been deeply involved with another case. And as always with him, his involvement had bordered on obsession and he had taken little notice of anything much else happening in the world.

Karen didn’t respond. But he knew she would be well enough aware of what he was referring to.

‘Is there anything else you can tell me?’ he asked.

‘No, Kelly. No doubt I’ve told you too much already. Situation normal.’

She hung up then without saying goodbye. Situation normal, indeed, thought Kelly.

He replaced the receiver slowly and forced himself to turn his attention back to his computer screen.

The phone rang again almost at once. It was Moira’s daughter Jennifer.

‘I just thought I’d call, John, to remind you that Mum’s expecting you over tonight.’

Kelly knew what she meant. Could hear the unspoken words inside his head. Please don’t forget, or pretend to forget, or whatever it is that you do to avoid seeing Mum. Please don’t let her down again.

The awful truth was that he didn’t want to visit Moira ever again. Not for as long as she was ill. And it was a tragic fact that she was not going to get better. Even if nobody was ever allowed to say the words. But he knew that this time he would visit, if only to make some amends for his many shortcomings.

‘I’ll be there,’ he promised. ‘You just give her all my love and tell her I’ll see if I can’t find a couple of hot new videos for her.’

He put the phone down again, held his head in his hands for a few minutes, and then, with a great effort of will, reverted his attention yet again to the computer screen and made himself exit his games programme.

‘Right,’ he said, as he resolutely clicked on ‘My Documents’ and called up that empty document ‘Untitled Chapter Three’. For a good ten minutes he stared at the blank white screen, moving barely a muscle. Then, very suddenly he grabbed his mouse, quit Word and called up his games programme again.

Halfway through being beaten rotten in his third backgammon game, he accepted that he was unable even to concentrate on that, let alone on writing. His thoughts were somewhere else. On a moorland road, late on a wet foggy night. And within the confines of an isolated barracks where young soldiers learned their trade well away from prying eyes. A place where almost anything could happen, and yet, even in the high-tech communications era of the twenty-first century, in a country which retained an allegedly free and probing press, it remained quite likely that nobody outside its sentry-posted perimeters would ever know.

‘Damn,’ Kelly muttered to himself. ‘There’s something going on up there, something big. I can just feel it.’

Just an hour or so later, Karen Meadows received a totally unexpected phone call. Her head was buried in the inevitable piles of paper on her desk when it came, and Karen welcomed distractions from her paperwork every bit as much as Kelly did from his alleged writing.

This call, however, was more than that, and, in addition to being merely unexpected, was also, she had to admit to herself, surprisingly welcome.

‘Good afternoon, Karen, it’s Gerry Parker-Brown here.’

Good Lord, she thought. It had not really occurred to her that he would contact her. Indeed she had automatically assumed, under the circumstances, that she would have to chase him if she considered it necessary to follow up their meeting at Hangridge. Out loud she merely said: ‘Oh, hello.’

‘I just called to tell you that I’m afraid the results of my preliminary inquiries at the camp have not so far been helpful at all,’ the colonel continued. ‘Nobody I’ve shown your pictures to has recognised either of the chaps from the pub, not from those images anyway, and neither have any of my men come forward to say that they were there.’

Now that was not a surprise, thought Karen. She did wonder, however, why the colonel was calling to tell her nothing at all, and so soon.

‘It won’t stop here, though, I can assure you, Karen,’ Parker-Brown went on. ‘I will set up an internal inquiry and I’m sure we’ll be able to come up with something...’

Karen remained unconvinced, but said nothing.

‘Even if they were soldiers, they could have been friends of young Connelly from another regiment, who knows? But I haven’t given up yet, Karen, and as soon as we get anything, anything at all, I’ll be right on to you, I promise.’

‘Thank you very much,’ said Karen. She couldn’t think of anything else to say. Indeed, she didn’t think there was much else to say. And she was still wondering what had motivated Gerry Parker-Brown to call her so quickly in order to give her no information. She did not think, somehow, that he was the kind of man to do anything much without a reason.

‘Meanwhile, I wondered how you felt about a drink and a spot of dinner,’ Parker-Brown went on smoothly.

Karen nearly fell off her chair. Whatever had been flitting through her mind concerning this call, Colonel Gerrard Parker-Brown asking her out on a date had not figured at all. But that did seem to be what was happening. And she was so confused that she found herself unable to respond properly.

‘Um, well... I’m not sure... uh...’

He interrupted her stumblings. ‘I know it’s a frightful cheek, but all too many of my evenings seem to get filled up with army business of one kind or another, and tonight I happen to be free. So I just wondered how you were fixed? I’m sick and tired of spending my free time on my own, if you want the truth.’

The last bit was not particularly flattering, but the colonel — or Gerry, as Karen supposed she really must start thinking of him after this approach — had also managed to indicate pretty clearly that he was unattached. And she suspected that he had done so quite deliberately.

‘Well, I don’t know...’ she continued hesitantly, while at the same time feeling quite angry with herself. What on earth was the matter with her? Why was she so thrown at being asked out by a man? She knew the answer to that, of course. Her last thoroughly unwise love affair, which had been so important to her, had been with a married junior police officer, Detective Sergeant Phil Cooper, and it had left her totally disillusioned with men generally. When Cooper’s wife had found out, he had ended the affair at once. He had later tried to start it all again, of course, but Karen’s heart had by then been broken. It really had. And since that sorry episode, which apart from anything else had threatened to wreck her career, Karen had totally shut down her emotions. For almost a year now, both her head and heart had been closed to even the notion of romance. She had also shut down sexually, too. When Cooper had stepped out of her life, so her libido had also departed, and she had not felt so much as a flicker in that direction since.

Parker-Brown interrupted her again, for which she was grateful, as she suspected that he may have stopped her causing both of them considerable embarrassment with her dithering.

‘Look, nothing special,’ he said reassuringly. ‘Just two people, who I suspect may have a great deal in common and who I hope may become friends, sharing a drink and a spot of supper. That’s all.’

He had a pretty good turn of phrase, Karen had to give him that.

‘Well, I am free tonight...’ she began. She was free, in fact, virtually every night. Except when she was working. And that, at least, she suspected, might be one thing they had in common.

‘And?’

She took a deep breath. ‘I’d be delighted,’ she heard herself saying. And she realised that she meant it too. Which was yet another surprise.

He called for her at her flat at eight-thirty, just as he had said he would. He was wearing blue jeans, a black jacket and a bright white T-shirt. It was an extremely classy black jacket. Karen knew about clothes. She thought it was probably Paul Smith. And she was glad he had dressed casually. Karen only did casual. She spent a disproportionate part of her salary on very special designer numbers, but she preferred a DKNY track suit or an Armani bomber jacket to more formal wear.

She was wearing khaki combat trousers from Replay, and a big, loose, white cotton Comme des Garçons shirt with an elaborately embroidered red abstract relief down one side of its front. She thought their styles matched rather well.

He looked good, she had to admit it. And very young. She had already guessed that he was probably four or five years younger than her forty-three years, but out of uniform he appeared even more youthful. And rather more dishy, Karen thought. But then she had never been into uniforms. In her opinion, they were a necessary evil in certain professions, and she had been delighted to discard her own permanently when she had moved into CID.

Covertly, she looked him up and down. With his shock of sandy hair, those crinkly eyes and that ready smile, he was an extremely attractive man. She would just have to overlook the fact that he looked so much like a square-jawed hero out of the Eagle or Boys’ Own, that was all.

He was carrying a bunch of white roses which he handed over with a small bow.

‘Sorry to be so old-fashioned, it’s the way I was brought up,’ he said with a wide grin.

He both looked and sounded as if he was trying to make a weak joke, but she suspected he was probably just telling the truth. After all, if ever a man had public school and Sandhurst written all over him, it was Gerrard Parker-Brown. Even his name spoke for itself. Karen could only imagine what sort of family he came from.

‘I thought this was just a drink between friends,’ she said, but softened the words by smiling back at him.

‘It is, but we passed a stall selling those roses and I couldn’t resist.’

‘Ah. You like flowers?’

‘I do. Gardening is my passion. Or it used to be...’

He seemed about to tell her something, then stopped. Which was reasonable. They were, after all, standing in the doorway to her flat, and it was not quite the place for exchanging confidences.

‘Funny sort of hobby for a soldier, isn’t it?’ she enquired casually, as she gestured for him to step inside.

‘Not so much as you may think,’ he replied. ‘Some of the greatest generals in history were gardeners.’

‘Name two,’ she said.

‘Do you know, my mind has gone completely blank and I can’t think of one,’ he responded. ‘But it is true, honestly.’

Laughing, she reached for her white mackintosh cape. The weather had improved dramatically during the last couple of days, but Karen didn’t trust it. It was still November. And she really did absolutely hate getting her hair wet. It went frizzy at the front and stuck out at an angle at the back and sides.

He grinned at her. ‘If you’re ready, the car is waiting,’ he said.

She found that a rather curious turn of phrase, but he did not give her time to pass comment. He spoke again almost immediately, as she picked up her car keys from the little narrow console-table she kept next to the front door.

‘Nice piece,’ he remarked. ‘Georgian?’

She nodded, mildly surprised yet again. Not only did she not see him as a gardener, but neither would she have put him down as a man with any interest at all in antiques.

In the car park, he steered her towards a black Range Rover. A uniformed soldier-chauffeur sat in the driver’s seat. Suddenly, the phrase ‘the car is waiting’ made sense.

‘One of the perks of the job,’ said Parker-Brown quickly, yet again giving her little time to say anything. ‘And it means I can have a drink.’

She still said nothing. Just go with the flow, girl, she told herself.

He took her to the Cott Inn at Dartington, where they drank bitter and ate piping hot steak-and-kidney pies. Conversation came easily, considerably more so than she would ever have expected.

‘I much prefer this to eating formally, I do hope you agree,’ he said, as they sat together by a raging fire.

Karen settled back in her chair, idly watching the flames. She did feel extremely relaxed in this man’s company, that was for certain.

‘I do, I love it,’ she replied. ‘But I would have put you down for a formal man. I mean, with your background I wouldn’t have thought you’d ever had much experience of anything other than formal dining.’

‘Well, that’s pretty true of army life,’ he said. ‘Number one dress and the regimental silver and all of that—’

‘I’m sure,’ she interrupted. ‘And one would assume that with your sort of family background, too...’

It was his turn to interrupt.

‘Karen, what on earth sort of background do you think I have?’ he asked.

She paused and studied him carefully. His face was giving nothing away.

‘Well, public school and Sandhurst, I suppose,’ she said. ‘And with a name like yours, a pretty upper-crust family, I should imagine.’

He grinned quickly, but was rather serious when he spoke again. ‘My father was also a fusilier, another professional soldier, but he wasn’t an officer,’ he began. ‘He was a corporal in the 1st Battalion of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers. His name was Graham Parker and I can barely remember him. He was killed in Northern Ireland in 1968 when I was just four years old and I don’t think we ever saw a lot of him at home...’

Karen found herself doing mental arithmetic. That made Gerry forty, at least a year or two older than she had judged him to be, but still young to be a full colonel, she was sure.

‘It was only really the beginning of the troubles, not long after the civil rights march in Londonderry which is generally reckoned to have been the start of it all, and only weeks into the Royal Fusiliers’ first tour of duty over there,’ Parker-Brown continued. Karen noticed that his voice had acquired a far away note. ‘He was actually very, very unlucky. But enough of that. It was all a long time ago.’

Parker-Brown flashed that grin again.

‘Anyway, my mother remarried a couple of years later, a plumber named Martin Brown. He adopted me and brought me up, and did his best to be a father to me. But my mother never wanted me to forget my real father and she thought it was important that I retained his name, which is how I became Parker-Brown. That was her solution. And Martin went along with it.’

‘I see,’ said Karen. ‘But what about your first name. Gerrard. I mean, isn’t that a bit posh for a corporal’s lad?’

‘Ah.’ Parker-Brown was smiling easily now. ‘It seems that my mother had been watching a film shortly before I was born, in which Gerrard Street, in the West End of London, featured briefly. She’s always suffered from occasional delusions of grandeur, my mum, and she so much liked the sound of Gerrard, which she did indeed think was suitably posh, that she decided that should be my name. Which is why I have two Rs in the middle, rather than the usual Gerard with one R. Unfortunately, she didn’t realise until too late that it’s actually a street full of Chinese restaurants and knocking shops, and not the tiniest bit posh.’

Karen laughed and shook her head.

‘Not what you expected, eh?’ he enquired.

She shook her head again.

‘So, didn’t you even go to public school, then?’

‘Absolutely not. State primary and then a grammar school. Thank God for the eleven-plus. The system may not have been perfect, but it did give kids like me a real chance. I always wanted to go into the army, and more particularly I wanted to be a fusilier like my dad, and in spite of having lost her husband in action, my mother encouraged me. She has always said she knew it was what my father would have wanted. He’d been a dedicated career soldier, you see, although in the ranks. She was more than happy for me to chose a military career. I don’t think she imagined that I’d be an officer, though — as you pointed out — she did give me the right name, I suppose. Anyway, grammar school gave me that opportunity. I passed the right exams and, yes, I did go to Sandhurst. That’s the only bit you got right.’

‘And now you’re a full colonel. At what? Forty? That’s quite young, isn’t it?’

‘Youngish. My promotion from lieutenant colonel only came through last month, but there you are. Life is full of little miracles, isn’t it?’

‘She must be very proud of you, your mum.’

‘I think she is. It hasn’t all been plain sailing, though. Certainly not in my personal life.’

‘Ah.’

‘Yes. Ah, indeed. My wife and I have been apart for some time. She seemed to prefer a chinless wonder with a title, which should not have been a huge surprise, really. I made the mistake of marrying into the army aristocracy, or what passes for it, and I don’t think I was ever quite what she required. I thought I was head over heels in love, but sometimes now I think I was in love with my wife’s family set-up more than anything else.’

She was surprised by his honesty. His directness. Indeed, he really was a thoroughly surprising man.

‘Do you have children?’

He nodded. ‘A boy and a girl, aged twelve and thirteen. They’re both at boarding school. There is, of course, as far as their mother and her family are concerned, no alternative to a boarding-school education. I seem to see them less and less. Actually, I think that nearly always happens with fathers whose exes have custody of their children, whatever people tell you.’

‘Maybe,’ Karen said non-commitedly. ‘I wouldn’t know.’

‘No children, then?’

‘No.’ Karen answered abruptly. She liked learning about other people’s lives, but was never so keen on giving much away about her own. And she was, after all, at an age when she was fast having to accept that it was highly unlikely she would ever have any children, which was something, even though she had never been particularly maternal, that she did not like to dwell upon.

‘And husbands, past or present?’

Karen studied him through narrowed eyes. She hadn’t given it a thought, but, of course, Parker-Brown did not even know if she was married or not, because as usual she had said so little about herself. Yet he had still asked her out. Just for friendship, he had said. She wasn’t so sure. Was he always this attentive to, and this interested in, his friends, she wondered. Or did he have an ulterior motive.

‘No.’ She was abrupt again, partly because more and more nowadays, when she met a man who interested her, she found herself wishing she wasn’t always inclined to be so darned suspicious, which just seemed to come with the territory of her job, and partly because she remained determined not to talk about herself if she could possibly avoid it. But while she was still trying to think of a way to change the subject, he spoke again.

‘I’m surprised. I would have thought you would be much in demand.’

She laughed. Smooth bastard, she thought. Aloud she said: ‘Even if that were true, being in demand is not quite the same as getting married.’

He laughed with her then. She really was very easy in his company, and the rest of the evening passed extremely pleasantly. They continued to make small talk effortlessly and she discovered that they did indeed have a shared interest in collecting antiques.

‘Actually, most of my stuff would generally be regarded as junk, I expect,’ confessed Karen.

‘The best sort,’ said Parker-Brown. ‘Anybody with a healthy bank balance can spend a fortune in Bond Street. It takes talent to seek out special pieces of junk.’

‘Umm,’ mused Karen. ‘In my case, I don’t have any choice. I certainly can’t afford Bond Street on my salary.’

‘Me neither,’ said Parker-Brown. ‘In spite of having a great deal of family money, my dearest ex insists on screwing the maximum possible maintenance out of me every month.’

She sympathised with him. The conversation moved on to holidays in the sun and to favourite restaurants, then circled back to antique fairs and to great finds in car boot sales.

Karen, invariably awkward at what might be the start of any kind of new relationship, found herself surprised both by how much she was enjoying herself and how much she was warming to Gerry Parker-Brown.

In fact, it would have been almost the perfect evening were it not for the shadow cast by the Alan Connelly affair. All evening it was in the back of her mind, and she was very tempted to bring it into the conversation. She wanted to know what Parker-Brown really thought and if his inquiries had made any progress. Indeed, she had wondered all along if at least a part of his purpose in arranging this occasion might be to talk about the matter.

But Parker-Brown didn’t even mention it. And it was nearly time to leave before Karen managed to bring the subject up. Even then, she was aware that her interjection sat clumsily amid the evening’s social chit-chat.

‘I wondered if you had made any progress with your Alan Connelly inquiries, Gerry?’ she asked quite bluntly, having failed to find any way at all of working the matter into the conversation.

Parker-Brown took a deep pull of his pint and stretched his long legs.

‘Not really,’ he replied. ‘Are you sure you want to talk about it tonight?’

‘Yes, quite sure.’ She had no intention of letting him off the hook that easily.

‘OK. Well, I’m pretty certain now that those two men your witness described are not in my lot. In fact, I can find no trace of anyone like them at all. Look, I know your witness was very sure in his own mind that they were soldiers, but he had no way of being certain, did he? It wasn’t as if they were in uniform.’

‘No.’ She felt mildly irritated now. She suddenly had the feeling that she was being handled, that this whole evening may have been little more than a softening-up process, leading towards the moment when Parker-Brown would tell her, in effect, that he had no help to give her. And possibly no intention of trying to help either, she suspected, although he had been extremely careful from the start to avoid giving that impression.

‘He couldn’t be absolutely certain, but he got the clear impression that they were soldiers,’ she continued resolutely. ‘And, actually, our witness is, by coincidence, someone I have known for many years, someone whose judgement I trust.’

The absurdity of the situation struck her then. By and large, she did trust Kelly’s judgement, but she didn’t think she had ever let him know that.

Parker-Brown studied her thoughtfully, running the fingers of one hand over a chin that really could only be described as chiselled. ‘Well, in that case, of course, I’ll carry on making inquiries,’ he said. ‘I do want to assure you, Karen, that I will help all I can. One of my young men has died, and if there is anything suspicious about his death, then I want to know about it every bit as much as you do.’

‘Thank you...’ began Karen. He interrupted her before she had time to say anything else.

‘And now, let’s not spoil this evening with work things, eh? I really have enjoyed myself. You’re great company, you know.’ He paused. ‘For a police officer,’ he added mischievously.

‘And you’re not bad yourself — for a soldier,’ she responded almost automatically.

But she was no longer quite so at ease, even though she could not deny to herself that she had thoroughly enjoyed the evening and Gerrard Parker-Brown’s company. However, she still couldn’t help wondering if the colonel was deliberately making a friend of her, and maybe even looking for more than that, in order to put her off the scent.

‘C’mon, let’s get you home,’ he said, interrupting her train of thought. He grinned at her yet again, and it really was a disarming grin. He looked totally ingenuous, a big boyish man in a big boy’s job, incapable surely, she told herself, of being so downright devious.

‘Oh, and I really hope we can do this again some time.’

She hesitated, still battling with the feeling that there was a hidden agenda here. It was ridiculous, she told herself firmly. She was merely being fanciful, just like Alan Connelly. This wasn’t some kind of Iraq-gate. Indeed, she had no information whatsoever concerning the death of Connelly or Craig Foster which indicated even the slightest need for any kind of cover-up.

There was no reason at all why she should not enjoy this man’s company as often as she liked. He was attractive, charming and in every way great to be with. She really must control her tendency towards suspecting other peoples’ motives all the time. And particularly the motives of anyone who seemed to show a special interest in her.

‘I’d like that very much,’ she said very deliberately, as he ushered her towards the door. And she meant it.