Authors: Hilary Bonner
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.