She frowned at him, in considerable bewilderment, it seemed. Kelly didn’t say anything.
‘And Michael’s just turned seventeen, he doesn’t have to go to school.’
She leaned a little closer to Kelly and he was engulfed in a cloud of stale alcohol. But he didn’t mind much. Kelly was a bit like a reformed smoker who gets at least some kind of kick out of inhaling other people’s smoke. It was sad, he knew, but even old and second-hand alcoholic vapours were not totally repugnant to him.
‘So, who the fuck are you?’ she asked. And then, before giving him the chance to reply, continued with: ‘I don’t know you, do I?’
Kelly shook his head. ‘It’s about you daughter, Mrs Slade.’
‘My daughter?’ The eyes went blank again, her mouth tightened. ‘I don’t have a daughter. Not any more.’
‘I know. I’d like to talk to you about her death—’
‘You’re from the army,’ Margaret Slade interrupted. ‘Well, you can fuck off. I hate the fucking army. I never wanted my Joss to join in the first place, and she’d still be alive too, if she hadn’t. I reckon. So go on, then. I’ve told you, haven’t I? Fuck off.’
She pushed the door as if she were about to shut it in his face.
‘No, Mrs Slade, I’m not from the army.’
Margaret Slade wasn’t listening. The door kept closing on him. Kelly put his foot in it. It was a total myth that journalists were always doing that. Kelly could only remember even attempting to do so just once before in his life, and as this time a small rather frail woman was leaning against the door trying to close it, rather than a large fit man, the process was at least not so painful as he remembered it being on the previous occasion.
He went for broke.
‘Look, I think there is a possibility that your daughter was murdered, Mrs Slade,’ he told her through the fast-closing gap between the door and its frame.
He knew he had no right to say that. Not yet, anyway. He had no hard evidence, just a hunch. But he was quite determined to get to talk to Mrs Slade properly. Or, as properly as her condition would allow. And he suspected that only shock tactics would work with her.
He felt the pressure on the door lessen. Margaret Slade eased away a little, releasing her hold on the door, and he took the opportunity to step inside, closing the door behind him.
‘So who are you, then?’ she asked.
‘I’m just a man who doesn’t like lies and cover-ups,’ he said, realising that he sounded rather trite and pretentious, but he couldn’t help it. And, strangely enough, it was pretty much the truth.
He explained to her straight away, and as best he could, exactly who he was and how he’d got involved.
‘This Alan Connelly, when did you say he died?’
‘Just four days ago.’
‘Four days ago,’ she repeated carefully.
‘That’s three, then,’ she went on, after a small pause.
‘I didn’t realise that you knew about Craig Foster,’ responded Kelly.
‘Craig Foster, the lad Jossy was going out with? I don’t know anything about him at all. What’s happened to him, then?’
‘He was killed just weeks after your Jocelyn. A training accident, allegedly. He died of gunshot wounds.’
‘Oh, my God.’ Margaret Slade sounded genuinely upset. ‘He was ever such a nice kid. He and Jossy had only just started going out together. I never met him before … before she died. But he came to the funeral, you know. And he seemed ever so cut up.’
‘Mrs Slade, if you didn’t know about Craig, then what did you mean when you said: “That’s three, then.”’
‘What?’ Now, Margaret Slade just seemed bewildered. Kelly could almost see her brain cells fighting their way through the alcohol. ‘Three? Yes. There was a lad who died at Hangridge a few months before Jossy, I think.’
She paused. Kelly was practically on the edge of his chair, but he said nothing. The news he had given Mrs Slade seemed to have sobered the woman up somewhat. But Kelly didn’t dare push her.
‘Neither Jossy nor Craig would have been there when it happened,’ she continued. ‘And, as far as I’m aware, neither of them even knew about it. The army tend to forget things like that, don’t they? They’re not likely to tell the new recruits about the ones who’ve come to a sticky end, are they?’
Kelly found himself sitting ever closer to the edge of his chair.
‘So what happened to this boy, then?’
‘He killed himself too. Or so they said. I didn’t think anything about it at the time, but you begin to wonder …’
‘And how exactly did he allegedly kill himself ?’
‘I don’t know. Do you know, I don’t think I ever asked. Now isn’t that extraordinary.’
Kelly didn’t think it was that extraordinary. He reckoned Mrs Slade’s brain would turn on and off according to the amount of alcohol swimming around in her system. She had appeared to be surprisingly lucid through most of their conversation, but then, so did a lot of alcoholics. He doubted she was very often capable of stringing facts together and coming to a conclusion.
‘Who are they? Who told you about him?’
She looked completely blank.
‘I don’t know, really I don’t,’ she said. ‘It was after the funeral. Another soldier, I think. Not Craig. No, not Craig. Like I said, I doubt he ever knew. An older man. I made a bit of a fool of myself, you see. I’d had a couple, of course. But it wasn’t that. I just broke down that day. I blamed myself …’
She gestured around the flat. Kelly had been so caught up in what she was saying that he had barely taken anything else in. She seemed to be inviting him to look around, so he did.
The place was a tip. The floors were covered in stained carpeting, the walls were so murky it was hard to see what colour they had started out, and there was very little furniture. Instead, boxes were piled against every wall alongside tottering heaps of old newspapers and magazines.
‘I didn’t give Jossy much of a childhood, nor much of a home either,’ Margaret Slade continued. ‘We always seemed to be in a mess. Mind you, I defy anyone married to my old man not to have got themselves into a mess. That bastard. But when they told me that my Joss had killed herself, well, I just blamed myself, you see. I thought it was all my fault.’
‘You didn’t question it?’
‘No. I didn’t.’ She looked confused. ‘Why would I have done? This officer came round and I just believed everything he said. He was that sort. And I felt so dreadful. I just wanted to kill myself, too.’
She picked up a glass from the top of one of the boxes. It looked as if it contained whisky. She drained most of it in one.
‘And, in a way, that’s what I’ve been doing ever since,’ she said.
‘But when you learned there’d been another suicide, did that really not make you think at all?’
Margaret Slade laughed in a dry, humourless sort of way.
‘I don’t do a lot of thinking, really,’ she said. ‘I prefer to have a drink. You may have noticed.’
She had a self-awareness, a knowledge of her own behaviour, which was unusual among alcoholics, who were more often than not in total denial, Kelly thought. He had been, anyway.
Kelly decided to ignore her response.
‘Mrs Slade, did your daughter leave a suicide note of any kind?’
‘No. Well, nothing was found, anyway, that’s what they told me.’
‘Umm.’
‘Is that unusual?’
‘Actually, no, it’s not. The police would tell you that only around twenty-five per cent of suicides leave notes. But, obviously, it would make a huge difference if she had done.’ Kelly thought for a moment. ‘Tell me more about how you learned of the earlier suicide,’ he said.
Mrs Slade put her glass down and sat upright. She was obviously concentrating hard. Kelly thought that somewhere beyond the alcoholic stupor she actually had rather intelligent eyes.
‘It was strange, really,’ she said. ‘I do r
emember that the chap who told me, did so as if he was doing me a favour. Trying to reassure me, weird really. Like I said, I was in a dreadful state on the day of the funeral. I’d been a lousy mother, and Jossy didn’t have a father worth mentioning. But I hadn’t seen it coming or anything. And that made it worse. I didn’t even know that my daughter was so unhappy that she had decided to do away with herself. And on the day of the funeral, it just got too much for me. Then this chap started trying to tell me that it wasn’t my fault. At first I thought, what does he know? But he kept saying the army did that to people, that it wasn’t so unusual for youngsters just not to be able to cope. He was older, like I said, several years older than Jossy. At the time, I sort of assumed that he was one of the instructors at Hangridge, I think. He said that he’d known this boy who’d been in the intake before Jossy’s, who’d done the same thing.’
Mrs Slade paused. Kelly expected her to pick up her whisky glass again, but she didn’t. She just sat looking at him in silence for several seconds. Kelly could see that she was concentrating, trying to sort things out in a mind more or less permanently addled by alcohol, but a mind which Kelly somehow suspected was actually pretty sharp in the rare moments when she was completely sober. If you caught her that day.
‘It made me feel better,’ she said suddenly. ‘Him telling me that, made me feel better. But I never saw a link with Jossy’s death. Never. Never thought, that’s odd, two young people at the same barracks killing themselves like that. I never questioned it.’
She picked up the whisky then, but didn’t take a drink, just held the glass in her hand and stared at the remaining contents.
‘Not surprising, really. Alcohol stops you questioning things, you see. I guess that’s what so good about it …’
Her voice tailed off.
‘I know,’ said Kelly gently.
She looked him in the eye properly for the first time. ‘Ah,’ she said.
He changed the subject then. He was there for a purpose, after all. And, as ever, he preferred not to talk about himself.
‘Mrs Slade, did Jocelyn ever say anything to you about being bullied, or perhaps being sexually harassed. You do hear of that in the army. I just wondered?’
‘No, she didn’t. But then, looking back, she didn’t say much to me about anything. And I can’t say I blame her …’
Kelly thought for a moment.
‘The soldier who told you about the other suicide, at Jocelyn’s funeral,’ he went on. ‘I don’t suppose he gave you a name, by any chance, did he?’
‘He told me the lad’s first name, yes, he did.’
‘And do you remember it?’
She smiled wanly. ‘Oh yes, I remember it all right. Same name as my bloody ex-husband, Jossy’s rat of a father. Trevor. Young Trevor, he called him.’
‘Thank you,’ said Kelly. ‘You’ve been a great help.’
He meant it too.
‘What are you going to do next?’ asked Mrs Slade.
‘I’m going to do my level best to break through the red tape of the military and find out exactly why four presumably fit and healthy young people, stationed at Hangridge, have died in little more than a year, Mrs Slade, that’s what I’m going to do,’ said Kelly.
‘Are you, indeed?’
Mrs Slade’s control, rather admirable considering what she had drunk, Kelly thought, seemed to have slipped. She slurred the words, her period of concentration and lucidity over, it seemed. Then she drained the dregs of her whisky in one.
‘I don’t know how you’ve got the strength,’ she said, closing her eyes and slumping back in her seat.
Kelly reckoned he didn’t have a chance of getting any more out of her that day, even if she knew anything more, which he doubted.
‘Look, perhaps I could take your phone number?’ he ventured.
Margaret Slade’s eyes remained closed. For a moment or two Kelly did not think he was going to get a reply.
‘I’m in the book,’ she muttered eventually, still without opening her eyes.
Kelly rose to his feet, delved into his jacket pocket for a business card, which he propped against the whisky bottle, and headed for the door.
*
Karen had been left reeling by Kelly’s news. It had shaken her rigid. And she just had to do something about it.
Almost immediately after ending her call to Kelly, she dialled the number of Hangridge. Gerry would be sure to have arrived back there by now. But just as an anonymous male voice answered, she replaced the receiver. No. The telephone wasn’t good enough.
Impulsively, she switched off her computer, grabbed her coat and left the office, without explaining to anyone where she was going.
Her mind was racing as she embarked on the drive across the moors. And Gerry Parker-Brown and how fond she had been becoming of him figured all too much in her thoughts. She was both angry and upset. But she knew that she must do her best to dismiss any personal feelings, and smartish. So far, it seemed Kelly had run rings round both her and the colonel, which, she had to admit, was pretty typical when he got his investigating boots on, and she didn’t like it. She felt she had been made to look like a fool. More specifically, she felt that Gerry Parker-Brown had been making a fool of her all along. It was not the first time in her life that she had been taken in by a personable and attractive man, and she hated that weakness in herself.
Karen got the impression that unannounced visitors at Hangridge were a rarity. This time, she barely glanced at the young man on sentry duty. She just about registered that this was not the same good-looking young soldier she had admired on her previous visit. But she wasn’t interested either way. She was in a hurry to get on with it. She sat in her car, impatiently tapping her fingers on the steering wheel, while he retreated into his sentry box and made what seemed to be a series of phone calls.
He kept her waiting for an irritating four or five minutes before he eventually returned to the car and leaned down to speak to her through the open window.
‘They say to go on through,’ he told her, looking vaguely surprised. ‘You’re to head for the central admin building,’ he went on, pointing in the appropriate direction.
‘I know,’ she said. ‘I’ve been here before.’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ said the soldier, continuing as if she had not spoken at all. ‘Visitors’ car parking is to the right …’
‘I know,’ she said again, and jerked the car forward away from the jobsworth sentry who was beginning to annoy her. She wasn’t in the mood for military red tape this afternoon.
She parked quickly and headed for the main entrance to the admin building. Another sentry gestured her straight in, and as she opened the door she saw a smiling Gerry Parker-Brown step out of his office and move forward to greet her.
‘What a lovely surprise, my favourite policewoman twice in one day,’ he began. ‘Why don’t we pop across to the mess—’
She interrupted abruptly.
‘Cut it out, Gerry,’ she fired at him. ‘You’ve not been straight with me, have you?’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ he replied.
‘I think you do. And if jolly little outings together are supposed to soften me up, I can assure you they do not.’
‘What are you talking about, Karen?’ he asked calmly, his expression slightly quizzical.
‘I’m talking about whatever game it is you think you are playing. It stops. Now. This minute. All I want from you is the truth about what’s going on here, at Hangridge.’
‘So do I, Karen,’ he replied lightly. ‘Every day I tell myself, this will be the day when I get to grips with what each one of the little bastards is up to, but …’
‘No, Gerry. I’ve told you. The game is over. No more feeble jokes. Please. I now know about the death of Jocelyn Slade. You lied to me, Gerry, and I would like to know exactly why?’
She was aware that the sergeant sitting at a desk, just inside the reception area, had stopped typing into his computer and was starin
g at her.
Gerry put his hand on her arm with a firmer than normal pressure, she thought, and ushered her towards his office.
‘You’d better come in, then, hadn’t you?’ he said.
Once inside, he closed the door firmly and bade her sit down. She did so, choosing the only upright chair in the room except the one behind his desk. She did not intend to give him the psychological advantage of looking down at her, and she somehow suspected that had she chosen one of his two comfortably low armchairs, he would not have sat next to her as he had done the first time she visited Hangridge. Certainly, he headed straight for his swivel desk-chair and sat very upright. And, there was no banter at all in his voice, when he finally responded.
‘I didn’t lie to you, Karen,’ he replied very quietly. ‘As I recall, you asked me if any other of our soldiers had died in accidents at the camp. I told you about Craig Foster. And I believe I was perfectly frank about his death, and the manner of it, was I not? Jocelyn Slade’s death was not an accident. Do you really regard suicide as an accident? I most certainly do not. Slade chose to take her own life. That was a private tragedy, which I did not see the need to share with you. I can only apologise if you felt that I misled you, because I can assure you that was not my intention.’
Smooth as ever, thought Karen. She could feel the anger rising in her and battled to keep control.
‘Come off it, Gerry,’ she snapped. ‘You knew perfectly well that I was interested in any sudden death at Hangridge. I may have interviewed you informally but I did come to you in an official capacity, and you chose to keep information from me which would be vital to a police investigation. Apart from anything else, Colonel, that is an offence.’
Karen knew that she was pretty good at tough talking when the occasion called for it. After all, she’d had enough practice at deflating the bubble of arrogance all too often present in members of certain strata of society, who were inclined to give the impression that they thought they were above the law. And this time, her genuine anger and sense of personal outrage probably gave her an extra edge.
However, Gerry Parker-Brown did not seem much abashed.
‘Oh, come on, Karen, we’re a long way from a formal police investigation, surely,’ he said, his voice calm and reassuring.
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