by Faith Martin
* * *
Jason Morley sat on the sofa of his small, empty and utterly silent flat, and looked at the gun in his hand. It was a piece of junk as far as firearms went, but it was deadly enough to do the job.
He had a can of lager that he’d just opened in the other hand, and slowly drank from it. When it was empty, it would be time to act. He knew that. He’d promised himself that — no more wavering.
But it wasn’t empty yet. Not quite yet. He still had time.
He sighed and stared out of the window. It wasn’t raining, but the sky had that cold, overcast look that made a mockery of the fact that it was supposed to be spring. If he went to the window and looked around the dismal housing estate, he would feel no warm, golden sunshine on his face. There were no bluebells to see, or daffodils growing in the surrounding concrete gardens. There would be no birds singing. If he opened the window, only cold, damp air would seep in.
Cold, damp air . . .
He let his mind drift back to that other time of cold, damp air, when he’d carefully and faithfully trailed that bastard Corporal Francis Clyde-Brough through the narrow back streets of Reading. Until, satisfied they were at last alone, and that there was no CCTV to capture his image, he finally closed in and gave the sod what he deserved.
Funny, when he thought about it now, he felt nothing, nothing at all. Not remorse, or guilt, but no sense of justice or satisfaction either.
Jason took another gulp of lager. The can was just under half-full now. But he still had a few minutes until it was empty. Still had time to think.
As a soldier he had killed before, of course, but that had always seemed to him to be more of an exercise, an abstract concept rather than a visceral, human thing. What’s more, it had always been done at one remove. In a war zone, you didn’t see the people killed by mortars, or ground-to-air-missiles — or even by automated gunfire, if you were keeping your head down at the same time that you were spraying bullets about.
But killing Clyde-Brough had been up close and personal.
It had had to be done, and he’d done it. Simple as that. Oh, he’d got drunk afterwards, when he was safely away from Reading, and safe.
Safe.
Jason smiled at this odd, bizarre concept, and took another sip out of the can. Just one more mouthful left. He looked at the flimsy can, gave it a contemplative little shake, and almost laughed.
Down to his last gulp. He’d better be careful how he used it.
He leaned his head against the backrest of the cheap sofa and sighed again.
Of course, ‘safe’ could mean so many things to different people. And it could mean nothing at all. Was anybody ever safe? When you could just drop dead of a stroke or a heart attack at any time? Or walk out to get a pint of milk and get wiped out by a drunk driver?
Would he be safe from his old mate Gareth Proctor — as good a pal as anybody could ever ask for — if Gareth found out what he’d done in Reading?
Maybe. Maybe not. It was hard to tell any more. Jason exhaled noisily. He felt rather tired. When they’d both been serving army officers he would have trusted Gareth Proctor with his life, and without hesitation. Because he knew that clever, careful, and gutsy Gareth Proctor would always have his back. And he knew that Gareth would have felt the same way about him.
But they weren’t in the army any more.
Everything was different now.
Slowly, deliberately, Jason raised the can of lager to his lips and drained it. Then he leaned forward and set it carefully on the floor.
Then he reached for his mobile and began to write a text.
* * *
At the moment that Jason hit the ‘send’ button on his mobile, the telephone on Hillary Greene’s desk began to ring. She was still reading about archaeological finds (specifically about how much some rare Roman gold and silver work had fetched) and absently reached out to pick up the receiver.
‘Hello?’
‘Hillary? Sophie here. I’ve been asking around about that little matter you were interested in.’
Hillary dragged her eyes away from the screen and leaned back in her chair, mentally switching gears. ‘Hello, Soph, and how’s the army treating you nowadays?’
‘Like it always has,’ her old friend said, with the usual bite to her voice. ‘If I wasn’t a colonel I’d bloody retire.’
‘You’ve been saying that for years.’
‘And if I didn’t think it would please them all so much to see the back of me, I’d retire tomorrow.’
Hillary laughed. ‘You’ve been saying that for years too.’
Her old college friend finally laughed. ‘Do you want the info you asked me for or not? Unlike ex-coppers, I don’t have all day.’
Hillary reached for her notebook and grabbed a pen. ‘Shoot. If you’ll forgive the expression.’
Again, she heard familiar laughter, then an exaggerated groan, then she got quickly down to business. ‘OK, I’ve managed to find some things out about your dead soldier in Reading.’
‘He’s not mine,’ Hillary interrupted.
‘Nor mine either, I’m pleased to say,’ her friend shot back. ‘The sod was kicked out a while ago and good riddance. He’s strictly a civilian matter now.’
Hillary could feel her spirits start to sink. ‘I take it he was a bad ’un?’ she sighed.
‘Yup.’
‘How bad?’ Hillary prompted. ‘And before you say it, yes I know you can’t give me details or you’ll end up getting court-martialled or put up against a wall and shot or whatever it is they do to you nowadays. Just the general gist will do.’
‘Good, because that’s all I could get myself without anyone wondering what I was up to. So — in no particular order, he was lazy, stupid, cowardly, but probably not actually corrupt. Not to your copper’s way of thinking anyway.’
‘You mean he wasn’t bent? Wasn’t flogging off stolen guns or whatnot?’
‘Can’t say.’
Hillary paused, pen hovering over the paper. ‘Can’t say, or won’t say?’
‘Bit of both,’ her friend admitted. ‘You know the army — no, scratch that — you don’t, do you? Let’s just say that we’re good at covering our arses when things go wrong. We don’t advertise it. We just hide it or flush it out of the system like so much sewage.’
‘Charming image,’ Hillary said dryly.
‘Right. Well, in the case of Clyde-Brough, I naturally couldn’t find out specific details, but then I didn’t go asking for them. The last thing I need is my CO asking me why I’m being so curious. I just asked a someone who knew a someone, who knew the general gossip in this particular case.’
‘Which was?’
‘That some of the men in a certain unit, in a certain part of the war zone, died when they needn’t have because Clyde-Brough didn’t do his job properly.’
Hillary took a long, slow breath. ‘Did the name Gareth Proctor feature anywhere in this . . . er . . . cock-up?’
‘Just a minute . . .’
Hillary waited while there was a rustling sound as her friend checked her notes.
‘Nope, no Proctor.’
Hillary wasn’t aware that she’d been holding her breath until she suddenly had to let it out in a whoosh. Then the sense of relief washed away. ‘How about Jason Morley?’
‘Don’t want much, do you?’ Sophie grumbled. ‘Hold on . . . ah.’
Hillary’s heart sank. ‘I don’t like the sound of that “ah”.’
‘No. Do you know this Morley character?’ her friend asked cautiously.
‘Never met him,’ Hillary said truthfully.
‘Hmmm. OK. Well in that case . . . Morley was involved in the cock-up as you call it, but he and several others were on the receiving end of it. Mind you, he was lucky. He got out alive. Let me see . . . huh. Yeah, he got out without any physical injuries, but his psych eval wasn’t good. He was given an honourable discharge. But reading between the lines, in his case I think PTSD had risen its ugly head.’
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Hillary closed her eyes for a moment, then sighed. ‘So would I be right in thinking that Jason Morley would not have been a big fan of Clyde-Brough?’
‘Oh I think you can most positively say that,’ Sophie agreed dryly.
‘Thanks. Next time we meet up, the Chardonnay’s on me,’ Hillary promised.
‘So is the three-course meal that goes with it,’ the army colonel said with a laugh, and hung up.
For a moment, Hillary sat in her chair and thought. She was almost certain that her colleagues investigating the Reading murder case wouldn’t have had access to this information. As her friend had said, the army didn’t air its dirty washing in public.
And they definitely needed to know.
But she couldn’t ring Reading without telling Gareth she was going to do it first. He deserved to know, and besides she didn’t like to do things behind people’s backs unless she couldn’t avoid it. They had to work together, and for that to be productive, he had to trust her.
Besides, if Jason Morley was suffering from PTSD, he’d need a friend to help him cope with police scrutiny, and once Gareth knew it was going to happen, he could be there for him.
So she got up and walked the short distance down the corridor to the small communal office. As she looked in, however, she was surprised to see the former soldier’s chair empty.
‘Where’s Gareth?’ she asked Claire, who was frowning intently at her computer screen. Whatever she was doing, it was obviously engrossing, because she looked up only vaguely, then glanced at the empty chair opposite her, and gave a brief shrug.
‘Oh, yeah, guv. He got a text about five minutes ago — he said it was urgent. He looked a bit upset. I asked him if it was bad news, but he said he just needed to go and see a friend. He said to tell you he’d make up the time tonight, like he did the last time.’
‘OK,’ Hillary said and went back to her office.
In the modern computer age it didn’t take her more than a minute or two to find out the current address of Jason Morley.
Grabbing her bag, she left the office at a run. She might be worrying over nothing, but she didn’t like the way things were shaping up.
Why had Gareth been so interested in the Clyde-Brough case to begin with unless he suspected something? And if he knew that Jason had good reason to bitterly resent Clyde-Brough, he might not have been able to hide his worries — or his suspicions — when the man was murdered months later.
And his friend, Jason Morley, might well have noticed his unease. And with Gareth then getting a new job working for the police . . .
The desk sergeant watched her charge through the lobby, bolt out the door and then run across the car park, and grinned. Somebody looked like they were about to get it in the neck. Because when Hillary Greene went after you with a look like that on her face, somebody was definitely in for the high jump!
* * *
Puff the Tragic Wagon started first go and responded at once to her unusually heavy touch on the accelerator, as if he understood her sense of urgency. As she drove towards the ever-expanding market town of Bicester at just a touch over the speed limit, she tried to convince herself that she was overreacting.
For a start, there was nothing to say that the text Gareth had received had even been from Morley. Her colleague must have more than one friend after all. And even if it had been from Morley, there was no reason to suppose there was a crisis looming. She knew she was still feeling a little off-kilter after talking to Sophie, and that might be affecting her judgement.
Nevertheless she kept her speed up and a wary lookout for her colleagues in Traffic. The last thing she needed was to get pulled over. Taking time to explain would strain her already tight nerves to breaking point.
Plus it would be a real pain to get a speeding fine.
But she made it to Bicester in good time and without incident, only to have to wait in a long queue at the roundabout that led to the shopping mecca that was Bicester Village. Traffic was always heavy around the world-famous shopping precinct so beloved of foreigners and domestic shoppers alike, and as the minutes ticked away she drummed her fingers impatiently on Puff’s steering wheel. From time to time she checked her phone, where the map showing Jason Morley’s exact address was displayed.
Just her luck, it was on the far side of Bicester in an area known as Glory Farm. In her experience of urban sprawl, she doubted if there would be a farm in sight, and that the area would prove to be anything but glorious.
Her cynicism was vindicated when, nearly ten minutes later, she turned into a maze of narrow, uninspiring streets that were a mix of low-rise commercial estates and ‘affordable housing’.
Trusting the satnav, she followed the directions to a three-storey block of perhaps twenty small flats, with grey pebble-dashed walls and newish-looking white PVC doors and windows. Unfortunately the parking spaces in front of it were all taken, and she scanned the vehicles anxiously for Gareth’s car. She couldn’t see it, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t been forced, as she was doing, into cruising around and trying to find a space on the streets somewhere.
Eventually she found a free spot and moved quickly back towards the building, all but running by the time that she spotted the entrance. When she reached it, the door turned out to be unlocked, with not even an entry-phone system to provide minimum security.
A little breathless, she walked through a totally empty and cold hallway with dirty black-and-red tiled flooring, a single lift, and a set of concrete stairs leading off to her right.
She guessed from the number of Jason Morley’s flat that his would be one of those on the top floor, and not fancying the look of the lift, went to the stairs and began to climb.
As she did so, she mentally rehearsed what she was going to do.
If she knocked on the door, and Jason Morley turned out to be alone, she’d have to pretend to be a market researcher or something.
If Gareth answered, then she was going to take the bull by the horns and insist on speaking to both of them and explaining that the Reading police would need to interview Jason. She’d have to be careful to make it clear that it would be just a matter of routine — that Jason wasn’t even a person of interest yet, and that there was no cause for alarm. The last thing she wanted to do was alienate . . .
The sound of a gunshot suddenly filled the narrow staircase, the flat, ugly and unmistakable sound of it echoing off all the empty spaces and hard concrete surfaces.
Her heart seemed to leap into her throat and then commenced to do a wild jig in her chest, leaving her momentarily unable to take a breath.
She was just passing the door leading to the second floor and instantly she began to run up the final flight. Once there, she erupted onto a small concrete landing, with seven or eight doors leading off it.
But even as she began to move cautiously forward, a door to her right began to open and she instinctively froze, experiencing the atavistic fight-or-flight mode that sent her adrenaline levels soaring.
A woman, aged about forty, looked gingerly out. She looked wary, a little puzzled, a little frightened, and her eyes instantly fastened on Hillary and widened. ‘Did you hear that bang . . . ?’
‘Get back inside,’ Hillary said quickly. ‘Lock the door, just in case. Don’t worry, I’ll call the police, in case it’s something serious. I don’t think it is,’ she lied with a comforting smile. ‘Probably someone just put an aerosol can in the woodburner or something! But I wouldn't open the door to anybody for a while unless they can post police identification through your letterbox, to be on the safe side.’
She hoped the woman was reassured. The last thing she needed was to have panic-stricken civilians running around. Then she thought of something else. ‘Wait!’ she said, as the woman began to close the door. ‘Do you know which door belongs to someone called Jason Morley?’
‘The new tenant? Right at the end, on the left,’ the woman said helpfully.
Cautiously, Hillary crept along the corrid
or. Her eyes constantly moved around, alert to any movement, but also registering her surroundings. Here, the same dirty black-and-red tiles lined the floor, and magnolia-coloured woodchip wallpaper covered the walls.
Her heart was still racing, but at least nobody else came to the doors to look out and nearly give her a heart attack. She could only hope that the vast majority of the building’s occupants were out at work.
As she moved, she fumbled around in her bag for her mobile phone. Retrieving it, she speed-dialled Rollo Sale’s number and put the phone to her ear. She was aware that her hand was shaking slightly and tried to control it.
‘Sale,’ a voice said cheerfully in her ear.
Hillary went to speak, realized her mouth was bone dry, and swallowed hard to work up some saliva. ‘Sir, it’s Hillary,’ she whispered.
‘Speak up, Hillary, I can barely hear you.’
‘Sir, I can’t,’ she whispered. ‘I’m in a block of flats in Bicester,’ she rattled off the address details, ‘and I’ve just heard a shot fired. I’m on the top floor, and I think the origin of the gunshot is a flat at the end. I’m outside it now, but there’s no sign of a gunman.’
For a moment there was a profound silence, then Rollo’s voice again, firm and clear but sharp with anxiety. ‘Get out. At once. I’ll call for an armed response unit.’
‘Sir, I have reason to believe Gareth Proctor may be in one of the flats — and probably the one where the gunshot was fired,’ she said urgently.
There was another moment of profound silence, then, ‘My orders stand. Make sure you get everyone out that you find in the public areas, and don’t let anyone else in. You need to secure the scene and prevent any casualties if possible.’
‘Sir, Gareth might be injured and in need of assistance,’ she argued.
‘Assistance is on the way. I’ll notify the armed response team to that effect and send for an ambulance. But no medical personnel can attend until given the all-clear by us. Do you have any information about the suspected gunman?’
‘Gunman might be Jason Morley,’ Hillary whispered. ‘I believe it likely the gunshot came from his flat. But that’s not confirmed.’