Authors: Hilary Bonner
‘Is it, indeed? Well, we will see about that,’ snapped Karen. ‘Meanwhile, could you please tell me exactly when Gerrard Parker-Brown was relieved of the command of this regiment, Lieutenant Colonel Childress, and when you took over.’
‘I wouldn’t use the term “relieved of his command”,’ Ralph Childress responded quickly. ‘That
sounds in some way critical, as if Gerry left under a cloud. Nothing could be further from the truth. He is an exceptional officer whose services were urgently required elsewhere, in a highly specialist capacity, that is all.’
‘Please spare me the commercial. I asked you when Gerry left and when you took over.’
‘Yesterday. I arrived here yesterday afternoon and he had already gone. I told you, he was needed urgently elsewhere.’
‘How convenient.’
Lieutenant Colonel Childress ignored Karen totally then and more or less marched straight through all four police officers. DC Farnsby stepped aside to let him pass, and Karen made a mental note to give her a rollicking for that, later. Meanwhile, Lieutenant Colonel Childress sat down behind his desk, clasping his hands neatly before him. Karen found her gaze drawn to his short stubby fingers. Obscurely, she noticed how well manicured his nails were.
‘So, please, how can I help you?’ the lieutenant colonel enquired, flashing a brief, empty smile which went nowhere near his eyes.
‘Could I ask you if you have been stationed here at Hangridge at all in the last year, in any other capacity, before taking command yesterday,’ Karen asked.
‘Not at all. For the past five years I have been employed in various jobs at the Ministry of Defence.’ Ralph Childress flashed the empty smile again. ‘I cannot tell you what a joy it is to be at Hangridge and to have taken command of my regiment. It’s like coming home.’
‘Really.’ Karen thought she had rarely heard such insincere tosh. ‘As you only arrived here yesterday,
Lieutenant Colonel, you personally can help me very little. You should know, however, that I am now setting up an investigation into the suspicious deaths of a number of young soldiers stationed here at Hangridge, and an assault on a member of the public. I will therefore want at least three rooms set aside for my officers where they can interview as many of your soldiers as we feel the need to. And I shall expect all personnel to be made available for interview instantly, upon the request of anyone in my team. We are quite possibly investigating more than one murder here and I will no longer tolerate anything other than full co-operation from the military. Is that clear?’
The commanding officer nodded his assent, and it gave Karen some small satisfaction to see that he no longer looked quite so self-confident.
‘Right. I should also like you to get on to your high command or whoever it is that regimental commanding officers take their orders from, and I want you to tell them that I require immediate access to Colonel Parker-Brown. Straight away, and wherever he might be. He is currently under suspicion of involvement in these deaths, and I will not tolerate all that rubbish about special duties. I need to interview him fully, and I do not intend to allow army protocol to get in my way. And neither do I care whether or not his whereabouts are classified. I am conducting a murder investigation and I will not be obstructed. Is that also clear?’
‘Perfectly,’ The new CO’s voice was totally controlled, but Karen could see that she had rattled him, which she couldn’t help finding rather satisfying.
*
Long before Karen even arrived at Hangridge, John Kelly set off for London. He had slept for another nine hours or so and woken just before four in the morning feeling much better than he could reasonably have expected. He certainly felt well enough to drive to Newton Abbot and catch the first fast train to London. Even if he had not felt so well, he would probably still have gone. He just couldn’t wait any longer.
He arrived at Paddington just after 9 a.m. and took an expensive cab across London. He still didn’t feel able to cope with the tube. The cab journey, into the heart of the new trendily reinvented docklands of London, took around forty-five minutes, which was considerably better than he might have anticipated at that time of the morning.
When he arrived at his destination, he paid off the cab driver and stood on the pavement for a few moments peering up at the impressive riverside tower block, which was home to his only son. Nick lived in the penthouse, and his apartment, which Kelly had visited several times before, boasted picture windows, a huge terrace and panoramic views up and down the Thames.
Kelly was not expected and had no idea whether Nick was in or not, but Nick ran his business, whatever that was, from home and Kelly reckoned he had a fifty-fifty chance of catching him in, possibly more at that hour of the morning. It was quite simple, anyway. If Nick was not there, he would wait until he returned. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, more important for him to do.
He walked across the sweeping expanse of pavement which led to the entrance of the apartment
block, and rang the appropriate bell on the intercom. Nick answered at once.
‘Hi,’ said Kelly. Just the one word.
‘Dad?’ Nick sounded astonished, as well he might. Kelly lived over two hundred miles away and had never arrived unannounced before. ‘Good Lord! What on earth are you doing here?’
‘I wanted to see you. So I thought, to hell with it, and jumped on a Cornish flyer.’ He tried to make his voice as light as possible. ‘Hope you haven’t got anyone with you. Not an inconvenient time, or anything?’
‘No, no. Of course not. Come on up. Open the door when you hear the buzzer. You know your way, yeah?’
‘Yeah.’
Kelly took the lift to the fifteenth floor. Nick was standing in the doorway of his apartment. He looked as tanned and fit as ever, and was wearing a long-sleeved, pristine white shirt – cuffs neatly buttoned at the wrists – which hung loose over well-ironed, faded blue jeans.
‘Good God, what have you been up to?’ he asked as soon as he saw his father’s damaged face.
‘It’s a long story,’ replied Kelly. ‘I’ll tell you later.’
‘But you’re all right?’ There was concern in Nick’s voice, and Kelly was sure that much at least was genuine.
‘Fine. Honestly. It looks much worse than it is.’
Nick stepped back and ushered his father into the apartment. Kelly stood for a moment in the middle of the huge ultra-modern living room, with its polished maple floors and just a few pieces of big, expensive-looking, leather and chrome furniture, very minimalist.
A dazzling morning sun was blazing directly into the apartment, making everything look bright and shiny, and as he looked out, briefly taking in once more the stunning views across the river and South London, with the dome of the Maritime Museum at Greenwich in the distance, Kelly had to squint in order not to be blinded by its glare.
When he heard the click of the front door, as Nick closed it, he swung round, smiling, to face his son.
‘Well, I’ve come all this way. Don’t I get a hug?’
Nick’s face was instantly split by a big grin.
‘Of course, Dad,’ he said, and, stepping forward, began to wrap his long arms around his father.
Moving again with unexpected speed for a man of his years who had lived his lifestyle, Kelly grabbed hold of the cuff of Nick’s right sleeve and ripped it violently upwards. The button popped off at once and Kelly was able to pull the cuff back in one smooth movement, revealing his son’s bare lower arm.
A line of angry red indentations ran right across his right wrist. The skin had been broken in several places and one or two of the indentations were still oozing a watery puss. They were clearly toothmarks.
Kelly let go of the sleeve at once and stepped away from his son’s attempted embrace.
‘You fucking bastard,’ he said very quietly. ‘Who the fuck are you, and what is it that you do?’
Nick had turned white. He looked down at his wrist, then up at his father’s damaged face again. Suddenly his whole body language became threatening. He stepped forwards, arms hanging loosely at his sides. For a moment Kelly thought he was going to attack him. And that this time he would not stop.
But, quite abruptly, Nick did stop. He turned away
from Kelly and sat down on one of the big, black leather armchairs. Kelly stared at him, willing him to speak.
‘I don’t know what to say,’ Nick managed eventually.
‘Well, at least you are not denying it,’ said Kelly.
Nick shrugged.
‘You came to Babbacombe beach two days ago to kill a man, didn’t you, and when you realised that that man was me, you backed off, isn’t that right?’
Nick shrugged again.
‘You had been employed by somebody to kill me, only you didn’t know who your mark was. You had no idea you had been sent to kill your own bloody father. Isn’t that how it was, Nick?’
‘You seem to have all the answers …’
‘Don’t fuck with me,’ said Kelly, raising his voice to a shout. ‘Just don’t fuck with me. Because I do have all the answers. Not only do I know it was you on the beach, and you were sent there to kill me, but I can also prove it. There were fragments of your skin in my teeth. These are currently being examined in a forensic laboratory and DNA will ultimately be extracted. The police will be able to prove extremely easily that it was you who attacked me.’
With a carefully executed sense of the dramatic, Kelly removed his mobile from his jacket pocket.
‘One call. One call, Nick, to my old friend, Detective Superintendent Karen Meadows. That’s all it will take. The police would then arrest you and take a DNA sample from you, and if it matches with the bits of skin in my teeth, which it will, of course – well, that’s it, isn’t it. All the proof any court of law would need. A foolproof case.’
‘Oh, come on, for fuck’s sake, Dad …’
‘No. Don’t you even fucking talk to me unless you are going to tell me what I want to hear. I want to know exactly who set you up for this. Was it Parker-Brown, was that who it was? I want to know, and I want to know exactly what has been going on up at Hangridge, and don’t damned well tell me you don’t know. I want the lot, Nick, and I want it now.’
‘I can’t tell you, Dad. It’s army stuff …’
‘Nick, you’re not in the fucking army. You left several years ago, and the more I think about it, the more I think you didn’t leave at all. You were chucked out, weren’t you? That’s what happened to you. So just tell me all of it. Or I make that call.’
Nick attempted his knock ’em dead grin again, but it merely made him look vaguely skeletal. ‘Come on, Dad, if I’m half of what you seem to be making me out to be, what gives you the idea I’d let you make that call? You can probably guess how easily I could kill you.’
‘You had the chance two days ago, and you didn’t take it then.’
‘No. Maybe I underestimated you, though, underestimated just how dangerous you can be.’
‘Maybe you did. But I’m still your father. I don’t want to shop you any more than you wanted to kill me. I just want the truth. Please.’
Nick narrowed his eyes and appeared to think long and hard.
‘You’d better sit down, then,’ he said.
Kelly did so at once, never taking his gaze off his son. It seemed that, as he had hoped, Nick might be prepared to gamble that his father would ultimately be unable to harm him, just as he had apparently been unable to harm his father.
‘It was Parker-Brown who sent you, wasn’t it?’ Kelly enquired.
Nick nodded. ‘Yes. Of course.’
‘And he had no idea that he was asking you to take out your own father, because we don’t even have the same name.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Why, for God’s sake?’
‘Because he thought it was necessary. Look, Dad, there aren’t all that many men I’d kill for without question. Not without a bloody great pay packet, anyway.’
Kelly turned his head away. He had been unable to stop himself wincing and tears were pricking the backs of his eyes. He did not want Nick to see. He did not speak.
‘You don’t understand, Dad. Gerry was SAS too, and he was my squadron leader when I was in the regiment. He was the best. The fucking best. He was always on your side, Gerry. And you were half right, I didn’t actually get chucked out of the regiment, but as near as damn it. They asked me to leave. I’d got involved in a bit of freelancing, working alongside some mercenary outfits, and the brass wouldn’t have it. But Gerry understood. We all did stuff like that. It wasn’t the money. That was only half of it. It’s just that you can’t do much about cleaning up the world, getting rid of the real scum, if you only play by the rules.’
Kelly tried to keep the astonishment off his face. He’d had no idea that his son held such right-wing views, for a start.
‘Anyway, Gerry was promoted to half colonel and eventually went back to the Devonshires as CO, and
I became a sort of freelance military consultant. The world’s full of people who want my skills.’
Nick grinned again. Kelly thought it looked like a leer.
‘So, when this spot of trouble they had at Hangridge came to the boil, it was natural enough for Gerry to turn to me,’ Nick went on. ‘He told me there was this guy, who’d been employed by the families – who could finger him, someone who’d seen him when he’d been looking for a squaddie who was out to cause trouble because of what he thought he knew—’
Kelly interrupted. ‘Alan Connelly?’
Nick nodded. ‘Yeah, that was his name. Gerry just said he thought this man may have recognised him, and he needed taking out.’
Kelly was mesmerised. So Parker-Brown had remembered him from their brief confrontation in The Wild Dog. And he had not given himself away, by even a blink, that day at Hangridge. Karen had been right. Parker-Brown certainly was a smooth operator and one hell of an actor.
‘It didn’t seem like any big deal,’ Nick continued.
Kelly could hardly believe his ears.
‘Just a job. That’s all. And I had no idea who I was taking out. We work on the basis of need to know, you see. I didn’t need to know. Gerry set it up and just told me the instructions you’d been given, to walk up and down Babbacombe beach at midnight, until you were approached. You got a phone call, didn’t you, an anonymous call?’