‘Yeah, all right, Karen, give it a break, will you.’
Karen’s face broke into a grin. She had a really cheeky, yet extremely warm way of doing so. It was quite endearing, but she was unaware of that too. Kelly sat quietly waiting for her to speak again.
‘OK, Kelly,’ she said eventually. ‘I’ll at least see if we can find those two men. Do you remember what they looked like?’
‘Sort of, but they were bundled up against the weather — woolly hats, coat collars turned up, that sort of thing.’
‘Umm. Well, if you come across to the station with me, let’s try to get as full a description as possible on record. Do you think you might remember enough to be able to help put together a computer image?’
Kelly nodded a little uncertainly.
‘Right. Then I’ll see what inquiries I can set in motion up at Hangridge. If your two men are soldiers stationed up there, and we can come up with good enough images, somebody out at the barracks might recognise them. Shouldn’t hold your breath, though, Kelly, however good a likeness you come up with. The army doesn’t take kindly to civilian plod poking about without a damned good reason.’
‘Which is precisely my point,’ said Kelly, rising to his feet, grabbing his jacket from the back of his chair, and setting off in pursuit of Karen, who was already half out of the door. ‘They’ll cover up anything they can to keep it in the family.’
Karen did not bother to reply. She knew he was right about that, though. Although the civilian police theoretically had jurisdiction over military establishments in almost all relevant matters, in practice the vast majority of non-combat deaths were investigated by the SIB, the Special Investigation Branch of the Royal Military Police, with no civilian police involvement at all. Civilian police forces were routinely notified of suicide and accidental deaths on military premises within their area, but only became actively involved when the RMP reported obvious foul play. And Karen was one of many senior officers who felt that all sudden non-combat deaths of military personnel should be investigated by civilian police forces in exactly the same way as all non-military sudden deaths were. Indeed, she believed it to be vital for such investigations to be independent as well as thorough.
Alan Connelly, of course, had died on a public highway, so his death was therefore automatically a CID matter should any further investigation be called for.
None the less, Karen had no illusions. Any inquiries she made up at Hangridge would be welcomed by the military about as much as a visit from Saddam Hussein during the period when he had still been Iraq’s leader. And probably in much the same manner, at least as far as her career was concerned, she reflected glumly.
Five
Outside on the pavement, Karen paused to pull on her white mackintosh cape. It was still raining and she didn’t like getting her hair wet. Kelly caught up then and was right behind her as, the steel tips on her boots making sharp ringing noises on the Tarmac, she hurried across South Street, past Torre Conservative Club, to the CID offices in their recently converted building opposite the entrance to the main police station yard. She heard Kelly start to laugh as he studied the sign outside the Lansdowne Dance Centre next door. It advertised tuition in everything from modern ballroom through Latin American disco, to rock and roll.
‘I can just see Chris Tompkins doing the tango with a rose in his teeth,’ he said.
In spite of herself, Karen laughed. Detective Sergeant Tompkins, one of Torquay CID’s longest serving officers, who had only recently managed to finally achieve promotion from detective constable, was very tall, very thin, moved with a bony awkwardness and had a permanently morose hangdog sort of face. Karen always thought he looked like an anorexic bloodhound.
She punched the security code into the door ahead of her and led the way upstairs to her first-floor office. They had to pass through the open-plan incident room and Karen was aware of the eyes of every officer there focusing on Kelly. That last case still weighed heavily on all of them, and Kelly had been at the hub of it. Kelly might be a kindred spirit and someone for whom most of the team had considerable professional respect, but he did spell trouble, and she had known that bringing him, unannounced, into the CID offices would be bound to create something of a stir.
To hell with it, thought Karen. She had neither the time nor the inclination to pussyfoot around. Yes, Kelly did spell trouble, but that was because he had yet again encountered something troublesome, and being Kelly, he never seemed to learn to walk away. One thing Kelly didn’t do was cry wolf. Karen may have given Kelly little or no indication of her true opinion, but in fact she reckoned that if John Kelly thought there was something fishy about that young squaddie’s death, then there probably was. The only question was whether or not Karen wanted to take a potentially politically tricky matter further. And she was all too aware that she really wasn’t so different from Kelly. Almost certainly, she would be unable to resist.
‘Right, Farnsby,’ she called to a young woman detective constable sitting at one of the computer stations by the wall. ‘I want you to help Kelly build up an E-fit. We need to get a picture of two possible witnesses. Go on, Kelly, you know the form.’
‘Your wish...’ began Kelly, then let his voice trail away as he saw the look in Karen’s eye.
Janet Farnsby, whose serious, rather humourless nature was somehow emphasised by the way she kept her straight, light brown hair tied back from her face and the round granny spectacles she affected, stood up and looked doubtfully around her. Torquay CID didn’t run to providing a computer for every CID officer. Instead, they shared the bank of machines where DC Farnsby had been sitting. Karen knew what the young woman was thinking. Was she really supposed to work with John Kelly, of all people, in the middle of the incident room?
‘You can use my office, I’m off to Middlemoor,’ Karen announced, once more leading the way. Once inside her little glass cubicle, Karen busied herself picking up and sorting out the various papers she needed for her meeting with the chief constable at headquarters. There was just one item on the agenda: CID budget. Karen’s favourite topic. No doubt, further economies were about to be demanded. Not only would her officers be sharing computers, Karen reckoned they’d be sharing notebooks and pencils if Harry Tomlinson had his way. She gritted her teeth and made herself concentrate on ensuring she had everything she needed for her unwelcome meeting.
Janet Farnsby, who had recently completed a course on building E-fits, the modern computerised alternative to identikit, had settled in front of Karen’s screen with Kelly by her side and was already typing in data and calling up various images for him to study.
Karen, still wearing the white cape, with an untidy bundle of papers tucked under one arm, the big denim Voyage bag under the other, watched them from the doorway for a few seconds.
Kelly glanced up at her and looked for a moment as if he might be about to say something clever. Karen didn’t give him the chance.
‘Right, I’m off,’ she announced briskly. ‘Good luck.’
As she crossed the incident room once more, heading for the stairs, she very nearly bumped into Chris Tompkins.
‘Sorry, boss,’ muttered the veteran detective in his familiarly flat tones.
Karen couldn’t look at him. She really couldn’t. But if she’d happened to have had a rose handy, she would definitely have at least attempted to put it between his teeth.
Once settled in her car for the forty-five-minute or so drive to the Devon and Cornwall force’s HQ at Middlemoor, on the outskirts of Exeter, Karen immediately called the chief constable’s office, ostensibly to confirm her appointment for later that afternoon.