She sighed, and trying not to disturb Sophie — who now appeared to be asleep, after digging her claws into Karen’s legs for at least a minute while making herself a suitable bed in her mistress’s lap — she reached for the telephone on the little table next to the sofa. She pushed the appropriate buttons to check for messages.
The first was from her elderly neighbour Ethel, whose spirited attitude to life and apparently perpetual good humour put Karen to shame, she sometimes felt.
‘I’ve taken in a parcel for you, dear. Pop round any time. I’ve got a nice bottle of port that fell off the back of a lorry. Only I shouldn’t be telling you that, should I? Still, if you arrest me and put me inside, at least I won’t have to spend Christmas with that blessed sister of mine.’
Karen grinned and waited for the next message.
‘Darling, where are you? It’s Alison. Didn’t you get my message at the weekend? George and I would really love you to come to dinner on Saturday. Our new neighbours will be there, and Sally Sturgis and her husband are down from London. Sally Court that was, do you remember her? She’s dying to see you again...’
Karen pulled a face. She and Alison Barker had once, a million years ago, been good friends, when they were at police training college together. Since then their paths had diverged dramatically. While Karen had concentrated on her career, and had only once even come close to marriage, Alison had quickly abandoned the police force to become a wife and mother of four. The two women had absolutely nothing in common any more, in Karen’s opinion, but, none the less, Alison had been wooing Karen constantly since she and her husband had moved to Torquay from the Midlands several months earlier. Twice now Karen had accepted invitations from Alison, primarily, if perversely, in an attempt to make her phone calls go away, and each time she had regretted it. On the second occasion, Sunday lunch a few weeks previously, Karen had been obliged to spend her entire visit cooing over Alison’s first grandchild. Apart from anything else, that had made her feel dreadfully old, as she knew she was almost exactly the same age as Alison. And now Alison wanted her to meet another police cadet from their ancient past. Someone else she would no doubt have absolutely nothing in common with. She could barely even remember Sally Court.
Resolutely, she pressed delete. Just hearing Alison’s voice had somehow made her even wearier than she had been before, and she knew that she would have to be at her desk by seven, at the latest, in the morning if she wanted to keep her appointment at Hangridge. First, she had to sort out a load more paperwork to send off to Harry Tomlinson, in a desperate effort to back up some of the claims of financial diligence which she had made that afternoon.
Carefully, she lifted a purring Sophie off her lap and laid her on the sofa by her side. The cat stretched sensuously, but otherwise didn’t stir. Lascivious little beast, thought Karen, as she wandered into the kitchen to pour herself another drink. She was vaguely hungry, but not sure that she had the energy to make herself something to eat. Missing supper would, in any case, do her no harm, she reflected. She had consumed that rather large lunch in the Lansdowne, after all.
All she really wanted to do now was to fall into bed and watch TV for the rest of the evening.
Ethel would have to wait until tomorrow. And Alison Barker could wait for ever.
In the morning, Karen succeeded in making her early start as planned. And by around ten she was able to throw a bundle of papers at a somewhat bemused DC Farnsby, along with instructions to send them to the chief constable’s office. Then she set off for Hangridge. In spite of his apparently relaxed manner, Gerrard Parker-Brown was still a soldier, and a high-ranking one at that. Karen doubted he would have much truck with unpunctuality.
She had decided that in order to keep up the appearance of informality she would make the trip in her own car, a modern MG convertible, which she thought was a great little motor, even though Kelly, an MG purist, had looked down on it from the start.
She took the coast road to Paignton, then on through Dartington, and on to the moors via Buckfastleigh, so that she would pass the spot where Alan Connelly had been killed. The incessant rain which had fallen barely without pause through the first week of November had finally cleared up, and this was a beautiful day for a drive over Dartmoor. She slowed down as she approached the stretch of road where the accident had happened. It was not difficult to pinpoint. Karen had been told that part of the drystone wall on the north side of the road had been demolished by the rear end of the big articulated lorry, and angry black tyre marks criss-crossed the Tarmac, which had paled with age. Today, driving conditions were perfect. Everything was bathed in the orange glow of autumn sunshine. But Karen knew Dartmoor. She could imagine well enough how different it would have been on a dark wet night, with a swirling mist cutting down visibility to just a few feet.
Thoughtfully, she continued on to Two Bridges, turned right towards Moretonhampstead, just as Kelly had done two days previously in such very different driving conditions, and then, a couple of miles before Moreton, swung north through the pretty village of Chagford and up on to the remote part of the moor along the narrow winding road, which she knew led to Hangridge. All around her, vaguely purple hills, each topped with a tor, a distinctive irregular pile of granite, jaggedly dissected the skyline. Hangridge was relatively new. It had been built on MoD land in the 1970s. Karen knew almost exactly where the barracks were situated, built on a hillside in a particularly remote and unforgiving part of the moor, not far from Okehampton. But she had never actually been there before. The camp was quite isolated, the last two or three miles reached only by its own specially constructed approach road, so even the most tenacious of tourists exploring the moor would be unlikely to pass it by chance. And, in any case, Karen, who had loved Dartmoor since she was a child, rarely had time any more to play tourist. In addition, with every promotion her job had become more and more that of a manager and less and less what she regarded to be that of a police officer. She was desk-bound far too much of the time. No doubt about that. Karen didn’t think that was healthy for any police officer, whatever their rank and job description. And at least one bonus of this so far unofficial inquiry was that it had already given her the excuse to get out of her office and back on the beat, as it were, even if only fleetingly.
She was mulling over these thoughts as a dip in the hills took her through a ragged patch of dark conifers. The road swung sharply to the right as it rose steeply upwards again and, as she turned the corner, quite suddenly she was confronted for the first time by Hangridge barracks, headquarters of the Devonshire Fusiliers and a crack infantry training depot. Karen was completely taken by surprise.
She didn’t know quite what she had expected, and indeed had been unaware of any particular expectations, but she had not been prepared at all for what lay directly before her, built in such a way that she could see almost the entire layout on the bleakly exposed hillside.
Karen was well aware of Hangridge’s reputation for housing one of the army’s toughest training centres, a place designed to turn out elite fighting forces, or so she had been told, and she supposed that in her imagination she had conjured up a picture of some grim, moorland reincarnation of Colditz. Certainly, she admitted to herself, her extremely limited knowledge of the army was probably stuck in a time warp. Somewhere inside her head lurked an image of squat, black Nissen huts surrounded by unassailably tall walls or fences, topped by tangled rolls of potentially lethal barbed wire.