The reality of Hangridge could not have been more different. A neat cluster of conventionally built buildings, one or two storeys high, lay surrounded by playing fields which had been levelled out of the hillside. A rugby game was in process on one such field and groundsmen were at work on another. Karen realised that this was the kind of glorious moorland day which would even brighten the dark bleakness of Dartmoor Prison at Princetown, about as grim a building as you could get. But there was definitely nothing grim or at all forbidding about Hangridge. There was a perimeter fence, of course, made of wire netting, and even a strand or two of barbed wire here and there, but the whole impression of the place was open and pleasant.
Indeed, thought Karen, the place looked more like a comprehensive school than a barracks. Or her idea of a barracks, anyway. Of course, she reflected, as she drove very slowly towards the gates, Hangridge had been built in the ’70s when new comprehensive schools were popping up all over Britain. Obscurely, she wondered if the same architects had been used by the army.
The gates to Hangridge stood open, and only the presence of two young men on sentry duty, both carrying automatic rifles, detracted from the notion that the camp was as likely to be a centre of education for young civilians as a military establishment.
Karen pulled to a halt at the sentry point and wound down her window. One of the sentries stepped smartly forward. Every inch the soldier. But his dark blue beret, with its distinctive Fusiliers’ red and white feathered hackle, seemed too big for his head and Karen was struck at once by how young he looked. At first sight he could have been an overgrown fourteen-year-old. God, she must be getting old. This was boy-soldier land, but she knew the fresh-faced sentry had to be at least seventeen, probably more.
The young sentry saluted as he approached. He was of mixed race and rather gorgeous. His smooth olive skin gleamed with good health and he had big, beautiful, black eyes. There was something boyishly cheeky about him, and Karen could not help thinking how nice it would be to see him smile. She swiftly dismissed the thought from her mind and made an effort to pull herself together. She began to introduce herself, but it seemed she did not need to.
‘Good afternoon, miss,’ said the boy soldier respectfully, and Karen couldn’t help enjoying the moment. It had been a long time since anyone had called her ‘miss’, let alone an attractive young lad. Unmarried as she remained, she was none the less much more of a ‘madam’ nowadays than a ‘miss’.
‘The CO is expecting you,’ the sentry continued.
‘Thank you very much. Now, where do I go exactly?’
‘Just a minute, miss,’ interrupted the second sentry, who looked equally boyish in spite of the stern expression he had adopted. ‘Your ID, please.’
The first soldier flushed slightly. Karen was reminded that these young men probably still had their L-plates on. They may have been primed by their commanding officers about her visit, but they were still supposed to go through the motions of correct sentry duty.
She produced her warrant card which was duly inspected almost to the point of unnecessary diligence, she thought, by the second sentry. Finally, she was directed to the largest and most centrally positioned of the cluster of buildings where, after she had parked her car in one of several spaces reserved for visitors, a third sentry led her directly to the CO’s office.
Gerrard Parker-Brown was exactly as she had remembered him from their previous brief meeting: warm, affable and almost disturbingly unmilitary.
He rose from his desk as she was shown into his room, and stared at her in undisguised surprise.
‘Oh, it’s you,’ he said. ‘I didn’t realise. Terrible with names, always have been. But I remember you now. And I remember thinking when we met at that do, how unlike a police officer you were.’
He stepped forward and enclosed her right hand in both of his.
‘Splendid to see you again, absolutely splendid,’ he went on. ‘Now, coffee, tea? Something stronger?’
He grinned broadly, flashing big strong white teeth. He had sandy hair, cropped short around the sides, and somewhat unruly at the front, where it had been allowed to grow a little longer over a broad, open face heavily sprinkled with freckles. His square-jawed, rather old-fashioned, kind of boy’s comic, good looks could only properly be described as handsome. There were prominent laughter lines around his dark brown eyes, which were framed by unusually long thick eyelashes. Karen couldn’t help registering that they were rather exceptional eyes, more like a woman’s than a man’s, although she didn’t remember noticing that before.
‘Coffee, please,’ she said, and found herself smiling at him involuntarily. He was quite disarming. ‘And I remember thinking how unlike an army officer you were.’
He positively beamed back at her. ‘That’s only because everybody still thinks in clichés,’ he said, gesturing for her to sit in one of the two low armchairs to one side of his desk, and lowering himself into the other. ‘But things have changed, about time too in many respects, but not all for the good, unfortunately. Army officers, police officers, we’re all the same nowadays, aren’t we? Bloody managers. Don’t know about you, it’s the endless paperwork that gets me down.’
‘Absolutely,’ smiled Karen.
She had not expected to meet this kind of kindred spirit in the British army, that was for certain. She studied Parker-Brown carefully for a moment. He was tall and slim, looked extremely fit, and she suspected that his almost excessively casual manner involved more than just a little bit of front. None the less, you couldn’t help responding to him. She had to make a conscious effort to remember that this was an extremely senior military man, commanding officer of a major infantry regiment, and she was a senior police officer with a job to do, which might yet prove to be extremely tricky.
‘So, what exactly can I do for you, Detective Superintendent?’
‘As I indicated to you on the phone, Colonel, I have one or two anxieties concerning the death of Alan Connelly.’
‘But I understood it was perfectly straightforward. A tragedy, of course, but there’s no mystery, is there? Private Connelly had left base without permission and was, unfortunately, extremely drunk. He more or less threw himself in front of an articulated truck, didn’t he, in conditions that made it almost impossible for the driver to have avoided hitting him? That’s what I understood, anyway.’
‘We have no evidence to the contrary, Colonel, but there are one or two so far unexplained aspects of the case, and as I was quite sure you would be as anxious as we are to clear everything up, I decided it might be helpful for you and I to have an informal chat.’
Karen was aware of the colonel studying her quizzically. The corners of his mouth twitched. Had she said something to amuse him? Karen was pretty certain that he had not been entirely taken in by her allegedly informal approach, and probably suspected that she had good reason for being there and that she would have some serious questions to ask. Indeed, she was becoming increasingly more determined to find out everything there was to know about Alan Connelly’s death.
‘Of course,’ he said. And then he waited.
Karen told him about the two men, believed to be soldiers, who had come to find Alan Connelly in the pub, and then more or less disappeared, and about how Connelly had earlier claimed that he was likely to be killed and that his death would not be the first at Hangridge.
‘We have a reliable witness to all of that,’ she concluded, trying not to think too much about Kelly and the trouble he had got himself and her into over the years.