Gill Morris nodded her head slowly. ‘I grasped that from your letter,’ she said. ‘But all I can tell you about Trevor, Mr Kelly, is that the poor kid had probably been a tragedy waiting to happen for many, many years.’
Kelly left quickly after ascertaining that Gill Morris could help him no more. And what she had told him, while not necessarily having any relevance at all to the other deaths, had sown the first seeds of doubt in his mind. Back behind the wheel of the MG, he told himself that was no bad thing. It was important for him to keep as open a mind as possible in order to conduct a proper investigation. If he was too convinced that the deaths were suspicious, then his inquiries could end up being just as perfunctory as he was sure the army’s had been. He needed to be very sure of himself before coming to any conclusions. He owed Karen that, because he knew she was sticking her neck out probably more than ever before.
He checked his watch and, as he did so, cursed his luck that the home of the witness in the Jocelyn Slade case, Fusilier James Gates, was in London, and East London at that, which meant that when approaching from the west the whole of the city centre had to be crossed. After all, the Devonshire Fusiliers still considered their home county to be their major source of recruitment, and Kelly already knew from his days as an Evening Argus reporter that approximately sixty per cent of the regiment’s strength were native Devonians. Yet so far his investigations had taken him to Scotland and to Reading, and now he needed to travel to London proper. It was, however, only just gone ten o’clock. There was therefore plenty of time to make the return trip that day, and as he was already in Exeter, Kelly decided to pick up one of the Plymouth or Cornwall to London expresses from St David’s station.
He parked in the station car park. The next train, due just half an hour later, arrived at St David’s on schedule. For a change, the journey passed without incident and the train also arrived at Paddington on time. Kelly took the tube to Mile End, having already checked the London A — Z, which he always kept in his car, to plot the short walk necessary to take him from the tube station to what he believed to be James Gates’ family home. He no longer had the money for cross-London taxis, and in any case he hoped that the tube would actually be quicker. Certainly, on this occasion, his entire journey turned out to be a surprisingly efficient one.
His walk took him through a fairly rough part of London to a council flat in an uninviting tower block. A legacy from the sixties, he thought. A sullen-looking young man, with close-cropped orange hair and a sprinkling of freckles, answered the door. He looked about the right age to be Gates himself. Kelly wondered if he had struck really lucky.
‘James Gates?’ he ventured.
The young man scowled. ‘Is that some kind of a sick joke?’ he asked.
‘Uh, no.’ Kelly was puzzled. You never knew what sort of response to expect in a situation like this, but the reaction of this particular youth was highly curious, at the very least.
‘I’m looking for James Gates,’ Kelly persisted.
The young man’s eyes narrowed.
‘Well, you’d better try the cemetery, then, hadn’t you.’
Kelly felt his pulse quicken.
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘My brother’s dead.’
‘Dead?’ Kelly repeated the word. It was all he could manage. He was totally stunned. He felt as if he had been hit by a thunderbolt.
‘Who the fuck are you?’
Kelly struggled to overcome his shock. He knew he had to explain fast. ‘I’m investigating the deaths of a number of soldiers at Hangridge barracks, on behalf of their families.’
‘About time,’ said the young man.
‘Could you spare me a few minutes?’
‘Are you police?’ The young man stared at Kelly suspiciously.
‘No.’
‘Then you’re army?’
Kelly opened his mouth to reply, but was prevented from doing so when the young man answered his own question.
‘No, you can’t be, or you’d have known Jimmy was dead.’
‘Absolutely right. I’ll explain everything if you’ll give me the chance. Look, what’s your name?’
The young man seemed to consider for a few moments. ‘It’s Colin,’ he said eventually.
‘Right. Well, Colin, if I could come in just for a few minutes, then I’ll explain exactly why I’m here.’
Colin stood in the middle of the doorway, square on, staring at Kelly for several moments more, before abruptly stepping back and gesturing for him to enter.
Gratefully, Kelly followed Colin Gates through a dark hallway and into a sparsely furnished but spotlessly clean and tidy sitting room. Colin threw himself almost full length across a sofa rather unattractively upholstered in vivid red leather, which clashed with his hair. The only other chairs in the room were the four upright ones positioned around a brightly shining, wooden dining table. Kelly pulled one of those across the room and sat down facing Colin.
‘I had no idea your brother was dead,’ he said. ‘Would you tell me what happened to him?’
‘They posted him to Germany. He died only five days later. An army chaplain and a major came round in the middle of the night to tell us.’
‘But what happened exactly, Colin? Do you know?’
Colin Gates shrugged. ‘We know what they said happened. They found our Jimmy dead in a paddling pool. He was pretty tanked up, allegedly, and fell in and drowned. So they said.’
‘You’re not convinced?’
‘No. I was never convinced, but who was going to listen to me?’
Kelly studied Colin Gates more carefully. He was long and gangly and, upon reflection, Kelly realised that he was probably no more than fifteen or sixteen. But there was something in his manner that made him give the impression, at first, of being older. He was, thought Kelly, a lad who had had to grow up fast.
‘Your parents didn’t agree, then?’
Colin Gates sniffed in a rather derisory, dismissive sort of way.
‘Me dad said I’d been watching too many bad movies. But then, he did twenty years in the paras and came out a staff sergeant. He’s army through and through, me dad. The military police investigated, over there in Germany. They showed Dad their report, a tragic accident they said, and Dad accepted it.’
Another one, thought Kelly. Army families lived by a different code, it seemed. The habit of obeying orders and accepting what those in authority told them sometimes stayed with them, Kelly was beginning to realise years after they actually quit the military. For ever, probably.
‘But you didn’t accept it?’
‘No.’
‘Any particular reason?’
Colin shrugged again, and this time said nothing.
Kelly changed tack.
‘Shouldn’t you be at school?’ he asked. ‘How old are you, anyway?’
Colin shrugged again. ‘I’m sixteen. I’ve just left school. I’ve got a temporary job in a hotel kitchen, but I hate it. I’ve taken a sickie today. Don’t tell me dad, that’s all. Jimmy was the golden bollocks round here. I’m the little bugger nobody listens to.’
Colin grinned. Kelly thought there was something rather likeable about him in spite of the aggressive front he affected.
‘I won’t,’ he said. He glanced round the room. There were a few family photographs on a shelf above the fireplace, and that was about all. Most of those seemed to be of a young man in uniform, whom Kelly assumed to be James.
‘What about your mother?’ he asked. ‘What does she think.’
‘She buggered off when I was a baby,’ said Colin. ‘Dad said she didn’t take to being an army wife. Me nan brought me and Jimmy up, but she died a couple of years back.’