Karen thought for a moment. ‘OK, Kelly,’ she said eventually. ‘I don’t know if it will do much good, but I can’t think it’ll do much harm.’
She put the phone down thoughtfully. If she was honest, she quite liked the idea of Gerrard Parker-Brown being given the third degree by Kelly, who was, she knew, an excellent interviewer. It still rankled that Parker-Brown had, she was sure, deliberately set out to handle her. And, even worse than that, she admitted reluctantly to herself, he had initially succeeded rather well.
Also, she did need to be absolutely sure that when she went back to the chief constable, her case for an investigation would be so strong that he would have no choice but to agree. And Harry Tomlinson was a stubborn man. Furthermore, he was not the sort of policeman who would ever want to be involved in any kind of showdown with the military. Karen knew all too well that Tomlinson would only consent to her putting a formal police investigation in place, if the case she presented was so overwhelmingly strong that she gave him no choice.
She was well aware that she needed all the help she could get. In particular, she needed support from within the force. Karen did not really want to be put in the position where her only hope of taking matters any further was to inform the chief constable that the Hangridge affair was about to be blown wide open by the families of the dead soldiers, led by John Kelly. In the first place, Tomlinson would probably take that as some kind of threat and might react with increased bloody-mindedness. And in the second place, Tomlinson had always viewed Karen’s close association with Kelly with deep suspicion, and had even dared, on more than one occasion, to hint at the station gossip, which she knew had been going on for years. There had long been a rumour that she and Kelly were having an affair, which was pretty ironic really, she reflected. Because there had never been even a breath of truth in that — until the previous night, when it had very nearly become a fact. Even though that now seemed rather unreal.
On the other hand, something that was very real, was the existence of one man within the police force whom she trusted totally to confide in concerning Hangridge and the Devonshire Fusiliers, and of whose support she was confident. However, he was somebody she had had an affair with. And he was a junior officer at that.
‘Damn,’ she said out loud, as once more she cursed herself roundly for creating her own complications.
Phil Cooper had been her sergeant when they had investigated a particularly complex and emotionally draining case, full of twists and turns. And one of the twists had been that somehow along the way she and Phil had begun an affair. No. It had been much more than that. For her, at least. She had fallen deeply and irrevocably in love, although she was no longer quite so sure of his true feelings.
Phil had recently been promoted to detective inspector and had rejoined the Devon and Cornwall Constabulary, after a brief spell with the Avon and Somerset. And Karen was well aware that his new job would be right up his street. Phil was now with the force’s Major Crime Incident Team. The unit operated in a clandestine way, from an anonymous warehouse on an industrial estate on the outskirts of Exeter, unmarked and unheralded. Karen knew that the team thought of themselves as the elite, SAS-like, front-line troops of the police force, and there had always been a boy-soldier side to Phil, who was a big, rugby-playing, very physical sort of man. And although solid and reliable on the one hand, he was also the kind of policeman who enjoyed the unorthodox and, like Karen, was unafraid of taking risks — which may have been one of the reasons they had always got on so well.
Anyway, one way and another, in a professional sense she trusted Phil Cooper absolutely, even if personally she had grown to have her doubts.
He had called her not long previously to tell her about his new appointment and he had also made it quite clear that he was still available to her. Indeed, that he would very much like to re-open their relationship.
‘Things would be different, I promise you, Karen,’ he had said.
But she had asked just one question. ‘Are you still married, Phil?’
‘Well, yes, but—’ he had begun.
‘But nothing, Phil,’ she had interrupted. ‘Just fuck off, will you.’
And that had been their last conversation. Karen smiled wryly. Complicated or what? Well, she wasn’t going to let it be. Not as far as the job was concerned, and not as far as Hangridge was concerned either. Resolutely she punched out Phil’s mobile number.
‘Cooper,’ he replied, in that slightly sing-songy way of speaking with which she had once been so familiar.
‘Hi, Phil...’ she began.
‘Hello, Karen, I’m so glad to hear from you,’ he responded at once.
‘Let me say from the start, this call is purely and absolutely professional,’ she told him sternly. She felt rather pompous, but was none the less determined to make her position on that clear at once.
‘Yes, of course,’ he replied, backing off instantly. However — and she couldn’t have explained why — she felt that he didn’t entirely believe her. Typical, bloody arrogant man, she told herself.
Out loud she said: ‘Look, Phil, I’ve got something big on. It’s a very hot potato and I need some help. Just you and me, quietly. I don’t want to talk about it on the phone, so I was hoping we could have a meet. Soon as you can.’
Phil asked no questions.
‘I won’t be able to get away this evening because we’ve got a big job on here, and it’s likely to hang over into tomorrow, but what about tomorrow night?’ he replied, with obvious eagerness, and she hoped it wasn’t just that he was keen to see her. He would know, of course, that Karen must be referring to something very important indeed.
‘I could drive over to the Lansdowne, if you like?’ Phil continued.
Karen opened her mouth to say no. She didn’t want an evening drinking session with Cooper. That was, after all, how their affair had begun in the first place. On the other hand, the quicker she met up with him the better. And as she was absolutely adamant that she never wanted to rekindle their relationship and that she was totally over him, then what possible reason could she have for avoiding an evening meeting with him?
‘That would be ideal,’ she said casually. ‘But let’s make it another pub, shall we?’
She didn’t want the entire station knowing that she had been drinking with Cooper. The word that their affair was on again would be round the nick in about five minutes, if they met in the Lansdowne. And that had caused enough problems first time round. But as Cooper replied, she almost wished she hadn’t made the request for a different pub.
‘Of course,’ he said, sounding quite conspiratorial. ‘How about that quiet little boozer we used to go to out on the Newton Abbot road.’
Oh, God, she thought. That had been one of their regular haunts during their affair. But she was determined not to show him that it meant anything to her one way or the other to go there again.
‘Sure,’ she replied, even more casually. ‘See you there about seven? All right?’
‘All right,’ he replied, with rather more enthusiasm in his voice than she would have liked. And warning bells were ringing in her head as she ended the call.
But she needed Phil Cooper’s help, she told herself. She really did.
Sixteen
The following morning Kelly spent an hour or so at his computer, checking a few facts on the Internet. Before confronting Colonel Gerrard Parker-Brown, he wanted to familiarise himself with any statistics he could find concerning non-combat deaths in the military, and also to bone up on the history of the Devonshire Fusiliers.