‘I can’t tell you, Dad. It’s army stuff...’
‘Nick, you’re not in the fucking army. You left several years ago, and the more I think about it, the more I think you didn’t leave at all. You were chucked out, weren’t you? That’s what happened to you. So just tell me all of it. Or I make that call.’
Nick attempted his knock ’em dead grin again, but it merely made him look vaguely skeletal. ‘Come on, Dad, if I’m half of what you seem to be making me out to be, what gives you the idea I’d let you make that call? You can probably guess how easily I could kill you.’
‘You had the chance two days ago, and you didn’t take it then.’
‘No. Maybe I underestimated you, though, underestimated just how dangerous you can be.’
‘Maybe you did. But I’m still your father. I don’t want to shop you any more than you wanted to kill me. I just want the truth. Please.’
Nick narrowed his eyes and appeared to think long and hard.
‘You’d better sit down, then,’ he said.
Kelly did so at once, never taking his gaze off his son. It seemed that, as he had hoped, Nick might be prepared to gamble that his father would ultimately be unable to harm him, just as he had apparently been unable to harm his father.
‘It was Parker-Brown who sent you, wasn’t it?’ Kelly enquired.
Nick nodded. ‘Yes. Of course.’
‘And he had no idea that he was asking you to take out your own father, because we don’t even have the same name.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Why, for God’s sake?’
‘Because he thought it was necessary. Look, Dad, there aren’t all that many men I’d kill for without question. Not without a bloody great pay packet, anyway.’
Kelly turned his head away. He had been unable to stop himself wincing and tears were pricking the backs of his eyes. He did not want Nick to see. He did not speak.
‘You don’t understand, Dad. Gerry was SAS too, and he was my squadron leader when I was in the regiment. He was the best. The fucking best. He was always on your side, Gerry. And you were half right, I didn’t actually get chucked out of the regiment, but as near as damn it. They asked me to leave. I’d got involved in a bit of freelancing, working alongside some mercenary outfits, and the brass wouldn’t have it. But Gerry understood. We all did stuff like that. It wasn’t the money. That was only half of it. It’s just that you can’t do much about cleaning up the world, getting rid of the real scum, if you only play by the rules.’
Kelly tried to keep the astonishment off his face. He’d had no idea that his son held such right-wing views, for a start.
‘Anyway, Gerry was promoted to half colonel and eventually went back to the Devonshires as CO, and I became a sort of freelance military consultant. The world’s full of people who want my skills.’
Nick grinned again. Kelly thought it looked like a leer.
‘So, when this spot of trouble they had at Hangridge came to the boil, it was natural enough for Gerry to turn to me,’ Nick went on. ‘He told me there was this guy, who’d been employed by the families — who could finger him, someone who’d seen him when he’d been looking for a squaddie who was out to cause trouble because of what he thought he knew—’
Kelly interrupted. ‘Alan Connelly?’
Nick nodded. ‘Yeah, that was his name. Gerry just said he thought this man may have recognised him, and he needed taking out.’
Kelly was mesmerised. So Parker-Brown had remembered him from their brief confrontation in The Wild Dog. And he had not given himself away, by even a blink, that day at Hangridge. Karen had been right. Parker-Brown certainly was a smooth operator and one hell of an actor.
‘It didn’t seem like any big deal,’ Nick continued.
Kelly could hardly believe his ears.
‘Just a job. That’s all. And I had no idea who I was taking out. We work on the basis of need to know, you see. I didn’t need to know. Gerry set it up and just told me the instructions you’d been given, to walk up and down Babbacombe beach at midnight, until you were approached. You got a phone call, didn’t you, an anonymous call?’
Kelly nodded.
‘That was Gerry. He’s quite an actor.’
‘I know,’ said Kelly flatly.
‘Well, I hightailed it down to Torquay and out to Babbacombe. Like I said, Gerry had no idea, of course, that I was your son. And it didn’t occur to me to think you might be involved. I suppose it should have done in a way, with your history. But with Moira just having died and everything — well, it simply didn’t occur to me. Not until you managed to break away from me a bit — I guess that was the first time I underestimated you — and started yelling your head off. I recognised your voice, didn’t I? I recognised the sound of your voice. I was gobsmacked. Absolutely gobsmacked. I shone the torch in your face to make sure, and then, well, I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t kill you. Not my own father. Not you. I love you, Dad.’
Nick looked across at him appealingly. Kelly felt absolutely nothing. He knew that Nick loved him, had loved him since they had become so joyfully reconciled a few years previously, in spite of the fact that Kelly had been such a neglectful father. Kelly had always thought it a miracle that Nick had still been prepared to accept him, and had never failed to be deeply moved when Nick expressed his love for him. Until now, he thought grimly.
‘So, you knocked me senseless, instead,’ said Kelly flatly.
‘What else could I do? I had to be able to make a clean getaway. I couldn’t let you find out that it was me. My torch had a rubber casing, so I knew that if I chose the spot carefully, I should be able to stun you without doing any lasting harm.’
‘So you tried to knock me out carefully, is that it?’
‘Well, that’s one way of putting it, I suppose.’
It was exactly what Kelly had thought at the time, of course.
‘And then you rang me up in the early hours of the morning with some spurious excuse, in order to make sure that you had been careful enough.’
‘Well, yes, I suppose so. I watched from the woods too. I saw you get in your car and drive away. What were you doing in that bloody great tank of a Volvo anyway? If you’d been driving the MG, I’d never have gone near you. I’d have known it was you.’
‘The exhaust went.’
‘Ah, just for a change, eh?’
Nick understood about MGs. Kelly wasn’t interested.
‘But if it hadn’t been me, you would have killed whoever happened to be walking up and down that beach without question?’ he persisted. ‘Is that it?’
‘Well yes. I suppose it is. But you don’t understand, Dad. Really, you don’t. There was good reason, you see...’
‘Try me, Nick. Tell me your good reason for being prepared to strike down and kill a quite possibly innocent stranger, just because your former squadron leader asked you to?’
‘Look, Dad, Gerry and I were in Northern Ireland together. And we both felt extremely strongly about what was happening over there. You have to see it to believe it, Dad...’
‘I saw it, Nick, you know that,’ said Kelly.
‘No, Dad. Not the way we did. And the IRA is like any other organisation. At the core of the worst atrocities, there is an extremist minority. Most of them call themselves the Real IRA, nowadays, whatever that means. Now we allegedly have peace, but there are all too many bastards who don’t even want it. Gerry, well — when things needed sorting Gerry was prepared to go that bit further than most, even within the SAS. His father had been an NCO in the Devonshires and had died in Northern Ireland. Did you know that?’
Kelly shook his head. He neither knew nor cared, as it happened.