Nick sat down again, apparently quite calm.
‘Think what you like,’ he said.
‘I don’t like my thoughts,’ replied Kelly, forcing himself to focus. There were still aspects of all of this that puzzled him.
‘If life is so cheap among you, Parker-Brown and the rest, why didn’t you take out the Irishman himself, when he started to cause so much trouble?’ he asked.
‘To begin with, it was loyalty to him, whatever you think. Then, after he’d dealt with Slade and Foster, it became too dangerous. If he’d come to sudden harm, the colonel reckoned it would come back on us and blow out the whole Irish operation we had overseen. There could have been mayhem. It seemed easier to let the Irishman do it his way.’
‘And sacrificing those young people was not a problem?’ Kelly found the detached way his son discussed violent death quite chilling.
‘National security was involved, Dad.’
‘Absolute bollocks.’
Nick looked down at the ground.
‘Well, we never expected it to snowball like it did, never expected it to involve so many...’
‘So many murders, Nick? Is murder the word you are seeking?’
Nick shrugged.
Kelly felt ill, really ill. He stood up, concentrating hard. The room seemed to be moving.
‘I’m going to leave now,’ he said. ‘I can’t stay here with you any longer.’
‘I didn’t want you to know, Dad. Not ever.’
‘I don’t suppose you did.’
Kelly moved shakily towards the door. He had to hold on first to the back of the sofa and then to the edge of the table to ensure that he did not fall. Nick did not appear to notice.
‘How did you know?’ he asked. ‘What made you think it was me? I didn’t think you’d ever suspect me.’
Kelly studied his son sorrowfully. ‘I suspected you once before,’ he said. ‘There was that other murder, wasn’t there, more than two years ago now, that I, just for a moment, came to believe you might have committed. But I told myself I was crazy, plumb crazy...’
Kelly let his voice trail away. Nick looked startled, but made no response.
‘And there was something else,’ Kelly continued. ‘Just a coincidence, a very meaningful coincidence. Jennifer saw your car parked in Torquay on the same night that I was attacked. A customised Aston, so distinctive that she spotted it at once. Careless of you, Nick.’
Nick’s eyes widened. ‘I didn’t drive my own car to Torquay,’ he said. ‘I’m not an amateur, for God’s sake. I’d never have done that. I know my motor is distinctive, but it’s not the only one in the damned country. There are some others very nearly the same. Jesus! She didn’t see my car, Dad, no way.’
Kelly managed a wan smile. This, surely, was the final irony.
‘Well, there you go,’ he said quietly.
Nick stood up again, his handsome face creased in a frown.
‘What are you going to do now, Dad?’ he asked.
‘I’m going to get some fresh air,’ said Kelly. ‘I need it.’
‘I mean, are you going to the police?’
Nick reached out and put a hand on his father’s shoulder. Kelly shrugged him off. He couldn’t bear to be touched by his son. Not any more.
‘I haven’t decided,’ he said, leaning against the front door for support. ‘What would you do if I told you that I was going to the police — kill me?’
‘You know I couldn’t. I have already proved that.’
Kelly opened the door. Suddenly, he really could not stay in the same room as his only son for a second longer. As he left, he had the last word.
‘Yes, well, I haven’t made up my mind what I am going to do yet. So, you’ll just have to live with that for the time being, won’t you? Which is, of course, a luxury your various victims have been permanently denied.’
Twenty-two
Meanwhile, at Hangridge, Karen left Cooper, Tompkins and the rest to methodically interview the entire barracks, if necessary, and headed back to Torquay police station, driven as earlier by PC Mickey Turner.
On the way, she tried to call Kelly but both his phone at home and his mobile were on voicemail.
‘I hope you’re still sleeping, Kelly, and not doing anything daft,’ she said in her message. ‘I just wanted to touch base with you. Guess what, Parker-Brown has flown the nest. Call me as soon as you can to let me know you’re all right. Let’s keep in touch.’
Back in her office, she learned that the patrol car which had just made a routine check on Kelly had reported that his borrowed Volvo was no longer there and his house appeared to be empty.
‘Damn the man,’ muttered Karen. He undoubtedly was doing something daft, and she was worried. His life could well still be in danger.
But, after instructing uniform to continue to look out for Kelly, she did her best to put him out of her mind. There was nothing more she could do.
She then contacted Tomlinson to bring him up to speed. Her call was double-edged. Parker-Brown had been transferred out of immediate harm’s way with extraordinary swiftness, she felt, and with interesting timing — just as she had been given the go-ahead to launch a full investigation into the Hangridge deaths.
Karen suspected that he had been tipped off. And she had a pretty good idea that Harry Tomlinson, under those damned clubby, all boys together, rules again, had called Parker-Brown and told him what to expect. She was pretty damned sure, though, that the chief constable would not for a moment have considered the possibility of Parker-Brown promptly doing a runner. After all, that was not playing the game. And, even if it was a bit childish, she was somewhat looking forward to telling Tomlinson about that.
And indeed, when she explained to him the situation which had confronted her at Hangridge that morning, he sounded both shocked and let down.
‘What? He’s just gone? And without telling anyone?’
Karen knew that what the chief constable meant was that Parker-Brown had not notified him that he was about to stage a disappearing act. And that, of course, no doubt broke all the rules of Tomlinson’s damn silly code of honour.
‘That’s right, sir,’ she responded expressionlessly. ‘And, naturally, a top priority of this investigation now is to find Parker-Brown. All I have been told so far is that he has been transferred, that he’s on special duties, and that his whereabouts are classified. The whole thing stinks of a cover-up, quite honestly, sir. Anyway, I was hoping you might be able to help, put some pressure on the MoD to tell us where he is, that sort of thing.’
‘Umm. I’ll do my best.’
For once, the chief constable did not argue. Karen reckoned he probably didn’t dare. He certainly wouldn’t want it ever to become public knowledge that he had given Parker-Brown any kind of warning about the impending investigation, as Karen suspected he had.
‘Thank you sir,’ she said.
‘He could already be a long way away, of course. We’ve still got dammed near a war situation in Iraq, after all, and that would certainly put him out of our grasp for a bit.’
‘It’s possible, sir. Yes.’
‘On the other hand, he might have gone nowhere at all. If you’re right about all this being another military smokescreen, well, he might just have gone home to put his feet up for a bit.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Karen sat very still for a few seconds after she ended the call. The chief constable had the previous day guessed straight away that she had set up Phil Cooper and the MCIT to support her bid for a formal investigation into Hangridge, and now once again she may have underestimated Tomlinson. Of course. Parker-Brown could well be at his home. Why on earth hadn’t she thought of that?
Within seconds of hanging up she patched herself through to Middlemoor again, on the line which she knew would connect her directly with Tomlinson’s secretary.