Jane topped up her glass and offered to pour more for Gerry, who declined. ‘You’re working on that? How exciting. I thought you’d got your man, though. How much of a suspect is he?’
‘Hard to say just yet. That’s why I wanted to talk to you.’
‘You know I can’t give you any details? National security and all that. The army likes its privacy. We don’t like to be held too accountable for our actions. We don’t like to let people know what we’re up to. We always have a get-out-of-jail-free card up our sleeve.’
Gerry laughed. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘I’d just like to know anything you can tell me about his military career.’
‘Oh, there’s plenty I can tell you. I had a good nose around after you phoned, even talked to some people who knew him. And if it helps you, that’s all well and good, as long as nobody else knows where it came from.’
‘I’ve got no problem with that,’ Gerry said. ‘If it helps, I’m just trying to get some kind of confirmation that we’re on the right track. I’m pretty sure of it, but we have no real evidence yet.’
Jane swirled the wine in her glass. ‘Well, I can’t answer that question for you,’ she said. ‘Mark Vincent was nothing unusual. He had a few problems, but who doesn’t?’
‘So how did you, or the army, deal with his problems? And what were they?’
Jane sighed. ‘You have to understand, dear, that in addition to other things, we’re quite tolerant of our own. As you know, we have internal systems of discipline, rules and regulations. They’re as much meant to protect us from the outside as they are to enforce justice and punishment within the services. To put it bluntly, no matter what the recruitment adverts and friendly websites tell you about careers and what have you, all that goes out of the window in wartime. In wartime, a soldier’s job is to kill people, and we will forgive him an awful lot if he just does that one job exceptionally well.’
‘And Mark Vincent did?’
‘There was a war of some sort or another throughout most of Mark Vincent’s army career. Like many other soldiers in his position, he saw far more action than any human being should have to see, and he endured it. Don’t you think that takes a sacrifice, maybe rips out a little part of your soul? We also asked him to do things that no decent human being should ever have to do. Whatever we may be, us soldiers are not automatons. We are not without conscience, human feeling, compassion even. At least we start out with those things. In some cases, they get knocked out of us over the years. That may have been the case with Mark Vincent.’
Their moules arrived and both sat in silence for a while to enjoy them. ‘What was the general consensus on Vincent?’ Gerry asked.
Jane paused with her fork in mid-air. ‘Mark Vincent was a violent and disturbed young man when he joined up. He had a lot of anger, and we taught him to channel and direct that anger and violence. Which, when you think about it, is hardly unusual in the army. As a rule, we can direct violence against the enemy, but if you’re asking me whether I think he’s the kind of man who could direct it against someone he thought had betrayed or crossed him, then I’d have to say yes. But that’s just an opinion based on an afternoon spent reading files and talking to people about him. And I’m not a psychologist.’
‘Don’t worry. I’m not going to quote you,’ Gerry said. ‘Did he ever train as a sniper?’
Jane hesitated before going on. ‘The army doesn’t like to talk about things like that,’ she said, ‘but yes, he did. He was an excellent shot, and he had no compunction about killing strangers from a distance. It would have been a waste not to train him. And use him.’
‘Did he have mental problems?’
‘Of course he did. Show me a soldier who doesn’t. Sometimes mental problems can be valuable assets in the military. Oh, we have our psychiatrists and so on, but it’s not like you can patch up a psyche in a field hospital the way you can a gunshot wound or an IED injury. And it’s not as if our shrinks have the time it takes to spend on fixing these minds. Years of therapy? No chance. Many of them go undiagnosed. PTSD, for example. There’s been a lot of talk about that recently.’
‘Did Vincent suffer from PTSD?’
‘Hard to answer. I’d reckon that he probably did — at least he suffered some of the symptoms. He was never diagnosed — he never spent long enough with a psychiatrist for that — but in my layperson’s opinion, from what I’ve read, and what people have told me, I’d say he did. According to one report I saw, he suffered from headaches and insomnia, and he had difficulty controlling his emotions and forming relationships with others. There were also issues of substance abuse, again not uncommon in PTSD cases, or in combat, for that matter — just think Apocalypse Now.’
Gerry had never seen Apocalypse Now, but she didn’t want to let on to Jane. ‘Drugs?’ she said.
‘In Mark Vincent’s case, the doctor thought it was mostly alcohol, though other drugs may have been involved. You should remember that pretty much all of this was only discovered towards the end of his military career, shortly before his discharge. He never underwent any serious psychiatric evaluation.’
‘I got the impression, reading between the lines,’ said Gerry, ‘that the discharge was dishonourable.’
‘Well, that’s true to some extent,’ Jane said, ‘but we prefer a mutual parting of the ways, if we can work one out. I’m sure you have the same policy with bent coppers when you can get away with it. Far less headline-grabbing. And Mark Vincent had certainly served long enough to retire gracefully.’
‘He didn’t object?’
‘No. He took the package, as they say in business.’
‘Did his discharge involve anything to do with a civilian massacre?’
‘I know of no such massacre.’
‘Kosovo?’
Aunt Jane remained silent for a while. ‘It takes a long time for these things to come out, for the investigation into allegations to be completed, probably much like your business.’
‘So he was?’
Aunt Jane merely smiled.
‘I also think he made connections there he used later when he was involved in people-trafficking,’ Gerry went on. ‘Especially young girls in the sex trade.’
‘Well,’ said Aunt Jane. ‘I wouldn’t deny that such things happen. Soldiers do sometimes come into contact with criminal elements.’
‘But he was also promoted to sergeant at one point. How on earth did that come about?’
‘How do these things usually come about? Deceptive appearances. Human error. He was good at getting people to do things, and that’s one trait you want in a sergeant. Leadership quality. Unfortunately, as we discovered too late, Vincent was only good at getting people to do things that benefitted himself, not the army as a whole. I never came into contact with him, you understand, so I’m speaking very much as an outside observer here, based on official reports and a couple of off-the-record conversations, but I’m pretty good at reading between the lines, and I’d say Vincent was charming and manipulative when he wanted to be. And he did have a bit of a temper.’
‘How did it manifest?’
‘Bar brawls, that sort of thing. Fighting in general. Again, that’s not so unusual for a soldier. He was quite a decent boxer in the ring, too. Controlled and disciplined.’
They finished their moules just as the main courses arrived. Jane worked her way through the wine as she ate her bloody steak. Gerry had only taken a few sips of her first glass. Mostly because she was driving, but partly because the rich and complex red wine didn’t go very well with moules or halibut. ‘What kind of state was he in after he left the army?’
‘I’ve no idea what became of him. Maybe you can fill me in on that?’