Хилари Боннер - No Reason To Die

Joan Lockharte muttered something that sounded vaguely affirmative. Or it may just have been a sniff. Karen wasn’t sure.

‘Could you remind me of his name?’ she continued determinedly.

‘Colonel Gerrard Parker-Brown.’ The chief constable’s secretary rattled off the name without hesitation. She was at least efficient, Karen had to give her that. And her memory was faultless. Karen knew that well enough. She had often had cause to wish that it wasn’t quite so good.

Her next call was to Hangridge. She had decided to make her initial inquiries informal — which was in any case all she could reasonably do under the circumstances — hence her desire to know the name of the Fusiliers’ commanding officer before contacting the barracks. She wanted to trade on her one and only social contact with Parker-Brown. That was, after all, how dealings between potentially immovable forces like the police and the army were more often than not conducted. Karen, as a relatively young woman with certain idiosyncrasies regarding her work, who had not only managed to survive but usually to triumph in a man’s world, was not particularly good at these kind of tactics. It did not suit her either to prevaricate or to dissemble. But she reckoned that, in this case, her best chance of getting any real co-operation out of the army was to give it a go.

The sergeant who answered the phone put her straight through to the colonel, whose double-barrelled name, while so traditionally appropriate for a senior army officer, did not fit at all with her brief memory of him. Certainly she was not surprised when he so promptly came on the line. He hadn’t seemed the type who would hide behind minions under any circumstances.

‘Parker-Brown.’ He spoke crisply, not quite with the aristocratic intonation of previous generations of army officer, but Karen suspected that upper-crust vowels had probably been deliberately toned down.

She quickly introduced herself, at the same time reminding the colonel that they had met once at the CC’s party at Oldway Mansions.

‘Yes, yes, I remember,’ he responded at once, in such a way, however, that Karen was quite sure he didn’t remember at all. ‘How nice to hear from you, Detective Superintendent.’

His approach threw Karen a bit. She had expected the CO of the Devonshire Fusiliers to be rather more on his guard with a senior policewoman, albeit one who was playing the social card. She found herself pausing while she worked out exactly how to word what she wanted to say next. The colonel, still sounding helpful and friendly, filled the silence.

‘So what can I do for you, Miss Meadows?’

Karen decided to get straight to the point.

‘Look, I wondered if I might come up and see you. As soon as possible. Tomorrow morning, perhaps? It concerns one of your young soldiers, Alan Connelly, the lad killed on the road over the moors last night, near Buckfast. Certain matters have come to my attention that I’d very much like to talk through with you...’

‘Ah, yes, Connelly. Tragic, quite tragic. He was only seventeen, you know. I’ll help in any way I can, naturally. But his death is hardly a police matter, is it, Miss Meadows?’

‘Any sudden violent death is a police matter, Colonel, at least in the initial stages. And that is the case even with serving military personnel when death occurs in a public place.’

Karen was determined to make that clear from the beginning.

‘Yes, yes, of course. I do understand. Would you like to come up here for coffee tomorrow? Midmorning? Would about eleven suit you?’

Karen agreed at once, reflecting on how civilised the modern army was, or at least how civilised it liked to be perceived as.

She ended the call and forced herself to concentrate for the last half-hour or so of her journey on the unwelcome meeting ahead. Karen reckoned that she was a good copper. She’d had her ups and downs, but, in reality, she knew darned well that she was a good copper. Paperwork, however, was her bête noir . She hated it. She loathed it. And managing a budget was the worst sort of paperwork in her opinion, and the most unsatisfactory aspect of her job. However, the chief constable was a paperwork sort of policeman. If you considered him to be any kind of policeman, that is. Which Karen actually didn’t.

It was one of those days when Karen was extremely pleased eventually to get home. Her meeting with the chief constable had gone much as she had expected. It had been a bit like a visit to an accountant, really. Only an accountant who was not so much on your side as that of the tax authorities. As usual when finances were under discussion, Karen had found herself forced to duck and dive quite spectacularly. It had been one of her trickiest sessions with Harry Tomlinson, and by the time it was finally over Karen had felt uncharacteristically drained of energy.

As soon as she entered her apartment in West Beach Heights, an old Victorian block to the west of Torquay seafront, she headed straight to the small kitchen at the back to make herself a large gin and tonic. Plymouth gin poured over lots of ice and a slice of lime, in a decent tall glass filled to the brim with Schweppes tonic — her favourite tipple, and the kind of G and T that was still hard to find in British bars of any kind, and virtually non-existent in pubs.

As she took a long, deep drink she became aware of a small furry creature rubbing itself against her legs. Sophie, the handsome brown and white cat with which Karen shared her home, was inclined to scratch, claw and deliver impatient love bites if she did not receive enough attention. So Karen, wondering why she was quite so fond of such a self-centred pet, dutifully bent down to tickle Sophie’s ears, as she knew was required. Then she carried the remains of her drink into the sitting room. It was a rather lovely room, decorated in pale creams and white, and furnished with the various antique pieces Karen so much liked to collect. Two huge windows along one wall, stretching almost from floor to ceiling, gave sweeping views of the bay. Karen was by nature congenitally untidy, but she more or less kept her untidiness to the bedroom, making a real effort to keep the living room in at least reasonable order. She slumped gratefully onto the sofa, deliberately omitting to switch on the lights so that she could savour the view outside. Almost at once, Sophie took a flying leap onto her lap and demanded attention again.

Karen grumbled at her in good-humoured fashion. She was actually grateful for Sophie’s company. It wasn’t that she was short of friends, or certainly acquaintances, eager to spend time with her. But she rarely seemed to have time in her head to arrange anything, even if she did have the inclination. And since her affair with the man she had believed to be the love of her life had ended the previous year, she seemed to have no interest whatsoever in starting a new relationship with anyone. Or certainly not with anyone she had so far met.

She sighed, and trying not to disturb Sophie — who now appeared to be asleep, after digging her claws into Karen’s legs for at least a minute while making herself a suitable bed in her mistress’s lap — she reached for the telephone on the little table next to the sofa. She pushed the appropriate buttons to check for messages.

The first was from her elderly neighbour Ethel, whose spirited attitude to life and apparently perpetual good humour put Karen to shame, she sometimes felt.

‘I’ve taken in a parcel for you, dear. Pop round any time. I’ve got a nice bottle of port that fell off the back of a lorry. Only I shouldn’t be telling you that, should I? Still, if you arrest me and put me inside, at least I won’t have to spend Christmas with that blessed sister of mine.’