Gant!

by Laurence Todd

  “You know what strikes me as odd in this case?”

  I continued before she replied. “Phipps says he contacted you about what he took from the car. Not too much longer after that, he gets shot, so does his brother. The other man I mentioned just now? He was holding what Phipps had passed on to him, and he too gets killed, but he didn’t die nicely, beaten to death actually. So, all three were connected. Funny that, wouldn’t you say?”

  “There’s nothing funny about people dying, Detective. You’re very flippant, aren’t you?”

  Time to raise the stakes. I took a picture from the A4 envelope I was holding and laid it on the desk in front of her.

  “Recognise anyone in this picture?” I asked.

  I’d given her the one of Perkins addressing the squad from the dais.

  She looked closely at the picture. “No, I’m afraid I don’t. What does this have to do with me?”

  “You know Christian Perkins?”

  “Of course I do. He’s a senior MP in the party. I’ve worked with him on any number of occasions.”

  “That’s Perkins on the dais talking to those soldiers.”

  She held the picture closer to her eyes and squinted.

  “I wouldn’t have recognised him from this. Anyway, he used to be in the army. So what?” She was starting to sound annoyed at my questioning her. Good.

  “Perkins never rose above sergeant whilst in the army, but the man on the dais has the uniform of a ranking officer. Notice the pips on the shoulder?”

  “And?” Her eyes opened wide. She ran her fingers through her hair. I wasn’t certain if I liked her hair better than her legs. I decided I preferred her legs.

  “Did you know your friend, Mr Perkins, Mr Law-and-Order, hanging’s too good for the buggers, was actually involved in a plot to organise a coup against the Government in the mid 1970s?”

  “Oh, that’s preposterous, Detective. Christian involved in something like that?” She sat back in her chair and shook her head.

  “Does sound peculiar, doesn’t it? But I have the testimony of someone who was there, who was part of the squad being trained for just such a move. There’s a lot more pictures like this one. You want to see them?”

  “Christian is a patriot. The very idea . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  “Next time you see him, tell him you’ve seen this picture. Also,” I took out the one of the blindfolded soldier and showed it to her. “Tell dear old Christian you’ve seen this one as well. Ask him if the name Eric Biggins means anything to him.”

  “Should it?”

  “Yes, I think it should. The man in the picture there,” I pointed at Biggins, “was shot dead by a firing squad. Perkins gave the order to shoot, killed the guy in cold blood. He even went to the man’s funeral, can you believe that?”

  She looked at me and said nothing. I wondered if she already knew all this. Would Perkins have told her? Was I boring her by stating what she already knew?

  “Do you already know this? You don’t seem surprised.” She looked out the window and shook her head.

  “Ask him also what Auspicium Melioris Aevi means. He’ll know what I mean.”

  “I went to a school that offered Latin. I know what it means.”

  “Even better.” I stood up. “You can translate it for him. Oh yeah, before I forget, do you know someone named Richard Rhodes?”

  She paused. “I’m not sure. I might do but can’t place the name. Who’s he? Is he another conspirator?” Was that a tone of levity in her voice?

  “Doesn’t matter.” I looked at her then left the office. I resisted the temptation to sing We’ll meet again as I did so.

  I was on the Tube to Watford. It was now peak commuter time on a Friday afternoon and the carriage was crowded as far as Neasden, at which point I was able to get a seat.

  Interesting that Debbie Frost had not admitted knowing Richard Rhodes. There’s no mistaking a guy that size and I saw him and her getting out of a taxi last Wednesday evening. That clearly suggested she was lying. I wondered what their connection was. Were they friends or was their relationship, if that’s what it was, a business one? Was she aware that his recent employment had been babysitting a Colombian drugs pusher around London? The Conservative Party was officially anti-drugs. What would it say about one of its top employees consorting with a mercenary soldier who also just happens to be helping to make drug deals in London possible? An interesting moral quandary, I was considering as the train reached Watford.

  Jonathan Rothery lived in a spacious semi-detached house with a large garden a ten-minute walk from the station. He was home when I arrived. I introduced myself to his daughter and she took me to the lounge where her father was watching the news.

  He was sitting in his wheelchair with a blanket across his knees. His daughter introduced us.

  “You’ll forgive me if I don’t stand up?” I was impressed he’d still got his sense of humour.

  He still had most of his hair, it was chalky grey and short. He was wearing a shirt and tie and had a barrel chest. He was probably a formidable physical presence in his younger days. No longer.

  “Why would a Yard Detective Sergeant come all the way out here to see me?” he asked.

  “A rather delicate matter, actually.” I looked at his daughter. She nodded and left after saying she’d bring some coffees in soon.

  “I don’t understand,” he said when the door closed. He switched the news off.

  I explained very briefly what I was investigating and that I was filling in some gaps. I didn’t give him much detail, just a few broad strokes.

  “You were in the army in the seventies,” I began.

  “Yeah, I was a squaddie for about thirteen, fourteen years. Came out around the time Thatcher had that parade to celebrate victory in the South Atlantic. I’d loved to have gone on that one. I’d got a licence whilst in the forces so I drove a lorry for a number of years until this,” he nodded down at the chair. “Now I sit in one of these bloody things all the time.”

  There was something about his tone, about his body language that made me think he was ready to spill his guts out. I wondered if he suspected why I was in his home. I continued.

  “I want to ask you about something specific that occurred whilst you were still a serving soldier in the mid 1970s.”

  His expression changed, as though he knew what was coming next. He pursed his lips.

  “Okay.” He folded his arms.

  “I’m investigating a recent case that’s led to three deaths and I believe there’s a connection to this and something that occurred much earlier. I’ll come straight to the point, Mr Rothery.” I paused. “In the mid seventies you were part of some quasi-military outfit being trained to mount an action to overthrow the Government. That’s correct, isn’t it?”

  I said this almost accusingly.

  He looked at me quite obliquely, almost as if he’d lost his connection with the real world and was struggling to make sense of what was happening outside of him. He glanced out the window but didn’t appear to be noticing anything.

  “How much do you know?” he finally said.

  “I know the broad outline though not the main details. I’ve seen the manifesto and the pictures of training exercises. I even know the logo Auspicium Melioris Aevi. Good enunciation, eh?” I grinned at him. He didn’t appear to be impressed.

  “I see,” he said resignedly.

  “Oh, don’t worry. I’m not here to arrest you for it. It didn’t happen so there’s probably nothing to charge you with anyway. I’m not even sure there’s such a charge as retrospective treason. No, my interest in this case is a little more specific. Do you know of someone named Eric Biggins? You know who I’m talking about?”

  He was silent for a while, staring at a blank television screen. I suspected he was reliving events he’d thought he’d successfully buried in his subconscious. As if being in a wheelchair wasn’t bad enough, now he was experiencing existential angst. His whole demeanour b
ecame one of a kind of subdued melancholia, as though he was suffused with sadness. He exhaled.

  “I knew Eric.”

  “So I’m guessing you know what I’m going to ask next,” I said. He nodded.

  “I think so.” He took a deep breath. I waited a moment. “You were one of the firing squad.”

  “How do you know that?” He looked surprised.

  “Someone who was there.”

  “Can I know who?”

  I shook my head. “’Fraid not.”

  He sat silent and very still for several seconds. His daughter entered carrying a tray with two coffees. She saw her father’s expression. She gave me a look that seemed to say “Go easy on him.” I wondered how much she knew and whether she’d realised why I was with her father. She patted him on the arm and left the room. I ignored the coffee.

  “There’s not a day goes past I don’t think of that poor bastard and what was done to him. I actually think I’m in this wheelchair because the Lord is punishing me on earth for what we did.”

  I took this as his cue to open up.

  “Why don’t you tell me what happened? Start at the beginning. Take your time.”

  He sipped his coffee. It seemed to fortify him.

  “I always wanted to be a soldier. Proud to be one. Proud to serve in one of the finest fighting units in the whole bloody army,” he stated in an even voice. “I really loved being in uniform. Didn’t think there was anything better in this world. You ever been a soldier? You ever been in uniform?”

  I stated I hadn’t, only wore a policeman’s uniform for a few years until I became a detective in CID. What had I done, he asked. School, university, the beat, CID and now Special Branch. Served differently but for the same ends. Protection of Queen and Country.

  “I joined up in sixty nine, when the world seemed to be full of student agitators campaigning against the Vietnam war. We even had riots in this country. Bloody foreign students whipping up resentments against a war we weren’t even part of.” He sounded angry.

  “Anyway, I did. I tell you, you’ve not known camaraderie until you’ve fought alongside someone, seen them in action, seen them react to being under fire and the level of awareness they show. I have. Two tours of duty in Northern Ireland. Both sides hating us.”

  He shook his head as though he didn’t believe what he was saying. Maybe he didn’t want to.

  I noticed, as he was speaking, his eyes had glazed over. He was talking to and for himself rather than to me. It was almost cathartic for him. Things he’d probably not said to anyone outside of his regiment were now pouring out of him. Had he been bottling up these feelings since leaving the army? I allowed him to continue.

  “You ever seen someone shot and die in front of you?” he asked solemnly.

  I resisted the flippancy of replying, “Yes, actually, the other night. I was with two young men as they were both shot by an assassin and died.’

  “No, I haven’t,” I lied. “Only the after effects, the clearing up. That sort of thing.”

  “I have,” he stated with all the certainty he could muster. “A couple of my mates in the regiment were shot dead by snipers. On patrol in Belfast we were. Just walking along some shitty backstreet trying to keep the fucking Irish from killing each other. Never caught the bastards who did it either, or if we did we didn’t know it. Ireland was a nightmare. We had to use softly-softly against terrorists who were planting bombs beneath cars and killing innocent people. Soldiers were considered expendable. Did you know that?”

  I shook my head. No, I didn’t know that. How much of this was idle rambling? I allowed him to continue with his musings.

  “And when we got back to England, what did we find? Civil war and bloody anarchy ’cause of the unions and a government too weak to stand up to the Commie bastards. Something clearly had to be done, we couldn’t go like that.”

  “Something was done, wasn’t it?”

  He nodded. “Yeah, it was.”

  He then spent the next few minutes telling me about how he was approached by a senior officer and asked if he wanted to be part of a special Civil Defence unit being secretly trained to help keep the country functioning in the event of any further outbreaks of civil disorder. He agreed to be part of the unit and was taken away from normal duties and trained in a camp somewhere, he thought, in the West Country, to be ready to move in and guard telephone communications premises and power stations so the country could function as normal. That was the story most other soldiers at the camp had been told.

  “How long before you discovered what the actual purpose was?”

  “I’m not sure. There were all kinds of rumours about revolutions and coups and all that but I didn’t take too much notice, to be honest.”

  “So what did Eric Biggins do to deserve being shot? Did he vote Labour or something?” I was being flippant, hoping to draw Rothery out but he seemed not to hear me. He was silent for about twenty seconds. His eyes moved around and he exhaled a few times. He seemed bothered.

  “Funny as it sounds, I don’t actually know.”

  “What, he was just selected at random. Is that it?”

  He looked angry for a second. “No, it wasn’t that. I heard from some of the lads that Biggins was attempting to blow the whistle on what was happening. Someone said he’d written to a newspaper telling them what was being prepared for. I don’t know if that’s true, but the next thing I knew, we were gathered together on the parade ground. A major told us we had to be careful as there was a traitor in our midst. Biggins was dragged out to a wall, blindfolded, had his hands tied behind him and, on a count of three, we shot him.”

  “Christ,” I muttered under my breath.

  “Funny thing is, we were told our rifles had blanks. I discovered later the bullets were real and Biggins died from gunshot wounds.”

  “Interesting. The official army record says he died whilst engaged on a training exercise. It’s listed as an unfortunate accident. No one was ever blamed for it.”

  “It wasn’t an accident.” Rothery was slow and firm in his denial. “We murdered him.”

  I thought I saw a couple of tears running down his cheek. He was trying to keep himself in check but not succeeding.

  “How long afterwards did you find this out?” I ignored the tears.

  “Not very long at all. We were expecting him to come back later on that evening but he didn’t. Someone asked what had happened. There were all kinds of things being said. Eventually, the major came into the mess and congratulated us on executing a traitor. That’s when we realised, or certainly I realised, we’d actually killed someone. I think it was about that point when I began to think this wasn’t kosher. There was something about it that wasn’t right and I didn’t like it.”

  “What, the private army wasn’t just for playing games?” I was hoping to get him agitated.

  “With God as my judge I swear I thought what we were doing was preparing to be some kind of beachhead unit to be used in the event of a general strike or civil disturbance. I’d heard the rumours about shooting ministers and all that but I didn’t believe them. I mean, come on, this is England. We’re not a fucking banana republic, we don’t overthrow governments. We’re a democracy. We cast votes, that’s the British way.”

  “Did others feel the same as you?”

  “Quite a few did. We weren’t there to kill anyone. I thought we were being trained for special duties, not to be bloody stormtroopers for a revolution. I tell you, morale certainly went down after that. But we couldn’t just walk away, could we?”

  “The major you mentioned. His name wasn’t Perkins by any chance, was it?”

  “Yes, it was. He was the one who welcomed us to the camp, told us about our historic mission and all that crap.”

  George Selwood had said that I’d be amazed at the extent of the complicity at the top of the establishment at this adventure. He’d mentioned the army and other forces chiefs. I’d never been a soldier but even I knew the army was a
total institution. Orders given and orders obeyed without any questioning by the recipients. An officer said shit, you asked if you had to drop your trousers or do it fully clothed. It was beginning to sound as though he was right.

  “So, what eventually happened to Eric Biggins’ body? Who took care of it?”

  “Never knew,” he replied slowly, shaking his head. “He was shot and we were ordered away not too long afterwards. That’s all I know.”

  “Ordered away?”

  “Yeah, back to our regiments. Whatever we were being prepared for never occurred or, if it did, it went ahead without me.” A rare smile.

  Quite a story. Perkins had been at the epicentre of the accounts given by George Selwood and now Jonathan Rothery. Both men present at the same time and believing they were being trained to rescue the country they loved from union militancy. Both being exploited by people like Christian Perkins who, it appeared, had another agenda.

  “Did you ever know anyone else in command other than Perkins?”

  “No. I saw Perkins with a senior officer once but I didn’t know who it was. He was only visiting and never spoke to plebs like us.”

  “And you’ve no idea why this little escapade never went ahead?”

  “None,” he replied emphatically. “We were all told we were being RTUed, returned to units, and that was it. It never went ahead, whatever it was.”

  “And you genuinely believed you were being prepared as some kind of Civil Defence force in the event of a general strike or something like that.”

  He nodded. “Yeah, I did. Most of us there did. That bastard Perkins. We were ordered to keep quiet about this and I have. I’ve not said anything about this all these years.” He waved his hands. “I mean, who’d believe me if I did?” He shrugged. He picked up his coffee and took a lengthy gulp of it.

  “So, there it is. It’s a big weight off my mind finally telling someone what we did to that poor sod.” He paused for a moment. “What happens to me now?”

  “Nothing I know of. It’s your conscience; you’ve got to live with yourself. I was just here to pick your brains. I’ve been told by Perkins that Biggins’ death was an accident but you’ve said it wasn’t, so has someone else. But, whatever, that’s not what I’m investigating so that’s for others to decide. Me? I’m just investigating a case, as I said earlier.”