by M. R. Hall
THIRTY-SIX
There were no officers in the court and only a very few other ranks. The men of C Company had finished their post-tour leave and the order had evidently been given that the conclusion of Jenny’s reconvened inquest was to be kept as low-key as possible. A police inquiry was underway into the circumstances of the incident at Colonel Hastings’s home and Jenny had not been asked to deal with the inquest into Major Norton’s death. In the little over two weeks since it had happened, the press had largely lost interest and moved on to more current and thrilling stories. There was only a scattering of reporters present, whom Jenny assumed from their yawns and bored expressions were expecting to hear nothing more than her closing remarks followed swiftly by open verdicts. This, too, was what Simon Moreton was expecting. From his usual seat at the back of the court, he listened to the evidence of the penultimate witness, Private Danny Marsh, with evident impatience. He had had his fill of the north Somerset coast and was anxious to be back in the thick of the action shuttling between Whitehall and the offices of the Chief Coroner in the Royal Courts of Justice.
The intervening fortnight had taken its toll on the relatives. Sarah Tanner, now even more visibly pregnant, looked to have aged ten years. Sitting next to the female police constable who during her weeks of isolation had become her only companion, her eyes stared out from above dark shadows. Paul and Rachel Green appeared no longer to be on speaking terms. They sat two seats apart and barely exchanged a glance. Kathleen Lyons was composed as always, but somehow cut a more diminished figure. Her defiant dignity had given way to weary resignation. She seemed more caught up with her own downcast thoughts than with what was going on around her.
Claydon White and Carrie Rhodes did their best to give an impression of optimism, but the smiles were forced. They had read the public mood and could feel it magnified inside the courtroom. Even in the space of seventeen days there had been an imperceptible turning of the page. The war was over. The social media storm over the #Helmand2 was a distant memory. The wave of outrage had crashed on the shore. There would be no emotional verdict, no headline moment. If there was anything to be milked from the case, it would most likely entail a long and costly slog through the civil courts which they would have no appetite for. The relatives behind them would be palmed off with vague promises and the money spent on dining and driving them written off as a business expense.
At the other end of the lawyers’ bench, Robert Heaton radiated quiet, understated confidence. He had been given the job of steering the ship safely home and the harbour was in sight. In the face of all of his opponents’ bluster, he had already proved beyond doubt that Private Green had been the author of his own misfortune. There were many reasons that front-line soldiers weren’t permitted personal phones, and the dangers posed by unfaithful partners were high among them. He had lost his head and had only himself to blame for it.
Despite assurances from Alison that Private Marsh was a disaffected, spirited young man who wouldn’t shy from telling the truth, he had followed his colleagues in saying as little as possible. Jenny could understand why. With no qualifications and no immediate family to fall back on, the army, for all its faults, was all Danny Marsh had. Everyone has to belong somewhere and Danny clung to his sliver of security.
At the end of his brief spell in the witness box, Jenny turned to the final matter she wished to raise with him.
‘You took Private Lyons’s notebook from his belongings, didn’t you?’
‘Yes,’ Danny said.
‘Why did you do that?’
‘I wanted his nan to have it.’
‘And you didn’t think it would get to her otherwise?’
‘I don’t know . . . I suppose I was worried it wouldn’t.’
‘Because it contained a letter he’d written to her to be read in the event of his death?’
Danny nodded. ‘Yeah.’
Jenny motioned to Alison who passed the notebook up to Danny.
‘Look at the letter. You’ll see that several pages have been torn out after it.’ She paused while he turned through the notebook. ‘What was on them?’
‘Nothing . . . I don’t know.’
‘That’s not an answer, Private Marsh. I’ll make it simple: did you tear out those pages?’
It was Alison to whom Danny’s eyes turned. From her elevated position, Jenny couldn’t see her expression, but she could guess it. Danny found himself paralysed and tongue-tied. He shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot.
‘Try again, Private,’ Jenny said. ‘Did you tear out those pages?’
Danny nodded.
‘What was on them?’
He squirmed with embarrassment. ‘Nothing. Just stupid stuff . . . Stuff the other lads had written – messing around. It was just mickey-taking. We all got it . . .’
‘When did they write this?’
Jenny could see Danny’s mind groping for any way out, but there was none. He was cornered.
‘When he was digging the latrine.’
‘So this was, what – teasing? Bullying?’
‘No. Just banter.’
‘And had you been drinking?’
‘Not much. Hardly anything . . . A couple of the lads just brewed some stuff in their canteens because it was the end of the tour.’
Jenny felt the atmosphere in the court turn. All attention was suddenly focused on Danny’s every twitch and gesture. Robert Heaton stiffened and leaned forward.
‘And did this “banter” have anything to do with what happened later that night?’
Danny Marsh’s lip began to tremble. Alison fixed him with a stern, maternal look.
‘It was just meant to be a joke,’ Danny said. ‘We hid his goggles . . . And when the sergeant ordered kit inspection we wound him up a bit – told him he’d be court martialled for letting his equipment fall into the hands of the enemy. It was just a joke. A stupid joke. No one thought he’d take it seriously.’
‘But you did know he’d take it seriously, didn’t you?’ Jenny said, ‘Because he was just a boy, wasn’t he? Was that part of the joke – the fact that there was so much he didn’t know or understand?’
Danny couldn’t deny it. ‘No one thought he’d go over the wall. You’d have to be crazy.’
Or young, or very frightened, or both, Jenny thought to herself.
‘Thank you, Private Marsh.’
She handed Private Marsh over to the lawyers and watched the faces of the jury as Danny was forced to accept that Lyons suffered more than his share of teasing and was the frequent butt of Sergeant Bryant’s temper.
‘You make it sound like we had it in for him,’ Danny objected loudly to Claydon White. ‘That’s not how it was. We loved that lad. Skippy was a mate. We all loved him like a brother.’
‘You had a funny way of showing it. The sergeant cracking his rib and the rest of you pushing him to the point where he gave his life for a pair of goggles.’
‘That’s the army,’ Danny said. ‘That’s how it is. That’s just how it is.’
‘I’m sure. I don’t doubt it for a minute.’
White looked gravely at the jury and sat back down in his seat.
‘Any questions, Mr Heaton?’ Jenny asked.
‘No questions, ma’am.’ Heaton politely shook his head in the hope that appearing unfazed was the best way to dampen the effect of Private Marsh’s evidence. ‘I’m sure the jury wouldn’t appreciate my delaying them from their deliberations a moment more than necessary.’
‘Well, they’ll have to wait a short while longer, Mr Heaton. I have one further witness I wish to hear from.’
‘Ma’am?’
On Jenny’s cue, Alison went to the door at the back of the court and called for Private Lee Roberts.
From the back of the courtroom, Simon Moreton fixed Jenny with an accusing stare. She ignored him.
Seconds later, the two male nurses Jenny had employed to transport him from hospital brought his wheelchair down to the front of the courtro
om followed by Anna. Private Roberts was dressed in uniform. The empty bottom halves of his dress trousers were carefully folded and pinned. He looked far from healthy, but following Jenny’s intervention a fortnight before, he had been weaned off his medication and on examination by independent psychiatrists was declared to be perfectly sane. The ICU psychosis was explained away as a symptom of an infection. Jenny had her suspicions over whether he had genuinely suffered a psychotic episode, but had put them to one side. All that mattered was that he was recovering and here to tell his story.
Anticipating Heaton’s protest at another unannounced witness, Jenny headed him off: ‘Do you have an objection to hearing from this witness, Mr Heaton?’
Ignoring the urgent whispers from the MOD lawyers behind him, Heaton glanced at the jury then at Private Roberts and decided that any attempt to block the witness would be counter-productive.
Private Roberts’s voice was weak and his delivery shaky, but he was determined to be heard. When he had sworn on the Bible to tell the truth and nothing but the truth, Jenny asked him for his version of the story. Without further prompting, he repeated to the court what he had told her in the hospital canteen the previous afternoon.
His final posting had been his third tour of duty, but his first under the direct command of Major Norton. It had become clear that things would be different from the moment of their arrival. Norton didn’t let a day go by without mounting a patrol, and often more than one. While other officers he had served under kept their men within the safe confines of the post for as long as possible, sometimes for days at a stretch, Norton believed in maintaining a near constant and visible presence in the valley. This required the platoon to operate at the outer limits of its abilities. A seven-mile foot patrol in full kit in forty degrees of heat with the constant threat of IEDs, sniper fire or ambush, sapped the energy from bodies and minds. If anyone dared question the need to patrol as often or in such exposed positions, Major Norton would always answer that he was operating on the direct orders of HQ. Colonel Hastings expected nothing less of them. Norton never mentioned his legendary record of killing and capturing enemy insurgents, but Sergeant Bryant reminded them of it frequently: they were working for the best and the bravest, and he expected them to step up their game accordingly.
The remorseless routine took its toll. They had two men seriously injured and one killed in the first three months of the tour. By a quirk of fate, both Kenny Green and Pete Lyons had been on the patrol in which Private Dalton had been killed in an ambush which resulted in them being pinned down for three hours. Dalton took two of those hours to die in writhing agony, in the middle of a dirt road. The incident hit morale hard. Norton responded not by easing back but by stepping up activity. Sensing that the men were becoming restive, Sergeant Bryant became even more ferocious in his discipline. Most were smart enough to keep their heads down, but Pete Lyons couldn’t help himself – he’d answer back, then get the rough side of the sergeant’s tongue or worse. Roberts wasn’t in the least surprised that Lyons had a cracked rib – Bryant’s boot seemed to be his regular alarm clock.
Somehow the men got through the rest of the tour without further loss of life, although they had more close shaves than he cared to remember. As the weeks passed they seemed to degrade the local Taliban to the point where the local villagers claimed that they had retreated from the valley altogether, making only the occasional forays from the surrounding mountains. For a while it felt as if they had won the war and that it had all been worthwhile. Then, a month from the end, and with the approach of the opium-growing season, Taliban had reappeared to assert themselves and let the farmers know they would be expecting a cut of their business. Norton increased the frequency of their patrols still further. An exhausted platoon started to fray at the edges. Discipline suffered. Some of the men cadged small amounts of hashish from the locals and brewed up hooch.
‘You couldn’t help but think that someone was going to get killed before we got home,’ Roberts said. ‘We didn’t talk about it, it was just a feeling in the platoon – that Major Norton would rather die than take a single backward step.’
The night of the 21st had been particularly edgy. The 22nd was to be their last day of operations. There would be a dawn patrol and one later in the evening. No one wanted to catch a bullet on their last outing. The bottles of hooch had been passed round. There was dark talk of refusing to leave the post the following day. It had seemed like a good idea for a while, but then someone came up with the idea of playing a prank on Pete Lyons. Skippy was all too easy to wind up. Roberts hadn’t been one of the ring leaders, but he had heard some of the boys trying to convince him that courts martial could still sentence a soldier to the firing squad.
Lyons had pretended to tough it out as he always did. He certainly gave no clue that he was scared enough to go looking for his missing goggles. Looking back, Roberts guessed it was probably as much to do with his pride as anything else. Skippy had wanted to go home a man, a hero, not in disgrace as a loser who had fainted on patrol and earned himself a serious charge.
They had all felt sick with guilt the next morning when they realized he was gone. They were all waiting for someone to blurt out what had happened, but no one did. Major Norton became more and more agitated. He had been showing serious signs of strain for weeks – sudden mood swings, outbursts of anger – but Lyons’s disappearance pushed him to the edge. Before Yusuf arrived with the news that the Taliban were holding him and demanding $100,000, he was pacing like a caged animal. There had been no question of sending Yusuf back with a counter offer. Norton wanted to resolve the situation immediately. He didn’t want to be the officer who had been humiliated by kidnappers on his last day of tour.
Roberts hadn’t noticed that Kenny Green was particularly quiet that morning because they all were. They hardly spoke a word to one another. Everyone was dealing with his own private guilt. When the chance came to go to Shalan-Gar, they were almost relieved. Kenny had thrown his kit on. He couldn’t get there fast enough.
All Roberts remembered of the short journey along the dirt road to the village compound was the atmosphere in the Land Rover in which he was travelling. Major Norton had been deathly silent, but it was obvious to everyone that his silence was masking his rage. He had owned that stretch of valley for six months. He had earned the trust of the locals. He had led a platoon that had eliminated more than one hundred of the enemy. And here he was on the last day having the Taliban stick two fingers up to him. Even Bryant felt it. Roberts remembered glancing over at Norton in the Land Rover with concern. The two of them had always operated as a single unit. That morning, Bryant looked like a man who had been cut adrift. He couldn’t seem to read Norton’s intentions, and his uncertainty was picked up by the men. By the time they walked through the heavy gates into the silent village, they could smell each other’s fear. Soldiers have a sixth sense: each one of them knew something bad was about to happen.
Roberts, Green and Carter watched the backs of Bryant and Norton as they crossed the square to Musa Sarabi’s house. The compound was often bustling and full of noise, but that morning there was precious little sign of life except the odd chicken scratching in the dust. The Taliban were in the village – they could feel it. Norton knocked on the door of Musa Sarabi’s house and Roberts had seen it open and the panicked look on the old man’s face. He knew in that moment that the village elder had sent Yusuf to lead them into a trap. Almost immediately a grenade exploded on the far side of the square.
They dived for cover behind the low wall that ran along the perimeter of Musa Sarabi’s property as a burst of gunfire issued from a rooftop some thirty or forty yards away on the far side of the square. They returned fire as it became clear that there were two or three gunmen firing from separate positions. Then they heard screams and gunfire coming from behind them inside Musa Sarabi’s house. It was a big house that stretched over two floors. Sarabi inhabited it with his extended family – brothers, wives, cousins, chil
dren. Roberts heard Kenny say, ‘It’s Norton – he’s gone crazy.’
‘I didn’t register what was going on at first, but Kenny clocked it. Before I knew what he was doing, he’d shot through the door into the house. I heard shouting – Kenny yelling at Norton to stop or he’d shoot. There were more screams, more gunfire from inside, and more incoming from across the square . . . It was all over in seconds – Sergeant Bryant went in after them. There was a shot. He came out seconds later and took off across the square firing up at the rooftop and ordered us to follow. He took one of the gunmen out. Private Carter and I broke cover. We were firing up at the roof thinking we’d taken the enemy out when another grenade came in. I saw it coming in to land about ten feet in front of us . . . I blacked out . . . Then all I’ve got is snatches of memory. I saw Bryant dragging Kenny’s body across the dirt, Norton following behind . . . I heard voices – Danny Marsh and the others. That’s it. That’s all . . . I’ve got a picture in my mind of the helicopter – the female medic sticking a needle in my arm – then nothing till Bastion.’
‘What do you think happened to Private Green?’ Jenny asked.
‘I think he was trying to stop Norton murdering women and children. He was going to shoot him, but Sergeant Bryant shot Kenny first.’
‘But you didn’t see it?’
‘No. Only Sergeant Bryant knows for certain.’
There were only two further questions for the witness. Both came from Claydon White: ‘Private Roberts, would you agree with one thing that Sergeant Bryant told this court – that Private Kenny Green died a hero’s death?’
‘He did.’
‘Would you have shot Major Norton if you had witnessed him murdering women and children?’
Roberts took a while to consider his answer. ‘I don’t know, sir. Loyalty’s powerful, but not always a good thing . . . No, I’m not sure I’d have been brave enough.’
Sergeant Bryant arrived in court later that morning flanked by two hefty military police officers. He did as Jenny had suspected he would and refused to answer any further questions on the grounds that he was entitled not to incriminate himself.
