by Tom Bradby
Professor Malcolm leant forward on the sofa. He took the photograph album from her, glanced through the rest of it, then closed it and rested both elbows on the cover. ‘Is there any moving picture? Cine film, or something like that? From the same period.’
Julia hesitated. ‘Yes.’ She stood up. ‘I had it transferred as a present for my mother.’ She went to the television, knelt down and opened the box beside it. The tapes, like the photograph albums, were numbered by year, but they also had the subject matter written on them. This had been done by the company Julia had asked to do the transfer.
She put the tape for 1981–2 in the video and switched on the television. It began with the skiing holiday. The video had no sound and the tape flickered with the staccato motion of cine film.
The images were of Julia skiing, shot by her father or mother – probably her father. She was doing a snowplough down a gentle slope beneath a grey sky. There were several takes and, in between, Julia could remember going up the button lift visible in the background. Then, all of the class came down together, doing the snowplough and clutching each other so that they formed a long snake. At the bottom, they fell over.
Julia could see out of the corner of her eye that Professor Malcolm was smiling.
The cine film did not mirror the photograph album, even if they covered the same epoch, because her father generally had one camera or the other with him, but not both. After the skiing holiday, there were pictures of Julia and Alice on the common. These, too, had been shot by her father, but Julia could not see now why he had chosen to film them, since they were just walking along, obviously shy of the camera. Alice was wearing long white socks, which were visible above red wellington boots. She wore a plain blue sweater and her hair was scruffy. She was a long way from pink dresses and makeup. Julia was in jeans and a blue jacket.
Alice smiled shyly into the lens, which had moved closer to her, and Julia recalled how naughty Alice had been on occasion. She remembered painting on the drawing-room wall next door and Sarah’s unrestrained fury when she had caught them in the act. That had been around this time.
Julia had been clutching the remote control and now began to fast forward. ‘There’s no need to rush,’ Professor Malcolm said. She slowed it to normal speed.
She rubbed her forehead. The film moved on to the summer and a lunch at the de la Rues’ house. The shelter at the end of the pool was the same, but this was before the wall had been built so you could see the lawn beyond. Sarah was lying flat on the ground in a yellow bikini in the sunshine. Julia could see her own mother in the background in an upright chair, but the camera stayed on Sarah before moving to the other side to shoot her from a different angle. Sarah was gesticulating at the cameraman and smiling, obviously telling him to go away. The yellow bikini emphasized how brown she was, and as she sat up, shooing him away with her hand, Julia saw that, even in this position, there was little fat around her stomach.
The camera must then have been switched off and later picked up by someone else, because the next images were of Alice on Mitchell Havilland’s shoulders. He swung her around and threw her off, then she climbed on him again, scrambling up, before standing and jumping with a shriek of delight.
Julia wondered if Sarah had filmed this. Alice swam after him, climbed up, jumped. Julia was in the pool, swimming on her own. She didn’t join in.
Julia pressed the fast-forward button again, then leant forward, switched off the television, took out the tape and put it back in the box.
‘It’s hard to see her,’ Professor Malcolm said.
‘Yes.’
‘Such a sweet girl.’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s so much harder seeing moving images, isn’t it?’
Julia nodded.
‘There’s quite a lot of her, though.’ He coughed. ‘It’s nice to have. Terrible, after the event, to look back and wish you’d shot more pictures … somehow harder to have nothing to remember her by.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘You must wish …’ He stopped.
‘Wish what?’
‘The new machines … the video cameras are so much better because they can record voices … they give you a much better record of personalities. That could be … worth a lot.’
‘Yes,’ Julia said, adding another ‘yes’ with more emphasis as she took in what he was saying.
‘Would you mind if we went back to the scene now?’
Julia didn’t answer. She was thinking how much she would give to be able to see her father talking on film, as if he were still alive.
CHAPTER SEVEN
MAC WAS SITTING in the granary restaurant at Heathrow’s terminal three, looking at the dregs of his third black coffee. It was almost twelve, he had been here for three hours and the screen above said that the delayed flight was still not due in until one o’clock.
He pressed the redial button on his mobile phone and put it to his ear, thinking he had left it long enough.
‘Is that Mrs Evans?’ he asked. ‘Hi, it’s Captain Macintosh here again. I called earlier and I’m so sorry to bother you once more. I said I was looking for the regimental personnel files for Mitchell Havilland. Did you get anywhere with Lieutenant Colonel Ford?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But we can’t give them to you.’
‘But, Mrs Evans, I am—’
‘We don’t have them.’
There was a pause while Mac tried to work out what she meant.
‘The Colonel has just returned to the base,’ Mrs Evans said. ‘He would like a word.’
Mac waited while she put him through. He felt unaccountably nervous.
‘Mac!’
‘Colonel Ford …’
‘Alan. For goodness’ sake, Mac, you’re practically family.’
‘Well, I’m really sorry for bothering you, it’s just that—’
‘Mac, we had to hand over these files to the MoD and to your own investigating team, led by a Major Rigby. We did it some years ago. Not only Mitch’s file, but most others as well – almost everyone serving in the battalion at the time.’
‘Right. Do you think it’s possible I could come down and—’
‘The position, Mac, is this. After the investigation was closed, I had a number of high-level visitors and was instructed that neither I nor my colleagues were to discuss this further with anyone. So, if you’d like to get these same high-level people to pick up the phone and instruct me to go ahead, I’d be delighted to help, but I would really need that kind of authority.’
Mac considered explaining the circumstances of the call and appealing to Alan’s affection for Julia, but thought better of it. He was a little embarrassed.
He ended the phone call and went to get another cup of coffee.
Mac ended up bringing the two sergeants back to the Granary restaurant, seeking out a quiet corner on the far side. He had considered something more formal, but thought that would work against him. Besides, both men looked tired and clearly wanted to get on with whatever was necessary.
Sergeant Jarrow was a strikingly good-looking man, with a broad face and unkempt blond hair that curled over the back of his collar. He was short, but lean and bulky, as if he spent much of his time in the gym. Like Mac, he wore a Drizabone.
Sergeant Blackstone was older, with a narrow face and a beaky nose. He had cropped dark hair, flecked with white, and a face that, though angular, was kindly. His manner was calm and reassuring, and Mac immediately saw his value as a source-handler.
He bought them both a coffee and came to sit opposite them. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘You’re both tired, so I’ll try to keep this brief.’
Sergeant Blackstone leant forward slowly. ‘We don’t want any part of, or involvement in, the destruction of this woman’s career,’ he said.
‘No.’
‘She’s a good girl.’ Sergeant Blackstone spoke with a faint hint of a Scottish accent.
‘Yes,’ Mac said.
‘Things just got out
of hand.’
Mac looked thoughtfully at the blank pad of white paper in front of him. He had not expected the two men to be so conciliatory. ‘The situation,’ he said, looking from one to the other, ‘is quite serious, in the sense that there are a number of other agencies involved – the Foreign Office, particularly, which is sensitive to having this sort of operation housed in an embassy anyway. If you want to help Captain Havilland, then I need to have some kind of handle on what went wrong.’
There was a long silence. Eventually Blackstone looked at Jarrow, and leant forward to Mac. A young woman had come to sit at the next-door table, so he hesitated, then said quietly, ‘It’s very introspective. Always on call, always waiting around, worrying about the man out there. It can get to anyone.’
‘Did she get on with you?’
‘Yes, but, you know, we’re …’ He glanced at Jarrow. ‘It’s intense. She did get a bit withdrawn.’
‘Why, do you think?’
‘It can get to anyone. It’s like that.’
‘Is there any …’ Mac stopped for a second. ‘Captain Havilland has an exemplary record, can you think why it might have got to her on this occasion?’
‘It’s cumulative,’ Blackstone said. ‘Everyone knows who her father was. And the Sword of Honour stuff. I think she feels a lot of pressure to succeed.’
‘She said as much?’
Blackstone shook his head. ‘You learn a lot living in such close quarters.’
‘But I thought she was succeeding?’ Mac said.
Blackstone shrugged. ‘She felt our man might have been a plant. We held his hand okay – me and Steve – but it’s not our job to assess the information. That was her and the Americans. She felt he was feeding us crap and she blamed herself.’
‘But he wasn’t a plant?’
‘Probably not.’
The Clapham district library is about a hundred yards up the hill from the junction, past Allders and opposite the bus-stop. Mac had come here often in pursuit of background information on investigations and, as before, he bought a coffee from the café opposite on the way in – his sixth or seventh of the day.
The library itself was brightly lit and he walked through the rows of tall bookshelves to the reference section at the back, where low tables were full of people already reading newspapers and periodicals. He had to hide his coffee behind his back, because there were large signs forbidding eating or drinking.
When the woman at the counter asked how she could help, Mac had to think hard to remember when the war in which Lieutenant Colonel Mitchell Havilland had died had actually been fought. It seemed to belong to a different century. ‘The Daily Telegraph,’ he said, ‘from the first six months of 1982.’
It took her a few minutes, but she came back with one small plastic box, marked ‘DT. Jan–June 1982.’
Mac went over to the microfiche in the corner and switched on the light. He had been impatient while waiting for the corporals to find out more about Havilland’s death and, since military records were suddenly hard to come by, he had decided to begin with those in the public domain.
There was another machine next to him, but no one was on it. Attaching the reel was a clumsy business.
It took Mac a long time to spin through the months. Occasionally he stopped and read one of the front-page articles, to familiarize himself with aspects of the war he had forgotten, but he continued swiftly until he found the report covering the death of Lieutenant Colonel Mitch Havilland, known to regimental colleagues as Mad Mitch. Most of the front page was devoted to an article describing the long and bloody battle which had claimed his life.
Havilland had been with a small group of men on the eastern end of the mountain, holed up and unable to complete the final assault on a key ridge. Under fire, he had suddenly broken cover to pull in one of his wounded soldiers only to be shot in the back while carrying him to safety.
One of the article’s sub-headings was ‘Decisive act spurs men on to final assault on ridge’. There was a quote underneath this, from a Corporal Richard Claverton. ‘It was insanely brave,’ he had said. ‘We couldn’t let him down.’
After ‘Mad’ Mitch Havilland’s death [the report continued], the men were inspired to break the deadlock and push up on to the ridge, which turned out to have been held by a tiny group of the enemy, armed with a single machine-gun. The survivors were at last able to look down to see dawn breaking over Port Stanley and to savour their bittersweet and costly victory in this, the final battle of the war.
Mac sat back in his chair and picked up his coffee, which was still warm. Then he opened his satchel, which he had placed by his feet, and pulled out the sheet he had recovered from the printer the night before. He cast his eyes over the summary again: ‘Havilland, Lieutenant Colonel Mitchell. Investigation into death. No discrepancies found, save for informant. No further action due to informant’s psychiatric condition. Current battalion CO informed official complaint made and investigated. No action to be taken.’
Mad Mitch or not, Mac thought, running out under enemy fire to try to save the life of a corporal did not make any sense. It was more than mad, it was utterly foolish. He wondered how the soubriquet ‘Mad’ had been earned. He had always assumed it to be a term of affection.
Next to him, on the table, Mac caught sight of a copy of today’s Evening Standard. He pulled it over, then sat again, turned away from the microfiche machine. The front-page report was about the release of the Welham murderer, Robert Pascoe, and was accompanied by a picture of the man cornered against the wall of a house. Next to him stood Julia Havilland.
Mac stared at her, then at Pascoe, who looked hounded, almost messianic, as if in the final stages of deteriorating sanity. Beside him, Julia was calm and collected and … and as beautiful as she always damned well was. She was leaning forward, slightly off balance, one long leg behind the other. She was obviously helping Pascoe, because her arm was on his. In the corner of the photograph, a man was shouting at them both angrily.
Mac read the report, which said that she had intervened to help Pascoe away from the crowd and into his house. It detailed who she was, whose daughter, without comment. Mac returned to the article on the microfiche and glanced through it once more. Robert Pascoe was the soldier Mitch Havilland had died saving. He wondered why he had never known this.
Mac wrote down the name in his book, though he was unlikely to forget it. He thought the media frenzy, at least, would make Pascoe easy to find. Beneath, he wrote down ‘Richard Claverton. Corporal.’
Mac took back the microfiche. Behind where he had been sitting was the computer used for making searches and Mac typed in ‘Falklands War’. There were many titles, but he found his eyes drawn to the two most recent books, Excursion to Hell, and Green-eyed Boys. They were about the war crimes controversy of the early nineties. His department had run at least one major investigation into allegations that enemy prisoners had been shot after surrendering. Rigby had been deeply involved and it was rumoured – Sheila had told him this – that he had been instructed by the brass to make sure the investigation did not result in prosecutions.
And, in the end, there had been none.
Mac ordered up both books and skim-read them, as well as an overall account of the war by Martin Middlebrook.
He left the library four hours later, with the Standard tucked under his arm and a clearer than ever sense of the horrors of battle, but no more coherent thoughts about Mitchell Havilland.
He walked in the direction of home and turned on his mobile phone, which had been switched off while he was in the library. There were three messages, all from Sheila in the office, saying Rigby wanted to know how he was getting on.
CHAPTER EIGHT
PROFESSOR MALCOLM PAUSED by the cross on the village green before climbing over the stile and making his way down the path.
‘Do you walk here?’ he asked.
‘I came yesterday.’
‘For the first time?’ He stopped. ‘I apo
logize. If you’d rather not …’
‘No. It’s fine.’
They walked on in silence.
At the point by the stream where Sarah had been murdered, Julia nodded in response to Professor Malcolm’s silent question. He opened the envelope and pulled out the photographs, looking through them slowly and glancing at his surroundings from time to time. He handed some to her with raised eyebrows, expecting her to refuse, but she took them. She also looked about her.
‘In the early stages of the investigation, we were very taken with Sarah’s clothes,’ he said. ‘She leaves church at almost eleven on the dot, because everyone remembers the church bell striking. She comes straight here, on a wet day, in her Sunday best, dragging her daughter, both in inappropriate footwear.’
‘A rendezvous of some kind,’ she said.
‘Yes, but it’s not exactly subtle, is it?’ He took a few paces. ‘Do you know, we asked – I asked – so many people here about that during the original investigation and everyone gave us the impression they didn’t find anything strange about this. Alan, your mother, your father, de la Rue, the Rouses – none of them found it odd or inexplicable that Sarah should suddenly decide to go for a walk after church with her daughter.’ He was looking at her now. ‘It’s bizarre, isn’t it?’
‘What is?’
‘You don’t just walk out of church in your Sunday best then disappear off to the woods with your five-year-old daughter. What’s odd is the way in which everyone seemed to believe it was not out of the ordinary or remarkable. It’s explicable if you know she was meeting a lover, but otherwise it’s not – and no one ever entertained the idea that she might have been meeting a lover, despite the evidence that she was promiscuous.’
‘What do you mean?’
