Cherringham--The Vanishing Tourist

by Neil Richards

  Mary didn't return from that moment of drifting away.

  “You know him, Mary? Right? You can tell us?”

  The pause interminable. Mary O’Connor had a secret in all this.

  When her eyes finally returned — so slowly — her face showed that she was about to reveal it.

  “That soldier …” she said slowly, the room so quiet, “he was my nephew.”

  And then, as if it might not be clear enough, “He was Patrick's son.”

  15. A Tale of Two Warriors

  Sarah had stepped out into the sun.

  Jack watched her just stand there, outside the hotel.

  In all the years Jack had asked people about things, secret things … and watch them slowly begin to talk, to open up about something they so much wanted kept secret … he had not seen anything like the hushed conversation between his partner and Mary O’Connor.

  He stood by her, also enjoying the sun, its wonderful warmth, but waiting for Sarah to … what?

  Come back?

  Return from the conversation she had just had and all the thoughts?

  “You okay?” he said.

  Without turning, she nodded.

  Then she asked Jack the question that was also running around his brain.

  “Jack, what Mary told us? What does it mean?”

  He shook his head. “I’m not sure. Definitely a connection … O’Connor and Latchmore. We have to go to him now.”

  She nodded. “But what is it about? That connection — what could it be?”

  He had no answer to that.

  And — like a ray of light that would suddenly make everything sharp and clear — Sarah's phone trilled, the piercing ring loud, startling.

  She dug the phone out of her jeans.

  A glance, then to Jack.

  “It’s dad.”

  Sarah answered the call.

  “Dad. Hi …”

  Nothing then. Jack watched Sarah nod … then she made the gesture of writing to Jack, who dug out a small spiral notebook and a pen from his shirt pocket.

  Sarah turned to the nearby wall of the hotel and — phone nestled in her shoulder — she started taking notes.

  “Yes. What year? Right. And the end of the enquiry?”

  As she listened and took the notes, she looked at Jack.

  Then: “I understand, dad. No one who doesn't know about this will hear about it. Got it.”

  “Dad — thank you.”

  Then her father must have said something that made Sarah laugh and she closed the call, “I love you, too.”

  She lowered the phone and turned to Jack.

  “It all fits, Jack. What dad found out.”

  She started walking to her Rav 4. “I’ll tell you on the way to Latchmore’s place. I think for that chat I ought to pass the ball to you.”

  Jack nodded walking beside her.

  “And to think that I thought this wasn't much of case at all.”

  “It's more than that,” Sarah said walking briskly. “It’s a story. Sad, but true. And I think we may finally learn what happened to Patrick O’Connor.”

  She pressed the button to unlock her car doors.

  And as she got into the driver's seat. “This may not be easy, Jack. Based on what you told me about Latchmore.”

  “It’s never easy to get those last secrets out …”

  Though the day was warm, the sun brilliant, Jack felt chilled.

  Going back to that makeshift cottage, the tall trees encircling it — guarding it almost.

  The shade from the trees cool. Latchmore chilly as well.

  And dangerous?

  Could well be, thought Jack.

  Sarah had his small notebook on the left armrest, standing in a cup holder.

  But she didn't need to refer to it as she brought Jack up to speed.

  “The enquiry …” she began. “There was an incident in Helmand … Americans, British, a cry for help and a rescue that didn't happen. Richard Latchmore was there. And so was O’Connor's son.”

  “Lieutenant Eddie O’Connor.”

  She nodded. “He’s named in the enquiry. The lieutenant in charge of the American soldiers …”

  As Sarah drove — a bit fast, Jack thought — he guessed what everything they had learned meant.

  “And that’s why his father Patrick came here?”

  Sarah's answer, simple, now suddenly obvious: “Yes.”

  *

  Jack knocked at the door of the simple shack. Quiet.

  Perhaps Latchmore was out, walking the wild woods nearby.

  But then from inside, steps. Slow.

  He looked at Sarah.

  “Maybe you should wait in the car, Sarah. I mean—”

  She quickly shook her head. “This is where I belong. The two of us, here.”

  Jack knew better than to argue.

  The door slowly opening. Latchmore in the open crack. A look at Jack, then to Sarah.

  “Thought you’d be back … detective. And with your friend?”

  Jack scanned Latchmore's face. Was this veteran potentially dangerous?

  He and Sarah had done some risky things. But this somehow felt more dangerous.

  Unpredictable.

  “Yes,” Jack said. “Can we come in? Few more questions.”

  A small smile creased Latchmore's face.

  Too savvy not to know they had found something out.

  Maybe he had even had been warned by someone after Michael's questions about the enquiry?

  “Well, let’s see …” said Latchmore. “Do I have a choice?”

  He put on exaggerated American accent. “You don't happen to have what they call a search warrant, do you pal?”

  Then, beside him, Sarah spoke.

  “We just want to help,” Sarah said. “To know the truth. About Patrick O’Connor …”

  “The truth? Oh, that has a habit of squirreling away. One person’s truth …”

  Latchmore's face turned grim, his mood shifting moment to moment in this conversation.

  “…is another person’s lie.”

  Jack nodded, looked down at the ground. They could go to the police.

  But what would they do? What could they do with an honoured veteran?

  No evidence. They had the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle without knowing what the hell it was supposed to look like.

  “Let us come in. Five minutes, and then — if you want the meeting over, out we go.”

  “Damn right,” Latchmore said.

  Another shift. Another hint of menace.

  But even as he said that, he opened the door wider, and suddenly Jack and Sarah were free to walk into the darkness of the cabin.

  *

  Latchmore grabbed two simple wooden chairs, plopped them in the centre of the room.

  “Sit. Tell me …” the words laced with sarcasm “…what you think you know?

  Latchmore remained standing while Jack and Sarah took the seats.

  No. This was not going to be easy, Jack thought.

  “Five years ago. You served in Helmand province, British special forces.”

  Latchmore said nothing.

  Jack was suddenly aware of Latchmore's shotgun standing in the corner, barrel down … something he might have expected to see in a shack buried in the Appalachians rather than just outside a small Cotswold village.

  “And at the same time, not far from where you led your squad, an American team was doing reconnaissance. And that squad was led by a young American lieutenant.”

  Latchmore cleared his throat.

  Jack could guess that even these simple words … could take the vet back there.

  To the dismal sands, the rocky hills, the country filled with allies who could quickly turn into enemies.

  “Want to tell me how the hell you found this out?”

  Jack nodded. Latchmore's confusion made sense.

  This was all supposed to be secret. The files locked.

  “These days? What can be kept secret
?”

  Jack looked at Sarah. He would have preferred if it was just him inside this cramped near-shack.

  Too damn unpredictable, he thought.

  What do we really know about Latchmore, his mental state?

  “So …” Latchmore said, as if trying to sound casual when it was anything but, “…an American squad there, my men nearby. So what?”

  It was defiant.

  Jack nodded.

  “They were wiped out. With your team so close. And that soldier in charge … his father came here. Patrick O'Connor. The young lieutenant’s father. He came right down Barrows Lane. Down here—”

  A gamble there, Jack thought. We don’t know that for sure.

  He saw Sarah doing her best to keep a worried look off her face.

  “And after that …” Jack opened his hands as if the words were a magic trick, “he vanished. Gone. And you were the last person to see him. Because—”

  And now, instinctively, Jack stood up …

  “Because he came here to see you. There’s a connection between his son dying and your squad being right there, doing nothing.”

  A pause. The next words sounding harsh, brutal. “Isn't there?”

  Jack and the tall Latchmore now eye-to-eye.

  The British veteran looked ready to take a swing.

  “What the hell do you know about what happened out there? In that god-damned desert?”

  Jack nodded. “You will tell someone what happened, Latchmore. Maybe not us. But the police, somebody. You'll tell them what happened when O’Connor came down here to see you … And why he came down here.”

  Latchmore looked away.

  And for a moment, Jack hated what he was doing.

  The guy had been through plenty. Jack had worked with cops who went straight from their tours in Iraq and Afghanistan to taking the police test, going from the academy to the streets of New York … and he knew how haunted so many of them could be.

  They could be good cops.

  But they could also have a lot they were dealing with.

  What’s the expression?

  They had seen things.

  Finally, Jack pressed on: “What happened?”

  And at that moment, with a creak that made Jack turn, startled by the sound piercing the quiet in the shack — the front door opened.

  16. Handling The Truth

  Sarah turned fast, nearly jumping as the door opened as Jack was pressing the ex-soldier so hard.

  And she saw Karen Taylor, babe in arms, walking into the room.

  The baby quiet against her chest, playing with her mother’s hair even though it was tied tight into a bun, a few stray strands catching the light.

  “Dad,” she said quietly, “you have to tell them.”

  Sarah looked to Jack.

  Dad?

  So Richard Latchmore was Karen’s father?

  Things began to click into place. The daughter married to a young soldier — who, like her father, had gone away to fight. But unlike her father — hadn’t come home.

  Was that why Latchmore had moved into this little shed up the lane from her cottage?

  To be here, to support his daughter and her baby?

  To protect them.

  But what did she want Latchmore to say? What did she know that they didn’t?

  They knew Latchmore had been on duty in Afghanistan, near where Eddie O’Connor had been attacked.

  And nothing had been done to save the Americans.

  They also guessed why Patrick O’Connor had made this grim pilgrimage.

  “Sarah,” her dad had said to her, giving her the details of that day, what the enquiry revealed, “you must keep this to yourselves.”

  As best she could, Sarah had promised to do just that.

  And now — in this dark shack, it was all about to come out.

  “Karen. You shouldn't be here. Go back—”

  The baby looked up as her grandfather spoke, eyes sparkling. Then, out of place but so wonderful, a smile.

  “Dad, you did nothing wrong. It should all come out properly. You have to tell them.”

  Sarah watched Latchmore walk over to his daughter and the baby girl. He extended a hand — rough, worn, weather-beaten but now so gentle as it stroked the oh-so-soft cheek of the baby.

  “I … I—”

  Then, in a matching gesture, Latchmore's daughter raised her hand to her father’s hand.

  “The truth, Dad. It can never be wrong to tell the truth. Isn't that what you taught me?”

  Sarah watched their eyes, locked on each other — father and daughter.

  And then — almost reluctantly — Latchmore removed his hand from the baby girl’s cheek, and turned to look at Jack, then Sarah.

  All sense of threat seemed to have dissipated when his daughter and granddaughter came in.

  Latchmore took a deep breath as if the words to come next would be so hard to say …

  “First,” he said quietly, “that day in Afghanistan. It was spring. But so hot. The sun blistering. But quiet. Always so glad when it was quiet …”

  Everyone waited. Latchmore sat.

  “Then the message on the radio. A secure channel. The US squad nearby. Under heavy fire. Asking for help, from someone, anyone … any unit that might be close.”

  He looked up.

  His eyes hooded. The pain of this story palpable.

  “And me and my men … not far away at all …”

  *

  Jack listened as Latchmore told the story of that bloody afternoon in a rock-strewn valley in Helmand Province.

  He and his men had been lying in wait for two days in an abandoned farm. They were on a secret mission to take out a key Taliban leader. A mission that could — on no account — be compromised or revealed.

  Regardless of whether an American unit, in trouble on the hillside opposite, were begging for help.

  Or were dying.

  Latchmore and his men had pleaded with base over their radio to be allowed to offer support. But their mission was paramount — their orders clear.

  They had reluctantly melted back into the shadows, while above them on the bare hillside, one by one, the Americans had died, their air support diverted, delayed, finally arriving too late.

  Back at Camp Bastion a week later, Latchmore had been criticised by American colleagues for doing nothing.

  His response — that he was obeying orders — sounding hollow in the air-conditioned offices of the base.

  Inevitably, the mission he and his unit were deployed on soon became an open secret when the desperate fate of the American unit was discussed. Forums took that open secret back to parents and families in the States.

  Where Jack could imagine how the story unfolded.

  Patrick O’Connor, now alone in the world, his family gone — had clearly poured his grief and anger into finding those responsible for his son’s death.

  The Taliban had killed his son. But Patrick must have railed at the idea that allied soldiers were less than a mile away, men who could have risen up to fight at his son’s side — but chose not to.

  “So Patrick came here to see you,” said Jack, his eyes locked on the English soldier in the chair opposite. “What did he want?”

  “He wanted to kill me,” said Latchmore.

  “What?” said Sarah. “But he was so frail …”

  “Frail, yes,” said Jack, his eyes not leaving the soldier, “but still tough enough to take on Rob Ferris, don’t forget.”

  Jack waited for Latchmore to continue, but it was his daughter who spoke next.

  “That day … he just appeared,” said Karen. “It was so frightening. I’d been out in the garden with the baby all afternoon. When I went in — he was in the house. Sitting in the kitchen. Waiting. He had a knife. Wanted to know where my husband was. I was terrified. I said my husband was dead. He didn’t believe me.”

  “The cottage, used to be mine, you see,” said Latchmore. “That’s how he tracked me down.”
/>   “But he didn’t know you’d moved out …” said Sarah.

  “Sold it to Peter when they got married,” said Latchmore. “Built the shack here — so I could be near …”

  “But alone,” said Jack.

  “How I like it.”

  “So, Karen — what happened?”

  “I tried to get him to calm down, but he wouldn’t listen. Then—”

  “Then I turned up,” said Latchmore. “Good timing — or bad. Take your pick.”

  Jack nodded. He knew this story was going to come out. It just needed its own time …

  “I told Karen to take the baby — come up here and wait. I thought I could talk him round. Explain. I told him the truth about that day. Or at least — the truth as I see it. But he didn’t want truths. He just wanted one thing …”

  “Revenge,” said Jack.

  “In the end I just held my hands up and said there was nothing else to say. In war, we all lose people we love. I lost men. I lost my son-in-law. Blaming gets you nowhere. I turned to go — and he just threw himself at me. I got the knife off him — though he did cut me.”

  Latchmore took a breath. So hard to be reliving this.

  “I didn’t want to hurt him but he wouldn’t stop. Kept coming at me, punching, kicking. In the end I just hit him. You know? Just to put him down. But it’s a stone floor. He hit it hard. He didn’t get up.”

  Jack watched Latchmore — so matter of fact, calm, talking about Patrick O’Connor’s death.

  But then he was a man who had seen a lot of death — how else would he talk about it.

  “What did you do then?”

  Latchmore shrugged.

  Jack pressed on. “What did you do, Richard?”

  “I put him in the wheelbarrow, took him up to the copse, laid him down out of sight. Then I came up here, told Karen he’d gone away — and she was safe. Told her it was best not to mention him to anyone. She understood — didn’t you love? Always best to keep your head down — you know?”

  Jack nodded. “And then?”

  “Went back to the wood that night. Brought the body up here. Buried it by the barn. Under the woodpile.”

  “Why not just tell the police?” said Jack.

  “Right. Sure. When the Army let me go they said I had mental health issues. PTSD — you know? Who was going to believe my side of the story? Trained killer versus grieving father. And what about Karen here? They’d have hounded her. TV. Press. Journalists. No, I did the right thing.”