Banks finished his pint. ‘Sounds like a plan to me,’ he said.
Gerry made her way up the A1 for her meeting with Aunt Jane that evening. It was full dark already, and the road was busy with the last of the rush-hour traffic. Her windshield wipers were whipping back and forth at top speed to clear the filthy spray thrown up by the lorries ahead of her. The A167 through Northallerton would probably have been a more pleasant drive, Gerry thought as she slowed down for the roadworks north of Scotch Corner. Though the rain had stopped for now, for which Gerry was grateful, when she looked out from side to side, she saw lights gleaming on lakes where there should be fields. This was the danger point. The ground was so waterlogged that it couldn’t absorb any more moisture. One more heavy shower and banks would be broken and barriers breached. Low-lying neighbourhoods would be flooded, streets evacuated, and perhaps even people would be killed.
She pulled into the village of Hurworth-on-Tees and parked outside the church opposite the Bay Horse, where she had arranged to meet Aunt Jane for dinner. It was an expensive restaurant, she knew. She had been once before with a potential boyfriend who had been trying to impress her. The meal had impressed her very much, but unfortunately the suitor hadn’t. Her girlfriends had always said she was too fussy when it came to boyfriends, that she never gave anyone long enough to get to know them, but from Gerry’s point of view, she wasn’t so desperate for a man that she was willing to take the second rate. And in her experience the second rate didn’t take long to spot, and was second rate for good reason.
Aunt Jane was already waiting at a table Gerry had reserved in the warm, soft glow of the dining room. The voices of the other diners were muffled and the servers came and went without fuss. She hoped she might be able to get some useful information tonight. She had been disappointed by the mugshot on the police Internet archive. It resembled the person in Ray Cabbot’s sketch, but not enough.
Aunt Jane stood up to greet her, all six foot two of her. Gerry thought herself tall at six foot, and indeed she seemed so at work around her colleagues – only Winsome Jackman matched her – but Aunt Jane put her in the shadow. She was broad-shouldered and full-figured, clearly fit and sturdy, but in no way unfeminine. In fact, Gerry noticed a number of men in the dining room sneak an admiring glance as she stood up. Jane also looked a good ten or more years younger than fifty. Her blond hair was piled high, and that made her seem even taller. Statuesque was the word that came into Gerry’s mind. She wasn’t wearing a uniform tonight, but a simple black dress with a high neckline and a red waistcoat buttoned up the front. Bangles jingled like wind chimes around her wrists, and a simple string of pearls hung around her neck. The hoop earrings were just the right size. As usual, Gerry marvelled at her elegance just as much as she had marvelled years earlier.
Aunt Jane was an honorary title. There was no blood relation between the two. She was Gerry’s mother’s best friend from their schooldays and, though the two had gone in very different directions, the friendship had endured. When Gerry was younger, they didn’t see much of Aunt Jane, who, she later learned, had been serving in both Afghanistan and Iraq, but when she did come to town it was like Christmas. Her energy and enthusiasm for just about everything were infectious, and although Aunt Jane and Gerry’s mother were the same age, to Gerry, Aunt Jane always seemed more vibrant, more fun and far, far more cool. That was unfair to her mother, she now realised, but back then she had just been an impressionable child. Aunt Jane had taught her a few martial arts moves to use against the boys who pulled her hair at school; Aunt Jane had taken her for a pillion ride on her motorcycle and made her promise never to tell her mother; Aunt Jane had helped her choose the colours that suited her and showed her how to apply lipstick, eye-liner and mascara before she was officially allowed to wear make-up by her parents. And then, of course, she had disappeared back to Afghanistan again as suddenly as she had arrived. A leg injury caused by an IED had put paid to her active service, and she now walked with a slight limp, like Terry Gilchrist, but the army had found her a suitable desk job at Catterick, and she had seemed happy enough to leave the world of action behind.
‘Well, look at you, stranger,’ Aunt Jane said as they both sat down. ‘It’s been too long. Why haven’t you been to see me? It’s not as if I’m far away now you’re up in Eastvale.’
‘I know. I’m sorry,’ said Gerry. ‘Just, you know, being the new girl and all . . . it’s a hard job.’
Aunt Jane smiled. ‘No need to tell me that,’ she said. ‘I just miss my old friend Geraldine, that’s all. You must come and see me more often.’
‘I’d like that,’ said Gerry. Aunt Jane was the only person apart from her mother who called her Geraldine.
‘How’s Tess – I mean your mother. I haven’t heard from her in ages, either.’
‘She’s fine,’ said Gerry.
‘Still lecturing at the poly?’
‘It’s a university now,’ said Gerry. ‘They all are. Have been for years. But, yes, she’s still working.’
‘Dad still drafting wills?’
Gerry laughed. ‘He’s still working, yes.’
‘Good for him. Aidan’s still carrying a torch for you, you know.’
Gerry felt herself blush. Aidan was Aunt Jane’s son, and they had been out together a few times in their teens. ‘I thought he was married now.’
‘Oh, he is,’ said Aunt Jane. ‘Mariette. Nice enough girl. But it doesn’t stop him pining for you.’
‘Oh, stop it,’ said Gerry. ‘You’re embarrassing me.’
‘You always did embarrass easily. Shall we study the menus? Wine?’
Jane already had a glass full of red wine in front of her, and the bottle stood open on the table.
‘Just a drop,’ said Gerry. ‘I’m driving.’
Jane poured her some wine. A bit more than a drop, in Gerry’s opinion, but she said nothing. ‘And in case you’re wondering,’ Jane said. ‘I’m not. Driving, that is. One of the perks of rank.’
They clinked glasses and Jane put on her reading glasses to examine the menu. In the end they both decided to have moules marinière for starters and settled on pan-fried halibut with black carrots and various foams, ketchups and sauces for Gerry, and for Jane a 28-day matured fillet steak, cooked rare, with hand-cut chips, onion rings and vegetables. They put in their orders and leaned back in their chairs.
‘You were asking about a Mark Vincent,’ Jane said finally. ‘May I ask why?’
Gerry leaned forwards and lowered her voice. She had known when she set up the meeting that if she expected to get information she had to be willing to give some, and she trusted Aunt Jane as much as she trusted anyone. More than most, in fact. ‘He’s a suspect in a case we’re working on,’ she said.
Jane narrowed her eyes. ‘Well, I assumed that much,’ she said. ‘What case? And don’t try to weasel out of it.’
‘A shooting. A mass shooting.’
‘The Red Wedding?’
‘Shhh,’ said Gerry, glancing around nervously. ‘Yes.’
Jane topped up her glass and offered to pour more for Gerry, who declined. ‘You’re working on that? How exciting. I thought you’d got your man, though. How much of a suspect is he?’
‘Hard to say just yet. That’s why I wanted to talk to you.’
‘You know I can’t give you any details? National security and all that. The army likes its privacy. We don’t like to be held too accountable for our actions. We don’t like to let people know what we’re up to. We always have a get-out-of-jail-free card up our sleeve.’
Gerry laughed. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘I’d just like to know anything you can tell me about his military career.’
‘Oh, there’s plenty I can tell you. I had a good nose around after you phoned, even talked to some people who knew him. And if it helps you, that’s all well and good, as long as nobody else knows where it came from.’
‘I’ve got no problem with that,’ Gerry said. ‘If it helps, I’m just trying t
o get some kind of confirmation that we’re on the right track. I’m pretty sure of it, but we have no real evidence yet.’
Jane swirled the wine in her glass. ‘Well, I can’t answer that question for you,’ she said. ‘Mark Vincent was nothing unusual. He had a few problems, but who doesn’t?’
‘So how did you, or the army, deal with his problems? And what were they?’
Jane sighed. ‘You have to understand, dear, that in addition to other things, we’re quite tolerant of our own. As you know, we have internal systems of discipline, rules and regulations. They’re as much meant to protect us from the outside as they are to enforce justice and punishment within the services. To put it bluntly, no matter what the recruitment adverts and friendly websites tell you about careers and what have you, all that goes out of the window in wartime. In wartime, a soldier’s job is to kill people, and we will forgive him an awful lot if he just does that one job exceptionally well.’
‘And Mark Vincent did?’
‘There was a war of some sort or another throughout most of Mark Vincent’s army career. Like many other soldiers in his position, he saw far more action than any human being should have to see, and he endured it. Don’t you think that takes a sacrifice, maybe rips out a little part of your soul? We also asked him to do things that no decent human being should ever have to do. Whatever we may be, us soldiers are not automatons. We are not without conscience, human feeling, compassion even. At least we start out with those things. In some cases, they get knocked out of us over the years. That may have been the case with Mark Vincent.’
Their moules arrived and both sat in silence for a while to enjoy them. ‘What was the general consensus on Vincent?’ Gerry asked.
Jane paused with her fork in mid-air. ‘Mark Vincent was a violent and disturbed young man when he joined up. He had a lot of anger, and we taught him to channel and direct that anger and violence. Which, when you think about it, is hardly unusual in the army. As a rule, we can direct violence against the enemy, but if you’re asking me whether I think he’s the kind of man who could direct it against someone he thought had betrayed or crossed him, then I’d have to say yes. But that’s just an opinion based on an afternoon spent reading files and talking to people about him. And I’m not a psychologist.’
‘Don’t worry. I’m not going to quote you,’ Gerry said. ‘Did he ever train as a sniper?’
Jane hesitated before going on. ‘The army doesn’t like to talk about things like that,’ she said, ‘but yes, he did. He was an excellent shot, and he had no compunction about killing strangers from a distance. It would have been a waste not to train him. And use him.’
‘Did he have mental problems?’
‘Of course he did. Show me a soldier who doesn’t. Sometimes mental problems can be valuable assets in the military. Oh, we have our psychiatrists and so on, but it’s not like you can patch up a psyche in a field hospital the way you can a gunshot wound or an IED injury. And it’s not as if our shrinks have the time it takes to spend on fixing these minds. Years of therapy? No chance. Many of them go undiagnosed. PTSD, for example. There’s been a lot of talk about that recently.’
‘Did Vincent suffer from PTSD?’
‘Hard to answer. I’d reckon that he probably did – at least he suffered some of the symptoms. He was never diagnosed – he never spent long enough with a psychiatrist for that – but in my layperson’s opinion, from what I’ve read, and what people have told me, I’d say he did. According to one report I saw, he suffered from headaches and insomnia, and he had difficulty controlling his emotions and forming relationships with others. There were also issues of substance abuse, again not uncommon in PTSD cases, or in combat, for that matter – just think Apocalypse Now.’
Gerry had never seen Apocalypse Now, but she didn’t want to let on to Jane. ‘Drugs?’ she said.
‘In Mark Vincent’s case, the doctor thought it was mostly alcohol, though other drugs may have been involved. You should remember that pretty much all of this was only discovered towards the end of his military career, shortly before his discharge. He never underwent any serious psychiatric evaluation.’
‘I got the impression, reading between the lines,’ said Gerry, ‘that the discharge was dishonourable.’
‘Well, that’s true to some extent,’ Jane said, ‘but we prefer a mutual parting of the ways, if we can work one out. I’m sure you have the same policy with bent coppers when you can get away with it. Far less headline-grabbing. And Mark Vincent had certainly served long enough to retire gracefully.’
‘He didn’t object?’
‘No. He took the package, as they say in business.’
‘Did his discharge involve anything to do with a civilian massacre?’
‘I know of no such massacre.’
‘Kosovo?’
Aunt Jane remained silent for a while. ‘It takes a long time for these things to come out, for the investigation into allegations to be completed, probably much like your business.’
‘So he was?’
Aunt Jane merely smiled.
‘I also think he made connections there he used later when he was involved in people-trafficking,’ Gerry went on. ‘Especially young girls in the sex trade.’
‘Well,’ said Aunt Jane. ‘I wouldn’t deny that such things happen. Soldiers do sometimes come into contact with criminal elements.’
‘But he was also promoted to sergeant at one point. How on earth did that come about?’
‘How do these things usually come about? Deceptive appearances. Human error. He was good at getting people to do things, and that’s one trait you want in a sergeant. Leadership quality. Unfortunately, as we discovered too late, Vincent was only good at getting people to do things that benefitted himself, not the army as a whole. I never came into contact with him, you understand, so I’m speaking very much as an outside observer here, based on official reports and a couple of off-the-record conversations, but I’m pretty good at reading between the lines, and I’d say Vincent was charming and manipulative when he wanted to be. And he did have a bit of a temper.’
‘How did it manifest?’
‘Bar brawls, that sort of thing. Fighting in general. Again, that’s not so unusual for a soldier. He was quite a decent boxer in the ring, too. Controlled and disciplined.’
They finished their moules just as the main courses arrived. Jane worked her way through the wine as she ate her bloody steak. Gerry had only taken a few sips of her first glass. Mostly because she was driving, but partly because the rich and complex red wine didn’t go very well with moules or halibut. ‘What kind of state was he in after he left the army?’
‘I’ve no idea what became of him. Maybe you can fill me in on that?’
‘Petty crime,’ said Gerry. ‘Assaults, arson, prison, that possible involvement in people-trafficking I mentioned earlier.’
‘Not surprising. It’s what I would have predicted from what I’ve read. At least the army gave him a rudder to steer by and a structure and shape to his life. Without them, he’d have been lost. I’ve seen his type before, far too often. When they first come to us, it’s generally because someone has told them – either you lot or their parents – that it’s either prison or the army. And when they leave us, as often as not it’s prison they drift towards.’
‘I thought the army was supposed to make men out of boys?’
‘You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, Geraldine. You ought to know that in your line of work.’
‘But was there a specific incident? He was in Iraq at the time, wasn’t he?’
‘Yes. Basra.’ Jane finished her steak, pushed the dish away. She had finished her wine, and the alcohol seemed to be having no effect on her. ‘But as I hinted earlier, it was mostly a matter of the Balkans catching up with him. In Iraq it was petty crime, mostly. Black market, that sort of thing.’
‘And in Kosovo?’
‘Other things. Many just rumours. Most not proven.’
&n
bsp; ‘What sort of things?’
‘That he was rough with women. Certain kinds of women. Rumour has it he beat up a prostitute once. There were several unexplained murders. Nothing we could pin on Mark Vincent, of course, but in retrospect . . . One way or another, Mark Vincent became a liability. You can argue that it should have happened sooner, but . . . what can I say? Hindsight makes visionaries of us all.’
‘What was the problem with women?’
‘Same problem as with so many men. Women were all sluts to him. Except his dear dead sister, of course. She was an angel.’
‘How do you know about that?’
‘According to one of the men I talked to, someone who knew Mark Vincent, he used to go on and on about her, showed her photo around. It seems she died when he was quite young. Is this of any use?’
‘Yes. We think this may all be connected with his sister’s death.’
‘How?’
The waiter arrived with the dessert menu. Jane studied it and decided on a cream cheese and vanilla mousse, while Gerry settled on a herbal tea. Jane gave her a pitying look. ‘Oh, Geraldine, Geraldine,’ she said. ‘What are we to do with you?’
When the waiter came by, Jane ordered the mousse and a double Remy. Gerry thought about the bill and swallowed.
When the waiter had gone, Gerry told Aunt Jane about what had happened to Mark Vincent’s sister, and of Maureen Tindall’s role in it.
‘And he naturally thought that if this Maureen had turned up, his sister wouldn’t have died?’ she commented.
‘Yes. I think so.’
‘In his eyes, then, she was perhaps as responsible for the loss of his sister as the actual murderer himself?’
‘That’s about it.’
‘Well that’d certainly do it, wouldn’t it?’
‘It seems so. But don’t say anything, Aunt Jane. It’s only a suspicion. I’m not supposed to talk about it.’
Sleeping in the Ground Page 31
