“What we have is a Lawrence who served on barges for three years and got rapid promotion. It does not prove anything.”
Sarah-Kelly said nothing, although her expression suggested she would rather have talked about her own funeral.
“You knew him better than anyone else,” Donald said.
“I can’t believe he did the kind of things I’ve heard about in the Commission. He was thoughtful. That was his downfall, I think, along with not hiding his contempt of most of the other officers. Why would someone who’d read a whole roomful of books slaughter people?”
“It’s not about whether he read a roomful of books or not. The Lawrence I remember never showed any cruel streak as a boy; he never tortured cats or bullied weaker boys. His trait was defiance in the face of authority...” Despite which, it was incontrovertibly the case Lawrence had made himself useful to General Wardian glory trust—Account-Captain Turner had been quite sneeringly emphatic about that during the meeting in Oban.
“Something disturbed him though,” Sarah-Kelly said. “He had nightmares, he babbled about ‘light brushes’ and ‘hard brushes’. A ‘light brush’ is when surplus are taken back to port—I’ve learned that in my work—and a ‘hard brush’ is a prevention; they use the so-called brass-muncher. I’ve also heard it called a killer-quad, which is a more honest name.”
“Maybe he picked up rumours.” Donald was thinking of Lawrence’s friendship with Team Lieutenant Haighman. “Before we can do anything at all, I need to check that the court martial has been revoked and the Night and Fog sentence cancelled as TK promised they would be. If it’s all done and dusted, life gets an awful lot easier for all concerned. Then he is no longer a wanted man and we can get him out here and talk to him. It must be driving Bartram up the wall sheltering a fugitive from the Night and Fog.”
“How will we find all that out?”
“I’ve asked for his personnel file to be sent up from corporate HQ.” Donald smiled. “Being in the Provisional Cabinet does have some perks.”
Chapter 21
Donald found both Lawrence’s and Garrington’s personnel files waiting on his desk. He opened Lawrence’s file. To begin with, he checked whether the revocation of the court martial and annulment of the Night and Fog sentence had been brought up to date in the file. They had been—a communiqué signed by the executive-marshal of General Wardian reinstated Lawrence at the rank of cost-centre lieutenant along with all privileges as they had been as of 15/07/06. A subsequent note signed by an account-captain somewhere in the HQ bureaucracy stated that as of 25/11/06 it had not been possible to trace Lawrence Aldingford but enquiries would continue.
The file made keen reading to a brother who knew almost nothing of his sibling’s career. Lawrence had made immediate impact as a quick-witted, natural leader, with a fine memory and probing intellect. He was marked for high command even while he preferred the clunking route up from probationary basic to senior NCO of a combat unit. One sensed a certain reticence in appraisals by his officers—the use of vague phrases like “solves problems efficiently”, “a discreet individual”, “may be trusted with difficult tasks” could mean a great range of things, all subject to a context known only to the writer. The impression was Lawrence completed his missions without incurring a fuss higher up the chain of command.
The file of Leading Basic Garrington was much thinner. It told of an unexceptional teenager who drew perfunctory comments of satisfactory progress in training. He had indeed been assigned to the Oban garrison, he had indeed been allocated as crew of ‘survey barge’ Oban-C. Grade Lieutenant First Class Aldingford had signed off a favourable preliminary evaluation. There followed a sequence of memos. Lawrence’s memo to his boss Account-Captain Second Class Turner that Garrington was missing after an informal search of the barracks, Oban’s pubs and brothels had failed to turn him up. Several crewmen had provided statements that money and personal valuables were missing on return to Oban from Garrington’s first patrol. Then Turner’s report to his boss, an executive-colonel in charge of Accounts Scotland, formally invoking a hunt by Corporate Audit to arrest Garrington on charges of theft and desertion. A stack of records evidenced the efforts of Corporate Audit to find their man: a watch put on the family home; routine visits to local pubs; interviews with old school friends and former teachers at the local street school. None of these had yielded success after almost two years, although “enquiries are ongoing”.
What would a court make of this? Garrington’s statement seemed to have the conviction of truth about it, against which, the ingenuity of clever liars should not be under-estimated. Equally, the charges of theft could have been fabricated. Donald felt suspended by suspicions and doubts running both ways.
His own convictions, as well as his legal training, held Lawrence innocent until proven guilty. It ran deeper than just wishing to believe the best of his last surviving kin. Donald just could not make himself believe a youth whose only vice was insolence could have become a pitiless mass-murderer. It was easier to believe Lawrence had been tempted into corruption, even if that ran against a boyhood free of cheating, lying or stealing. Father had once commented the only reason he continued to keep Lawrence at school was his honesty, which proved that somewhere within his errant son there was an honourable person.
Donald sat for a while, thinking of matters beyond Lawrence. By this time, National Party bulletins had spread throughout the Republic of the New Nation announcing Donald Aldingford as the new minister for trade. Probably TK and Wingfield had already read one. It chilled Donald to imagine TK’s reaction. He had sent
