Chapter 22

 

Back in London, Waite reassured the team that Milton was still firmly with them.

The CCTV footage had provided excellent coverage of what had happened in that Parisian square, but their joy at landing firm evidence had turned sour when they saw that their chief appeared to be one of the main perpetrators. It had been a stunning revelation that they had refused to accept on the face of it.

Waite had addressed them all and explained the incidents building up to the moment when Milton was caught on camera beating the Scouser up. The troops were both satisfied and relieved. Milton owed his junior a drink.

“Our focus now is to turn to a Jackie Carson,” he said. “Detective Inspector Milton has reason to believe that this is the correct name for Carson Jacks, which is an alias. Run it through all the usual channels and I want answers within three hours. Come on, let’s move.”

The reaction of the staff proved that their minds were back on the job after a difficult past couple of days as they dispersed to their workstations.

Various snippets of information filtered back to Waite over the next couple of hours but he asked his excited team to save their findings for the briefing, which commenced three hours later on the dot.

The buzz of chatter as he entered the briefing room showed Waite that they had the required results.

“Okay, who’s first?” he said.

Sergeant Sandra Bennett couldn’t wait to share her news. Her job had been to run his name through the Ministry of Defence’s army personnel records.

“Jackie Carson, it appears, was an exemplary soldier.” She was reading her notes obtained from a conversation with a Ministry of Defence bookworm.

“He joined the Royal Signals at 16. He was selected for training to the communications division of the Special Air Services at 20, making him one of their youngest members ever. But for some reason he was kicked out 18 months later. He was dismissed from the Regiment.”

“Do we know why?” asked Waite.

“No, sir, the military are very cagey about this one, but they have promised to let me have something by the afternoon.”

 

“To be honest, Waite, that is nothing that I didn’t really suspect already,” Milton said down the phone minutes after the briefing finished.

Waite was a little disappointed. He was eager to inform his boss of his findings and called him immediately after the briefing. But he still had more information to share.

“We’ve also tracked down his mother,” he added.

“You beauty, Waite. That’s more like it. Where is she?”

“She is 67, widowed, and living in Watford. We’re heading up there this afternoon to see her.”

“Just make sure you take Sergeant Bennett with you to give it a woman’s touch.”

 

Waite knocked on the door of the semi-detached house, which was located in a well-kept suburb of Watford. There was no answer.

“Hello? Mrs Carson?” Bennett called out.

“She’s around the back,” shouted a white-haired lady from an upstairs window of the house next door.

Waite and Bennett opened a waist-high garden gate at the front of the house and walked alongside the garage to the back garden. Mrs Carson was making the most of the last gasps of decent weather before the onset of winter blues.

She was kneeling on a cushion with clippers in hand trimming a plant.

“Hello, Mrs Carson?” Bennett called out again.

“Oh, hello.” Mrs Carson seemed shocked at being addressed by a uniformed officer. “Just making the most of this lovely weather.”

“I don’t blame you,” said Waite, who would rather have been sitting in the beer garden of a pub himself.

“I’m Sergeant Waite and this is my colleague Sergeant Bennett.” They produced their identification. “We’d like to ask you a few questions about your son.”

Mrs Carson’s face turned to an expression of sadness.

“You had better come inside then,” she said in a soft voice. “Please, come this way.”

She led her guests through a narrow back door which entered into the kitchen. Once inside, she put the kettle on and invited Waite and Bennett to sit in the immaculately kept living room. One of its main pictures on the wall was a head shot of Jacks wearing military attire. He looked no older than a teenager.

“It was the proudest day of my life when that photograph was taken,” she said, seeing the two were looking at the picture. “It was taken down in Aldershot and my Jackie had just passed out from his basic training and into the main regiment. He was so happy.”

“So tell us about your son,” Waite probed.

“Why all the interest after all this time?” she asked.

Bennett took over. “Ma’am , we have reason to believe that your son may be involved in criminal activity.”

“No way, not my Jackie. It’s impossible. He couldn’t do such a thing.”

“I’m sorry, Mrs Carson, but we have evidence to the contrary,” said Waite.

“No, it’s impossible. You see my Jackie was killed nine years ago in the Gulf War.”

The news stunned Waite and Bennett who were now completely baffled. Milton had not shared all of his information with his junior officers for fear of his story sounding too far-fetched. He had simply told them that Jacks had been on a mission in Kuwait during the Gulf War. He had shared with them nothing on the fallout from their operation.

“He went on a special assignment just before the main air bombardment, to save an Arab sheikh or something, but he never made it out.”

“Who informed you of his death, Mrs Carson?” asked Waite, who was not convinced.

“It was one of his colleagues that was on the mission with him. He said the Ministry would not confirm this because he was on a top-secret mission working for an Arab family. It was the saddest day of my life. Losing a husband is bad enough, but a son? Well, you always expect them to be here long after you go.”

Mrs Carson went on to describe her son’s upbringing. His father was a communications engineer and had taught his son the trade since he could walk, spending hours together in the shed at the back of the house.

“His father died in a car accident when he was 14 and it changed his life,” she said.

“He was one of the brightest lads in his school, but he had made his mind up that he wanted to dedicate his life to what his father had taught him. The only way he believed he could do that was by joining the Royal Signals.

“I tried to keep him in school. He left with 10 O levels you know. But his mind was made up; Jackie was stubborn like that, just like his father.

“The stuff he was taught during his first couple of years in the army his father had already taught him and the army soon realised that they were dealing with a communications expert who was only 18. He was even teaching the teachers at times.

“He came home a year or two later and said that he had been selected to apply for the SAS. That was the last time I saw him until he left the forces.”

“And why did he leave the army?” asked a softly spoken Bennett.

“He never did say. But what I can tell you is that he was never the same man again. My son may have died during the Gulf War but I felt I had lost my son the day he left the army.”

She may not physically have had a body to bury but emotionally her son was already six-feet under.

 

Waite was convinced that Jacks was indeed Jackie Carson. During his phone call later that afternoon with Milton, they decided that he obviously wanted his mother to believe that he was dead in order to sever completely his ties with the UK, substantiating the story Pups had told Milton a few weeks earlier.

But the most compelling news came later that afternoon when the Ministry contacted Bennett again.

“Sir, you are not going to believe this,” Waite said to Milton.

“Jackie Carson was kicked out of the military for football hooliganism.”

“You are right, Waite, I do not believe you!”

The story was to send shivers down Milton’s spine.

“Sir, Jackie Carson, or Carson Jacks as you now know him, was stationed in Turkey in 1990 when England played there in a friendly before the World Cup finals.

“There was a lot of trouble. Thousands of England fans had travelled out for a bit of winter sun and there was also a large garrison of British troops stationed there as tension was rising in neighbouring Iraq.

“Jacks was there with the 22nd Squadron of the SAS, a specialist tactical division used to monitor the movements of Northern Iraqi forces by intercepting their radio transmissions.

“Anyway, he was off duty and in Istanbul on the day of the game and apparently got caught up in the trouble. But wait for this …”

Waite took a deep breath. He was talking at 100 mph, but tried to steady himself.

“The Ministry sent over CCTV footage of a couple of incidents that were used as evidence during his closed-door trial. In fact this is still a Top Secret file.

“The first showed him fighting inside a pub which was completely wrecked by the trouble. You can clearly see him using his professional fighting techniques.”

“So was he jailed as well?” Milton interrupted.

“No, sir. Once he was found by the Turkish police, they checked his ID, saw that he was military and handed him over to the British military police to deal with. The court took into account what had happened to him after the fight and he was simply discharged from the regiment.”

“What do you mean, ‘found’ and ‘took into account what happened after the fight’?” Milton was curious.

“Take a deep breath, sir. This is where it gets nasty.

“It appears that the English fans were hugely outnumbered at the pub and were overrun by the Turks. Most of them legged it, including Jacks, but he became isolated from the others. He ran down a narrow alley pursued by a mob but it was a dead end. CCTV footage from a nightclub that has a staff entrance in that alley picked it up.”

“What did it show, Waite?”

He could hear Waite swallow with a gulp before he continued.

“Sir, Jacks was heavily outnumbered. From the footage it looks as though there were about eight of them. They just overwhelmed him but he put up a fight. He kept getting up but they just kept beating him and beating him time and time again. It was brutal, sir.

“Eventually he didn’t get up and lay motionless on the floor. Sir, the dirty bastards raped him while gloating and cheering. Absolutely filthy animals.”

Waite was battling to relive the horror of what he had just witnessed on the television screen.

“He was defenceless. He was raped by three of the men and I could tell he was still just about conscious as he was still moving his arms and trying to push them away.

“There was nothing he could do, sir. The others just stood there laughing and I’m sure they would all have raped him but something happened and they fled. A minute or two later the police arrived.

“He spent two weeks in hospital with a fractured skull and several fractured ribs. He was dismissed by a military court several weeks later.”

There was a deadly silence. Milton was stunned and felt as though the wind had been kicked out of him.

He could not believe that a man so revered and respected by so many had suffered such a degrading and disgusting act.

“Are you sure it’s Jacks?” he asked.

“Absolutely. His face matches all the pictures you have sent through. I am 100 per cent certain that Carson Jacks and Jackie Carson are the same man. 100 per cent.”

Milton felt sick. He had not seen the footage but Waite’s graphic description painted the macabre picture in his mind.

It was no wonder Jacks had fallen out of love with his country. He had been through one of the most inhumane episodes possible for any man or woman and all his country could do was say he was no longer fit to defend its borders.

It would be enough to push many over the edge.

Not only did Jacks now have an army at his own personal disposal, he also had a motive for revenge. It was getting messy but Milton was convinced that he was the only other person at Expatriatedotcom to know the real story of Carson Jacks and he decided that was the way it would remain.