No Reason To Die (29 page)

The ring of the doorbell saved her from having to come up with more of the right thing to say. After all, she was no better at soul-baring than Kelly. Indeed, quite possibly she was worse.

She opened the door, paid the pizza delivery boy, turning down Kelly’s shouted-out offer to share the cost, and put the box on the coffee table in front of the sofa.

After going into the kitchen and fetching a roll of kitchen paper, another glass of red wine for herself and a Diet Coke from the fridge for Kelly, she returned to the living room to find Kelly staring into space, the box still unopened before him.

She did the honours and passed him a slice of pizza, precariously balanced on a piece of kitchen paper.

He ate without enthusiasm, but finished the slice apart from the edge of the crust, which he rolled up in the kitchen paper she had given him.

She persuaded him to take a second slice, which he ate half of. She was starving – as usual. Two slices disappeared at a rate of knots and she was well into the third before she felt her hunger even begin to abate.

Kelly, having finished, walked to the window again and once more stood, with his back to the room, looking out over the bay, while Karen continued to eat. When she eventually felt moderately full, she joined him there.

The room was dimly lit and they could see outside quite clearly, as the entire seafront was brightly
illuminated by a mix of standard street lighting, strings of multicoloured fairy lights and the headlights of passing cars.

‘Still thinking about those walks with Moira?’ she ventured gently.

He did not reply, instead turning slightly more away from her.

She did not persist. She knew better. She stood quietly alongside him for a moment until she noticed that, although he had uttered absolutely no sound, his shoulders were shaking almost imperceptibly.

She put an arm around him and half turned him towards her. His body was strangely unresisting. She saw then that tears were streaming down his face. He was silently sobbing his heart out.

She put both arms around him then and held him very tightly, still saying nothing.

‘It’s all mixed up in my head,’ he muttered through the tears. ‘Moira’s death, Hangridge, not being able to write. Did I tell you? Barely two fucking chapters, that’s all I’ve managed. I didn’t tell you that, did I?’

‘No, Kelly, you didn’t,’ she said quietly.

‘No. I haven’t told anyone. I can’t do it, Karen. So much for becoming the great bloody novelist. I can’t fucking do it. You have to go into your head to write fiction. I don’t like what’s inside my head, and I can’t cope with it either. Not now I can’t. And as for Hangridge, well, I’ve been as absorbed with that over the last few weeks as I have with Moira. And that makes me feel guilty. I just feel so guilty. I can’t sort myself out. It’s all such a muddle … such a desperate, fucking muddle …’

He clung to her.

‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.’ He repeated the words
over and over again, in between great wrenching sobs.

‘It’s all right, Kelly,’ she said, in a way that she hoped was soothing. ‘It’s all right. It’s allowed to show grief, you know. You’re allowed to cry. So do so. Go on. Cry. As much and for as long as you like.’

After a bit, he stopped even attempting to weep quietly. He gave in to it and stopped trying to control the tears. It must have been fully two or three minutes before the sobs became less violent, but he still held onto her. Like a child, she thought. Then he said it again.

‘I’m so sorry. Really.’

‘Don’t be, please don’t be,’ she said. ‘I’m honoured.’

She took a paper tissue from the pocket of her jeans and gently wiped his face with it with one hand. With the other, she stroked his forehead. Suddenly she felt very tender towards him.

And then it happened. Something changed in his body, and to her surprise, and perhaps also to her dismay, she felt it change in her own body too. Maybe it was the display of tenderness that brought about the change, maybe it was something else, something beyond both their comprehension. She wasn’t sure. But, suddenly, John Kelly was no longer a child seeking nothing more than comfort.

His arms tightened around her and he began to kiss her face, her forehead, her eyes, and then, finally, her mouth. His lips sought hers with a kind of desperation. She didn’t mean to respond, but somehow could not stop herself. He pressed his lips against hers and his arms began to move over her body, stroking and caressing her. Then she found that she was doing
that to him too. He eased her lips apart with his tongue. She did not resist, instead she opened her mouth for him. For several seconds they stood like that, wrapped around each other, straining to make the kiss deeper and deeper, more and more demanding.

Then, all of a sudden, a moment of sanity hit her. What they were doing was madness. Total and utter madness. And she had had enough of such madness in her life. Kelly had buried his partner only the day before. His emotions could not be trusted, and neither, she suspected, could her own. Also, this was, at the very least, totally crass behaviour. Worse than that, it was quite horrible behaviour. And she could not live with it, even if he could. In addition, this was John Kelly. Her old friend and sparring partner. He had never been, and never could be, her lover. Not under any circumstances, she told herself, and certainly not under these circumstances. She was disgusted with herself.

Immediately, she jerked her head back, pulling away from his kiss, and at the same time struggled to push him away. It wasn’t much of a struggle. She felt his grip slacken and sensed him beginning to back off, even before she put both her hands on his shoulders and pushed. They both stepped back and stood, breathing heavily, looking at each other.

Kelly bowed his head slightly. She suspected he felt much the same way as she did.

‘Now I really, really, am sorry,’ he said eventually. ‘I just don’t know what came over me. That was a disgraceful thing to do. I’m just—’

‘No,’ she interrupted him. ‘No. It takes two. I played my part, all right. And I don’t know what
came over me, either. At least you have an excuse. You’re on an emotional roller coaster at the moment. You’ve just lost the most important person in your life, you’re in a muddle, you said that. You hardly know what you’re doing …’

‘Don’t I?’ he responded quietly. ‘No. No. You won’t make me feel better. I have no excuse at all, just a lot of reasons why I should not have done that. Look, I really had better go.’

She felt almost as emotionally drained as she was sure he was. Certainly, she had no energy left to try to further rationalise either his behaviour or her own. She just wanted to be left alone, to at least try to come to grips with what had happened. Or rather, she supposed, what had nearly happened.

‘Yes,’ she said quietly. ‘I think you better had go.’

She made no effort to see him out. He knew the way well enough. And he went at once, without saying another word. Perhaps, like her, he did not know what more to say.

She remained standing at the window and watched as his little MG pulled out of the car park and began to move slowly along the seafront road.

Sophie was at her feet, brushing against her, trying to wind herself around her legs. It was funny how, on the one hand, she was a typically selfish cat and, on the other, so sensitive to Karen’s moods that she almost invariably seemed to know when her mistress needed comfort.

Karen bent down and picked up the cat, scratching the back of her neck as she lifted her against one shoulder. Sophie’s more or less constant purring grew louder and louder in her ear.

‘You know what, Sophe,’ Karen murmured. ‘Your Uncle Kelly and I very nearly did something extremely stupid.’

Karen realised she was almost in a state of shock. Fond as she was of him, she had never considered Kelly in any sort of romantic or sexual way before. It had just never occurred to her.

And she was grateful that they had both come to their senses before that extraordinary moment had developed into something more. She was extremely glad they had stopped. But only because she had felt it was wrong. After all, the timing had been just terrible.

But the man, when his arms had been around her and his body pressed against hers, had not felt wrong at all. He had been both tender and exciting at the same time. As for the kiss, well, the kiss had been fabulous. Quite fabulous. She didn’t want to admit that, but it was true.

She could still taste it, still feel it. It had been a very special kiss indeed, and she was quite astonished. She had never thought there could be anything like that between her and Kelly.

None the less, it must go no further. She did not need any more man trouble, and Kelly was always, always, trouble. Also, she valued their friendship a great deal, and romance – or perhaps she really meant sex – was, in Karen’s experience, all too often inclined to render friendship dead in the water.

‘There’s only one thing for it, Sophe,’ she muttered to the still-purring cat. ‘Your Uncle Kelly and I just have to forget all about that little incident and go back to exactly the way we were before.’

Kelly’s whole body was trembling as he drove home. Like Karen, he had found their kiss very special. It had woken up his senses again. He had always found Karen attractive, but in an abstract kind of way, and it had simply never occurred to him before that their relationship could ever become anything other than it was. And now, like Karen, he believed that what had happened between them had been very wrong, particularly at this time. The fact that he had so actively enjoyed kissing Karen, just one day after he had buried his partner, made him feel quite sick. In effect, what he had done was little more than to make a clumsy pass at Karen Meadows, quite possibly destroying a friendship he cherished. And then there was their professional association. Had he destroyed that too?

Normally, even at a difficult time like this when he was coping with grief, he would be feeling elated to be on the threshold of an investigation like the Hangridge one. And, indeed, he had been truly excited by the information which Karen had handed him on a plate. It was, after all, potential dynamite. This was the kind of story the old hack in him lived for. And now he had spoilt it all. Not only had he killed the thrill of it for himself, but also, for all he knew, Karen Meadows might not even be prepared to continue with the information-sharing scheme she
had presented to him. At the very least she must consider him dangerously unstable, he reflected.

He muttered a few expletives as he parked the MG. Why was he such a fool? But then, perhaps he had always been dangerously unstable.

The house looked particularly dark and empty that night. He hurried to unlock the door, get inside and switch on the lights. It was almost as cold in the house as it had been outside.

He checked the central heating boiler. The timer had been playing up. The system had closed down a good couple of hours earlier than it should have done. Cursing some more, Kelly switched it on again, made himself a mug of tea and wandered upstairs to check his answering machine.

There was a message from Margaret Slade. Brief and to the point.

‘Neil Connelly has just phoned. Whatever you said to him worked. He’s come round in a big way. I think he’s going to join the campaign. Call me.’

Kelly smiled. At least this would give him something else to think about. Still marvelling at the change in the woman, he returned Margaret Slade’s call at once.

‘I told him all I knew and I reckon he’s prepared to go all the way with us,’ she said. ‘He’s a solid sort of man, too, I think. It’s just journalists he doesn’t like.’

‘I’m not a journalist.’

‘Yes, well that’s the sort of prevarication that puts him off ’em, I should say.’

Kelly chuckled.

‘You’ve got an answer for everything, all of a sudden, Margaret. And, by God, you’re going to
need to have, taking on the military. You should know that the police, although aware of a big question mark hanging over these deaths at Hangridge, are not going to be investigating. Not at the moment, anyway. The official view is that these deaths have already been properly investigated by the SIB.’ Kelly paused. ‘Even though we now have four deaths to consider. I’ve found out about the squaddie called Trevor. And what you were told has turned out to be absolutely right. His death was another alleged suicide, very similar to your Jossy’s, as it happens. His full name was Trevor Parsons and I have his last civilian address.’

‘That is progress, John.’

‘Yeah. Look, you should know that I do have a very good long-time police contact, Margaret.’ Kelly paused again. The thought continued to lurk in the back of his mind that Karen Meadows might no longer be quite such a good contact. Not after what had happened that night. But he certainly had no intention of discussing any of that with Margaret Slade.

‘I’m not going to tell you who it is, but, suffice to say, we are talking about a senior police officer who has basically been refused permission to pursue matters with the army, and that this officer is actually angry enough about that to be prepared to pass on information to me.’

‘Wow! You are good, John, aren’t you?’

‘Umm. We’ll see. But what about you? I think I’m only just beginning to get the hang of you. No doubt, you’ve got your next move planned?’

‘Well, sort of. We’re going to call for a public inquiry. You have to be focused, don’t you, and it’s
no good making a lot of noise without knowing what you’re aiming for. We thought we might march on the House of Commons, or something like that, but I’d like more ammunition.’

She broke off. ‘If that isn’t an unfortunate choice of words under the circumstances,’ she said.

Kelly smiled again. Black humour. All the best fighters, in any kind of battle, were inclined to indulge in black humour, he reckoned.

‘Anyway, I don’t think we’ve got enough to throw at Parliament yet, do you, John?’

‘Probably not. We need to co-ordinate everything, find out all we can and then make our move. The march sounds great. And I’ll handle the press side, when you decide to do it. I’d like to have a proper story ready to drop simultaneously. I do already have something to go on.’