No Reason To Die (35 page)

‘Hello,’ he said tentatively.

‘I understand you’re investigating the deaths of soldiers up at Hangridge,’ responded a muffled voice. It was so distorted, no doubt deliberately, that Kelly could not even tell if his caller was a man or a woman.

‘Well, I have been looking into various incidents at the barracks,’ he replied cautiously.

‘I have information that I believe could be of interest to you.’

‘I see.’ Kelly could feel the hairs standing up on the back of his neck. This was far from the first time in his life that he had received a call like this. Sometimes they were from total nutters. More often than not, they were from people who thought they knew something important, but actually didn’t. And once in a blue moon they were dynamite.

One thing Kelly knew for sure, this was the kind of investigation that was crying out for a deep throat. Because if he was honest, without something of that nature – some anonymous source of crucial inside information – Kelly did not see the truth ever being fully revealed.

On the other hand, there had now been yet another death which could be connected to the others. And there were other disturbing factors, notably the most important and the most potentially explosive aspect of his meeting with Colonel Parker-Brown earlier that day, when he had been confronted by something totally unexpected, something only he could possibly know about, and something he really could not wait
to share with Karen. The sensible part of Kelly urged him to tell his caller to contact Karen Meadows and then to hang up. He was getting into extremely deep water. He should merely put together the best story he could from the information he already had, and then step back from the whole affair. After all, obsessive though he might be when embroiled in an investigation, he was not a totally stupid man. And he was becoming aware that even he could be in some danger, if he continued to delve into the affairs of the Devonshire Fusiliers. However, he quickly dismissed the thought from his mind. Of course, he wasn’t in any danger. And even if he was, well, there was absolutely no chance of him stepping back from this investigation. If this caller had information for him, then Kelly wanted it, and Kelly would probably do almost anything to get it. So, he wasn’t going to back off. Not now. Not yet. No way.

‘Who are you?’ he asked instead.

‘Never mind that,’ said the voice. ‘I’m just somebody who has a great deal of information that you might want. You and the families of those dead soldiers. I know what happened to them all, you see. What happened and why. I know the truth.’

‘I see.’ Kelly didn’t know what else to say.

‘So, do you want to know the truth too?’

Kelly sat down in his window armchair with a bump. His knees had suddenly seemed in danger of giving out, and he realised that he was sweating.

‘Of course I do,’ he said.

‘Right.’

‘Well, go on …’

‘Are you off your trolley, man?’ The remark sounded so incongruous when delivered by someone
who appeared to be speaking through a thick wedge of cotton wool that Kelly found he was smiling in spite of himself.

‘I’m sorry …’ he began.

‘Yes. You should be. I’m not telling you any of this on the phone.’

‘Right.’

‘No. We’ll have to meet. And somewhere we won’t be seen.’

‘Right.’

‘Do you know Babbacombe beach?’

‘Yes.’ How strange, thought Kelly. It was one of his favourite haunts, that and The Cary Arms. He had been up there – well, on the road above the small secluded beach, anyway – on the day of Moira’s funeral. It had been a refuge for him then, and he didn’t really regard it as quite the place for a clandestine meeting. But he wasn’t going to argue.

‘I’ll see you there at midnight tonight. And come alone.’

‘Yes. Of course. Right. Where exactly?’

‘You just start to walk along the beach, from the direction of the pub. I’ll be there. You won’t see me at first. I’ll find you. Don’t worry. Just walk up and down the beach, until I do. Oh, and no torch. You don’t need to see me, you just need to listen.’

‘OK. But, tell me. Why are you doing this?’

‘They were mates of mine. Alan Connelly, Jimmy Gates, Robbie Morgan. They were all my mates.’

The caller hung up then. Straight away. Leaving Kelly looking at a buzzing handset.

Shit, he thought. Connelly, Gates and Morgan. His mysterious caller was indicating a link between those three deaths at least, already backing up Kelly’s own
suspicions. And the most significant aspect of that was that he had included Morgan in it. Morgan, whose involvement had remained something of a long-shot until that moment. Morgan, a local lad whose death probably hardly anybody in Torbay knew about yet. But Kelly’s anonymous informant knew. Less than twenty-four hours after Morgan had been murdered, he knew. He could have seen it in the evening paper, of course, just as Kelly had. And, indeed, maybe it was that which had prompted him to contact Kelly.

Kelly took his tobacco and skins out of his pocket and began to roll himself a cigarette. He was both excited and thoughtful. He had no idea how his caller even knew that he was investigating the deaths at Hangridge, but, apart from his dealings with the various families involved, he had now actually visited the barracks of the Devonshire Fusiliers and done his best to interview the regiment’s commanding officer. He suspected that gossip in an army barracks was probably every bit as rampant as he knew it to be in newspaper offices and police stations. And he was in the phone book. A lot of journalists, Kelly knew, were ex-directory. But Kelly thought that was nonsense. If you want to gather in information, you need to make it as easy as possible for anyone who wishes to supply you with some to be able to do so. Whatever inconvenience that might cause on occasions.

Anyway, one way and another, his unexpected phone call changed everything. Absolutely everything. No way would he now be making any sort of move at all, and certainly there would be no question of breaking the story to the press, not until after he had met his mysterious deep throat.

He lit up and took a deep drag, forcing himself to remain calm. He was at a crucial stage in an investigation which was beginning to pull in all sorts of unexpected directions, and it was essential that he kept as cool a head as possible.

So much now hinged on whatever he might learn that night from his anonymous caller who, he was quite aware, of course, could still turn out to be a nutter. But somehow, and maybe it had been something in that muffled voice which had already convinced him, Kelly didn’t think so.

Either way, Kelly certainly didn’t want Karen Meadows to know about his deep throat, at least not until after he had met up with him. Assuming it was a him. For a start, she would only interfere, and Kelly wanted to handle this alone. Dealing with informants was always, in his opinion, a one-person job. However, Karen Meadows would be sure to try to stop him keeping his lone midnight assignation. She would never take on board any responsibly for something like that. She was, after all, a policewoman. At the very least, she would insist on some kind of police back-up, and Kelly somehow felt absolutely certain that his caller would know if he did not turn up alone as promised. After all, he was probably military and probably trained in surveillance. Kelly reckoned he had no choice but to find some excuse for avoiding this evening’s meeting with Karen, because she knew him too well not to glean at once that there was something big going on that he wasn’t sharing with her. He did not even want to speak to her on the phone. Not now. Not until after that midnight assignation.

Instead, he decided to email her. And he used
Moira’s daughters as his excuse, telling Karen that they had arranged a special supper on their last evening together, before Paula returned to her home in London and Lynne went back to university in Bristol. The girls had wanted Kelly to be there, and he had naturally accepted their invitation, he wrote. However, he had totally forgotten his commitment to join them when he’d made his appointment with Karen, which he would now like to put off until the following day. He was very sorry, but he couldn’t let the girls down, could he?

He read the message through several times, tweaking the odd word. It was good, he thought. Nothing at all in it to rouse Karen’s suspicions.

He pressed ‘send’ and made himself another roll-up. He felt a complete rat for using the girls as an excuse in this way, so soon after their mother’s death, but he told himself they would understand. The truth, of course, was that whether or not they would understand actually made no difference. Any kind of commitment to Moira’s daughters was currently the best excuse available to Kelly. And Kelly was a very determined man. When he had an aim in his life, he was inclined to use any means at his disposal to see it through.

When she arrived, Phil Cooper was already sitting in what had been his and Karen Meadow’s favourite corner table in the quiet little pub on the Newton Abbot road, that they had so often visited together. There was a pint of bitter in front of him. He beamed at her as she walked across the bar to him, and rose to his feet, his arms open in a welcoming gesture. Not for the first time, Karen marvelled at his cheek. What
was it with men, she wondered? However badly they behaved, they just expected to be allowed to bounce back into your life.

‘God, Karen, it’s good to see you,’ he said warmly.

‘Phil.’ She manoeuvred her way past him with some care, avoiding the physical contact he seemed to be inviting, and sat down. She intended to keep the entire evening strictly businesslike and to be as brief and to the point as possible. She very nearly started to remind him again that their meeting really was business and no more than that. But she stopped herself just in time, reckoning that even to make the comment raised the possibility that she might be considering an alternative.

Instead she looked Cooper directly in the eye without smiling, and asked for a Diet Coke when he offered her a drink.

He looked at her questioningly.

‘I am driving,’ she said.

‘So am I,’ he responded. ‘One glass of something won’t do you any harm, Karen.’

‘Diet Coke, please, Phil,’ she repeated. She wasn’t sure enough of herself to take any chances with this man. She watched him amble to the bar in that gangly way of his. It felt strange to be with him again. He had been so very important to her.

‘And dinner,’ he said, when he returned from the bar, dropping a couple of packets of crisps onto the table alongside their drinks. ‘Smoky bacon flavour,’ he said, grinning his familiar crooked grin.

She felt very slightly irritated. Smoky bacon was her favourite, in fact the only crisp-flavouring that she liked. Had Cooper deliberately set out to remind her of how well he knew her? She wasn’t sure. And, in any
case, she had neither the time nor the inclination to waste on such considerations. She made herself concentrate on the job in hand.

‘Look, Phil, like I told you, I think I might have stumbled across something very big indeed,’ she began. ‘And Harry Tomlinson certainly thinks it’s too hot to handle. It’s military, and it’s sensitive, and if we don’t do something about it pretty smartish, I reckon the whole thing is going to blow up in our faces and we’re going to look extremely stupid. A number of deaths are involved. At least some of them could be murder. And all but one, that I know about so far, has happened on our patch, albeit mostly on army premises.’

She realised from the way the expression on his face changed that she’d caught his attention. But then, whatever else he was, Phil Cooper was a good copper, and that little build-up would have had any good police officer on the edge of his seat. Phil’s manner had been vaguely flirtatious before, she thought. But not any more.

‘Army, eh?’ he remarked, the curiosity strong in his voice.

She nodded. ‘Yes. And I can’t handle it alone.’

He raised both eyebrows.

‘I don’t think I’ve ever heard you admit that before, Karen,’ he said.

‘I’m not sure it’s ever been true before,’ she said. ‘Well, not about the job, anyway.’

As she spoke, she realised that the latter part of her remark could be taken in all kinds of ways she would prefer it not to be, and certainly not by Phil Cooper, of all people. But he appeared to be far too intrigued by what she was telling him to have even noticed.

She continued then, with the whole story, grateful that probably the one good result of her otherwise disastrous affair with Cooper was that she had become close enough to him to really learn the kind of man he was, and the kind of police officer he was. She knew absolutely that she could trust him, at least in a professional sense.

‘Shit,’ he said, when she had finished. ‘That’s big, all right. And how like Kelly to be involved.’

‘Could you imagine him not being? A story like that breaking on his patch. He’s not supposed even to be a journalist any more, but his nose started twitching before he even had a clue what it was twitching about.’

Phil giggled. He had always been a giggler.

‘So, what do you want from me?’ he asked.

‘I’d like MCIT to get involved, but I want you guys to come in from a different direction. I don’t want the information coming from me. Hopefully, we’ll have double the impact that way.’

‘I think I see.’

‘I’m sure you do, Phil. If someone from your team were to call on the chief constable to get a police investigation authorised, based on information that has come his way from sources totally independent to mine, then I think it would add an immense amount of weight. Even Harry Tomlinson can’t take us all on.’

‘That’s the trouble, though, isn’t it?’ remarked Phil. ‘He doesn’t take anyone on, does he? He just sort of wriggles until it all goes away.’

Karen laughed. Phil had always made her laugh.

‘With this one, though, what we have to do is to make sure it doesn’t go away,’ she said. ‘It’s too important, I’m sure of it.’

‘Yes.’ Phil was thoughtful. ‘I’m not usually a great one for conspiracy theories. All too often the truth is something quite simple and straightforward. But you might have begun to uncover something quite extraordinary here, Karen, and I must admit I’d really like to have a crack at solving it. It’s intriguing, isn’t it?’