No Reason To Die

by Hilary Bonner

  ‘Thank you for staying with Mum,’ she said.

  Kelly just nodded. He didn’t reckon he deserved any thanks. Not with his track record.

  He stared down at the recumbent figure on the bed. He couldn’t explain quite what he felt. At that moment, he possibly loved Moira more than ever before. And yet, at the same time, he could barely recognise her as the woman he had shared his life with. She had changed quite dramatically since he had last seen her, only a couple of days earlier. She was so horribly thin, wasted really, and deathly pale. But it wasn’t that. It was more that the very core of her no longer seemed to be there. As if her soul had somehow already left her. She just didn’t seem to be Moira any more.

  Then she opened her eyes.

  Kelly felt a hot, sweet rush of shock course through his body. He realised then, that although he had not even formulated the thought, he hadn’t ever expected Moira to open her eyes again. But her eyes brought her to life again. She was back. Perhaps not for long, but she was back.

  ‘Good morning, darling,’ said Jennifer, sounding wonderfully normal, if a little more gentle in her greeting than she would have been were her mother well. That was, however, the only difference.

  Kelly tried to wish Moira good morning, too. The words stuck in his throat. He could not bring himself to wish for her to have another day in this life in the state she was in. He did not wish to see her suffer any more. He hadn’t a clue what to say. He just couldn’t speak. This whole bedside scene seemed like a kind of charade to him.

  He leaned forward and took Moira’s hand. The tears were pricking the backs of his eyes. He felt he did not have the right to cry, because he considered his behaviour throughout so much of Moira’s illness to have been thoroughly tardy. And yet he did care. He really cared.

  ‘You’re still here, then.’ Moira, quite incredibly, Kelly thought, managed a small wan smile. It seemed to him even more incredible that she had managed to speak, in an unreal hoarse whisper, forcing the words out as if they caused her real pain, which they almost certainly did. Then she winced and sank deeper back into the pillows. The effort of managing those few words, of making contact again with a world she had almost left behind, had obviously been extreme. She was awake, but she was even weaker than she had been the previous evening.

  Kelly just nodded. He could feel his eyes filling up with tears. He was fighting to regain control. Jennifer turned to look at him.

  ‘You can go home now, John,’ she said, speaking to him almost as gently as she had addressed her mother. ‘Lynne and Paula will be here any minute. They’re just making some phone calls and sorting one or two things out, but they won’t be long. You have to work, John. Mum wouldn’t want you to stop.’

  Kelly hesitated, ashamed of himself yet again when he realised how much he wanted to get out of that sickroom. But he mustn’t let that show. He really mustn’t.

  ‘No, I’ll s-stay, of course I’ll stay,’ he said.

  Then he felt Moira squeeze his hand, and somehow she managed to find the strength to do so rather more forcefully than she had the previous night. Her eyes were closed again and, for a moment, he thought that the grip was just a reflex action. He squeezed back. It seemed all that he could do. Then Moira spoke again, eyes still shut, gripping his hand with more strength than he would have thought possible. The voice was even weaker than before, but the words were strong enough.

  ‘Go home, John, get writing, you idle bastard,’ Moira ordered. And she took her hand away from his.

  Kelly’s throat tightened involuntarily. It was almost as if he were choking. He was finding it hard to swallow and even harder to breathe normally. He was very close to breaking down. He feared that he was going to make a complete fool of himself and knew that he would only embarrass Moira, who had never been one for displays of emotion.

  ‘I’ll see you both later, then,’ he muttered, as he headed gratefully for the door.

  Once outside in the corridor, he could no longer control himself. The tears he had tried so hard to contain began to fall. The trembling and shaking he had experienced the previous night, when he had, for a moment, really thought that Moira was gone, overwhelmed him again.

  He knew there was a gents’ toilet at the end of the corridor and he headed for it in a hurry. The tears were falling freely, rolling down his face into his shirt collar, and he was no longer able even to attempt to stop their flow. He broke into a run, nearly knocking over a nurse coming out of the room next to Moira’s. Afraid that she might try to speak to him, he did not pause to turn towards her, let alone apologise. Instead he ran all the faster, flinging open the door to the gents’ and throwing himself in. Only when he had managed to lock himself into a cubicle, did he finally let go. And then he just cried and cried.

  Great sobs wracked Kelly’s body. All the pent-up emotions of the last few months poured out of him. He felt as if he was never ever going to stop weeping. And he wasn’t even sure that he wanted to.

  For several minutes, Kelly just gave in totally to despair.

  Eventually he did stop weeping, of course.

  He dried his tears, splashed cold water on his red, swollen eyes, then set off for the car park, keeping his head down. He didn’t want anyone to see that he had been crying.

  Once inside the little MG, he rummaged in the glove department for the battery-operated shaver he kept there. Kelly had been an on-the-road journalist for virtually the whole of his adult life, until just a few months ago. He always carried his passport and a major credit card in full working order. And he always had basic toiletries to hand. Old habits died hard.

  As he ran the shaver over his stubbled jaw, he used his mobile to call Nick. He wanted to warn him of Moira’s deterioration. But even though it was not yet quite eight o’clock, there was no reply either from Nick’s home number or his mobile. However, Nick, unlike his father, was naturally an early riser and would already be well into his working day. He worked from home but, even if he was in, was inclined, Kelly knew, to ignore his phone if he was busy on the computer, which seemed to demand so much of his time.

  Kelly left a short, sad message explaining that Moira was now in a hospice, and then contemplated what to do next.

  He needed a cup of tea, he reckoned, before he could even think straight. His mouth felt dry and his tongue and teeth were furry. He also wanted to clean his teeth and have a quick wash, and he knew exactly where to go to achieve all three aims.

  He started the engine, saying a small prayer as he did so, because he had left his mobile phone plugged into the car charger all night. The battery seemed to have remained healthy enough. The car started on the second turn. Kelly headed on to the Torquay road but pulled into the first lay-by not far out of Newton Abbot, where a mobile, roadside snack bar was invariably to be found just yards away from a Portakabin public convenience. Kelly visited the loo first and quickly completed his toilet before buying two paper cartons of tea at the snack bar. He sniffed them appreciatively as he ambled back to his car. Bob, the owner, made good strong tea with proper tealeaves and was always generous with the sugar.

  Kelly drank one of the cartons of tea almost straight down, scalding his tongue, which at least might take some of the fur off it, he reflected, because cleaning his teeth had only half done the job. Then he began to attempt to plan his day. He knew all too well that there was only one way for him to cope with emotional turmoil. He needed to bury himself in his work. And yet the thought of working on his novel held even less appeal than usual.

  The Hangridge affair, on the other hand, was becoming quite fascinating.

  He used his mobile to try to call Karen Meadows.

  She was not in her office yet, which he supposed was not really surprising as it was still only twenty minutes past eight, and neither was she answering her mobile phone. He would have to try again later.

  In any case, he now knew exactly what his next move was going to be. He wanted to talk to Jocelyn Slade’s mother.

  Mrs Foste
r had been able to supply him with an address for Mrs Slade, the mother of her son’s girlfriend, although she had told Kelly she could not swear that it was current. Margaret Slade lived in Reading. Kelly thought for a moment before deciding to go home first. It might be helpful for him to log onto the Net and do a little research into the Devonshire Fusiliers before making any more Hangridge inquiries, and a shower and a change of clothes might also be a good idea, he reflected.

  Then he would set off to drive to Reading, a journey he would expect to take between three and three and a half hours on a bad day, and yet again he would arrive unannounced. So far, his policy had provided plenty of results.

  Kelly’s brain was buzzing again. He had always so much more enjoyed looking into other people’s lives rather than his own.

  Ten

  Karen had not answered her phone because she was on her way to Totnes with Gerrard Parker-Brown. He had phoned the previous afternoon to ask if she could sneak a morning off work to visit a rather special antiques fair that he had just heard about.

  ‘I know it’s short notice, but if we get there for the start we could both be back on parade by early afternoon,’ he had said.

  To her utter astonishment, she had heard herself agreeing almost without hesitation. And now she was sitting alongside Gerry in his black Range Rover, studiously avoiding all calls. Her excuse for, in effect, bunking off work had been an extremely vague muttering about an important community meeting. She could not remember when she had last done such a thing, if indeed she had ever done such a thing. And she knew perfectly well that it was the opportunity of spending time again with the man, as much as attending the event, which had caused her to behave in such an out of character manner.

  He had picked her up, this time without an army driver, promptly at 8.15 a.m., and even at that hour of the morning conversation between them came alarmingly easily, she reckoned.

  ‘I collect military memorabilia among other things, and this fair is allegedly going to have some really good stuff on sale,’ he told her enthusiastically. He seemed to have an immense capacity for enthusiasm and it was a quality that Karen greatly appreciated.

  They spent a couple of hours at the fair, which was in a huge barn on the outskirts of Totnes. Although it turned out to be rather disappointing in terms of the military memorabilia, Gerry did not seem unduly put out and Karen was impressed by the knowledgeable way in which he chatted to dealers.

  As ever, she thoroughly enjoyed rummaging around at the various stalls, and while she was negotiating to buy a rather beautiful, nineteenth-century, French candlestick she became aware of him drifting away from her side. But within little more than a couple of minutes he was back, beaming at her and triumphantly brandishing a small, but rather lovely, silver dagger brooch, which he promptly pinned to the lapel of her jacket.

  ‘I thought a dagger was rather appropriate for a police detective,’ he told her.

  ‘Oh, Gerry, no, I couldn’t possibly …’ she began.

  ‘Don’t be silly, it cost nothing. Less than a tenner. And I want you to have it.’

  She gave in gracefully, and he had another surprise for her as they prepared to leave the fair.

  ‘Are you hungry?’ he asked.

  ‘Ravenous,’ she replied, wishing, as she invariably did, that that were not so often the case. ‘But we haven’t really got time to go and eat somewhere, or I haven’t, anyway.’

  He nodded. ‘Nor me. But, well, you see, I knew we were going to be pushed for time, so I took the liberty of preparing a bit of a picnic. Pretty rough and ready, I’m afraid.’

  It turned out to be not so rough and ready at all. Back in the Range Rover, parked in a corner of the field allocated as car park for the antiques fair, he produced a Thermos flask of hot coffee and bacon sandwiches, which, made with really crispy bacon and fresh crusty bread, were wonderfully crunchy and quite delicious in spite of being cold.

  ‘How did you know bacon sandwiches are my absolute favourite food?’ she asked.

  ‘I didn’t, but they’re mine, particularly when I make an early start.’ He smiled at her. ‘Something else we have in common.’

  She smiled back. And it seemed perfectly natural for him to lean across the car and kiss her gently on the lips. It was a very brief kiss, but this time it was much more than merely a kiss of friendship, and she could sense the promise in it with her whole being. He tasted and smelt a little of bacon, but that just seemed to make him all the more attractive. And he had such absolutely beautiful eyes. Feelings she had denied for so long were beginning to make themselves known to her again, and she was not at all sure she could fight them off. Or that she wanted to any more.

  He pulled away, touching her lightly on the cheek with the fingers of one hand as he did so, and settled back into the driver’s seat, silently watching her. She did not try to speak. She had no wish to spoil the moment.

  ‘Well, I suppose I’d better drop you off at Torquay police station or I expect the entire area will be overrun by a major crime wave,’ he said.

  She laughed and nodded her assent. She really did have to be back at work. None the less, she felt vaguely disappointed.

  ‘Tell you what, how about lunch somewhere on Sunday, when we both have more time, hopefully?’

  Her spirits rose at once. And she couldn’t be bothered even to pretend to deliberate.

  ‘That would be great,’ she said.

  She was in her office well before one o’clock, still in extremely high spirits. Yet again Gerry had not mentioned the Alan Connelly affair, and this time Karen had not felt inclined to do so either. In fact, rather to her surprise, she had managed to put any vague misgivings she had about either the colonel or his regiment completely out of her mind.

  And, in spite of trying to tell herself that she must proceed with caution and remember past mistakes, she was still feeling immensely good-humoured when she finally returned Kelly’s call more than an hour later.

  ‘So, what have you been up to, you old bugger,’ she enquired cheerily.

  Kelly told her at once about the third death at Hangridge. And that was the end of her good humour.

  ‘Shit,’ she said. ‘Shit!’

  ‘I assume you weren’t told about Jocelyn Slade.’

  ‘No, I bloody wasn’t,’ she responded.

  ‘But I thought you’d checked the records at the coroner’s court.’

  Karen cursed herself. It hadn’t occurred to her that it would be necessary. Not at this stage, anyway. Even before their two social meetings, she hadn’t really believed that the commanding officer of the Devonshire Fusiliers would deliberately mislead her, that he would fail to tell her about a death at his barracks.

  Now, particularly since experiencing the closeness she had felt for Gerry Parker-Brown that morning and the promise of that kiss, she felt quite betrayed. She had to force herself to concentrate on her conversation with Kelly.

  ‘I checked the records specifically on Craig Foster,’ she said. ‘I didn’t ask the court to check for any other deaths at Hangridge.’ She thought for a moment.

  ‘They have a brand new clerk at the coroner’s court. Old Reggie Lloyd remembered everything and would probably have volunteered the information.’ She paused. Kelly didn’t say anything.

  ‘Oh shit,’ she said again.

  ‘Ah,’ said Kelly.

  Karen tried to sort out in her mind what she should do next.

  ‘Look, where are you, Kelly?’

  ‘I’m at home.’

  ‘Right. I have to check out officially what you’ve told me, Kelly. It changes everything. Don’t take this any further, will you? Please don’t do anything at all until I get back to you, all right?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Kelly.

  Kelly smiled as he drove slowly along a dull red-bricked street looking for Margaret Slade’s address. He had lied to Karen, of course. He had already arrived in Reading when she called him, and he’d known she would not approve of him seeking out Jocelyn
Slade’s mother, so he had decided at once not to tell her. The lie had come quickly and easily enough, and he had absolutely no intention of heeding her plea for him to do nothing until he heard from her further.

  Mrs Slade’s home turned out to be a flat above a chip shop in what Kelly reckoned must surely be the most unattractive part of a town, which, with its towering central buildings and lack of any discernible sense of identity, he considered to be altogether thoroughly unappealing.

  Kelly rang the bell four times before Margaret Slade finally answered. He had felt it in his bones that she was inside. And he would have stood leaning on the doorbell for the rest of the day, if necessary. He wasn’t giving up. This was getting important.

  The woman who eventually answered the door looked wan, pale and shaky, her wispy, obviously dyed, reddish-brown hair framing an unnaturally white face. It took Kelly five seconds to realise that she was drunk, even though it was still quite early in the day, not long after two in the afternoon. But this was not the sort of drunkenness you associate with closing time in a pub or the end of a wild party. This was the drunkenness of a seasoned alcoholic. And Kelly recognised it instantly. He’d had plenty of experience, after all. Alcoholism, he suddenly suspected, had been the mystery illness Craig Foster didn’t tell his parents about, and quite possibly hadn’t been told about himself by Jossy.

  Margaret Slade looked at him with unseeing eyes, as he greeted her courteously.

  ‘I don’t buy or sell anything at the door and you’ve got no chance at all of converting me to any religion that’s ever been invented,’ she said. She stood holding onto the door and swaying very slightly along with it, as it moved on its hinges.

  He grinned.

  ‘I’m not buying or selling, and I’m certainly not preaching,’ he replied.

  ‘Ah.’ He could see that she was finally focusing on him, albeit with some difficulty, as if considering the situation. She looked puzzled. ‘I must have paid the rent,’ she went on. ‘It goes straight out of my social.’