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?’
‘It certainly is.’
‘Yeah, well, you know something, Karen, I reckon I’ll probably get an anonymous call tomorrow, from some frightened young soldier giving me almost all the information on Hangridge and the Devonshire Fusiliers that you’ve just given me.’
‘Really, Phil? Now wouldn’t that b
e an amazing coincidence?’
‘Absolutely amazing, Karen.’
‘Thanks, Phil.’
‘My pleasure.’ His eyes were fixed on hers and there was no mistaking the look in them.
‘I’ve missed you,’ he said.
‘And I’ve missed you too,’ she replied honestly. ‘But that’s life, isn’t it?’
‘Well, I suppose so, but …’
‘Look, Phil, I’m sorry. But I do have to go.’
‘Right.’ He finished his drink and stood up. ‘I’ll call you, then, as soon as I have any news.’
‘Do that.’ She stood up too. ‘And thanks again.’
They left the pub together and it wasn’t until she was back behind the wheel of her car that she was able to reflect on the personal implications of her meeting with her former lover.
Something extraordinary had happened. Something she found she was extremely glad about. She hadn’t felt anything. She really hadn’t felt anything.
She realised then that when she had arranged to meet Phil, she had actually been much more worried about her reaction to him than his to her. She had not only fancied him rotten, she had loved him to bits. But she doubted he had ever really considered making the kind of commitment to her that she had wanted.
And now she didn’t want it any more. She took a deep breath. She felt a huge sense of relief. It was over. She neither loved not lusted after him any more.
And she supposed she’d had to see him again to know that.
Suddenly, she was overwhelmed by the feeling of being at peace with herself for the first time in a long while. She so wanted her life back. And in a strangely insidious sort of way, her affair with Phil Cooper had taken it from her.
Eighteen
Karen arrived home just before 9 p.m. and embarked on her usual round of last-minute tidying before Kelly’s arranged visit half an hour or so later. However, most of her flat was already moderately clean and tidy. After all, her recently acquired cleaning lady, Shirley, an out-of-work actress whose impecunious state had forced her to move in with her mother a couple of streets away, had made her weekly visit only the day before.
The bedroom, however, was its usual tip. Although Shirley was undoubtedly a good and thorough cleaner, and had even informed Karen that she was going to convert her house-cleaning activities into a proper business which would transform her finances, Karen was not entirely sure she was cut out for the job. Shirley – who had taken to wearing black T-shirts with the words DUST BUST emblazoned in white across her ample bosom, in order, she said, to attract attention to her new enterprise – had attitude. A lot of attitude. Unless Karen’s bedroom was in at least some kind of order, Shirley wouldn’t even go into it.
However, as she stood in the doorway looking at the mayhem within, Karen had to admit that Shirley probably had a point. The pile of clothes on the chair at the foot of her bed had once again spread onto the floor. And entangled among the various items were at least a couple of pairs of old knickers.
Karen set about putting shirts and trousers on hangers, throwing casually abandoned shoes into the bottom of her wardrobe, and gathering up the more unsavoury items destined for the washing machine. Then she stopped. What on earth was she doing? There was absolutely no way Kelly was going anywhere near her bedroom. That was just not going to happen. So why was she so frantically tidying the room?
‘For God’s sake,’ she muttered to herself. Sometimes, she wondered what on earth was going on in her head.
She abandoned the rest of the mess at once, made her way into the sitting room, flopped onto the sofa and switched on the TV to Sky News in order to catch up on the day’s events. Yet another major royal scandal appeared to be breaking, and Karen, while actually something of a closet republican, had a real weakness for royal gossip – the more scurrilous the better. The British royal family were, after all, the world’s greatest soap opera, she thought.
And in spite of all that was on her mind, she quickly became embroiled in the latest revelations, which cast almost inarguable doubt on the paternity of a major young royal. Indeed, she was so engrossed that she was surprised, when she glanced at her watch, to find that it was already ten minutes to ten.
She checked both her mobile phone and landline for messages, in case she had missed any calls. Her only message was from the irritatingly persistent Alison Barker.
‘Such a pity you couldn’t make dinner with Sally, but she’s coming down again in a couple of weeks and I just wondered …’
Karen pressed delete. She was even less interested than usual in Alison Barker. She was puzzled. Kelly was normally punctual and she had realised when he’d phoned her earlier in the day that he’d had something he was dying to tell her, which made it all the more unlikely that he would be even five minutes late. She tried both of Kelly’s numbers, but was merely switched straight to voicemail on each.
She wandered around the flat, picking up books and magazines and putting them down, periodically looking out of the window, watching for Kelly’s car to turn into the car park. Ten o’clock came and went, and still Kelly had not arrived. A thought occurred to her then. Perhaps he had emailed her. Karen had left her police station office just after six thirty and she thought she had last checked her email about half an hour before that. Surely Kelly would not have cancelled that late in the day, would he? And surely he wouldn’t have chosen email to do so, at such short notice.
None the less she logged onto her computer, which she kept hidden away in a Victorian roll-top desk in a corner of her big, high-ceilinged living room. And, indeed, there was an email from Kelly, timed 6.12 p.m., apologising for having to put off their meeting. She must have just missed it.
Karen read the message over two or three times. She was more than a little puzzled. The email, crucially she thought, made no mention at all of how important their postponed meeting might be, something Kelly had already made clear. In fact, it gave very little away, and that in itself made her deeply suspicious.
She could not imagine what could have happened to make Kelly back out of a meeting he had been so keen to arrange. But something had happened, she was quite sure of that.
More than that, John Kelly was up to something. She knew him well. She just knew he was up to something and, whatever it was, he had been quite determined not to tell her about it.
She logged off her computer, shut it away in the desk and, completely preoccupied, made her way into the kitchen where she opened a bottle of red wine. Unusually, although she hadn’t eaten anything except Phil Cooper’s crisps since lunchtime, she wasn’t hungry. But she could do with a proper drink.
Thoughtfully, she wandered back into the living room and flopped down on the sofa again. The television was still on. Karen didn’t even glance at the screen. Instead she reached for her cordless phone, took her palmtop computer out of her handbag, looked up a phone number and dialled it.
‘Hello, Jennifer?’ she queried. ‘Karen Meadows. I was just calling to see how you and your sisters were getting on?’
‘Oh, that is kind of you,’ said the voice at the other end of the line, making Karen feel like a total rat. She didn’t know it, but one way and another Moira’s daughters seemed to have a habit of unwittingly doing that to people. Or to her and Kelly, anyway.
‘We’re fine. Well, we’re coping. I mean, we were expecting it, after all. But it’s always a shock, isn’t it …?’
‘Yes, of course. And your mother was just such a lovely person.’
Karen paused. As ever she was too impatient to keep up small talk for long, even under these circumstances.
‘Don’t suppose Kelly is with you, by any chance, is he?’ she enquired casually.
‘No,’ responded Jennifer, sounding slightly puzzled herself. ‘Should he be?’
‘No, no, of course not,’ Karen responded swiftly. ‘I haven’t been able to raise him at home or on his mobile and it occurred to me that he might have been visiting you.’
‘No. We
haven’t seen him since the day of the funeral, actually.’
Jennifer spoke without a note of criticism. Typical, thought Karen. And she was now behaving just as badly as no doubt Kelly was.
‘Oh, well, I expect he’s very busy,’ she responded lamely, and managed one or two other platitudes before ringing off, slamming the receiver quite violently back on its charger.
She had known it. She really had known it. Kelly had been lying. That meant he was keeping something from her. And that was sure to mean trouble. Because, with Kelly, it damned well always did.
Meanwhile, Kelly had decided, mainly because he was so on edge that he just couldn’t sit at home waiting, to go out to Babbacombe early and eat in The Cary Arms, the lovely old pub built into the cliffside just above beach level, which was one of his favourite hostelries in the area. He arrived around 8.30, ordered steak and chips and a Diet Coke, followed by a couple more Cokes and a coffee in order to while away the time until closing. At around 11.20, aware of the landlady starting to fidget demonstrably, he made his way to the borrowed Volvo, parked in the car park down by the beach. It was a completely dark night. No moon and no stars were visible. The lights from the couple of houses to one side of the beach and the pub above them, barely cut through the cloak of blackness which seemed to have wrapped itself around Kelly. He shuffled across the car park to the Volvo, moving unnaturally slowly. It had, of course, been raining earlier in the day, and Kelly suspected there might be a shower again at any moment.
Once inside the Volvo, he rolled a cigarette and sat smoking with the window wound down, looking around him as best he could. Apart from what were now the relatively distant lights of the pub and the two beach houses, Kelly could see nothing at all.
Every few minutes he flicked on his lighter in order to check his watch. It was almost like a nervous tic. At exactly midnight, he opened the car door and stepped out.
No Reason To Die Page 28
