Impatiently, Kelly closed the thing down. Not only did he feel as unable to write as he had done for weeks now, but it also seemed that he couldn’t even play backgammon any more. He tossed his mouse to one side, tucked the keyboard into its home on a retractable shelf slotted beneath the top of his desk, and stared for several minutes at the empty black screen.
Then he made a decision. It wasn’t much of a decision. He guessed he’d been intent, subconsciously at least, on this course of action since encountering that fatal accident the previous night and discovering who the victim was. It had been just the kind of incident he could never resist delving into.
He reached for the phone to his left and pushed one button. A brisk female voice answered, a voice which always made Kelly smile. She had a way of answering the phone which, in itself, made it quite clear she had no time for prevarication.
‘Karen Meadows.’
‘Good morning, Detective Superintendent, and how are you this morning?’
‘Instantly plunged into a state of nervous tension by the very sound of your voice, Kelly.’
‘Now, that’s not kind...’
‘Probably not, but truthful. I don’t think I’ve heard from you since you left the Argus, and it’s been wonderfully peaceful, I can tell you.’
‘Oh, come on, Karen, you know you’ve been missing me...’
‘Really? I’m actually still coping with the flak from the last time you decided to meddle in police affairs—’
‘So am I.’ Kelly interrupted swiftly, and all the banter had gone from his voice.
When he and Karen had last had dealings together, the subsequent events had without doubt taken Kelly a step too far, and had more or less led directly both to him quitting journalism and for him and the high-ranking detective failing to be in touch with each other for an uncharacteristically long time.
He was well aware that under the circumstances it was going to be pretty hard for either him or Karen to slip back into the way things had once been between them.
‘Yes, I’m sure you are, Kelly.’
There was no longer any inflection in Karen’s voice. He realised that she had picked up at once on the flatness in his own voice. It seemed that they remained strangely good friends, beneath it all, these two. Just like always. He hoped so, anyway. He knew that she understood, and she was probably the only person in the world who did. But then, he and Karen had always been drawn to each other, although there had never been even the remotest suggestion of their friendship developing into anything more than that. As far as Kelly was concerned, if he had thought about it at all, he would probably have come to the conclusion that he so valued their relationship the way it was, that he would not want to risk changing it. But the truth was that he didn’t think about it. He’d never thought about it. He and Karen were mates, that was all. They certainly had a great deal in common. They were both inclined to be loners by nature, and they shared a sometimes near-obsessional approach to their work. Kelly had been aware of some kind of bond between them virtually ever since he had first met Karen almost twenty years earlier, when she had been an ambitious young detective constable and he already a star of Fleet Street. Indeed, he had helped extricate her from the threat of a scandal which could have destroyed the high-flying career he had always believed she was destined for. Karen was not quite as much of a maverick as Kelly had always been, but she was certainly a free spirit, a talented and able police officer, fiercely independent, who quite frequently chose to rebel against the more petty restrictions the police force imposed upon its officers.
‘You haven’t called to ask after my health, though, have you, Kelly,’ Karen continued in a perfectly normal sort of voice. ‘That’s never been your style.’
Kelly detected just a hint of edge there, but decided to ignore it. Instead he went straight to the point.
‘Do you know about that fatal death on the Buckfast road last night?’ he asked.
‘Vaguely,’ she responded. ‘I have a report on it somewhere. Sent to CID as a matter of routine because somebody died, that’s all. It seems straightforward enough...’
‘No. I don’t think it is.’
He heard Karen sigh down the line. ‘And what, pray, do you know about it exactly, Kelly?’
‘I was there. I don’t think it was an accident.’
Kelly held his breath. He had no idea whether the young squaddie’s death was an accident or not, but he did know that if he prevaricated at all he would lose her. Karen Meadows had always had a short attention span.
‘Really?’ The detective superintendent sounded as if she was trying for a mix of sarcasm and dismissal in her voice. Kelly knew her so well. Well enough to also be able to detect a distinct note of curiosity. She was interested. She wanted to know what he knew. He’d got her. He must not waste the opportunity.
‘Look, have you got time for a pint at lunchtime.’
‘Kelly, no...’
‘Just for a few minutes, we could go to the Lansdowne.’ He named the pub directly opposite Torquay police station.
‘Kelly, I haven’t got time to go to the toilet. I never have time to go to the toilet. And you want me to meet you in a pub?’
‘They’ve got nice clean loos in the Lansdowne. We could chat in the ladies’, if you like.’
‘Very funny. All right. I’ll see you there at one-thirty. Don’t be late, I can spare half an hour, max.’
‘As if...’
Kelly was smiling as he finished the call. It was funny how his conversations with Karen Meadows almost always left him smiling. She had that effect on him. He really shouldn’t have left it so long to get in touch, while all the while hoping that she would contact him first. But, on the other hand, he supposed he had felt that he’d needed a reason, and maybe she had felt the same. After the last time. When Kelly had decided to actively intervene in a murder investigation gone wrong the previous year, the repercussions had been enormous, and had left him with death on his conscience. Kelly had acted honestly enough, as he almost always did, and his motives had, by and large, been good. But he had also behaved with reckless impulsiveness. He was not proud of the episode, and indeed it had led him to resign from the Argus on the grounds that he no longer wished to do a job which could lead him, however inadvertently, to cause such devastation.
And Karen Meadows, in spite of their long friendship, had made it quite clear at the time that she considered him to be a loose cannon with whom she no longer dared associate.
He supposed he was lucky that only six months later she was prepared, at least, to talk to him.
Kelly got to the pub first as Karen knew he probably would have done, even without her warning against being late. He was sitting in the corner by the window, his usual pint of Diet Coke on the table before him, when she arrived, throwing the pub door wide open so that it banged against the wall behind it.
Every head in the bar turned. Two CID men, sitting on tall stools, automatically lifted their pints and downed them. Karen knew they would not be comfortable to continue drinking in the same bar as their governor at lunchtime. It was raining again. Karen was wearing a long, white, caped mackintosh with a hood. She flung back the hood and tossed her bobbed dark hair. The pub lights enhanced its shine. The white cape fell open to display black sweater, black jeans and steel-tipped cowboy boots. She looked stunning. And her appearance was absolutely not what most people would expect of a policewoman. The jeans were just tight enough to show her shape, which remained pretty damned fine. But Karen had no idea how good she looked and totally failed to notice Kelly’s admiring glance.