‘It’s more than that, really, though,’ Margaret Slade continued. ‘We’d like you to conduct an investigation on our behalf. People hire private detectives for stuff like this, don’t they? Well, we’d like to hire you. You’re a professional investigator, after all, of a kind. And you’ve already told us much more than we knew before.’
‘Well, I don’t know—’
‘We’ll pay you,’ interrupted Margaret Slade. ‘I’d never expect anyone to work for nothing. We’ll pay you the going rate. I don’t have any money, but Marcia has her husband’s life insurance, and she says she knows he wouldn’t be able to think of a better way for her to spend it. We’re going to start a fighting fund, too. I’ve read about that sort of thing. It’s what people do when they’re trying to achieve something, when they have a cause, isn’t it?’
‘Well, yes.’ Kelly felt quite humbled. He was, however, still a journalist at heart. It occurred to him almost at once that Margaret Slade’s suggestion could give him the solution to his exclusivity problem.
‘There wouldn’t be any need for you to pay me,’ he said. ‘Look, a big part of any campaign like this is getting the media on board and on your side. You realise that, I’m sure?’
‘Yes, of course. That’s one of the reasons we thought you would be the right person for us to employ.’
‘You did?’ Kelly was surprised. He was pretty sure he hadn’t mentioned his journalistic past to either of the two women. He hadn’t wanted to frighten them away, not at that stage. And, in any case, even if he had mentioned it to Margaret Slade, he very much doubted that she would have been in any condition to remember.
‘Well, the thing is,’ he continued. ‘If you give me exclusive rights to place any stories and information that we come up with between us, I can make quite enough money directly from the media. You wouldn’t need to pay me anything.’
‘Better still.’
‘Right.’ Kelly paused. ‘You seem to know that I was a journalist. How? I don’t think I told you...’
‘No, you said you were a writer, so I looked you up on the Net,’ she said. ‘Couldn’t find any books, but then all these newspaper stories kept popping up, and I found a biog’ on you when you’d been a speaker at a journalists’ training seminar a few years ago.’
‘Ah.’ Kelly would have to rethink his opinion of Margaret Slade. When sober, she was very different to the image he had conjured up of her in his mind. He now detected a distinctly educated note in her voice, which he had totally missed when he first met her. But then, she had been so drunk it would have been difficult to detect anything. However, her memory of that afternoon seemed to be rather better than he would have considered possible, given the state she was in. None the less, his initial reaction had been to be surprised that she had a computer at all, let alone that she was able to surf the Net so effectively.
‘It’s a very old computer,’ Margaret Slade continued, as if reading his mind. She really did seem to be an unusually perceptive woman. ‘I bought it second-hand for Jossy when she was still at school. Before... before...’
She paused mid-sentence and Kelly was momentarily puzzled. She had already said she bought the computer when Jossy was still at school. She could have been about to say ‘before Jossy died’, but that was obvious. She wouldn’t have bought her a computer afterwards, would she?
‘Before I started drinking again,’ she continued eventually.
‘Ah,’ said Kelly.
‘Yes. Look. I want you to know about my drinking before we go any further.’
‘You sound sober enough, now,’ said Kelly.
‘It is ten to eight in the morning,’ responded Margaret Slade, a light irony in her voice.
She had a sense of humour too, thought Kelly.
‘Fair enough,’ said Kelly. ‘But you don’t sound like someone who was drunk when they went to bed last night.’
‘And you’d know that?’
‘Oh, yes. First-hand knowledge. For many years. And I suspect I was probably much much worse than you’ve ever been.’
‘You must have gone some, then,’ retorted Margaret Slade.
Kelly was beginning to rather enjoy this conversation. ‘I certainly did,’ he replied.
‘Well, it began in the usual way for me, as a young woman. Social drinking, that sort of thing. It was the seventies. Everybody I knew was drinking. About the only thing Jossy’s father and I had in common was the booze. I think it’s why I married him. My parents, well, they were already getting worried about my drinking, and they disapproved of Trevor from the start. Wish I’d listened to them. Then I might not be in this state.
‘Anyway, after Trev left me, I very nearly hit rock bottom. But I managed to pull myself together, reckoned I had to, for the kids. I went to Alcoholics Anonymous, and somehow or other I kicked the drink. It was never easy for me, but I did it. Then my parents died suddenly one after the other, and they left me some money. We didn’t always live in this crummy flat, you know. I had a nice little house.
‘I wasn’t such a bad mother, either, I don’t think. Not all the time, anyway. I was dry for what — six, seven years. Then when Jossy was, oh, about fourteen, I started again. It was man trouble. Story of my life. I thought I’d found Mr Right, and he turned out to be an even bigger rat than my ex-husband. He conned me out of a lot of money. I took out a mortgage on our little house to invest in an office-cleaning business he was starting, and guess what, it went bust. If it ever bloody existed. And then, when he had milked me virtually dry, he took off. Gone. I was left bitter, twisted and broke. Naturally, I thought that alcohol was my only solace, and that was the final straw.
‘We lost the house, ended up in this dump, and I don’t think I’ve been sober for a day since. Until — until the day after you came calling.’
‘Really?’
‘I went to an AA meeting again that night. That very night. Half canned, still. First time in nearly five years. I thought I’d screwed my Jossy up. I thought I was the reason she was dead, and that made me not care about anything else at all, including myself. Now I know it may have been nothing to do with me. I need to find out the truth, for me and for my girl. She could have been murdered, John, that’s what you’re saying, isn’t it?’
Kelly spoke carefully.
‘It’s possible,’ he said. ‘It has to be possible. But it isn’t going to be an easy ride to find out what really happened. The army will block us all the way, I’m sure of it. They’ve already started doing just that.’
‘I didn’t imagine for one minute that it would be easy, John,’ Margaret Slade responded. ‘That’s why I wanted you on board. I had an uncle who was a Fleet Street reporter. It was years ago and he’s dead now, but I still remember his stories from when I was a kid. If an old tabloid hack can’t find a way through red tape and obstruction, I don’t know who can.’
Kelly found that he was smiling when he put the phone down. The adrenaline was starting to pump. He couldn’t wait to get on the case. He wanted to call Alan Connelly’s father straight away, to try to persuade him that he should be prepared to question the army’s version of events, and that he should get in touch with Margaret Slade.
He looked at his watch again. It was still not quite eight o’clock. He didn’t dare ring the Connelly household yet, not before at least 8.30, he reckoned. He had not exactly been welcomed into their home with open arms, and he suspected that Neil Connelly was not going to be all that pleased to hear from him, let alone if he disturbed the family too early in the morning. Kelly had to persuade the man to listen and to think, and he had to be very careful in his approach.