He mulled all this over as he picked up the mug he had used in the early hours and made his way into the kitchen to make more tea. His right leg was still not functioning properly. He kicked it to and fro as he refilled the kettle, and while he waited for it to boil. Spending half the night in that chair had done him no good at all. He stretched his back and his arms. Everything ached.
He made tea in the same unwashed mug, pouring boiling water over a tea bag, and perched on one of the two stools alongside what Moira had called the breakfast bar. Moira. The service sheet from her funeral lay on the worktop next to the cooker. He hadn’t noticed it in the night. But then, he had been in a kind of sleepless haze.
His mind was buzzing now. First of all there was Hangridge and the possibly immense significance of his conversation with Margaret Slade. Her approach to him presented something of a dream scenario. In his mind’s eye, he could already see the avalanche of major stories with which he would bombard Fleet Street. Not to mention TV and radio. Then there would be the book, the real-life story of Hangridge, just an extension of the investigative journalism he had made a lifelong career of, something he was well qualified for — unlike attempting to be a novelist. And after that, the film...
Yes. There was all of that. But mixed up with it, somehow, were his feelings for Moira, his sense of loss, his compassion for her, and his guilt. He felt genuine compassion, too, for the young Hangridge soldiers who had died, and for their bereaved families.
Predictably enough, however, it was Hangridge that was dominating his thoughts. It wasn’t just that the slowly unfolding drama was becoming so intriguing. He was also aware that his involvement in it would be sure to distract him from his pain. He told himself that Moira would have understood.
He checked his watch again. Quarter past eight. Still too early. There was a possibility, of course, that Neil Connelly had returned to his job as a postman, in which case he would probably have left his home hours earlier, but Kelly didn’t think so. He reckoned it might be some time yet before Connelly would have recovered sufficiently from the shock of his son’s death to return to work. He wandered into the living room and whiled away the next fifteen minutes watching breakfast TV. At 8.30 promptly he called the Connellys in Glasgow, which turned out to be something of an anticlimax. There was no reply. The family had an answering machine but Kelly did not leave a message. He needed to make a personal approach, and he needed it to be good. He would just have to keep calling until he could speak to Neil Connelly direct. Momentarily, he cursed himself for not phoning earlier, even though he knew really that he had done the right thing. He had no idea if Mrs Connelly still worked or not, but maybe Neil Connelly had returned to his job already, after all. If he had called earlier, he may have caught him. On the other hand, maybe the family were just not answering the phone. Maybe the whole lot of them — Alan Connelly’s mother, father, younger brother and sister — had shut themselves away from the world in their neat little home, an oasis of order on that grim housing estate, isolated by their grief.
Kelly shivered. There was no physical reason for it. The room wasn’t cold and he wasn’t ill. He remembered his mother’s old saying, that somebody had walked over his grave. Maybe they had. Kelly could think of one hell of a lot of folk who might like to.
Just before nine he called Karen Meadows. She was another one he had to use his best persuasion techniques on. He really needed her help. He also suddenly wanted very much to know what progress she had made, if any, during the six days since Moira had died.
‘I didn’t expect to hear from you today,’ she said.
‘No, well, I guess we all just try to carry on,’ responded Kelly. He thought he sounded trite and pathetic at the same time.
‘Yes, I guess we do.’ At least he could rely on Karen Meadows not to be judgemental, thought Kelly. It was perhaps a strange asset for a police officer. Kelly was not sure that he had ever been aware of her passing any kind of personal judgement on anyone.
‘I wanted to talk about Hangridge,’ he said bluntly.
‘Today? Are you sure?’ She was being quite gentle with him. By her standards, certainly. He appreciated it.
‘Absolutely sure,’ he said.
‘OK, I was going to call you tomorrow, anyway. I just didn’t want to bother you the day after the funeral, but I do need to talk to you.’
That made Karen Meadows the second woman to surprise him that morning. And he had still not had breakfast. She had not been ready to give much away the last time they had met. All that stuff about procedure and protocol. Something must have happened. Something that had changed her mind, made her actually want to talk to him.
‘I just wondered how you’ve been getting on with it, and if—’ he began.
‘No,’ she interrupted swiftly. ‘Not on the phone. Can you meet me this evening?’
‘Of course. The pub? Or do you want to go for something to eat...’
‘No. My place. About half past seven. We need to talk in private.’
Kelly felt a burst of adrenaline coursing through his veins. This was out of character. What did it mean? What was going on?
He agreed at once and Karen then ended the call with the abruptness he was used to, which he was actually rather more comfortable with than her earlier gentle approach. He finished his tea, wolfed down a bowl of cornflakes and then tried the Connellys’ number again. This time Neil Connelly himself answered promptly. Maybe the family had been having a lie-in. Kelly doubted they had been sleeping well. He knew all about not sleeping well.
The call was very nearly extremely short.
‘I told ye, I didn’t want to talk to ye,’ said Connelly sharply, as soon as Kelly gave his name.
‘I know, I just want to tell you something and then I’ll go away.’ Kelly spoke quickly, afraid the other man would hang up. ‘I now know of at least two other suspicious deaths at Hangridge, a young man and a young woman, and a possible third. The parents of the other two are getting together, they want a proper investigation into the deaths—’
‘You are a fucking journalist, aren’t you, just like I thought.’ Neil Connelly interrupted. Neither his tone of voice nor his language were encouraging.
‘Not any more,’ responded Kelly, more or less truthfully.
‘Well, I don’t fucking trust you—’
‘You don’t have to, Mr Connelly.’ This time it was Kelly’s turn to interrupt. Now he really was afraid that the Scotsman would hang up. ‘But maybe you would trust the mother of a young woman soldier, called Jocelyn Slade, who died about six months before your lad. She wants to talk to you, and if you’d just make a note of her name and number, I promise you’ll never hear from me again unless I know you want to.’
It seemed a very long time before Mr Connelly spoke again. And when he did, he was brief and to the point.
‘Very well,’ he said. ‘That’s a deal.’
Kelly gave him Margaret Slade’s phone number and Neil Connelly ended the call at once. Kelly had no idea what the result might be. He thought Connelly was a stubborn man as well as a proud one, but there was little doubt that he had truly loved his son.
Kelly went over it all again in his head as he made his way upstairs to have a shower and dress. He was beginning to feel the familiar impatience. He wanted things to start happening. And he really wanted to talk to Karen Meadows. What was she going to tell him? What information was she going to give him? She hadn’t summoned him to her home for nothing, that was for certain. He just couldn’t wait for 7.30 that evening. And he had fat chance of doing any work on the great novel before then, he reflected wryly, as he stood under the hot jet of water and rubbed shampoo into his head with more energy than he had mustered in months.