‘Once a hack...’ she said.
He grinned back.
‘Thanks, anyway, Karen,’ he said. ‘You know, together we may even be able to crack this.’
‘All I need from you is enough information, so that I can damned well force that arse-licking bastard Tomlinson to let me launch a proper police investigation. At least, that would be a start.’
‘I’ll do my best,’ said Kelly. Karen felt his eyes on her.
‘I have a feeling you may have some information for me first,’ he continued.
‘You’re right,’ she said, reaching for her Voyage denim bag which she had dumped on the floor next to the sofa. She opened it and retrieved a small sheaf of A4 paper print-outs from her office computer.
‘Inquest reports,’ she announced, and watched Kelly’s eyes light up.
‘Jocelyn Slade, whose death doesn’t add up at all in my opinion, Craig Foster, and a young man called Trevor Parsons.’
She paused for dramatic effect and was not disappointed. Kelly was on the edge of his seat.
‘And the death of Trevor Parsons is indeed another alleged suicide, even if it was much earlier.’ She tapped the small pile of papers. ‘Parsons’ home address is on record and so is the address of another young soldier, who seems to me to be of considerable interest. Fusilier James Gates. He was called as a witness at Slade’s inquest.’
‘Wow,’ said Kelly. ‘That’s a hell of a start, Karen. I’d better be off. I’ll read the reports tonight and start following them up in the morning.’
He rose to his feet and held out one hand. She passed him the papers. He smiled at her, but it was a pretty wan attempt. Karen looked him up and down. His appearance was haggard. In spite of the enthusiasm he had displayed, she thought he might be close to total exhaustion.
‘You’re not sleeping, are you?’ she enquired.
‘No,’ he said, then managing a smile, added: ‘Well, not in a bed, anyway. Sit me upright in a chair and I go off like a light, only to wake up crippled with cramp and feeling a darned sight worse, I suspect, than if I hadn’t slept at all.’
‘And are you eating?’
‘Eating?’ Kelly sounded puzzled. ‘Do you know, I can’t really remember when I last ate anything. I felt sick all day yesterday, and today, eating just hasn’t occurred to me.’
‘Do you feel hungry now?’
‘I honestly don’t know.’
‘How about staying here for a while, and I’ll order us a pizza?’
She saw him hesitate, then he sat down again on the sofa, folding the papers and tucking them into his jacket pocket.
‘I think I’d like that,’ he said.
‘Any particular sort?’
‘I’ll leave that to you.’
He may have recognised that he should eat, but he was obviously still uninterested in food. Karen was more than a little anxious about her old friend. Still watching him out of the corner of one eye, she reached for the phone and arranged for her local pizza takeaway to deliver a large Four Seasons.
Kelly started speaking again as soon as she finished the call. And it was almost as if he had forgotten all about the controversial case they had just been discussing and the plot the two of them had hatched.
‘I know Moira and I never officially lived together,’ he told her, his voice much softer and weaker than usual. ‘But she was always in my house, and even when she wasn’t, well, it felt like she was. Does that sound stupid? What I mean is, I could always feel her presence. She was there. In my life. Even when she wasn’t actually within the same four walls. And now, well, she’s gone. For good. Her presence is no longer there and the place just seems totally empty. And I... and I... I feel quite desolate.’ He stumbled over the last few words.
‘Does that make any sense at all?’ he went on.
‘Yes,’ said Karen promptly. ‘Of course it does. That’s the way these things are, I think.’
It was the answer she thought that he needed, and she was also sure it must be the truth. But she realised, with a fleeting sadness, that she really had no idea whether that was actually the case, because she had never achieved a relationship which even approached what Kelly had described. There had been that disastrous early liaison with a man who turned out to be a con artist, which could have ended her career, had not Kelly, who was investigating the man, chosen to refrain from making it public. And her subsequent love life had been little more than a series of casual flings and one-night stands, until her recent, mind-numbing, soul-destroying affair with Detective Sergeant Phil Cooper. But she wasn’t going to think about him and the devastating effect that relationship had had on her. Not tonight. Not ever again, if she could help it.
The ring of the doorbell saved her from having to come up with more of the right thing to say. After all, she was no better at soul-baring than Kelly. Indeed, quite possibly she was worse.
She opened the door, paid the pizza delivery boy, turning down Kelly’s shouted-out offer to share the cost, and put the box on the coffee table in front of the sofa.
After going into the kitchen and fetching a roll of kitchen paper, another glass of red wine for herself and a Diet Coke from the fridge for Kelly, she returned to the living room to find Kelly staring into space, the box still unopened before him.
She did the honours and passed him a slice of pizza, precariously balanced on a piece of kitchen paper.
He ate without enthusiasm, but finished the slice apart from the edge of the crust, which he rolled up in the kitchen paper she had given him.
She persuaded him to take a second slice, which he ate half of. She was starving — as usual. Two slices disappeared at a rate of knots and she was well into the third before she felt her hunger even begin to abate.
Kelly, having finished, walked to the window again and once more stood, with his back to the room, looking out over the bay, while Karen continued to eat. When she eventually felt moderately full, she joined him there.
The room was dimly lit and they could see outside quite clearly, as the entire seafront was brightly illuminated by a mix of standard street lighting, strings of multicoloured fairy lights and the headlights of passing cars.
‘Still thinking about those walks with Moira?’ she ventured gently.
He did not reply, instead turning slightly more away from her.
She did not persist. She knew better. She stood quietly alongside him for a moment until she noticed that, although he had uttered absolutely no sound, his shoulders were shaking almost imperceptibly.
She put an arm around him and half turned him towards her. His body was strangely unresisting. She saw then that tears were streaming down his face. He was silently sobbing his heart out.
She put both arms around him then and held him very tightly, still saying nothing.
‘It’s all mixed up in my head,’ he muttered through the tears. ‘Moira’s death, Hangridge, not being able to write. Did I tell you? Barely two fucking chapters, that’s all I’ve managed. I didn’t tell you that, did I?’
‘No, Kelly, you didn’t,’ she said quietly.
‘No. I haven’t told anyone. I can’t do it, Karen. So much for becoming the great bloody novelist. I can’t fucking do it. You have to go into your head to write fiction. I don’t like what’s inside my head, and I can’t cope with it either. Not now I can’t. And as for Hangridge, well, I’ve been as absorbed with that over the last few weeks as I have with Moira. And that makes me feel guilty. I just feel so guilty. I can’t sort myself out. It’s all such a muddle... such a desperate, fucking muddle...’
He clung to her.
‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.’ He repeated the words over and over again, in between great wrenching sobs.
‘It’s all right, Kelly,’ she said, in a way that she hoped was soothing. ‘It’s all right. It’s allowed to show grief, you know. You’re allowed to cry. So do so. Go on. Cry. As much and for as long as you like.’