‘Um. So you thought you’d rather wake me up in the middle of the night than Terry Wallis, did you?’
‘Well, you are my father. I thought you’d be more likely to forgive me.’
Kelly smiled in spite of himself.
‘Smooth bugger,’ he said. ‘Hang on, I’ll look the number up for you.’
Kelly and Terry Wallis, one of his few old Fleet Street friends still in the employ of a major national newspaper, kept in quite regular touch. Terry’s Washington number was scribbled in the back of his desk diary, and it took Kelly only a moment to look it up and relate it to Nick.
‘Thanks a million, Dad. You may have saved the MoD, as well as my life.’
‘Jolly good.’ Kelly didn’t want to discuss lives being saved, right then, and was quite grateful to end the call, which at least seemed to have helped him to function a little better. The effort of making conversation, however perfunctory, appeared to have done him good, he thought.
He reckoned his speech was almost back to normal, and he now felt that he could just about cope with calling Karen Meadows. Even though he knew she was not going to be exactly delighted to hear from him at this hour.
He dialled her home number, his fingers still trembling but at least more or less doing what he told them to, and at around the tenth ring she answered very sleepily and not a little grumpily.
‘Yes,’ she growled.
‘Karen, it’s me. I’m so sorry to call so late...’
‘So you fucking well should be...’ She mumbled something else that Kelly couldn’t quite understand, before rounding on him in language he understood perfectly.
‘It’s not fucking late, Kelly. It’s fucking early. It’s a quarter to two in the fucking morning!’
Kelly ignored the outburst. He just wasn’t up to it.
‘Look, something’s happened. You ought to know about it, really you—’
‘What? Now? In the middle of the night? Are you off your head? Anyway, I thought you didn’t want to see me till tomorrow. I thought you were having dinner with Moira’s girls tonight.’
Kelly knew he couldn’t play games any more.
‘I lied.’
‘Yes, you bastard. I know, actually.’
‘You do?’
‘I phoned Jennifer.’
‘Checking up on me?’
‘Bit late for that, really.’
‘I’m sorry, but, believe me, I did have a good reason.’
‘Don’t you always?’
‘Maybe. But this time I really did.’
‘Ah.’ There was a brief pause. ‘Are you all right, Kelly.’
Kelly had thought he’d been managing his speech rather well. What had she picked up on, he wondered. Kelly supposed he should not be surprised. It was quite possible that Karen Meadows actually knew him better than his only son did. In any case, he probably was still slurring his words a bit, although he couldn’t be certain because there was an echo inside his head, which made everything sound slightly distorted.
‘Yes. Just about. But there has been an incident, something I never for a second expected. I need to talk to you about it.’
‘At this time of the morning?’
‘Yes. Honestly, Karen, it can’t wait. It really can’t wait.’
‘Look, it’s nothing to do with...’ she paused. ‘You know, what happened the other night, is it?’
‘What?’ For a moment he didn’t know what on earth she was talking about. Then he realised. She must be referring to their misguided kiss. For God’s sake, he thought.
‘Nothing, absolutely nothing, could be further from my mind,’ he answered honestly.
‘OK. OK. You’d better come over, then.’
‘No.’ Kelly shook his head as he said the word, and a shooting pain darted from somewhere around his eyes, right through his nervous system, down to the base of his spine. He really couldn’t do any more driving. For a start, his vision remained far from normal.
‘Look, I don’t think I should drive. Could you come over here to me?’
‘You haven’t been drinking, Kelly, have you?’ she asked suddenly, and now she really did sound alarmed.
‘No.’ He managed an attempt at a dry laugh. ‘I haven’t been drinking, Karen. But something has happened which could have even more disastrous consequences. And not just for me.’
There was a brief pause, and when she replied she did not prevaricate any more. He was aware that while she knew him to be capable of some quite extreme moments of madness, she would also know that he would not ask her to visit him in the middle of the night without a very good reason indeed.
‘I’ll be with you in half an hour, maximum,’ she said.
She pulled on jeans and an old sweater and then delved into the back of the wardrobe for her old and much-loved, quilted denim Armani coat, with its distinctive metal badge. She needed comfort clothes for this jaunt, she thought. And, preoccupied as she already was by her brief conversation with Kelly, the faded blue coat, which she reckoned oozed quality, still gave her a bit of a satisfied feeling as she pulled it on. ‘They don’t make ’em like this any more,’ she muttered to herself.
On the drive along the front and through a deserted town centre, Karen tried to imagine what on earth could have happened to induce Kelly to call her at 1.45 in the morning and demand an audience. Particularly, as whatever he had been up to earlier — and she had been right, of course, he had most definitely been up to something — he’d, apparently, at first been quite determined to keep it from her.
He had sounded quite peculiar, too. She wished now that she hadn’t referred to their little emotional lapse, but she had a feeling that the whole incident was in any case about to pale into insignificance.
In St Marychurch, she had to park a little down the road from Kelly’s house, mainly because of the large Volvo already parked outside, and at such an angle to the pavement that it blocked part of the road. He answered his front door before she even had the chance to ring the bell. She could only assume that he must have been looking out of the window for her to arrive and she had various lines of banter ready for him, all of which went completely out of her mind as soon as she saw him.
There was now a large, very sore-looking bump towards the upper left of Kelly’s forehead. It was a nasty, yellow-reddish colour and there were signs of residual bruising all around it. In addition, both of Kelly’s eyes were puffy and discoloured and he seemed to be having difficulty in focusing. She was genuinely shocked.
‘Good God,’ she said. ‘What the fuck happened to you?’
‘It’s a long story,’ he replied. ‘Come in. I’ve made fresh coffee. I think we’re both going to need it.’
He led the way into the living room, gestured her to a chair by the fireplace, and poured coffee from a steaming jug into two big mugs. She waited with unusual patience. After all, she needed a few minutes’ grace to recover from the shock of his appearance.
‘Well?’ she enquired, when Kelly finally sat down across the fireplace from her.
‘As you can see, I’ve had a bit of a going-over.’
‘I certainly can see. Don’t you think I should take you to casualty?’
‘No, I’m all right, really.’
‘What the fuck happened?’
‘I think somebody tried to kill me,’ he began. ‘And I really have no idea why he didn’t go through with it.’
‘Shit,’ she said.
Kelly nodded his assent. ‘Shit, indeed,’ he said. ‘I’m scared, Karen, and I don’t mind admitting it.’