Хилари Боннер - No Reason To Die

She turned abruptly to Kelly, who had quickly returned to his seat. ‘So, let’s get on with it,’ she said.

‘And it’s lovely to see you, too.’ Kelly grinned at her.

‘Oh, stop it, Kelly. For a start, your boyish charm has never worked on me, and secondly, I’ve told you already, I don’t have any time.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘Not even half an hour any more, twenty minutes max, now.’

‘OK.’ Kelly stopped playing games at once. ‘OK. I met the lad who was killed by that truck. It was in The Wild Dog, probably only minutes before he died...’

He told Karen the whole story then, everything the young soldier had said about Hangridge, how frightened he’d seemed, the look in his eyes when he’d been escorted out of the pub by the two men who had come looking for him, and he put considerable emphasis on what had turned out to be not only the boy’s last words to him, but for all that Kelly knew may well have been the last words he ever spoke.

‘“They’ve killed the others. They’ll kill me, I’m sure of it.” That’s what he said, Karen, and half an hour or so later he was dead. Now, it may be possible that we just have some kind of weird sort of coincidence here. But I think it’s more than that. And, at the very least, surely it merits an investigation.’

Karen was thoughtful. She really had been extremely hungry, and while Kelly talked she had been tucking into the jacket potato and sausages, brought over to her by Steve, with some gusto and not a little haste. She was therefore reluctant to speak at all, muttering merely a grunt or two every so often during Kelly’s discourse, until she had consumed enough of her meal to satisfy the worst of her hunger.

‘The boy was drunk, Kelly,’ she said eventually, narrowly avoiding spitting bits of half-chewed baked potato at him. ‘I’ve made a point of looking into the case since we talked on the phone. The post-mortem examination was held early this morning and, in fact, with the amount of alcohol he had in his system, he would have had to be blind drunk. I’m sure you noticed just how pissed he was, Kelly. You’ve had enough experience.’

Kelly ignored the sarcasm, which Karen in any case felt had been rather beneath her, even though it was totally justified.

‘Yes, I know,’ he said. ‘But, none the less, the lad was genuinely terrified. You could see it in his eyes.’

‘Kelly, haven’t you heard of alcoholic paranoia? You of all people.’

‘Yes. Even suffered from it myself, Karen, just as you appear to be so kindly suggesting. Of course I know about alcoholic paranoia. But that wasn’t it. I’m sure of it.’

‘Really. You a psychiatrist now as well as a potential Booker prize-winner, are you?’

Karen didn’t know quite why she was being so hard on him, but she didn’t seem able to help herself. Perhaps it was because of what she had said to him as soon as he had phoned her that morning. Kelly always brought trouble. She watched him wince as she delivered her latest broadside, then shrug his shoulders. He didn’t rise to the bait at all, and instead answered her in a level tone.

‘Look, I can’t explain it, Karen, but I really did think the lad was one hundred per cent genuine and, OK, I know I can’t explain this either, but for some reason neither did I think he was suffering from alcoholic paranoia, or any other kind of paranoia, come to that.’

Karen finished the final mouthful of her meal before responding. She was an organised eater and had arranged her meal into little food parcels, a piece of sausage, some cheesy potato and a sprinkling of salad in each, which she had devoured quite systematically in spite of her haste.

‘Look, Kelly, you saw the scene of the accident. You must have got some idea of what happened. There was one vehicle involved, a lorry being driven by a professional along a winding moorland road on a dark, rain-swept night, a pretty unsuitable road for a big artic’, even under the best of conditions, and one pedestrian who was out of his brains. Now, if that doesn’t add up to a straightforward, highly predictable scenario, I don’t know what does.’

‘Well, maybe, but you didn’t hear the lad talking...’

‘Let me tell you. Your squaddie, whose full name was Alan Connelly, by the way, and who shouldn’t even have been getting boozed up in The Wild Dog as he was only seventeen, just lurched out across the road in front of this extremely large articulated lorry. That’s what the driver said, and all the evidence, like tyre marks, etc, point to him having told the truth. There is absolutely no evidence to indicate any kind of foul play, and neither does there seem to have been any way the accident could have been the driver’s fault, not in that weather. The lad was out of his skull and the injuries that he received, according to the pathologist’s report, back up the driver’s claim that he seemed to virtually throw himself into the road. None the less, the poor bastard driver is totally traumatised and is still in hospital with shock. That’s about the sum of it, one of life’s minor tragedies. Nobody, but you, Kelly, has even suggested there could be anything more to it than that. So what are you really getting at?’

Kelly shrugged again. ‘I don’t know, Karen. Of course I don’t know. But I do know this Alan Connelly was frightened silly and when I saw the pathetic little sod in a heap in that road, all I could think of was that he’d predicted his own death. And he’d been proven quite bloody right. There are some unanswered questions, Karen, you have to agree to that. What about those two men who turned up looking for him, for a start? And who were they? I asked them if they were from Hangridge, and come to think of it, they didn’t answer, but I felt sure they were soldiers. They had that look. And I just assumed they were mates of his. At first, anyway. But where were they when the boy was killed? They weren’t seen at the scene at all, and they haven’t come forward since, have they?’

Karen finished her final food parcel, chewing appreciatively, and drained the last of her pint of Diet Coke.

‘Maybe they were drunk too, Kelly, and they and your tragic young friend just all went their separate ways outside the pub. Simple as that.’

Kelly shook his head. ‘No. They weren’t drunk, no way. Not those two. And they wouldn’t have parted company with that boy, surely? They’d come to get him. They made it quite clear they were looking for him. Plus Connelly was so damned drunk, I find it hard to believe he could have made it half a mile down the road unaided.’

‘Oh, I dunno,’ muttered Karen, rising to her feet and swinging her latest extravagance, an eccentrically decorated Voyage handbag made of blue denim, with lots of dangly bits and designed to look like the top of a pair of jeans, over one shoulder. ‘It’s amazing what drunks can do.’

‘Yeah, all right, Karen, give it a break, will you.’

Karen’s face broke into a grin. She had a really cheeky, yet extremely warm way of doing so. It was quite endearing, but she was unaware of that too. Kelly sat quietly waiting for her to speak again.

‘OK, Kelly,’ she said eventually. ‘I’ll at least see if we can find those two men. Do you remember what they looked like?’

‘Sort of, but they were bundled up against the weather — woolly hats, coat collars turned up, that sort of thing.’

‘Umm. Well, if you come across to the station with me, let’s try to get as full a description as possible on record. Do you think you might remember enough to be able to help put together a computer image?’

Kelly nodded a little uncertainly.

‘Right. Then I’ll see what inquiries I can set in motion up at Hangridge. If your two men are soldiers stationed up there, and we can come up with good enough images, somebody out at the barracks might recognise them. Shouldn’t hold your breath, though, Kelly, however good a likeness you come up with. The army doesn’t take kindly to civilian plod poking about without a damned good reason.’