Hilary Bonner - When the Dead Cry Out

“She’d found herself a job in an office,” Kelly went on. “A surprisingly good job, she said, but I think she also wanted to get away from her father, at least for a bit.”

“Anyway.” He stopped and glanced at Karen. “You know what I’m going to say, don’t you?” he asked.

Karen thought that she might. She wondered if Kelly was ever going to stop playing games. And she also wondered if it was really just nerves that was making him behave like this or if he was covering something up. Mind you, she reckoned, if he was, then it was probably only his own thoughtless behaviour.

“Kelly, for Christ’s sake,” she said yet again.

He continued straight away then. “Well, I sought her out because I wanted to tell her what Jimmy Finch had said about Marshall confessing to him.”

“You did what?”

“I told her that Marshall had more or less confessed to killing her mother,” Kelly repeated a little sheepishly. “Not just about her mother’s death, but also implying that he’d killed her sister, too.”

“Terrific,” said Karen. “Absolutely terrific. And how did she respond to that, as if I couldn’t guess?”

“Look, I actually had a purpose in telling her what I did.” Kelly was on the defensive now. “I’d got the name of this doctor who was an expert on Recovered Memory Syndrome. You know about it?”

“Of course.” There’d actually been a conviction based on the highly controversial condition the previous year up in Merseyside which involved a young girl witnessing her father kill her mother in 1978. The girl, by then a twenty-nine-year-old woman, underwent intensive counselling sessions including hypnotherapy which had allegedly caused her to recall scenes that she had previously blanked out of her mind.

“Well, I suggested to Jennifer that she should see this doctor and undergo therapy, so that if she had any doubts at all about her memory of what happened she could at least be reassured. Well, that was the way I put it to her...”

Kelly paused. Karen smiled tightly. “Reassured” was a word that slipped rather too easily off the tongue of a one-time tabloid hack, she thought to herself. This time she waited a little more patiently for Kelly to start talking again.

“She listened to me but she didn’t seem all that keen; then she called me to say that she had made an appointment. I think she just wanted to talk to someone. Also, when you and the prosecuting counsel had all gone on about how she could have been disturbed as a child and that her memory, prompted by Marshall, might not be one hundred percent, I think something did seep through even though she wouldn’t have it at the time. I think she already had her doubts and I provided her with a way of putting them to rest. Or at least that’s what she hoped would happen.”

He paused and glanced at Karen as if he was looking for reassurance now.

“If you ask me, she so desperately wanted a father, a real father, that she willed herself to believe in Marshall, and that meant that she had to believe everything he told her about what happened with her mother and her sister. Marshall played daddy to her from the moment she rediscovered him, and she didn’t want it to end. By God, she didn’t.”

He stopped again. Karen studied him appraisingly. Sometimes she just could not believe the way Kelly behaved, the way he meddled.

“Psychiatrist yourself now, are you?” As she spoke she realized this was not the first time she had made that remark to him. But she had never been so serious before.

“Obviously not,” he replied very quietly. “I made a real balls-up of it. It’s true what I said before, all right, whatever you make of it. She’s dead because of me. I am responsible.”

“Two days ago now she phoned again and she said that she’d had several sessions with the shrink I’d recommended and that she had successfully recovered her memory, and that this time she was absolutely certain that she remembered everything correctly. She said she wanted to tell me all of it. But she wouldn’t talk on the phone. Said she wanted to meet me face-to-face. So I dropped everything and took the train to London.”

Kelly coughed dryly and reached for his glass of water. Karen was intrigued now.

“Why you, do you think?” she asked more gently.

“She said I’d provided the key to her memory and maybe I could tell her how to use it.” Kelly smiled. “Those were her exact words, come to think of it. Quite poetic really. I don’t think she knew who to turn to, actually. She had no friends worth mentioning and no family apart from Marshall.”

“What about going to the police?”

“Under the circumstances she didn’t think the police could help. Not this time round, as she put it.”

“Under what circumstances?”

Kelly smiled grimly. “Look, you don’t have to listen to me telling you anything secondhand,” he said. “I’ve got it all on tape.”

“You have?” In spite of herself, Karen could feel the excitement welling up in her.

“Yup. I did an in-depth interview with her at her flat the day before yesterday. Then afterwards I went back home to decide what to do with it, what to do next, what I could do next. It was pretty tricky stuff, as you can imagine. Then I heard the news yesterday morning that Richard Marshall had been killed. I couldn’t believe it. I hadn’t expected her to do anything like that. I really hadn’t.”

Kelly covered his face with his hands.

“Anything like what, exactly?” Karen was being very careful.

“Well, I just knew at once that she’d killed him. That she’d killed Richard Marshall. I just knew it. I mean, if he’d been my father I’d have killed him.”

Yes, but not everyone is quite such a hothead as you, thank God , thought Karen. Aloud she said nothing. Instead she waited again for him to resume speaking.

“I knew she’d done it so I just got myself to the station and caught a train straight back here. I didn’t know what to do when I couldn’t raise her. It was during the night that I began to think she was probably dead, too. That was why I broke into her flat this morning.”

“And I was proved right, unfortunately. She was dead. Stone-dead. Half her bloody head blown off. And I’ll bet you, I’ll bet you everything I’ve got, that you’ll find the gun that killed her also killed Richard Marshall in Poole.”

By late afternoon the next day the Met were satisfied that Jennifer Roth had indeed almost certainly killed herself. The regional Home Office pathologist reported that the angle of the gun indicated a self-inflicted wound. Initial forensic evidence also backed up the suicide theory. And the gun used, a Browning 45, was also almost certainly the weapon used to kill Richard Marshall in Poole.

Kelly, who had been held overnight at Hammersmith Police Station, was released into Karen’s custody, enabling her to take him back to Torquay. She couldn’t wait to hear that tape which, for reasons that defied her, he had left in the drawer of his desk at home. His explanation was that he thought the content so explosive that he didn’t want to carry the tape around with him.

In the car on the way down the M5, Karen’s mobile phone rang and a familiar number flashed on to the screen. It was Cooper. For a moment she considered not answering it. She glanced at Tompkins. It was a filthy day again for the time of year. The rain was tipping down and the detective constable was frowning in concentration as he peered through the curtains of misty water being formed by the heavy traffic all around him. In the back seat Kelly, who had earlier grumbled that he had not slept for one minute during his night spent in a police cell, was snoring gently.

Karen let the phone ring several times before finally pressing the receive button.