Authors: Hilary Bonner
‘It certainly is.’
‘Yeah, well, you know something, Karen, I reckon I’ll probably get an anonymous call tomorrow, from some frightened young soldier giving me almost all the information on Hangridge and the Devonshire Fusiliers that you’ve just given me.’
‘Really, Phil? Now wouldn’t that be an amazing coincidence?’
‘Absolutely amazing, Karen.’
‘Thanks, Phil.’
‘My pleasure.’ His eyes were fixed on hers and there was no mistaking the look in them.
‘I’ve missed you,’ he said.
‘And I’ve missed you too,’ she replied honestly. ‘But that’s life, isn’t it?’
‘Well, I suppose so, but …’
‘Look, Phil, I’m sorry. But I do have to go.’
‘Right.’ He finished his drink and stood up. ‘I’ll call you, then, as soon as I have any news.’
‘Do that.’ She stood up too. ‘And thanks again.’
They left the pub together and it wasn’t until she was back behind the wheel of her car that she was able to reflect on the personal implications of her meeting with her former lover.
Something extraordinary had happened. Something she found she was extremely glad about. She hadn’t felt anything. She really hadn’t felt anything.
She realised then that when she had arranged to meet Phil, she had actually been much more worried about her reaction to him than his to her. She had not only fancied him rotten, she had loved him to bits. But she doubted he had ever really considered making the kind of commitment to her that she had wanted.
And now she didn’t want it any more. She took a deep breath. She felt a huge sense of relief. It was over. She neither loved not lusted after him any more.
And she supposed she’d had to see him again to know that.
Suddenly, she was overwhelmed by the feeling of being at peace with herself for the first time in a long while. She so wanted her life back. And in a strangely insidious sort of way, her affair with Phil Cooper had taken it from her.
Karen arrived home just before 9 p.m. and embarked on her usual round of last-minute tidying before Kelly’s arranged visit half an hour or so later. However, most of her flat was already moderately clean and tidy. After all, her recently acquired cleaning lady, Shirley, an out-of-work actress whose impecunious state had forced her to move in with her mother a couple of streets away, had made her weekly visit only the day before.
The bedroom, however, was its usual tip. Although Shirley was undoubtedly a good and thorough cleaner, and had even informed Karen that she was going to convert her house-cleaning activities into a proper business which would transform her finances, Karen was not entirely sure she was cut out for the job. Shirley – who had taken to wearing black T-shirts with the words DUST BUST emblazoned in white across her ample bosom, in order, she said, to attract attention to her new enterprise – had attitude. A lot of attitude. Unless Karen’s bedroom was in at least some kind of order, Shirley wouldn’t even go into it.
However, as she stood in the doorway looking at the mayhem within, Karen had to admit that Shirley probably had a point. The pile of clothes on the chair at the foot of her bed had once again spread onto the floor. And entangled among the various items were at least a couple of pairs of old knickers.
Karen set about putting shirts and trousers on hangers, throwing casually abandoned shoes into the bottom of her wardrobe, and gathering up the more unsavoury items destined for the washing machine. Then she stopped. What on earth was she doing? There was absolutely no way Kelly was going anywhere near her bedroom. That was just not going to happen. So why was she so frantically tidying the room?
‘For God’s sake,’ she muttered to herself. Sometimes, she wondered what on earth was going on in her head.
She abandoned the rest of the mess at once, made her way into the sitting room, flopped onto the sofa and switched on the TV to Sky News in order to catch up on the day’s events. Yet another major royal scandal appeared to be breaking, and Karen, while actually something of a closet republican, had a real weakness for royal gossip – the more scurrilous the better. The British royal family were, after all, the world’s greatest soap opera, she thought.
And in spite of all that was on her mind, she quickly became embroiled in the latest revelations, which cast almost inarguable doubt on the paternity of a major young royal. Indeed, she was so engrossed that she was surprised, when she glanced at her watch, to find that it was already ten minutes to ten.
She checked both her mobile phone and landline for messages, in case she had missed any calls. Her only message was from the irritatingly persistent Alison Barker.
‘Such a pity you couldn’t make dinner with Sally, but she’s coming down again in a couple of weeks and I just wondered …’
Karen pressed delete. She was even less interested than usual in Alison Barker. She was puzzled. Kelly was normally punctual and she had realised when he’d phoned her earlier in the day that he’d had something he was dying to tell her, which made it all the more unlikely that he would be even five minutes late. She tried both of Kelly’s numbers, but was merely switched straight to voicemail on each.
She wandered around the flat, picking up books and magazines and putting them down, periodically looking out of the window, watching for Kelly’s car to turn into the car park. Ten o’clock came and went, and still Kelly had not arrived. A thought occurred to her then. Perhaps he had emailed her. Karen had left her police station office just after six thirty and she thought she had last checked her email about half an hour before that. Surely Kelly would not have cancelled that late in the day, would he? And surely he wouldn’t have chosen email to do so, at such short notice.
None the less she logged onto her computer, which she kept hidden away in a Victorian roll-top desk in a corner of her big, high-ceilinged living room. And, indeed, there was an email from Kelly, timed 6.12 p.m., apologising for having to put off their meeting. She must have just missed it.
Karen read the message over two or three times. She was more than a little puzzled. The email, crucially she thought, made no mention at all of how important their postponed meeting might be, something Kelly had already made clear. In fact, it gave very little away, and that in itself made her deeply suspicious.
She could not imagine what could have happened
to make Kelly back out of a meeting he had been so keen to arrange. But something had happened, she was quite sure of that.
More than that, John Kelly was up to something. She knew him well. She just knew he was up to something and, whatever it was, he had been quite determined not to tell her about it.
She logged off her computer, shut it away in the desk and, completely preoccupied, made her way into the kitchen where she opened a bottle of red wine. Unusually, although she hadn’t eaten anything except Phil Cooper’s crisps since lunchtime, she wasn’t hungry. But she could do with a proper drink.
Thoughtfully, she wandered back into the living room and flopped down on the sofa again. The television was still on. Karen didn’t even glance at the screen. Instead she reached for her cordless phone, took her palmtop computer out of her handbag, looked up a phone number and dialled it.
‘Hello, Jennifer?’ she queried. ‘Karen Meadows. I was just calling to see how you and your sisters were getting on?’
‘Oh, that is kind of you,’ said the voice at the other end of the line, making Karen feel like a total rat. She didn’t know it, but one way and another Moira’s daughters seemed to have a habit of unwittingly doing that to people. Or to her and Kelly, anyway.
‘We’re fine. Well, we’re coping. I mean, we were expecting it, after all. But it’s always a shock, isn’t it …?’
‘Yes, of course. And your mother was just such a lovely person.’
Karen paused. As ever she was too impatient to
keep up small talk for long, even under these circumstances.
‘Don’t suppose Kelly is with you, by any chance, is he?’ she enquired casually.
‘No,’ responded Jennifer, sounding slightly puzzled herself. ‘Should he be?’
‘No, no, of course not,’ Karen responded swiftly. ‘I haven’t been able to raise him at home or on his mobile and it occurred to me that he might have been visiting you.’
‘No. We haven’t seen him since the day of the funeral, actually.’
Jennifer spoke without a note of criticism. Typical, thought Karen. And she was now behaving just as badly as no doubt Kelly was.
‘Oh, well, I expect he’s very busy,’ she responded lamely, and managed one or two other platitudes before ringing off, slamming the receiver quite violently back on its charger.
She had known it. She really had known it. Kelly had been lying. That meant he was keeping something from her. And that was sure to mean trouble. Because, with Kelly, it damned well always did.
Meanwhile, Kelly had decided, mainly because he was so on edge that he just couldn’t sit at home waiting, to go out to Babbacombe early and eat in The Cary Arms, the lovely old pub built into the cliffside just above beach level, which was one of his favourite hostelries in the area. He arrived around 8.30, ordered steak and chips and a Diet Coke, followed by a couple more Cokes and a coffee in order to while away the time until closing. At around 11.20, aware of the landlady starting to fidget
demonstrably, he made his way to the borrowed Volvo, parked in the car park down by the beach. It was a completely dark night. No moon and no stars were visible. The lights from the couple of houses to one side of the beach and the pub above them, barely cut through the cloak of blackness which seemed to have wrapped itself around Kelly. He shuffled across the car park to the Volvo, moving unnaturally slowly. It had, of course, been raining earlier in the day, and Kelly suspected there might be a shower again at any moment.
Once inside the Volvo, he rolled a cigarette and sat smoking with the window wound down, looking around him as best he could. Apart from what were now the relatively distant lights of the pub and the two beach houses, Kelly could see nothing at all.
Every few minutes he flicked on his lighter in order to check his watch. It was almost like a nervous tic. At exactly midnight, he opened the car door and stepped out.
The night was surprisingly warm for the time of year, even though he could feel the dampness of the sea air around him. As he shut the car door he took a long deep breath, savouring the salty seaweedy smell.
Both the sea and the beach were as black as the sky. He shivered, even though he was not cold, as he peered around him, screwing up his eyes in the hope that they might adjust a little to the lack of light. He could still see absolutely nothing. With extreme care, he again proceeded across part of the car park, raised just above the beach alongside the deserted beach café, which opened only in the summer, and then just during daylight hours, and attempted to negotiate the small flight of steps which led down to sea level. At
the bottom he stumbled. He had somehow expected one step more. He fell almost to one knee and had to use the iron railing flanking the steps to haul himself upright again.
He had decided to obey all his instructions meticulously, including not bringing a torch, but he could really have done with one. He just hoped he didn’t break his neck before even encountering Deep Throat.
There was barely a breath of wind, which was why the night was so unseasonably warm. Yet visibility was so bad he thought that the darkness of the night was probably being intensified by a sea mist. He really did feel as if he were engulfed in a slightly clammy blanket, a feeling he thought was unique to the coast, particularly in foggy conditions. Certainly, he had experienced nothing like it inland anywhere in the world. It was strangely disorientating. Momentarily, Kelly lost his sense of direction, and only the sound of the waves gently lapping on the shingly beach told him that the sea was to his right, and the wooded hill leading up to Babbacombe proper and the main drag into Torquay was to his left. There was no other sound at all. You could hear no passing traffic noise down at Babbacombe beach, of course, and the lack of wind made the night almost eerily silent.
Kelly stood for a minute listening. Was there someone else already on the beach, he wondered? Not only could he not see anything, but neither could he hear anything. He began to pick his way over the shingles, straight along the beach as he had been instructed, startlingly aware of the rhythmic thumping of his heart, which, in the otherwise intense silence, seemed unnaturally loud. He slid each foot
cautiously in front of the other. Once, a particularly large pebble caused him to stumble for a second time, but this time he righted himself immediately and continued to move painstakingly forwards.
Visibility was so poor that he almost walked into the cliff at the far end of the beach, unaware that he had even reached it. And he paused for a moment before adhering to his instructions once more, turning on his heel and shuffling back along the beach.
Twice more he repeated this manoeuvre, and, just as he had almost reached the far cliff for the third time and was beginning to wonder if he was the victim of an elaborate hoax, it happened.
Suddenly he sensed that someone was behind him. He had neither heard nor seen anything, but all his senses told him that there was another presence on the beach and that it was threateningly close to him. The beat of his heart not only seemed extraordinarily loud now, he was also aware that it was much faster than usual, indeed his heart was racing. He tried to turn around, and opened his mouth to speak, or maybe to scream. He wasn’t sure. It didn’t matter. He was not given the chance to do either.
With no further warning, an arm locked around his throat and he felt the pressure of a large, strong body against his back. The crook of his assailant’s elbow locked beneath his chin, crushing his larynx. Kelly raised his own arms and lashed out with them frantically in all directions, desperate to make any kind of contact. A second arm from behind knocked his down to his side and pinned them there. The grip around his throat felt like steel and was tightening. He was being choked. Then he was aware of his attacker shifting his balance.