Karen had neither time nor inclination for those sort of sentiments. She ignored him totally on that issue. Instead she persevered with the purpose of her call.
“Bill, please, tell me about Kelly.”
“Oh, yes.” Talbot sounded disappointed. He’d wanted to enjoy the moment, no doubt, to share it with a kindred spirit.
“Well, it’s all about Kelly’s mother, really,” he went on. “Angela Kelly taught Marshall’s girls at primary school. Well, actually, she was the headmistress, and a bloody good one at that, I’m told. It seems that the day after Clara Marshall was last seen the eldest Marshall girl, Lorraine, told Kelly’s mother that her father had got rid of her mother—”
Karen interrupted there. Light had suddenly dawned. “I knew about the headmistress, it’s in the files, and I’m not at all sure I didn’t hear it gossipped about at the time. But I had no idea she was John Kelly’s mother. I’d missed that completely.”
Karen cursed herself. She felt she really should have known.
“Do you know the rest?” Talbot asked.
“Well, I know that the headmistress always blamed herself, thought that if she’d reported to the police what the little girl had said that she might have saved both children. She had no reason to blame herself, of course — what Lorraine Marshall said was just the sort of thing kids do say when their parents’ marriage is on the rocks.”
“Indeed,” Talbot continued. “But that was not the end of it, I’m afraid. It played on Angela Kelly’s mind. I talked to her myself, you know, when the shit finally hit the fan the year after Clara and the girls disappeared and when we first arrested Marshall. She kept saying over and over again: ‘Lorraine told me her father had got rid of her mother, she told me her father had got rid of her mother. She told me that and I should have understood. I should have done something.’”
“Mrs. Kelly always believed that it was because she had confronted Richard Marshall and told him what his daughter had said that he then killed his children as well as his wife. And she couldn’t forgive herself for having been taken in by him, for believing him when he said that Clara had first left him, then returned for the girls. I remember that I couldn’t console the woman at all. And neither, it seems, could anyone else. Six months later she killed herself. She took an overdose. And her family, John included, never had any doubts at all over why she did it...”
Talbot paused there. Karen felt a chill in her spine.
“Oh, my God,” she whispered.
Talbot began to speak again. “Well, as it’s turned out Marshall certainly didn’t kill both children. That’s one thing we do know, because at least one of those girls is still alive. Ironic really, isn’t it, Karen?”
Karen did not reply. She was lost in her own thoughts, and they were extremely disturbing ones.
“Karen?” There was both curiosity and anxiety in Talbot’s voice now. He had started thinking too, it seemed. “Karen? Are you there? You don’t think Kelly had anything to do with it, do you? Surely not...”
Karen interrupted him then. She wasn’t going down that road. Not yet. Not with anyone. Not even with Bill Talbot.
“For God’s sake, Bill. I’ve had people going through all the files on this case over and over again. How could they have missed the headmistress’s suicide? Was it there? Was it properly recorded?”
“Well...” Bill sounded disconcertingly unsure of himself. “Yes, it must have been. Everything was. It’s just that the enquiry was so disjointed. After we launched the initial investigation, and then had to let Marshall go because we didn’t have enough on him, well, everything went pear-shaped really. People kept coming up with theories, with their slant on things, you know how it is... you’ve moved on to something else by then—”
She interrupted again. “Bill, are you trying to tell me that Mrs. Kelly’s suicide and its probable cause wasn’t properly recorded?”
“No, of course not. It must have been. It’s just that there was so much, and so much after the event, if you see what I mean—”
“No, I don’t bloody see what you mean, Bill,” Karen stormed. “No wonder this fucking investigation has made the Devon and Cornwall Constabulary a laughingstock. Problem is, I just got the tail end of it and now I’m the one taking all the shit full in my face.”
She pushed the end button then. She knew she’d been unfair, really, but she couldn’t help it. The whole investigation had been a series of disasters from the very beginning, at least one of which she shared the blame for, and nothing seemed to be changing. But this was another development which hit her hard personally. She cared about Kelly. Not only that, she had to admit to herself, too many people knew of her close friendship with him. In fact, before her relationship with Phil became the focus of station gossip, she knew there had always been talk of her and Kelly having an affair. That had actually never been the case. Nonetheless Kelly was already a suspect character.
Not that long previously Karen had been instrumental in arresting John Kelly and of actually charging him with a murder during the investigation of another case, which she had always considered never to have been satisfactorily resolved. And that had been the case which had at one stage threatened to scupper her promotion to detective superintendent, or worst, at least partly because of her association with Kelly. Kelly had fallen under the spell of the mesmerizing Angel Silver, the high-profile widow of a rock star. And although he had been proven innocent before the case had even got to court and all charges had been dropped, he had only got himself into such a situation because of his tendency towards allowing his emotions to take control of him. It was true that his behaviour then had probably been accentuated by excessive use of drink and drugs, and, as far as Karen knew, Kelly was now clean, but nonetheless he had shown little self-control over anything much over the years.
Karen took yet another cigarette from her packet and lit it with the glowing end of the first. She inhaled deeply.
She had to admit to herself that if there was one man in the world who she knew was capable of acting in a thoroughly out-of-character way because he had allowed his feelings to run out of control, it was John Kelly. Fond as she was of him, she had believed before that under certain circumstances he could be capable of murder. She still believed it. And with his healthy list of criminal contacts Kelly was another man who would have no trouble at all getting hold of a gun if he wanted one.
She picked up her phone again and called Torquay Police Station.
“I want a national alert put out on John Kelly,” she said. “I want him found. And I want him found fast.”
“And if he won’t cooperate, if he won’t come quietly, I want him arrested on suspicion of murder.”
Chapter Eighteen
It did not prove necessary to arrest John Kelly after all.
Karen arrived back at Torquay Police Station just as the call came through from the Met. Kelly had turned up at Hammersmith Police Station less than an hour earlier. He had wanted to report the discovery of a body. The body of a young woman believed to be Jennifer Roth.
Karen felt yet again as if she’d been punched in the stomach. What was going on here? The whole scenario was becoming more and more complex and confusing by the second. What on earth had happened to Jennifer Roth? How had she died? And why had John Kelly of all people, a Torquay-based reporter, found her body in West London? She and the entire might of two police forces hadn’t even had a clue where to find Jennifer Roth.