Free No Reason To Die by Hilary Bonner Page A

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.’
    ‘Which is precisely my point,’ said Kelly, rising to his feet, grabbing his jacket from the back of his chair, and setting off in pursuit of Karen, who was already half out of the door. ‘They’ll cover up anything they can to keep it in the family.’
    Karen did not bother to reply. She knew he was right about that, though. Although the civilian police theoretically had jurisdiction over military establishments in almost all relevant matters, in practice the vast majority of non-combat deaths were investigated by the SIB, the Special Investigation Branch of the Royal Military Police, with no civilian police involvement at all. Civilian police forces were routinely notified of suicide and accidental deaths on military premises within their area, but only became actively involved when the RMP reported obvious foul play. And Karen was one of many senior officers who felt that all sudden non-combat deaths of military personnel should be investigated by civilian police forces in exactly the same way as all non-military sudden deaths were. Indeed, she believed it to be vital for such investigations to be independent as well as thorough.
    Alan Connelly, of course, had died on a public highway, so his death was therefore automatically aCID matter should any further investigation be called for.
    None the less, Karen had no illusions. Any inquiries she made up at Hangridge would be welcomed by the military about as much as a visit from Saddam Hussein during the period when he had still been Iraq’s leader. And probably in much the same manner, at least as far as her career was concerned, she reflected glumly.

Five
    Outside on the pavement, Karen paused to pull on her white mackintosh cape. It was still raining and she didn’t like getting her hair wet. Kelly caught up then and was right behind her as, the steel tips on her boots making sharp ringing noises on the Tarmac, she hurried across South Street, past Torre Conservative Club, to the CID offices in their recently converted building opposite the entrance to the main police station yard. She heard Kelly start to laugh as he studied the sign outside the Lansdowne Dance Centre next door. It advertised tuition in everything from modern