No Reason To Die Read Free

If there was one person in the world who knew all about dealing with drunks, it was John Kelly. After all, he’d been there. In spades.
    ‘It’s all right, mate,’ he said. ‘Come and sit down with me, and I’ll get you another one.’
    He steered the boy to a table by the wall and more or less pushed him into a chair. There was something about Kelly that allowed him to get away with it where another man might not. Perhaps even in his drunken state the lad could sense something of Kelly’s chequered past.
    At the bar he ordered a pint of ginger ale for the lad and another pint of Diet Coke for himself, resigned to the fact that he was going to do nothing constructive with the rest of that night, anyway, so he might just as well stay a little longer in The Dog. The ginger ale was warm, wet, pale brown and slightly fizzy. Kelly had a small bet with himself that the boy wouldn’t even notice that it wasn’t a pint of bitter.
    He put the drink on the table next to the young Scotsman who picked it up and downed half of it in one swallow. Then he sat back in his seat and studied the glass in his hand with some puzzlement. For a moment it seemed he may not have been fooled and that he was about to comment on the true nature of its contents, but Kelly didn’t give him chance to dwell on the matter.
    ‘You a squaddie or something?’ he asked.
    Alan did not reply but looked directly at Kelly, obviously making a determined effort to focus. In his eyes there was just a glimpse of something beyond drunken incomprehension, but Kelly was not quite sure what it was.
    ‘Well, are you?’ Kelly repeated.
    Alan nodded, reached for his glass again and, in doing so knocked it from the table so that it fell, sending a cascade of ginger ale over both Kelly and himself. The glass smashed into hundreds of small pieces on the flagstoned floor.
    ‘Shit,’ said Kelly.
    Alan slumped back in his chair, eyes blank again, looking as if he was only vaguely aware of what was happening.
    ‘Right,’ said Charlie, finally playing the role of publican, as he approached from behind the bar witha cloth and a dustpan and brush. ‘That’s it. You’re out of here, mate.’
    The order was entirely wasted. Alan’s eyes were closed and he seemed to have fallen asleep, or certainly slumped into drunken semi-consciousness.
    ‘It’s all right, Charlie, I’ll sort him out,’ said Kelly, who had been unceremoniously removed from more than his fair share of pubs in his time and saved from the same fate in numerous others thanks only to the assistance of various drinking companions.
    Kelly shook the young man by the shoulders. Alan’s eyes shot open, unnaturally wide.
    ‘Look, I think you could do with a bit of a helping hand, old son,’ he said gently. ‘Where are you stationed? Why don’t I call one of your mates. Somebody will come and pick you up, for certain.’
    ‘No. No, I don’t want that. No. You mushn’t call anyone.’ Alan shouted. He was still having difficulty getting his words out, but he had no difficulty whatsoever with his message. Kelly was mildly surprised by the strength of his reaction. He sounded quite alarmed at the prospect of being collected by his army mates.
    ‘Well, you can’t stay here, you know,’ Kelly continued. ‘Maybe I could drop you off.’
    It wouldn’t be such a bad idea. He might just as well, he thought. It would get him out of the pub anyway, and maybe on the road back to a late-night writing session after all.
    ‘No.’ The boy was adamant.
    ‘Well, how else are you going to get back to your billet, Alan? Don’t tell me you’ve got a vehicle parked outside? There’s no way you could drive, anyway.’
    Alan shook his head, in an almost dreamy sort of way. ‘No, I walked here, didn’t I?’
    ‘Right.’ Kelly thought for a moment, trying to remember an army base within anything like walking distance of The Wild Dog. He knew the moors, indeed that whole area of South Devon, extremely well, but